Translators From England

"In Eighty Eight how she did fight Is known to all and some, When the Spaniard came, her courage to tame, But had better have stay'd at home: They came with Ships, fill'd full of Whips, To have lash'd her Princely Hide; But she had a Drake made them all cry Quake, And bang'd them back and side."

"A Tudor! A Tudor! We've had Stuarts enough, None ever reign'd like old Bess in her ruff."

"[On 23 March 1603 the] lord admirall put her mind of her speech, concerning the succession...and that they, in the name of all the rest of her councell, came unto her to knowe her pleasure who should succeede. Whereunto she thus replyed; “I told you my seat had been the seat of kings, and I will have no rascall to succeed me, and who should succeed me, but a king?” The lords not understanding this darke speech, and looking the one on the other, at length Mr Secretary boldly asked her, what she meant by these words, “That no rascall should succeed her?” whereunto she replyed, “That her meaning was, that a king should succeed her, and who,” quoth she, “should that be, but our cozen of Scotland.” They asked her whether that were her absolute resolution? whereunto she answered, “I pray you trouble me no more. I'll have none but him;” with which answer they departed."

"Your Popish Plot and Smithfield Threat, We do not fear at all, For Loe! beneath Queen Besses feet, You fall, you fall, you fall."

"[T]he most glorious Sun that ever shined in our Firmament of England (the never to be forgotten Queen Elizabeth, of happy memory)."

"Queen Elizabeth, a princess, as ye wot, of no mingled blood of Spaniard or stranger, but born mere English here among us and therefore most natural unto us; of education, brought up and instructed in all virtuous qualities and godly learning, specially (that may be most comfort and joy to us all), in the sincere knowledge and following of God's Holy Word; of natural inclination, so godly disposed as without revenge she patiently suffered so much malice and wrong; of wisdom, so ware as she may shun the inconveniences and follies that her sister fell in."

"Fixt in our hearts thy Fame shall live, And maugre all the Popish spight; To honour thee our Youth shall strive, And Yearly Celebrate this Night."

"On the 14th of January [1603] the late Queen who had two days before sickened with a cold...removed to Richmond. But a little before her going, even the same morning, the Earl of Nottingham, High-Admiral of England, coming to her...she fell into some speech of the Succession; and then she told him, “that her seat had ever been the throne of Kings, and none but her next heire of bloud and descent should succeed her.”"

"In all the centuries that have passed, there has never been seen a woman who could be considered the equal of this great Queen."

"To her own people she boasted on her accession that she was ‘mere English.’ Her mother had been no foreign princess but an English flirt, and her father, the founder of England's Navy and of England's religious independence, had possessed a sixth sense whereby he understood the English people, even in the highest rages of his tyranny. She inherited from both, but most from her father in whose steps it was her ambition to walk. If she was heir to her mother's vanity and coquetry, she heeded the warning of her fate; and her own bitter experiences as a girl,—disgrace, imprisonment and danger of death,—had taught her, as Frederic the Great was taught by similar experiences in boyhood, that private affections and passions are not for Princes. She had learnt every lesson that adversity had to teach, and she would leave it to her rival to lose the world for love."

"My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done. His too familiar care doth make me rue it. No means I find to rid him from my breast, Till by the end of things it be supprest. Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow; Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind. Let me or float or sink, be high or low. Or let me live with some more sweet content, Or die and so forget what love ere meant."

"There was in her a certain hardness and coarseness of fibre, necessary perhaps for her terrible task in life. As a private person she would scarcely have been lovable, perhaps not even very admirable. But lonely on the throne she knew all the arts to make herself adored by her Court and her people. Without ceasing to be a woman, and while loving life in its fullness, she made everything subservient to purposes of State. Her learning endeared her to the Universities, her courage to the soldiers and sailors. Her coquetry became a means of keeping her nobles and courtiers each in his place, and exacting from each one the last ounce of personal devotion in the public service. Leicester's neck might be tickled by the royal hand, but his rival Cecil would be trusted in matters of high policy... Her love of hunting and dancing, masque, pageantry and display, was used to strengthen the wider popularity which was her ultimate strength; her public appearances and progresses through the country, which she thoroughly enjoyed, were no dull and formal functions, but works of art by a great player whose heart was in the piece, interchanges of soul between a Princess and her loving people."

