"Doggerel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... played noisily about him. An electric globe at the corner lighted their frolics. He was peevish and irritable, that they knew; but the spirit of adventure lured them into teasing him. They joined hands before him, and, keeping time with their bodies, chanted in his face weird and uncomplimentary doggerel. At first he snarled curses at them—curses he had learned from the lips of various foremen. Finding this futile, and remembering his dignity, ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the metrical part Dr. Steingass writes to me, "The verses in Al-Hayfa and Yusuf, where not mere doggerel, are spoiled by the spelling. I was rarely able to make out even the metre and I think you have accomplished a feat by translating them as you ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... A prominent character in Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais. Hertrippa is a magician who gives Panurge advice on the subject of marriage. Bluphocks is simply racking his brain for words to rhyme with "Pippa," so that he may write doggerel poetry to or about her. For "King ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... laughed. "You've got it wrong, Uncle Jabez," she declared. "There is another version of that old doggerel. It is: ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... glittered with not over-tasteful finery, the lady sometimes with finery stripped from the altars. Then, glass in hand he might joyously cry, "The sharp sword is my farm and plundering is my plough; earth is my bed, the sky my covering, this cloak is my house, this wine my paradise;" or chant the doggerel stave which said that "when a soldier was born three boors were given him, one to find him food, another to find him a comely lass, a third to go to perdition in his stead." But when the country had been eaten up, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... country in Europe, of which he could not give a very particular account. He had some letters, and was ingenious, but much of an unbeliever, and wickedly undertook, some years after, to travesty the Bible in doggerel verse, as Cotton had done Virgil. By this means he set many of the facts in a very ridiculous light, and might have hurt weak minds if his work had been ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... these songs are not, however, confined to a judicious selection of words to suit the air. There is often a quaint local humour conveyed in the doggerel verses; the charm being greatly enhanced by the introduction of creole slang and mispronounced Spanish. Fragments of these effusions occasionally degenerate into street sayings, which are in everybody's mouth till ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... among his friends and patrons many who afterward became distinguished both in war and in the civil professions. At these gatherings, Mingo, bustling around and serving his guests, would keep the table in a roar with his quaint sayings, and his local satires in the shape of impromptu doggerel; and he would also repeat snatches of orations which he had heard in Washington when Judge Wornum was a member of Congress. But his chief accomplishments lay in the wonderful ease and fluency with which he imitated the eloquent appeals of certain ambitious members ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... skilled in psalmody, has sometimes shown evidences of true poetic feeling. The divine afflatus has occasionally inspired in him some fine thoughts and graceful fancies. His race has produced many writers of terrible doggerel of the monumental class of poetry; but far removed from these there have been some who have composed fine ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... a list of my works. Here is an article on the writings of Victor Hugo, another on an American book called "Confessions of a Poet," a whole heap of verses, among which sundry doggerel epistles to you; and last, not least, the present voluminous ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... answers the hisses of the audience by elevating its heels and uttering a characteristic "hee haw." By the side of Busby junior stands the manager (Raymond), apologetically addressing the audience. Certain pamphlets lie scattered in front of the stage, on which are inscribed (among others) the following doggerel:— ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... a very large, very old-fashioned back-comb, having a story with a moral attached, the latter recited in doggerel rhyme. ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... had been committed during the night; the companies had scoured the streets singing some doggerel, which one of the bloody wretches, being in poetic vein, had composed, the chorus of ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... H. Carrington Bolton of the Smithsonian Institute. These rhymes unquestionably originated in old superstitions and rites, including incantations of the old magicians and practices of divination by lot. The doggerel of counting-out rhymes is often traceable to old Latin formulas used for these purposes, a fact that shows the absurdity and artificiality of purposely ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... him. Eight lines only were sufficient if the task was completed on time, but the time was up and no line was written. This meant being kept after school to write twelve lines. In this extremity. Jay Gould came to his rescue with the following doggerel:— ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... extravagant expenditure; all these mixed up together in a dusty old violin-case lined with ruby velvet. I found besides a large account-book, which, when opened, hopefully turned out to my infinite consternation to be filled with verses—page after page of rhymed doggerel of a jovial and improper character, written in the neatest minute hand I ever did see. In the same fiddle-case a photograph of my predecessor, taken lately in Saigon, represented in front of a garden view, ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... do you know you lie at peace?' Lawford audibly questioned, gazing at the doggerel. And yet, as his eyes wandered over the blunt green stone and the rambling crimson-berried brier that had almost encircled it with its thorns, the echo of that whisper rather jarred. He was, he supposed, rather a dull creature—at least people seemed to think so—and he seldom ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... that this attack created found voice in a ballad called 'The Devonshire Boys' Courage, 1690.' It is utter doggerel, but expresses the contemporary views of the people, and was sung to a tune called 'Liggan Water,' a title that, according to Mr William Chappell, refers to an Irish stream. I give ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... "versifying," as it was called in contradistinction to rhyming, was becoming fast the fashion among the more learned. Stonyhurst and others had tried their hands at hexameter translations from the Latin and Greek epics, which seem to have been doggerel enough; and ever and anon some youthful wit broke out in iambics, sapphics, elegiacs, and what not, to the great detriment of the queen's ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the doggerel is duly given the rhetorical benefit of a "Tenure by the Grace of God." The personages that carry this dignity require the backing of a determined and patriotic populace in support of their prestige value, and they commonly have no great difficulty ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... English refugees compiled their 'Sternhold and Hopkins' at Geneva, in imitation of the French, during the time of Bourgeois' residence, and took over a number of the French tunes; though they mauled these most unmercifully to bring them down to the measure of their doggerel psalms, yet even after this barbarous treatment Bourgeois' spoilt tunes were still far better than what they made for themselves, and sufficient not only to float their book into credit, but to kindle the confused enthusiasm of subsequent English ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... thinking; but usually the world has failed in {4} any effort to adopt their high standards. Speaking roughly, several centuries of charitable practice, in the English world at least, are fairly well summed up in the doggerel verses of that sixteenth-century divine, quoted by Hobson, who ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... down!" he said at last to his assistant, sprawled out on the stone beside him. "That's about right, Smithy. And maybe the rest of the doggerel isn't so far off either. 'Pokin' through the crust of hell'—well, there was hell popping around here once, and I am gambling that the furnaces ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... pious and unexceptionable doggerel and no one would admit such fact more quickly than Mistress Anne herself, who laid it away in after days in her drawer, with a smile at the metre and a sigh for the miserable time it chronicled. There were many of them, for among the same papers is a shorter ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... cockpit, whereupon the command devolved upon Captain William Hope. It must have been a distressing moment for Flinders, despite the intense excitement of action, when his friend and commander fell; it was indeed, as will be seen, a crucial moment in his career. A doggerel bard of the time enshrined the event in a verse as badly in need of surgical aid as were the heroes whom ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... text as an excellent imitation of Choctaw,—a language with which the colonel, as a whilom resident of the Indian Territories, was supposed to be familiar. Indeed, the next week's "Intelligencer" contained some vile doggerel, supposed to be an answer to Mrs. Tretherick's poem, ostensibly written by the wife of a Digger Indian chief, accompanied by a glowing eulogium, signed ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... a theme of inspiration for innumerable sermons and a prodigious quantity of doggerel. Among the happier lines ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... the rubbing, and the constable's kind manner, and listening to the doggerel rhyme, and feeling that nettle would get her deserts, the little thing soon ceased crying. But several groups had been drawn towards the place, and amongst the rest came Miss Winter and her cousin, who had been within hearing of the disaster. The constable began to feel very nervous and uncomfortable, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of