1. man
  2. 1700
Song of One Eleven Years in Prison

  WHENE’ER with haggard eyes I view
    This dungeon that I ’m rotting in,
  I think of those companions true
    Who studied with me at the U-
                niversity of Gottingen,
                niversity of Gottingen.

  [Weeps and pulls out...

Poet: George Canning
Address to the Toothache

My curse upon thy venomed stang,
That shoots my tortured gums alang;
An’ through my lugs gies mony a twang,
        Wi’ gnawing vengeance!
Tearing my nerves wi’ bitter pang,
        Like racking engines.

When fevers burn, or ague freezes,...

Poet: Robert Burns
The Nose and the Eyes

Between Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose;
The spectacles set them, unhappily, wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
  To whom the said spectacles ought to belong.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause,
  With a great deal...

Poet: William Cowper
A Recipe for Salad

To make this condiment your poet begs
The pounded yellow of two hard boiled eggs;
Two boiled potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve,
Smoothness and softness to the salad give;
Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl,
And, half suspected, animate the whole;...

Poet: Sydney Smith
A Farewell to Tobacco

  MAY the Babylonish curse
Straight confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see
In this word-perplexity,
Or a fit expression find,
Or a language to my mind
(Still the phrase is wide or scant),
To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT!...

Poet: Charles Lamb
The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder

Friend of Humanity
NEEDY 1 knife-grinder! whither are you going?
Rough is the road; your wheel is out of order.
Bleak blows the blast;—your hat has got a hole in ’t;
          So have your breeches!

Weary knife-grinder! little think the proud ones,...

Poet: George Canning
Metrical Feet

Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yet ill able
Ever to come up with dactyl trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long;—
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapæsts throng;
One...

Poet: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Hen

Anonymous translation from the German

A FAMOUS hen ’s my story’s theme,
  Which ne’er was known to tire
Of laying eggs, but then she ’d scream
So loud o’er every egg, ’t would seem
  The house must be on fire.
A turkey-cock, who ruled the walk,...

Poet: Matthias Claudius
A Riddle

The Letter “H”
’T WAS 1 in heaven pronounced, and ’t was muttered in hell,
And echo caught faintly the sound as it fell;
On the confines of earth ’t was permitted to rest,
And the depths of the ocean its presence confessed;
’T will be found in the sphere...

Poet: Catherine Fanshawe
Nonsense

  GOOD reader, if you e’er have seen,
    When Phœbus hastens to his pillow,
    The mermaids with their tresses green
  Dancing upon the western billow;
  If you have seen at twilight dim,
    When the lone spirit’s vesper hymn
    Floats wild...

Poet: Thomas Moore