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
BARRY CORNWALL.
31. Lighted halls,
Cramm'd full of fools and fiddles.
R. C. SANDS.
32. To hear
The roaring of the raging elements,
To know all human skill, all human strength
Avail not; to look round, and only see
The mountain wave, incumbent with its weight
Of bursting waters o'er the reeling bark;--
Oh, God, this is indeed a dreadful thing!
And he who hath endured the horror once
Of such an hour, doth never hear the storm
Howl round his home, but he remembers it,
And thinks upon the suffering mariner.
SOUTHEY--_Madoc_.
33. I perceive you delight not in _music_.
_Merry Wives of Windsor._
34. You hate the gold and silver which persuade
Weak men to follow _far-fatiguing trade_;
Who madly think the flowery mountain's side,
The fountain's murmur, and the valley's pride,
The river's flow, less pleasing to behold
Than dreary deserts, if they lead to _gold_.
COLLINS--_Eclogues_.
35. To climb life's worn and heavy wheel,
Which draws up _nothing new_.
YOUNG--_Night Thoughts_.
36. To tax a _bad voice_ to slander music. An he had been a dog that
should have howled thus, they would have hanged him.
_Much Ado About Nothing._
37. It moves you more perhaps than folly ought,
When some _green heads_, as void of wit as thought,
Suppose themselves monopolists of sense,
And wiser mens' ability pretence.
COWPER.
38. GENTLEMAN.--A _woman moved_, which like a fountain troubled
(Is) muddy, ill-seeming, thick, bereft of beauty,
And in no wise is meet or reasonable.
_Taming of the Shrew._
38. LADY.-- The heavens preserve me
From that dull blessing, an _obedient husband_.
TOBIN--_Honey Moon_.
39. You're tired of _visits_, _modes_, and _forms_,
And _flatteries_ paid to fellow-worms;
Their conversation cloys.
DR. WATTS.
40. The _spider_, that weaver of cunning so deep,
Who rolls himself up in a ball to sleep.
MRS. SIGOURNEY.
41. A _fly_ that tickles the nasal tip.
MISS H. F. GOULD.
42. _Man_ delights not thee; no, nor _woman_ neither.
_Henry IV._
43. Church-yards _unadorn'd with shades_
And _blossoms_----Naked rows of graves
And melancholy ranks of monuments;
----where the course grass between
Shoots up its dull green spikes, and in the wind
Hisses;
----where the neglected bramble
Grows near the dead.
BRYANT.
44. You all _punctilios_ hate,
Though long familiar with the great.
SWIFT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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