doggerel rhymes by children in playing their out-of-door games, to decide by the last word which of their number shall be "it" or "takkie," in games like "Hide and Seek" and "I Spy," must be familiar to every reader who has had any youth worthy ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... sometimes. He was a perfectly sound and healthy, well-grown boy and a friend who was with him at "the Shop" says he can remember no apparent trace of unhappiness, and is full of tales of his jokes and his fun, his quaint caricatures and doggerel rhymes, his love of flowers and nature, his hospitalities, and his joy in getting his friends to meet and know and like each other. Though he made no mark at Woolwich he did carry off the prize for the ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... can quote the hymns if they've got any merit at all. Otherwise I shall drag in the psalms. Hymns aren't very quotable as a rule. Shocking doggerel most of 'em!..." ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... by country people continued, indeed, but the creative artistic impulse was lost. True carols after the Reformation tend to be doggerel, and no doubt many of the traditional pieces printed in such collections as Bramley and Stainer's[33]{37} are debased survivals from the Middle Ages, or perhaps new words written for old tunes. Such ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... mother, was the daughter of Peter Folger, one of the settlers of Nantucket,—"a godly and learned Englishman," who, like many of the pious New England folk, used to relieve his heart in doggerel rhymes. In his "Looking-Glass for the Times" he appeals boldly for liberty of conscience in behalf of the persecuted Anabaptists and Quakers, and we are not surprised that Franklin should have commended the manly freedom of ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... the children have a common saying when making a swop or change of one toy for another, and no bargain is supposed to be concluded between boys and girls unless they interlock fingers—the little finger on the right hand—and repeat the following doggerel:— ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... last word is always a rising one. This is especially true on the last syllable of the last word, "tip." The counting out is not very different from that of white children. They all place two fingers of each hand in a circle; the one who repeats the doggerel, having one hand free, touches each finger in the circle saying, Hony, kee bee, l[a] [a]-weis, ag-les, huntip. Each finger that the huntip falls on is doubled under, and this is repeated again and again until there are but three fingers left. The persons corresponding ...
— Contribution to Passamaquoddy Folk-Lore • J. Walter Fewkes
... that doggerel, 'A Noble Personality,' is the most utter trash possible, and it couldn't have been written ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... apologise for the enclosed doggerel. Last night, round one of our fires, we were alluding to the various uses we have made of that deadly weapon, the bayonet, and it was suggested that I, as a Spring Poet, should record them ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... very difficult thing to accomplish, because working-men, like the people called their betters, do not always understand their own interests, and will often actually help their oppressors to exterminate their saviours to the tune of 'Rule Britannia,' or some such lying doggerel. We must educate them out of that, and, meanwhile, push forward the international association of laborers diligently. I am at present occupied in propagating its principles. Capitalism, organized for repressive ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... oblivion he'll consign; Nor to thy merit will his praise refuse. Thou may'st be searched for polish'd words and verse By flippant spouter, emptiest of praters: Tell him to seek them in some mawkish verse: My periods all are rough as nutmeg graters. The doggerel poet, wishing thee to read, Reject not; let him glean thy jests and stories. His brother I, of lowly sembling breed: Apollo grants to few Parnassian glories. Menac'd by critic with sour furrowed brow, Momus or Troilus or Scotch reviewer: Ruffle your heckle, grin and growl ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... moral support, the cool-headed adviser, surrounded by a crowd of brainless, empty-headed young fops, who were even now repeating from mouth to mouth, and with every sign of the keenest enjoyment, a doggerel quatrain which he had just given forth. Everywhere the absurd, silly words met her: people seemed to have little else to speak about, even the Prince had asked her, with a little laugh, whether she appreciated her husband's latest ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... a yet more violent form. Calling for pen and paper, while the sporting fraternity gathered round, he produced the Cub at Newmarket, which he printed and dedicated to the Duke of York in a characteristically Boswellian strain. In doggerel which defies rhyme or reason he tells ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... look down on such miserable translators, who make doggerel of his Latin, mistake his meaning, misapply his censures, and often contradict their own? He is fixed as a landmark to set out the ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... outhouse, and the yard thereby is guarded by a St Bernard, whose single evil deed was that under one of the obscure impulses of a dog's heart—atoned for by long and self-conscious remorse—he bit the poet; and tried, says one of the friars, to make doggerel of him. The poet, too, lives at the monastery gates, and on monastery ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got among the cabins of the Flintshire hills. ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... around the little room his eyes caught some writing on the wall. There were several bits of doggerel, ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... the written language offering unlimited facilities for the formation of the latter. Chinese riddles, by which term we include conundrums, charades, et hoc genus omne, are similar to our own, and occupy quite as large a space in the literature of the country. They are generally in doggerel, of which the following may be taken as a specimen, being like ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... he does it with fear and trembling. So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe, that even he, an obscure, nameless Bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as—an impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and, because he can make a shift to jingle a few doggerel Scotch rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of no small ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... apprentices and riotous boys, to the spot where the humpbacked tinker had dragged his passive burden. The foul green pond near Master Sancroft's hostel reflected the glare of torches; six of the tymbesteres, leaping and wheeling, with doggerel song and discordant music, gave the signal for ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... (de muy mala e corrupta letra), apparently in abbreviations (sin ortografia), that Las Casas says he found extreme difficulty in making it out. Now let us observe that date, which is given in fantastic style, apparently because the inscription is in a rude doggerel, and the writer seems to have wished to keep his "verses" tolerably even. (They don't scan much better than Walt Whitman's.) As it stands, the date reads anno domini millesimo quatercentessimo octiesque ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... Lord B.'s poetry, and treat the wretched verses, the Fare Well, with far too much respect. They are disgusting in sentiment, and in execution contemptible. 'Though my many faults deface me,' etc. Can worse doggerel than such a stanza be written? One verse is commendable: 'All my madness none can know.'" The criticism, as criticism, confutes itself, and is worth quoting solely because it displays the feeling of a sane and honourable man towards ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of their number, to view the manner of collecting the fluid. A fine, powerful voice aroused them from their momentary silence, as it rang under the branches of the trees, singing the following words of that inimitable doggerel, whose verses, if extended, would reach from the Caters of the Connecticut to the shores of Ontario. The tune was, of course, a familiar air which, although it is said to have been first applied to this nation in derision, circumstances ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... to a mere pin- point in the universe, there were other larger, more absorbing things on which the mind dwelt. There was the grey cold sea outside Dover and Portsmouth and Cork, where the great grey ships of war rocked and swung with the tides, where the sailors sang, in doggerel English, that bitter- sounding adaptation, "Germania rules t'e waves," where the flag of a World-Power floated for the world to see. And in oven-like cities of India there were men who looked out at the white sun-glare, the heat-baked dust, the welter ...
— When William Came • Saki
... perhaps as a sample of the Friedrich manufacture, surely not otherwise! There remains yet more than half of it; readers see what their foolish craving has brought upon them! Doggerel out of which no clear story, such story as there is, can be had; though, except the exaggeration and contortion, there is nothing of fiction in it. We fly to the Newspaper, happily at least a prose composition, which begins at this point; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... and bringing into view an immense blue canyon far ahead of us. "There lies the Stikeen," I called to Burton. "We're on the second south fork, which we follow to the Stikeen, thence to the left to Telegraph Creek." I began to compose doggerel verses to ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... he writes doggerel, and has no other pretensions that I can see. All the Elizabethans did, Shakespeare among the best of them. And I don't know that Shakespeare's doggerel is much better than Tusser's doggerel. It is ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... 