Austin Dobson Quotes

Fame is a food that dead men eat,—
I have no stomach for such meat.

And round about its gray, time-eaten brow
Lean letters speak—a worn and shattered row:
I am a Shade: a Shadowe too arte thou:
I marke the Time: saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?

O English girl, divine, demure,
To YOU I sing!

Time goes, you say? Ah, no!
Alas, Time stays, we go.

Old books, old wine, old Nankin blue;—
All things, in short, to which belong
The charm, the grace that Time makes strong,—
All these I prize, but (entre nous)
Old friends are best.

Love comes unseen,—we only see it go.

The ladies of St. James’s!
They’re painted to the eyes;
Their white it stays forever
Their red it never dies:
But Phillida, my Phillida!
Her colour comes and goes;
It trembles to a lily,—
It wavers to a rose.

A retrospect of the Eighteenth-Century Essayists subsequent to the ',' ',' and ',' only serves to confirm the supremacy of Addison and Steele. Some of their successors approached them in serious writing; others carried the lighter kinds to considerable perfection; but none (Goldsmith alone excepted) really rivaled them in that happily mingling of the lively and severe, which Johnson envied but could not emulate.

In merest prudence men should teach […]
That science ranks as monstrous things
Two pairs of upper limbs; so wings—
E'en angels' wings!—are fictions.

All the seasons run their race
In this quiet resting place;
Peach, and apricot, and fig
Here will ripen, and grow big;
Here is store and overplus,—
More had not Alcinoüs!

All passes. ART alone
Enduring stays to us:
The Bust out-lasts the throne,—
The Coin, Tiberius.

Carry his body hence,—
Kings must have slaves;
Kings climb to eminence
Over men's graves:
So this man's eye is dim;—
Throw the earth over him.