Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.
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The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry, The true, sick-hearted slave,...
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Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.
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Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
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In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.
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From far, from eve and morning And yon twelve-winded sky, The stuff of life to knit me Blew hither: here am I.
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On occasions, after drinking a pint of beer at luncheon, there would be a flow into my mind with sudden and unaccountable emotion, sometimes a line or two of verse, sometimes a whole stanza, accompanied, not preceded by a vague notion of the poem which they were destined to form a part of.... I say bubble up because, so far as I could make out, the source of the suggestions thus proffered to the brain was the pit of the stomach.
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The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
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Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
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Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man.
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Yes, lad, I lie easy, I lie as lads would choose; I cheer a dead man's sweetheart, Never ask me whose.
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O Queen of air and darkness, I think 'tis truth you say, And I shall die to-morrow; But you will die to-day.
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East and west on fields forgotten Bleach the bones of comrades slain,...
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'Long for me the rick will wait, And long will wait the fold, And long will stand the empty plate, And dinner will be cold.'
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When I was one-and-twenty,
I heard a wise man say,
Give pounds and crowns and guineas,
But not your heart away.'
Give pearls away and rubies,
But keep your fancy free.'
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
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Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.
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And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,...
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So up and down I sow them For lads like me to find, When I shall lie below them, A dead man out of mind.
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The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
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And silence sounds no worse than cheers After death has stopped the ears.
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Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But young men think it is, and we were young.
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I, a stranger and afraid, in a world I never made.
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And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man.
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Who made the world I cannot tell 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.
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Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
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