miss, miserable, poesy, with bells on

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As Byron put it in a loose translation of Horace: “But poesy between the best and worst / No medium knows; you must be last or first: / For middling poets’ miserable volumes, / Are damn’d alike by gods, and men, and columns.” Poetry needs greatness.

 miserable とは【意味】(貧困・不幸・病弱などのために)みじめな,不幸な... 【例文】miserable sinners... 

po・e・sy

n., pl. -sies.

1. Poetical works; poetry.
2. The art or practice of composing poems.
3. The inspiration involved in composing poetry.

[Middle English poesie, from Old French, from Latin poēsis, from Greek poiēsis, from poiein, to create.]

━━ n. 〔古〕 ((集合的)) 詩, 韻文; 〔古〕 作詩（法）.

with bells onReady to celebrate, eagerly, as in Of course I'll come; I'll be there with bells on.

This metaphoric expression alludes to decorating oneself or one's clothing with little bells for some special performance or occasion. A well-known nursery rhyme has: "See a fine lady upon a white horse, Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, And she shall have music wherever she goes" (in Gammer Gurton's Garland, 1784).

The first record of it that I have found in print, which I doubt is the earliest usage, is in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned, 1922:

"All-ll-ll righty. I'll be there with bells!"

The phrase is paralleled in the UK by 'with knobs on', which means, 'with additional ornament'. This is recorded from the 1930s onward, as in the English novelist Margaret Kennedy's The Fool of the Family, 1930:

"I'm waiting for the Marchese Ferdinando Emanuele Maria Bonaventura Donzati." "With knobs on," agreed Gemma airily. "Who's he?"