Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson Poems

CONDEMN'D to Hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away.
...

LIFE of Ages, richly poured,
Love of God, unspent and free,
Flowing in the Prophet’s word
And the People’s liberty!
...

LONG-EXPECTED one and twenty
Ling'ring year at last has flown,
Pomp and pleasure, pride and plenty
Great Sir John, are all your own.
...

Thou who survey'st these walls with curious eye,
Pause at this tomb where Hanmer's ashes lie;
His various worth through varied life attend,
...

Alas! with swift and silent pace,
Impatient time rolls on the year;
The Seasons change, and Nature's face
Now sweetly smiles, now frowns severe.
...

LONG-EXPECTED one and twenty
Ling'ring year at last has flown,
Pomp and pleasure, pride and plenty
Great Sir John, are all your own.
...

Friendship! peculiar boon of Heaven,
The noble mind's delight and pride,
To men and angels only given,
...

1 When Learning's triumph o'er her barb'rous foes
2 First rear'd the stage, immortal Shakespear rose;
3 Each change of many-colour'd life he drew,
4 Exhausted worlds, and then imagin'd new:
...

'--Quis ineptae
Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se?' ~ Juv.

Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel,
...

10.

Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new;
Endless labour all along,
...

Let observation with extensive view,
Survey mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;
...

No more thus brooding o'er yon heap,
With avarice painful vigils keep:
Still unenjoy'd the present store,
...

13.

Not the soft sighs of vernal gales,
The fragrance of the flowery vales,
The murmurs of the crystal rill,
...

The man, my friend, whose conscious heart
With virtue's sacred ardour glows,
Nor taints with death the envenom'd dart,
...

To Stella:

Evening now from purple wings
Sheds the grateful gifts she brings;
...

O Thou! whose power o'er moving worlds presides,
Whose voice created, and whose wisdom guides,
On darkling man in pure effulgence shine,
...

Had this fair figure, which this frame displays,
Adorn'd in Roman time the brightest days,
In every dome, in every sacred place,
...

Of the modern versifications of
ancient legendary tales. - An impromptu.

The tender infant, meek and mild,
...

The snow dissolv'd, no more is seen;
The fields and woods, behold! are green;
The changing year renews the plain,
...

The rites derived from ancient days
With thoughtless reverence we praise,
The rites that taught us to combine
...

Samuel Johnson Biography

Samuel Johnson (often referred to as Dr Johnson) (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784) was an English author. Beginning as a Grub Street journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and political conservative, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and attended Pembroke College, Oxford for a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher he moved to London, where he began to write essays for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage, the poems London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, and the play Irene. After nine years of work, Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755; it had a far-reaching impact on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". The Dictionary brought Johnson popularity and success; until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary, 150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read novel Rasselas. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets. Johnson had a tall and robust figure, but his odd gestures and tics were confusing to some on their first encounter with him. Boswell's Life, along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome (TS), a condition unknown in the 18th century. After a series of illnesses he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In the years following his death, Johnson began to be recognised as having had a lasting effect on literary criticism, and even as the only great critic of English literature.)

The Best Poem Of Samuel Johnson

On The Death Of Mr. Robert Levet, A Practiser In Physic

CONDEMN'D to Hope's delusive mine,
As on we toil from day to day,
By sudden blasts or slow decline
Our social comforts drop away.

Well tried through many a varying year,
See Levet to the grave descend,
Officious, innocent, sincere,
Of every friendless name the friend.

Yet still he fills affection's eye,
Obscurely wise and coarsely kind;
Nor, letter'd Arrogance, deny
Thy praise to merit unrefined.

When fainting nature call'd for aid,
And hov'ring death prepared the blow,
His vig'rous remedy display'd
The power of art without the show.

In Misery's darkest cavern known,
His useful care was ever nigh,
Where hopeless Anguish pour'd his groan,
And lonely Want retired to die.

No summons mock'd by chill delay,
No petty gain disdained by pride;
The modest wants of every day
The toil of every day supplied.

His virtues walk'd their narrow round,
Nor made a pause, nor left a void;
And sure th' Eternal Master found
The single talent well employ'd.

The busy day, the peaceful night,
Unfelt, uncounted, glided by;
His frame was firm--his powers were bright,
Though now his eightieth year was nigh.

Then with no fiery throbbing pain,
No cold gradations of decay,
Death broke at once the vital chain,
And freed his soul the nearest way.

Samuel Johnson Comments

yusraa 30 June 2019

please write small poems.

1 0 Reply

Samuel Johnson Quotes

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.

What is the reason that women servants ... have much lower wages than men servants ... when in fact our female house servants work much harder than the male?

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.

Self-love is often rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves, but persuades us that they escape the notice of others.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him.

Virtue is too often merely local.

Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things.

When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.

Abstinence is as easy to me, as temperance would be difficult.

You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labour, than when you give money merely in charity.

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed:

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.

Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

He that fails in his endeavours after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

The world will never be long without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are immediately detected, and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be superadded.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.

I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.

Sir, there is more knowledge in a letter of Richardson's, than in all Tom Jones.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprized to find it done at all.

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him. You have no business with consequences; you are to tell the truth.

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Samuel Johnson Popularity

Samuel Johnson Popularity

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