"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anxious swain, Whose tardy shocks still load the plain, And bids the sleepless merchant weep, Whose richer hazard loads the deep. For me the blast, or low or high, Blows nought of wealth or poverty; It can but whirl in whimsies vain The windmill of a restless brain, And bid me tell in slipshod verse What honest prose might best rehearse; How much we forest-dwellers grieve Our valued friends our cot should leave, Unseen each beauty that we boast, The little wonders of our coast, That still the pile of Melrose gray, For you must rise in minstrel's ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... this King?" asks the teacher, suddenly, at the end of a verse. Momentary stupefaction. The little minds are on ice-cream just then; the lad nearest the door has telegraphed that it is being carried up in pails. A little fellow on the back seat saves the day. Up goes ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Canterbury Tales. T. Wright's Text. Chaucer, the English Boccaccio in verse, attacks alike with his sarcasms the Church and the ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... they sang themselves to rest. At an early period the whole congregation was divided into ninety unions for prayer, and each band met two or three times a week. The night was as sacred as the day. As the night-watchman went his rounds, he sang a verse ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... the Lamp.—Can you or one of your learned correspondents, tell me the origin or first user of the literary "smelling of the lamp?" I know that it is commonly attributed to Demosthenes? but if it is his, I want chapter and verse for it. ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... attachment of a soul to such a leader. Fortunately the Bible contains a scientific monograph on this subject. I refer, of course, to the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews. And the whole result is summed up in a few words of the thirteenth verse. The great heroes, like Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, "saw the promises afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... frowns down into the valleys of the sea on the one hand, and the valleys of the firs and poplars on the other, he thought he heard some voices deep down in the shadows, and he listened. Very soon the harsh rasp of a command came to his ears, and he heard: "'Shun! 'verse arms," etc. He listened very attentively, and the tramp of armed men echoed down the darkness; and he thought he saw the glint of steel here and there where the ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... oil, By which the multitude are fed. And blessings o'er the land are spread. Mechanics next should take a stand Beside the yeoman of our land; Where'er enlightened men are found, They're showering blessings all around. Yet time would fail should I rehearse Their brave exploits, in simple verse; But there's a class, (I hope not here,) Who, like the boasting oak, appear; They think their hands were never made To wield the distaff, plough, or spade;— Their taper fingers, soft and fair, Are made to twine their silken hair, ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... a record will I seek; Not in the air shall these my words disperse, Though I be ashes,—a far hour shall wreak The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, And pile on human heads the mountain of my curse. That curse shall be forgiveness. Have I not,— Hear me, my Mother Earth! behold it, Heaven,— Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of Greek prose literature, was as diligently cultivated, and has left as many examples for modern perusal. The works of the earlier philosophers were in verse, while Socrates, the first of the moral philosophers, left no writings, doing his work with tongue instead of pen, though he forms the leading character in Plato's philosophic dialogues. In Plato we have the most famous of the ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... certain uncomplimentary epithets, and that Miss Jo retaliated sharply. "Her father's blood before her father's face boiled up and proved her truly of his race," quoted the blacksmith, who leaned toward the noble verse of Byron. "She saw the old man's bluff and raised him," was the directer comment of ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... and a slender volume for teaching Latin lyrics, called Lucretilis, the exercises being literally translated from the Latin originals which he first composed. Lucretilis is not only, as Munro said, the most Horatian verse ever written since Horace, but full of deep and pathetic poetry. Such a poem as No. xxvii., recording the abandoning of Hercules by the Argonauts, is intensely autobiographical. He speaks, in a parable, of the life of Eton going on without him, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... between the adductor tendons. A red hot iron and a bottle of whisky might have saved him. He had not even a penknife to cut the wound out—He thought of Phyl, she could do nothing. He thought of the bar of the Charleston Hotel, and the verse of the song about the old hen with a wooden leg and the statement that it was just about time for another little ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... sold myself for Arden!" she thought bitterly. She fancied how the record of her life would stand by-and-by, like a verse in those Chronicles which Sophia was so fond of: "And Clarissa reigned a year and a half, and did that which was evil"—and so on. Very brief had been her glory; very ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... spirits, but the rest of the column might be nervous; and it seemed so important to make the first fight an entire success, that I thought it wiser to let well alone; nor have I ever changed this opinion. For one's self, Montrose's verse may be well applied,—"To win or lose it all." But one has no right to deal thus lightly with the fortunes of a race, and that was the weight which I always felt as resting on our action. If my raw infantry force had stood unflinching a night-surprise ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Carmelite, by name Fra Battista, with a pair of brown dove's eyes in his smooth face. These he lifted towards Vanna's with an air so timid and so penetrating, so delicate and hardy at once, that when he was gone it was to leave her with the falter of a verse in her mouth, two hot ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... position as poet-laureate of the Western country folk. His materials are the incidents and aspects of village life, especially of the Indiana villages. These he interprets in a manner as acceptable to the na[:i]ve as to the sophisticated, which is saying a good deal for this type of verse. Some of his best known books are The Rubaiyat of Doc Sifers, Home Folks, A Defective Santa Claus, The Old Swimmin' Hole, An Old Sweetheart of Mine, and Out to Old ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... him little more than the five-and-thirty years to which his wife confessed—but he had fancied himself already in the temperate zone; yet here he was listening for her step with a tender sense of all it symbolized, with some old trail of verse about the garlanded nuptial door-posts floating through his enjoyment of the pleasant room and the good dinner just ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... of children with branches of the olive is not the mere ornament of a Bible verse, but the wisdom of one who knew both tree and child. For as children are bright creatures of swiftly changing moods, so are the olive leaves in the blue southern air. I once read of an artist who essayed to paint a group of olives and a cypress growing before them. Against their silvery leaves ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Theatre is heard of at Nantes, Limoges, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Narbonne, and Lyons, where Moliere produced his first serious attempt at high comedy in verse, L'Etourdi. In 1653 they played by invitation at the country seat of the Prince de Conti, the schoolfellow of Moliere. Three years later they played the Depit Amoureux at Beziers during the meeting in that town of the Parliament ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... at the date of the Captivity, and little more at the time of the attempt to make a Chaldean of him. The last verse says that he 'continued even unto the first year of king Cyrus,' the date given elsewhere as the close of the Captivity (2 Chron. xxxvi. 