John Keese, Wit and Littérateur: A Biographical Memoir |
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Page 16 - Less wretched now, and one day free; He, too, who yet had held untired A spirit natural or inspired — He, too, was struck, and day by day Was withered on the stalk away.
Page 58 - Sparkling and bright in liquid light Does the wine our goblets gleam in, With hue as red as the rosy bed Which a bee would choose to dream in. Then fill to-night, with hearts as light, To loves as gay and fleeting As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim, And break on the lips while meeting.
Page 13 - But how much nobler will be the Sovereign's boast, when he shall have it to say that he found Law dear, and left it cheap ; found it a sealed book, left it a living letter ; found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor ; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of Honesty and the shield of Innocence...
Page 16 - I asked not why, and recked not where ; It was at length the same to me Fettered or fetterless to be ; I learned to love despair. And thus when they appeared at last, And all my bonds aside were cast, These heavy walls to me had grown A hermitage — and all my own!
Page 18 - It had pleased God to form poor Ned A thing of idiot mind, Yet to the poor unreasoning 'boy God had not been unkind. Old Sarah loved her helpless child, Whom helplessness made dear, And life was everything to him Who knew no hope nor fear. She knew his wants, she understood Each half artic'late call ; For he was everything to her, And she to him was all.
Page 20 - Why, mother, do you look so pale, And why are you so cold...
Page 16 - But why delay the truth ? — he died. I saw, and could not hold his head, Nor reach his dying hand — nor dead, Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. He died — and they...
Page 19 - The rabble boys who used to jeer Whene'er they saw poor Ned Now stood and watched him at the grave, And not a word they said. They came and went and came again Till night at last came on, And still he loitered by the grave Till all to rest were gone.
Page 13 - ... it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich — left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression — left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence...
Page 69 - It shall be Cowper's ' Task' to count them," instantly exclaimed the auctioneer. A joke much relished by the book-binding fraternity was his likening a ledger to Austria, because it was backed and cornered by Russia; and, when it was knocked down to a Mr. Owen Phalen, he paused at the name and said reflectively, " Don't know about selling to a man who is always Owen and Phalen.