'Polyhorus tharus'. In relation to the word 'tharus', which figures as a sort of scientific (or doggerel) cognomen to this bird, Mr. W. H. Hudson once pointed out to me that, like some other 'scientific facts', it originated in a mistake. The Pampa Indian name of the bird is 'trare'. Molina (Don Juan Ignacio), in his 'History of Chile', happened to spell the word 'thare', ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... have their lighter moments, and it was probably in one of his happiest and, certainly, in one of his most careless moods that Mr. Justice Denman conceived the idea of putting the early history of Rome into doggerel verse for the benefit of a little boy of the name of Jack. Poor Jack! He is still, we learn from the preface, under six years of age, and it is sad to think of the future career of a boy who is being brought up on bad history ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... literary merit as to evoke the surprise of posterity at the ephemeral success which they unquestionably achieved. An instance in point is the celebrated poem "Lillibullero," or, as it is sometimes written, "Lilli Burlero." Here is the final stanza of the pitiful doggerel with which Wharton boasted that he had "sung a ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... rattle off for my special delectation a doggerel ballad of his own composition. The hero was myself and there was a glowing anticipation of the arrival of a heroine. And as I listened my interest would wax intense at the picture of this world-charming bride illuminating the lap of the future in which she sat ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... year that is stormily ending Has brought us full measure of grief, And yet we must thank it for sending At times unexpected relief; These boons are not felt in the trenches Or make our home burdens less hard; They're not a bonanza, but merit a stanza Or two from the doggerel bard. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... were amongst the most trying moments of our life in the North; and from the composition of our squadron, namely, two fast vessels, and two slow ones, the constant waiting for one another put me much in mind of the old doggerel:— ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... Gorges, son of Sir A. Gorges, who was possessor of the chapel for many years. This blocked up the aisle and was taken to pieces. The black slab which was on the top is set in the floor, and the brasses containing an epitaph in doggerel rhyme, attributing all the merits in the universe to the deceased, hang on the wall on the north side. The date of the chapel, 1528, is on the capital of one of the pillars supporting the arch which divides the chapel from the nave. The capitals ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... something the very opposite of complimentary. A surly person is said to have "a dogged disposition." Any one very much fatigued is said to be "dog weary." A wretched room or house is often called "a dog hole," or said to be only fit for "a dog." Very poor verse is "doggerel." It is told of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, that when a young nobleman refused to translate some inscription over an alcove, because it was in "dog-latin," she observed, "How strange a puppy shouldn't understand ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... tried to force the thoughts from his mind with doggerel. Ben Adam, he thought. Abou Ben Adam, Humpty Dumpty, hurry, hurry, hurry, the only two headed get yours here the sum of the square of the sides is equal to the square of the hyper-space, no, mustn't think that mimsy ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation that I could liken them to nothing but to their own relations, those noble characters of men of wit and pleasure about the town. The like considerations have hindered me from dealing with the lamentable companions of their prose and doggerel. I am so far from defending my poetry against them that I will not so much as expose theirs. And for my morals, if they are not proof against their attacks, let me be thought by posterity what those authors would be thought if any memory of them or of their writings could endure ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... simply printed books. The vaster proportion of what is printed is not literature. It may be statements of fact and items of information; it may be sound science and unimpeachable record; it may be truism; it may be platitude; it is often sheer bathos or doggerel. We do not count these things as literature. A good deal of singing, piano-beating and tin-whistling is not music. It is only in virtue of a certain fine quality that books are literature. According to Emerson, literature is "a record of the best thoughts." According to Matthew Arnold ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... irate Ransom, "that if John Doe and Richard Roe, with a declaration in ejectment, could only be turned into doggerel, he would be ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... the Poet Sternhold. Thomas Sternhold (ob. 1549), was the author with John Hopkins (ob. 1570), of a metrical version of the Psalms, which became a bye-word for doggerel. Sir Morgan is, of course, alluding to some pious rhymes groaned on the way to the triple tree. cf. Shadwell, The Miser (1672), I, i, 'She would be more welcome to thee than a reprieve would, if thou ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... the good things that lay in the house that John built, represented by a stealthy seedy gentleman, who, after reading a board intimating that apartments were to let, crept slyly past the sleepy Bull, to mount the house-steps; and there deliver himself of the following doggerel, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... can write something worthy of being read, while a mere verse-maker, like yourself, writes only doggerel, that is not worth the paper on which it is printed. Now I advise you to let verse-making alone, and attend closely to your business, both for your own sake and ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... extraordinary English doggerel rhyme which I took down, though it seems singularly incoherent when written out at length. These rhymes are repeated by the old men as a sort of chant, and when a line comes that is more than usually irregular they seem ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... boy lost his temper and sang some naughty doggerel he had made up in his cell that morning. He abused the town and townsmen, but especially the townsmen. He damned their morals, their customs, and their institutions. He said that they had ugly faces, raucous ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... of some poetry, or rather doggerel," said Mr. Harry, "that I cut out of a newspaper for you yesterday;" and he drew from his pocket a little slip ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... Crassus' saying meant, "His (the ass's) lips hold thistles and lettuces to be both alike;" wanting the discrimination to distinguish between them. Or, if I may put it into a doggerel rhyme: ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... the mercenaries, who had little stomach for fight without wages, accepted the passports proffered by Parma. They revenged themselves for the harsh treatment which they had received from Casimir and from the states-general, by singing, everywhere as they retreated, a doggerel ballad—half Flemish, half German—in which their wrongs ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... about the poetry," replied my father; "no doubt it seems to you poor, silly doggerel; but I have no doubt of this, Roger, your interest and mine lie in abiding ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... afterwards. He made a long face, but, in truth, felt scarcely more sorrowful than a mute at a funeral. These first passions of men and women are mostly abortive; and are dead almost before they are born. Esmond could repeat, to his last day, some of the doggerel lines in which his muse bewailed his pretty lass; not without shame to remember how bad the verses were, and how good he thought them; how false the grief, and yet how he was rather proud of it. 'Tis an error, surely, to talk of the simplicity of youth. I think no persons are more hypocritical, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... from a well-known poem, a popular song, a nursery rhyme, or even doggerel verse. Sometimes a whole poem or song prefaces an article. When the verse is printed in smaller type than the article, it need not be enclosed in quotation marks. In his typewritten manuscript a writer may indicate this difference in size of type by single-spacing ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... nourishment of the thought of man, that serves only as it undergoes metabolism, and becomes thought and lives, and in its very living passes away. You scientific people, with your fancy of a terrible exactitude in language, of indestructible foundations built, as that Wordsworthian doggerel on the title-page of Nature says, "for aye," are ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... given not to an Elizabethan named William Shakespeare, who was born at Stratford, and married, and migrated to London, and became a second-rate actor, and afterwards returned to Stratford, and made a will, and composed a few lines of doggerel for the tombstone under which he was buried. Our reverence is given to the writer of certain plays and sonnets. To that second-rate actor, because we believe he wrote those plays and sonnets, we give that reverence. But our belief is not such as we give to the proposition that one and ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... added also by occasionally referring an impression to another sense. For instance, the newspaper poet writes: "The street was white with snow," and makes his line commonplace doggerel. Tennyson says: "The streets were dumb with snow," ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... this piece of doggerel, Peace would have been the last man to have attributed to himself all those qualities associated symbolically ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... of June 30, 1716, we find a doggerel old mug-house ballad, which is so characteristic of the violence of the times that it is ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... children should be nurtured on the wholesome and delicious food of actual literature, instead of "skeletons" and "abstracts." He set great store on learning poetry by heart, for he believed in poetry as the chief instrument of culture. He poured just contempt upon the wretched doggerel which in school reading-books too often passed for poetry. "When one thinks how noble and admirable a thing genuine popular poetry is, it is provoking to think that such rubbish should be palmed off on a ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... habitually performed in a foreign language, or, if in English, by those who have not the art of making their words intelligible, there will always be a demand for books that tell the story more clearly than is to be found in the doggerel translations of the libretti, unless audiences return with one accord to the attitude of the amateurs of former days, who paid not the slightest attention to the plot of the piece, provided only that their favourite ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... necessary to make the service appear alluring, especially to the young. He was a jovial, good-natured fellow, of ready wit and much broad humor. When he espied any large boys among the idle crowd around him, he would attract their attention by singing in a comical manner the following doggerel,— ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... bookes' have survived to the present time, and it has been contended that they were probably nothing more than ballads and copies of doggerel verses. But this is an hypercritical objection, or rather groundless guess, for it is evident that the proclamation points at something far more important. We may safely conclude that they were newspapers, and that journalism ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... assonates, rather than rimes, with "glorious," but this is dangerously close to doggerel. Assonance is unsuited to the genius of any language possessed of a rich vowel-system. This is evident to any one who has read Archbishop Trench's attempt to render Calderon's verse into ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... is the township vortex where all assemble to "swap stories" and deal out the news. Lincoln, from behind the counter—his pulpit—not merely repeated items of information which he had heard, but also recited doggerel satire of his own concoction, punning and emitting sparks of wit. Lincoln was hailed as the "capper" of any "good things on ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... under glass and to live underdone—when there were no Indians to shoot! She would have joyed to venture "Paracelsus" on him, and some lengthy rhymed discourses; and she fondly turned leaves and leaves of her pet doggerel analytics. "Pippa Passes" and others she had to skip, from discreet motives—pages which he would have doubtless stayed awake at; but she chose a poem at length. This was better than Emma, he pronounced. And short. The horse was a good horse. He thought a man whose horse must not play out on him ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... by singing an adapted version of "Massa's In the Cold, Cold Ground," just when they were eating breakfast. As an alleged musical effort it was bad enough, but as a personal insult it was worse. One hesitates to repeat the doggerel, even in an effort to be exact. However, the chorus, bellowed shamelessly by ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... soldier boy!" cried Andy, his eyes sparkling, and then he began to hum a bit of doggerel he had made up on the ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... a dollar," she said, "but it is a jester's dollar, the fee of a clown. Don't you see, Martin, the whole thing is lowering. I want the man I love and honor to be something finer and higher than a perpetrator of jokes and doggerel." ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... magic and spells. The cat, as was to be expected, was particularly good on anything that had 'cat' in it; he once catalogued all the principal catastrophes; while the dog, although a good student, had a fancy for writing doggerel. Many and many a time, when the enchanter and his wonderful animals were seated in their armchairs round a blazing fire, talking exactly as any three good friends might talk, a nose would flatten itself against the panes, and the three companions would see looking in ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... us nothing; he would not have spared us the shrill uneducated voices and the unburied bottles of ginger beer. He would have crammed the poem with uncouth similes; he would have changed the metre a hundred times; he would have broken into doggerel and into rhapsody; but he would have left, when all is said and done, as he leaves in that paltry fragment of the grumbling organist, the impression of a certain eternal human energy. Energy and joy, the father and the mother ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... actual process of branding I dare not attempt to describe; Some themes are too high and outstanding For bards of the doggerel tribe; But patriot minstrels will ladle Out lauds on the parents who see That the Celt is tattooed in his cradle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... and in a snow-storm, next door to the North Pole. Now, coming from the north, seeing its snowy hills and house-roofs rosy with the glow of sunset, it was warm and southern by contrast. The four principal towns of West and North Bothnia are thus characterised in an old verse of Swedish doggerel: Umea, the fine; Pitea, the needle-making; Lulea, the lazy; and in Tornea, everybody ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... hand, and very gradually worked himself waist-high with the sill. But the sill was too narrow for him; that was as far as he could get unaided; and it