Well, and here are the next few poems out of the reciter:
Thomas Nashe, In Plague Time: This is, I think, still well-known, but if I read it in high school, I didn’t remember it. It’s essentially a list of aphorisms about the worthlessness of mortal success, and as such is oh so terribly quotable: “fond are life’s lustful joys”, “rich men, trust not in wealth/gold cannot buy you health”, “Beauty is but a flower”, “brightness falls from the air” (or possibly from the hair), and of course “Strength stoops unto the grave”.
Sir Henry Wotton, The Character of a Happy Life: Now this seems, on the face of it, to be eminently quotable as well, and yet ... the poem as a whole gets quoted more than any piece of it. Although I’ve seen references to “whose passions not his masters are” and “deepest wounds are given by praise”, Sir Henry’s famous quote is not from a poem at all, but the line defining a diplomat as “an honest man sent to lie abroad”.
Francis Beaumont, On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey: This poem, I assume, was considered good material for reciting because of all the corpses, but other than its opening lines “Mortality, behold and fear!/What a change of flesh is here!”, there’s nothing I recognize as part of the common tongue. Which is very odd, you know, because Mr. Beaumont (and his collaborators) gave us such stock phrases as “till the cows come home”, “do or die”, “charity and treating begin at home” “my dancing days are done” “one foot in the grave” “What's one man's poison, signior, is another's meat or drink”, “hit the nail on the head”, , “I care not twopence”, “though I say't that should not say't”, and “speak boldly, and speak truly, shame the devil”.
James Shirley, Death the Leveller is another one of those morbid pieces thatit must have been fun for an eight-year-old to deliver. The pullable quotes seem to be “Sceptre and Crown/Must tumble down” and the last couplet: “Only the actions of the just/smell sweet and blossom in their dust.”
John Milton, On His Blindness: “They also serve who only stand and wait”. ’Nuff said.
John Bunyan, To Be a Pilgrim (note: I know the link says it’s by Maddy Prior, but that’s just false. It’s also not by John Buynan, by the way, but by Percy Dearmer, at least in the form shown and printed in the reciter): this has got to be the most parodied hymn in the book. Well, or not parodied so much as borrowed for the purposes of making fun of something else. The form is so easy that I imagine any Gentle Reader could in less than half-an-hour on any topic of even passing interest make up one far better this:
He who would blogrolled be
To boost his page rank
Must blog with constancy
West Bank or World Bank
On everything give vent
Nor take time to relent
Your first avowed intent
To be a bloggerThen spread your links around
To Higher Beings
Don’t let your site go down
from slashdot’s gleanings
Use Technorati’s might
A link for BoingBoing write
Attack the Left (or Right)
To be a bloggerYour comrade’s views defend
Their blockquotes parrot
Make RSS your friend
Show party spirit
Then fingers peg away
And give ’em hell to pay
You’ll labour night and day
To be a blogger
Here are sands, ignoble things / Dropt from the ruined sides of—
-Vardibidian.