22; Ezra i. 1; vi. 3). From Daniel x. 1 we learn that he lived on till Cyrus's third year, if not later; but the date in i. 21 is probably ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... to the last verse, Ronayne's voice grows lower; it doesn't tremble, yet there is in it something suggestive of the idea that he is putting a terrible constraint ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Hanway, to make the awful certainty threefold surer, was traitorously proposing his Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal. Mr. Hawke, being a Southern man, and because no Southern man can complete an interview without, like Silas Wegg, dropping into verse, quoted from Byron where he stole from Waller ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... honoured master put an end to his own life, but Kira Kotsuke no Suke lived. Although we fear that after the decree issued by the Government this plot of ours will be displeasing to our honoured master, still we, who have eaten of your food, could not without blushing repeat the verse, 'Thou shalt not live under the same heaven nor tread the same earth with the enemy of thy father or lord,' nor could we have dared to leave hell and present ourselves before you in paradise, unless we had carried out the vengeance which you ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... had agreed not to mention Ingigerd Hahlstroem's name. But one day Frederick handed Miss Burns a piece of paper with a verse written in lead pencil in a ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... happy specimen of the difficult art of reasoning in verse. His verse is at best vigorous epigrammatic writing, such as would now be converted into leading articles, twisted with more or less violence into rhyme. And yet there is a poetical side to his mind, or at least a susceptibility ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... day I knew not how my freedom was to be brought about. But confident I was that this passion for preaching was not implanted within me to be quenched by adverse circumstances, and often would this verse appeal to me forcibly: "O rest in the Lord; wait patiently for Him, and He shall give thee ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling
... precaution to prevent intemperate indulgence in wine, his banquet revealed the essential difference between Jewish and pagan festivities. When Jews are gathered about a festal board, they discuss a Halakah, or a Haggadah, or, at the least, a simple verse from the Scriptures. Ahasuerus and his boon companions rounded out the banquet with prurient talk. The Persians lauded the charms of the women of their people, while the Medians admitted none superior to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... there was a clatter of metal upon wood, and then one voice, loud and rotund, struck up the first verse once more—"Says Billy Norris, Masulipatam"—The singer was in the middle of the stave when Desmond, rounding a privet hedge, came upon the scene. A patch of greensward, sloping up from a slipway ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... fingers on the harp,* as if, literally, he had cut off his right hand and put it from him:—King David, or an angel? guesses the careless tourist. The space below has been lettered. After a little puzzling you recognise there the relics of a familiar verse from a Latin psalm Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, and the rest: inscribed as well as may be in Greek characters. Prior Saint-Jean caused it to be so inscribed, absurdly, during his ...
— Miscellaneous Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... a risk," he answered, as he took a chair Amy set out for him. "But I have important business down here, so I though I'd call. I worked out that little verse on the way down," ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... verse from the Bible which I have quoted above, occurs the phrase "all these kings." It attracted my attention in a moment, because it carries to my mind such a vastly different significance from what it always did at home. I can see easily enough that if I wish to profit by this tour and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... interrupted the speculation. A man cushioned like a cozy corner laughed at himself while waiting for his audience to do so. Then he gave a yell and started to sing a ridiculous song about the milkmaid and the summer boarder. When he had finished one verse he took another "fit" of laughter, but somehow the audience did not see it his way, and when he tried it again, he broke off with an explanation. He felt sure that the people did not quite understand the joke, and ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... night of his futile impulse to put into shape the nebulous verse which had tormented his brain, no one saw Harold Dartmouth. The violent shock and strain had induced an attack of mental and spiritual depression which amounted to prostration, and he lay on his sofa ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... pity swept over Jimmy. He did not blame her now. She had been a mere child five years ago, scarcely old enough to distinguish right from wrong. You couldn't blame her for writing sentimental verse at that age. Why, at a similar stage in his own career he had wanted to be a vaudeville singer. Everything must be excused to Youth. It was with a tender glow of affectionate forgiveness that he ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... thirty years ago, a German writer published a piece of verse which began in this way: "Our hearts are oppressed with the emotions of a pious sadness, at the thought of the ancient Jehovah who is preparing to die." The verses were a dirge upon the death of the living God; and the author, like a well educated son of the nineteenth century, bestowed a few poetic ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... to these romances, like a page out of their favourite novelettes. They were interrupted by an extraordinary noise from the French singer, who seemed suddenly to have gone mad. The Push had watched in ominous silence the approach of the Frenchman. But, as he passed them and finished a verse, a blood-curdling cry rose from the group. It was a perfect imitation of a dog baying the moon in agony. The singer stopped and scowled at the group, but the Push seemed to be unaware of his existence. He moved on, and began another verse. As he stopped to take ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... to-day has written more powerfully or frankly on the conventions of modern society than John Helston, who, however, has hitherto confined himself to the medium of verse. In this novel, the theme of which occasionally touches upon the same problems—problems involving love, freedom of expression, the right to live one's life in one's own way—he is revealed to be no less a master of the prose form than ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... with which the Universe Beholds itself, and knows it is divine; All harmony of instrument or verse, All prophecy, all medicine, is mine, All light of art or nature;—to my song Victory and praise in its ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... while White wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He remembered a verse from the old days when he went to Sunday-school in the Jersey town where ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... like tapioca imitating pearls. Either view—possibly both—may be right. I will only say that with an occasional exception for some piece of rebelliousness or even levity which may have taken my fancy, I have tried to choose no verse but ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... not; I might have spared Your patience many a trivial verse, Yet these my earlier welcome shared, So let the better ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... New College; but though studious as a boy, he was not studious within the prescribed limits, and at the age of eighteen he left school with a character for talent, but without a scholarship. All that he had obtained, over and above the advantage of his character, was a gold medal for English verse, and hence was derived a strong presumption on the part of his friends that he was destined to add another name to the imperishable ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... away his rising irritability, and replied, "I think, Ronald, your mind is so full of poetic arrows that one could not take a step, or lift a finger, or draw a breath, without your being able to hit him with a verse." ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... (author of "Thomas a Becket," &c.) wrote the several papers entitled "Dramaticles;" some pieces of verse; and the Letters addressed to "The ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... following year our Politics found a fresh vent through the establishment of The Harrovian. I had dabbled in composition ever since I was ten, and had printed both prose and verse before I entered Harrow School. So here was a heaven-sent contributor, and one morning, in the autumn of 1869, as I was coming out of First School, one[9] of the Editors ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... publication of Walter Harte's An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad,[1] it has reappeared more than once: the unsold sheets of the first edition were included in A Collection of Pieces in Verse and Prose, Which Have Been Publish'd on Occasion of the Dunciad (1732), and the Essay is also found in at least three late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century collections of poetry.[2] For several reasons, however, it makes sense to reprint the Essay again. ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... that high, clear voice, the bacchanalian shoutings and roarings fell silent, and the wild weird song, throbbing with passion, rose and fell upon the still evening air. After each verse, the whole chorus of deep, harsh voices swelled high over the wailing ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... for the price and it was preferred because it never struck below the belt," I added. "Her occasional verse was a trifle worse. Don't you know 'The Pain Killer' used to be full of ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... point is worthy of note in connection with this—although no one noted it particularly at the time, namely, that the portion of Scripture undesignedly selected contained that oft-quoted verse, "Ye know not what a ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... possession of him and within two months he had finished two comedies, and a tragedy in verse called "Hermione," which was later produced. Giving so much promise as a dramatist he was persuaded to leave the stage and, unwilling of spirit, returned to Upsala in the spring of 1870, as he was advised that he would never be recognized as a writer unless he had secured ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... ready for her. Later, she lay again in the balcony chair, not so soothed by her little pile of books as she had looked to be. Beautiful, pellucid thought, deep-flowing philosophies, knife-edged epigrams and measured verse lay to her hand, but they seemed unreal, somehow, and their music echoed like meaningless words shouted, for the echo merely, in empty halls. She drowsed discontentedly and woke from a dream of the grey lady to see her stretched in the companion chair, herself asleep, it seemed, for it was only ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... Ehstnische Gesellschaft," and set themselves to collect the popular literature of their country. Doubtless encouraged by the recent publication of the Kalevala in Finland, Dr. Faehlmann undertook specially to collect any fragments of verse or prose relative to the mythical hero of Esthonia, the son of Kalev, intending to weave them into a connected whole. He did not live to complete the work; but after his death Dr. Kreutzwald carried ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Introduction to the New Test., translated by Bishop Marsh, vol. iii. part I. p. 32. The few works of the same kind written in the early and middle ages are noticed in Horne's Introduct., vol. ii. p. 274. About the year 330, Juvencus, a Spaniard, wrote the evangelical history in heroic verse. Of far greater merit were the four books of Augustine, De Consensu Quatuor Evangeliorum. After a long interval, Ludolphus the Saxon, a Carthusian monk, published a work which passed through thirty editions in Germany, besides being translated into French and Italian. Some years ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... they seated themselves when the first notes of that quaint old ballad, "The Mistletoe Bough," sounded from the piano in the drawing room, Nora O'Malley appeared in the archway, and in her clear, sweet voice sang the first verse ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... demand for a new edition of this cumbrous piece of blank verse, proves what we have often said, that the want, in CROMWELLS time, of a literary journal of the character of the Nation has had a permanent effect upon literature. Had we been in existence when that obstinate and pedantic ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... amidst the sublime scenery, indulged that luxury of pensive sadness, which is so soothing to the mind after the first emotions of turbulent sorrow have subsided. Sometimes she poured forth the effusions of melancholy in the language of verse; and, although her compositions have little poetical merit, they appear to me to bear the marks of genuine sensibility. Many of her poems are lost; but some still remain in my possession, and a few still hang on my memory. I will repeat to you ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Ballade also received an illumination from Von Buelow. This is a vivid tone picture, though without motto or verse. Starting with those fateful fifths in the bass, it moves over two pages fitfully gloomy and gay, till at the end of the second page a descending passage leads to three chords so full of grim despair as to impart the atmosphere of a dungeon. The player was hastily turning the leaf. "Stop!" cried ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... Little Scrip for Travellers. In Prose and Verse. With end papers in colour, and gilt top. Fcap. 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. nett; on ...
— Astronomy of To-day - A Popular Introduction in Non-Technical Language • Cecil G. Dolmage
... has Traherne, it may be well to let him tell us here in his splendid enthusiasm what it is to be a child and what the eyes of a child can see. He shall do it, first in his magnificent prose and then in his fine and simple verse. ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... they cannot strike out a new one for themselves. In this piece the author—most attractively to the critic, if not always quite satisfactorily to the reader—makes for, and flits about, half-a-dozen different forms of verse. Now it is the equivalenced octosyllable of the Coleridgean stamp rather than of Scott's or Byron's; now trochaic decasyllabics of a rather rococo kind; and once at least a splendid anapaestic couplet, which catches the ear and clings to ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... in the twenty-first verse of this chapter, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, and the high captains, and the chief men of Galilee. Now, of course, Galilee, over which Herod had jurisdiction, and where, for the most part, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... collected these flowers of colonial poesy, which prove that the old Conquerors were much more expert with the sword than with the pen. Hist. del Peru, Parte 1, lib. 2, cap. 93.] [Footnote 27: "Fue recibimiento mui solemne, con universal alegria del Pueblo, por verse libre de Tiranos; i toda la Gente, a voces, bendecia al Presidente, i le llamaban: Padre, Restaurador, i Pacificador, dando gracias a Dios, por haver vengado las injurias hechas a su Divina Magestad." ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... when she saw him take up the book. He began without preface, treating the passage before him in his usual way,—that is to say, taking verse after verse in the Greek, translating and commenting. She never spoke all through, and at last he closed the little Testament, and bent towards her, his look ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... things in short sentences, much as the supposititious charity boy just now referred to might have repeated a verse or two from the Book of Proverbs, there was something dreamy (for so literal a man) in the way in which he now shook his right forefinger at the live coals in the ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... Peter Corneille was puizled to end a verse he would undo a trap that opened into his brother's room, shouting, "Sans-souci, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... exception of that first curse? That, remember, cannot mean any alteration in the laws of nature by which man's labour should only produce for him henceforth thorns and thistles. For, in the first place, any such curse is formally abrogated in the eighth chapter and 21st verse of the very same document—"I will not again curse the earth any more for man's sake. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease." And next: the fact is not so; for if you root ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... why the Jordan, which plays such an important part in the history of the Hebrews, receives so little honour and praise in their literature. Sentimental travellers and poets of other races have woven a good deal of florid prose and verse about the name of this river. There is no doubt that it is the chief stream of Palestine, the only one, in fact, that deserves to be called a river. Yet the Bible has no song of loving pride for the Jordan; no tender and beautiful words ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... that a lover should adopt. I have offered her the humble homage of my great love, I have been assiduous near her, I have attended on her daily. I have had my love sung by the most touching voices, and expressed in verse by the most skilful pens. I have complained in passionate terms of my sufferings. My eyes, as well as my words, have told her of my despair and my love. I have laid my love at her feet; I have even had recourse to tears, but all in vain, and I have failed to see that in her soul she was in ...
— The Magnificent Lovers (Les Amants magnifiques) • Moliere
... of departed days!—my verse records, Thy time of glory, thy illustrious Lords, The fearless Bigods—Brotherton—De Vere, And Kings, who held thee in their pride, or fear, And gallant Howards, 'neath whose ducal sway Proud rose thy towers, thy rugged heights were gay With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... you come with your mother?' Tears began to fill my eyes, while he spoke again: 'Your father will give you a walloping, and they'll expel you from school.' I felt so distressed and humiliated that I could not utter a word 'Recite some verse for me, young man,' he said quietly, all the ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... exercise and use in school playgrounds. The girls' singing-games have not developed on these lines, and have therefore not lost so much of their early characteristics. The singing games consist of words, tune and action. The words, in verse, express ideas contained in customs not now in vogue, and they may be traced back to events taking place between men and women and between people of different villages. The tunes are simple, and the same tune is frequently used for different ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... fails to furnish, we must accept his judgment as imperial and final. Once or twice, indeed, he seems to feel the faultiness of his procedure, and tries to bolster it, but as a rule he speaks thus: "The following verse is a formula (repetition), and hence not the property of the author." (Die ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... This was a new surprise for the good mother. She could not sufficiently express her astonishment and delight, when Jack and Francis, taking their flageolets, accompanied their brothers, who sung the following verse, which Ernest had ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... blood-fierce his mind, his breast-hoard, grew, no bracelets gave he to Danes as was due; he endured all joyless strain of struggle and stress of woe, long feud with his folk. Here find thy lesson! Of virtue advise thee! This verse I have said for thee, wise from lapsed winters. Wondrous seems how to sons of men Almighty God in the strength of His spirit sendeth wisdom, estate, high station: He swayeth all things. Whiles He letteth right lustily fare the heart of the ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... sending up his name he followed the servant to her study on the floor above, where he found her working with a pencil, as she sat before a brightly burning wood fire, over a manuscript which he saw to his surprise was not in verse. At his glance of enquiry she smiled and laid the ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... pen— Stupidities of critics, not of men. Be it mine once more the maunderings to trace Of the expounders' self-directed race— Their wire-drawn fancies, finically fine, Of diligent vacuity the sign. Let them in jargon of their trade rehearse The moral meaning of the random verse That runs spontaneous from the poet's pen To be half-blotted by ambitious men Who hope with his their meaner names to link By writing o'er it in another ink The thoughts unreal which they think they think, Until ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... be doggerel or dignified verse, popular poetry almost invariably possesses one great merit. When we read the outpourings of the seventeenth and eighteenth century poets to the innumerable Julias, Sacharissas, and Celias whom they celebrated in verse, we cannot but feel that we are often in contact ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... painter of real life, and the inquisitive observer of the humorous and eccentric. The facility it affords of a quick and certain conveyance, in defiance of wind and tide, ensures its proprietors, during the summer months, a harvest of success. Its advantages I have here attempted to describe in verse, a whim written during my passage; and this will account for the odd sort of measure adopted, which I attribute to the peculiar motion of the vessel, and the clanking of the engine; for, as everybody knows, poets are the most susceptible ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... and followed him up with a persistent voice all the morning? Nothing so very new nor strange, nothing but what he had known ever since he was a little boy five years old, and had stood at his mother's knee, one summer Sunday morning, and said it to her; it was just this little verse: "Follow me, and I will make ...
— Sunshine Factory • Pansy
... round the square like an inundation. And amid this silence the woman began to sing the Marseillaise. As she sang, the tears ran down her cheeks. Everybody in the vicinity was weeping or sternly frowning. In the pauses of the first verse could be heard the rattle of horses' bits, or a whistle of a tug on the river. The refrain, signalled by a proud challenging toss of Gueymard's head, leapt up like a tropical tempest, formidable, overpowering. Sophia, who had had no warning of the emotion ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... historians say that he was deprived of the power on account of the irregularity of his life. Laurentius reports that Francis I, when a prisoner in Spain, cured a great number of people of struma (scrofula). A paraphrase of the Latin verse which Lascaris wrote concerning this event ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... others. Countless instances of such happy expression could be cited by any one who has lived the last year in France. On the bodies of young soldiers have been found letters of farewell to their parents that made one think of some heroic Elizabethan verse; and the mothers robbed of these sons have sent them ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... the old Bible and put his finger on a verse: "While we have time let us do good unto all men; and especially unto them that are of the household ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... I myself deemed, if not absolutely vicious, yet of very inferior worth. Gradually, however, my practice conformed to my better judgment; and the compositions of my twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth years—(for example, the shorter blank verse poems, the lines, which now form the middle and conclusion of the poem entitled the Destiny of Nations, and the tragedy of Remorse)—are not more below my present ideal in respect of the general tissue of the style than those of the latest date. Their faults were at least a remnant of the former ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... like to know of two books by the use of which teaching may be made a pleasure instead of a task to children, they cannot do better than order "The Easy Book" and "The Beautiful Book;" the former containing pieces in prose, and the latter, pieces in verse, and both of them richly and copiously illustrated with appropriate pictures. These books are published at "The Nursery" ...
— The Nursery, No. 103, July, 1875. Vol. XVIII. - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... meant those who have written most skilfully in prose and verse. Some of these have written in prose, because they wished to tell us something more fully and freely than they could do if they tied themselves to lines of an equal number of syllables, or ending with the same sound, as men do when they write poetry. Others ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... strengthens as the days pass. If the stream of his genius flowed in gentle rivulets, it traveled as far and spread its fruitful influence as wide as many a statelier river. He was above all things a poet. In his prose as in his verse he has revealed the essential qualities of a poet's nature: he dealt with the life which he saw about him in a spirit of broad humanity and with genial sympathy. When he fashioned the tender triolet on the pitcher of mignonette, or sang of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... ship's sail bellying in the wind are not more inevitable, nor more graceful, than the curves of an adze-head or of a plough-share. Cast in iron or steel, the gracefulness of a plough-share is more indestructible than the metal, yet pliant (in the limits of its type) as a line of English blank verse. It changes for different soils: it is widened out or narrowed; it is deep-grooved or shallow; not because of caprice at the foundry or to satisfy an artistic fad, but to meet the technical demands of ...
— Progress and History • Various
... (Tendr que no ir para dar prueba de carcter.) (Con aparente clera y dando a entender, a pesar suyo, que se alegrara de verse precisado a ...
— Ms vale maa que fuerza • Manuel Tamayo y Baus
... while Fanny, calling out to Henry Boyd, repeated the whole verse as Susan's poetry, bidding him ask Miss Lindsay if Montgomery could beat that. Susan was highly offended, saying that she considered herself insulted, and chose to walk the remainder of ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... layman to be a great power in literature; man of action; of thought; of endurance. Freedom first great possession; afterwards learning and culture. Alfred a loyal Son of the Church. Founder of English prose. Earliest literature of a nation in verse; why. Influence of Rome ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... of the dawning glory of Immanuel's land,—Lady Charlotte playing the organ and The Duke leading with clear, steady voice verse after verse. When they came to the last verse the minister made a sign and, while they waited, he ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... day they should have kept, Lost unheeded and lost unwept; Lost in a way that made search vain, Lost in the trackless and boundless main; Lost like the day of Job's awful curse, In his third chapter, third and fourth verse; Wrecked was their patron's only day,— What would ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... Needless to say, she flew in the face of Dr. James's authority, and went everywhere. She was at Lady Bunbury's drum, whither I had gone in another fruitless chase after Mr. Marmaduke. Dr. Warner's verse was the laughter of the company. And, greatly to my annoyance,—in the circumstances,—I was made a hero of, and showered with three times as many invitations as ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the aboriginal tribes both of Africa and America. In the ancient world it appears to have been at least equally prevalent. It is evidently alluded to, as well as the other practice that has just been noticed, of wounding the body by way of mourning, in the twenty-eighth verse of the nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, among the laws delivered to the Israelites through Moses:—"Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you," both of these being doubtless habits of the surrounding nations, which the chosen people, according ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... North Carolina Reader, Number III. Prepared with Special Reference to the Wants and Interests of North Carolina. Under the Auspices of the Superintendent of Common Schools. Containing Selections in Prose and Verse. By C.H. Wiley. New York: ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... to me, "I'll tache ye to caricature Oirishmen in Parleymint!" However, I was repaid by the humour the incident gave rise to in the imagination of my brother workers on the Press. Mr. F. C. Gould made this capital sketch, and others portrayed my crime in verse. The following was written to me by one of London's most celebrated editors, and has ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... between an Old Maid and a French Petit Maitre On an Amorous Doctor "There comes from old Avaro's grave" "Last Monday all the papers said" To a Primrose, (the first seen in the season) On the Christening of a Friend's Child Epigram, "Hoarse Maevius reads his hobbling verse" Inscription by the Rev. W. L. Bowles, in Nether Stowey Church Translation Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie Epilogue to the Rash Conjuror Psyche Complaint Reproof An Ode to the Rain Translation ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... door, before which there was no need of a lamp to assure a man of the room he was seeking. Through the door burst that most sorrowful of all human sounds, the sound of a child audibly wrestling with some unintelligible verse, twenty, fifty, a thousand times repeated anew, and anew, without becoming intelligible, while the verse had not yet taken its place in the child's head. Through the boards sounded afar a ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... The gist of this verse is a reference to Jesus Christ as a source of miraculous power, not merely because He wrought miracles when on earth, but because from heaven He gave the power of which Peter was but the channel. Now it seems to me that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... alone, but Jan shook her head. The lift-man was equally eager to procure one, but again Jan defeated his desire and walked out into the hot street. Somehow she couldn't bear "The Garden of Khama" just then. It was Hugo Tancred's favourite verse, and was among the few books Fay appeared to possess, Fay who was lying in the English cemetery, and so glad to be ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... Guy, who in February, 1265, mounted the papal throne as Clement IV. It was to no purpose that Walter of Cantilupe assembled the patriotic bishops and appealed to a general council, or that radical friars like the author of the Song of Lewes formulated the popular policy in spirited verse. The greatest forces of the time were steadily opposed to the revolutionary government, and rare strength and boldness were necessary ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... policy of the Vindictives, these visionaries held a convention at Cleveland; voted down a resolution that recognized God as an ally; and nominated Fremont for the Presidency. A witty comment on the movement—one that greatly amused Lincoln—was the citation of a verse in first Samuel: "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the happy thought That my Pauline would read—the self-same morn The self-same chapter—gave the sacred text, Though I had heard my mother read it oft, New light and import never seen before. For I would ponder over every verse, Because I felt that she was reading it, And when I came upon dear promises Of Christ to man, I read them o'er and o'er, Till in a holy and mysterious way They seemed the whisperings of Pauline to me. Later I learned to lay up for myself 'Treasures in heaven where neither moth nor ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... the sea looks like summer, the young ladies are yearning for sensations: but yet the north is better than the south of Russia, in spring at any rate. In our part nature is more melancholy, more lyrical, more Levitanesque; here it is neither one thing nor the other, like good, sonorous, but frigid verse. Thanks to my palpitations I haven't drunk wine for a week, and that makes ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... of supporting himself. He had already done something in this line; and after a series of translations from Juvenal, Persius, and Ovid, he undertook, at the age of sixty-three, the enormous task of turning the entire works of Virgil into English verse. How he succeeded in this, readers of the "Aeneid" in a companion volume of these classics can judge for themselves. Dryden's production closes with the collection of narrative poems called "Fables," published ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... to adopt your elegant phraseology, Master Ralph, I bet I will produce the same story, with the same conclusion, but a different moral, in an hour—since you allow me twice the time I named—if I may be permitted to write it in blank verse, that is, and of course, with the understanding that what I write is not intended to be anything but ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... imaginative urgency so great as to quicken his brain to this flawless ordering of the best words, and it is that ordering and that alone which communicates to us the ecstasy, and gives us the supreme delight of poetry. It should here be added that poetry habitually takes the form of verse. It is, perhaps, profitless to attempt any analysis of the emotional law that directs this choice, nor need it arbitrarily be said that poetry must of necessity be verse. But it is a fact, sufficiently founded on experience, that the intensity of vision that demands and achieves nothing ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... quotes Lady Lyttelton's letters in the "Life of the Prince Consort," gives such a hymn, which is a paraphrase of the 121st Psalm, as it appears in the Coburg Gesang-Buch, and supplies a translation of the verse in question. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... mountains, fields, manors, and families, and in a few of the technical terms of mining, husbandry, and fishing, Cornish lives on, and probably will live on, for many ages to come. There is a well-known verse:— ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... none; or whether the Earth shall be made a Common Treasury to all, without respect of persons?" As it traverses much the same ground as the pamphlet from which we have just quoted at such length, it really calls for no further notice from us. The following verse on its title-page, however, seems ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... A new expence of complement from me: If you delight to heare your praise, Ile hire Some mercenary [poet][102] to comend In lofty verse ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... crow, In prose, I well know, Many good little girls can rehearse: Perhaps it will tell Pretty nearly as well, If we try the same fable in verse. ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... have left school very young, had not the head-mistress, seeing that she was a clever child, retained her as pupil teacher. Quiet, gentle, and caring little for the amusements of girls of her own age, her chief pleasure was in composing verse, much of which is still in existence. The following lines are from her 'Versification of David's lament over Saul and Jonathan,' which was written when she was ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... the left shoulder, and allow the weight of the body to rest on the left leg, the right foot being carried slightly outward. Allow the body to bang down as far as possible on the left side, without straining too much. Then verse ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least in ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... present to their parents some token of their affection and gratitude, each of them would make a different offering, and most probably in a different manner. Some would pay their congratulations in themes of verse and prose, by some little devices, as their genius dictated, or according to what they thought would please; and, perhaps, the least of all, not able to do any of those things, would ramble into the garden, or the field, and gather what it thought the prettiest ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... popular. There was a great demand at that time for narratives of the exploits of pirates, the doom of murderers, and wild love adventures. It is said that one of the Boston publishers, in the sale of ballads alone, found a very lucrative business. Benjamin, who found it very easy to write doggerel verse, wrote one ballad called "The Light-house Tragedy." It was a graphic, and what would be called at the present day, a sensational account of a shipwreck, in which the captain and his two daughters perished. He wrote another which was still more captivating, and which ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... inimitable . . .'s"—mentioning a name which I had never heard till then. "Will you permit me to look at it?" said I. "With pleasure," he answered, politely handing me the book. I took the volume, and glanced over the contents. It was written in blank verse, and appeared to abound in descriptions of scenery; there was much mention of mountains, valleys, streams and waterfalls, harebells, and daffodils. These descriptions were interspersed with dialogues, which, though they proceeded ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the writing of poetry was a favourite pursuit in that age. Such, indeed, was the case. The taste developed almost into a mania. Guests bidden to a banquet were furnished with writing materials and invited to spend hours composing versicles on themes set by their hosts. But skill in writing verse was not merely a social gift; it came near to being a test of fitness ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Hugo was the surest and quickest of standards. French poetry is at best a severe exercise for foreigners; it requires extraordinary knowledge of the language and rare refinement of ear to appreciate even the recitation of French verse; but unless a poet has both, he lacks something of poetry. Adams had neither. To the end of his life he never listened to a French recitation with pleasure, or felt a sense of majesty in French verse; but ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... poetical version of Newton's law of universal gravitation. The analogy between physical attraction and the mutual attraction of congenial minds and souls has its record in the French word aimant, denoting loadstone or magnet.] sang in Greek verse that it is friendship that draws together and discord that parts all things which subsist in harmony, and which have their various movements in nature and in the whole universe. The worth and power of friendship, too, all mortals understand, and attest by their approval in actual instances. ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... of Edgar Allan Poe, the most interesting and original figure in American letters. And, to signify that peculiar musical quality of Poe's genius which inthralls every reader, Mr. Lowell suggested this additional verse, from ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as Claire stood there, her eyes sweeping the sea for an as yet invisible craft, her heart seemed to beat rhythmically to the last verse of a noble English poem which the governess of her twin daughters had made them recite to her that very morning. How did ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... 'I don't wish to limit his acquirements: still, he has no right to appropriate what is mine, and make it ridiculous to me with his vile mistakes and mispronunciations! Those books, both prose and verse, are consecrated to me by other associations; and I hate to have them debased and profaned in his mouth! Besides, of all, he has selected my favourite pieces that I love the most to repeat, as ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... beautiful lines like this, and from many noble passages of high reflection set to sonorous verse, this remarkable poem is in its whole effect unique in impressive power, as a picture of the advance of an elect and serious spirit from childhood and school-time, through the ordeal of adolescence, through close contact with stirring and enormous events, to that decisive ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... kneel down in front of her, in the warmth of the kitchen so that he might not catch cold in the unheated bedroom, and would shut his eyes very tightly because God did not like to see little boys peeping through their distended fingers at Him, and would say his verse: ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... indeed! He's delighted with himself. Many a better man has been driven from the stage after his first verse. Your ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... fishing-spears, repair to the holy ground or sacred grove where the skulls are kept, and there they draw themselves up in two rows, while the medicine-man chants an invocation or prayer for a good catch. At every verse the crowd raises a cry of approval and assent. At its conclusion the medicine-man sets an example by thrusting with his spear at a fish, and all the men immediately plunge into the water and ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... be exact—who had been about to break forth into the second, or forty-second verse of his song (there being in all seventy-two stanzas, so it doesn't much matter which one is designated)—the older cowboy, I say, paused with his mouth open, and a blank look on his face. Then he grinned—that is the ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... not been entirely silent. The utter failure of her reign to present a single noble thought or impulse, a single evidence of sympathy with the immense mass of suffering, has been sharply commented on, not only in prose, but in the vigorous verse of Robert Buchanan. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... newspaper now printed at Belgrade is the State Gazette, which prudently avoids all remarks on Austrian or Russian policy; and the only annual is the Golubitza, (Dove,) a miscellany in prose and verse, neatly got up in imitation of the German Taschenbuecher, and edited by M. Hadschitch, the framer of the code of laws. In the Lyceum, lectures on law are delivered by M. Simonovich, bred an Hungarian advocate, and formerly editor of the Courier, a newspaper now discontinued; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... sung in Saturnian metre, of course to the pipe, and presumably in such a way that the -caesura- in particular in each line was strongly marked; and in alternate singing the second singer probably took up the verse at this point. The Saturnian measure is, like every other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity; but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the greatest license in omitting ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and seated himself again at the table. Opening the book, his eyes fell upon a verse of Mark's Gospel. He stopped to read it; and then read it again. Suddenly he looked ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... ballet, "Le Rossignol," in which Montessu and Noblet used to be famous in those days, and which Mr. Wagg transferred to the English stage as an opera, putting his verse, of which he was a skilful writer, to the pretty airs of the ballet. It was dressed in old French costume, and little Lord Southdown now appeared admirably attired in the disguise of an old woman hobbling about the stage with a faultless ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... say so. In my time the fellows that graduated were of a different sort from nowadays. They were lads who got shaved twice a week, and could scan all kinds of verse. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... But a change in this respect was inevitably sure to come. The strong propensity of the national mind toward historical studies is illustrated by the large proportion of historical works among the masterpieces of our literature, whether in prose or in verse. It would seem as if our conscious poverty in historical monuments and traditions had engendered an eager hunger for history. No travelers in ancient lands are such enthusiasts in seeking the monuments of remote ages as those whose homes are in regions not two generations removed from ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... record in the 22d chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, that "they saw the light and were afraid, but they heard not," that is, understood not, the voice. That the voice was in the Hebrew is asserted in the twenty-sixth chapter and the fourteenth verse. We often hear a man's voice, and fail at the same time—say we did not hear because we did not understand the words uttered. Such is the latitude of the original term translated by the word hear. So there is no contradiction here. The term hear in ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... sighed; "I must leave it and answer some questions. If I have time afterwards, I may, perhaps, do one verse." ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... prove the point. There is Lelia Dante, for instance, who writes like a—like a—well, you know how she writes. She sticks to her mother's apron strings like a four-year-old child. They never are seen apart, I am told. Then there is Mrs. Helen Walker Wilbur, the poetess. We have a volume of her verse that is positively combustible from its own heat. The sheets had to be run off the press soaked in water to keep them from igniting. The room was full of steam all the time the work was going on. Warm! I should say so! Now, that woman is vain, and she dresses ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... evangelist, whose inspired verse contributed much to the crystallization of the sentiment and spirit that finally doomed African slavery in America, thus referred to the heartless tragedy and the splendid Black ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... expedition to Quebec, continued to be favorites with the British troops during the War of the Revolution (see Historical Magazine, II., First Series, 164). It may be observed here that the war produced a considerable quantity of indifferent verse on both sides. On that of the English it took the shape of occasional ballads, such as "Bold General Wolfe," printed on broadsides, or of patriotic effusions scattered through magazines and newspapers, while the French celebrated all ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... thus, that the whole universe, is not merely dependent on, but actually is, the WILL of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence. It has been often said that the true poet is a seer; and in the noble verse of an American poetess, we find expressed, what may prove to be the highest fact of science, ...
— Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection - A Series of Essays • Alfred Russel Wallace
... released) was the real ground on which the Administration submitted. "We must stick to American principles concerning the rights of neutrals." It was to many, as Secretary of the Treasury Chase declared it was to him, "gall and wormwood." James Russell Lowell's verse expressed ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... Solomon, in French verse, is given by M. Emile Blemont in La Tradition (an excellent journal of folklore, etc., published at Paris) for March 1889, p. 73: Solomon, we are informed, in very ancient times ruled over all beings [on the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... also a man of scholarly culture and literary tastes. He was a lover of the classics, and was said to have known by heart the first book of the Iliad, and the Odes of Horace. There is a legend that he often soothed his little son to sleep by humming to him an ode of Anacreon. He wrote verse, he was a very clever draughtsman, and he was a collector of rare books and prints. Mr. W. J. Stillman, in his "Autobiography of a Journalist," refers to the elder Browning, whom he knew in his later years, as "a serene, untroubled soul,... as gentle as a ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... later than Hooker, in 1564, and his share in founding English prose as we know it is, of course, not comparable with that of Hooker, for of Shakespeare's prose there remains for us but little. Whenever he rose to eloquence he clothed himself in verse as with an inevitable attribute, but on the rare occasions when he condescended to step down from the great line to "the other harmony of prose" he is as splendid as in all else. In Hamlet ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... music room, Van Kuyp read a volume of verse. He did not hear his wife enter. It pained her when she saw his serious face with its undistinguished features and dogged expression. No genius this, was her hasty verdict, as she quickly went to him and put a hand on his head. It was her hand now that ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... will appear some day or other; or, perhaps, the age of Louis XV.: I beg you to treat me well." I have no reason to complain of her. It signifies very little to me that she can talk more learnedly than I can about prose and verse. ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... is the taste of verse, prose, and painting since le bon vieux temps, dear madam! Nothing attracts us but what terrifies, and is within—if within—a hair's breadth of positive disgust. The picture of Death on his Pale Horse, however, is very grand certainly-and some of the strange things ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... lives in it; because it always looks beautiful in the snow, and because the tree is so picturesque. The fact that it is gray for lack of paint may remind a casual wanderer that there is something to do, now and then, for the "folks back home." The verse is just as bad as I thought it would be. It seems incredible that any one should buy it, but ours is a big country and there are many kinds of people living in it, so who knows? Why don't you accept my picture and then you write the card? I could not put my initials ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the highest compliment which can be paid them is the truthful assertion that any person may read them with keen interest, and never reflect that they were written for young people. Poetry and prose meet in them on equal grounds, and any of them in verse would be charming. The main reason for this is that such stories to charm must set forth natural objects with Irving-like fidelity; nay, the writer must, with a few words, bring before us scenes and things as in a mirror. In this 'The Ice Maiden' excels; Swiss life ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... service; his courtiers were about him, in their bright garments, and he himself was dressed in his royal robes. The choir was chanting the Latin service, and as the beautiful voices swelled louder, the king noticed one particular verse which seemed to be repeated again and again. He turned to a learned clerk at his side and asked what those words meant, for ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... took her own Bible and read aloud the verse her father had written. "But, mother, this sounds as though you would be happy ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... either brainless or soulful, and the choice of evils is a delicate one. Well, I have never set up for a man of the world, though sometimes when I have heard the Lovelaces of the day hinting mysteriously at their secret sins or boasting of their florid gallantries, I have remembered the last verse of Suckling's "Ballad of a Wedding," which, no doubt, the reader knows as well as I, and if not, it will increase his acquaintance with our brave old poetry ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... drawing consolation from the ethics and philosophy of the ancient dramatists, whom he had always admired, especially the tragedies of Euripides; he formed a complete moral anthology from that poet and from the works of Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch verse. Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
