Quotes about yeoman, page 6
The Rebel Scot
How, Providence? and yet a Scottish crew?
Then Madam Nature wears black patches too!
What, shall our nation be in bondage thus
Unto a land that truckles under us?
Ring the bells backward! I am all on fire.
Not all the buckets in a country quire
Shall quench my rage. A poet should be feared
When angry, like a comet's flaming beard.
And where's the stoic can his wrath appease,
To see his country sick of Pym's disease?
By Scotch invasion to be made a prey
To such pigwidgeon myrmidons as they?
But that there's charm in verse, I would not quote
The name of Scot without an antidote;
Unless my head were red, that I might brew
Invention there that might be poison too.
Were I a drowsy judge whose dismal note
Disgorgeth halters as a juggler's throat
Doth ribbons; could I in Sir Empiric's tone
Speak pills in phrase and quack destruction;
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poem by John Cleveland
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The Devil's Walk. A Ballad
I.
Once, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose,
With care his sweet person adorning,
He put on his Sunday clothes.
II.
He drew on a boot to hide his hoof,
He drew on a glove to hide his claw,
His horns were concealed by a Bras Chapeau,
And the Devil went forth as natty a Beau
As Bond-street ever saw.
III.
He sate him down, in London town,
Before earth's morning ray;
With a favourite imp he began to chat,
On religion, and scandal, this and that,
Until the dawn of day.
IV.
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poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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The Trumpeter, an Old English Tale
It was in the days of a gay British King
(In the old fashion'd custom of merry-making)
The Palace of Woodstock with revels did ring,
While they sang and carous'd--one and all:
For the monarch a plentiful treasury had,
And his Courtiers were pleas'd, and no visage was sad,
And the knavish and foolish with drinking were mad,
While they sat in the Banquetting hall.
Some talk'd of their Valour, and some of their Race,
And vaunted, till vaunting was black in the face;
Some bragg'd for a title, and some for a place,
And, like braggarts, they bragg'd one and all!
Some spoke of their scars in the Holy Crusade,
Some boasted the banner of Fame they display'd,
And some sang their Loves in the soft serenade
As they sat in the Banquetting hall.
And here sat a Baron, and there sat a Knight,
And here stood a Page in his habit all bright,
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poem by Mary Darby Robinson
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A Point Of Honour
``Tell me again; I did not hear: It was wailing so sadly. Nay,
Hush! little one, for mother wants to know what they have to say.
There! At my breast be good and still! What quiets you calms me too.
They say that the source is poisoned; still, it seems pure enough for you!
``I shall bring them to shame, aye one and all, my Father who loves me so,
Dear Mother, a little severe at times, but with story as white as snow,
And sister Effie, so trim and quick, so fair and betrothed so long,
Who will wait for her lover for years and years, but would die at the thought of wrong.
``O don't! For I know what my brother Ralph, if he knew it, would think and say.
He would drive me across the lonely moor, and would curse me all the way;
Would call on the cold wet winds to whip, and the sunshine to pass me by,
And vow that the ditch were too good a grave for a thing as foul as I.
``And then there is grand-dad, worn and white, who can scarcely speak or see,
But sits in the sun in his wicker chair, with the Bible upon his knee.
To him 'twould but sound like a buzzing hive if they talked to him of my fall:
Yet I almost think that I dread his face, turned heavenward, more than all.
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poem by Alfred Austin
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Le Monocle de Mon Oncle
“Mother of heaven, regina of the clouds,
O sceptre of the sun, crown of the moon,
There is not nothing, no, no, never nothing,
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill.”
And so I mocked her in magnificent measure.
Or was it that I mocked myself alone?
I wish that I might be a thinking stone.
The sea of spuming thought foists up again
The radiant bubble that she was. And then
A deep up-pouring from some saltier well
Within me, bursts its watery syllable.
II
A red bird flies across the golden floor.
It is a red bird that seeks out his choir
Among the choirs of wind and wet and wing.
A torrent will fall from him when he finds.
Shall I uncrumple this much-crumpled thing?
I am a man of fortune greeting heirs;
For it has come that thus I greet the spring.
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poem by Wallace Stevens
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Baucis And Philemon
IN ancient times, as story tells,
The saints would often leave their cells,
And stroll about, but hide their quality,
To try good people's hospitality.
It happened on a winter night,
As authors of the legend write,
Two brother hermits, saints by trade,
Taking their tour in masquerade,
Disguised in tattered habits, went
To a small village down in Kent;
Where, in the strollers' canting strain,
They begged from door to door in vain;
Tried every tone might pity win,
But not a soul would let them in.
Our wandering saints in woeful state,
Treated at this ungodly rate,
Having through all the village passed,
To a small cottage came at last,
Where dwelt a good honest old yeoman,
Called, in the neighbourhood, Philemon,
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poem by Jonathan Swift
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Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle upon the Restoration o
, High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate,
And Emont's murmur mingled with the Song.--
The words of ancient time I thus translate,
A festal strain that hath been silent long:--
"From town to town, from tower to tower,
The red rose is a gladsome flower.
Her thirty years of winter past,
The red rose is revived at last;
She lifts her head for endless spring,
For everlasting blossoming:
Both roses flourish, red and white:
In love and sisterly delight
The two that were at strife are blended,
And all old troubles now are ended.--
Joy! joy to both! but most to her
Who is the flower of Lancaster!
Behold her how She smiles to-day
On this great throng, this bright array!
Fair greeting doth she send to all
From every corner of the hall;
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poem by William Wordsworth
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A Nation's Test
I.
A NATION'S greatness lies in men, not acres;
One master-mind is worth a million hands.
No royal robes have marked the planet-shakers,
But Samson-strength to burst the ages' bands.
The might of empire gives no crown supernal—
Athens is here—but where is Macedon?
A dozen lives make Greece and Rome eternal,
And England's fame might safely rest on one.
Here test and text are drawn from Nature's preaching:
Afric and Asia—half the rounded earth—
In teeming lives the solemn truth are teaching,
That insect-millions may have human birth.
Sun-kissed and fruitful, every clod is breeding
A petty life, too small to reach the eye:
So must it be, with no man thinking, leading,
The generations creep their course and die.
Hapless the lands, and doomed amid the races,
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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The Truce of Piscataqua
Raze these long blocks of brick and stone,
These huge mill-monsters overgrown;
Blot out the humbler piles as well,
Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell
The weaving genii of the bell;
Tear from the wild Cocheco's track
The dams that hold its torrents back;
And let the loud-rejoicing fall
Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall;
And let the Indian's paddle play
On the unbridged Piscataqua!
Wide over hill and valley spread
Once more the forest, dusk and dread,
With here and there a clearing cut
From the walled shadows round it shut;
Each with its farm-house builded rude,
By English yeoman squared and hewed,
And the grim, flankered block-house bound
With bristling palisades around.
So, haply shall before thine eyes
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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Canterbury Tales; The Chanouns Yemannes Tale
The prologe of the Chanouns yemannes tale.
Whan ended was the lyf of seinte Cecile,
Er we hadde riden fully fyve mile,
At Boghtoun under Blee us gan atake
A man, that clothed was in clothes blake,
And undernethe he wered a whyt surplys.
His hakeney, which that was al pomely grys,
So swatte, that it wonder was to see,
It wemed as he had priked miles thre.
The hors eek that his yeman rood upon
So swatte, that unnethe myghte it gon.
Aboute the peytrel stood the foom ful hye,
He was of fome al flekked as a pye.
A male tweyfoold upon his croper lay,
It semed that he caried lite array.
Al light for somer rood this worthy man,
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poem by Geoffrey Chaucer
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