Oracles from the Poets: A Fanciful Diversion for the Drawing Room
General
Oracles from the Poets: A Fanciful Diversion for the Drawing Room
Amusements; Fortune-telling; Quotations, English
6. You never speak the word _farewell_
But with an utterance faint and broken,
A heart-sick yearning for the time
When it shall never more be spoken.
BOWLES.
7. GENTLEMAN.--Now, my lord, as for tripe, it's your utter aversion.
GOLDSMITH--_Haunch of Venison_.
7. LADY.--An _exquisite_ of the highest stamp.
ALBERT PIKE.
8. To see
Things of no better mould
Than thou thyself art, greedily
In Fame's bright page enroll'd.
MOTHERWELL.
9. Weaving spiders.--
Hence, you long-legged spinners, hence!
_Midsummer Night's Dream._
10. You have no taste for _pomp_ and _strife_,
Which others love to find;
Your only wish, that bliss of life,
A poor and quiet mind.
CLARE.
11. You like not this _phrenology_,
This system of unfolding
The secret of a man's desires
To every one's beholding.
R. M. CHARLTON.
12. The sullen passion, and the hasty pet,
The swelling lip, the tear-distended eye,
The peevish question, the perverse reply.
HAYLEY--_Triumphs of Temper_.
13. Nor do you love that common phrase of guests,
As, _we make bold_, or, _we are troublesome_;
_We take you unprovided_, and the like;
----nor that common phrase of hosts,
_Oh, had I known your coming, we'd have had_
_Such things and such_; nor blame of cook, to say,
_This dish or that hath not been served with care_.
THOMAS HEYWOOD AND RICHARD BROOME--_The Late Lancashire
Witches_.
14. Tales of love were wont to weary you;
I know you joy not in a _love-discourse_.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona._
15. 'Tis a dreary thing to be
_Tossing on the wide, wide sea_,
When the sun has set in clouds,
And the wind sighs through the shrouds,
With a voice and with a tone
Like a living creature's moan!
EPES SARGENT.
16. _To hear the French talk French_ around you,
And wonder how they understand each other;
To hearken, and find all attempts confound you
At guessing what they mean by all their pother.
BYRON--_Giuseppino_.
17. _Books!_ out upon them; faithless chroniclers
Mere wordy counsellors--cold comforters
In the hour of sorrow.
LADY FLORA HASTINGS.
18. Your curse upon the venom'd slang
That shoots your tortured _gums_ alang,
An' through your lugs gies mony a twang,
Wi' gnawing vengeance;
Tearing your nerves wi' bitter pang,
Like racking engines.
BURNS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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