Horace Smith

Rating: 4.67
Rating: 4.67

Horace Smith Poems

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows:-
...

Champagne doth not a luncheon make,
Nor caviare a meal;
Men gluttonous and rich may take
These till they make them ill.
...

Nothing so true as what you once let fall,--
'To growl at something is the lot of all;
Contentment is a gem on earth unknown,
...

I.

Oh for a field, my friend; oh for a field!
I ask no more
...

Three attorneys came sailing down Chancery Lane,
Down Chancery Lane e'er the courts had sat;
They thought of the leaders they ought to retain,
...

I.

Give that brief to me,
Without so much bother;
...

Two neighbours, fighting for a yard of land;
Two witnesses, who _lie_ on either hand;
Two lawyers, issuing many writs and pleas;
...

The times still 'grow to something strange';
We rap and turn the tables;
We fire our guns at awful range;
We lay Atlantic cables;
...

You say 'tis plain that poets feign,
And from the truth depart;
They write with ease what fibs they please,
With artifice, not art;
...

I.

Oh, saw ye my own true love, I praye,
My own true love so sweete?
...

In olden time--in great Eliza's age,
When rare Ben Jonson ruled the humorous stage,
No play without its Prologue might appear
...

Take, oh take those boots away,
That so nearly are outworn;
And those shoes remove, I pray--
Pumps that but induce the corn!
...

Thou little village curate,
Come quick, and do not wait;
We'll sit and talk together,
So sweetly _tete-a-tete_.
...

The linnet had flown from its cage away,
And flitted and sang in the light of day--
Had flown from the lady who loved it well,
...

And Willie, my eldest born, is gone, you say, little Anne,
Ruddy and white, and strong on his legs, he looks like a man;
...

Warriors! who from the cannon's mouth blow fire,
Your fame to raise,
Upon its blaze,
Alas! ye do but light your funeral pyre!
...

The moon in the valley of Ajalon
Stood still at the word of the prophet;
But since certain 'Essays' were written
...

Sleep, little baby, sleep, love, sleep!
Evening is coming, and night is nigh;
Under the lattice the little birds cheep,
...

I know not what the cause may be,
Or whether there be one or many;
But this year's Spring has seemed to me
More exquisite than any.
...

Horace Smith Biography

Horace (born Horatio) Smith was an English poet and novelist, perhaps best known for his participation in a sonnet-writing competition with Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was of him that Shelley said: "Is it not odd that the only truly generous person I ever knew who had money enough to be generous with should be a stockbroker? He writes poetry and pastoral dramas and yet knows how to make money, and does make it, and is still generous." Biography Smith was born in London, the son of a London solicitor, and the fifth of eight children. He was educated at Chigwell School with his elder brother James Smith, also a writer. Horace first came to public attention in 1812 when he and his brother James (four years older than he) produced a popular literary parody connected to the rebuilding of the Drury Lane Theatre, after a fire in which it had been burnt down. The managers offered a prize of £50 for an address to be recited at the Theatre's reopening in October. The Smith brothers hit on the idea of pretending that the most popular poets of the day had entered the competition and writing a book of addresses rejected from the competition in parody of their various styles. James wrote the parodies of Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge and Crabbe, and Horace took on Byron, Moore, Scott and Bowles. The book was a smash, and went through seven editions within three months. The Rejected Addresses still stands the most widely popular parodies ever published in the country. The book was written without malice; none of the poets caricatured took offence, while the imitation is so clever that both Byron and Scott claimed that they could scarcely believe they had not written the addresses ascribed to them. The only other collaboration by the two brothers was Horace in London (1813). Smith went on to become a prosperous stockbroker. Smith knew Shelley as a member of the circle around Leigh Hunt. Smith helped to manage Shelley's finances. Sonnet-writing competitions were not uncommon; Shelley and Keats wrote competing sonnets on the subject of the Nile River. Inspired by Diodorus Siculus (Book 1, Chapter 47), they each wrote and submitted a sonnet on the subject to The Examiner. Shelley's Ozymandias was published on 11 January 1818 under the pen name Glirastes, and Smith's On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below was published on 1 February 1818 with the initials H.S. (and later in his collection Amarynthus). After making his fortune, Horace Smith produced a series of historical novels: Brambletye House (1826), Tor Hill (1826), Reuben Apsley (1827), Zillah (1828), The New Forest (1829), Walter Colyton (1830), among others. Three volumes of Gaieties and Gravities, published by him in 1826, contain many clever essays both in verse and prose, but the only piece that remains much remembered is the " Address to the Mummy in Belzoni's Exhibition." Horace Smith died at Tunbridge Wells on 12 July 1849.)

The Best Poem Of Horace Smith

Ozymandias

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart knows:-
'I am great OZYMANDIAS,' saith the stone,
'The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
'The wonders of my hand.'- The City's gone,-
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,-and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

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