John Davidson (poet)

John Davidson (April 11, 1857 – March 23, 1909) was a Scottish journalist, playwright, fiction-writer and translator, but is best remembered as a poet.

Quotes

 * Business – the world's work – is the sale of lies: Not goods, but trade-marks; and still more and more In every branch becomes the sale of money.
 * Smith (Glasgow: Wilson, 1888) p. 26


 * One must become Fanatic – be a wedge – a thunder-bolt To smite a passage through the close-grained world.
 * Smith (Glasgow: Wilson, 1888) p. 33


 * Mere by-blows are the world and we, And time within eternity A sheer anachronism.
 * "Queen Elizabeth's Day", from Fleet Street Eclogues (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., [1893] 1895) p. 198


 * Farewell the hope that mocked, farewell despair That went before me still and made the pace. The earth is full of graves, and mine was there Before my life began; my resting-place.
 * "The Last Journey", from The Testament of dick peter (London: Grant Richards, 1908) p. 146


 * That minister of ministers, Imagination, gathers up The undiscovered Universe, Like jewels in a jasper cup.
 * There is a Dish to hold the Sea, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)


 * My feet are heavy now but on I go, My head erect beneath the tragic years.
 * I felt the World a-spinning on its Nave, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Ballads and Songs (1894)

 * Quotations are cited from the 1st edition (Boston: Copeland & Day, 1894).


 * Unwilling friend, let not your spite abate; Help me with scorn, and strengthen me with hate.
 * "To My Enemy", p. 2


 * Seraphs and saints with one great voice Welcomed that soul that knew not fear. Amazed to find it could rejoice, Hell raised a hoarse, half-human cheer.
 * "A Ballad of Hell", p. 85


 * And the difficultest job a man can do, Is to come it brave and meek with thirty bob a week, And feel that that's the proper thing for you. It's a naked child against a hungry wolf; It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck; It's walking on a string across a gulf With millstones fore-and-aft about your neck; But the thing is daily done by many and many a one. And we fall, face forward, fighting, on the deck.
 * "Thirty Bob a Week", p. 97