"Poetical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its strength and beauty from the sun; how the sun warmed the earth and made the crops grow; how it brought gladness and hope and inspiration to men; and they made it the centre of the great world story, the foremost hero of the great world play. For the myths form a poetical explanation of the earth, the sea, the sky, and of the life of man in this wonderful universe, and each great myth was a chapter in a story which endowed day and night, summer and winter, sun, moon, ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... for a whole year I saw nothing of her, nor heard except at Christmas, when she sent me a closely written letter of six sheets, of which I will transcribe only the poetical conclusion: ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... all danger of exhaustion. So long as there is appetite, there is food: and of that plain substantial nature which, Johnson says, suits the stomach of middle life. Burke, for instance, is a sufficiently poetical politician to interest one just when one's sonneteering age is departing, but before one has come down quite to arid fact. Do you know anything of poor Sir Egerton Brydges?—this, in talking of sonnets—poor fellow, he wrote them for seventy years, fully convinced of their goodness, and only lamenting ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... whole, and in spite of Mr. Hardy's love of the dance and of dance music, his poetry lacks grace and movement. His war poem, Men Who March Away, is singularly halting and awkward. His complete poetical works are interesting because they proceed from an interesting mind. His range of thought, both in reminiscence and in speculation, is immensely wide; his power of concentration ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... poem, wonderfully correct and conscientious as a translation, is inferior in poetical merit to that of Stephens, who, as we see, instead of choosing modern words, is careful to retain many of the picturesque old rune equivalents. This we perceive at once if we compare Stephens' four lines, beginning "Christ was on ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... Poetical justice is administered by the literary Kazi with exemplary impartiality and severity; "denouncing evil doers and eulogising deeds admirably achieved." The morale is sound and healthy; and at times we ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Schimper has propounded an entirely new and very interesting theory, which will, no doubt, find favor with you hereafter, about the significance of the circular and longitudinal fibres in organisms. Schimper is fruitful as ever in poetical and philosophical ideas, and has just now ventured upon a natural history of the mind. We have introduced mathematics also, and he has advanced a new hypothesis about comets and their long tails. . ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... series of practical lessons on the origin, history and peculiarities of the English language, punctuation, taste, figures, style, and its essential properties, criticism, and the various departments of prose and poetical composition. ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... the Timaeus and Critias, is rather historical than poetical, in this respect corresponding to the general change in the later writings of Plato, when compared with the earlier ones. It is hardly a myth in the sense in which the term might be applied to the myth of the ...
— Statesman • Plato
... laburnum, each striving to outdo the other in melody. A new imaginative world was opened to the boy. In Memorabilia he afterwards recorded the strong intellectual and emotional excitement, the thrill and ecstasy of this poetical experience. To Shelley especially did he give immediate and fervid personal loyalty, even to the extent of endeavoring to follow ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of poetry begins to be lost. These battle-pieces are therefore a warfare for the possession of the poet's ideal, not the joyous life-breath of that ideal already victorious in him. And the other poems of this first great epoch in his poetical life, though always powerful, often beautiful, yet never, we think, show a perfect resting upon his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... symbolism and image-worship, borrowed probably from an older creed and remote regions of Asia,—the worship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its symbolical representations of JEHOVAH Himself were not even confined to poetical or illustrative language. The priests were monotheists: the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... ziv trem gl xszmtv." This is a specimen of the mysterious Temurah, and the "Azby" is the key to it. The other four permuted alphabets are of a similar nature and character, and are so highly esteemed among the sages and bards of Israel, that they often use them in their literary and poetical compositions. The Machzorim, or the Jewish Liturgies for the festivals, are full of compositions where the first letters of the sentences follow the order of either the "Atbash" or "Tashrak." The latter is simply a reversed ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... and a few eccentric people on their wedding days. We forget the intensely practical purport of the custom. The ancient Greeks wore wreaths and carried boughs, not because they were artistic or poetical, but because they were ritualists, that they might bring back the spring and carry in the summer. The Greek bridegroom to-day, as well as the Greek bride, wears a wreath, that his marriage may be the beginning of new life, that his "wife may be ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... author of the 'Faery Queene,' indeed, his fine, elaborate, fertile genius burthened with its rich treasure, and stimulated to new activity by his poetical alliance with Raleigh, whose splendid invention first made apparent the latent facilities which certain departments of popular literature then offered, for a new and hitherto unparalleled application ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... This was rather poetical for the Philosopher, and of course it led us to wonder wherein he thought we differed. Hepatica asked anxiously if she really had looked so very old-fashioned in the white evening frock which had been three times ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... in the world, all the difference between the sordid and the poetical. I don't know if you have ever experienced the hypnotic intoxication of a florist's shop? Take it from me, uncle Pete, any girl can look an angel as long as she is surrounded by choice blooms. I couldn't help myself. I wasn't responsible. I only woke up when I met her outside. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... driver. We had not spoken during the passage of the last six miles, since the jolting of the heavy vehicle over the roughening road had spoiled the Judge's last poetical quotation. The tall man beside the Judge was asleep, his arm passed through the swaying strap and his head resting upon it—altogether a limp, helpless-looking object, as if he had hanged himself and been cut down too late. The French lady on the back seat was asleep, too, yet ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... that she had not an idea to give him, gave him a great many good ideas, to which he appeared to listen, while he was contemplating her trim figure, and the animated expression of her face, and thinking how very well she would look at the head of that poetical table behind that phantom teapot. At last the topic of Popular Education ran out; and Overtop felt that this kind of imposition could ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... in the tiny front gardens of the whites in the streets of the town; while red, white, and pink oleanders grew as tall as trees, and flower here every month in the year. The night-blooming cereus abounds, opening just at sunset, and closing again at break of day. The outside leaves of this poetical flower are of a pale green, the inner ones of a pure wax-like white, and the petals light yellow. Complete, it is about eight inches long, and from ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... This, though not very poetical, is the description of a poet. Beckmann, in his History of Inventions, paints it with more fidelity, and in prose more pleasing than Cowley's poetry. He says, "There are few plants which acquire, through accident, weakness, or disease, so many ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these men will have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by King Kynegils upon his conversion, by St Birinus in 635. We know very little about it, except that it was enlarged or rebuilt in the middle of the tenth century by St Aethwold, and if we may believe the poetical description of Wolstan, we shall be inclined to believe the church was enlarged, for it appears to have been a very complex building with a lofty central tower, having a spire and weathercock, in accordance with the Bull of ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... man appears in literature, in the history of human thought on the beginning of our race, in three forms. There is the Mythical Adam, the embodiment of poetical musings, fanciful conceits, and speculative dreams; there is the Theological Adam, the central postulate of a group of dogmas, the support of a fabric of controversial thought, the lay figure to fill out and wear the hypothetical ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... force of his language in dealing with those dearest to him—his wife, his sister, his brother—is proof enough of this. The frequent allusions in his correspondence to the physical exhaustion brought on by the act of poetical composition indicate a frame which, though made robust