Charles Stuart Calverley Quotes

White is the wold, and ghostly
The dank and leafless trees;
And 'M's and 'N's are mostly Pronounced like 'B's and 'D's:
'Neath bleak sheds, ice-encrusted,
The sheep stands, mute and stolid:
And ducks find out, disgusted,
That all the ponds are solid.

I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a Dun.

Forever; ’t is a single word! Our rude forefathers deemed it two:
Can you imagine so absurd A view?

The farmer’s daughter hath soft brown hair (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese)
And I met with a ballad, I can’t say where, That wholly consisted of lines like these.

I have a liking old
For thee, though manifold
Stories, I know, are told
Not to thy credit;
How one (or two at most)
Drops make a cat a ghost—
Useless, except to roast—
Doctors have said it:<p>How they who use fusees
All grow by slow degrees
Brainless as chimpanzees,
Meagre as lizards;
Go mad, and beat their wives;
Plunge (after shocking lives)
Razors and carving knives
Into their gizzards.

Now the "rosy morn appearing"
Floods with light the dazzled heaven;
And the schoolboy groans on hearing
That eternal clock strike seven:-
Now the waggoner is driving
Towards the fields his clattering wain;
Now the bluebottle, reviving,
Buzzes down his native pane.

O my own, my beautiful, my blue-eyed! To be young once more and bite my thumb
At the world and all its cares with you, I’d Give no inconsiderable sum.

’T was ever thus from childhood’s hour! My fondest hopes would not decay:
I never loved a tree or flower Which was the first to fade away.

O Beer! O Hodgson, Guinness, Allsop, Bass!
Names that should be on every infant's tongue!
Shall days and months and years and centuries pass,
And still your merits be unrecked, unsung?
Oh! I have gazed into my foaming glass,
And wished that lyre could yet again be strung
Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and taught her
Misguided sons that "the best drink was water."

I can not sing the old songs now! It is not that I deem them low;
’T is that I can’t remember how They go.