"Versification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... held current opinions; and the world does not believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a lumbering proclivity that way, and so forfeits the confidence of grave sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable and unprecedented prescription she had waited for so long, seemed all of a piece to poor mamma: wild, unpractical, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the position summarised in the preface to "In Memoriam," d. 1849. The result is that his later work lacks the inspiration of restlessness and discovery, and he tends to put more and more of his genius into the technique of his verse and less into the meaning. The versification is marvellous, but one gets tired of it, and he often has nothing to say and has to spin out commonplaces in rich language. One feels this even in the "Idylls of the King," which are the best of his later or middle long efforts: they are artificial, not impulsive; Virgil, not ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... was half-drowned, would never have been remembered if Madame de Vernuel, who saw it, had not said 'la Reine boit'. Pleasure or malignity often gives ridicule a weight which it does not deserve. The versification, I must confess, is too much neglected and too often bad: but, upon the whole, I read the ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... world whose verses were to find a place by every fireside before the little girl said her last good-night to it. So far there had been some bright witticisms and sarcasms in rhyme, and the clergy had penned verses for wedding and funeral occasions. The Rev. John Cotton had indulged in flowing versification, and even Governor Bradford had interspersed his severer cares with visions of softer strains. Anne Dudley, the wife of Governor Bradstreet, with her eight children, had found time for study and writing, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be masters of the art of versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are classics of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the 'American Review', the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of 'fugitive poetry' ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and 'pokerishness.' It is one of those 'dainties bred in a book' which we feed on. It will stick to the memory ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... and regular versification, in the mouths of the inferior actors, who have not the art to conceal them, is, to an English ear at least, very unpleasing, and indeed almost destructive of theatrical illusion; and as a number of such actors must necessarily appear in every tragedy, it may ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... bases and capitals of columns, inscribed each with the name of one of the Muses. Puttenham's Art of Poetry, published in 1589, book II., ch. ii. contains the fullest account of the mysteries and varieties of this sort of versification.] ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... swimming, wrestling, throwing the bar, dancing, hunting, fishing, and playing at fives against the church or tower; and they constitute the joy of youth, and the admiration of old age. The convivial amusements are singing and versification. In these favourite exercises the performers are of humble merit; the singing is mere roar and squeak; and the poetical effusions are nonsense, vested in the rags of language; and always slanderous, because ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... summer in the open, Borrow, who was now twenty-two, relapsed into the indifferent versification of Danish ballads and Welsh bards, was severely fleeced in obscure journeyings in Southern Europe, and so gained some experience for future use, vainly sought a post, on the strength of his linguistic attainments, as an assistant in the British Museum ...
— George Borrow - Times Literary Supplement, 10th July 1903 • Thomas Seccombe
... Waller's, like several of his others, has all that merit which arises from the absence of fault, and all that fault which arises from the absence of merit—of high poetic merit, we mean, for in music it is equal to any of his poems. Much has been said about the model which he followed in his versification, the majority of critics tracing in it an imitation of Fairfax's Tasso. The fact seems to be that Waller, with a good ear, had a very limited theory of verse. He worshipped smoothness, and sought it at every hazard. He preferred the Jacob of a soft flowing commonplace to the ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... I have designedly omitted all special treatment of the lyric metres of Horace and Catullus, as well as of the measures of the comic poets. Our standard editions of these authors all give such thorough consideration to versification that repetition in a separate place ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... they are so overladen with confusing imagery that they have to be read twice to be understood. In the poem "Solveig" (1855) he makes the heart "in its prison envy the free-born thoughts which fly to the beloved one's breast." His versification is gnarled and twisted, and a perpetual strain upon the ear. As Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen has remarked, one need not be a princess in order to be troubled by the peas in his verse.[13] Browning himself could scarcely have perpetrated more unmelodious ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Pied Piper of Hamelin." This clever versification of a well-known tale was written for the little son of the actor William Macready. According to Dr. Furnivall, the version used directly by Browning is from "The Wonders of the Little World: or A General History of Man," by Nathaniel Wanley, published in 1578. There are, however, more incidents ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... thoughts and sentiments offensive to the Church. In some the Florentine patriot spoke over-boldly. Others exposed their author to misconstruction on the score of personal morality.[6] All were ungrammatical, rude in versification, crabbed and obscure in thought—the rough-hewn blockings-out of poems rather than finished works of art, as it appeared to the scrupulous, decorous, elegant, and timorous Academician of a feebler age. While pondering these difficulties, and comparing the readings of his many ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versification which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... tastes and pursuits were perhaps a little too similar. They addressed poetical epistles to each other, and were, reciprocally, too gentle critics. But Mr. Pye was a most amiable and accomplished man, a fine classical scholar, and a master of correct versification. He paid a visit to Enfield, and by his influence hastened a conclusion at which my grandfather was just arriving, to wit, that he would no longer persist in the fruitless effort of converting a poet into a merchant, and that content with the independence he had realised, he would ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... language as it already exists than by a hasty recourse to the mint of invention. The "Religious Musings" has more mind than the Introduction of B. II. of "Joan of Arc", ("Destiny of Nations", Poet. W. I. p. 98) but its versification is not equally rich. It has more passages of sublimity, but it has not that diffused air of severe dignity which characterizes my epic slice. Have I estimated my own performances ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... verses was one of her least gifts. Many excitable persons possess this talent at versification, as all may possess it. It is merely that a certain exaltation of feeling raises the mode of expression with it, in the same way as song differs from speech. Verses of this sort do not necessarily demand the high faculties that constitute the poet,—the creative ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... learn, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, National History, Psalmody, Sewing, Knitting, and Religion. These were the order of the day, but if anyone distinguished himself by a show of talent, diligence or good behavior, that one received special instruction in versification, an art in which Pennewip ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... permanent; and after the first surprise wore off, the quaintness of his inventions, and the minute artifice of his poetic machinery, repelled the public taste. The Linnaean system, partly indecent, and partly ridiculous, was felt to be wholly unfitted for the blazonry of versification; and his poem, the labour of years, sank into obscurity as rapidly as it had risen into distinction. It is now wholly unread, and almost wholly forgotten; yet it contains bold passages, and exhibits from time to time happiness of epithet, and harmony of language. Its subject ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... province. In the first division of the present work, however, along with the life of the poet and the history of the Felibrige, a description of the language is given, which is an account at least of its distinctive features. A short chapter will be found devoted to the subject of the versification of the poets who write in the new speech. This subject is not treated in Koschwitz's admirable grammar of ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... yourself. And even if she refuses you, is that a ground for despair? My own husband asked me three times, and three times I said no. And then he took to writing verses—and I saw there was but one way to stop him. So we were married. Ask her; ask her again—and again. You can always resort in the end to versification. And now," the lady concluded, rising, "I have spoken, and I leave you to your fate. I'm obliged to return to the hotel, to hold a bed of justice. It appears that my innocent darlings, beyond there, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... easily enough,) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion. While admitting that the venerable and heavenly forms of chiming versification have in their time play'd great and fitting parts—that the pensive complaint, the ballads, wars, amours, legends of Europe, &c., have, many of them, been inimitably render'd in rhyming verse—that there have been very illustrious poets ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... A shout of applause was followed by wild strummings and tunings of mandolins, and occasional scratching of heads or turbans, to remember all that Hafiz had ever written, or to aid their attempts at improviso versification. Time flew on, and no one of the young rayahs appeared inclined to begin. At last one stepped forward, and named the rose, in a borrowed couplet. He was dismissed with a graceful wave of the hand by the princess, and broke his mandolin in his vexation, as he quitted the ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... the memorable Wartburg in Thuringia were the acknowledged centres of taste and good breeding. They were the courts of last resort in all questions of style, grammar and versification. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... remains of his life in turning the Consolation of Boethius into English. The translation was published after the translator's death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some very unsuccessful attempts to enrich our versification with new metres, and on account of the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under a thin veil of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public compassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. He complained ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at least equally to its merit. In "The Dispensary" there is a strain of smooth and free versification; but few lines are eminently elegant. No passages fall below mediocrity, and few rise much above it. The plan seems formed without just proportion to the subject; the means and end have no necessary connection. Resnel, in his preface to ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... to note again that the Jews in turn submitted to the influence of foreign literatures. Immanuel Romi, for example, at his best, is an exponent of Provencal versification and scholastic philosophy, while his lapses testify to the self-complacency and levity characteristic of the times. Yehuda Romano, one of his contemporaries, is said to have been teacher to the king ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... at work on some more of the Young Astronomer's lines. I find less occasion for meddling with them as he grows more used to versification. I think I could analyze the processes going on in his mind, and the conflict of instincts which he cannot in the nature of things understand. But it is as well to give the reader a chance to find ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Rossetti's emendation, adopted by Forman and Dowden. Here again—cf. note on (17) above—Prof. Woodberry commits himself by stigmatizing the correction as one 'for which there is no authority in Shelley's habitual versification.' Rossetti's conjecture is confirmed by the reading of B., white ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... therein as a preacher, who delighted in the collection of olden tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Lansdowne (1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence, The Last Day, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young, it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land 'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that day be forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young's verse ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... of their composition, has had to apply himself, almost without cessation, to the performance of newspaper press duties; and those who know anything about such things need not be told that a taste for versification is, to a press-man, as a rule, what poverty is to most people—a very inconvenient and by no means a profitable companion. In my own case, however, the inconvenience has been a pleasure, and I have no reason to find fault as to profit. From the fitful excitement ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... said Hyacinthe. "Well, since I renounced versification—a little poem I had begun on the End of Woman—because words seemed to me so gross and cumbersome, mere paving-stones as it were, fit for labourers, I myself have had some idea of trying drawing, and perhaps engraving too. But what drawing can portray the mystery which lies beyond life, the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... his judgment seemed perfectly justified, and even if he was wrong, it is interesting to note that this poor sailor and night-watchman was ready to rise up and criticise an eminent dignitary and scholar on rather delicate points of versification and the finer distinctions ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... each other only in one point—in their taste for poetry, or perhaps we ought to say versification, but even here ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... was to give an extraordinary importance to the speeches; and it is in the eloquence of these, in the grandeur and dignity of the versification, and in the lofty moral elevation of the characters, that Corneille excels. All of these qualities are admirably exemplified in "Polyeucte"; and in the conduct of the leading personages one may perceive the most persistent trait of this dramatist's ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille
... impressions. His denunciations and sarcasms, the harsh things of all sorts he says of the great, of fashionable people and of women, his rude and cutting tone, provoke and irritate, but are not displeasing. On the contrary, after so many compliments, insipidities and petty versification all this quickens the blunted taste; it is the sensation of strong common wine after long indulgence in orgeat and preserved citron. Accordingly, his first discourse against art and literature "lifts one at ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... patterns of versification were introduced, the Saturnian rhythm seems to have received a different explanation. It was considered as a compound of the iambic and trochaic systems. It might be described as an iambic hepthemimer followed by a trochaic dimeter brachycatalectic. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... printed in the second volume of the Minor Poets, and he is by far the most considerable writer amongst them. He has a very happy talent in versification, which much exceeds Addison's, and is inferior to few of the English Poets, Mr. Dryden and Pope excepted. The first poem in this collection is addressed to the supposed ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... of Racine, and the tender passions are certainly touched by that elegant and most pathetic writer with a much finer hand. I need not add that he is infinitely more correct than Corneille, and more harmonious and noble in his versification. Corneille formed himself entirely upon Lucan, but the master of Racine was Virgil. How much better a taste had the former than the latter in choosing ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... some slight counter current of this kind; so much, indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will even do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's versification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior because he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere; if all were equally melodious, ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... difficulties of our language, the satisfaction of approaching in a novel and perceptibly felt manner one of those excellences which, as much as anything, contributes to the permanent charm of Catullus, his dainty versification, will more than compensate for any shortcomings which the difficulty of the task has made inevitable. The same may be said of the elaborately artificial poem to Camerius (c. lv.), and the almost unapproachable Attis (c. lxiii.). Here, at least half ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... volume having been devoted to the Reason or Theory of Art in general, it is our intention in the second, Rhyme and Rhythm, to bring these comprehensive thoughts to a focus, and concentrate their light upon the art of Versification. Indeed, this volume is to be considered as a manual of poetic Rhythm. Practical rules are given for its construction and criticism; simple solutions offered of its apparent irregularities and anomalies; and examples of sufficient length are quoted from the best poets to afford just ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... verdict was unfavourable:—"There is some sweetness of versification and of expression in Miss Melville's poems, but they are unequal, and want force and interest. They never would become popular, so that I feel obliged to decline the publication. Poetry is at all times heavy stock, unless by authors of ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... Western States, and the Indian frontiers has created an unique school of realistic fiction in which Mr. Kipling is at this moment the chief professor. There is moreover a manifest affinity between these short prose narratives and the strain of racy strenuous versification upon the quaint unvarnished notions and hardy exploits of the bush, the prairie, or the frontier, by which Bret Harte, Lindsay Gordon, and again Kipling have attained celebrity. As these poems echo the far-off ring of the ancient ballad, so we may venture ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... his versification, we shall be sensible what a share of praise is due to his invention in that also. He was not satisfied with his language as he found it settled in any one part of Greece, but searched through its ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... taken from English history, is written in a remarkably smooth and flowing style, very different from some of the tragedies, MACBETH, for instance. The passages consist of a series of single lines, not running into one another. This peculiarity in the versification, which is most common in the three parts of HENRY VI, has been assigned as a reason why those plays were not written by Shakespeare. But the same structure of verse occurs in his other undoubted plays, as in RICHARD II and in KING JOHN. The ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... to show what is coming, so that one can get ready to cry or laugh, as the case may be—a kind of sign-board, a milestone, to tell where we are going, and how fast we go. The readers then call her attention to the solid columns of the other papers, and the versification of the World. She said she did not like the dead calm. She liked the breaking up into verses, like her songs. That is a good thing; it gives the reporter time to take breath and sharpen his pen, and think of some witty thing to say; for life is a hard battle anyway, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... the "Heliand." The investigation has been admirably started by Mr. Edouard Sievers in a little book containing this portion of the text, and exhibiting in detail the peculiar intimacy of relation between it and the "Heliand," in regard to vocabulary, phraseology, and versification. This part of Mr. Sievers' work is complete. Probably no one who has gone through his proofs will be found to question his conclusion, that there is between the "Heliand" and the Saxon "Paradise Lost" such an identity as isolates those two works from all other literature, and makes ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... The precious fragment consists of 69 alliterating verses, which are preserved in a Kassel manuscript of the 8th or 9th century. The language shows a mixture of Low and High German, there are gaps in the text, the meaning of several words is doubtful, and the versification is here and there defective. All this, which some account for by supposing that the manuscript was copied from a version which had been written down from memory and not perfectly recalled, makes translation difficult and uncertain. The poetic version here given is that found in Btticher and Kinzel's ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... our nineteenth century poets, and particularly to Tennyson, Swinburne, and William Morris. Years ago Mr. R.H. Horne said most acutely that the principle of Chaucer's rhythm is "inseparable from a full and fair exercise of the genius of our language in versification." This "full and fair exercise" became a despised, almost a lost, tradition after Chaucer's death. The rhythms of Skelton, of Surrey, and Wyatt, were produced on alien and narrower lines. Revived by Shakespeare and the later Elizabethans, it ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mirror for Magistrates," which will be mentioned hereafter in speaking of the works of Thomas Sackville lord Buckhurst. The legends combined in this collection, which came from the pen of Ferrers, are not distinguished by any high flights of poetic fancy, nor by a versification extremely correct or melodious. Their merit is that of narrating after the chronicles, facts in English history, in a style clear, natural, and energetic, with an intermixture of political reflections conceived in a spirit of wisdom and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... fortune at the courts of the cardinals in the capacity of companions or secretaries, or as preceptors to their illegitimate children. Lucretia, also, received instruction in classic literature from these masters. Among the poets who lived in Rome she found teachers to instruct her in Italian versification and in writing sonnets, an art which was everywhere cultivated by women as well as men. She doubtless learned to compose verses, although the writers on the history of Italian literature, Quadrio and Crescimbeni, do not place ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... all over this nation Centuries after myself shall have died; People will point to my versification— I, who was born on ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... that, in the astounding experiment of Locrine, none of 'the life of human character or the life-likeness of dramatic dialogue has suffered from the bondage of rhyme or has been sacrificed to the exigences of metre.' But when all is said, when an unparalleled skill in language, versification, and everything that is verbal in form, has been admitted, and with unqualified admiration; when, in addition, one has admitted, with not less admiration, noble qualities of substance, superb qualities ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... I've been expecting it. I suppose it's the appointed gate o' a workman's intellectual life—that same lust o' versification. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... far more important and more useful contributor, whose work was full of talent, whose versification was clever and pointed, and whose topical "Punch's Fairy Tales" (with obtrusively obvious morals) are models of their kind. His "Little Frenchman's First Lesson" (May 18th, 1844) purports to be a translation of a French poem with which patriots are supposed to implant hatred ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Tricks" as a specimen of versification might perhaps have been included in the volume of Verses for Children, but it seemed best to keep it with the "Owl Hoots," as these papers were the last that Mrs. Ewing wrote. The first appeared in The Child's Pictorial Magazine a few days before ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... fifteenth century, lies, or did lie until very lately, unheeded in the cemetery of the Escurial, with the dust of many a better worthy. [32] The extracts selected from it by Castro, although occasionally exhibiting some fluent graces with considerable variety of versification, convey, on the whole, no very high idea of taste or ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... are greatly on the decline; next, those who have kept up their classical studies, and are able to read and enjoy the original, will hardly take an interest in a mere translation; while the English reader, unacquainted with Greek, will naturally prefer the harmonious versification and polished brilliancy of Pope's translation; with which, as a happy adaptation of the Homeric story to the spirit of English poetry, I have not the presumption to enter into competition. But, admirable as it ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... Middle Ages verse-making was very popular and very widely practised; for versification is very easy when people are in the habit of using it freely, and a verse is much more easily remembered than a line of prose. For many generations legends were versified. It must be remembered that verse and poetry are often very far apart; and poetry is as difficult ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... usually fashioned, differs in each of the great national families, even as their language and genius differ. He also shows that the earliest Latin ecclesiastical poets were Irish, and formed their hymns upon the rules of Irish versification; thus quite controverting the theory that rhyme was introduced by the Saracens in the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... "Couplets on M. Laisney, imprimeur a Peronne," he says: "It was in his printing-house that I was put to prentice; not having been able to learn orthography, he imparted to me the taste for poetry, gave me lessons in versification, ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... introspection will countenance it. That we do take advantage of metrical language to adjust our perceptive faculties to the force of the expected articulations, is clear from the fact that we are balked by halting versification. Much as at the bottom of a flight of stairs, a step more or less than we counted upon gives us a shock; so, too, does a misplaced accent or a supernumerary syllable. In the one case, we know that there ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... him in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was distinguished by its truthfulness to nature, by its expression in hearty and harmonious words of the finer emotions of the soul, and by the freedom and elasticity of its versification. We should learn that in the seventeenth century this style of poetry—sometimes called the romantic—was succeeded by another and very different fashion in poetic composition, introduced into England in imitation of continental and classical models: ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Perhaps his coming later than the rest may have contributed to lessen the esteem he deserves. Garth had success as a poet; and, for a time, his fame was even greater than his desert. In his principal work, 'The Dispensary', his versification is negligent; and his plot is now become tedious; but whatever he may lose as a poet, it would be improper to rob him of the merit he deserves for having written the prose dedication, and preface, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... approbation as I could conscientiously bestow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,—that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken tick, tick, after all,—and that he had never seen a sweet-water ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the ill-mannered old woman turned into an attractive little girl. Southey apparently was delighted with efforts to bring his story into any form more pleasing to the folk, and we find his son-in-law saying that he was especially pleased with a versification "by G. N. and published especially for the amusement of 'little people' lest in the volumes of The Doctor it should 'escape their sight.'" However, it would appear that teachers at least should know this masterpiece in the only form in which its author put it. To that end ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... organization, and an unhappy memory. An early poem is only remarkable when it displays an effort of reason, and the rudest verses in which we can trace some conception of the ends of poetry, are worth all the miracles of smooth juvenile versification. A school-boy, one would say, might acquire the regular see-saw of Pope merely by an association with the motion of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Alderman VARIAN, whose v always takes the form of a w, especially in his rendering of a foreign tongue; as witness his being 'just on the qwi-wi-we for the capitol,' on one occasion, and the subjoined versification of another of his ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... treatise /On Greek Versification in Inscriptions/ (Boston, 1888) gives an account of the slight changes in structure (caesura, etc.) between earlier ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... musical talent, and I remember distinctly the evident pleasure with which Percival listened to the chorus of organ tones and rich cultivated voices. In general, however, his appreciation of music was subordinate to his study of syllabic movement in versification; and it was with reference chiefly to poetic measure, I have been told, that he acquired what mastery he had over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... death—that the small folio appeared with a fine portrait, still dear to the collector, which contains for the first time what may be called the "garden-poetry" of our author, together with some specimens of his political and satirical versification. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... ignorant that they may be happy, we protest against the innovation. In this dangerous experiment of Poe's, however, we are forced to do what he would have us do—admire the ingenuity of the poet, together with his knowledge of effect, rhythmical and dramatic, his flexibility and strength of versification, and marvellous faculty of word painting. This propensity to make all things subservient to the advancement of Art is not always productive of present good to one's fellow beings, whatever may be the results to posterity, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... which makes her nature; so that they get, after all, but a sort of post-mortem knowledge of her." Again, he observes—"Pope, for example, was the prince of versifiers, and Hume the prince of logicians: with the one versification strangled itself in a tub of honey; with the other logic broke its neck in trying to fly in a vacuum. It is by no means strange, therefore, that the thousand-eyed philosophy of Shakspeare should have seemed a perfect monster to the one-eyed logic of Hume." Perhaps the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... intermixture is requisite ... It is without reason, therefore, that some critics have censured these modes of speech, and ridiculed the poet for the use of them; as old Euclid did, objecting that versification would be an easy business, if it were permitted to lengthen words at pleasure, and then giving a burlesque example of that sort of diction... In the employment of all the species of unusual words, moderation is necessary: for metaphors, foreign words, or any of the others improperly ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Swabian Minnelieder, the connecting link between modern and ancient German poetry. Still, notwithstanding their merit as critics, they were no poets, and merely opened to others the road to improvement. Hagedorn, although frivolous in his ideas, was graceful and easy in his versification; but the most eminent poet of the age was Gellert of Leipzig, A.D. 1769, whose tales, fables, and essays brought him into such note as to attract the attention of Frederick the Great, who, notwithstanding the contempt ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... 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, Sir Robert Aytoun, and Drummond of Hawthornden, have, amidst much elegant versification, left no impression on the popular mind. Other poets of that and the succeeding age imitated Buchanan, by writing in Latin verse. Though a considerable portion of our elder popular songs may be fairly ascribed ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... For that age, this form of literature was the most agreeable diversion from archaeological studies, and, indeed, the only possible means of re-establishing an independent class of narrative poetry. For the versification of ancient history could only lead to the false tracks which were trodden by Petrarch in his 'Africa,' written in Latin hexameters, and a hundred and fifty years later by Trissino in his 'Italy delivered from the Goths,' composed in 'versi sciolti'—a never-ending poem ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Blifil, "dismissed the corpse with a single fee, but were not so disgusted with the living patient." At parting, the Bishop took the Curate most kindly by the hand, and recommended him by all means to cultivate the amiability of versification. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Reformation period appears to have spent itself. The following century added nothing to Danish hymnody. Anders Chrestensen Arrebo, Bishop at Tronhjem, and an ardent lover and advocate of a richer cultivation of the Danish language and literature, published a versification of the Psalms of David and a few hymns in 1623. But the Danish church never became a psalm singing church, and his hymns have disappeared. Hans Thomisson's hymnal continued to be printed with occasional additions of new material, most of which possessed no permanent value. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... remarkable Italian Abbe Galiani, under date of May 3d, 1778.[28] And she proceeds to give a translation in French verse, which she says "D'Alembert made the other day between sleeping and waking." Galiani, who was himself a master of Latin versification, and followed closely the fortunes of America, must have enjoyed the tribute. In a letter written shortly afterwards, he enters into all the grandeur of the occasion. "You have," says he, "at this hour decided the greatest question ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... technical difficulties of rhyme and rhythm; he performs his tour de force, the difficulties are overcome, and his task is accomplished. But Racine's problem was very different. The technical restrictions he laboured under were incredibly great; his vocabulary was cribbed, his versification was cabined, his whole power of dramatic movement was scrupulously confined; conventional rules of every conceivable denomination hurried out to restrain his genius, with the alacrity of Lilliputians ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... resemblance to the original as an unhewn shaft to the fluted column. Mr. Hayward unconsciously illustrates his lack of a refined appreciation of verse, "in giving," as he says, "a sort of rhythmical arrangement to the lyrical parts," his object being "to convey some notion of the variety of versification which forms one great charm of the poem." A literal translation is always possible in the unrhymed passages; but even here Mr. Hayward's ear did not dictate to him the necessity of ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Alphonsus which resembles Chapman's undisputed work, and it is hard to believe that he had a hand in it. The Revenge for Honour is on an Oriental theme, entirely different from those handled by Chapman in his other tragedies, and the versification is marked by a greater frequency of feminine endings than is usual with him; but phrases and thoughts occur which may be paralleled from his plays, and the work may be ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... occurred to me that you could give me a hint or two at versification. I have just commenced, but I find it no easy matter, the ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... here importune death] [Theobald had regularized the versification and had added two words] Mr. Theobald's emendation is received by the succeeding editors; but it seems not necessary that a dialogue so distressful should be nicely regular. I have therefore preserved the original reading in the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... following little history has presumed to borrow the peculiar style of versification from Longfellow's ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... century, created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in a single document. It is only in a refined and speculative age that a polity is constructed on system. In rude societies the progress of government resembles the progress of language and of versification. Rude societies have language, and often copious and energetic language: but they have no scientific grammar, no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at Love's Labour's Lost, published in quarto, in 1598, as "corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere." The date of composition is unknown, but the many varieties of versification, with some allusions, mark it as among the earliest of the dramas. Supposing that Shakespeare obtained his knowledge of fine manners and speech, and of the tedious quips and conceits which he satirises, from the contemporary poems, plays, and ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... the last years of his life. It has always seemed to me that Dr. Watts's rank as a poet has never been properly appreciated. If ever there was a poet born, he was that man; he attained without study a smoothness of versification, which, with Pope, was the result of the intensest analysis and most artistic care. Nor do the most majestic and resounding lines of Dryden equal some of his in majesty of volume. The most harmonious lines of Dryden, that ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the songs, the reader is warned that it will be found difficult to make them conform to the ordinary rules of versification, nor is it intended that they should so conform. They are written, and are intended to be read, solely with reference to the regular and invariable recurrence of the caesura, as, for instance, the first stanza of the ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... wrong, or, perhaps it would be truer to say, on premature lines. From this time henceforth the whole serious production of Latin poetry for centuries was a continuous effort to master and adapt Greek structure and versification; the Odyssey of Livius was the first and, with one notable exception, almost the last sustained attempt to use the native forms of Italian rhythm towards any large achievement; this current thereafter sets underground, and only emerges ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... of Milton, intended to strengthen Mrs. Renshaw's argument, really weakens it; for while he undoubtedly condemns rhyme, he laments in the course of this very condemnation the lame metre which is sometimes concealed by apt rhyming. "Some Views on Versification," by Clara I. Stalker, is an essay written from a sounder and more conservative point of view. The middle course in poetical composition, which avoids alike wild eccentricities and mechanical precision, has much to recommend it, and Miss Stalker does well to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... laboriously accumulated. Yet the Poem contains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed the passion is every where true to nature; a great number of the stanzas present beautiful images, and are expressed with unusual felicity of language; and the versification, though the metre is itself unfit for long poems, is harmonious and artfully varied, exhibiting the utmost powers of that metre, and every variety of which it is capable. It therefore appeared to me that these several ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... criticisms about him. Ben Jonson said that Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging. But Donne, though he forgot to keep step with the procession of poets, has survived many poets who tripped a regular measure. He has survived even Pope's "versification" of his poems, one of the most unconsciously humorous things in English literature. Accent alone will not keep a man alive. Which poet of these latter days stands the better chance to remain, Francis Thompson, whose spiritual flame occasionally burned up accent, or Alfred Austin, who ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... Like so many other poets, he took infinite delight in the Faery Queen; but Dryden, the great poetical luminary of his own day, naturally exercised a predominant influence upon his mind. He declared that he had learnt versification wholly from Dryden's works, and always mentioned his name with reverence. Many scattered remarks reported by Spence, and the still more conclusive evidence of frequent appropriation, show him to have been familiar with the poetry of the preceding century, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... was placed at the University of Edinburgh, where his studies were as irregular as at the High School: at the latter he is said to have made his first attempt at versification in the description of a thunderstorm in six lines, the recital of which afforded his mother considerable pleasure and promise; and, on another occasion, he is stated to have remarked, during a journey over a sterile district of Scotland, in a day of drizzling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... Espronceda, Spain's greatest Romantic poet, offers the best possible approach to the whole subject of Romanticism. He is Spain's "representative man" in that movement. Furthermore, the wealth of meters he uses is such that no other poet provides so good a text for an introduction to the study of Spanish versification. The editor has therefore treated the biography of Espronceda with some degree of completeness, studying his career as one fully representative of the historical and literary movements of the period. A treatment of the main principles of Spanish versification ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... an average, we have beaten our ancestors; seldom can we take up a paper or a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great names; the age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; and truly may we consider that the very abundance of good versification has lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... happily the sound of the clock is made to alarm the audience. Southern would have been his favourite, but that he mixes comick with tragick scenes, intercepts the natural course of the passions, and fills the mind with a wild confusion of mirth and melancholy. The versification of Rowe he thought too melodious for the stage, and too little varied in different passions. He made it the great fault of Congreve, that all his persons were wits, and that he always wrote with more art than nature. He considered Cato rather as a poem than a play, and allowed Addison to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Shakespeare's genius can be adequate. In knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judgment, he has no rival. It is true of him, as of no other writer, that his language and versification adapt themselves to every phase of sentiment, and sound every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expressions, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... him; and, when he was no more, perpetuated his fame, which he felt was a portion of his own celebrity, by publishing his posthumous poem, De Arts Graphica;[A] a poem, which Mason has made readable by his versification, and Reynolds even interesting ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... immortalized many of WILL CARLETON'S earlier poems enter again into his City Ballads.[11] If ever a poet comprehended the human heart and the mainspring of its responses, it is he who gave us that wonderfully-common-place (by reason only of its theme) but delightful versification, "Betsey and I are out." His new collection embraces several pieces almost as striking in their character; and their wholesomeness and truthfulness of sentiment will win for them many readers. None of these poems are fanciful pictures ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... the doggerel poem in the State Poems Marvel's? Several poems which are ascribed to him are as bad in versification, and, I need not say, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... translation is now at an end, and the less arduous work of revision remains to be done, and then we shall see it published. I promise both you and myself much pleasure from its perusal. You will most probably find it at first less pleasing than Pope's versification, owing to the difference subsisting between blank verse and rhyme—a difference which is not sufficiently attended to, and whereby people are led into injudicious comparisons. You will find Mr. Pope more refined: Mr. Cowper more simple, grand, and majestic; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various
... to mention that the appellation "Childe,"[2] as "Childe Waters," "Childe Childers," etc., is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification which I have adopted. The "Good Night" in the beginning of the first Canto, was suggested by Lord Maxwell's "Good Night"[3] in the Border ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... thus, 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7; and a naga-uta (long song) consisted of an unlimited number of lines, all fulfilling the same conditions as to number of syllables and alternation of phrases. No parallel to this kind of versification has been found yet in the literature of any other nation. The Chronicles and the Records abound with tanka and naga-uta, many of which have been ascribed by skeptics to an age not very remote from the time when those books were ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... scenery amidst which they lie, created a youthful desire to depict them in verse. This doggrel ditty (I forestall the critics!) of the Miller of Roche is all, however, that I preserved of the imperfect piece. The ditty is a homely versification of a homely tale which was often told by the fireside in Lincolnshire. I never saw anything resembling it in print, until Mr. Dickens (whose kind attention I cannot help acknowledging) pointed out to me a ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... were the troubadours, who were traveling minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers, 1087-1127. Among the kind of songs cultivated by these ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... wood in Caithness. I knew Sir Tollemache Sinclair well, but unfortunately he was not at home. He was what is called "a character." He had strong literary tastes, and firmly believed that he understood the art of French versification better than Victor Hugo. The last time I had seen him was at a hotel in Paris. He was on that occasion in a mood of great complacency, having just been spending an hour with Victor Hugo at luncheon. I asked him if, with regard to French versification, Victor Hugo agreed with him. "No," he replied, ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... basement. On the altar side there are also some verses, by an unknown author, in which human life is compared to "the damask rose and blossom on the tree," with other images of its vanity and shortness. There is a dash of Elizabethan vigour in the versification, mixed with a certain quaintness which points to the decadence, and the lines have been attributed to such different writers as Francis Beaumont and Francis Quarles. The figures in the monument have been "beautified" with ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... The versification of the first stanza of this section is very lovely, and subtly responsive to the feeling. It exhibits the completest inspiration. No mere metrical skill, nor metrical sensibility even, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... us a specimen of the versification of the 137th psalm, in the Bible; one of the sweetest lyrics ever written, beginning 'By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion; we hanged our harps upon the willows,' etc. This psalm, whose exquisite beauties are so well preserved in our common ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... have heard Johnson say, 'Sir, a thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.' That power must undoubtedly be allowed its due share in enhancing the value ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... endeavored to elucidate a somewhat obscure subject. Some of the poet's allusions remain enigmatical to the present day. The point of each sarcasm naturally passed out of mind together with the society against which it was levelled. If some of the versification is rough and wanting in "go," I must plead in excuse the difficult form of the stanza, and in many instances the inelastic nature of the subject matter to be versified. Stanza XXXV Canto II forms ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... worthy of so great an honor than by telling him quite frankly just what she thought of his verses. They were very, very pretty. He had talent—great talent. Only, as in attending the classes of M. Regis she had acquired some little knowledge of the laws of versification, she would like to warn him against impairing a thought for the benefit of a rhyme, and she pointed out several such places in ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... are taken from the Old Testament or the New, and the versification embraces a great variety of metres, with the ease and sweetness almost peculiar to female writers. The whole book of Jonah is finely illustrated in a series of poems which cannot fail ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... is surprised to find himself at so great a distance from the object with which he set out."—Id.; also Murray cor. "Few rules can be given which will hold good in all cases."—Lowth and Mur. cor. "Versification is the arrangement of words into metrical lines, according to the laws of verse."—Johnson cor. "Versification is the arrangement of words into rhythmical lines of some particular length, so as to produce harmony by the ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... thought that Racine had strength sufficient to make him the equal of Corneille. "Sire," said the comic poet, "Racine has already surpassed Corneille by the harmonious elegance of his versification, and by the natural, true sensibility of his dialogue; his situations are never fictitious; all his words, his phrases, come from the heart. Racine alone is a true poet, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... few of us were bold enough to ask the main difference between this Roman system of versification and the system which governed modern English poetry—even ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... 1576, we find a dramatic entertainment entered, called "The Historie of the Colyer," acted by the Earl of Leicester's men; but it was doubtless Ulpian Fulwell's "Like will to Like, quod the Devil to the Colier," printed in 1568. The structure, phraseology, versification, and language of "Grim, the Collier of Croydon," are sufficient to show that it was written before 1600: another instance to prove how much the arrangement of the plays made by Mr Reed was calculated to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... versification excellent, and my disinclination to take the parentage is not because of any defect in them; but it is a matter of fact, there is only one word which I inserted, and which I claim as my own composition—that ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... and languid. Its motion is circular, not progressive. Each line revolves on itself in a sort of separate orbit. They do not join into one another like a running-hand. Fletcher's ideas moved slow; his versification, though sweet, is tedious, it stops at every turn; he lays line upon line, making up one after the other, adding image to image so deliberately, that we see their junctures. Shakspeare mingles everything, runs line into line, ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... appearance, which I immediately procured; it was the production of an American, a scholar, once in the best society, but who, by intemperance, had forfeited his claim to it. He wrote the very best satirical poem I ever read by an American, full of force, and remarkable for energetic versification; but intemperance, the prevalent vice of America, had induced him to beggary and wretchedness, he was (by his own request I understand) shut up in the house of correction at South Boston, that he might, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... importance in English schools. At present, very little is generally taught, and perhaps known, about this subject. In a recent elaborate edition of the works of Pope, the skill of that consummate master of the art of epigrammatic versification is impugned because in one of his lines he suffers the to receive the metrical accent. When one of the commonest customs (for it is in no sense a license) of English poets—a custom sanctioned by Shakspeare, Dryden, Milton, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... merit; since, to judge from the practice of the national poets, the French ear seems to be even better pleased with such strict identities of sound, at the close of corresponding lines, than it is with those definite mere resemblances to which, in English versification, rhymes are rigidly limited. Suspense between hope and dread, dread preponderating, is the state of feeling represented in the present chorus. Salomith is the ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... flattered by these efforts. His poetry, notably his odes on "Tea," and the "Eulogy of Moukden" as the cradle of his race, was translated by Pere Amiot, and attracted the attention of Voltaire, who addressed to the emperor an epistolary poem on the requirements and difficulties of Chinese versification. The French thus rendered a material service in making China better known to Europe and Europe better known in China, which, although it may be hard to gauge precisely, entitles them still to rank among those who ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... confine his attention to those superior sciences. He treated of music, and of rhetoric, of grammar, and the art of versification, and of arithmetic, both by letters and on the fingers; and his work on this last subject is the only one in which that piece of antique curiosity has been preserved to us. All these are short pieces; some of them are in the catechetical method, and seem designed ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... of no ignoble type, but probably because he was part of an age when verse had become the habitual form of culture, and all who could write caught the habit of versification,—a habit easier to fall into in Italian than in any other language. But while the consecration of time has been given to the 'Commedia,' and the 'Convito' passes into the shadow and perspective of lesser things, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... there may be noted, in qualification of much pliancy and vigour, a certain air of experiment in occasional passages, and a license in versification, which more than warrants a warning "to expect every kind of irregularity in these modern hexameters." The following lines defy all efforts at reading in dactyls or spondees, and require an almost complete transposition ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... to be preferred, especially in such composition as includes much action: but every great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification. The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet—the truth and splendour of his imagery, and the melody of his language, ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... sympathies go back very far, further back than these Confessions; I find them in a French sonnet, crude and diffuse in versification, of the kind which finds favour with the very young, a sonnet which I should not publish did it not remind me of two things especially dear to me, my love of ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... writers the two stand side by side. Lover had more versatility of talent, taking him partly outside the field of literature. He made the most of his powers: nothing which he has written gives the idea that he might have done it better. He was a poet, which Lever was not, and had an easy command of versification and language. His songs, while they show no high poetic qualities, are excellent of their kind, and his facility in turning an impromptu verse is shown in this scrap from the book before us in praise ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... and versification of the Monody, the heroic couplet in which it is written has long been a sort of Ulysses' bow, at which Poetry tries her suitors, and at which they almost all fail. Redundancy of epithet and monotony of cadence are the inseparable companions of this metre in ordinary ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... "our Pindarick madness" is well known. The "first and obvious defect" of Dryden's Threnodia "is the irregularity of its metre." The "lax and lawless versification" of this type of poetry, he wrote in the Life of Cowley, "concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle." One cannot but wonder therefore at his praise of Morrison's ode. To be sure, Reynolds quotes Johnson as pronouncing ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... externals of poetry. Minds with some breadth but with little depth are not thoroughly original. Their sense of the beautiful busies itself necessarily with that for which they have the readiest gifts; and their readiest gifts being words more than ideas, versification more than thought, form more than substance, they turn out verse, chiefly narrative, which captivates through its easy flow, its smooth sensuousness of diction, its gloss. Take a poet so celebrated, in some respects so admirable, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... also Coleridge who said that with the exception of Lucretius and Statius he knew no Latin poet, ancient or modern, who could be said to equal Casimire in boldness of conception, opulence of fancy, or beauty of versification.[8] A knowledge of the themes and techniques of this Latin poet should therefore be of interest to all ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... be some who swear he never lived at all—aye! though his poems have come down to us,—and many are the arguments I have had with so-called wise men like Zabastes, concerning his style and method of versification. Everything he has written bears the impress of the same master-touch,—nevertheless garrulous controversialists hold that his famous work the 'Ruva-Kalama' descended by oral tradition from mouth to mouth till it came to us in its 'improved' present condition. 'Improved!'" and Sah-luma ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... passage in Lucan is a versification of the same narrative related by Pliny, lib. viii. ch. 35; and AElian, lib. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... the confusion of voices has not ceased or diminished. Beckmesser has been heatedly, in support of his chalk-marks, going over Walther's literary misdemeanours: Defective versification, unpronounceable words, misplaced rhymes, etc. etc. The masters have been vociferously criticising and rejecting the new-comer. Pogner has looked on and taken no part, a dejected spectator. He is sorry to see the Knight defeated, and he says to himself that he knows ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... indeed a very ill-advised attempt, even as regards the reviewers addressed. The very tone adopted, that of deprecation of criticism, would be in their view a proof of weakness, and as such they accepted it. Nor had the poem any better chance with the general reader. Its rhetoric and versification were only one more of the interminable echoes of the manner of Pope. It had no organic unity. The wearisome note of plea for indulgence had to be relieved at intervals by such irrelevant episodes as ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the most suitable for the purpose; and Chaucer as a Southern man (like his "Parson of a Town") belonged to a part of the country where the old alliterative verse had long since been discarded for classical and romance forms of versification. Thus the "Romaunt of the Rose" most suitably opens his literary life—a translation in which there is nothing original except an occasional turn of phrase, but in which the translator finds opportunity for exercising his powers of judgment by virtually re-editing the work before him. ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the very act of making a contract with the Devil for his soul forms the fourth. Faust, overwhelmed with confusion, has not a word to say; and Satan seizing him by the hair of his head, carries him off in triumph. This piece is written in iambics of ten syllables and the versification appeared to me correct and harmonious, and the sentiments forcible and poetical; this fully compensated for the bizarrerie of the story itself, which, by the bye, with all the reproach thrown by the adherents of the classic taste on those of the romantic, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... grateful to the ears of men. If not passion, there was fervor, which was perhaps as near it as the somewhat stately movement of Spenser's mind would allow him to come. Sidney had tried many experiments in versification, which are curious and interesting, especially his attempts to naturalize the sliding rhymes of Sannazzaro in English. But there is everywhere the uncertainty of a 'prentice hand. Spenser shows himself already a master, at least in verse, and we ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Il Penseroso. Milton's minor poems, which had hitherto been neglected, {199} exercised a great influence on Collins and Gray. Collins's Ode to Simplicity was written in the stanza of Milton's Nativity, and his exquisite unrimed Ode to Evening was a study in versification, after Milton's translation of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha, in the original meters. Shakspere began to to be studied more reverently: numerous critical editions of his plays were issued, and Garrick restored his pure ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Malay signifies a wanderer. As a people they are passionate, vain, susceptible, and endowed with a reckless bravery and contempt of death. The Malays have considerable originality in versification. The pantoum is particularly theirs—a form arising from their habits of improvisation and competitive versifying. They have also the epic or sjair, generally a pure romance, with much naive simplicity and natural feeling. And finally, they ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... led her often to interfere, had not the Major constantly checked, and at the same time encouraged her; for the wily man of the world fancied he saw that a favourable turn had occurred in Pen's malady. It was the violent efflux of versification, among other symptoms, which gave Pen's guardian and physician satisfaction. He might be heard spouting verses in the shrubbery walks, or muttering them between his teeth as he sat with the home party of evenings. One day prowling about the house in Pen's absence, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... notice those lesser inaccuracies from which the writings of men solely self-educated are rarely free,—indeed Aram himself, in sending to a gentleman an elegy on Sir John Armitage, which shows much, but undisciplined, power of versification, says, "I send this elegy, which, indeed, if you had not had the curiosity to desire, I could not have had the assurance to offer, scarce believing I, who was hardly taught to read, have any ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in our Scotch poets," said Dalrymple, as though not satisfied with the short answer he had given. "There is a very notable power of active living exhibited in their somewhat irregular versification, and in the concatenation of their ratiocinations regarding the three principal actions of the early Scottish life, which I take to have been birth, stealing, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... have it so. No word of song is possible, in that century, to mortal lips. Only polished versification, sententious pentameter and hexameter, until, having turned out its toes long enough without dancing, and pattered with its lips long enough without piping, suddenly Astraea returns to the earth, and a Day of Judgment of a sort, and there bursts out a song ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... form between the Chansons de Geste and the romances; though to this there are exceptions, themes not French, and themes not purely heroic, being represented in the epic form. In the early Teutonic poetry there is no distinction of versification, vocabulary, or rhetoric between the original and the secondary narrative poems; the alliterative verse belongs to both kinds equally. Nor is it always the case that subjects derived from books or from ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... taking narratives, full of Oriental passion, vivid descriptions of scenery, and portraitures of female loveliness and dark-browed heroes, often full of melody, but melodramatic; and in substance do not bear analysis. But they still impress with their flow of vitality, their directness and power of versification, and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Iliad is also often spoken of as characteristic of the style in which that great epic is written. And yet, as has been said, "though its versification is always appropriate, and therefore never mean, it only rises into stateliness, or into a terrible sublimity, when Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. Thus he ushers in with true grandeur ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... painting! In the first stages there are rules to be learned, just as in any other study. In school we had to learn the rules of grammar and mathematics. Just such rules are applicable to musical performance. I must know the rules of versification in order to scan poetic stanzas; so I must know the laws of rhythm and meter to be able to punctuate musical phrases and periods. Pupils who have long passed the stage of division and fractions do not seem able to determine the time-values of the various notes and groups of notes used ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... supposing that we wanted to make a poet of him, and nothing else, forbid him all quiet, steady, rational labor? Should we force him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the laws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to discover in the works of previous writers? Whatever gifts the boy had, would much be likely to come of them so treated? unless, indeed, they were so great as to break through all such snares of falsehood and vanity, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the balcony, spatter on the iron railing and form a shower bath for the pedestrians who ventured from beneath the protecting shelter. Before him was paper, partly covered with well-nigh illegible versification, and a bottle of ink, while a goose-quill, tool of the tuneful Nine, was expectantly poised in ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... verse-structure, and rhyme. There is, I believe, no good, concise, cheap handbook to English prosody; yet such a manual is greatly needed. The only one with which I am acquainted is Tom Hood the younger's *Rules of Rhyme: A Guide to English Versification*. Again, the introduction to Walker's *Rhyming Dictionary* gives a fairly clear elementary account of the subject. Ruskin also has written an excellent essay on verse-rhythms. With a manual in front of you, ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... cousin) of his predecessor, King Jo[a]o II. The theme of the play, the contention of Angel and Devil for the possession of a human soul, was far from new. Its treatment, however, was original and the versification is clear-cut and well sustained throughout, while a deep sincerity and glowing fervour raise the whole play to the loftiest heights. The metre is mostly in verses of seven short (8848484) lines (abcaabc) ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... walking in a melancholy mood along the beach towards Pebbleridge, doubting deeply in his honest mind whether he ever should do any good, in versification, or anything else. He said to himself that he had been too sanguine, eager, self-confident, ardent, impetuous, and, if the nasty word must be faced, even too self-conceited. Only yesterday he had tried, by delicate ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... sketch we are indebted to a lively volume of whim, humour, and pleasant sentiment, entitled Snatches from Oblivion: the work likewise contains some springy versification.—Ed.] ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 287, December 15, 1827 • Various
... house of Count Gouvon, and in the seminary at Annecy, and at Les Charmettes he did his best to teach himself, but without any better result than a very limited power of reading. In learning one rule he forgot the last; he could never master the most elementary laws of versification; he learnt and re-learnt twenty times the Eclogues of Virgil, but not a single word remained with him.[88] He was absolutely without verbal memory, and he pronounces himself wholly incapable of learning anything from masters. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... flamed nightly with three hundred burning cresaets, the city was strewn with flowers and decorated with triumphal arches, the Guilds of Rhetoric amazed the world with their gorgeous processions, glittering dresses and bombastic versification, the burghers all, from highest to humblest, were feasted and made merry, wine flowed in the streets and oxen were roasted whole, prizes on poles were climbed for, pigs were hunted blindfold, men and women raced ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
