And often did beguile her of her tears,

When I did speak of some distressful stroke

That my youth suffer'd. My story being done,

She gave me for my pains a world of sighs;

She swore, in faith, 't was strange, 't was passing strange.

'T was pitiful, 't was wondrous pitiful;

She wish'd she had not heard it, yet she wish'd

That Heaven had made her such a man; she thank'd me,

And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,

I should but teach him how to tell my story,

And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake:

She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd,

And I loved her that she did pity them.

This only is the witchcraft I have used.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act i. Sc. 3.

Soft as some song divine thy story flows.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book xi. Line 458.

Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir.

George Canning (1770-1827): The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.

Well, honour is the subject of my story.

I cannot tell what you and other men

Think of this life; but, for my single self,

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Julius Caesar. Act i. Sc. 2.

Story! God bless you! I have none to tell, sir.

George Canning (1770-1827): The Friend of Humanity and the Knife-Grinder.

The story is extant, and writ in choice Italian.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Hamlet. Act iii. Sc. 2.

That book in many's eyes doth share the glory

That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Romeo and Juliet. Act i. Sc. 3.

'T is an old tale and often told;

But did my fate and wish agree,

Ne'er had been read, in story old,

Of maiden true betray'd for gold,

That loved, or was avenged, like me.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): Marmion. Canto ii. Stanza 27.

Or call up him that left half told

The story of Cambuscan bold.

John Milton (1608-1674): Il Penseroso. Line 109.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The moon takes up the wondrous tale,

And nightly to the listening earth

Repeats the story of her birth;

While all the stars that round her burn,

And all the planets in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,

And spread the truth from pole to pole.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): Ode.

Her father loved me; oft invited me;

Still question'd me the story of my life,

From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes,

That I have passed.

I ran it through, even from my boyish days,

To the very moment that he bade me tell it:

Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,

Of moving accidents by flood and field,

Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach,

Of being taken by the insolent foe

And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence

And portance in my travels' history;

Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle,

Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven,

It was my hint to speak,—such was the process;

And of the Cannibals that each other eat,

The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads

Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear

Would Desdemona seriously incline.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act i. Sc. 3.

Even such is time, that takes in trust

Our youth, our joys, our all we have,

And pays us but with age and dust;

Who in the dark and silent grave,

When we have wandered all our ways,

Shuts up the story of our days.

But from this earth, this grave, this dust,

My God shall raise me up, I trust!

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618): Written the night before his death.—Found in his Bible in the Gate-house at Westminster.

Not once or twice in our rough-island story

The path of duty was the way to glory.

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892): Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington. Stanza 8.

Soft-heartedness, in times like these,

Shows sof'ness in the upper story.

James Russell Lowell (1819-1891): The Biglow Papers. Second Series. No. vii.

Who ran to help me when I fell,

And would some pretty story tell,

Or kiss the place to make it well?

My mother.

Jane Taylor (1783-1824): My Mother.

The tyrant custom, most grave senators,

Hath made the flinty and steel couch of war

My thrice-driven bed of down.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Othello. Act i. Sc. 3.

This story will not go down.

Henry Fielding (1707-1754): Tumble-down Dick.