Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
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. St. 1.
The smith and his penny both are black.
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.
Longfellow—Nuremberg. L. 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.
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.
Longfellow—To a Child. L. 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.
Chas. Mackay—Tubal Cain. St. 4.
In other part stood one who, at the forge
Labouring, two massy clods of iron and brass
Had melted.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. XI. L. 564.
I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool.
King John. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 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.
Spenser—Sonnet XXXII.