Jeu-d'Esprit on the Word "Barb"

The warrior donn’d his well-worn garb,
And proudly waved his crest,
He mounted on his jet-black barb,
And put his lance in rest.
Percy’s Reliques.

Eftsoons the wight, withouten more delay,
Spurr’d his brown barb, and rode full swiftly on his way.
Spenser.

Hark! was it not the trumpet’s voice I heard?
The soul of battle is awake within me!
The fate of ages and of empires hangs
On this dread hour. Why am I not in arms?
Bring my good lance, caparison my steed!
Base, idle grooms! are ye in league against me?
Haste with my barb, or, by the holy saints,
Ye shall not live to saddle him to-morrow!
Massinger.

Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia.

See’st thou yon chief whose presence seems to rule
The storm of battle? Lo! where’er he moves
Death follows. Carnage sits upon his crest--
Fate on his sword is throned--and his white barb,
As a proud courser of Apollo’s chariot,
Seems breathing fire. Potter’s Æschylus.

Oh! bonnie look’d my ain true knight,
His barb so proudly reining;
I watch’d him till my tearfu’ sight
Grew amaist dim wi’ straining. Border Minstrelsy.

Shakspeare.

Fair star of beauty’s heaven! to call thee mine,
All other joys I joyously would yield;
My knightly crest, my bounding barb resign,
For the poor shepherd’s crook and daisied field;
For courts or camps no wish my soul would prove,
So thou wouldst live with me, and be my love!

Earl of Surrey’s Poems.

For thy dear love my weary soul hath grown
Heedless of youthful sports: I seek no more
Or joyous dance, or music’s thrilling tone,
Or joys that once could charm in minstrel lore,
Or knightly tilt where steel-clad champions meet,
Borne on impetuous barbs to bleed at beauty’s feet.

Shakspeare’s Sonnets.

As a warrior clad
In sable arms, like chaos dull and sad,
But mounted on a barb as white
As the fresh new-born light,--
So the black night too soon
Came riding on the bright and silver moon,
Whose radiant heavenly ark
Made all the clouds, beyond her influence, seem
E’en more than doubly dark,
Mourning, all widow’d of her glorious beam.

Cowley.