"The Queen sitting all alone in her splendid coach appeared like a goddess such as painters are wont to depict."

"Britannia's Figure once could Passion move, And Princes either fear'd or sought her Love. When fam'd Eliza gave one single Nod, The Spaniard bow'd, nay cring'd and fear'd her Rod"

"Dowson seemed gentle, affectionate, drifting. His poetry shows how sincerely he felt the fascination of religion, but his religion had certainly no dogmatic outline, being but a desire for a condition of virginal ecstasy. If it is true, as Arthur Symons, his very close friend, has written, that he loved the restaurant-keeper's daughter for her youth, one may be almost certain that he sought from religion some similar quality, something of that which the angels find who move perpetually, as Swedenborg has said, towards "the dayspring of their youth.""

"The fairest face of all is the face I have not seen."

"O pray the earth enfold Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust."

"Ah, God, that sweet things should decline, And fires fade out which were not cold,  Erewhile."

"You ask my love completest, As strong next year as now, The devil take you, sweetest, Ere I make aught such vow. Life is a masque that changes, A fig for constancy! No love at all were better, Than love which is not free."

"Dowson and Johnson most I praise— To troop with those the world's forgot, And copy their proud steady gaze."

"I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion."

"I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng."

"Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine; And I was desolate and sick of an old passion."

"Better than mortal flowers, Thy moon-kissed roses seem."

"Ah, Lalage! while life is ours, Hoard not thy beauty rose and white, But pluck the pretty, fleeting flowers That deck our little path of light: For all too soon we twain shall tread The bitter pastures of the dead: Estranged, sad spectres of the night."

"I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine."

"Say, doth she weep for very wantonness? Or is it that she dimly doth foresee Across her youth the joys grow less and less, The burden of the days that are to be: Autumn and withered leaves and vanity And winter bringing end in barrenness."

"I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder."

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.They are not long, the days of wine and roses; Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream."

"I was not sorrowful, but only tired Of everything that ever I desired."

"Yea! for our roses fade, the world is wild, But there, beside the altar, there, is rest."

"When this, our rose, is faded, And these, our days, are done, In lands profoundly shaded From tempest and from sun: Ah, once more come together, Shall we forgive the past, And safe from worldly weather Possess our souls at last?"

"Charles and I read to each other every night before dinner. We're working our way with great joy through Patrick O'Brian's sea stories. I think he's a storyteller on the order of Kipling. Marvelous stuff. They're just a delight."

"O'Brian is not always easy to cite, because his many terse moments of wit and aptitude require context for their explication, and because he allows himself so much time and room for the development of his tale.."

"(What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?) I don’t know, because I don’t know what you expect. Would finding all Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels be a shock?"

"Jack,you have debauched my sloth."

"My God, oh my God," he said. "Six hundred men."

"“This short watch that is about to come, or rather these two short watches--why are they called dog watches? Where, heu, heu, is the canine connection?'"

"... He is not very sharp in some ways; and in his simple view of the world, paederasts are dangerous only to powder-monkeys and choir boys, or to those epicene creatures that are to be found in Mediterranean brothels. I made circuitous attempt at enlightening him a little, but he looked very knowing and said, 'Don't tell me about rears and vices; I have been in the Navy all my life.'"

"“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”"

"“Other people's marriages are a perpetual source of amazement.”"

"And pray, what in sea language is meant by a ship?"

"Most historical novels suffer from the fatal twin defects of emphasizing the pastness of the past too much while at the same time seeking to be over-familiar with it (“Have some more of this Chian,” drawled Alcibiades). O’Brian does neither."

"Come," he said, taking her by the hand and leading her to a distant sopha, "come and sit by me, and let us talk of bats."

"Comparisons are odious."

"I'm armed with more than complete steel,— The justice of my quarrel."

"All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools."

"It lies not in our power to love or hate, For will in us is overruled by fate."

"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"

"A pleasant-smiling cheek, a speaking eye, A brow for love to banquet royally."