Charles Stuart Calverley

Charles Stuart Calverley

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

Quotes

• 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).

External links

• Works by Charles Stuart Calverley at Project Gutenberg