"Elegy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... content. It was in Porlock that Coleridge wrote "Kubla Khan," transported, Heaven knows whither, by virtue of the hushed repose that consecrates the sleepiest hamlet in Great Britain. It was at Stoke Pogis that Gray composed his "Elegy." ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... she brings a book with her, gilt-edged and bound in green morocco like the Byron we read when we were children, or in red morocco like the Elegant Extracts out of which we used to translate Gray's "Elegy," and the "Battle of Hohenlinden," ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Harrow-on-the-Hill. It was, I observe, written as long ago as 1838, so that it can be reproduced without much danger of hurting the feelings of those who may have known and loved the subject of this touching elegy. The name of the victim was Port, and the circumstances of his death ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... or winter slew him, we do not know. In 1601 Fitzgeoffrey published a short Latin elegy on Nash in his "Affaniae," alluding in happy phrase to the twin lightnings of his armed tongue and his terrible pen; and Nash had six lines of tempered praise in "The Return from Parnassus." But all we know of the cause or manner of Nash's death has to be collected from a ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... in 1535-6, he must have died in 1564. The tablet referred to also contains Buchanan's lines. Omnia quae longa, &c., celebrating his learning, and lamenting his premature fate. Dempster likewise quotes these lines and another elegy on his death, by Buchanan. (Opera, vol. ii. pp. 106, 120,) and says, that Alexander Cockburn, who had spent several years abroad, published various works, of which he had only seen three, the titles of which he specifies; but he mistakes the date of his death, in placing it in 1572, and his age, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... funeral was ever so poetically attended. Dryden, indeed, as a man discountenanced and deprived, was silent; but scarcely any other maker of verses omitted to bring his tribute of tuneful sorrow. An emulation of elegy was universal. Maria's praise was not confined to the English language, but fills a great part of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... v. 1, p. 71, is printed an Elegy on Cunedda, the work of one who had actually partaken of his royal munificence, who had received from him "milch cows, horses, wine, oil, and a host of slaves." The writer with respect to the martial prowess ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... smiled upon you and flattery falls sweet on your ear, and you are in danger of forgetting the final end of all ambition read "Grays Elegy." ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... the palace, the palace, the palace! That is what Richard Baxter called "The Saints' Everlasting Rest." That is what John Bunyan called the "Celestial City." That is Young's "Night Thoughts" turned into morning exultations. That is Gray's "Elegy in a Churchyard" turned to resurrection spectacle. That is the "Cotter's Saturday Night" exchanged for the Cotter's Sabbath morning. That is the shepherd of Salisbury Plain amid the flocks on the hills of heaven. That is the ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... supply the want. The reader, running over his works, will find that he takes nearly as much pleasure in critically expounding his theory of poetry as in making poems. This is as far as it can be from the case of the spontaneous village minstrel dear to elegy, who has no theory whatever, although sometimes he may have fully as much poetry as Whitman. The whole of Whitman's work is deliberate and preconceived. A man born into a society comparatively new, full of conflicting elements ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Pogis, and you made me give more than the day's excursion cost. Then we went along a wet, bushy lane that muddied my trousers, and when we arrived at Gray's grave, you found the solemn yew-tree, and perched yourself on a wet, cold gravestone, and read Gray's Elegy aloud, while I held an umbrella over your heads and enjoyed myself. Now you want to put in Sunday at Canterbury, where, if it isn't more cheerful, you will probably ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... to India as a chaplain. In addition to his chaplaincy, he held the office of preceptor to one of the native princes of Hindostan. He died at Bhoog, in the kingdom of Cutch, on the 25th of September 1830; and if we add that he was a man of remarkable learning, his elegy may be ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... orthometry^. poem; epic, epic poem; epopee^, epopoea, ode, epode^, idyl, lyric, eclogue, pastoral, bucolic, dithyramb, anacreontic^, sonnet, roundelay, rondeau [Fr.], rondo, madrigal, canzonet^, cento^, monody [Slang], elegy; amoebaeum, ghazal^, palinode. dramatic poetry, lyric poetry; opera; posy, anthology; disjecta membra poetae song [Lat.], ballad, lay; love song, drinking song, war song, sea song; lullaby; music &c 415; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... were embroidered in silks of different colors, until the fashion gave way to cut-work and lace. Italy produced lace fabrics early in the fifteenth century; and the Florentine poet, Firenzuola, who flourished about 1520, composed an elegy upon a collar of raised point lace made by the hand of his mistress. Portraits of Venetian ladies dated as early as 1500 reveal white lace trimmings; but at that period lace was, professedly, only made by nuns for the service of the Church, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... do not think Gray a first-rate poet. He has not a bold imagination, nor much command of words. The obscurity in which he has involved himself will not persuade us that he is sublime. His Elegy in a Church-yard has a happy selection of images, but I don't like what are called his great things. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... signboard, a workshop, finished articles for sale, mechanics who work under him. He cannot deliver for more than a month the stanzas which he has promised you, unless he breaks his word to Dosithee, who has ordered an elegy from him. He has an idyl on the loom; it is for Crantor, who is hurrying him, and from whom he expects a handsome price. Prose, verse, which do you want? He is equally successful with either. Ask him for letters to sympathize with a bereavement ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... That seems to mourn for the expiring day.] The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. Gray's Elegy. ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... celebrating the magnificence of the Pope and Cardinal Caesar, whom, in his verses on the Borgia Steer, he described as his greatest benefactor. Apparently he was also the author of the elegy on the death of the Duke of Gandia, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... Venus and Adonis. Shelley calls his elegy on the poet Keats Adona'is, under the idea that the untimely death of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... your affecting elegy on the death of two pigs, I am just now returned from eating a most excellent one with the most magnificent Donaldson. I wish you would explain to me the reason of my being so very hard-hearted as to discover no manner of reluctance at that innocent animal's ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... of the date of publication, however, is found in the fourth Eclogue. It contains a long poem called The towre of vertue and honour, which is really a highly-wrought elegy on the premature and glorious death, not of "the Duke of Norfolk, Lord High admiral, and one of Barclay's patrons," as has been repeated parrot-like, from Warton downwards, but of his chivalrous son, Sir Edward ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... found, consisted of an old shattered press and one small, worn-out font of English, which he was then using himself, composing an Elegy on Aquila Rose, before mentioned, an ingenious young man, of excellent character, much respected in the town, clerk of the Assembly, and a pretty poet. Keimer made verses too, but very indifferently. He could not be said to write them, for his manner was to compose them in the types directly ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... the feeling of the poets, also, attaching itself with tenderness to graceful scenes of country life. Tito Strozza, about the year 1480, describes in a Latin elegy the dwelling of his mistress. We are shown an old ivy-clad house, half hidden in trees, and adorned with weather-stained frescoes of the saints, and near it a chapel, much damaged by the violence of the river ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... poet, it is taken for granted that he can sit down at any moment and spin off any number of verses on any subject which may be suggested to him; such as congratulations to the writer's great-grandmother on her reaching her hundredth year, an elegy on an infant aged six weeks, an ode for the Fourth of July in a Western township not to be found in Lippincott's last edition, perhaps a valentine for some bucolic lover who believes that wooing in rhyme is the way to win the object of ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... occasion, when the balance might be held as finally struck, and when the nation, by its own voluntary act, had recognized the position which its poet, through all time coming must maintain, it would have been felt as a vast and serious omission if the last elegy had not been uttered by the greatest vindicator of his fame. It was so uttered, and none but those who listened to that address can conceive the effect which it produced. Elsewhere than in these pages we should assuredly have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... mass, I fear me, I saw this genus and species in Cambridge before now: I'll take no notice of him now. [Aside.] By the faith of a gentleman, this is pretty elegy. Of what age is the day, fellow? Sirrah boy, hath the groom saddled my hunting hobby? Can Robin hunter tell where ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... these is to know a very different Brann from the author of "The Bradley-Martin Bal Masque" or "Garters and Amen Groans." The Brann who wrote "Life and Death," by that work alone, wins to undying fame as surely as does Grey by his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." I have combed my memory in vain to match it from an American pen. A few paragraphs from Ingersoll, a few pages from Poe, a few stanzas from Whitman—but make your own search and your own comparisons; and if, in your final ranking, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to this conclusion without much thought. She composed an Ode to Despair, an Elegy to an Unhappy Woman, and a Triolet to Interfering Dukes, before her