by exercise and temperance, was by nature excitable rather than strong. And even in the direction in which we should least have expected it, there is reason to believe that there were capacities ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... had a vein of poetry in him, and the first numbers of the Herald show it. He had occasion to mention, one day, that Broadway was about to be paved with wooden blocks. This was not a very promising subject for a poetical comment; but he added: "When this is done, every vehicle will have to wear sleigh-bells as in sleighing times, and Broadway will be so quiet that you can pay a compliment to a lady, in passing, and she will hear you." This was nothing in itself; but here was a man wrestling with ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... acquaintance and kindred. He would be the guardian, from generation to generation, of this race; their ever-reappearing friend at times of need; and meeting them from age to age, would find traditions of himself growing poetical in the lapse of time; so that he would smile at seeing his features look so much more majestic in their fancies than in reality. So all along their course, in the history of the family, he would trace himself, ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... perhaps unconscious, knowledge of art, pushed the humour almost to the verge of caricature. For, as the serious ideal requires a certain exaggeration in the proportions of the natural, so also does the ludicrous. Thus Aristophanes, in painting the humours of his time, resorts to the most poetical extravagance of machinery, and calls the Clouds in aid of his ridicule of philosophy, or summons Frogs and Gods to unite in his satire on Euripides. The Don Quixote of Cervantes never lived, nor, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... tons burthen. Phineas Pett was the first of the great ship-builders. His father, Peter Pett, was one of the Queen's master shipwrights. Besides being a ship-builder, he was also a poet, being the author of a poetical piece entitled, "Time's Journey to seek his daughter Truth,"[16] a very respectable performance. Indeed, poetry is by no means incompatible with ship-building—the late Chief Constructor of the Navy being, perhaps, as proud of his poetry ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... about the poet's mental states. And yet the truths are not true because the poet feels them, as he would say—no matter how passionately he feels them. There is no separate organ of poetic truth: and not all the things that poets have passionately felt are true. Some highly poetical thoughts have been very false thoughts. But, if they are true, they must be true for good logical reasons, which a philosophical critic may even in some cases by subsequent reflection be able to disentangle and set forth. Yet the poet did not get at those truths by ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... that we are all part of one great evolution and all literally the children of one Father, he sees that the universal brotherhood of humanity is no mere poetical conception, but a definite fact; not a dream of something which is to be in the dim distance of Utopia, but a condition existing here and now. The certainty of this all-embracing fraternity gives him a ...
— A Textbook of Theosophy • C.W. Leadbeater
... short poetical eulogium of a king, apparently of Menephtah or Seti II of the nineteenth dynasty, is found in Papyrus Anastasi 4 of the British Museum. It is published in "Select Papyri," pl. lxxxiv, l. 2-9; lxxxv, l. 1. Although not divided by red ...
— Egyptian Literature
... being had to say about civilized society." In referring the circumstances under which he writes his second work on English manners, he says: "Having been born and brought up in a new country, yet educated from infancy in the literature of an old one, my mind was filled with historical and poetical associations, connected with places, and manners, and customs of Europe; but which could rarely be applied to those of my own country. To a mind thus peculiarly prepared, the most ordinary objects and scenes, on arriving in Europe, are full of strange matter, and interesting novelty. England is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 584 - Vol. 20, No. 584. (Supplement to Vol. 20) • Various
... E. compares this Dantesque tarn and scenery with the poetical accounts of neid, vii. 563; Lucretius, vi. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... splendours and barbarities of absolute autocracy and summary jurisdiction. It throws a new or unaccustomed light on those days. Not even yet—not even in Bloomsbury, where the poets meet—have we in England anything quite like it; whereas when Baghdad and Damascus were the theatres of these poetical and hair-splitting competitions our ancestors had but ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... devoted their talents to her glorification. The verses which the two Strozzi addressed to her are even more ardent than those of Bembo—perhaps because their authors possessed greater poetical talent. Tito, the father, experienced the same feelings for the beautiful duchess as did his genial son Ercole, and he expressed them in the same poetical forms and imagery. This very similarity indicates that their ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... is putting on a surplice in our honour," Mark laughed to one of his companions, who not feeling quite sure whether Mark was being poetical or profane, decided that he was being flippant, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... a moment, 'I mean by nothing in them those who don't care about anything solid. This is an instance: I knew a man who had a young friend in whom he was much interested; in fact, they were going to be married. She was seemingly poetical, and he offered her a choice of two editions of the British poets, which she pretended to want badly. He said, "Which of them would you like best for me to send?" She said, "A pair of the prettiest earrings ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... rose-leaves rose from the depths of the lake and floated on the surface of the water. "Never again will you or any mortal man behold the nixies of the pool; they are changed into rose-leaves; this was their punishment," he said, "a poetical punishment—ha, ha!" and he vanished with a ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... The poetical temperament of Emily's mind made her frequently change places with others, and, indeed, become in thought those ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... deeps unvisited by any human soul save his, followed his faithful sister-spirit to a better world, Lady Hesketh, that model of a third friend, built, in St. Edmund's Chapel, where he was buried, a monument displaying two tablets, both bearing poetical inscriptions; one dedicated to William Cowper, the other to Mary Unwin. The friendship of Garrick and Mrs. Clive is memorable for its sprightliness, sincerity, unbroken harmony-saving a few momentary quarrels for ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Petronius verses are freely used. Sometimes, as we have observed above, they form an integral part of the narrative, and again they merely illustrate or expand a point touched on in the prose. If it were not aside from our immediate purpose it would be interesting to follow the history of this prose-poetical form from the time of Petronius on. After him it does not seem to have been used very much until the third and fourth centuries of our era. However, Martial in the first century prefixed a prose prologue to five books of his Epigrams, and one of these prologues ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... myriad-minded dramatist, but in the restricted role of adapter for English readers of familiar Ovidian fables, that he first impressed a wide circle of his contemporaries with the fact of his mighty genius. The perfect sweetness of the verse, and the poetical imagery in 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece' practically silenced censure of the licentious treatment of the themes on the part of the seriously minded. Critics vied with each other in the exuberance of the eulogies in which they ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... obscure passages, explaining away those plain ones by which the more difficult should be expounded, and overlooking those cautions by which the Holy Spirit guards against exaggeration. By such men a rhetorical illustration, a poetical figure, a local or temporary instruction, are made to form points of faith or positive rules of practice. It is evident many, even of the moral precepts, given by our Saviour, cannot be literally obeyed[7]; and were intended rather to cultivate a general ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... her heart. His swift intelligence, growing more manifest each day as he grew stronger, moved her admiration. He had, too, she realized, a sunny and sensuous nature, alive to beauty—even the beauty of the trivial things in his sickroom. He had an odd, poetical trick of phrase. He was a paragon of young Greek gods. She had discovered him; and women don't discover even mortal paragons every day in the week. Also, she was a woman of forty-three, which, after all, is not wrinkled and withered eld; and she was not a soured ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... harassed by his education, if that brutalization of which we spoke above can be called education, in that exchange of usages and sentiments among different nations, the Filipino, to whom remain only his susceptibility and his poetical imagination, allows himself to be guided by his fancy and his self-love. It is sufficient that the foreigner praise to him the imported merchandise and run down the native product for him to hasten to make the change, without reflecting ...
