Charles Stuart Calverley

British poet (1831-1884)

Charles Stuart Calverley (December 22, 1831February 17, 1884) was an English poet. He was the literary father of what has been called "the university school of humour".

Charles Stuart Calverley

Quotes

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  • 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.
    • Ode - "On a Distant Prospect" of Making a Fortune, from Verses and Translations (1862).
  • 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.
    • Dirge, from Verses and Translations (1862).
  • 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."
    • Beer, from Verses and Translations (1862).
  • 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:

    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.

    • Ode to Tobacco.
  • I sit alone at present, dreaming darkly of a Dun.
    • In the Gloaming; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • 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.
    • Changed; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • 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.
    • First Love; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • 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.
    • Ballad; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
  • ’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.
    • Disaster; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare:
      • Oh, ever thus, from childhood’s hour,
        I ’ve seen my fondest hopes decay;
        I never loved a tree or flower
        But ’t was the first to fade away.
        - Thomas Moore, The Fire Worshippers, p. 26.
  • Forever; ’t is a single word!
    Our rude forefathers deemed it two:
    Can you imagine so absurd
    A view?
    • Forever; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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