Poets From England

"A Babylonish dialect Which learned pedants much affect."

"For rhetoric, he could not ope His mouth, but out there flew a trope; And when he happen'd to break off I' th' middle of his speech, or cough, H' had hard words,ready to show why, And tell what rules he did it by; Else, when with greatest art he spoke, You'd think he talk'd like other folk, For all a rhetorician's rules Teach nothing but to name his tools."

"He was in LOGIC a great critic, Profoundly skill'd in analytic; He could distinguish, and divide A hair 'twixt south, and south-west side: On either which he would dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute, He'd undertake to prove, by force Of argument, a man's no horse; He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl, And that a lord may be an owl, A calf an alderman, a goose a justice, And rooks Committee-men and Trustees."

"Beside, 't is known he could speak Greek As naturally as pigs squeak; That Latin was no more difficile Than to a blackbird 't is to whistle."

"We grant, although he had much wit, He was very shy of using it."

"When civil fury first grew high, And men fell out, they knew not why; When hard words, jealousies, and fears, Set folks together by the ears, And made them fight, like mad or drunk, For Dame Religion, as for punk; Whose honesty they all durst swear for, Though not a man of them knew wherefore: When Gospel-Trumpeter, surrounded With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded, And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick, Was beat with fist, instead of a stick; Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling, And out he rode a colonelling."

"Women, that left no stone unturn'd In which the cause might be concern’d, Brought in their children’s spoons and whistles, To purchase swords, carbines, and pistols."

"They who study mathematiks only to fix their minds, and render them the steadyer to apply to all other things, as there are many who profess to do, are as wise as those who think by rowing boats, to learn to swim."

"And poets by their sufferings grow; As if there were no more to do, To make a poet excellent, But only want and discontent."

"Authority intoxicates, And makes mere sots of magistrates; The fumes of it invade the brain, And make men giddy, proud and vain; By this the fool commands the wise, The noble with the base complies, The sot assumes the rule of wit, and cowards make the base submit."

"There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon."

"And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up."

"To A. A. Milne belongs the honour of enshrining with urban romance the civilized and comfortable child of to-day. When we were Very Young marks an epoch as positively as any children's book has ever marked one. It is not extravagant to surmise that a distant posterity may find in that volume of children's verse a key with which to unlock the present more easily than with any contemporary novel, or poem, or play."

"My mother is English, and as she was the one who read to us, my early world was A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. None of them thought it necessary to protect children from darkness. On the contrary, they guided their readers right toward it. This gives one an enormous sense of being respected as a child. Not just of being trusted to handle things as they are, but to be accepted as not entirely good. To be recognized as having darkness within oneself, too."

""They wanted to come in after the pounds", explained Pooh, "so I let them. It's the best way to write poetry, letting things come"."

"That's what Jagular's always do", said Pooh, much interested. "They call 'Help! Help!' and then when you look up, they'll drop on you."

"Then Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh walked hand in hand down the forest path and they said goodbye. So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them along the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing."

"If I plant a honeycomb outside my house, then it will grow up into a beehive."

"I shouldn't be surprised if it hailed a good deal tomorrow", Eeyore was saying. "Blizzards and what-not. Being fine today doesn't mean anything. It has no sig - what's that word? Well, it has none of that. It's just a small piece of weather."

"I'm not going to do just nothing anymore." "You mean never again?" "Well, not so much. They don't let you."

""Well," said Pooh, "what I like best—" and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called."

"You only blinched inside," said Pooh, "and that's the bravest way for a Very Small Animal not to blinch that there is."

"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it on the way."

"...and then he and Roo pushed each other about in a friendly way, and Tigger accidentally knocked over one or two chairs by accident, and Roo accidentally knocked over one on purpose, and Kanga said, "Now then, run along.""

"Lucky we know the forest so well, or we might get lost," said Rabbit half an hour later, and he gave the careless laugh which you give when you know the Forest so well that you can't get lost. Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."

"Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin."

"when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."

""I've got a sort of idea," said Pooh at last, "but I don't suppose it's a very good one." "I don't suppose it is either," said Eeyore."

"By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.""

"Owl took Christopher Robin's notice from Rabbit and looked at it nervously. He could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday, and he could read quite comfortably when you weren't looking over his shoulder and saying "Well?" all the time, and he could—"

"And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anyone who can spell Tuesday, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count."

"Piglet took Pooh's arm, in case Pooh was frightened."

"Yes," said Tigger, "they're very good flyers, Tiggers are. Strornry good flyers."

"Now it happened that Kanga had felt rather motherly that morning, and Wanting to Count Things — like Roo's vests, and how many pieces of soap there were left, and the two clean spots in Tigger's feeder."

"One day when Pooh was thinking, he thought he would go and see Eeyore, because he hadn't seen him since yesterday."

"Piglet looked up, and looked away again. And he felt so Foolish and Uncomfortable that he had almost decided to run away to Sea and be a Sailor, when suddenly he saw something."

"Pooh said good-bye affectionately to his fourteen pots of honey, and hoped they were fifteen; and he and Rabbit went out into the Forest."

""Shall I look too?" said Pooh, who was beginning to feel a little eleven o'clockish. And he found a small tin of condensed milk, and something seemed to tell him that Tiggers didn't like this, so he took it into a corner by itself, and went with it to see that nobody interrupted it."

"Nearly eleven o'clock," said Pooh happily. "You're just in time for a little smackerel of something."

"The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn't there."

"When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is."

"I found a little beetle, so that beetle was his name, And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same. I put him in a matchbox, and I kept him all the day...And Nanny let my beetle out Yes, Nanny let my beetle out She went and let my beetle out- And beetle ran away.She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did, She said she wanted matches, and she just took off the lid She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid- And we'd get another matchbox, and write BEETLE on the lid.We went to all the places which a beetle might be near, And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear, And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout: "A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be And he had a sort of look as if he thought it might be ME, And he had a kind of look as if he thought he ought to say: "I'm very, very sorry that I tried to run away."And Nanny's very sorry too, for you know what she did, And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid, So Nan and me are friends, because it's difficult to catch An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match."

"When I was One, I had just begun. When I was Two, I was nearly new. When I was Three I was hardly me. When I was Four, I was not much more. When I was Five, I was just alive. But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever, So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever."

"You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes."

"We can't all and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."

"There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there."

"Isn't it funny How a bear likes honey? Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! I wonder why he does?"

"Hello Rabbit, is that you?" "Let's pretend it isn't", said Rabbit, "and see what happens."

"How sweet to be a cloud Floating in the blue."

"Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin."