Page:Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922).djvu/641

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POETRY POETRY

1

For dear to gods and men is sacred song.
Self-taught I sing; by Heaven and Heaven alone,
The genuine seeds of poesy are sown.

HomerOdyssey. Bk. XXII. L. 382. Pope's trans.


Versibus exponi tragicis res comica non vult.
A comic matter cannot be expressed in tragic
verse.
Horace—Ars Poetica. 89.


Non satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto.
It is not enough that poetry is agreeable, it
should also be interesting.
Horace—Ars Poetica. 99.


Versus inopes rerum, nugseque canorae.
Verses devoid of substance, melodious trifles.
Horace—Ars Poetica. 322.


Ubi plura nitent in carmine, non ego paucis
Offendar maculis, quas aut incuria f udit,
Aut humana parum cavit natura.
Where there are many beauties in a poem I
shall not cavil at a few faults proceeding either
from negligence or from the imperfection of
our nature.
Horace—Ars Poetica. 351.


Nonumque prematur in annum.
Let your poem be kept nine years.
Horace—Ars Poetica. '388.


Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new:
Endless labor all along,
Endless labor to be wrong:
Phrase that Time has flung away;
Uncouth words in disarray,
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet.
 | author = Samuel Johnson
 | work = Parody of the style of
Thomas Wahton. See Croker's note to
Boswell's Johnson. Sept. 18, 1777. Also
in Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes.


The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected,
surprises and delights.
 | author = Samuel Johnson
 | work = The Lives of the English
Poets. Life of Waller.


Still may syllables jar with time,
Still may reason war with rhyme,
Resting never!
Ben Jonson—Underwoods. Fit of Rhyme
Against Rhyme.


These are the gloomy comparisons of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of
poetry, without the inspiration.
Junius—Letter No. VII. To Sir W. Draper.


Facit indignatio versum.
Indignation leads to the making of poetry.
Quoted "Facit indignatio versus"—i.e., verses.
JtrvENAL-T-/Sofires. I. 79.
The poetry of earth is never dead;

  • * * * *

The poetry of earth is ceasing never.
Keats—Ok the Grasshopper and Cricket.
 A drainless shower
Of light is poesy: 'tis the supreme of power;
Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm.
Keats—Sleep and Poetry. L. 237.


There are nine and sixty ways of constructing
tribal lays,
And—every—single—one—of—them—is—right.
Kipling—In the Neolithic Age.


The time for Pen and Sword was when
"My ladye fayre," for pity,
Could tend her wounded knight, and then
Grow tender at his ditty.
Some ladies now make pretty songs,
And some make pretty nurses:
Some men are good for righting wrongs,
And some for writing verses. ^
Frederick Locker-Lampson—The Jesters
Plea.
It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in
its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of
dreamland.
Lowelij—Among My Books. Coleridge.
For, of all compositions, he thought that the
sonnet
Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it.
 | author = Lowell
 | work = Fable for Critics. L. 368.


Never did Poesy appear
So full of heaven to me, as when
I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear
To the lives of coarsest men.
LowELii—Incident in a Railroad Car. St. 18,
 
These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were
bred,
Each softly lucent as a rounded moon;
The diver Omar plucked them from their bed,
FitzGerald strung them on an English thread.
 | author = Lowell
 | work = In a Copy of Omar Khayyam.
 | seealso = (See also Eastwick)
 | topic = Poetry
 | page = 603
}}

{{Hoyt quote
 | num =
 | text = <poem>Musseo contigens cuncta lepore.
Gently touching with the charm of poetry.
Lucretius—De Rerum Natura. IV. 9.


The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms,
still consists in its truth—truth conveyed to
the understanding, not directly by the words,
but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.
Macaulay—Essays. OntheAthenianOrators.


{{Hoyt quote

| num = 
| text = <poem>We hold that the most wonderful and splendid 

proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. Macaulay—On Milton. (1825)