mind was made up. She also considered very seriously what she would look like in a little cottage in the middle of the forest, dressed in a melancholy grey and holding communion only with the birds and trees; ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... will be begun three days before the advent of the Messiah. Then he will appear in Palestine, and will utter a lament over the devastation of the Holy Land, and his wail will be heard throughout the world. The last words of his elegy will be: "Now peace will come upon earth!" When the evil-doers hear this message, they will rejoice. On the second day, he will appear again and proclaim: "Good will come upon earth!" And on the third his promise ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse, The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... death of a person called Partridge, once a shoemaker, but at the time the conductor of an Astrological Almanack, led to a controversy, which was supported with great humour by Swift and other wags. I believe you will find that this, with Swift's Elegy on the same person, is one of the last occasions in which astrology has afforded even a jest to ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... French epicure, knew coffee as few men before him or since. In his historical elegy, contained in Gastronomy as a Fine Art, or the Science ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... disagreeable mission to the unfriendly court of Philip II., where the mortifications which he encountered, joined to the insalubrity of the climate, so impaired his health that he found himself obliged to solicit his recall, which he did in an Ovidian elegy addressed to the queen. The petition of the poet was granted, but too late; he sunk under a lingering malady in October 1565, a few months after ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... folks on hand this here will be pulled off in relays, ladies furst, as they hain't room fer all to onct, but Hank, here, claims he's got grub enough on hand so all will git a chanct to shove right out ag'in their belt. An' I might say right here in doo elegy of our feller townsman that Hank c'n set out as fillin' an' tasty a meal of vittles as anyone ever cocked a lip over, barrin', of course, every married ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... Departs; as often in poetry and earlier English. Cf. Goldsmith, D. V. 171: "Beside the bed where parting life was laid;" Gray, Elegy, 1: "the knell of parting day," etc. On the other hand, depart was used in the sense of part. In the Marriage Service "till death us do part" is a corruption of "till death us depart." Wiclif's Bible, in Matt. xix. 6, has ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... ploughmen, the carpenters, the fox-hunting gentlemen and the farmers smelling of mud and brandy. Their tongues join together in syllabling the sharp-cut words, which for ever slice asunder time and the broad-backed moors. Plaint and belief and elegy, despair and triumph, but for the most part good sense and jolly indifference, go trampling out of the windows any time ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... were in those days an unknown quantity in French education, and especially in New France until after the conquest. But Wolfe opened the great world of English poetry to Canada as he recited Gray's Elegy with its prophetic line,— ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... liveliness a little Gaelic song, the burlesque elegy of a countryman on the loss of his cow, the comic tones of which, though he did not understand the language, made Waverley laugh more than once. [Footnote: This ancient Gaelic ditty is still well known, both in the Highlands and ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... in Death's last sleep, There rest the foamy lip, the bloodshot eye, The noble brow o'er which some heart doth weep, Whose only elegy—the buried sigh. There kneels the friend and comrade who would die Beside the form he loved, alas, so well, Now in his last expiring agony, When every breath is as a funeral knell, And the soul bleeds with thoughts ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... perhaps comfort and relief. The first movement expressed the grave and simple happiness of a loving young couple, with its tender sensuality, its confidence in the future, its joy and hopes. The second movement was an elegy on the death of a child. Christophe had avoided with horror any effort to depict death, and realistic detail in the expression of sorrow: there was only the utter misery of it,—yours, mine, everybody's, of being face to face with a misfortune which falls or may fall to the ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... Description of a Salamander To Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough On the Union On Mrs. Biddy Floyd The Reverse Apollo Outwitted Answer to Lines from May Fair Vanbrugh's House Vanbrugh's House Baucis and Philemon Baucis and Philemon The History of Vanbrugh's House A Grub Street Elegy The Epitaph A Description of the Morning A Description of a City Shower On the Little House A Town Eclogue A Conference To Lord Harley on his Marriage Phyllis Horace, Book IV, Ode ix To Mr. Delany An Elegy To Mrs. Houghton Verses written on a Window On another Window Apollo to the Dean News ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... Preface Dedication The Wrexham Eisteddfod and the "Death of Saul" Historical Note DEATH OF SAUL Episode the