— The Indolence of the Filipino • Jose Rizal
... throat; so round and slender her waist; so daintily snowy her muslin drapery. Calumny! Of course it was calumny. And how he could have poignarded the calumniators, and taken the poor, fluttering, persecuted Diva to his bosom. The desire to execute that latter portion of retributive and poetical justice was making itself felt stronger and stronger within him every minute, as he sat beside the sofa exposed to the full force of the magnetic ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... poetry. For all stands upon dialogues; wherein he feigns many honest burgesses of Athens speaking of such matters that if they had been set on the rack they would never have confessed them; besides, his poetical describing the circumstances of their meetings, as the well-ordering of a banquet, the delicacy of a walk, with interlacing mere tiles, as Gyges's Ring, {7} and others; which, who knows not to be flowers of poetry, did never walk into ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... translation adopted by Mr. Brooks was so entirely my own, that when further residence in Germany and a more careful study of both parts of Faust had satisfied me that the field was still open,—that the means furnished by the poetical affinity of the two languages had not yet been exhausted,—nothing remained for me but to follow him in all essential particulars. His example confirmed me in the belief that there were few difficulties in the way of a nearly literal yet thoroughly rhythmical version of Faust, which might ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... may be the prevailing fashion in poetry—after the manner of the favourite literary models of the day. A priori, therefore, everything is in favour of the belief hitherto universally entertained, that among Chaucer's earliest poetical productions was the extant English translation of the French "Roman de la Rose." That he made SOME translation of this poem is a fact resting on his own statement in a passage indisputably written by him (in the "Prologue" ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... enamored. But how to make her his wife was the difficulty. The lady was willing—was more than willing; "for when the fires of Spanish love are kindled, they burn unextinguishably," says the proverb. Or, in the poetical language of the Indians, "it burns as did the fires of Mount Orizaba in its youth—fires that only went out when its head was coated with silver gray." The mother was willing; and no one but the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... music" had carried him out of the ruck of London dandies to the chief seat of the British judicature, and had made him the hero of the Tichborne Trial and the Alabama Arbitration. Yet another personage of intellectual fame who was to be met in Society was Robert Browning, the least poetical-looking of poets. Trim, spruce, alert, with a cheerful manner and a flow of conversation, he might have been a Cabinet Minister, a diplomatist, or a successful financier, almost anything except ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... her, and she saw scores and scores of excellent qualities in his smile; she could not believe that he had any defect whatever. His secret was precious to her. She considered that he had confided it to her in a manner both distinguished and poetical. He had shown a quality which no youth could have shown. Youths were inferior, crude, incomplete. Not that Mr. Gilman was not young! Emphatically he was young, but her conception of the number of years comprised in youthfulness had been enlarged. She saw, as in a magical enlightenment, ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... is so favorite a poetical designation of the English coast, that it is with some degree of pride we hail our "sea-girt isle" as surpassing in the magnificence and splendor of this characteristic, every other part of the kingdom; for even Shakspeare's cliff at Dover, immortalized as it is by the ...
— Brannon's Picture of The Isle of Wight • George Brannon
... the bud—that's Rosemary," said Winnie who scorned to read poetry and often employed poetical fancies in her rather quaint phrasing. "A rose in the bud and a flower of a girl. A temper that blazes, a quick pride that bleeds at a word and a passion for loving that sometimes frightens me. The sick and the helpless and the young—Rosemary ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... have no fear if no Spaniards have landed on that coast before us," said Barlowe stolidly. "If they have—no poetical speeches will help ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... fact, an almost unreadable page. Throughout the first half of the eighteenth century the books printed in New England compared favorably with the ones imported from England at that date, and in the special case of the "Poetical Oblation"—a fine quarto, offered by Harvard College to George III. on his accession to the throne, the typography is exquisite. For the early binding but one word can be said—that of praise. All these old books had Charles Lamb's desideratum of a volume, were "strong backed and neat bound." Well ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the elements of self-culture, I don't know that I could recommend you a better book to begin upon than the Poems and Ballads. Don't you see the moral of those four lines I've just quoted to you? Why should we wish to change from anything so free and delightful and poetical as lovers into anything so fettered, and commonplace, and prosaic, and BANAL, as wives and husbands? Why should we wish to give up the fanciful paradise of fluttering hope and expectation for the dreary reality of housekeeping and cold mutton on Mondays? Why should we not be satisfied ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... the tinsmith Lange; she had married all her children, and so was ready to come to the service of her friends and acquaintances. She was even to be called upon for poetical effusions for special occasions; under the great Saint Christopher's cloak that she wore winter and summer alike beat a feeling heart, and a noble soul dwelt in the big ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... survivors of that celebrated naval action are not numerous, the only one we ever had the pleasure of meeting having been stone-deaf. Another writer compares the roar to the sound of a vast mill; and this similitude, more flowery than poetical, is perhaps as good as that of the one who was in Aboukir Bay. To leave out Niagara when you can possibly bring it in would be as much against the stock-book of travel as to omit the duel, the steeple-chase, or the escape from the mad bull in a thirty-one-and-sixpenny fashionable ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... only sang at a time, a series of extempore verses telling of the life and deeds of the hero—his accomplishments and goodness—in the poetical ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... most poetical, I allow; but not the most just. But tell me, is the ground you have taken sufficiently large?—is the foundation you have chosen strong enough to bear the moral superstructure you raise upon it? You know the prevalent idea is, that Shakspeare's women are inferior to his men. This assertion ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... this was a local saying or a proverb I cannot say. The words have a poetical ring about them: "When Borrhas ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... fostering bosom of our planet mother, Earth. Therefore it must be the distinctive and well defined purpose of our co-operative farm to furnish and perfect these conditions, thus uniting in perfect harmony stirpiculture with agriculture, a union as poetical as it is practical. From these conditions must come a race of dominant thinkers, the exponents and champions of the real objects and purposes of ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... "You're getting poetical, old codger," said Dick. "You must be in love." Ellery blushed, but Dick went on, oblivious of byplay. "I move that we celebrate the occasion by a cold collation. Last week, your mother kindly made inquiries about my tastes that led me to infer that everything I most affect is stowed away ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... dialogue may be noted, such as (1) the acute observation that Meno prefers the familiar definition, which is embellished with poetical language, to the better and truer one; or (2) the shrewd reflection, which may admit of an application to modern as well as to ancient teachers, that the Sophists having made large fortunes; this must surely be a criterion of their powers of teaching, for that no man could get a living by shoemaking ...
— Meno • Plato
... that your husband's portrait on the back of the sign?" (there was a picture of a stag with antlers on the reverse of the poetical swing-board, either intended as a pictographic pun upon the name of "Deer," or as a hint to sportsmen of good ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... he thought, 'hopin' for to remind him of old days. "She had them flowers on her weddin'-day, I shouldn't wonder!" This poetical conception surprising him, he turned towards the little boy, and said "This 'll be a memorial to you, as you gets older." And without another word all sat down. They ate in silence, and the old butler ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... earn money as a midwife, and the daughter as a laundry-woman. The latter's marriage with David Sechard, a printer, alters the situation of the family for the better; and Lucien is enabled to occupy himself in the printing-house, while pursuing his poetical efforts. Though his literary talent, for the time being, has no value in cash, it procures him the friendship of Madame de Bargeton, a grand dame of Angouleme; or, more properly speaking, it is the pretext and justification; for Lucien really owes the lady's favour to his Apollo-like beauty. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed indeed that the present war had filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were buried in ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... design or its details. I touch up, here and there, but I do little more. The reason for my rapid writing is that I never attempt putting pen to paper before my design is perfectly mature. I never start with one idea, trusting to the glow of poetical composition for the remainder. That will do in lyrical poetry, but it would be death and damnation to dramatic. But just think of it!—twenty-eight hundred lines in about three weeks! To look back upon such labour is appalling! Let me give you the whole history of my manner of composition in a few ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... with these intrepid collectors. No doubt I would rather have found Monsieur and Madame Trepof engaged in collecting antique marbles or painted vases in Sicily. I should have like to have found them interested in the ruins of Syracuse, or the poetical traditions of the Eryx. But at all events, they were making some sort of a collection—they belonged to the great confraternity—and I could not possibly make fun of them without making fun of myself. Besides, Madame Trepof had spoken ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... old general, and knew the absolute importance of keeping up the spirits of his men on the eve of such a desperate encounter, employed the pause in addressing his own regiment, the Greys, in poetical language: explaining to them the honour that they were receiving in being put thus in the forefront of the battle, and in having the great white warrior from the Stars to fight with them in their ranks; and promising large rewards ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... at another, the metallic clank of the Bell-bird, or what was said to be the Bell-bird. But this note was not that solemn and sonorous toll of the Campanese of the mainland which is described by Waterton and others. It resembled rather the less poetical sound of a woman beating a saucepan to make a swarm ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... accompanied him to Holland to be his groomsman, and at parting had given her the rose which lay before her in the little casket. No voice had ever suited hers so well; she had never heard language so poetical from any other lips, never had eyes that sparkled like the young Thuringian noble's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sheltering and refreshing rock in it. These romans and contes and nouvelles of his stimulate, but they do not either rest or refresh. They have what is, to some persons at any rate, the theatrical quality, not the poetical or best-prosaic. But as nearly consummate works of art, or at least craft, they ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... reign, he also was killed. His two sons, Hasan and Husayn, inherited all the defects and few of the merits of their sire: Hasan was a pauvre diable, whose chief characteristic was addiction to marriage, and by poetical justice one of his wives murdered him. Husayn was of stronger mould, but he fought against the impossible; for his rival was Mu'awiyah, the Cavour of the Age, the longest-headed man in Arabia, and against Yazid, who, like Italy of the present ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... them impartially together. Nay, even as it is, Calderon stands so indisputably at the head of all Catholic religious dramatists, among whom Dr. Newman has recently enrolled himself, that perhaps it may not be out of place to inquire for a moment into his poetical methods and aims, in order that we may then discover, if we can, how and why the disciple differs from his master. Now there is a great conflict of opinion as to the precise degree of merit which these particular Spanish dramas possess. ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... original design, formed early in life, had been to build a single epic on the Arthurian theme, which seemed to him to give scope, like Virgil's Aeneid, for patriotic treatment. 'The greatest of all poetical subjects' he called it, and it haunted his mind perpetually. But if Virgil found such a task difficult nineteen hundred years before, it was doubly difficult for Tennyson to satisfy his generation, with scientific historians raking the ash heaps of the past, and pedants demanding local colour. In ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... shown how bygone objects and incidents come down to us invested in peculiar attractions: this the poet knows and feels, and the probabilities are that he transferred the incidents of to-day, with all their poetical and moral suggestions, to the romantic long-ago, partly from a feeling of prudence, and partly that he himself was under this spell of antiquity, How many a Troubadour, who recited tales of king Arthur, had his incidents furnished him by the events of his own time! And thus it is the many ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... sentimental a man for us; the men of Newcome want a sound practical person; the Liberals of Newcome have a desire to be represented. When we elected Sir Barnes, he talked liberally enough, and we thought he would do, but you see the honourable Baronet is so poetical! we ought to have known that, and not to have believed him. Let us have a straightforward gentleman. If not a man of words, at least let us have a practical man. If not a man of eloquence, one at any rate whose word we can trust, and we can't trust Sir Barnes ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had not absorbed, as it does to-day, almost all the best imaginative energy of English or foreign writers. Now we hear of "art" on every side, and every novelist must give the world his opinion about schools and methods. Scott, on the other hand, lived in the greatest poetical ago since that of Elizabeth. Poetry or the drama (in which, to be sure, few succeeded) occupied Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Crabbe, Campbell, and Keats. Then, as Joanna Baillie hyperbolically declared, "The Scotch novels put poetry ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... as addressed to his friend, it is sparkling and poetic, a final word, loving, admonitory, in perfect line and keeping with the central thought of all that came before. From this Sonnet, interpreted as I indicate, I shall try to find assistance in this study. But if it is a mere poetical ascription to Cupid, it, of course, tells us nothing except that its author was ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... am writing on the subject of poetical agents, I will also say some words of our poetical flatterers, though the same persons frequently occupy both the one office and the other. A man of the name of Richaud, who has sung previously the glory of Marat and Robespierre, offered to Bonaparte, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... which grow of poverty in the case of those who have been reduced to it after knowing other things. You often think, I doubt not, in quiet hours, what