Against Unworthy Praise http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1433/
The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)
Context: p>O heart, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause
Being for a woman's sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.What, still you would have their praise!
But here's a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these.
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.</p
A Prayer for Indifference, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Eino Leino. "The Harp-Of-the-Wind," (1905), Leevi Lehto (transl.), in: Leevi Lehto. Leevi Lehto. Finnish poetry: then and now, January 2005. Published online at upenn.edu. Accessed 20-03-2013
“O Popular Applause! what heart of man
Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?”
Source: The Task (1785), Book II, The Timepiece, Line 481.
Hudibras, Part III (1678)
Context: We idly sit, like stupid blockheads,
Our hands committed to our pockets,
And nothing but our tongues at large,
To get the wretches a discharge:
Like men condemn'd to thunder-bolts,
Who, ere the blow, become mere dolts;
Or fools besotted with their crimes,
That know not how to shift betimes,
And neither have the hearts to stay,
Nor wit enough to run away.
“It is not, nor it cannot, come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”
Variant: But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
Source: Hamlet
The Path of Roses (1856), concluding lines
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)
"Spring and Fall", lines 12-15
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
“Nor can his blessed soul look down from heaven,
Or break the eternal sabbath of his rest.”
Act V, scene 2.
The Spanish Friar (1681)