First Episode the Second Episode the Third Episode the Fourth Palm Sunday in Wales Elegy on the late Crawshay Bailey, Esq. Nash Vaughan Edwardes Vaughan; a Monody Monody on the Death of Mrs. Nicholl Carne Elegiac Stanzas on the Death of Mrs. Grenfell In Dreams Mewn Cof Anwyl: on the Death of John Johnes, Esq., of Dolaucothy Elegiac In Memoriam To Clara ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... times interesting, if not constantly reliable. After a reading of Gray's "Elegy" by a fourth standard class, the boys were asked what was meant by "fretted vaults," and one youth replied—"The vaults in which these poor people were buried; their friends came and fretted over them." Asked what he understood by "Elegy," another boy in ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... favorite theme is, of course, the old story which is ever new. The civil wars have inspired many pathetic compositions, and poems like Salome Urena's apostrophe to the ruins of colonial times, Bienvenido S. Nouel's elegy on the ruins left by the late revolutions, and Enrique Henriquez' "Miserere!", gems of verse, are veritable cries of anguish at the desolation wrought by fratricidal strife. Perhaps it is the poets' sorrow at the misfortunes of their country ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... elevation he had lived on in his own county, uniting the character of the English squire, in that fox-hunting county, with that of a perfect gentleman, a scholar, and a most admirable member of society. He was a poet, also, affecting the style of Cowley, who wrote an elegy upon his uncle, William Hervey, an elegy compared to Milton's 'Lycidas' in imagery, music, and tenderness of thought. The shade of Cowley, whom Charles II. pronounced, at his death, to be 'the best man in England,' haunted this peer, the first Earl ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... to quarrel with Gray's way of passing his life, and the poet who had produced so exquisite a masterpiece as the Elegy had a fair right to spend the rest of his days as he pleased. But the temptations to confound a finicking dilettantism with the 'art to live' are so strong, that it is worth while to correct the Rector's admiration for Gray by looking ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... tired of the jingle of Pope's imitators, and the new era had not dawned. Goldsmith and Gray, both recently dead, serve to illustrate the condition in which the most exquisite polish and refinement of language has been developed until there is a danger of sterility. The 'Elegy' and the 'Deserted Village' are in their way inimitable poems: but we feel that the intellectual fibre of the poets has become dangerously delicate. The critical faculty could not be stimulated further without destroying all spontaneous impulse. The reaction to a more masculine ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... presto followed the andante, not very new, with commonplace variations, and the feeble finale. Then they played more, at the request of the guests,—first an elegy by Ernst, and then various other pieces. They were all very well, but did not produce upon me a tenth part of the impression that the opening piece did. I felt light and gay throughout the evening. ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... which makes a long sea voyage so unendurable. I think it was Gray who said that his idea of paradise was "To lie on a sofa and read eternally new romances of Marivaux and Crebillon." Could the author of the "Elegy" have stretched himself out on the open deck of a Kamchadal boat, covered to a depth of six inches with fragrant flowers and freshly cut hay; could he have floated slowly down a broad, tranquil river through ranges of snow-clad mountains, past forests ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... being lauded high by some distinguished personage, as Thomas Jefferson, for example, he soon has the eyes and the ears of the world; whilst others, more worthy, perhaps, in all the elements of true greatness, are left unnoticed and unknown. This thought awakens my recollection of a stanza in Gray's 'Elegy.' It touches tenderly and beautifully upon the neglect and lack of appreciation often experienced by real beauty, virtue and goodness. Here ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... pieces, such as his famous elegy, he caught the classic tone to perfection, feeling himself in vital union with the great of bygone centuries; but in thought and feeling he was really modern and under the influence of the Christian Germanic spirit with all its depth and intensity. His touching friendship with Radegunde is, as ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... River Anthology was a new book, but that it was a new book from America. It was exactly as if a remarkable realistic novel was reported from Russia or Italy. We were in no danger of confusing it with the 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' People in England who heard of Main Street were not likely to identify it with a High Street; with the principal thoroughfare in any little town in Berkshire or Buckinghamshire. But when I was a boy I practically identified the boarding-house ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... whom were good versifiers, agreed that Grotius excelled in Poetry. Scaliger acknowledged his epigrams were admirable[46]. Casaubon being informed that Grotius had written some verses on the death of Theodore Beza, says, "he heard with infinite pleasure that so great a man had his elegy written by so great a poet[47]." Baudius calls him the darling friend of the Muses, and acquaints us that Scaliger thought some of his small poems equal to the best of the ancients[48]. Gerard Vossius speaks of him as the greatest poet of his age, and the prince of poetry. In fine, M. Baillet, ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... or the soul, nobody can deny the immortality of genius, which ever remains as a bright and guiding star to the struggling humanities of succeeding ages. This work, then, which has stood the test of centuries, has placed Vatsyayana among the immortals, and on This, and on Him no better elegy or eulogy can be written ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... villa at Fiesole, provided for him by Lorenzo, Poliziano occupied his life with teaching and writing, occasionally paying visits to other cities. In 1492 Lorenzo passed away and Poliliziano wrote an elegy which is to this day regarded as unique in modern Latin verse. In 1494 the famous scholar followed his patron, even while Savonarola was setting Italy in a ferment of passionate religious reaction against the poetic and ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... Stew Barley Broth Calf's Heart The Christmas Pudding Apple Pie Lobster Salad Stewed Steak Green Pea Soup Trifle Mutton Chops Barley Water Boiled Chicken Stewed Duck and Peas Curry The Railway Gilpin Punch Elegy Punch The Boa and the Blanket Punch The Dilly and the D's Punch A Book in a Bustle Punch Stanzas for the Sentimental. Punch 1. On a Tear which Angelina observed trickling down my nose at Dinner-time 2. On my refusing ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... gone; and Harry Esmond blushed that he had not a single tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in Latin verses over the rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though Sievewright's wife was an ugly shrew, as he remembered to have heard afterwards. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dead? O earth, earth, the two beasts of prey, blood-thirsty souls, brandishing the spear, will quickly distain with blood the fallen, fallen enemy. Wretches, that they ever came to the thought of a single combat! In a foreign strain will I mourn with tears my elegy of groans due to the dead. Destiny is at hand—death is near; this day will decide the event. Ill-fated, ill-fated murder because of the Furies! But I see Creon here with clouded brow advancing toward ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... elegy too,' said my friend, 'written against my burial. I wish you'd read it for me,' and he fidgeted for it in the nervous manner of the dying. Finding it among his pillows, he handed it to me saying, 'You needn't be frightened of it. It is well dosed ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... Castle with Dr. Adams and his party, ten of us in all. We drove afterward to see the country church-yard, where Grey wrote his elegy and where he now lies buried. This was a most charming little trip and we all enjoyed it exceedingly. The young folks gathered leaves ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... The elegy of Tickell, maliciously called by Steele "prose in rhyme," is alike inspired by affection and fancy; it has a melodious languor, and a melancholy grace. The sonnet of Gray to the memory of West is a beautiful effusion, and a model for English sonnets. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... must make an expedition to the library. What shall I bring? There is Mosheim's 'Ecclesiastical Ancient History'; that has a solid, venerable sound. Or, if you prefer poetry, I will get Gray's 'Elegy.' That cannot be a literary mushroom, for he was twenty years writing it. But perhaps it is Tupper you would like. That would suit your mood exactly, Tupper's ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... and within one of its transepts is buried the celebrated Dr. Coppinger, a learned writer and member of the most famous and enduring of the Danish families to whom Ireland became a native land. In an old graveyard on the island, Charles Wolfe, the writer of the elegy on Sir John Moore, and Tobin, the dramatist, are buried. The panorama from Spy Hill embraces the enchanting river and the wide harbour, which is capable of holding all the ships in the British Navy within the line drawn from the two forts, Camden and Carlisle, which guard the entrance. Of Queenstown, ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... these are a series of sonnets called Astrophel and Stella, of which his latest critic says: "As a series of sonnets, the Astrophel and Stella poems are second only to Shakespeare's; as a series of love-poems, they are perhaps unsurpassed." Spenser wrote an elegy upon Sidney himself, under the title of Astrophel. Sidney's prose is among the best of the sixteenth century. "He reads more modern than any other author of that century." He does not use "ink-horn terms," or ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... regulation" in the reign of Henry I. The custom was still observed in many places, and we often heard the sound of the curfew bell, which was almost invariably rung at eight o'clock in the evening. The poet Gray commences his "Elegy written ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... a Kasidah, Ode or Elegy rhymed couplets numbering more than thirteen: If shorter it is called a "Ghazal." I have not thought it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... himself out, to such an extent of preparation and to such heights of eulogy, as this work exhibits. It is dedicated to the Earl of Bellamont, just about to come over, as Phips's successor. Mather held in his hand a talisman of favor, influence, and power. In the Elegy which concludes the ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... bent upon looking up the church which gave rise to Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," intending when we got there to have a little scene over it; Mr. S., in all the conscious importance of having been there before, assuring us that he knew exactly where it was. So, after some difficulty with our coachman, and being stopped at one ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... outnumber the whole Canadian population, is a magnificent spectacle; and Montcalm laying down his life to lose Quebec is not less affecting than Wolfe dying to win her. The heart opens towards the soldier who recited, on the eve of his costly victory, the "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," which he would "rather have written than beat the French to-morrow;" but it aches for the defeated general, who, hurt to death, answered, when told how brief his time was, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... his genius enabled him to embellish truth, and to present it with all its graces and attractions to the understandings of all those who are endowed with an innate love of the beautiful. His pictures, like Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-yard, may with equal truth be said 'to abound in images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... displayed, in commemoration of the tercentenary of Cervantes's death, an exceptionally fine collection of editions of his works and of rare plates illustrating episodes from them. Notable among the books was a first edition of his earliest published poems, four redondillas, a copla and an elegy, on the death, October 3, 1568, of Elizabeth de Valois, third wife of Philip II, and sister of Charles IX of France.[13] Dark rumors were afloat for some time that she had been poisoned by order of her husband. Among the other treasures in the Hispanic Museum ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... North's Life of Lord Guildford. Some touches of minor importance I owe to contemporary pamphlets in verse and prose. Such are the Bloody Assizes the life and Death of George Lord Jeffreys, the Panegyric on the late Lord Jeffreys, the Letter to the Lord Chancellor, Jeffreys's Elegy. See also Evelyn's Diary, Dec. 5, 1683, Oct. 31. 1685. I scarcely need advise every reader to consult Lord Campbell's excellent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Gray and with intolerance of Pope. Cf. "Biographia Literaria," ch. 2: "I felt almost as if I had been newly couched, when, by Mr. Wordsworth's conversation, I had been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray's celebrated Elegy. I had long before detected the defects in The Bard; but the Elegy I had considered as proof against all fair attacks; and to this day I can not read either without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events whatever ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... was April's end, and had been squally, with violent storms; but the last onslaughts of the north-wester had routed the rain-clouds. The day was dying under a clear saffron sky, and a thrush piped its mellow elegy. Miss Percival heard him, and listened, smiling with her lips, and with her eyes also which the serene light soothed. Her lips barely moved, just relaxed their firm embrace, but no more. She held the light gratefully with her eyes, seemed unwilling to lose a moment of it, wistful ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... says: "The touching and feeling composition of this talented young man was sung by Herr Jaeger in a similar spirit." The following year, among other compositions, was the oratorio of "Lazarus," which was composed in three parts—first, the sickness and death, then the burial and elegy, and, finally, the resurrection. The last part, unfortunately, if ever written, has been lost. He made attempts at operatic composition, producing a vast amount of beautiful music, but always to indifferent librettos, so that none of his music ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... worshippers, and will leave the world without any one hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he is. I am perfecting myself in the "Ode to Eton College" against Thursday, that I may not appear unclassic. I have just discovered that it is much better than the "Elegy." ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... state of delight, of new expectancy, and when we steamed out into the lake I could scarcely repress a cry of joy so thrilling was the view. I had never seen a large body of water, had striven to picture the majesty of a wave, and now I stood with poetry rolling about me—now a deep-blue elegy, now a limpid lyric, varying in hue with the shifting of a luminous fleece-work, far above. To have been born and brought up amid great scenes were surely a privilege, but to come upon them for the first time when the mind is ripe, ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... Thucydides, parts of Tacitus, parts of the tragedians, at school, but now he had it in his power to study a great author entire, and as a whole. Never before did he fully appreciate the "thunderous lilt" of Greek epic, the touching and voluptuous tenderness of Latin elegy, the regal pomp of history, the gorgeous and philosophic mystery of the old dramatic fables. Never before had he learnt to gaze on "the bright countenance of truth, in the mild and dewy air of delightful ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... names belonging to the period which suggest genius and influence. Edward Young had just published his "Night Thoughts," Thomson, the poet and author of "The Seasons," and Isaac Watts had just passed away, Lord Littleton had written "The Conversion of St. Paul," Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" was being eagerly read by the people, Blackstone's famous "Commentaries on the Laws of England," had made a profound impression, Johnson had completed his "Dictionary" and Oliver Goldsmith was writing his immortal ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... visits that consecrated ground who has not reaped enjoyment from the labors of that man's life. And as the simple epitaph meets the eye, and is read in an audible tone, the heart-felt invocation, "Blessings on his memory!" is his oft-repeated elegy. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... turn my view, All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong; Phrase that time hath flung away, Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... loathed his presence. He repeated his excellent gesture of despair, sighed, "All right," and left the room. The two pieces of Jim Dyckman's photograph were still on the floor of the hall. He stooped quickly and silently and picked them up as he went out. He closed the door with all the elegy one can put in a door ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Tryphoena, as a mark of her love, threw the bottom of her wine upon Gito: At what time, Eumolpus, quite drunk, aim'd at rallery on those that were bald and branded; till having spent his life-less stock, he return'd to his verses; and designing an elegy on the loss of hair, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... sad ruin which the Fates have wrought, Unless the Fates themselves should weep and wish Their curbless power had been controlled in this? For thy loss, worthiest Lord, no mourning eye Has flood enough; no muse nor elegy Enough expression to thy worth can lend; No, though thy Sidney had survived his friend. Dead, noble Brooke shall be to us a name Of grief and honour still, whose deathless fame Such Virtue purchased as makes us to be Unjust to Nature in lamenting thee; ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... freedom, and forced into light the real character of the royal claims. How stern and bitter the temper even of the noblest Puritans had become at last we see in the poem which Milton produced at this time, his elegy of "Lycidas." Its grave and tender lament is broken by a sudden flash of indignation at the dangers around the Church, at the "blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold a sheephook," and to whom ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... the patronage of that most cultured family, the Herberts, Breton being a protege of "Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," whom Browne (and not Ben Jonson, as is commonly said) eulogised thus in elegy. George Wither, being Browne's intimate friend, was presumably not unappreciated by the kinsfolk of George Herbert. Thus do they appear as in a bond ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... wonder and sneer at him; but amongst our little circle of friends we may be sure he found admiring listeners. The young General had the romance of a boy on many matters. He delighted in music and poetry. On the last day of his life he said he would rather have written Gray's Elegy than have won a battle. We may be sure that with a gentleman of such literary tastes our friend George would become familiar; and as they were both in love, and both accepted lovers, and both eager for happiness, no doubt ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... buried in the corner of his church-yard, in the parish of..., under a plain marble slab, which his friend Eugenius, by leave of his executors, laid upon his grave, with no more than these three words of inscription, serving both for his epitaph and elegy. Alas, poor Yorick! ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... North's Life of Guildford, 220.; Jeffreys' Elegy; Luttrell's Diary; Oldmixon, 762. Oldmixon was in the crowd, and was, I doubt not, one of the most furious there. He tells the story well. Ellis Correspondence; Barnet, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... muslin and broadcloth! But it takes very little to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover. There are a great many cruel things besides poverty that freeze the genial current of the soul, as the poet of the Elegy calls it. Fire can stand any wind, but is easily blown out, and then come smouldering and smoke, and profitless, slow combustion without the cheerful blaze which sheds light all round it. The one Reader's hand may shelter the flame; the one blessed ministering spirit with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tour—his independence. Gray had many points which made him vulnerable to Walpole's shafts of ridicule; and Horace had a host of faults which excited the stern condemnation of Gray. The author of the 'Elegy'—which Johnson has pronounced to be the noblest ode in our language—was one of the most learned men of his time, 'and was equally acquainted with the elegant and profound paths of science, and that not superficially, but thoroughly; knowing in ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... not dismiss the miscellaneous poetry of this period, without some notice of the "Coplas" of Don Jorge Manrique, [28] on the death of his father, the count of Paredes, in 1474 [29]. The elegy is of considerable length, and is sustained throughout in a tone of the highest moral dignity, while the poet leads us up from the transitory objects of this lower world to the contemplation of that imperishable existence, which Christianity has opened beyond ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... considered, which affects no other composition; the place in which they are now commonly found restrains them to a particular air of solemnity, and debars them from the admission of all lighter or gayer ornaments. In this, it is that, the style of an epitaph necessarily differs from that of an elegy. The customs of burying our dead, either in or near our churches, perhaps, originally founded on a rational design of fitting the mind for religious exercises, by laying before it the most affecting proofs of the uncertainty of life, makes it proper to exclude from our epitaphs all such ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... were at first confin'd To speak in broken verse the mourner's mind. Prosperity at length, and free content, In the same numbers gave their raptures vent; But who first fram'd the Elegy's small song, Grammarians squabble, and ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... those fortunate bards who obtain fame and honor during life. His learning was deep, his reading extensive, his acquaintance with mankind large. "To him," says Denham in his famous elegy, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... exaggerated demands, unsatisfied passions and imaginary sufferings.[6] And in estimating the influences which had prepared the way for this mental disposition, Goethe emphasizes the influence of English literature. Young's "Night Thoughts," Gray's "Elegy," Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," even "Hamlet" and his monologues haunted all minds. "Everyone knew the principal passages by heart, and everyone believed he had a right to be just as melancholy as the Prince of Denmark, even though he had seen no ghost and had no royal father to avenge." ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... me, and Tryphaena had just sprinkled Giton with the last drops in her cup, when Eumolpus, who was himself almost drunk, was seized with the notion of satirizing bald pates and branded rascals, but when he had exhausted his chilly wit, he returned at last to his poetry and recited this little elegy ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... a very different elegy concerning him; for it appeared that Farmer Rodel, who had for years been raising Barefoot's hopes concerning his will, made no mention at all of her in that document—far less did ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... words inexperienced and clear give variety to the sameness of the English words. —Gray, in the Elegy, ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... a nobleness of thought, a courageous aim at high and, in a strict sense manly, excellence in many of the writers:—nor can that period be justly termed tame and wanting in originality, which produced poems such as Pope's Satires, Gray's Odes and Elegy, the ballads of Gay and Carey, the songs of Burns and Cowper. In truth Poetry at this as at all times was a more or less unconscious mirror of the genius of the age; and the brave and admirable spirit of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... similar thought in His inimitable elegy, which every reader will immediately recollect. Can it be imagined, that nature, which does nothing in vain, nor indeed without a reference to the being who is eminently signalized as lord of the lower creation, has been at pains to decorate these spots, but in anticipation, if one may use the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Isham copy or ed. A.—In the old copies this elegy is marked "Elegia v." The fifth elegy (beginning "Nox erat et somnus," &c.) was not contained ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... introduce, ere the close, a living but anonymous figure amidst the company of the silent dead, and contrive to unite the interest of a personal story, the charm of a mystery, and the solemnity of a moral meditation, into one fine whole! We know of but one objection of much weight to this exquisite elegy. There is scarcely the faintest or most faltering allusion to the doctrine of the resurrection. Death has it all his own way in this citadel of his power. The poet never points his finger to the distant horizon, where life and immortality are beginning to colour ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... striking essay upon the 'Wealth of Nature,' which he contributed to the 'Saturday Review' of September 24, 1859.[76] It may be considered as a sermon upon the text of Gray's reflections in the 'Elegy' upon the 'hearts once pregnant with celestial fire' which lie forgotten in the country churchyard. What a vast work has been done by the unknown! what must have been the aggregate ability of those who, in less than ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen |
