boy (n.)

Just at the age 'twixt boy and youth,

When thought is speech, and speech is truth.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Marmion. Introduction to Canto ii.

Twelve years ago I was a boy,

A happy boy at Drury's.

W M Praed (1802-1839): School and Schoolfellows.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,

The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;

Of him who walked in glory and in joy,

Following his plough, along the mountain-side.

By our own spirits we are deified;

We Poets in our youth begin in gladness,

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Resolution and Independence. Stanza 7.

Get money; still get money, boy,

No matter by what means.

Ben Jonson (1573-1637): Every Man in his Humour. Act ii. Sc. 3.

The boy hath sold him a bargain,—a goose.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Love's Labour's Lost. Act iii. Sc. 1.

A Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Henry IV. Part I. Act ii. Sc. 4.

You hear that boy laughing?—you think he's all fun;

But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;

The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,

And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894): The Boys.

Love is a boy by poets styl'd;

Then spare the rod and spoil the child.

Samuel Butler (1600-1680): Hudibras. Part ii. Canto i. Line 843.

Oh would I were a boy again,

When life seemed formed of sunny years,

And all the heart then knew of pain

Was wept away in transient tears!

Mark Lemon (1809-1870): Oh would I were a Boy again.

A parlous boy.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): King Richard III. Act ii. Sc. 4.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Isaac Newton (1642-1727): Brewster's Memoirs of Newton. Vol. ii. Chap. xxvii.

The boy stood on the burning deck,

Whence all but him had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

John Keble (1792-1866): Casabianca.

I remember, I remember

The fir-trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops

Were close against the sky;

It was a childish ignorance,

But now 't is little joy

To know I'm farther off from heaven

Than when I was a boy.

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): I remember, I remember.

The blinded boy that shootes so trim,

From heaven downe did hie.

Thomas Percy (1728-1811): King Cophetua and the Beggar-maid.