"Poem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there is something in common between the two which is essentially a democratic quality, the final standard being that of reference to commonness, normal feeling, the common man. Mr. Chesterton wrote a very stirring poem in his Ballad of King Alfred, a ballad which appealed to patriotism, fellowship, and those broad, profound emotions which underlie the common sense of a people. It was far nearer to the spirit of the Barrack Room Ballads than he, I am sure, ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... on the living character of his age. We follow him, step by step, on his slow and wearisome journey, enjoying his fatigues and dangers with the better zest, since we know in advance that he reached home safely at last. One of the most popular modern books of travel—Eothen—is a poem which gives us the very atmosphere and odor of the Orient, but nothing more; and the author floats before our vision in so dim and wraith-like a manner, that many readers have doubted whether the work was founded on actual experience. On the other hand, those ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... than once (three times, to be exact) I have fired at that same fox to kill. I have lost many a rooster, but those I have not lost are many, many more. Browned to a turn, and garnished with parsley, a rooster is almost a poem. So was that wild fox, the other morning, almost a poem, standing on the bare knoll here near the house, his form half-shrouded in the early mist, his keen ears pricked, his pointed nose turned toward the yard where ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... strange mixture of Romanism, Spiritism (demonology,) Theosophy, Materialism, and other kindred cults. Almost every week some new ode or hymn was produced, every sentiment of which was an applauding of man, for God was utterly ignored, and the key-note of the Harvard college "class Poem," for the year 1908, became the key-note of the Sunday Song of the "worshippers" in ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... point, chastity. His plays have plenty of coarseness; they have touches, though very rarely, of voluptuous description; but they always leave us with the sense that purity is noble and impurity is evil. It is striking to note the tone in this respect of his successive productions. His youthful poem, "Venus and Adonis," is touched with the disease which had blighted the literature and the life of southern Europe,—the infection of the imagination by sensuality, a sort of intellectual putrescence. In the frank daylight of the early dramas this nightmare has disappeared, yet in the generally ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... example of versified words without meaning is "Jabberwocky." Although (notwithstanding Lewis Carroll's explanations) the coined words are absolutely without meaning, the rhythm is perfect and the poetic quality decidedly apparent, and the poem appeals to the nonsense lover as a work of pure genius. Bayard Taylor is said to have recited "Jabberwocky" aloud for his own delectation until he was forced to stop by uncontrollable laughter. To us who know our Alice it would seem unnecessary ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... His own story, Hard Times, first appeared in this, with the earliest work of more than one writer who later became celebrated. Dickens loved to encourage young writers, and would just as quickly accept a good story or poem from an unknown author ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... said to have lived on the shore of one of the Great Lakes. Before the white men sold fire water to the Indians, there were many happy homes in the forest. The ways of living were the same as we read about in Longfellow's poem, and the children were trained to be brave and honorable ...
— Two Indian Children of Long Ago • Frances Taylor
... His parents not being wealthy enough to send him to college when he left Hawkshead, he became a schoolmaster, with a view to preparing himself for holy orders. About this time he fell in love, as related in the poem, and every thing followed as there described, except that I do not know exactly when and where he died. The number of youths that came to Hawkshead school from the families of the humble yeomanry, to be educated to a ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... withal, two or three of them in succession, were bad for grass, much more for grain; no herring came either; very cleanness of teeth was like to come in Eyvind Skaldaspillir's opinion. This scarcity became at last their share of the great Famine Of A.D. 975, which desolated Western Europe (see the poem in the Saxon Chronicle). And all this by Eyvind Skaldaspillir, and the heathen Norse in general, was ascribed to anger of the heathen gods. Discontent in Norway, and especially in Eyvind Skaldaspillir, seems ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... outwardly obeisant to another religion are altogether pagan in their hearts, and Meave the Queen of the Western Host is more to them than Mary Queen of Heaven. I was told of this Meave that lately she was seen in vision by a peasant, who made a poem on her, calling her "The Beauty of all Beauty": and the man who told me this of his friend had himself seen the jetted fountains of fire-mist winding up in spiral whirls to the sky, and he too had heard of the Fountains ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... in which they were written. All over the continent of Europe, among the nations whose language is of Latin and Celtic origin, his muse inspires deep interest and pleasure. His extraordinary oriental poem, "Lalla Rookh," has been translated into Persian, and delights the literary sons of Iran as it erst thrilled the imagination and heart of all persons of poetic temperament in the British Isles. In the city of Dublin, a statue has been erected to his memory, close by the old senate, now used ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... self-support, and my home I regarded as very precious. The night before my child was taken from me, I knelt by his side throughout the dark hours, hoping for a vision of relief from this trial. The following lines are taken from my poem, "Mother's Darling," written ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... the learned Theban. Choosing the latter, he proceeded to the poet's shop, cheapened the article, and would have secured it without hesitation, had not the extortionate bard demanded the sum of three drachmas,[3] nearly equal to half a dollar, for the poem, and refused to bate a fraction. The disappointed bargainer left, and was for some days decided in favor of the brazen image, which could be had at half the price. But reflecting that what Pindar would give for his money was a draft upon universal fame and immortality, while the statue might ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... over the irregularities of her boarder. His hours of work passed her comprehension, his work itself filled her soul with wonder and disgust. In his moments of inspiration when he was evoking the stormy chords of the introduction to his symphonic poem, Bisesa he never dreamed that his landlady was craning her head up from her pillows in a vain effort to discover the tune, or to reduce it to the known terms of short metre rhythm. His broken, irregular measures ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... good Poem, whether it be Epique, or Dramatique; as also in Sonnets, Epigrams, and other Pieces, both Judgement and Fancy are required: But the Fancy must be more eminent; because they please for the Extravagancy; but ought not ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... says The Mail, "which is now being used all over Germany, is celebrated in a set of verses by Herr Hochstetter in a recent number of the well-known German weekly, Lustige Blaetter. In its way this poem is as remarkable as Herr Ernst ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... lute that we call a bluebird, You blend in a silver strain The sound of the laughing waters, The patter of spring's sweet rain, The voice of the wind, the sunshine, And fragrance of blossoming things. Ah! you are a poem of April, That ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... that, in a long poem, the rhyme is not detrimental. That depends greatly, however, upon the skill with which it is handled. Surely the same Hexameter can be written as smoothly and more vigorously without rhyme. Rhyme adds greatly to the labor of ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... reinvented gunnery. Sheridan's first famous ride was on a barebacked, bridleless horse which he mounted in the pasture where it was feeding, and clung to with his knees and elbows in its long flight down the highway. No poet has yet put this legendary feat into verse, but all my readers know the poem which celebrates Sheridan's ride from Winchester to Cedar Creek. This ride not only saved the day, but it stamped with the fiery little man's character the history of the whole campaign in the Valley of the Shenandoah; and in it, as ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... fine instance among the many which that poem contains. A passage in the 'Prometheus Unbound,' of Shelley, displays the power of the metaphor to ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... object of their worship comes before us as a tortured, persecuted, slain god—the suffering Dionysus—of whose legend they have their own special and esoteric version. That version, embodied in a supposed Orphic poem, The Occultation of Dionysus, is represented only by the details that have passed from it into the almost endless Dionysiaca of Nonnus, a writer of the fourth century; and the imagery has to be put back into the shrine, bit by bit, and finally incomplete. Its central point is the picture of the rending ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Bastile. The State prison in Paris, which was destroyed by the mob in 1789 (v. Coleridge's poem on this subject, and the stirring description in Dickens' Tale ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... several dinners with him are transacted, dialogue partly given: a pious wise old gentleman really, in his kind (age now eighty-four); looking mildly forth upon a world just about to overset itself and go topsy-turvy, as he sees it will. His ANTI-LUCRETIUS was once such a Poem!—but we mention him here because his fine Cabinet of Antiques came to Berlin on his death, Friedrich purchasing; and one often hears of it (if one cared to hear) from the Prussian Dryasdust in subsequent ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... disreputable: and Jurgen was at any such work less a help than a hindrance. So Chloris gave him a parcel of lunch and a perfunctory kiss, and told him to go down to the seashore and get inspired and make up a pretty poem about her. "And do you be back in time for an early supper, Jurgen," says she, "but ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... himself once remarked that he liked "little sad songs." Among, his special favorites in this class of poetry were "Ben Bolt," "The Lament of the Irish Emigrant," Holmes' "The Last Leaf," and Charles Mackay's "The Enquiry." The poem from which he most frequently quoted and which seems to have impressed him most was, "Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?" His own marked tendency to melancholy, which is reflected in his face, seemed to respond to appeals of this sort. Among his favorite poets besides Shakespeare ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... The very bigoted mother sent her regularly from her sixth year on with her sister to the preaching services with the express injunction to report the sermons at home. And although on account of her poor head she had to struggle grievously with every poem or bit of lesson which she had to learn for school, yet now at home she would seat herself upon a hassock, spread a handkerchief over her shoulders and begin to drone out the whole sermon as she had heard it in the church from the minister. And this ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... lay awake in a disturbance of her whole nature, which she could neither understand nor subdue! Nora had never read a poem, a novel, or a play in her life; she had no knowledge of the world; and no instructress but her old maiden sister. Therefore Nora knew no more of love than does the novice who has never left her convent! She could not comprehend the reason why after meeting with Herman Brudenell ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... tries to reproduce Mr. Browning's mode of verse for our edification, may seem to be in a somewhat parlous state. But Miss Caroline Fitz Gerald's work is better than her aim. Venetia Victrix is in many respects a fine poem. It shows vigour, intellectual strength, and courage. The story is a strange one. A certain Venetian, hating one of the Ten who had wronged him and identifying his enemy with Venice herself, abandons his native ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... cows by ropes while they feed, or digging and hoeing or doing field-work of a more laborious kind, or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks—to obtain an adequate idea of which pursuit and its followers, in any country, it is only necessary to take any pastoral poem, or picture, and imagine to yourself whatever is most exquisitely and widely unlike ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... them. He was at Monterey and he says that the Mexicans fought well. I was at Frankfort, the capital of our state, myself with him, when they unveiled the monument to our Kentucky dead and I heard them read O'Hara's poem which he wrote for that day. I tell you, Langdon, it makes my blood jump every ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Archer. "If Alsace used to belong to France, then the Rhine must have been the boundary between France and Gerrmany and we'rre right on that old frontierr now—hey? I'm a smarrt lad, huh? They used to have watch towers and things 'cause I got kept in school once forr sayin' a poem wrong about a fellerr that was in a watch towerr on the Rhine. I bet this towerr had something to do with that old frontierr and I bet it was connected with that castle overr on shorre, too. Therre was a picture of a fellerr in a kind of an arrmorr looking off the top of a towerr ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... a mathematician and a man of a thoughtful habit, the Host made fun of him, he tells us, saying, "Thou lookest as thou wouldst find a hare, For ever on the ground I see thee stare." The poet replied to the request for a tale by launching into a long-spun-out and ridiculous poem, intended to ridicule the popular romances of the day, after twenty-two stanzas of which the company refused to hear any more, and induced him to start another tale in prose. It is an interesting fact that in the "Parson's Prologue" Chaucer actually introduces a little ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... but little of the substance, of this poem, will be found in a little Italian poem called Caccia, written ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... to follow up her advantage by farther hints of time lost, and precious opportunities thrown away. "You might have written poems like them," said she; "or, no, not like them perhaps, but you might have done a neat prize poem, and pleased your papa and mamma. You might have translated Jack and Jill into Greek iambics, and been a credit to your college." I turned testily away from her. "Madam," says I, "because an eagle houses ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... poem of Browning's called "An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experiences of Karshish, the Arab Physician." The somewhat weird conception is that the Arab physician, travelling in Palestine soon after the date when the ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... can be more graphic than are these noble lines. They open a Newdigate Prize Poem of just eighty years ago, written, says tradition, by its brilliant author in a single night. (R. C. Sewell, Magdalen College, 1825.) Tivoli he had never visited; but those who stand to-day beside the Temple of the Sibyl on the edge of its ravine, ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... with decision. "I am not in the least an orator. I can repeat a poem: that is all. Oh! I hope I have not broken my glasses." They had slipped from her nose to the floor. Conolly picked them up and straightened them with one ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... two girls do over theirs; and when I was ready neither Maida nor Beechy were in their rooms. I had opened my door to go down and look for them when I came face to face with a waiter carrying an enormous bouquet. It was for me, with a perfectly lovely poem written by the Prince. At least, it was in his handwriting, so I suppose it was by him, and it was full of pretty allusions to an "adorable woman," with praises for the gracious day that gave her to the world. I was pleased! It was like going back and being a young girl again, ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... can justify this re-issue of Coleridge's classic poem is the excellent illustrative ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... think that Emperor was making during all those days on his knees? Stop, I'll read it to you!' Then she read me a lot of verses, where it said that the Emperor spent all the time vowing vengeance against the Pope. 'You don't mean to say you don't approve of the poem, Parfen Semeonovitch,' she says. 'All you have read out is perfectly true,' say I. 'Aha!' says she, 'you admit it's true, do you? And you are making vows to yourself that if I marry you, you will remind me of all this, and take it out of me.' 'I don't know,' ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... was named Vigi, and I asked him if he was descended from the author of the thirteenth book of the "AEneid." He said he was, and that in honour of his ancestor he had translated the poem into Italian verse. I expressed myself curious as to his version, and he promised to bring it me in two days' time. I complimented him on belonging to such a noble and ancient family; Maffeo Vigi flourished at the beginning ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... is remarkable," stated the hunchback. "But—please—do not look so shocked. I assure you I do not commonly pick young gentlemen's pockets. It is a vulgar pastime, and I am an accomplished villain. Why, once upon a time, I wrote an epic poem. What mere larceny can compare with that fell deed! Besides, this particular outrage upon the sanctity of your overcoat was not without justification. Observe: Ichi, the beast, picks Little Billy's pocket, and the way to Fire Mountain is lost; Little Billy picks Mr. Blake's pocket, and the ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... In its way it was a poem. But while his arms were still round her she looked towards the window, wondering whether he had seen her ride up to the door accompanied by the very youthful officer ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... another poem, please, Mr. Monjardin!" she would ask in supplicating tone. "For instance, that one you ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... a sound broke the stillness save the remote murmuring, until a solitary sea-gull rose in the air and circled directly over the tower, uttering its mournful and unmusical cry. Automatically to my mind sprang the lines of the poem: ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... far as he rejects the simplifying and reducing process of the average man who at an early age puts Life away into some snug conception of his mind and race. This one turns the key. He has released his will and love from the vast Ceremonial of wonder, from the deep Poem of Being, into some particular detail of life wherein he hopes to achieve comfort or at least shun pain. Not so, the artist. In the moment when he elects to avoid by whatever makeshift the raw agony of life, he ceases to be fit ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... in the London University Magazine, we ought also to run over the lighter portions of its pages. These are "A young head, and, what is still better, a young heart,"—discursive enough—"A Tale of the Irish Rebellion—the Guerilla Bride, a Poem," beginning ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... day a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communion with nature all his life, wrote a poem and ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... a strong man in an adjoining room, to be ready to come in when summoned, and hold him down. Gold, gold, gold was the subject of his thoughts—the theme of his ravings—at that time. He must have read, at some period of his life, and been much impressed by, Hood's celebrated poem on that subject, for he was constantly quoting ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... out of Florence, his native city-republic, by a political strife. In this year, as he himself phrases it, he descended into hell; that is, he began those weary wanderings in exile which ended only with his life, and which stirred in him the deeps that found expression in his mighty poem, the Divina Commedia.[1] Throughout his masterpiece he speaks with eager respect of the old Roman writers, and of such Greeks as he knew—so we have admiration of the ancient intellect. He also speaks bitterly of certain popes, as well as of other more earthly tyrants—so we have the dawnings ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... I need no other apology for presenting to your notice the bearer hereof, Mr. Barlow. I know you were among the first who read the Visions of Columbus, while yet in manuscript; and think the sentiments I heard you express of that poem will induce you to be pleased with the acquaintance of their author. He comes to pass a few days only at London, merely to know something of it. As I have little acquaintance there, I cannot do better for him than to ask you to ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... theory is as old as Homer. Its laureate is Montesquieu. The more northerly you go, he said, the sterner the man grows. You must scorch a Muscovite to make him feel. Gray was a convert. One of the prose hints for his noble fragment of a didactic poem runs thus: "It is the proper work of education and government united, to redress the faults that arise from the soil and air." Berkeley entertained the same feeling. Writing to Pope from Leghorn, and alluding to some half-formed design he had heard him mention of visiting Italy, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... ridicule of Linus, on his awkwardness in holding the lyre, struck him on the head with his instrument, and killed him. The scholars of Linus lamented the death of their master, in a mournful kind of poem, called from him Aelinum. These poems were afterwards designated Epitaphia, from the two words [Greek: epi], upon, and [Greek: taphios], sepulchre, being engraved on tombs, in honour or memory of the deceased, and generally containing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... overcome them. Bunyan wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress" in Bedford jail on scraps of wrapping paper while he was half starved on a diet of bread and water. That unfortunate American genius, Edgar Allan Poe, wrote "The Raven," the most wonderful conception as well as the most highly artistic poem in all English literature, in a little cottage in the Fordham section of New York while he was in the direst straits of want. Throughout all his short and wonderfully brilliant career, poor Poe never had a dollar he could call his own. ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Tennyson read his poems. His reading was most impressive, but I think he read Browning's "Ride from Ghent to Aix" better than anything of his own, except, perhaps, "The Northern Farmer." He used to preserve the monotonous rhythm of the galloping horses in Browning's poem, and made the words come out sharply like hoofs upon a road. It was a little comic until one got used to it, but that fault lay in the ear of the hearer. It was the right way and the fine way to read this particular poem, and I have ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... refer to, says, "After these transactions, he was treated with the greatest indignities, and at last inhumanly murdered in Berkeley Castle, and his body buried in a private manner in the Abbey Church, at Gloucester." The lines of Gray, in his celebrated poem of "The Bard," are familiar to most school-boys, where he alludes to the cries ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... French poetry you send me is a rather exaggerated piece of enthusiasm as it stands thus alone; though, incorporated in the poem to which it belongs, the effect of it may be striking. Some of the stanzas of Manzoni's "Ode to Napoleon" (a very noble poem), detached from their context, might appear strained and exaggerated. That which has real merit as a whole seldom ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... Dry Rot in Europe, but one matter puzzled him. He read in papers or reviews, and he vaguely heard talk of a secret institution, the Society of Souls. They were going to run a newspaper; they were not going to run a newspaper. There was a poem in connection with them, which mystified LINCOLN B. SWEZEY not a little; he "allowed it was darned personal," but further than that his light did not penetrate. He went to a little Club, of which he was a temporary member; it was not fashionable, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 14, 1893 • Various
... and save for the scrawl of the night before, we had had no communication for many weeks ... She tried to distract her mind by repeating poetry, and the thing that came into her head was Keats's 'Nightingale', an odd poem ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... said the little monk cheerily; "come to my room, and we'll finish making the ink, and then you can learn to read the letters as I make them, while I write out a poem for the Queen; and then I'll get out the red and blue and yellow, and the thin leaves of gold, and we'll try and make a beautiful big letter like those in the Queen's book, and finish it ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... inhuman action to tarnish the splendor of his fame." The benevolent magnanimity of the heroes, the sweet sensibility of the heroines, their harmony with Nature's moods (traits which Macpherson had supplied from his own imagination), were the very traits that won the enthusiasm of the public. The poem in its turn stimulated the sentimentalism which had produced it; and henceforth the new school contended on even terms with ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... passamezzo [It], toccata, Vorspiel [G.]. instrumental music; full score; minstrelsy, tweedledum and tweedledee, band, orchestra; concerted piece [Fr.], potpourri, capriccio. vocal music, vocalism^; chaunt, chant; psalm, psalmody; hymn; song &c (poem) 597; canticle, canzonet^, cantata, bravura, lay, ballad, ditty, carol, pastoral, recitative, recitativo^, solfeggio^. Lydian measures; slow music, slow movement; adagio &c adv.; minuet; siren strains, soft music, lullaby; dump; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... an equivocal and lewd poem it must be to please these ladies and make them laugh! My king, we must, then, to please these dear ladies, forget a little our chastity, modesty, and maiden bashfulness, and speak in the spirit of the ladies—that is to say, as ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... it as you see it, in that book. It belonged to Lord Hilton's brother. The verses are a translation of part of the poem beside which they lie—one by Von Salis, who died shortly before that date at the bottom. I will read them to you, and then show you something else that is strange about them. The poem is called Psyche's Sorrow. Psyche ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... ran into Linton. Unlike Drummond, Linton bore marks of the encounter. As in the case of the hero of Calverley's poem, one of his speaking eyes was sable. The swelling of his lip was increased. There was a deep red bruise on his forehead. In spite of these injuries, however, he was cheerful. He was whistling ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... sometimes it seems to me as if he hadn't read because he loved it, but because he thought it due to himself. But maybe I'm mistaken. I could imagine a delicate poem shutting up half its sweetness from his cold, cold scrutiny,—if you will excuse ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... was no better prepared than he should be. The faculty, however, were indulgent, and had, moreover, even at that early day, hit upon the happy expedient of awarding to every member of the graduating class an honor of some sort, the delivery of an oration or a poem,—taking especial care, by the way, to note in the proces verbal of the exercises that those students who were too poor to purchase, and too stupid to manufacture, either the one or the other, had been excused from taking the part assigned;—a convenient device, by which many a deceived ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... In a poem upon stones attributed to Orpheus, it is said that the sacred fire was also lighted by a bit of crystal which concentrated the rays of the sun upon the material to be inflamed. This process must have been the one that was most usually