OREVER! 'tis a single word!
Our rude forefathers deem'd it two;
Can you imagine so absurd
A view?
Forever! what abysms of woe
The word reveals, what frenzy, what
Despair! For ever (printed so)
Did not.
And nevermore must printer do
As men did longago; but run
"For" into "ever," bidding two
Be one.
Forever! passion-fraught, it throws
O'er the dim page a gloom, a glamour:
It's sweet, it's strange, and I suppose
It's grammar.
C. S. Calverley, Fly Leaves.
ALKING down St. James's Street, Lord Chelmsford was accosted by a stranger, who exclaimed, "Mr. Birch, I believe?" "If you believe that, sir, you'll believe anything," replied the ex-chancellor, as he passed on.
Berkeley, Life and Recollections.
OU snared me, Rose, with ribbons,
Your rose-mouth made me thrall.
Brief—briefer far than Gibbon's,
Was my "Decline and Fall."
Austin Dobson, Vignettes in Rhyme.