would become of your children, if you were gone. You have done, I trust, what you can to care for them, even from your grave: you think sometimes of a poetical figure of speech amid the dry technical phrases of English law: you know what is meant by the law of Mortmain; and you like to think that even your dead hand may be felt to be kindly intermeddling ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... It may accompany talent, but it proves that talent to be partial and defective. The brain may be large, but the manhood, the "virtus," is small, where such things are allowed, much more where they are gloried in. A poet such a man may be, but a world poet never. He is sectarian, a poetical Quaker, a Puritan, who, forgetting that the truth which he possesses is equally the right and inheritance of every man he meets, takes up a peculiar dress or phraseology, as symbols of his fancied difference ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... daughter of Philip, Earl of Leicester; of whom Waller was the unsuccessful suitor, and to whom he addressed those elegant effusions of poetical gallantry, in which she is celebrated under the name of Sacharissa. Walpole here alludes to the lines written ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... quotation references which through an unforeseen accident had been printed off in an unfinished state; and the addition of a few bibliographical facts. By Mr. Browning's desire, I have corrected two mistakes: the misreading, on my part, of an historical allusion in "The Statue and the Bust," and of a poetical sentiment expressed in "Pictor Ignotus"—and, by the insertion of a word or sentence in the notice of each, expanded or emphasized the meaning of several of the minor poems. I should have stated in my ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... gave the name of fancy, as it is this which presents to our choice all the different materials which are subservient to the efforts of imagination, and which may therefore be considered as forming the ground-work of poetical genius." ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... beauty of the scene fascinated me, and I stood leaning with my back against a rock pinnacle watching it. Do not imagine it gave rise, in what I am pleased to call my mind, to those complicated, poetical reflections natural beauty seems to bring out in other people's minds. It never works that way with me; I just lose all sense of human individuality, all memory of human life, with its grief and worry and doubt, and become part of the atmosphere. M'bo, I found, had ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.—Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical. ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... strength, gentleness and firmness, were in her character most happily blended. Her mind was both poetical and practical. She had a refined taste, and a love for the beautiful as well as ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... the coach was nearly so, and in half an hour they were proceeding on their journey, along the road over which Mr. Pickwick and Sam had so recently travelled, and of which, as we have already said something, we do not feel called upon to extract Mr. Snodgrass's poetical ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... cavalier, named Ruy de Camera, having called upon Camoens to furnish a poetical version of the seven penitential psalms, the poet, raising his head from his miserable pallet, and pointing to his faithful slave, exclaimed: "Alas! when I was a poet, I was young, and happy, and blest with the love of ladies; but now, I am a forlorn deserted wretch! See—there ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... upon human character, produced by the face of different countries, we might expect to find, in the Indian, among other things, a strong tendency toward poetical thought, embodied, not in the mode of expression usually denominated poetry, but in the style of his addresses, the peculiarities of his theories, or the construction of his mythology, language, and laws. This expectation is totally disappointed; but when we examine the degree and character ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... he regarded him intently with a look of mingled astonishment and unwilling admiration,—the monk meanwhile extended his hands as though in blessing and spoke aloud, his Latin words echoing through the rocky temple with the measured utterance of poetical rhythm. Translated they ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... reflects the keen interest that he took in literature, arrived at Moffat after Home had seen the "translations." Home, he found, "had been highly delighted with them," and when Carlyle read them he "was perfectly astonished at the poetical genius" that they displayed. They agreed that "it was a precious discovery, and that as soon as possible it should ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... in form and meaning and often suggest that the text as we have it is a Sanskritized version of an older work in some popular dialect, brought into partial conformity with literary usage. In the poetical portions, this process of sanskritization encountered greater difficulties than in prose, because metre and prosody often refused to admit the changes required by grammar, so that this poetical dialect cannot be called either Sanskrit, ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... (8.) The poetical and didactic parts of the Scriptures are scattered throughout the whole Bible. These abound with highly wrought figures. This is probably owing partly to the insufficiency of ordinary language to express the sublime ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... the world, and saw often Virtue in rags and Vice in purple: the former conduces to happiness, it is true, but the happiness lies within and not in externals. I contemned the deceitful folly with which writers have termed it poetical justice to make the good ultimately prosperous in wealth, honour, fortunate love, or successful desires. Nothing false, even in poetry, can be just; and that pretended moral is, of all, the falsest. Virtue is not more exempt than Vice from the ills of fate, but it contains ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in truth, is replete with poetical associations, and of a kind that we look in vain for in connection with any other potable. Unlike the Anacreontic in praise of the grape,—song suggestive chiefly of bacchanal revels and loose jollity,—the verse which extols "the cup that cheers, but not inebriates," brings to mind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... verses, or composing rebuses, and my governess never failed to applaud the juvenile compositions I presented to her. Some of them, which I preserved and printed in a small volume shortly after my marriage, were written when I was between twelve and thirteen years of age; but as love was the theme of my poetical fantasies, I never showed them to my mother till I was about ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... sending him such a prosperous voyage. Then they told him the adventures of the cat, and showed him the cabinet of jewels which they had brought for Mr. Whittington. Upon which he cried out with great earnestness, but not in the most poetical manner: ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... to Aristotle; from the word [Greek text], which signifies to make or feign. Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth. For the fable and fiction is, as it were, the form and soul of any poetical ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... and swayed by fluctuations of health. She was "up and down," whatever that betokened. At one moment she "saw the sun,"—her poetical way of expressing that she began to feel pretty well,—and thought she had had enough of the "frivolous existence one leads in an hotel"; at another a fit of sneezing,—"was not the early morning sneeze but the real thing,"—a pang of rheumatism, or a touch ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... thinly-peopled outer places, away from the influence and distraction of his own estate. For some time past a problem that had once been remote was assuming dimensions of increasing urgency. This detail concerns Fa Fai, who had already been referred to by a person of literary distinction, in a poetical analogy occupying three written volumes, as a pearl-tinted peach-blossom shielded and restrained by the silken net-work of wise parental affection (and recognizing the justice of the comparison, Wong Ts'in had been induced to purchase the work in question). Now that Fa Fai had ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... take measures to keep oneself from following in their footsteps, even though their last estate was theoretically desirable. Hence side by side with the cult of the Divus Julius went that of Mars Ultor, Mars the Avenger. The circumstances of the beginning of the cult show that it was no mere poetical title but a genuine cult-name born in an earnest moment: for the great temple subsequently built to Mars under this cognomen was vowed by Augustus "in behalf of vengeance for his father," in the war against the slayers of Caesar, Brutus and Cassius. This temple, vowed at Philippi in B.C. 42, ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... can be no two opinions as to that,—and of more than average intelligence. Their conversations, which my father calls "causeries Romaines," are endless, and they never seem to get tired of them; maybe these discussions about life's problems with a beautiful woman appear Italian to him, poetical, and worthy of the times of the Renaissance. I very seldom take part in these conversations because I do not believe in Mrs. Davis' sincerity. It seems to me that her intellect is merely a matter of brain, and not of soul, and that in reality she does not care for anything except her ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... simply put it to you, or to any one who can judge of poetry, if this is not a poetical conception. I ask any one who has a heart, if there is not pathos in it. Is there not a high poetic merit in the mere conception of these two scenes, thus presented? And had we seen it rudely chipped and chiselled out by some artist of the middle ages, whose hand had not yet been practised ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... also indebted to Gen. H. H. Sibley, one of the earliest American traders among them, and to Rev. S. W. Pond, of Shakopee, one of the first Protestant missionaries to these people, and himself the author of poetical versions of some of their principal legends; to Mrs. Eastman's "Dacotah." and last, but not least, to the Rev. E. D. Neill, whose admirable "History of Minnesota" so fully and faithfully presents almost all that is known of the history, ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... calling'. Sir Walter Scott, one of his kindlier censors, rebukes him for 'the caprice and indolence with which he has thrown from him, as if in mere wantonness, those unfinished scraps of poetry, which like the Torso of antiquity defy the skill of his poetical brethren to complete them'. But whatever may be said for or against Coleridge as an 'inventor of harmonies', neither the fineness of his self-criticism nor the laborious diligence which he expended ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... respective careers with so much quiet good sense, that Charlie's remonstrances against the counting-house, and his strong fancy for an artist's life, was something quite new, and which Miss Patsey scarcely knew how to answer. There was nothing in the least poetical or romantic about Patsey Hubbard, who was all honest kindness and straight-forward common sense. She had no feeling whatever for the fine arts; never read a work of imagination; scarcely knew one tune from another; and had never looked with pleasure at any picture, but one, a portrait of her own ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... with nature, offer to embryo authors, who are ambitious to book something new, a more worthy subject than the decies repetita descriptions of bull-fights and the natural history of ollas and ventas. Those who aspire to the romantic, the poetical, the sentimental, the artistical, the antiquarian, the classical, in short, to any of the sublime and beautiful lines, will find both in the past and present state of Spain subjects enough, in wandering with lead-pencil and note-book through ...
— A Supplementary Chapter to the Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... poetical," suggested the other, unfeelingly. "I am to suppose, then, that you know ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... that disease and sorrow would be banished from the world; and that "the millions of spiritual beings who walk the earth unseen" would be rendered visible, and become the friends, companions, and instructors of mankind. In the seventeenth century more especially, these poetical and fantastic doctrines excited the notice of Europe; and from Germany, where they had been first disseminated by Rosencreutz, spread into France and England, and ran away with the sound judgment of many clever, but too enthusiastic, searchers ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... a word (in its poetical meaning), repetition of this word, twice, three times or even more frequently, according to the need of the poem, will not only tend to intensify the inner harmony but also bring to light unsuspected spiritual properties of the ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... peace-loving King of France, excited universal enthusiasm; glasses were elevated in the air a l'Anglais, and the ladies, snatching their bouquets from their fair bosoms, strewed the table with their floral treasures. In a word, an almost poetical fervor prevailed. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the sunny sky and azure sea, land flowing with milk and honey, and overflowing with population, if only you belonged to the country on which you depend for a livelihood, what a perfect place you would be, and how poetical one could grow about you! a consummation which, fortunately for my readers, the recollection of the open drains, the ill-favoured priests, and ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... lovely little fruit, that is almost as delicate and shy as the anemone, with tragedy; and yet its chief poetical associations are among the darkest and saddest that can be imagined. Shakespeare's mention of the strawberry in the play of Richard III. was an unconscious but remarkable illustration of the second line already quoted ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... reproduce an ideal portrait of Homer, conceived as a blind old man. The marks of age and blindness are rendered with great fidelity. There is a variant type of this head which is much more suggestive of poetical inspiration. ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... came to a stand, to look about her, when her dog, to whom Dymock had given the poetical name of Sappho, began to prick up her ears, and snuff as if she scented something more than ordinary, and the next minute, she dashed forward, made her way through certain bushes, and disappeared. Tamar called aloud; a hollow echo re-sounded her voice, but no dog appeared;—again ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... have set her upon her guard. She had caught that very fawning method of appeal for a kind regard which had once distinguished Schwartz, and it was obvious that Scraper could make no claim to which she would not be ready to give adhesion. It is in the very nature of poetical justice that it satisfies the emotions, and I was not displeased to see affairs take this sudden turn, to view the hard and despiteful heart ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... responded Madame de Fleury; "and what knowledge she possesses of all the requirements, the most subtle refinements of good society! What polished manners she has! What choice language she uses! What poetical expression she gives to her sentiments! I often forget myself when I am talking to her, and fancy that I am communicating with a person of the same standing as myself; and, without knowing what I am doing, I involuntarily ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... discovery of the defendant's impossible either to ignore or to reconcile with the jury's verdict. Against the intervention of Richelieu (Mr. Nupkins) I have nothing to urge. M. D—' opines that I shall in the end deal out poetical justice to Mrs. Bardell as Milady. He is right. I have, indeed, gone so far as