employed ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... to me hafter the ewent, and wanted me adwance 50 lb., so that he might purshew his fewgitif sister—but I wasn't to be ad with that sort of chaugh—there was no more money for THAT famly. So he went away, and gave huttrance to his feelinx in a poem, which appeared (price 2 ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a bumper, and after giving a few preparatory hems, he sang the following "singularly wild and beautiful poem," ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... his Eve in Paradise, which indeed would have been a place as little delightful as a barren heath or desert to those who slept in it. The fondness of the posture in which Adam is represented, and the softness of his whisper, are passages in this divine poem that are above all commendation, and rather ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... and attracted by the strange fascination of the Annals,—of one who, failing to gain a hearing at first, never courted the breath of popularity again; just as the author of Joseph and his Brethren, when his noble poem fell still-born from the press, turned contemptuously away and preserved thenceforward an unbroken silence. It should be noticed that the 4to. of 1633 is not really a new edition; it is merely the 4to. of 1624, with a new title-page. In a copy bearing the later date I found ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... in the work ought to contribute directly or indirectly to the main effect. Very often a definite theme may be found about which the whole work centers, as for instance in 'Macbeth,' The Ruin of a Man through Yielding to Evil. Sometimes, however, as in a lyric poem, the effect intended may be the rendering or creation of a mood, such as that of happy content, and in that case the poem may not have an easily expressible ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... idea, the grammarian Aristophanes exclaimed in a somewhat affected, though highly ingenious turn of expression: "O life and Menander! which of you copied the other?" Horace informs us that "some doubted whether Comedy be a poem; because neither in its subject nor in its language is there the same impressive elevation which distinguished from ordinary discourse by the versification." But it was urged by others, that Comedy occasionally elevates ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... man who will make play With a number of wounds(?) on his girdle; [Note: Unless this is an allusion to the custom of carrying an enemy's head at the girdle, the meaning is obscure. LL has quite a different reading. The language of this poem is late.] A hero's flame over his head, His forehead a ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... aimlessly down the deserted corridor, his footsteps echoed hollowly like a dirge. A line from an old poem sprang to his mind: "We are the dead, row on row we lie—" He was the dead, but still he chased the chimera of hope, yet knowing in his heart it ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow
... of the emigration of a people has been often repeated since the world began. The Israelites of old, with their wanderings of forty years, furnish the theme of an inspired poem as old as history itself. The dreadful tale of the Kalmuck Tartars, in 1770, fleeing from their enemies, the Russians, over the desolate steppes of Asia in mid-winter; starting out six hundred thousand strong, men, women, and children, with their flocks and herds, and reaching ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... the public story-teller, or of the teacher with a group of children, not the spontaneous (and most rare) power of telling stories such as Beranger gives us in his poem, "Souvenirs du Peuple": ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... the existing British public. But, first of all, putting the question of who writes, or speaks, aside, do you, good reader, know good 'style' when you get it? Can you say, of half-a-dozen given lines taken anywhere out of a novel, or poem, or play, That is good, essentially, in style, or bad, essentially? and can you say why such half-dozen lines are ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... old," she wrote; "you see, I shall never live to have another doll given me. This will be my last doll. There is something solemn about it. If I could write poetry, I am sure a poem about 'A Last Doll' would be very nice. But I cannot write poetry. I have tried, and it made me laugh. It did not sound like Watts or Coleridge or Shakespeare at all. No one could ever take Emily's place, ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... contains several characters unknown to Cooper, Dickens, Marryatt, or Bulwer. As a Mythological Work it should be immediately secured, as it makes mention of a number of gods and deified worthies hitherto unknown to old Jupiter himself. As a Poem, its claims to consideration cannot be denied, as it comprises a great many beauties not discoverable in the "Song of Hiawatha," besides several Indian names ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... health and forced him to resign. The presence of two such men gave some hours of refined social life in the intervals of rough work. One evening walk along the Kanawha has ever since remained in my memory associated with Whittier's poem "The River Path," as a wilder and more brilliant type of the scene he pictured. We had walked out beyond the camp, leaving its noise and its warlike associations behind us, for a turn of the road around a jutting cliff shut it all out as completely as if we had been transported ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... seventeenth and part of the eighteenth century to our Scottish country folk seems to have been the lesson of toleration; and as they were slow, stubborn scholars, the lash was very frequently and very severely applied. One of the Jacobite papers of Mr. Petrie's