Robert Southey

"If you would be pungent, be brief ; for it is with words as with sunbeams—the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn."

"Cold is thy heart and as frozen as Charity!"

"You are old, Father William." the young man cried, "The few locks which are left you are grey; You are hale, Father William—a hearty old man: Now tell me the reason, I pray."

"In my days of youth, I remembered my God, And he hath not forgotten my age."

"It was a summer evening, Old Kaspar's work was done, And he before his cottage door Was sitting in the sun, And by him sported on the green His little grandchild Wilhelmine."

"He came to ask what he had found, That was so large, and smooth, and round."

"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory."

"But what they fought each other for I could not well make out."

"And everybody praised the Duke Who this great fight did win." "But what good came of it at last?" Quoth little Peterkin. "Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory."

"From his brimstone bed, at break of day, A-walking the Devil is gone, To look at his little, snug farm of the World, And see how his stock went on."

"How, then, was the Devil dressed? Oh! he was in his Sunday's best; His coat was red, and his breeches were blue, And there was a hole where his tail came through."

"He passed a cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility; And he owned with a grin That his favorite sin Is pride that apes humility."

"Thou hast confessions to listen, And bells to christen, And altars and dolls to dress; And fools to coax, And sinners to hoax, And beads and bones to bless; And great pardons to sell For those who pay well, And small ones for those who pay less."

"At this good news, so great The Devil's pleasure grew, That, with a joyful swish, he rent The hole where his tail came through."

"Great news! bloody news!" cried a newsman; The Devil said, "Stop, let me see!" "Great news? bloody news?" thought the Devil; "The bloodier the better for me."

"How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures; nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven: In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths; Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night!"

"And then they knew the perilous Rock, And blest the Abbot of Aberbrothok."

"Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock, “Oh Christ! It is the Inchcape Rock!”"

"Every body is a critic."

"Will ye believe The wonders of the ocean? how its shoals Sprang from the wave, like flashing light; .. took wing, And, twinkling with a silver glitterance, Flew through the air and sunshine? yet were they To sight less wondrous than the tribe who swam, Following like fowlers, with uplifted eye, Their falling quarry: .. language cannot paint Their splendid tints! though in blue ocean seen, Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue, In all its rich variety of shades, Suffus'd with glowing gold."

"What will not woman, gentle woman dare, When strong affection stirs her spirit up?"

"And last of all an Admiral came, A terrible man with a terrible name,— A name which you all know by sight very well, But which no one can speak, and no one can spell."

"Where Washington hath left His awful memory A light for after times!"

"The laws are with us, and God on our side."

"My days among the Dead are past; Around me I behold, Where'er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old; My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day."

"Yet leaving here a name, I trust, That will not perish in the dust."

"Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost."

"They sin who tell us love can die; With life all other passions fly, All others are but vanity. . . . . . Love is indestructible, Its holy flame forever burneth; From heaven it came, to heaven returneth. . . . . . It soweth here with toil and care, But the harvest-time of love is there."

"Oh, when a mother meets on high The babe she lost in infancy, Hath she not then for pains and fears, The day of woe, the watchful night, For all her sorrow, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?"

"Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe; But ’tis the happy that have called thee so."

"Agreed to differ."

"The Satanic school."

"How little do they see what is, who frame Their hasty judgement upon that which seems!"

"The arts babblative and scribblative."

"The march of intellect."

"How does the water Come down at Lodore?"

"So I told them in rhyme, For of rhymes I had store."

"From its fountains In the mountains, Its rills and its gills; Through moss and through brake, It runs and it creeps For a while, till it sleeps In its own little lake."

"It runs through the reeds, And away it proceeds, Through meadow and glade, In sun and in shade, And through the wood-shelter, Among crags in its flurry, Helter-skelter, Hurry-skurry."

"Rising and leaping, Sinking and creeping, Swelling and sweeping, Showering and springing, Flying and flinging, Writhing and ringing, Eddying and whisking, Spouting and frisking, Turning and twisting, Around and around With endless rebound: Smiting and fighting, A sight to delight in; Confounding, astounding, Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound."

"And so never ending, but always descending, Sounds and motions forever and ever are blending All at once and all o'er, with a mighty uproar, — And this way the water comes down at Lodore."

"No sooner was the Baltic open to our merchants, than corn was bought up there for importation into England; at the same time the continent was glutted with English goods, which, because the supply greatly exceeded the demand, were sold at less than their prime cost, and upon which the foreign governments soon laid new duties...to prevent the ruin of their own manufactures. This might have been a salutary lesson, if nations were ever rendered wise by experience; it might have taught us that, however willing one part of this nation might be to see the other ruined by the free admission of foreign grain, foreign governments would never consent to have their fabrics destroyed by the unrestricted introduction of British goods. It is a sound maxim in politics, whatever it may be in morals, that charity begins at home."

"Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be."

"Write poetry for its own sake — not in a spirit of emulation, and not with a view to celebrity; the less you aim at that the more likely you will be to deserve and finally to obtain it."

"And then she went to the porridge of the Little, Small, Wee Bear, and tasted that; and that was neither too hot nor too cold, but just right."

"Somebody has been sitting in my chair!"

"Wild dreams! but such As Plato lov'd; such as with holy zeal Our Milton worshipp'd. Blessed hopes! awhile From man with-held, even to the latter days When Christ shall come, and all things be fulfill'd."

"Already in 1829 the poet laureate, Southey, was preaching the tenets of philanthropic collectivism, and his Colloquies showed an antipathy to laissez-faire which was to influence Lord Shaftesbury. The literary tradition of Southey was continued in the novels of Kingsley and Mrs. Gaskell, of Dickens and Charles Reade; and it appears, if in new forms, in the philippics of Carlyle and the delicate satire of Arnold."

"Bob Southey! You're a poet—Poet-laureate, And representative of all the race; Although 'tis true that you turn'd out a Tory at Last—yours has lately been a common case; And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye at? With all the Lakers, in and out of place? A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye;"Which pye being open'd they began to sing" (This old song and new simile holds good), "A dainty dish to set before the king," Or Regent, who admires such kind of food; And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumber'd with his hood, Explaining Metaphysics to the nation— I wish he would explain his Explanation.*You, Bob! are rather insolent, you know, At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only Blackbird in the dish; And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall, for lack of moisture quite a-dry, Bob!"

"Of all the Tory reformers in the early years of the nineteenth century none was so fecund of schemes, and often sound schemes, for improving the lot of the people as Robert Southey. He often seems to us cold and unattractive, but for his life of hard work, his unflinching honour, and his practical pity for the unfortunate he deserves a sympathetic understanding which is more often given to frailer brethren of the pen."