"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could devour this muffin now," he said, in his rumbling, sing-song and strangely theatrical voice, which always suggested that he was about to deliver a couple of hundred or so lengths of blank verse. "Omar beneath his tree perchance, or Gurustu who to Baghdad came with steed a-foam and eyes a-flame. Wherefore do you trample upon hapless animals that are not dumb, young man, and cause the poor astronomer to cast ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... not lead him to such frequent appeals to Christian books as would have appeared in a discourse intended for Christian readers; we nevertheless reckon up in them between twenty and thirty quotations of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, certain, distinct, and copious: if each verse be counted separately, a much greater number; if each expression, a very ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... out of your Hole" (Vol. iii., p. 132.).—Your correspondent S. W. SINGER has brought to my recollection a verse, which I heard some children singing near Exeter, in July last, and noted down, but afterwards forgot ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... insisted upon my reopening the negotiations into which Belloni and I had entered during the previous summer. To show with what earnestness I tried to consider the chances of carrying out my plan, I drafted out the plot of the opera, which the French poet would only have to put into verse, because I never for a moment fancied that it would be possible for him to think out and write a libretto for which I would only need to compose the music. I chose for my subject the legend of Wieland der Schmied, upon which I commented with some stress at the end of my recently finished ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... and couldn't have done it worse; He sat down on the handles, an' went to spinnin' verse. He wrote it nice and pretty—an agricultural ditty; But all o' his pesky measures didn't measure an acre more, Nor his p'ints didn't turn a furrow that wasn't ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be Too hard for libertines in poetry; Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Spleen[112]. JOHNSON. 'I think Dodsley gave up the question. He and Goldsmith said the same thing; only he said it in a softer manner than Goldsmith did; for he acknowledged that there was no poetry, nothing that towered above the common mark. You may find wit and humour in verse, and yet no poetry. Hudibras has a profusion of these; yet it is not to be reckoned a poem. The Spleen, in Dodsley's Collection, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry[113].' BOSWELL. 'Does not Gray's poetry, Sir, tower above the common mark?' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... notes belong To some chief source of perfect melodies; And glancing through a laurelled, lordly throng Of shining singers, lo! my vision flies To William Shakespeare! He it is whose strong, Full, flute-like music haunts thy stately verse. A worthy Levite of his court thou art! One sent among us to defeat the curse That binds us to the Actual. Yea, thy part, Oh, lute-voiced lover! is to lull the heart Of love repelled, ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... young as I might be, but I am a deal younger than I look. Listen, dearie, I have never FELT old yet! Isn't that a thing to be grateful for? I don't read much poetry, except it be in the Church Hymnal, but I cut a verse out of a magazine a year ago which just suits my idea of life, and, what is still more wonderful, I took the trouble to learn it. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote it, and I'll warrant him for a good, cheerful, ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... of cold mortality. A song was soon proposed, and many a ludicrous stave sung, as the inspiring cup made the circle of the company. "Luke Caffary's Kilmainham Minit," an old flash chant, and "The Night before Larry was stretched," were among the most favourite ditties of the night. A verse from the last may serve ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... wonderful it is to watch their coming together at that point! For a little while you can trace the mountain water by itself in the other: then it is all lost, and they pour on together." This picture, also, she set in a frame of verse one day, and gave it ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... first verse, and the last," he said at length. "And all Poland was shouting them when this man dreamed his dreams. They are forbidden now, and if that waiter's a liar, I'll end my days in Siberia. They sang it in the churches, and the secret police put a ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... do. Let up on him! Give him a chance. Let him earn his money, or go without. Talk about making him independent—you've made him as dependent as a baby! I don't know my Bible as well as you do, but there is a verse somewhere— something about 'fullness of bread and abundance of idleness.' That's what's the trouble with Blair. 'Fullness of bread and abundance ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... miss, I say that's well said for the shamrock any way. And all that's in it for me is this—the schoolmaster was a rogue that did not give me that verse in for my money. ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... flavours else. Albeit thy thirst may now Be well contented, if I here break off, No more revealing: yet a corollary I freely give beside: nor deem my words Less grateful to thee, if they somewhat pass The stretch of promise. They, whose verse of yore The golden age recorded and its bliss, On the Parnassian mountain, of this place Perhaps had dream'd. Here was man guiltless, here Perpetual spring and every fruit, and this The far-fam'd nectar." Turning to the bards, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... volumes of poetry—"The Black Riders" and "War is Kind." Their appearance in print was jeeringly hailed; yet Crane was only pioneering in the free verse that is today, if not definitely accepted, at least more than tolerated. I like the following love poem as well as any rhymed and conventionally metrical ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... quote a specimen in verse, from a breviary now in the library of Gonville and Caius ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... delight to change house and air every day! Twenty useless callings I have, to make my living. I know how to push the bending oar My bark speed giving; I can bring down the falcon Flying in the heavens; Can tame the kicking mule, And good verse arrange in sevens— So I ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni
... Passages.—Place a comma between chapter and verse in citations of biblical passages: as, John ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... every verse, the negroes in their enthusiasm would throw up their hands and shout "Glory," and the row-boats would take that opportunity to push off; and so at last they were all brought on board. The masters fled; houses and ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... August (the day before these riots were renewed), Dr. Mayhew preached in the west meeting house, from the text, Galatians, chap. v. verse 12: 'I would they were even cut off which trouble you.' Although the sermon was regular enough, the text then seemed significant, and Hutchinson (History) states that some were excited by it. (Doubtless the 'Band-dogs' of Dr. Mayhew.) At any rate, in the night the bonfires ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... found at Carthage upon which are written magic spells against horses entered for races in the circus. Just like the Carthaginian jockeys, Augustin had recourse to these hidden and fraudulent practices, to make sure of success. On the eve of a verse competition in the theatre, he fell in with a wizard who offered, if they could agree about the price, to sacrifice a certain number of animals to buy the victory. Upon this, Augustin, very much annoyed, declared that if the prize were a crown of immortal gold, not a fly should be sacrificed ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... added the last verse to the rest. Then I went into our bedroom and recited the whole poem aloud with much feeling and gesticulation. The verses were altogether guiltless of metre, but I did not stop to consider ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... who were evidently much pleased, took up the chorus moderately at the second verse, came out strong at the third, and sang with such genuine fervour at the last that it was quite evident, as Moses remarked, there was not a lazy man amongst them—at least, if ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... not a grain of poetry in my composition,' said his lordship; 'I never could write a verse; I was notorious at Eton for begging all their old manuscripts from boys when they left school, to crib from; but I have a heart, and I can feel. I love Venetia, I have always loved her, and, if possible, I will marry her, and ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time Moping ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... policemen saw him disappearing down the road in a cloud of dust from which echoed his mocking laugh and a chanted, jubilant verse that had not been heard in that ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... triumphantly as possible to the last verse and word of that ringing hymn. My door and windows were set thick with wondering faces and staring eyes, a Senora washing. These Americans were past understanding! And that revolver—they shivered as they looked at it, and not ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... faculties and discipline the imagination. Mr. William Grindal was Elizabeth's first classical tutor; with him she made a rapid progress. From other masters she received the rudiments of modern languages; at eleven years of age she translated out of French verse into English prose "The Mirror of the Sinful Soul," which she dedicated to Catherine Parr, sixth wife to Henry VIII. At twelve years of age she translated from the English into Latin, French, and Italian, prayers ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... President, closed the exercises with some translations of his own, which he called "Stories in Verse." We give two of them here; each relates an incident of Eberhard, the good count, whom German poets have often ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Protestantism and freedom, were the law which God had appointed for the half of Europe, and the whole of future America. It is a twelve days' epic, worthy, as I said in the beginning of this book, not of dull prose, but of the thunder-roll of Homer's verse: but having to tell it, I must do my best, rather using, where I can, the words of ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a wonderfully happy trip back to Lawrenceville. The spirit ran high. It was then that Turk Righter wrote the well known Lawrenceville verse which we sang ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... at all amiss!" muttered Christopher Coney, who was also present. And removing his pipe a finger's breadth from his lips, he said aloud, "Draw on with the next verse, young gentleman, please." ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... of the quotations are from poetry that these will be printed as verse rather than, as in the preceding exercises, in continuous ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... verse he put his sister down. "There," he exclaimed; "there is a small hint at a part of ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... for a moment be supposed that any alteration of Shakspeare's text would be necessary, or would be allowed; as little is it to be supposed that Shakspeare would commence a play in his old-accustomed, various, and unequalled verse, and finish it in the easy, but somewhat lax and familiar, though not inharmonious numbers of a reverent disciple."—Tyas's Shakspeare, vol. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... her his Ship of Fools. As a matter of fact, it was rather classic, as you say. The old man taught us navigation and Greek verse by turns for five years. He was a university man with a passion for literature, but I never knew a better sailor. He put me ashore when I was seventeen with pretty nearly the whole of my five years' pay ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... constantly, he quotes him incessantly; and no one who has read it can ever forget how Crabbe figures in the most pathetic biographical pages ever written—Lockhart's account of the death at Abbotsford. Byron's criticism was as weak as his verse was powerful, but still Byron had no doubt about Crabbe. The utmost flight of memory or even of imagination can hardly get together three contemporary critics whose standards, tempers, and verdicts, were more different ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... a verse or two of poetry right here where we stand, uncle?" asked Margery. "It keeps saying itself in my mind. I think you all know it and who wrote it, but that is all ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... wonderful June day, a glimmering of this truth dawned upon him. Such a statement would be open to the charge of exaggeration, and his frame of mind was pessimistic. But he had got so far as to ask himself the question,—Cui bono? and repeated it several times on his drive, until a verse of Scripture came, unbidden, to his lips. "For what hate man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?" and "there is one event unto all." Austen's saying, that he had never ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... be read in Latin in the churches "on both galleries, slowly, without chanting (sine tono), alternately (ummeschicht)." The Wittenberg Liturgy provided: "Before the early sermon on Sundays or on festival-days the boys in the choir, on both sides, shall read the entire Catechism in Latin, verse by verse, without ornamental tone (sine tono distincto)." (477.) Accordingly, when Luther began to preach on the chief parts in German, he was said to conduct "German Catechism." And since German services with German instruction ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Besides the two long poems, "Venus and Adonis" and "Lucrece," which first won popularity for him, he has written thirty-seven plays, ranging from the lightest comedy, through romance and historical narrative, to the darkest tragedy. Whatever form his verse takes,—sonnet, song, or dramatic poetry,—it shows the touch of the master hand, the inspiration of the master mind. Of his plays those which are still most frequently acted are the tragedies "Hamlet," "Macbeth," "King Lear," ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... to refer to the Book of Revelation for information respecting the resurrection of the dead. Now, in Rev. xx. 5 we have in express terms, "This is the first resurrection." And again, in the next verse, "Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power." It is evident, therefore, that this is the resurrection of the just, and that those who are thus "blessed and holy" ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... Elizabethan playwright, who found the London stage in possession of chronicle plays, and at once seized the opportunity of using and adapting their material in the histories of King John and the rest; that he learned the organ music of his blank verse from Kit Marlowe; that his tragedies are in the manner of Kyd or some other forgotten failure; that his comedies are but adaptations from Greene or Boccaccio; that "Cymbeline" is but an imitation of "Philaster"; in short that, finding some style ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... the morning but for my thinking of that album, which I'm glad has amused you both, my dears, so well. Ah, children, children, there's nothing like having something to do. I'll tell you something one of the poets, Cowper I think, has written about this in his homely verse:— ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to the edition of 1893. Both the poem as completed and these fragments of earlier drafts seem to belong to the last decade of the poet's life. The water-mark of the scrap of paper on which these drafts are written is 1819, but the tone and workmanship of the verse suggest a much later date, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to compare this description with that of another poet, a poet who sent forth his poetry daintily dressed in verse as well as carelessly wrapped in prose. Liszt tells us that Chopin had in his imagination and talent something "qui, par la purete de sa diction, par ses accointances avec La Fee aux Miettes et Le Lutin d'Argail, par ses rencon-tres de Seraphine ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... His small pieces presented to patrons. Character of his Annus Mirabilis. His rhyming plays. His impossible men and women. His tendency to bombast. His attempts at fairy imagery. His incomparable reasonings in verse. His art of producing rich effects by familiar words. Catholicity of his literary creed. Causes of the exaggeration which disfigure his panegyrics. Character of his Hind and Panther. And of his Absalom and Achitophel. Compared with Juvenal. What he would probably have accomplished ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... means something the very opposite of complimentary. A surly person is said to have "a dogged disposition." Any one very much fatigued is said to be "dog weary." A wretched room or house is often called "a dog hole," or said to be only fit for "a dog." Very poor verse is "doggerel." It is told of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, that when a young nobleman refused to translate some inscription over an alcove, because it was in "dog-latin," she observed, "How strange a puppy shouldn't understand his ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Reciter is seldom happy in his delivery of blank verse. To which the unsympathetic may retort, that he does not deserve to be. Mr. Punch, however, recommends his pupils to treat such sneers with the contempt they merit, and to study the little dramatic exercise which has just been thrown off ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... him for their happiest thoughts; by his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarossa, and by his persuasion the author of Cleone concluded his play without a couplet; for what can be more absurd, said Minim, than that part of a play should be rhymed, and part written in blank verse? and by what acquisition of faculties is the speaker, who never could find rhymes before, enabled to rhyme at the conclusion of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... in the top of a tree was a mocking bird warbling its sweet notes. Over in a hidden recess of a small brush, the thrush's mellow song could be heard. A number of small negro children were playing not far away. When Foster had finished the first verse of the song his sister took it from his hand and sang in a ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... as he saw her conscious blush, turned pale instead of becoming red and embarrassed, and, save a slight compression of his lips, made no other movement. She sang the concluding verse of the ballad in a rather unsympathetic manner, and, after a light instrumental piece devoid of sentiment, ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... prolific writer, both prose and verse, and, as we know, had an extraordinary vogue in her own time. Anything that came from her pen had an immediate success; indeed, so highly was she regarded that nothing she chose to write, however poor, could fail. And she certainly did write a good deal of poor ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... appear to have been uniformly 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 ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... flashed angrily. He shook his long hair. Life was very serious to him. He never wrote comic verse intentionally. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... those Irish stories are part of the epic cycle of Conchobar and Cuchulainn, and concern the wars of Ulster and Connaught. They are in prose, interspersed with verse. Long before being written, they existed in the shape of well-established texts, repeated word for word by men whose avocation it was to know and remember, and who spent their lives in exercising their memory. The corporation ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... felt the soft, rich, green grass beneath, and the blue illimitable heavens smiling above. I had come out of darkness into marvellous light. I was drenched with light as I had previously been by the cold, gray mist. I remembered another verse of the immortal poem I had learned ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the days of Imagism, before the attention of many American poets had been turned to Japanese art, Hearn recognized the scarcity in our literature of those short forms of verse in which the Greeks as well as the Japanese excel. The epigram with us is—or was until recently—a classical tradition, based on the brief inscriptions of the Greek anthology or on the sharp satires of Roman poetry; we had no native turn for the form as an ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... ones, under the roof of a garret; and few literary characters have lived, like Pliny and Voltaire, in a villa or chateau of their own. It has not therefore often happened that a man of genius could raise local emotions by his own intellectual suggestions. Ariosto, who built a palace in his verse, lodged himself in a small house, and found that stanzas and stones were not put together at the same rate: old Montaigne has left a description of his library; "over the entrance of my house, where I view my court-yards, and garden, and at once survey ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Sisters, who spoke of her habitually as the "blessed child." They had taught her all the dainty arts of lace-weaving, embroidery, and simple fashions of painting and drawing, which they knew; not overmuch learning out of books, but enough to make her a passionate lover of verse and romance. For serious study or for deep thought she had no vocation. She was a simple, joyous, gentle, clinging, faithful nature, like a clear brook rippling along in the sun,—a nature as unlike as possible to the Senora's, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... most strongly advocating Rosey's return to Clive, was Mrs. Laura Pendennis; with certain arguments for which she had chapter and verse, and against which we of the separatist party had no appeal. "Did he marry her only for the days of her prosperity?" asked Laura. "Is it right, is it manly, that he should leave her now she is unhappy—poor little creature—no woman had ever more need of protection; ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... gentleman passed through the gate as he concluded the verse, waved his hand jauntily by way of everlasting adieu, and went off whistling the refrain with great spirit, and both hands in ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... morning passed slowly in a struggle between a restless body, a restless mind, and a restless soul, all tending in different directions, and at last they stood in a row before their aunt to recite their morning's task. Even little Jamie had his verse of Scripture to lisp, and was patted on the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... were continually threatened. They could not imagine a poet, without supposing him to hold an intercourse with some demon. This was, as Abbe Resnel observes, having a most exalted idea of poetry, though a very bad one of poets. An anti-poetic Dominican was notorious for persecuting all verse-makers; whose power he attributed to the effects of heresy and magic. The lights of philosophy have dispersed all these accusations of magic, and have shown a dreadful chain of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... writer of verse, which he published sumptuously at his own expense. He had a gift for rhyming, and his verse is not entirely without merit. He had been greatly influenced by Swinburne and Robert Browning. He was grossly, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... preserve only that part (action) which tends best for 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... days of privation and ambition Daudet's longing was to make himself famous as a poet; and when at last, not yet twenty years old, he began his career as a man of letters it was by the publication of a volume of verse, just as his fellow-novelists, M. Paul Bourget and Signor Gabriele d'Annunzio have severally done. Immature as juvenile lyrics are likely to be, these early rhymes of Daudet's have a flavor of their own, a faintly ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... of the tales from the Kalevala ("Home of the Heroes"), a group of legends from Finland. These tales were sung in verse very similar to that which Longfellow used in Hiawatha. The following is a prose translation of one of the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... is said to have written in her copy of Tom Jones as fine a tribute to an author's power as could be desired—simply the words Ne plus ultra. Villiers, the notorious Duke of Buckingham, whose end served Pope for some of his best satirical verse, was also of the ...
— The Dukeries • R. Murray Gilchrist
... This verse on McClellan does not go to prove that the South respected any less the humane warfare, or the tactical ability of him his greatest opponents declared "the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... in order to start on this journey, the girl appeared to him like a verse familiar, yet forgotten, and which an added melody made strange. The ascetic rose from his seat and told her that it was time he left ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... beginning. By its popular poets the calibres of an age, the weak spots of its embankments, its sub-currents, (often more significant than the biggest surface ones,) are unerringly indicated. The lush and the weird that have taken such extraordinary possession of Nineteenth century verse-lovers—what mean they? The inevitable tendency of poetic culture to morbidity, abnormal beauty—the sickliness of all technical thought or refinement in itself—the abnegation of the perennial and democratic concretes at first hand, the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... limberin' up an' I knowed, as the sayin' is, that she was our meat. All at once, still a-hold o' 'er hands, he turned to me, an' sez he: 'Go ax Brother Quagmire to sing "How firm a foundation" three times, with the second an' last verse left out, an' tell 'im to foller that up with "Jesus, Lover." Git 'im to walk up an' down this aisle—this un, remember. Tell 'im I've got a case heer wuth more 'n a whole bench full o' them scrubs 'at'll backslide as soon as meetin' 's over; tell 'im to whoop ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... maids. What kind hearts are there running to waste! What pure and gentle affections blossom to be blighted! I dare say you have heard a young lady of more than forty sing, and you have seen her eyes fill with tears at the pathos of a very commonplace verse. Have you not thought that there was the indication of a tender heart which might have made some good man happy, and, in doing so, made herself happy, too? But it was not to be. Still, it is sad to think that sometimes upon cats and dogs there ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... question, what had Pope to say upon the deepest subjects with which human beings can concern themselves? The most explicit answer must be taken from the 'Essay on Man,' and the essay must be acknowledged to have more conspicuous faults than any of Pope's writings. The art of reasoning in verse is so difficult that we may doubt whether it is in any case legitimate, and must acknowledge that it has been never successfully practised by any English writer. Dryden's 'Religio Laici' may be better reasoning, but it is worse poetry than ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... literature. Such repudiate, and justly, the name of theists: but they decline, and justly, the name of atheists. They would—the finest and purest spirits among them—accept only too heartily the whole of the Psalm which I have chosen for my text, save its ascription and the last verse. We too—they would say—do not wish to be high-minded, and dogmatize, and assert, and condemn. We too do not wish to meddle with matters too high for us, or for any human intellect. We too wish to refrain ourselves from asserting what—however pleasant—we cannot prove; and to wean ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... of a verse, One-Eye sat up, smiled feebly, darted a bashful glance at Cis, and went on with his questions. "What was Uncle Albert's ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... vituperation and stinging sarcasm. Three generations of serious and of sportive writers wept and laughed over the venality of the senate. That venality was denounced on the hustings, anathematized from the pulpit, and burlesqued on the stage; was attacked by Pope in brilliant verse, and by Bolingbroke in stately prose, by Swift with savage hatred, and by Gay with festive malice. The voices of Tories and Whigs, of Johnson and Akenside, of Smollett and Fielding, contributed to swell the cry. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... me tell you, Elden, there are mighty few, men or women, who have gone half way through life without something they'd like to forget. Why not let them forget it? You're young yet, and perhaps you don't see it that way, but you'll be older. There's a verse ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... a short blocking and stilling of my external senses, I received this answer [of the Bridegroom]; that this could not be until a complete death of the body of sin was suffered, showing me that which is written in the 6th verse of the seventh chapter of Romans, that after that was perished and dead, wherein we were held, we should serve God in newness of spirit." (L. G. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... with her on equal terms. He had reason to expect preferment even higher than that which he had attained. He had inherited the fortune of a brother who died Governor of Madras. He had purchased an estate in Warwickshire, and had been welcomed to his domain in very tolerable verse by one of the neighbouring squires, the poetical fox-hunter, William Somerville. In August 1716, the newspapers announced that Joseph Addison, Esquire, famous for many excellent works both in verse and prose, had espoused the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... word for word (as nearly as the change from prose to blank verse would allow) from the old record in Hall. It would have been easy for Shakspeare to have exalted his own skill, by throwing a coloring of poetry and eloquence into this speech, without altering the sense or sentiment; but by adhering ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... man can sail in a favoring gale And snap out his course at his pleasure; A Dance espouse, no Acrisius will rail, His credence by hers he will measure; Write verse, or declaim; snap the finger of scorn At the world, yet still win all his cases, The rabble will drink in his words with concern When a Cato austere it displaces. At law, his "not proven," or "proved," he can have With Servius or Labeo vieing; With gold at command anything he may crave Is his without ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... treat to see you work it, miss. The way you got them up from three-and-six to four-and-ten with that hymn, penny by penny and verse by verse, was a caution. Not a Cheap Jack on Mile End Waste could touch ...
— Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... [Footnote 37: Verse 8. To [Greek: anaekon]. See Robinson's New Testament Lexicon; "it is fit, proper, becoming, it ought." In what sense King James' translators used the word "convenient" any one may see who will read Rom. i. 28 and Eph. v. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... his seed to the earth, was frequently rewarded with an increase of two, or even of three, hundred. The face of the country was interspersed with groves of innumerable palm-trees; and the diligent natives celebrated, either in verse or prose, the three hundred and sixty uses to which the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the juice, and the fruit, were skilfully applied. Several manufactures, especially those of leather and linen, employed the industry of a numerous people, and afforded valuable materials for foreign trade; which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... fashionable, and from tooting motor-cars to noisy symphonies all is a conspiracy against silence. At night dream-fugues shatter the walls of our inner consciousness, and yet we call music a divine art! I love the written notes, the symbols of the musical idea. Music, like some verse, sounds sweeter on paper, sweeter to the inner ear. Music overheard, not heard, is the more beautiful. Palimpsestlike we strive to decipher and unweave the spiral harmonies of Chopin, but they elude as does the sound of falling waters in a dream. Those violet bubbles ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... was thus singing his verse near the door, there came suddenly a mighty storm of wind, so that the king and all his nobles thought the castle would fall on their heads. They saw that Taliessin had not merely been singing the song of the wind, ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... endeared him to his classmates. While his principal delight was in the study of the Classics, he devoted much attention to mathematics and other studies. Like many other writers, some of his earliest efforts were in verse. Indeed it may be said of him, as of Pope, that he ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... of filling his stomach with sweetmeats, as going through a long debate filled with pompous epithets and sounding language. If we have any doubt of its being ridiculous, let us only suppose a man arguing an abstruse subject in metaphysics, in the blank verse of Milton, or the exact rhymes of Pope. The absurdity is the same, only different in degree. I would not be understood to cut off an extempore speaker from sublime expressions; because I do not suppose these to ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... strange they did not veil the hens and cows. In the shadowy mosque, with its five naves, she giggled at the yellow babouches out of which her little high-heeled shoes slipped, and threatened to recite a French verse under the delicate arch of ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of St. Matthew—'them that persecute you'—is put out of sight, and both passages (taking the lengthened reading of St. Matthew) are represented as having equally only four clauses? And again, when quotations going on to the succeeding verse in St. Matthew (v. 45) are stated dogmatically to have been wrongly referred by me to that Evangelist? But as to the details of this point in dispute, I beg to refer our readers to pp. 144-153 of the present volume. The reviewer appears also to be entirely unacquainted with the history of the phrase ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... well vindicated yourselfe therefrom by cashiering sundry corrupt spirits out of the army. And truly, Sir, better a few and faithfull, than many and unsound. The army on Christ's side (which he maketh victorious) are called chosen and faithfull, Rev. 17. 14—a verse worthy your Lordship's frequent and deepe meditation. Go on, therefore (good Sir), to overcome yourselfe (Prov. 16. 32), to overcome your army (Deut. 29. 9, with v. 14), and to vindicate your orthodox integrity ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... to lay up money for their children, or husbands for their wives: "But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house (or kindred), he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." 1 Tim. v. 8. It is, however, concerning this verse, only needful, in childlike simplicity to read the connexion from verse 3 to 5, and it will be obvious that the meaning is this, that whilst the poor widows of the church are to be cared for by the church, yet if any ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, Third Part • George Mueller
... little loves," said he, "the third and last verse, and together in the chorus." Then he began singing in a magnificent bass voice, and four or five female voices took up ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... understand a word of them. The consul then takes from his breast a roll of paper, and says, 'I shall read them!' Blunderbore then says, 'Don't!' But the consul does, and Blunderbore beats time to the music of the verse with his knuckles on the table; and perpetually ducks forward to look round the cap of a lady sitting between himself and me, to see what I think of them. I exhibit lively emotion. The verses are in French—short line—on ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... the telling of some series of connected incidents or events, whether real or fictitious, in prose or verse, orally or in writing; or the series of incidents or events thus related may be termed a story. In children's talk, a story is a common euphemism for a falsehood. Tale is nearly synonymous with story, but is somewhat archaic; it is used for an imaginative, legendary, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... minstrel Scott, who transformed their rude ballads into immortal song. Moore did a similar, though smaller, service for the Irish branch of the Celtic race. And we most truly think that a Welsh Scott or Moore is only wanting to marry the lays of Wales to undying verse. The third part of this collection will contain some of the most spirited of the patriotic ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... belief of the Roman Catholic Church in the testimony of the sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed by Pope Innocent III, at the close of the thirteenth century, beginning with the verse— ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... it is to be noted under this head that Wright, in a note to the Latin story we have already quoted, gives from John of Bromyard's Summa Predicantium another English version of the verse— ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... dozen cabbages, if I pleased to grow them in the garden here, I might demand, say, a dozen pence at Covent Garden Market,—and that for a dozen scenes, of the average goodness, I may challenge as many plaudits at the theatre close by; and a dozen pages of verse, brought to the Rialto where verse-merchants most do congregate, ought to bring me a fair proportion of the Reviewers' gold currency, seeing the other traders pouch their winnings, as I do see. Well, when they won't pay me for my cabbages, nor praise me for my poems, I may, if I please, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... in the telling, next, by way of contrast, a sad little story of neglected childhood by a junior who had never written anything good before, and a humorous essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... simultaneously. Heavens, how I wrote! Never was there a creative fever such as mine from which the patient escaped fatal results. The way I worked was enough to soften my brain and send me to a mad-house. I wrote, I wrote everything—ponderous essays, scientific and sociological short stories, humorous verse, verse of all sorts from triolets and sonnets to blank verse tragedy and elephantine epics in Spenserian stanzas. On occasion I composed steadily, day after day, for fifteen hours a day. At times I forgot to eat, ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... of a poet. He called himself a practical poet, because he made a regular business of it, turning his poetic inspirations into salable verse with the facility and success, as he himself expressed it, of a man who makes boxes out of wood. Moreover, he sold these poems as readily as any carpenter sold his boxes. Like himself, Claude Locker's poems were always short, always in request, ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... frequently eloquent in his silence. Chryses says not a word in answer to the insults of Agamemnon, but walks pensively along the shore. The melancholy flowing of the verse admirably expresses the condition of the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... his little Bible, to read one of the passages, as his father had advised him. He happened to open at a mark which his father had put in at the parable of the prodigal son. The first verse which his eye fell upon, was the verse, "I will arise and go to my father." Rollo thought that that was exactly the thing for him to do—to go and confess his ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... accident in his career, a comparatively trifling and casual item in the total expenditure of his many-sided energy. He was nearly sixty when he wrote Robinson Crusoe. Before that event he had been a rebel, a merchant, a manufacturer, a writer of popular satires in verse, a bankrupt; had acted as secretary to a public commission, been employed in secret services by five successive Administrations, written innumerable pamphlets, and edited more than one newspaper. He had led, in fact, as adventurous ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... the first verse," the Hat-ter went on, "the Queen bawled out 'See how he mur-ders the time! Off with his head!' And ev-er since that, he won't do a thing I ask! ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... Loch Fyne; thence to Edinburgh; Ormiston on the 21st; the John Stanleys there and Lord Neaves. [Footnote: A lord of justiciary, one of the foremost authorities on criminal law in Scotland, and for more than forty years a regular contributor of prose and verse to Blackwood's ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Dimitri, to the days of Peter the Great, when they seem to have acquired new vigour on account of the military achievements of the regenerator of his country. Nor are they extinct in our own time, for we find exploits of Napoleon, especially his disastrous expedition to Russia, made the subject of verse. The interest, however, of these legendary poems fades away as we advance into later days. The number of minstrels is rapidly diminishing; and Riabanin, and his companions among the Great Russians, and Ostap Veresai among ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... 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 to ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... sang that verse twice, with simple cunning, intending that Dick should hear. But Dick was waiting for the farewell of the men ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... think himself obliged to have no buttons to the collar of his doublet, if the King should command it,—a grave argument to convince the deputies of an important company of the obedience due to kings, for which he was severely lampooned both in prose and verse. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... power Dante's lines must have, when they so move a wild young savage who knows nothing but her Pater. But I am mistaken! I recollect now that Colomba belongs to the guild. Even when she was quite a little child she used to try her hand at verse-making, and my father used to write me word that she was the best voceratrice in Pietranera, and for ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... thinker who is without power to comprehend that law of reciprocal opposites, on which the world is built. For an example of this: the universe is indeed a uni-verse, a pure unit, emanating, as we think, from a spirit that is, in the words of old Hooker, "not only one, but very oneness," simple, indivisible, and therefore total in all action; and yet this universe is various, multifarious, full of special character, full even of fierce antagonisms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of contemporaneous American poets Edited by Jessie B. Rittenhouse Editor of The Little Book of Modern Verse [Selections made ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... dreamy; there was a cadence in it now as if some soul within were forcing her to chant it all, with almost the lilt of blank verse. ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... bundles. Their contents made her feel like laughing and crying both together, all by herself, there on the fast train flying southward through the night. Janet's superb grapes, Mrs. Ferry's preserved Canton ginger, Donald Ferry's little book of verse, with the ribbon mark opening it at "My Garden," all pleased her greatly, each in its way. Then there was a fascinating little traveller's work-box from Josephine, a letter writing-case from Mrs. Burnside, an ink-pencil from Max, a package ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... the Sacred Colleges alone betrayed misgivings, fearing that the fine would be annually renewed, and even the wealth of Chelebi exhausted. Elsewhere, the Jewries were divided into factions, that fought each other with texts, and set the Word against the Word. This verse clearly proved the Messiah had come, and that verse that the signs were not yet fulfilled; and had not Solomon, the wise king, said that the fool gave belief at once to all indifferently, while the wise man weighed and considered before believing? Fiercely waged ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... mysteries to us, I was so eager to know all that was in my book that the lesson was always too short. I continued reading by the hour, after the rebbe was gone, though I understood about one word in ten. My favorite Hebrew reading was the Psalms. Verse after verse I chanted to the monotonous tune taught by Reb' Lebe, rocking to the rhythm of the chant, just like the rebbe. And so ran the song of David, and so ran the hours by, while I sat by the low window, the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... like BUCHANAN, didst thou quite exhaust in One volume such abuse as fits a barge? Twitter and chirp like Mr. ALFRED AUSTIN, Or make a trifle mystically large, Like SWINBURNE, round whose verse the fog grows stronger Just in proportion as his lines ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... pretty well agreed that the imitator has no knowledge worth mentioning of what he imitates. Imitation is only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic poets, whether they write in Iambic or in Heroic verse, are imitators in ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the language of their southern neighbours. In the time of Barbour, the Scottish and English languages were almost the same; they were now widely dissimilar, and the Scottish poets, by writing English verse, required to translate their sentiments into a new tongue. Their poetry thus became more the expression of the head than the utterance of the heart. The national bards of this period, the Earl of Stirling, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... servants and companions of ladies of that date were themselves gentlewomen of good breeding. Waller writes verses to Mrs. Braughton, servant to Sacharissa, commencing his lines, "Fair fellow-servant." Temple, had he written verse to his mistress, would probably have left us ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... Works in Verse and Prose of Andrew Marvell, M.P. Edited with Memorial-Introduction and Notes by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart. In four ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... grace, M. —— read a part of the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. He turned their attention more especially to that interesting passage in the twelfth verse: "There is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved." He endeavoured to point out to them the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the awful consequences of violating the law of God, the inefficacy of all those expedients ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... the fields of Thrasymene, Where Mars did mate the warlike Carthagens; [1] Nor sporting in the dalliance of love, In courts of kings where state is overturn'd; Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds, Intends our Muse to vaunt her [2] heavenly verse: Only this, gentles,—we must now perform The form of Faustus' fortunes, good or bad: And now to patient judgments we appeal, And speak for Faustus in his infancy. Now is he born of parents base of stock, In Germany, within a town call'd Rhodes: At riper years, to Wittenberg he went, ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... again. In the middle of the room are two Catholic priests, one quietly reading,—either English or Irish, and probably the latter,—the other, dark, bearded, with broad-brimmed hat, talking earnestly to a friend in German and evidently explaining some verse in the open Bible before him; near them a young fire engineer on his way to Mexico, and of the same religion as the rest of the group. None of them were saved. It may be noted here that the percentage of men saved ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... avenues toward our home. For the first time in its existence possibly, our venerable "barracks," as we called the dormitory, saw its occupants returning home from an evening's bout just as the night watchman intoned his eleven o'clock verse. ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... again, speaking of verse-making, he says, "I know not what reason a father can have to wish his son a poet, who does not desire him to bid defiance to all other callings and business; which is not yet the worst of the case; for, if he proves a successful rhymer, and gets once the reputation of a wit, I desire ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... sensible view of the practical world are, perhaps, common enough in adolescence, and, as a general rule, work no serious harm. There were, however, two fatal defects of character in this case. The first was that Larime continued to dream and to write what he thought was verse, when he ought to have been at work plowing corn, for he had qualities which, with industry, would have made him a successful farmer. Second, he was mentally too lazy for the drudgery even the greatest poet must perform if he is ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... letters, Gainsborough saw changes occur no less important than in the political field. Samuel Johnson bowled into view, scolding and challenging the Ensconced Smug; Goldsmith scaled the Richardson ghetto and wrote his touching and deathless verse; Fielding's saffron comedies were produced at Drury Lane; Cowper, nearly the same age as the artist, did his work and lapsed into imbecility, surviving him sixteen years; Richardson became the happy father of the English Novel; Sterne ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... Willenhall, Staffordshire, near Mumpers' Dingle, is, perhaps, intended. The hymn was originally Cennick's, but the verse in question Charles Wesley's. The old tune Helmsley (not St. Thomas) was a ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... poems of Mary are a collection of Lays, in French verse; forming various histories and gallant adventures of our valiant knights: and, according to the usage of those times, they are generally remarkable for some singular, and often marvellous catastrophe. ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... followed by that of Alaric II., King of the Visigoths. Before the French set out on this latter expedition, they made a vow not to shave themselves till they had subdued their enemies. Vows of this kind were very common at that period. It was the custom of those times to draw an omen from the verse that was chanting, when a person entered the church. The king's envoys, at their entrance into the church of St. Martin, heard these words from the Psalms: "Thou hast endued me with strength for the wars; thou hast supplanted ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... he said, "ever since I heard it. I must say the last verse; it must have been of this very ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... the hills where on the upper edges spread the antlers of deer sniffing the wind, rejoicing in the magnificence of the fine highland country in its autumn time. Nan hummed and broke into a strain of the verse of Donacha Ban that chants the praise of day and deer-hunting; she charmed her comrade; he felt the passion of the possessor and stopped and turned upon her and made to kiss. She laughed temptingly, drew back, warding her lips with the screen that now she had arranged in a new and pleasing ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Mr. Ruskin was about to issue a volume of poems, consisting mainly of pieces already published. The statement was probably the first intimation received by many that the author of 'Modern Painters' had ever written anything in the shape of verse. That he has always been, like Sidney, a 'warbler of poetic prose,' has lately been emphasized by a magazine-writer; but it is not at all universally known that between the years 1835 and 1845 Mr. Ruskin figured somewhat largely as a poet, in the popular sense of that much abused ...
— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams
... your greatest necessities. When you can not extricate your hero by any human means, or yourself by your own wits, seek relief from heaven, and the gods will do your business very readily. This is according to the direct prescription of Horace in his "Art of Poetry," verse 191: ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... fortunate in the reception of my poetry. I have tried it every way—ballades by the bale, sonnets by the dozen, loyal odes, seditious songs, drawing-room poetry, an Epic on the history of Labducuo, erotic verse, all fire, foam, and fangs, reflective ditto, humble natural ballads about signal-men and newspaper-boys, Life-boat rescues, Idyls, Nocturnes in rhyme, tragedies in blank verse. Nobody will print them, or, if anybody prints them, he regrets that he cannot pay for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... processing performed on them. The fact that the texts exist in SGML ensures that they will be relatively easy to port to different hardware and software, and so will outlast the current delivery platform. Finally, the SGML markup incorporates existing canonical reference systems (chapter, verse, line, etc.); indexing and navigation are based on these features. This ensures that the same canonical reference will always resolve to the same point within a text, and that all versions of our texts, regardless of delivery platform (even paper printouts) ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... but his effort to publish 'Troilus' proved abortive owing to the interposition of the players. Roberts's 'book' was probably Shakespeare's play. The metrical characteristics of Shakespeare's 'Troilus and Cressida'—the regularity of the blank verse—powerfully confirm the date of composition which Roberts's license suggests. Six years later, however, on January 28, 1608-9, a new license for the issue of 'a booke called the history of Troylus ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... love songs, not altogether badly; then it was Jimmy's turn. He said he didn't know no love songs, but he would give us Tommy or Paddy Brennan. This gentleman appears to have started in business as a highwayman in the romantic mountains of Limerick. One verse that Jimmy gave, and which pleased us most, because we couldn't quite ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... speak, my fair Chloe, and what I write, shows The difference there is betwixt nature and art: I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose; And they have my whimsies, but ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... life intensely in the hours that were given to them, seized all chance of laughter, of wine, of every kind of pleasure within reach, and said their prayers (some of them) with great fervor, between one escape and another, like young Paul Bensher, who has revealed his soul in verse, his secret terror, his tears, his hatred of death, his love of life, when ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... of starting a fresh verse when the low rumble of an approaching shell was heard; a messenger of death from a great German gun out at La Bassee. This gun was no stranger to us; he often (p. 190) played havoc with the Keep; it was he who blew in the wall a few nights before and killed the two ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... "the consistency of geological discoveries with sacred history". His explanation is that an undefined interval may have elapsed after the creation of the heaven and the earth "in the beginning" as recorded in the first verse of Genesis; and he rejects as opposed to geological evidence "the derivation of existing systems of organic life, by an eternal succession, from preceding individuals of the same species, or by gradual transmutation of one species into another". But speculations of this order were utterly ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... first words of the verse fell from her lips, Villon's heart leaped and his eyes brightened for he knew the sound. They were part of the rhymes himself had sent her on that very parchment which had cost him first a dinner and then a drubbing. He had fancied the words and the rhymes when ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... windows rattled and shivered in the sunshine. Horses along the line of march crouched, ducked sideways, and snorted in panic. Women put their fingers in their ears as the drums passed. And when at the end of each verse the Ancients swelled their red-shirted bosoms and screamed, Uncle Trufant hissed in the ear of his nearest neighbor on the post-office steps: "The only thing we need is the old Vienny company here to give 'em the stump! Old Vienny, as ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Rome and ordered various works of living artists; and while there, he was one day asked by Salvator Rosa what he thought of Raphael. His reply, and the ensuing conversation, are thus reported by Boschini, in curious Italian verse, which, thus translated by Dr. Donaldson, is quoted in Mr. ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... where the present provinces of Chih-li and Ho-nan adjoin. [Sidebar] He wanders from State to State. B.C. 497-484. He was now in his fifty-sixth year, and felt depressed and melancholy. As he went along, he gave expression to his feelings in verse:— 'Fain would I still look towards Lu, But this Kwei hill cuts off my view. With an axe, I'd hew the thickets through:— Vain thought! 'gainst the hill I nought can do;' and again,— 'Through the valley howls the blast, Drizzling rain falls thick and fast. Homeward goes the ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... illness;" he was a practical, successful business man, an official in the Bank of England. His love of literature and the arts is proved by the fact that he practised them constantly for the pure joy of the working; he wrote reams and reams of verse, without publishing a line. He had extraordinary facility in composition, being able to write poetry even faster than his son. Rossetti said that he had "a real genius for drawing." He owned a large and valuable library, filled with curiosities of literature. ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... now quite clearly. She was the young girl to whom he taught Latin when he first came here as a college instructor. He was very fond of her. There was one of her books in his library—I have it now—a little volume of Horace, with a few translations in verse written on the fly-leaves, and her name on the title-page—Jean Gordon. My father wrote under that, 'My best pupil, who left her lessons unfinished.' He was very fond of the book, and so I ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... hobbling verse To all, and at all times, And deems them both divinely smooth, His ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... undertaken to play or have come out of with a fair measure of success. Some of the plays were on Biblical subjects, but only a minority. There were also plays in rhyme, though Yiddish knows not blank verse. Melchitsedek accosted his interpretess and made sheep's-eyes at her. But an actress who serves in a butcher's shop is doubly accustomed to such, and being busy the girl paid no attention to the poet, though the poet was paying marked ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Nothing is known of Villon's birth or death, and only too much of his life. In his poems the ancient forms of French verse are animated with the keenest sense of personal emotion, of love, of melancholy, of mocking despair, and of repentance for a life passed in ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang
... 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 he tried to tell them how very funny ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... was thrown into a mood of disgust with his profession, from which mood he was only delivered by recklessly abandoning these studies and indulging in an old enthusiasm for poetical literature. For two whole years he did nothing but write verse in every conceivable metre, and on every conceivable subject, from Wordsworthian sonnets on the singing of his tea-kettle to epic fragments on the Fall of Empires. His discovery at the age of five-and-twenty that these inspired works were not jumped at by the publishers with all the eagerness ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... pat from a favorite verse of the Koran, greatly pleased Bara Miyan. He smiled gravely, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... pictures; and he read poetry to her. Modern poetry, of course: a little Browning, and a good deal of Rossetti and Swinburne. For amorous and passionate poetry pleased him best; and he knew that it was likelier to serve his ends than verse of the more masculine and intellectual kind. Lesley rather preferred Browning and Arnold to Oliver's favorites, but she was never certain of her own taste, and was always humbly afraid that she might be making some ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... looked out from my own heart upon the world. I had all within me that makes contentment of the present, because I had that which can make me forget the present. I had the power to re-people—to create: the legends and dreams of old—the divine faculty of verse, in which the beautiful superfluities of the heart can pour themselves—these were mine! Petrarch chose wisely for himself! To address the world, but from without the world; to persuade—to excite—to command,—for these are the aim and glory of ambition;—but to shun its tumult, and its ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... life to Friedrich. Readers are not prepared for the details of grief we could give, and the settled gloom of mind they indicate. A loss irreparable and immeasurable; the light of life, the one loved heart that loved him, gone. His passionate appeals to Voltaire to celebrate for him in verse his lost treasure, and at least make her virtues immortal, are perhaps known to readers: [ODE SUR LA MORT DE S. A. S. MADAME LA PRINCESSE DE BAREITH (in OEuvres de Voltaire, xviii. 79-86): see Friedrich's Letter to him (6th November, 1758); with Voltaire's VERSES ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Creation, and to his glad surprise he described it all in song. The next morning he remembered, and repeated it; and the monks, hearing of it, took him into the monastery, and taught him scenes and sentences from the Bible, which he rendered into verse, and so became the first of the ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... eight; and at nine, having smoked a pipe and drank a glass of water, he retired. Yet in the midst of this clock-like regularity his labors were broken by frequent unfruitful seasons. Symmons says of him, that "he frequently composed in the night, when his unpremeditated verse would sometimes flow in a torrent, tinder the impulse, as it were, of some strange poetical fury; and in these peculiar moments of inspiration, his amanuensis, who was generally his daughter, was summoned by the bell to arrest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various |