to imprison her; but I own that her execution (as suggested by him) at the hands of the Queer Client, with Pickwick and his friends (or, alternatively, Mrs. Cluppins, Mr. Perker, and Bob Sawyer) as silent spectators, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the home, and the great free world for them. Who was it that likened a ship to a prison? May I be ignominiously hanged at a yardarm if that's true. The white sails of that craft were the white wings—pinions, I believe, would be the more poetical style—well, the white pinions, of their soaring love. Soaring as regards Jasper. Freya, being a woman, kept a better hold of the mundane ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... will also admit the manifold analogies of sensation which we observe in that which is without sensation. The whole system of symbols in nature which fills our treasury of words and penetrates, in a {132} thousandfold way, our scientific and popular, our poetical and prosaic speech, our thoughts and feelings, bears witness to the fact that that which is without sensation is also a preparatory step to sensation, and feeling both active and passive springs from ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... genuine non-committal. On the arrival of the British army he removed to Newark for a while; but soon returned to the city and published a paper devoted to the cause of the Crown. His course was a fruitful theme for the wags of the day; and at the peace, a poetical petition from Gaine to the Senate of the State, setting forth his life and conduct, was got up with a good deal of talent and humor. His ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to be the natural seat of liberty. There is something in the very presence, in the atmosphere of the ocean, which invigorates not only the physical but the moral energies of man.' Or as Wordsworth has expressed the same idea, with an extension of it, no less just than poetical, to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... gathering wisdom by burning the "midnight oil," is more poetical than profitable. The best time to use the brain ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... example should be styled the Ballad of Extravagant Grief, and will be found at its highest in the Poetical Works of John Donne. I can find ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... historical interest, or the light they might happen to throw on the obscure biography of the most remarkable actors in the scenes which they describe. It would be too much to claim for these ballads the exalted title of poetry. They are not poetical in the highest sense of the word, and possibly would not have been so effective for the purpose which they were intended to serve, if their writers had been more fanciful and imaginative, or less intent upon what they had to say than upon the manner of saying it. But if not extremely poetical, ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... time gave himself up almost entirely to engraving. Annibale, though he has the honor of having executed the immortal works in the Farnese Gallery, yet owed much there, as elsewhere, to the acquirements and poetical genius of Agostino. In the composition of such mythological subjects the unlettered Annibale was totally inadequate. See vol. i., ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... son about one of his father's maids, with whom he was in love; and Robert saw no reason why he should not rhyme as well as he, for the author had no more school-craft than himself. Writing of this song a few years later, he called it puerile and silly; and his verdict as a poetical one was correct. Still, considered as a song, this artless effusion possessed one merit of which he himself was probably not conscious: it was inspired by his feeling and not by his reading, by the warmth and purity of his love of Nelly Kilpatrick, and not by ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... of a public which had pretensions to taste, and piqued itself on encouraging literary merit. Swift and Pope we have mentioned on another occasion. Young still survived, a venerable monument of poetical talents. Thomson, the poet of the Seasons, displayed a luxuriancy of genius in describing the beauties of nature. Akenside and Armstrong excelled in didactic poetry. Even the Epopoea did not disdain an ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... "Valentines," as generally understood, that is to say billets sent by means of the post, are as numerously employed here as in other places, yet the custom consists not in the transmission of a missive overflowing with hearts and darts, or poetical posies, but in something far more substantial, elegant and costly—to wit, a goodly present of value unrestricted in use or expense. Though this custom is openly adopted among relatives and others whose friendship is reciprocated, yet the secret mode of placing a friend in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... volume end in the middle of the trip of 1890. Muir's notes on the remainder of the journey have not been found, and it is idle to speculate how he would have concluded the volume if he had lived to complete it. But no one will read the fascinating description of the Northern Lights without feeling a poetical appropriateness in the fact that his last work ends with a portrayal of the auroras—one of those phenomena which elsewhere he described as "the most glorious of all ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... to be daily increased. On the other hand, there were no troops in the town, save a small corps of "freebooters," and five companies of the burgher guard. John Van der Does, Seigneur of Nordwyck, a gentleman of distinguished family, but still more distinguished for his learning, his poetical genius, and his valor, had accepted the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious, rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some kind, is the business of men and women, not the making of jingles! No,—no,—no! I want to see ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the important secret which they taught, is supposed to have been the existence of one, invisible God. A large portion of Grecian mythology was thence derived; but in passing from one country to the other, the form of these poetical fables was often preserved, while the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... danger—there must be difficulty; and if, as the poet says, the course of ardent affection never does run smooth, it is perhaps because, without some intervening obstacle, that which is called the romantic passion of love, in its high poetical character and colouring can hardly have an existence—any more than there can be a current in a river without the stream being narrowed by steep banks, or checked by ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... cut off at so early an age; just when his great poetical talents had been matured by study and reflection, and when he probably would have produced some great work, was my friend and associate at Eton. He was a boy of studious and meditative habits, averse to all games and sports, and a great reader of novels and romances. He was a thin, slight ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... appeared in the most attractive garb, for Kossuth possessed a masterly style, and his leaders and shorter articles showed off to advantage so many unexpected beauties of the Hungarian language that his readers were fairly enchanted and carried away by them. His articles were a happy compound of poetical elevation and oratorical power, gratifying common-sense and the imagination at the same time, appealing by their lucid exposition to the reader's intelligence, and exciting and warming his fancy by their fervor. Kossuth always rightly guessed ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... the chateau, and abandoned himself to all kinds of folly. At first Mademoiselle Hortense, who was young and gay, was amused by the antics of her admirer, read the verses which he addressed to her, and showed them to the ladies who accompanied her. One such poetical effusion was enough to provoke laughter (and can you blame her?); but after the first burst of laughter, Mademoiselle Hortense, good and charming as her mother, never failed to say, with a sympathetic expression and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... accompanied by no harsh manner or cynical expressions; for the man whose soul is ennobled by true heroism, possesses a heart as tender as it is firm. His calmness under the most trying circumstances, and his uniform sweetness of manner, were almost poetical. They manifested 'the most sustained tenderness of soul that ever caressed the chords of a lyre.' In council he was temperate and patient, and his words fell softly and evenly as snow-flakes, like the sentences that fell from ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Dacier ever been particularly poetical about women. The present Diana had wakened his curiosity, had stirred his interest in her, pricked his admiration, but gradually, until a sleepless night with its flock of raven-fancies under that dominant Bell, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... reflected, puzzled, wept, consumed by fears and suspicions. Then her joyous young soul reassuring itself, she began to plan an adventure, to imagine an abnormal and dramatic situation, founded on the recollections of all the poetical romances she had read. She recalled all the moving catastrophes, or sad and touching stories; she jumbled them together, and concocted a story of her own with which she interpreted the half-understood mystery which ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... time, I must say, that, if I had heard it without a voucher for its authenticity, I should have regarded it as the most improbable of fictions. But the observing reader will remember that remarkable coincidences, and the signal triumph of the right, called poetical justice, are sometimes seen in actual life as well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... no great conjuror; but at that moment, like Audrey, "he thanked the gods he was not poetical." If there be any one thing more than another to make an "every-day man" content with his average lot, it is the exhibition of ambitious inferiority, striving for distinction it can never attain; just given sufficient perception to desire the glory of success, without power to measure the ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... a very extended or elevated mind; his imagination was not the most lively nor the most poetical, but he possessed a very solid, very ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... with the exception of 'The Small Celandine', the stanzas beginning "I wandered lonely as a cloud," and "She was a Phantom of delight," they were less remarkable than those of the two preceding, and the three following years. Wordsworth's poetical activity in 1804 is not recorded, however, in Lyrical Ballads or Sonnets, but in 'The Prelude', much of which was thought out, and afterwards dictated to Dorothy or Mary Wordsworth, on the terrace walk of Lancrigg during that year; while the 'Ode, Intimations of Immortality' ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... working, and whose temper was always angelic, though he sometimes suffered from severe depression. He was adored by his pupils both at Oxford and in Bohemia. His memory was always bright, and his conversation always sparkled with fresh thoughts and poetical ideas. He composed with extraordinary facility in Latin prose and verse; but the extant fragments of these literary exercises do not strike us as being of unusual excellence, though genuinely admired in their day. He was certainly an ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... remembered that the great Northern army produced nothing while it consumed the products of agriculture and manufacture—food, clothing, arms, ammunition, cannon, wagons, horses, medical stores—at a rate that might have led a poetical person to imagine the army as a devouring dragon. Who, in the last analysis, provided all these supplies? Who paid the soldiers? Who supplemented their meager pay and supported their families? The people, of course; and they did so both directly and indirectly. ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... soul-fortifying aspiration, which in the symphony as well as in the sonata takes the form of a theme with variations. Here, then, the recognition of a simple rhythmical figure has helped us to an appreciation of the spiritual unity of the parts of a symphony, and provided a commentary on the poetical contents of a sonata. But the lesson is not yet exhausted. Again do we find the rhythm coloring the first movement of the pianoforte concerto in ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... attachment to their favourite author. [Malcolm Laing (1762-1818) published, in 1802, a 'History of Scotland, etc.', with a dissertation "on the supposed authenticity of Ossian's Poems," and, in 1805, a work entitled 'The Poems of Ossian, etc., containing the Poetical Works of James Macpherson, Esq., in Prose and Rhyme, ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... we have, moreover, the poetical theogony of old Hesiod, who generated the whole universe in the regular mode of procreation; and the plausible opinion of others, that the earth was hatched from the great egg of night, which floated in chaos, and was cracked by the horns of the celestial bull. ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... as I have already said, I was not poetical—how much I enjoyed my first dinner at Glamis. The long journey and keen mountain air had made me hungry, and I thought I had never tasted such delicious food—such ideal salmon (from the Esk) and such heavenly ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... of nature; but they were no sooner opened, than he rushed into them with a rapidity and daring unwont to the more cautious spirit of his master; and, though irregular, eccentric, and often inferior, yet sometimes he made his way to poetical regions, of whose celestial hues even Titian ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... he had turned down one corner of the page, and then turned it back, leaving a deep crease. That would show that he was neither accepted nor rejected, but that matters were in an intermediate condition. It was a more poetical way then putting it in ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... afterwards felt in Fezzan, when they arrived in this deplorable condition, and reported the fall of their chief, who was there almost idolized. A national song was composed on the occasion, which the following extract will show to be marked by great depth of feeling, and not devoid of poetical beauty:— ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... the neighbors thought Cynthia could "go out to work;" the next eldest, Martin, a fine, sturdy and intelligent boy, could go to a trade; and the youngest, Rosa, one of the most beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde little girls of seven years, poetical fancy ever realized, "the neighbors thought," ought to be given to somebody, to raise. The mother was but a feeble woman; it would be a task for her to obtain her own living, they thought; and so, kind, generous souls, with that peculiar readiness with which disinterested friends console ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... author of fantastic fairy tales and even more fantastic plays. The Gods of the Mountain (1911) and The Golden Doom (1912) are highly dramatic and intensely poetic. A Night at an Inn (1916) is that peculiar novelty, an eerie and poetical melodrama. ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... moral sense or taste for conscience in the true meaning of the word; now this error may be the foundation of a character of far more elasticity and grace than ever adorned the persons whom I have been describing. It is especially congenial to men of an imaginative and poetical cast of mind, who will readily accept the notion that virtue is nothing more than the graceful in conduct. Such persons, far from tolerating fear, as a principle, in their apprehension of religious and moral truth, will not be slow to call it simply ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... quoted from the poetical books of the Pali Canon to the effect that nirvana is happiness and the same is stated in the more dogmatic and logical portions. Thus we hear of the bliss of emancipation and of the happiness which is based on the religious life[494] and ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot |
