Captive Bred Specimens

Famous quotes containing the words captive, bred and/or specimens:

    There a captive sat in chains
    Crooning ditties treasured well
    From his Afric’s torrid plains.
    Sole estate his sire bequeathed,—
    Hapless sire to hapless son,—
    Was the wailing song he breathed,
    And his chain when life was done.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Give me the critic bred in Nature’s school,
    Who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule;
    Who feeling’s honest dictates still obeys,
    And dares, without a precedent, to praise.
    Martin Archer, Sir Shee (1769–1850)

    A tattered copy of Johnson’s large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to “make up” verses.
    Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)