John Davidson (poet)
Scottish poet (1857-1909)
John Davidson (April 11, 1857 – March 23, 1909) was a Scottish journalist, playwright, fiction-writer and translator, but is best remembered as a poet.
This article on an author is a stub. You can help out with Wikiquote by expanding it! |
Quotes
edit- Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies:
Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more
In every branch becomes the sale of money.- Smith (Glasgow: Wilson, 1888) p. 26
- One must become
Fanatic – be a wedge – a thunder-bolt
To smite a passage through the close-grained world.- Smith (Glasgow: Wilson, 1888) p. 33
- Mere by-blows are the world and we,
And time within eternity
A sheer anachronism.- "Queen Elizabeth's Day", from Fleet Street Eclogues (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., [1893] 1895) p. 198
- Farewell the hope that mocked, farewell despair
That went before me still and made the pace.
The earth is full of graves, and mine was there
Before my life began; my resting-place.- "The Last Journey", from The Testament of dick peter (London: Grant Richards, 1908) p. 146
- That minister of ministers,
Imagination, gathers up
The undiscovered Universe,
Like jewels in a jasper cup.- There is a Dish to hold the Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
- My feet are heavy now but on I go,
My head erect beneath the tragic years.- I felt the World a-spinning on its Nave, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Ballads and Songs (1894)
edit- Quotations are cited from the 1st edition (Boston: Copeland & Day, 1894).
- Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate;
Help me with scorn, and strengthen me with hate.- "To My Enemy", p. 2
- Seraphs and saints with one great voice
Welcomed that soul that knew not fear.
Amazed to find it could rejoice,
Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.- "A Ballad of Hell", p. 85
- And the difficultest job a man can do,
Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week,
And feel that that's the proper thing for you.
It's a naked child against a hungry wolf;
It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck;
It's walking on a string across a gulf
With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck;
But the thing is daily done by many and many a one.
And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.- "Thirty Bob a Week", p. 97