POETS
Poets like painters, thus unskill'd to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
| author = Pope
| work = Essay on Criticism,. L. 293.
Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride!
They had no poet, and they died.
| author = Pope
| work = Odes of Horace. Bk. IV. Ode 9.
Then from the Mint walks forth the man of
rhyme,
Happy to catch me, just at dinner-time.
| author = Pope
| work = Prologue to Satires. L. 13.
The bard whom pilfer'd pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year.
| author = Pope
| work = Prologue to Satires. L. 179.
And he whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad.
| author = Pope
| work = Prologue to Satires. L. 185.
For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose,
The best good man with the worst-natured muse.
Earl op Rochester. An allusion to Horace
—Satire X. Bk.l.
| seealso = (See also Goldsmith)
| topic =
| page = 608
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>Graecia Mseonidam, jactet sibi Roma Maronem
Anglia Miltonum jactat utrique parem.
Greece boasts her Homer, Rome can Virgil
claim:
England can either match in Milton's fame.
Salvaggi—Ad Joannem Miltonum.
| seealso = (See also {{sc|Dkyden)
* * * For ne'er
Was flattery lost on Poet's ear;
A simple race ' they waste their toil
For the vain tribute of a smile.
Searr-r-Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto IV.
Last stanza.
Call it not vain:—they do not err.
Who say that, when the Poet dies,
Mute Nature mourns her worshipper,
And celebrates his obsequies.
Scott—Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto V.
St. 1.
I would the gods had made thee poetical.
As You Like It. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 15.
Never durst poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink were temper'd with Love's sighs.
Love's Labour's Lost. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 346.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling.
Dotn glance from heaven to earth, from earth
to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Midsummer Night's Dream. Act V. Sc. 1.
L. 12.
POETS
Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong;
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
Shelley—Julian and Maddalo. L. 556.
Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled,
On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be f yled.
Spenser—Faerie Queene. Bk. IV. Canto
II. St. 32.
| seealso = (See also {{sc|Lydgate)
I learnt life from the poets.
Madame de Staël—Corinne.
Ch.V.
Bk. XVIII.
With no companion but the constant Muse,
Who sought me when I needed her—ah, when
Did I not need her, solitary else?
R. H. Stoddard—Proem. L. 87.
The Poet in his Art
Must intimate the whole, and say the smallest
part.
W. W. Story—The Unexpressed.
Then, rising with Aurora's light,
The Muse invoked, sit down to write;
Blot out, correct, insert, refine,
Enlarge, diminish, interline.
Swift—On Poetry.
| seealso = (See also Lyttleton, Waller)
| topic =
| page = 608
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>Unjustly poets we asperse:
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse,
And all the fictions they pursue
Do but insinuate what is true.
Swift—To Stella.
Villon, our sad bad glad mad brother's name.
Swinburne—Ballad of Francois Villon.
To have read the greatest works of any great
poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest
works of any great painter or musician, is a
possession added to the best things of life.
Swinburne—Essays and Studies. Victor Hugo.
L' Annie Terrible.
The Poet's leaves are gathered one by one,
In the slow process of the doubtful years.
Bayard Taylor—Poet's Journal. Third Evening.
I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing.
Tennyson-—In Memoriam. XXI. 6.
| seealso = (See also Lamartine)
| topic =
| page = 608
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>The poet in a golden clime was born,
With golden stars above;
Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love.
| author = Tennyson
| work = The Poet.
For now the Poet cannot die,
Nor leave his music as of old.
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry.
| author = Tennyson
| work = To , after Beading a Life and
Letters. St. 4.
