Characteristics of English Poets from Chaucer to Shirley |
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Common terms and phrases
admiration beauty Canterbury Canterbury Tales century character Chaucer chivalry colour comedy comic contemporaries couplet Court of Love death delight doth drama dramatist Duke Earl Elizabethan English epic expression eyes Faery Queen fair favour favourite feeling flowers French genius gentle Hamlet hath heart heaven Henry heroes honour House of Fame humour imagination imitation Italian Jonson King knight Knight's Tale lady language less lines literature living look Lord lovers ludicrous Lydgate Marlowe master metre mind Mirror for Magistrates moral nature never noble ottava rima Parliament of Birds passage passion personages plays poem poet poet's poetical poetry probably Queen readers revenge rhymes Richard Richard II romance scene seems Shakespeare sing song Spenser spirit stanza stave supposed Surrey Surrey's sweet tale tender thee Theseus things thou tion Tottel's Miscellany tragedy translation Troilus Trouvères verse women wonder words write written wrote Wyat Wyat's youth Ywain
Popular passages
Page 138 - Coral is far more red than her lips' red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound...
Page 204 - Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.
Page 195 - Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, That would not let me sleep : methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes.
Page 184 - Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day; And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale! Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
Page 199 - O father abbot, An old man, broken with the storms of state, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye ; Give him a little earth for charity!
Page 142 - The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutor'd lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours.
Page 199 - Be not afeard ; the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears ; and sometime voices, That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep, Will make me sleep again : and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me ; that, when I wak'd, I cried to dream again.
Page 136 - As the soul of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare ; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared sonnets among his private friends, &c.
Page 182 - twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault Set roaring war : to the dread rattling thunder Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak With his own bolt...
Page 184 - O, for a muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention ! A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, And monarchs to behold the swelling scene...