Official Sung Verse

Famous quotes containing the words official, sung and/or verse:

    All official institutions of language are repeating machines: school, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words: the stereotype is a political fact, the major figure of ideology.
    Roland Barthes (1915–1980)

    Ye learned sisters which have oftentimes
    Beene to me ayding, others to adorne:
    Whom ye thought worthy of your gracefull rymes,
    That even the greatest did not greatly scorne
    To heare theyr names sung in your simple layes,
    Edmund Spenser (1552?–1599)

    Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread. The breath with which the poet utters his verse must be that by which he lives.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)