The Poetical Decameron, Or, Ten Conversations on English Poets and Poetry: Particularly of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I.

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Archibald Constable, 1820 - English poetry - 674 pages

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Page 71 - Sing a song of sixpence, A pocket full of rye; Four and twenty blackbirds, Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, The birds began to sing; Was not that a dainty dish To set before the king?
Page 183 - I could not make my verses iet vpon the stage in tragicall buskins, euerie worde filling the mouth like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heauen with that Atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad preest of the sonne...
Page 104 - The angel-quiristers of th' heavenly skies. Give pardon eke, sweet soul, to my slow eyes, That since I saw thee now it is so long, And yet the tears that unto thee belong To thee as yet they did not sacrifice. I did not know that thou wert dead before ; I did not feel the grief I did sustain ; The greater stroke astonisheth the more ; Astonishment takes from us sense of pain ; I stood amazed when others' tears begun, And now begin to weep when they have done.
Page 98 - Revenge, and made divers attempts, hoping to force her by the multitudes of their armed...
Page 219 - An Apologie of the Schoole of Abuse, against Poets, Pipers, Players, and their Excusers.
Page 175 - If thou refuse this, as a niggard of thy cates, I will have amongst you with my sword; for rather will I die valiantly than perish with so cowardly an extreme.
Page 256 - Doctor Reynolds is the last ; not in worth, but in the time of his loss. He alone was a well-furnished library, full of all faculties, of all studies, of all learning ; the memory, the reading of that man were near to a miracle.
Page 183 - I keepe my old coarse to palter up something in Prose using mine olde poesie still Omne tulit punctum, although latelye two Gentlemen Poets made two mad-men of Rome beate it out of their paper bucklers, and had it in derision for that I could not make my verses jet upon the stage in tragical! buskins, everie worde filling the mouth like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlan...
Page 190 - Dorastus, desirous to see if nature had adorned her mind with any inward qualities, as she had decked her body with outward shape, began to question with her whose daughter she was, of what age, and how she had been trained up?
Page 15 - Carde of Fancie. Wherein the folly of those carpet knights is deciphered, which guiding their course by the compass of Cupid, either dash their ship against most dangerous rocks, or else attaine the haven with pain and peril Wherein also is described in the person of Gwydonius a cruell combate between Nature and Necessitie.

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