was as much as I could bear to see of a feat which in itself might have hardened my conscience and softened my heart. But I had identified his doggerel verse at last. I am ashamed to say that it was part of a set of my very own writing in the school magazine of my time. So Raffles knew the stuff better than I did myself, and yet scorned to press his flattery ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... that a boy should own all these adjuncts and many others—quickness of perception, unlimited daring, and alertness to make a jockey. No truer summing up of the necessary qualifications is there than the old and famous "Father Bill" Daly's doggerel ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... of personality, which his philosophical dejection never quenched, is everywhere in evidence. It is clear that he did not set himself to master the poet's art, yet through the mask of conventional verse which often falls into doggerel, the voice of a true poet is heard. In selecting the pieces for this volume I have put in the vigorous sea verses of John Marr in their entirety and added those others from his Battle Pieces, Timoleon, etc., that best indicate ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... River," I related how Sam, Tom, and Dick resolved to take a trip on the craft during their summer vacation. On this outing they were accompanied by "Songbird" Powell, a school chum given to the making of doggerel which he persisted in calling poetry, Fred Garrison, who had stood by the Rovers through thick and thin, and Hans Mueller, a German youth who had not yet fully mastered the English language. To make the ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... good story is founded on the adventures of land-buyers in their endeavours to evade the spirit and obey the letter of land regulations. In 1891 a rhymester wrote in doggerel somewhat as follows of the experiences of a selector who "took up" ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... singularly ill-favoured, but her manners were spirited and amusing. Her chief employment was the composition of verses, and these she sung as a mode of subsistence. She published, in 1805, a volume of doggerel rhymes, and was in the habit of satirising in verse those who had offended her. Her one happy effort in song-making has preserved her name. She lived chiefly in the neighbourhood of Muirkirk. She died on the 3d November 1821, in her eightieth year, and her remains were interred ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... said Dick, to himself, deeply shamed. "Moonlight, poetry, mit-holding, and all the rest of it. Never having had it before, it's going hard with me. Why in the devil wasn't I taught to write doggerel when I was in college? A fellow don't stand any show nowadays unless he's ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... Beetle, our friend Gigadibs." Abanazar, the Emperor, and Aladdin had more or less of characters, and King passed them over. "Come forth, my inky buffoon, from behind yonder instrument of music! You supply, I presume, the doggerel for this entertainment. Esteem yourself to be, ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... had paused here, and was looking through some printed slips in his pocketbook. "I wanted you to see some of the fellow's articles in print, but I have nothing of importance here only some of his 'doggerel,' as he calls it, and you've had a sample of that. But here's a bit of the upper spirit of the man—and still another that you should hear him recite. You can keep them both if you care to. The boys all fell in ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... The doggerel, gotten up on the spur of the moment, struck the fancy of fully a score of boys, big and little, and in an instant all were singing it over and over again, at the top of their lungs, and at this those who did not ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... entering into the psychology of the period that we can estimate its attitude towards the poetry written by the pioneers themselves. The "Bay Psalm Book" (1640), the first book printed in the colonies, is a wretched doggerel arrangement of the magnificent King James Version of the Psalms, designed to be sung in churches. Few of the New England churches could sing more than half-a-dozen tunes, and a pitch-pipe was for a long time the ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... fable composed many years after both actors in the scene were dead. The story may not be true, but Macaulay's reasons for rejecting it are not quite exact. Reports of Claverhouse's gallantry at Seneff were certainly current during his lifetime. It is mentioned, for example, in a copy of doggerel verses addressed to Claverhouse by some nameless admirer on New Year's Day 1683.[4] And there is yet more particular testimony, though, like the former, it is of that nature which a historian will always feel himself at liberty to reject if it does not match with the rest ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... flutter of many fans, the frou-frou of silk dresses, and above all the din and sound of dance music, he heard an inane laugh and an affected voice repeating the doggerel rhyme that was even now written on that dirty piece of paper which ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy |
