"Alexandrine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Sonne Upon the Marche of orient, Was graunted be comun assent To Sem, which was the Sone eldeste; For that partie was the beste And double as moche as othre tuo. And was that time bounded so; 560 Wher as the flod which men Nil calleth Departeth fro his cours and falleth Into the See Alexandrine, Ther takth Asie ferst seisine Toward the West, and over this Of Canahim wher the flod is Into the grete See rennende, Fro that into the worldes ende Estward, Asie it is algates, Til that men come unto ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... translators had the good taste to imitate the authors of Ferrex and Porrex in the adoption of blank verse, and that one only amongst them made use of the heroic rhymed couplet; the others employing the old alexandrine measure, excepting in the choruses, which were given in various kinds of stanza. Her majesty alone seems to have perceived the superior advantages, or to have been tempted by the greater facility of Sackville's verse; and amongst the MSS. of the Bodleian library ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... unrivalled. Read him aright, and measure by time, not syllables, and no lines can be more legitimate,—none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as— ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... observed many years ago, and of which I could then give no satisfactory explanation. I was shooting in the marshes which surround the ruins of Gabia, and where there are still remains supposed to be of the Alexandrine aqueduct; I observed a small insulated hill, apparently entirely composed of travertine, and from its summit there were formations of tufa which had evidently been produced by running water, but the whole mass was now perfectly dry and encrusted by vegetables. At first I suspected ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... no lines can be more legitimate,—none in which the substitution of equipollent feet, and the modifications by emphasis, are managed with such exquisite judgment. B. and F. are fond of the twelve syllable (not Alexandrine) line, as:— ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... with the classical school of poetry; while blank verse, the nearest English equivalent of the language of Attic tragedy, was a shibboleth of romanticizing poets, like Thomson and Akenside. The reason was twofold: rhyme came stamped with the authority of the French tragic alexandrine; and, secondly, it meant constraint where blank verse meant freedom, "ancient liberty, recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming."[26] Pope, among his many thousand rhymed couplets, has left ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... invented by Edmund Spenser and employed by him in the "Faerie Queene," is a difficult but effective form of poetry. It consists of nine verses, the first eight being iambic pentameter, and the ninth line iambic hexameter, or Alexandrine. Its rhyme scheme is a b a b b c b c c. The following from Byron's "Childe Harold" will serve ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... books—which a patricist saw, but not being initiate could not read—was attributed to him.[17] The books contained the entire hieratic belief. Fragments that are held to have survived in an extant Greek novel are obviously Egyptian, but as obviously Alexandrine and neo-platonic. In the editio princeps Pheidias is mentioned. Mention of Michel Angelo would have been less anachronistic. The original books are gone, all of them, forever, perhaps, save one, chapters of which are as ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... when contemplated in its historic bearings, as an education of the faculties of man, that the emphasis that has been placed on special scientific methods discloses its significance. The speculative synthesis of Greek and Alexandrine Science was a superb training in Deduction,—in the descent from consciousness to Nature. Abstracted from its relations with reality, the scholasticism of the Middle Ages pushed Deduction to mania and moonshine. Then it was, that, in the sixteenth ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... would sweep away for all but boys of special classical ability most kinds of composition. Fancy teaching a boy side by side with the elements of German or French to compose German and French verse, heroic, Alexandrine, or lyrical! The idea has only to be stated to show its fatuity. I would teach boys to write Latin prose, because it is a tough subject, and it initiates them into the process of disentangling the real sense of the ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... " 48. Caesar follows Pompeius into Illyria. The lines of Dyrrachium and the Battle of Pharsalus. The beginning of the Alexandrine War. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... may still be seen in the Museum of Madrid, but the ninth muse, Urania, from which the d'Estes could not then be induced to part, is now in the Sala delle Muse of the Vatican. This is the Urania which Ebers imagines to have been carved by the young Alexandrine sculptor, Pollux, from the Selene whom we ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... so named from one principal theme celebrated,—namely, the deeds of Alexander the Great,—mixed fantastically the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome with the then prevailing ideas of chivalry, and with the figments of fairy lore. (The metrical form employed in these poems gave its name to the Alexandrine line later so predominant in French poetry.) The volume of this quasi-epical verse, existing in its three groups, or cycles, is immense. So is that of the satire and the allegory in metre that followed. From this latter store of stock and example, Chaucer drew to supply his muse with material. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... glass mosaic arranged in geometrical patterns was made use of to enrich the ambos, screens, episcopal chairs, sepulchral ornaments, and other similar fittings of churches, and was often of great beauty. A third sort of mosaic—the Alexandrine work (opus Alexandrinum)—used for pavements, has been already alluded to; this was extremely effective, but its use appears to have been less general than that of the glass ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... to be regretted that this splendid poem should show Cowley as the writer of the alexandrine that divides into two lines. For he it was who first used (or first conspicuously used) the alexandrine that is organic, integral, and itself a separate unit of metre. He first passed beyond the heroic ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... full breast of milk! Her complexion is fresh, her color is pure pink and white. In her forty-second year, she affects the young woman, buys little baby stockings, walks about followed by a nurse, embroiders caps and tries on the cunningest headdresses. Alexandrine has resolved to instruct her daughter by her example; she is delightful and happy. And yet this is a trouble, a petty one for you, a serious one for your son-in-law. This annoyance is of the two sexes, it is ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... of but eight lines and having the first four lines to rhyme alternately, and the last four immediately, and by having the concluding line an Alexandrine, as in the Spenserean stanzas, the difficulty, arising from the necessity of having so many similar rhymes, would be obviated, and the poet would have much greater facilities in expressing himself well, without impairing the dignity or ...
— The Emigrant - or Reflections While Descending the Ohio • Frederick William Thomas
... chose plus belle." Here is an Alexandrine written three hundred years ago, as simple as bon jour. Professor Aytoun is more ornate. After elegantly complimenting the spring, and a description of her Royal Highness's well-known ancestors the ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... [388:1] "The Alexandrine figs are of the black kind having a white rift or Chanifre, and are surnamed Delicate. . . . Certain figs there be, which are both early and also lateward; . . . . they are ripe first in harvest, and afterwards in time of vintage; . . . . also ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... Folies-Dramatiques; I pay her board, and, in exchange, she pays me in return—at least, I think so; for, my good fellow, you know, the absent are often in the wrong. Now, I am the more tenacious to know if I am wrong, as Alexandrine—she is called Alexandrine—has sent for some money. I have never been stingy with the fair sex; but I do not wish to be made a fool of. Thus, before playing the generous with this dear friend, I wish to know if she deserves it by her fidelity. I know there is ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... the side of excess. Though I am far from thinking such to be the result in the present instance. The effect of the whole translation is pleasing to me, and the mock-heroic effect I think not a little assisted by the reiterated use of the triplet and alexandrine. As to any evidence of authorship derivable from the appearance of the manuscript, I will only add another word. The lines in the translation have been carefully counted, and the number is marked in Goldsmith's hand at the close of his transcription. Such a fact ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... stanzas, not one of which repeats both the metrical pattern and rhyme scheme of any other. The stanzas range from six to eighteen lines in length, and the lines themselves from four short syllables to the long Alexandrine. At times one has the feeling that this love of changing rhythms and rhymes has improperly warped the ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... of God creating the world and passing over to men had been hypostatised in Alexandrian Judaism (see Sirach, Baruch, the wisdom of Solomon, Enoch, nay, even the book of Proverbs). But so long as the deutero-canonical Old Testament, and also the Alexandrine and Apocalyptic literature continue in the sad condition in which they are at present, we can form no certain judgment and draw no decided conclusions on the subject. When will the scholar appear who will at length throw light on these writings, and therewith ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... of ten syllables, with an occasional Alexandrine to accommodate a refractory epithet, and should rhyme peaceably with ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... "he knew how to choose the flowing and the sonorous words; to vary the pauses and adjust the accents; to diversify the cadence, and yet preserve the smoothness of the metre." To vary the English hexameter, he established the use of the triplet and Alexandrine. Though ridiculed by Swift, who vainly thought he had exploded them for ever, their force is still ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... Etampes the best houses are as yet the inns. There is certainly a royal castle, in the which lives the queen, the wife of the deceased king; nevertheless his Majesty was pleased to give audience in this hostelry, all covered expressly with cloth of Alexandrine velvet, with lilies of gold at the spot where the king was placed. As soon as the speech was ended, his Majesty rose up and gave quite a brotherly welcome to the brilliant ambassadors. The king has a very good countenance, a smiling countenance; he is forty ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... as snow-flakes cannot exist without their peculiar crystalizations. It is thus that the Iliad is inseparably united, and, as it were, immersed in the stately hexametre, and the French epics, in the graceful Alexandrine verse. The metre of the Kalevala is the "eight-syllabled trochaic, with the part-line echo," and is the characteristic verse of the Finns. The natural speech of this people is poetry. The young men and maidens, the old men and matrons, in their interchange of ideas, unwittingly fall ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... Malade, Bacchus, Euphrosine and La Jeune Tarentine, the last a synthesis of his purest manner, mosaic though it is of reminiscences of at least a dozen classical poets. As in glyptic so in poetic art, the Hellenism of the time was decadent and Alexandrine rather than Attic of the best period. But Chenier is always far more than an imitator. La Jeune Tarentine is a work of personal emotion and inspiration. The colouring is that of classic mythology, but the spiritual element is as individual as that of any classical ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... known as the Alexandrine War, which closed in March, 47, Csar placed the queen and her brother on the throne. It was at this time that the great Library and Museum at Alexandria were destroyed by fire. Four hundred thousand volumes were said ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... difference in style is very marked. The influence of Dryden's narrative-poems (his translations from Boccaccio and Chaucer) is clearly traceable in the metre, style, and construction of the later poem. Like Dryden, Keats now makes frequent use of the Alexandrine, or 6-foot line, and of the triplet. He has also restrained the exuberance of his language and gained force, whilst in imaginative power and felicity of diction he surpasses anything of which Dryden was capable. The flaws in his style ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... syllables. With the exception of a few recent poets, who have written in blank verse, and a few weak attempts to adapt the Greek principles of accent to the Polish language, all Polish poetry is, like the French, in rhyme; and the French Alexandrine is the favourite ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... breeze," In the next line, it "whispers through the trees":{13} If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep," The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with "sleep": Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song,{14} That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.{15} Leave such to tune their own dull rhymes, and know What's roundly smooth, or languishingly slow; And praise the easy vigor of a line, Where Denham's strength and Waller's{16} sweetness join. True ease in writing ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin |
