Careful Words

minstrel (n.)

minstrel (v.)

Sweet Mercy! to the gates of heaven

This minstrel lead, his sins forgiven;

The rueful conflict, the heart riven

With vain endeavour,

And memory of Earth's bitter leaven

Effaced forever.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Thoughts suggested on the Banks of the Nith.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd

As home his footsteps he hath turn'd

From wandering on a foreign strand?

If such there breathe, go, mark him well!

For him no minstrel raptures swell;

High though his titles, proud his name,

Boundless his wealth as wish can claim,—

Despite those titles, power, and pelf,

The wretch, concentred all in self,

Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust from whence he sprung,

Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto vi. Stanza 1.

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in!

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): In Memoriam. cv. Stanza 5.