Word: couplets
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...This couplet by 19th century Poet Arthur Hugh Clough was quoted last week by one of the Church of England's top theologians, Dr. Robert Mortimer, Bishop of Exeter, to summarize his view of how doctors should take care of their very old, very sick patients...
...Estimated increase during the Eisenhower era, 1953-60: 12%. *Whether or not the tag helped Smith, it did help Roosevelt: he became known as the man who called Al Smith the Happy Warrior. But Roosevelt deserved little credit. The Wordsworth couplet (from the poem that was read at Grover Cleveland's funeral in 1908) was written into the nominating speech by its principal ghostwriter, New York Judge Joseph M. Proskauer. Roosevelt accepted the idea reluctantly, argued that the flourish was too literary for hardheaded convention delegates...
Princeton students once voted him the world's worst poet, and a jeering couplet hounded him for years: "I'd rather flunk my Wassermann test/Than read a poem by Edgar Guest."* Such insults missed their mark, for Edgar Albert Guest never even pretended to be a poet. Said he: "I am a newspaperman who writes verse." And at the time he died last week at 77, Edgar Guest's success as a verse-writing newspaperman had never before been equaled and may never be again...
Poetry readings are a little tough on poets and audience alike. The poet, uncertain of his audience, must perhaps pass up good poems in favor of inferior but more easily assimilated material. He is likely to find that a catchy closing couplet will draw more audience reaction than a more profound piece...
With this couplet, G. K. Chesterton hymned the traditional British inability to get from place to place by a direct route. About the only straight roads on the island are those laid out atop old Roman roads like famed Watling Street, which makes a 160-mile run from London to Wales. In the days of gas rationing, austerity and fewer cars, it was possible for the lucky few to speed across country or through cities with ease. But last week, its inadequate road net jammed with 8,000,000 cars, 1,500,000 motorcycles and uncounted millions of bicycles, Britain...