Blacksmith

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 71.

Blacksmith

Curs'd be that wretch (Death's factor sure) who brought Dire swords into the peaceful world, and taught Smiths (who before could only make The spade, the plough-share, and the rake) Arts, in most cruel wise Man's left to epitomize!

• • Abraham Cowley, In Commendation of the Time we live under, the Reign of our gracious King, Charles II.

Come, see the Dolphin's anchor forged; 'tis at a white heat now: The billows ceased, the flames decreased; though on the forge's brow The little flames still fitfully play through the sable mound; And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round, All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare; Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there.

• • Samuel Ferguson—The Forging of the Anchor, Stanza 1.

The smith and his penny both are black.

• • George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum.

And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime; Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.

• • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nuremberg, line 34.

Under a spreading chestnut tree

 The village smithy stands:

The smith, a mighty man is he,

 With large and sinewy hands;

And the muscles of his brawny arms

 Are strong as iron bands.

• • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Village Blacksmith.

As great Pythagoras of yore, Standing beside the blacksmith's door, And hearing the hammers, as they smote The anvils with a different note, Stole from the varying tones, that hung Vibrant on every iron tongue, The secret of the sounding wire, And formed the seven-chorded lyre.

• • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, To a Child, line 175.

And he sang: "Hurra for my handiwork!"

 And the red sparks lit the air;

Not alone for the blade was the bright steel made;

 And he fashioned the first ploughshare.

• • Charles Mackay—Tubal Cain, Stanza 4.

In other part stood one who, at the forge Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass Had melted.

• • John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book XI, line 564.

I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus, The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool.

• • William Shakespeare, King John, Act IV, scene 2, line 193.

The paynefull smith, with force of fervent heat, The hardest yron soone doth mollify, That with his heavy sledge he can it beat, And fashion it to what he it list apply.

• • Edmund Spenser, Sonnet XXXII.