collection,—a triumphal poem on the victory of Gladsmuir,—which, if less poetical than the Ode of Hamilton of Bangour on the same subject, is in no degree less curious,—serves to throw very decided light on a passage in literary history which puzzled Dr. Johnson, and which ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... keep on getting letters about him. He seems to have been so glad to die. It was like a child's funeral, I am told, and all his American friends seem to have been there—Saint-Gaudens, Taber, etc. A poem about the dear fellow by Mr. Gilder has one very good line in which he says the grave 'might snatch a brightness from his presence there.' I thought that was very happy, the love of light and gladness being the most remarkable thing about him, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... relatively advanced period, however, this mass was represented as a monster, the antagonist of the gods of light and order, and from this representation has come a whole literature of myths. In Babylonia a great cosmogonic poem grew up in which the dragon figures of the water chaos (Tiamat, Mummu, Kingu) play a great part,[589] and echoes of this myth appear in the ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... Mr. Pennie's Tragedies, we must add that a more delightful collection of notes was never appended to any poem. Would that all commentators had so assiduously illustrated their text. Here is none of the literary indolence by which nine out of ten works are disfigured, nor the fiddle-faddle notes which some folks must have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... that, why not come to the war, and see it for yourself? A new country—one of the finest in the world. New scenery, new actors,—Why, Constantinople itself is a poem! Yes, there is another 'Revolt of Islam' to be written yet. Why don't you become our war poet? Come and see the fighting; for there'll be plenty of it, let them say what they will. The old bear is not going to drop his dead donkey ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... now like an enraged goddess or something; and if Herman hadn't been a quick bender and light on his feet she wouldn't of missed him with his gifts. As it was, he ducked in time and went out to the spring house to write a poem on her beauty, which he later read to her in German through a kitchen window that was raised. The window was screened; so he read it all. Later he gets Sandy Sawtelle to tell her this poem is all about how coy she is. Every once ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... truth. Beyond the Euxine also, in the other direction, all is fable. Colchis seems to have been known, though not so accurately as the recent Argonautic expedition might have led us to suppose it would have been. The west coast of Asia Minor, the scene of his great poem, is of course completely within his knowledge; the Phoenicians and Egyptians are particularly described, the former for their purple stuffs, gold and silver works, maritime science and commercial skill, and ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... sacred poem that hath made Both heav'n and earth copartners in its toil, And with lean abstinence, through many a year, Faded my brow, be destin'd to prevail Over the cruelty, which bars me forth Of the fair sheep-fold, where ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... poem, "Trivia, or the Art of Walking the Streets of London," published in 1716, advises in passing ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... in the old Anglo-Saxon poem, and this same sea-longing was bred in the bones of our Boston apprentice. Now at length the boy would break away; at least he would voyage to another home, though he might give up the notion of becoming a sailor. He intimates, ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... it was the first time I had worn a really low dress. Oh, how uncomfortable I was! Every one paid me great attention. Rossini asked me to recite some poetry, and I consented willingly, glad and proud to be of some little importance. I chose Casimir Delavigne's poem, "L'Ame du Purgatoire." "That should be spoken with music as an accompaniment," exclaimed Rossini when I came to an end. Every one approved this idea, and Walewski said; "Mademoiselle will begin again, and you could ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... line of this poem needs explanation. "Greenwood" is the name of a cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y. "Greenwood of Soul" means the soul's resting place, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... literature is studied. For example, in a course of this kind on Greek literature, in dealing with the Odyssey the students would discuss in class, or present written reports upon, the composition of the poem as a whole, and the relation to the main plot of different episodes such as the quest of Telemachus, his visit to Pylos and Lacedaemon, the scene in Calypso's cave, the building of the raft, the arrival ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... pencil back in his pocket and continued to stare at the Latin. It recalled the poem, which he had read as a student, and thought very fine. There were treasures of memory which no lodging-house keeper could attach. One carried things about in one's head, long after one's linen could be smuggled out in a tuning-bag. ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the mind's working as no other organ of the body is, and, oh, what a different order of thought would have rolled off from your pen, when you sat down and tried to write your best! If we are to believe Robert Burns, some people have been made more of than was originally intended. A certain poem records how that which, in his homely phrase, he calls "stuff to mak' a swine," was ultimately converted into a very poor specimen of a human being. The poet had no irreverent intention, I dare say; but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... supposition we have ultimately to think of God and man either as All plus something or All plus zero—which is absurd. Mr. Chesterton has rendered useful service by insisting that in creating the world God distinguishes Himself from the world, as a poet is distinct from his poem—a truth which he has condensed into an aphorism, {28} "All creation is separation"; but on the part of the Deity such "separation" implies of necessity the self-limitation just spoken of. Just as a billion, minus the billionth fraction of a unit, is no longer a billion, so infinity ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the Annee Litteraire published a long poem in de Clieu's honor. In the feuilleton of the Gazette de France, April 12, 1816, we read that M. Donns, a wealthy Hollander, and a coffee connoisseur, sought to honor de Clieu by having painted upon a porcelain service all the details of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... accessible by broad marble steps. It is known as the Jumna Musjid, and is conceded to be the finest of which Islamism can boast, owing its construction to that grand builder of tombs, palaces, and mosques, Shah-Jehan,—the creator of the Taj, that poem in marble at Agra, the glory and pride of India. The Jumna Musjid is built principally of red stone, but is freely inlaid with white marble, and as a whole is very impressive and Oriental ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... said she, with her clear, sweet, childish voice—"I know that Cardinal Bernis is a poet, and therefore it will not be very difficult for him to change a young maiden into a divinity. Nor is this the first time he has done so! I remember a lovely poem of his, the complaint of a shepherd, who considers the object of his love a divinity because she is so beautiful, and at last she proves to be no divinity, but on the contrary a regular little quarrelsome wrangler, who has nothing beautiful ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... and in Goethe's 'Goetz,' which he translated four years later, just the nourishment it craved. It is a curious coincidence that another great romantic writer, Alexandre Dumas, should also have begun his literary career with a translation of 'Lenore.' Buerger was not, however, a man of one poem. He filled two goodly volumes, but the oft-quoted words of his friend Schlegel contain the essential truth:—"'Lenore' will always be Buerger's jewel, the precious ring with which, like the Doge of Venice espousing the sea, he married himself to the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... knowledge of equity; by which I do not mean justice, but chancery law. But, though quite unable to understand how great a Chancellor Lord Eldon was, I am quite able to estimate how great a poet he was, also how great a wit. Here is a poem by that eminent person. Doubtless he regarded it as a wonder of happy versification, as well as instinct with the most convulsing fun. It is intended to set out in a metrical form the career of a certain judge, who went up as a poor lad from Scotland to England, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... movement and encouraged it, though it was attended very naturally with some painful considerations, and took away a pleasing picture from the landscape which filled the vision of Dr. Dwight when he wrote his poem entitled ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... the idea occurred to him of writing a great French epic, and he actually composed in his dungeon two cantos of it, which afterwards were not altered. The poem was called "Henriade," and was regarded ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... conceive it, is a purely subjective poem. In all that books tell us about it, there is nothing which is not at once false and true. And so, my pretty one, as you will henceforth be an authority only on conjugal love, it seems to me my duty—in the interest, of course, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Shutting up his telescope, Wolfe sat silent a while. Then, as afterwards recorded by Robison, he turned towards his officers and repeated several stanzas of Gray's Elegy. 'Gentlemen,' he said as he ended, 'I would sooner have written that poem than beat the French to-morrow.' He did not know then that his own fame would far surpass the poet's, and that he should win it in the very way described in one of the lines ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... had he written an Ode to the Fall, would have produced quite such a miraculous poem as that which begins ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... conjunction with his friend Steinhaeuser, soon after his return from the Mecca pilgrimage, more than thirty years ago, and he has been doing something to them ever since. In the swampy jungles of West Africa a tale or two has been turned into English, or a poem has been versified during the tedium of official life in the dank climate of Brazil. From Sind to Trieste the manuscript has formed part and parcel of his baggage and though, in the interval, the learned author has added many a volume to the shelf-full which ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... "Like that poem of poor Lamb's?" she said. "Oh thou dearer than a brother! Why wast thou not born within my father's dwelling? So might we talk of the old familiar faces—Yes, I believe there's ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... patriotically inclined and chose to devote this cherished space to a picture of the king or some national idol. Or maybe he was of literary bent and gave over the shrine to a religious text, a love poem, a maxim, or a moral admonition that he wished to keep daily before him. Even we ourselves often paste pictures in our watches. We have never, however, gone into the craze as the English of this particular era did. With them it was a fashionable fad that ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett |
