"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marriage or other domestic festivals. After he has received the usual courtesies he produces the Wai, a book written in his own crabbed hieroglyphics or in those of his father, which contains the descent of the house from its founder, interspersed with many a verse or ballad, the dark sayings contained in which are chanted forth in musical cadence to a delighted audience, and are then orally interpreted by the bard with many an illustrative anecdote or tale. The Wai, however, is not merely a source ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... effect it. They would bind their Samson until they have scanned his limbs and thews. Incapable of understanding the first motions of freedom in themselves, they proceed to interpret the riches of his divine soul in terms of their own beggarly notions, to paraphrase his glorious verse into their own paltry commercial prose; and then, in the growing presumption of imagined success, to insist upon their neighbours' acceptance of their distorted shadows of 'the plan of salvation' as the truth of him in whom is no darkness, and the one condition of their acceptance ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... valeureux Lysis . . . avec un escabeau qu'il tient en main donne si rudement sur la teste de l'un de ses adversaires, qu'il en fait sortir la cervelle. Il en assomme encores deux autres: mais que peut-il faire contre tant de gens, & ainsi desarme qu'il est? Son corps perce comme un crible, verse un grand ruisseau de sang. En fin il se jette sur Lisandre, et bien que par derriere on luy baille cent coups de poignards, il le prend, et le souleve, prest a le jetter du haut en bas d'une fenestre, si tous les autres ensemble, en se jettant sur luy, ne l'en eussent empesche. ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... well as theirs for his cause, filled her with hopes for a happy life." Napoleon's life at that time was one long deification. Louis XIV. himself, the Sun-King, had never received more flattery in prose and verse. All the official poets had tuned their lyres to sing his marriage, and the Moniteur was full of dithyrambs. It also published a translation of an Italian cantata entitled, "La Jerogamia di Creta, Inno del Cavaliere Vincenzo Monti," which ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... thereupon she turned it more to her own supposed case; and believing Mrs. Jewkes had a design against her honour, and looking upon her as her gaoler, she thus gives her version of this psalm. But pray, Mr. Williams, do you read one verse of the common translation, and I will read one of Pamela's. Then Mr. Williams, pulling out his little pocket Common-Prayer-Book, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... was graduated from Yale, only twenty men were of his class. Quite a large number of Yale graduates took part with the patriots, and Humphreys, one of the class of 1771, was aide-de-camp to Washington. He, I believe, is the only writer in verse who extolled this John Brown. How often we are indebted to poets for our heroes! If this John Brown had incited an insurrection and been hanged for killing his fellow-men contrary to law in time of peace, "his soul ...
— Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold • Archibald Murray Howe
... England, however, we shall find on many a deserted down or lonely tor ample evidence of the causes which led the people of this ancient Etruscan town to build their citadel at so great a height above the neighbouring valley. Fiesole, says Dante, in a well-known verse, was the mother of Florence. Even so in England, Old Sarum was indeed the mother of Salisbury, and Caer Badon or Sulis was the mother of Bath. And when there was first a Faesulae on the hill here there could be no Florence, as when first there was an Old Sarum on the Wiltshire downs ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... may command processions, fetes, masques, and stage-plays. It pleases her now to see this wonderful fairy piece, of which she has heard so much since, two years ago, it graced the nuptials of the Earl of Derby. Does she not remember also that pretty impromptu verse of the author when acting the part of King in another man's play, two years ago at Greenwich? Did she not twice drop her glove near his feet in crossing the stage? And how happily had he responded to the challenge! True to the character as well as to the metre ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... publicly; which is the first time that I have done so these many years since I used to go with my father and mother, and so got into the gallery, beside the pulpit, and heard very well. His text was, "Now the God of Peace—;" the last Hebrews, and the 20th verse: he making a very good sermon, and very little reflections in it to any thing of the times. Besides the sermon, I was very well pleased with the sight of a fine lady that I have often seen walk in Graye's Inn Walks, and it was my chance to meet her again at the door going out, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... embodied in his person the virtues of the typical avenger of the wrongs of the poor and the oppressed against the tyranny of the rich and the powerful; his name has been honored and his manly deeds have been lauded in prose and verse by thousands in many lands for many centuries, exciting doubtless many a noble deed of self-denial, and spurring to the forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, if not also to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... musician pushes his instrument into the hands of Running Antelope and turns to us with, "There's another verse, but I don't always give it." We ask him to repeat it for us, but he seems a little at a loss. "It's hard to call it out without the fiddle. When yer playin' you just spit it ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... much. You should train your mind to remember the best. John Ruskin, one of the most gifted of Englishmen, said, "To this I owe all that I have of power, to the fact that when I was a boy my mother made me learn, every day, and remember, a verse of ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... came up a lion out of Judah.' My grandfather is an elder in that church, and he said the verse and the sermon on it lifted the people ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... Fairy Queen," in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Nichols's edition, vol. iii., p. 172, are stanzas similar to the Welsh verse given above, which also partially embody the Welsh opinions of Fairy visits to their houses. Thus ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... at the spectacle of sordid self-seeking that everywhere met his gaze, and excess of sentiment made him forgetful of syntax. "Mark me, my friend, I am not to be bought," he continued in unconscious blank verse. "I shall take my pick, sir, and you will take this check." And he handed the amazed publisher a check for five hundred dollars. "I sicken, sir," he continued, "of this qualmish air of half-truth that I have breathed so long. I am going to read ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... have even found them still on guard after the battle, when the snow melted in springtime. Once when I was a boy, I found a whole bank of them by a fence, when the snow went off in April, and I wrote in their honour this verse: ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... sleepless merchant weep, Whose richer hazard loads the deep. For me the blast, or low or high, Blows nought of wealth or poverty; It can but whirl in whimsies vain The windmill of a restless brain, And bid me tell in slipshod verse What honest prose might best rehearse; How much we forest-dwellers grieve Our valued friends our cot should leave, Unseen each beauty that we boast, The little wonders of our coast, That still the pile of Melrose gray, For you must rise in minstrel's lay, And Yarrow's birk immortal ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Arkwright sing her own music,[184] which is of the highest order—no forced vagaries of the voice, no caprices of tone, but all telling upon and increasing the feeling the words require. This is "marrying music to immortal verse."[185] Most people place ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... this severe reprimand their leader gave them. [709] Moses did not, however, merely admonish the people to walk in the ways of the Lord, but he said to Israel: "I am near to death, Whosoever hath learned from me a verse, a chapter, or a law, let him come to me and learn it anew," whereupon he repeated all the Torah, [710] and that, too, in the seventy languages of the world, that not Israel alone but all the heathen peoples, too, might hear ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... very texture of their dreams. The building is able to speak thus powerfully to the imagination because its creator is a poet and prophet of democracy. In his own chosen language he declares, as Whitman did in verse, his faith in the people of "these states"—"A Nation announcing itself." Others will doubtless follow who will make a richer music, commensurate with the future's richer life, but such democracy as is ours stands here proclaimed, ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... and hard. She had not sung the ballad of the brave MacIntyre when formerly he had seen the piece. Did she merely wish him to know, by this arch rendering of the gloomy song, that she was pursuing her Highland studies? And then the last verse she sang in the Gaelic! He was so near that he could hear this adjuration to the unhappy lover to seek his boat and fly, steering wide of Jura and ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... it on the lassies? And, anyway, my kingdom is no of this world. Either I'm a poet or else I'm nothing." Clem would remind him of old age. "I'll die young, like, Robbie Burns," he would say stoutly. No question but he had a certain accomplishment in minor verse. His "Hermiston Burn," with ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... tippled prettily, divided regretfully, and paid the bill most cheerfully." On another occasion the historian's enthusiasm was too expansive to be confined to plain prose, and he inflated it in lyric verse:— ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... men of learning render themselves contemptible in the places where they live, while they are admired where they are known only by their writings."—Wace was a native of Jersey, but an author only at Caen. The most celebrated of his works is Le Roman de Rou et des Normans, written in French verse. He dedicated this romance to our Henry IInd, who rewarded him with a stall ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... death, and was on the point of being drowned in the Zambesi in a sack. Mokompa, also, continued to poetise, as in days gone by, having made a safe retreat with Chimbolo, and, among other things, enshrined all the deeds of the two white men in native verse. Yambo continued to extol play, admire, and propagate the life-sized jumping-jack to such an extent that, unless his career has been cut short by the slavers, we fully expect to find that creature a "domestic institution" when the slave-trade has been ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... in prayer, I felt my soul in God in such a way that it seemed to me as if the world did not exist, I was so absorbed in Him. He made me then understand that verse of the Magnificat, "Et exultavit spiritus meus," so that I ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... alone with his father. A golden hour, sacred to memories of the world's own childhood. He brought with him the book that was his evening's choice—Grimm, or Andersen, or AEsop. Already he knew by heart a score of little poems, or passages of verse, which Rolfe, disregarding the inept volumes known as children's anthologies, chose with utmost care from his favourite singers, and repeated till they were learnt. Stories from the Odyssey had come in of ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... jeer at the beginning of the performance, clinked their glasses and rapped their sticks with quite a respectful enthusiasm. When the song was over, Clive held up his head too; after the shock of the first verse, looked round with surprise and pleasure in his eyes; and we, I need not say, backed our friend, delighted to see him come out of his queer scrape so triumphantly. The Colonel bowed and smiled with ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the garden she would avoid them, and seek the most remote parts; and was seen like a sprite, only by gleams and glimpses, as she glided among the groves and thickets. Many of her feelings and fancies, during these lonely rambles, were embodied in verse, noted down on her tablet, and transferred to paper in the evening on her return to the farmhouse. Some of these verses now lie before me, written with considerable harmony of versification, but chiefly curious as ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... The observation of that day, We know it was not free; For if it had, such acts as those Had ne'er been seen in verse or prose, You may ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... scrawled across one corner of the note that anthrax was usually fatal, but that, as he himself had twice had it, he would risk taking it a third time in order to be with his friend. Thereupon the Iron King departed to the city, leaving the Poet to dictate blank verse to the pretty young secretary, who curled both feet round one leg of her chair, told him that she "loved his potry more'n anythink she'd ever read" and asked how all the hard words like "chrysoprase" and "asphdel" were spelt. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of the Cafe D'Harcourt where the absinthe flowed so continuously, and from which some very exquisite poetry has emanated for all time. It is the first intimation we have of what our best English poetry has done for the best French poets of the present, and what our first free verse poet has done for the general liberation of emotions and for freedom of form in all countries. He has indicated the poets that are to follow him. He would be the first to sanction all this poetic discussive intensity ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... Dante was living at Ravenna he would spend whole days alone among the forest glades, thinking of Florence and her civil wars, and meditating cantos of his poem. Nor have the influences of the pine-wood failed to leave their trace upon his verse. The charm of its summer solitude seems to have sunk into his soul; for when he describes the whispering of winds and singing birds among the boughs of his terrestrial paradise, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... went to sit with Adela, either at home or by the sea-shore, often carried a book in her hand, and at Adela's request she read aloud. In this way Adela first came to know what was meant by literature, as distinguished from works of learning. The verse of Shelley and the prose of Landor fell upon her ears; it was as though she had hitherto lived in deafness. Sometimes she had to beg the reader to pause for that day; her heart and mind seemed overfull; ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... rumbled into song. She now sang: "What fierce diseases wait around to hurry mortals home!" It is, musically, the crudest sort of thing. And it clashed with my mood; for I now wished to know how Herman had revealed Prussian guile by his manner of leaving Reno. Only after another verse of the hymn could I be told. It seems ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... my folly. By past experiences we build up our moral being. The Giant Wordsworth—God love him! When I speak in the terms of admiration due to his intellect, I fear lest these terms should keep out of sight the amiableness of his manners. He has written near twelve hundred lines of a blank verse, [1] superior, I hesitate not to aver, to anything in our language which any way resembles it. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... this way unless you refer at every minute to your guide-book, and to go through Europe reading a guide-book which you can read at home seems to be a waste of time. On the stone beneath which Addison lies is engraved the verse from Tickell's ode: ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... the tribunes of the Convention,[1131] they there find the same, classic, simple, declamatory, sanguinary tragedy, except that the latter is not feigned but real, and the tirades are in prose instead of in verse. Surrounded by paid yappers like victims for the ancient Romans celebrations of purifications, our provincials applaud, cheer and get excited, the same as on the night before at the signal given by the claqueurs and the regulars. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... He read this verse as he had done many a time before, without thinking of the exceeding beauty of the manner in which it is connected with the former one; but in after years he never read it again without that whole room rising before his eyes, and above all his mother's face. It was a sweet soft light, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... first mate joined in the refrain. And Hookway ceased to rave. They sang the hymn right through. The last verse was sung by every one. The "Amen" went up like a prayer at the end. And the sailors, with their caps in their hands, some of them with tears in their eyes, looked gratefully at Sylvia ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... Grandison: she began a translation from the French, of a book, called, the New Robinson; but in this undertaking, she was, I believe, anticipated by another translator: and she compiled a series of extracts in verse and prose, upon the model of Dr. Enfield's Speaker, which bears the title of the Female Reader; but which, from a cause not worth mentioning, has hitherto been printed with a different ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... labour and dissipation; Smollett was active in the literary trade, but not in such a way as to increase his own dignity or that of his employment; Gray was slowly writing a few lines of exquisite verse in his retirement at Cambridge; two young Irish adventurers, Burke and Goldsmith, were just coming to London to try their fortune; Adam Smith made his first experiment as an author by reviewing the Dictionary in the Edinburgh ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... me. Had I begun, in all past efforts to remember, at the wrong end? Instead of trying to recollect the circumstances that immediately preceded the murder, ought I to have set out by trying to reinstate my First Life, chapter by chapter and verse by verse, from childhood upward? Ought I to start by recalling as far as possible my very earliest recollections in my previous existence, and then gradually work up through all my subsequent history to the date of ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... Aren't we going to open with my play, and isn't my play in verse?... I'm sure you'll agree with me, Mr. Machin, that there is no real drama except ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... projected ride, and, going up to the study he had contrived for himself in the rambling roof of the ancient house, began looking along the backs of his books, in search of some suggestion of how to approach Letty; his glance fell on a beautifully bound volume of verse—a selection of English lyrics, made with tolerable judgment—which he had bought to give, but the very color of which, every time his eye flitting along the book-shelves caught it, threw a faint sickness over his heart, preluding the memory of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... fairy life. And so the joy is not unmixed with just a touch of awe. Amidst the whole tintinnabulation is a soft resonant echo of horns below, like an image in a lake. The air hangs heavy with dim romance until the sudden return to first fairy verse in sounds almost human. Once more come ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... stealthily endeavoring to place his finger accurately upon certain small round spots in the table-cloth. Whereupon, Mr. Bulliwinkle, to show how entirely he had himself in hand, proposed a toast in verse beginning, ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... rather shyly, 'of that verse in my chapter: "He maketh the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." What sort of a man ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... "Mound" of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true; "changing" is as familiar as may be; "foam that passed away," strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which I know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. For most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. The word "wave" is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass: it does not ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... much more forcible measures in order to spread the faith. War against infidels being one of the standing duties of the faithful, various regulations were laid down for the treatment of captives and the disposal of booty in such wars. God, who is said in every verse to be forgiving and merciful, encourages the faithful in such passages to slay and rob, and to make concubines of women taken in sacred wars. At the moment of his death an expedition, not the first, was ready to start against the Greek power. It is in this guise ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... would discuss. Chenier might well arm himself with "Paul and Virginia," and the "Chaumiere Indienne," in opposition to those writers, who, as he said, made prose unnatural, by seeking to elevate it into verse. ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time Moping melancholy mad: Come, ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... he said to his editor when he was told of what the actor-knight had said over the telephone. "My Lord, when I hear him spouting blank verse through his nose!..." ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... brother, Mr. Barthe Brick, familiarly known as the "Brick," who had just commenced a song, a parody upon Fra Diavolo,—a something very, very low, supposed to be sung by a dealer in hearth-stones; who, at the end of each verse, vociferates "who'll buy," heightening the illusion by trundling a chair, on its back, round the family ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... dreamy eyes, full of unwritten verse, dwelt with a curious indifference upon the broken procession of ascending, black figures. He had but lately joined, and to him both the fine vessel and her owner were invested ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... a race of which he is otherwise ignorant, I have afforded him a slight sketch of the Breton environment and historical development, and in an attempt to lighten his passage through the volume I have here and there told a tale in verse, sometimes translated, ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... ah! too vast, too awful and sublime, Is my great passion, born of grief and fear, To clothe in verse. Why, if the world could hear And understand my love, then for all time, So long as there was sound or listening ear, All space would ring and echo with ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... planned an appeal to eternity. He knew "Emaux et Camees" as pious folk their Bible; he felt that naught endured but art. So he became a pagan, and sought for firmness and delicacy in the texture, while aiming to fill his verse with the fire of Swinburne, the subtlety of Rossetti and the great, clear day-flame of Gautier. A well-nigh impossible ideal; yet he cherished it for twice ten years, and at forty had forsworn poetry ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... slight quickening of time in the last two lines, a clearer, stronger tone, as the singer's emotional nature caught the triumph in the words, but the last verse was ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... verse was first employed in our public theatres is considered and discussed in the "History of English Dramatic Poetry and the Stage," iii. 107, and the whole of Marlowe's Prologue, in which he may be said to claim the credit of its ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... The last verse of the chapter has these words "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me, and of My words, in this adulterous and sinful generation; of Him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when He cometh in the glory of His ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Minnie, the cook, could make. Then, as the afternoon drew to a close, and the matron began lining up her charges for the homeward walk, Tony and Lottie stepped out of the ranks and sang a pretty little verse of thanks for the good time ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... a great sob. Her little lad had been a choir boy,—perhaps these were his one-time comrades. The second verse of the carol rang ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... a manifest reference in the fourth verse to the personage alluded to in Psalm cxviii. 22, 23: "The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvellous in our eyes." And this passage is applied by Christ to himself ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King
... they married. From a suburban lodging, he brought her home to his mother's little house in the northeast of London without a single day's honeymoon. My Father was a zoologist, and a writer of books on natural history; my Mother also was a writer, author already of two slender volumes of religious verse—the earlier of which, I know not how, must have enjoyed some slight success, since a second edition was printed—afterwards she devoted her pen to popular works of edification. But how infinitely removed in their aims, their habits, their ambitions from 'literary' people of the present ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... 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 it were, he ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end-with the two latter the means. The poet of the "Creation" wished, by highly artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth-the poet of the "Ancient Mariner" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete failure what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path which could ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Daggett's text this morning was the twenty-second chapter of Revelation, sixteenth verse, "I am the root and offspring of David and the bright and morning star." Mrs. Judge Taylor taught our Sunday-school class today and she said we ought not to read our Sunday-school books on Sunday. I always do. Mine today was entitled, Cheap Repository ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... fled away together; they did not stand because the day of their calamity was come upon them, and the time of their visitation." And to Job cursing the day of his birth, from the first to the eleventh verse. In confirmation of which may also be quoted a calendar, extracted out of several ancient Roman Catholic prayer books, written on vellum, before printing was invented, in which were inserted the unfortunate days of each month, which it would ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... the priest who sat beside him one day heard Latin verse; whereat the father addressed David in the language of the Church and received reply in kind. And they talked solemnly about matters theological for five minutes, David's voice changing to the drone of the liturgist's ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... of the organ, aided by basses so hollow that they seemed to have descended into themselves, as it were underground, they sprang out, chanting the verse "De profundis ad te clamavi, Do—" and then stopped in fatigue, letting the last syllables "mine" fall like a heavy tear; then these voices of children, near breaking, took up the second verse of the psalm, "Domine exaudi vocem meam," and the second half of the last word again remained ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Let Homer sing his verse. I listen to this sublime genius in comparison with whom I, a simple herdsman, an humble farmer, am as nothing. What, indeed,—if product is to be compared with product,—are my cheeses and my beans in the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... to himself, Just like a miser counting o'er his pelf? I do believe he's talking in blank verse, Or reasoning in rhyme, which would be worse. He's deaf; if he were blind, 't would suit us better, For then he couldn't ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... her hand on his arm, and her eyes shone upon him. 'It will not be your gospel, Walter, that I know. Some day you will be a rich man, perhaps, and then you will show the world what a rich man can do. Isn't there a verse in the Bible which says, "Blessed is he that considereth the poor"? You will consider the poor then, Walter, and I will help you. We shall be able to do it all the better because we have been so ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... celebrated astrologer, was born at St. Remi in Provence in the year 1503. He published a Century of Prophecies in obscure and oracular terms and barbarous verse, and other works. In the period in which he lived the pretended art of astrological prediction was in the highest repute; and its professors were sought for by emperors and kings, and entertained with the greatest distinction and honour. Henry the Second of France, moved with his great renown, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... certain number of cuttings which I think cannot have been intended for the book at all, but must have been designed for poor Capricorn's "Oxford Anthology of Bad Verse," which, just before he left England, he was in process of preparing for the University Press. Capricorn had a very fine sense of bad taste in verse, and the authorities could have chosen no one better suited for the duty of editing such a volume. I must not give the reader too much of these ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... things I would love to rehearse Which would be written for me in verse But so many are here to await Their joyous messages to relate Many friends with me are ever near To guide our brother ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and called aloud—"It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the enemy," Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted an impromptu verse— ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... anthems, as in the rubric before the Venite in the Morning Prayer. The rubric in the Evening Prayer provides for an anthem after the Collect beginning, "Lighten our darkness." Antiphon has come to mean a verse of Scripture which is sung wholly or in part before and after the Psalms or Canticles, and designed to strike the key-note of the ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... victorious'? Well, there was a fellow just behind me, with a tremendous voice, singing lustily, and taking special pains to get the pronouns correct throughout. And when he reached the fourth line of the second verse he ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... me see—Maggie Jamieson—nae Marget, but jist Maggie. She was aye Maggie at home. Maggie Jamieson, frae her father. It's the last thing I can gie her. Maybe ye micht put a verse o' ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... headquarters this evening. They discoursed national airs in a manner that thrilled and elated us, making the welkin ring with their excellent music. As the last echoes of a plaintive air died over the distant woods, and I crept into my lowly quarters for my rest, the poet's verse ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... mourned over the state of the times which could countenance such impiety; and gradually, while he turned over the leaves of the prayer-book in his hand, he was led to read aloud the hundred and thirty-sixth psalm, commenting upon every verse as he proceeded, and weeping more and more bitterly, when he came to the part commemorating the ruin of Jerusalem, which he applied, naturally enough, to the captive state of France, smarting as she then was under the iron rod of Prussia. ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person can have forgotten that poor, uneducated man, Blind Jamie, who could actually repeat, after a few minutes' consideration, any verse required from any part of the Bible—even the obscurest and least important enumeration of mere ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... profoundly upon what he has read, or assimilated it more completely." So much "reading" and so much "meditation," even when accompanied by strong assimilative powers, are not, perhaps, the most desirable and necessary tendencies in a writer of verse or of fiction. To the philosophic critic, however, they must evidently be invaluable; and thus it is that in a certain self-allotted domain of literary appreciation allied to semi-scientific thought, Bourget stands to-day without a rival. His 'Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine (1883), Nouveaux ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the mazes of romance. In moments of despondency there is no greater relief to a fretted spirit than to turn to the "Odyssey" or Mr. Payne's exquisite translation of the "Arabian Nights." Great should be our gratitude to Mr. Morris for teaching us in golden verse that "Love is Enough," and for spreading wide the gates of his "Earthly Paradise." Lucian's "True History," that carries us over unknown seas beyond the Atlantic bounds to enchanted islands in the west, is one of those books which we do not half appreciate. And among ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock
... thus singing his verse near the door, there came suddenly a mighty storm of wind, so that the king and all his nobles thought the castle would fall on their heads. They saw that Taliessin had not merely been singing the song of the wind, but seemed to have power to command ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... write. One day she attempted verse. She succeeded. The lines were of equal length and the last words rhymed. A great light dawned on her: she was a poetess. One thing more remained: she wanted ideas; well she ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... whose congenial tastes delighted in his classical attainments, used to bandy Latin and Greek with him from the Bar to the Bench; and he has more than once told me of his sending Tenterden Greek verses of John Williams', of which the next day Tenterden gave him a translation in Latin verse. He is supposed to have died very rich. Denman was taken into the King's closet before the Council, when he was sworn in; the King took no particular notice of him, and the appointment is not, probably, very palatable to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the left side, there is a stone monument upon which is graven, in Chinese characters, a poem in Hokku, or verse of seventeen ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... be art in one of its branches, or music, which, indeed, is art, too. One of the most delightful of friendships I ever heard of was cemented over the task of acquiring the "accomplishment of verse." ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... professed itself much indebted. He died in 646, in the twentieth year of his episcopacy. He has left us two letters to St. Isidore, an eulogium of that saint, and a catalogue of his works; also a hymn in Iambic verse in honor of St. Emilian, and the life of that servant of God, who, after living long a hermit, was called to serve a parish in the diocese of Tarragon, where a famous ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... man help writing poetry in such a place? Everybody does write poetry that goes there. In the state archives, kept in the library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpublished verse,—some by well-known hands, and others, quite as good, by the last people you would think of as versifiers,—men who could pension off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... Murder, the English Mail-Coach, The Spanish Nun, The Csars, and half a score other things at the age of about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be, to fall in love with them."—Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860, p.307.] Few boys read poetry, whether in verse or prose, and fewer still criticism or philosophy; to every normal boy the gate of good literature is the good story. It is the narrative skill of De Quincey that has secured for him, in preference to other writers of his class, the favor of ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... above the head, toward the left shoulder, and allow the weight of the body to rest on the left leg, the right foot being carried slightly outward. Allow the body to bang down as far as possible on the left side, without straining too much. Then verse the movement. ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... the use we at present make of it in England, having a grave word or two to say in my next letter (preparatory to the examination of that verse which haunted me through the Japanese juggling, and of some others also), I leave you first this sign of the public esteem of it to ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... a young man of education. He read a good deal, however, and showed taste in literature—was indeed regarded by his companions as an authority in its more imaginative ranges, and specially in matters belonging to verse, having an exceptionally fine ear for its vocal delicacies. This is one of the rarest of gifts; but rarity does not determine value, and Walter greatly overestimated its relative importance. The consciousness of its presence had ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... was it that was remembered through all the long years that had passed away since Astumastao had received her last Sabbath school lesson, but she called up all she could, and in that which still clung to her memory was the matchless verse: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The sick man was thrilled and startled, and said, "Say it again and again!" So over and over again she repeated it. "Can you remember ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... ways with her brothers, and then by listening to the words they were reading. First, there was the story of the man who had his dwelling in the tombs. They read on slowly and gravely, Sophy reading each verse again, except when it was John's turn, till they came to the eighth, "For He said unto him, Come out of the man, ...
— Stephen Grattan's Faith - A Canadian Story • Margaret M. Robertson
... wide and, wagging the lower jaw up and down with every "ha," they sang "O, ha-ha-ha, ho!" so many times that it seemed as if they would never get through. And, indeed, how could they tell when the song was ended, for every verse was like the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... others bought a bake-pan in Newgate Market, and sent it home, it cost me 16s. So to Dr. Williams, but he is out of town, then to the Wardrobe. Hither come Mr. Battersby; and we falling into a discourse of a new book of drollery in verse called Hudebras, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... true poet can write something worthy of being read, while a mere verse-maker, like yourself, writes only doggerel, that is not worth the paper on which it was printed. Now I advise you to let verse-making alone, and attend closely to your business, both for your own sake ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... German merchants, and spread a gay table, to which I often invited Choti and T'yonni, who were my hosts as frequently. Ori-a-Ori every evening sat with me, and numbers of times we read the Bible, I, first, reciting the verse in French, and he following in Tahitian. His greatest liking was for the chapters in which the Saviour's life on the seaside with the fishermen was described, but the beatitudes brought out to the fullest his deep, melancholy voice, as by the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... ones who were at work—a condition which sometimes obtains in some parts of the United States even to this day. Michael Sadler, a member of the House of Commons and a fearless champion of the rights of the poor and oppressed, described this aspect of the evil in touching verse.[18] ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... books enables the author to show his powers, epic, lyric, tragic, or comic, and all the moods the sweet and winning arts of poesy and oratory are capable of; for the epic may be written in prose just as well as in verse." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... ladies' tables. The "Divina Commedia," which came into vogue especially after 1830, has been twice translated into rhymed triplets. One version is the work of a certain Hacke van Mijnden, who devoted all his life to the study of Dante. "Gerusalemme Liberata" has been translated in verse by a Protestant clergyman called Ten Kate, and there was another version, unpublished and now lost, by Maria Tesseeschade, the great poetess of the seventeenth century, the intimate friend of the great Dutch poet Vondel, who advised and helped her in the translation. ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... in the thicket, listened to this little song with great delight; but she was extremely sentimental where poetry was concerned, and it happened that when she heard this last verse she clasped her hands in a burst of rapture and exclaimed in quite a loud voice, "Oh, delicious!" This was very unfortunate, for the song stopped short the instant she spoke, and for a moment everything was perfectly silent; then the little voice spoke up again, ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... has been much studied for its literary value and the exceeding beauty and lyrical sweetness of some passages; but with the exception of a version by John Oxenford published in "The Monthly Magazine" for 1842, which being in blank verse does not represent the form of the original, no complete translation into English has been attempted. Some scenes translated with considerable elegance in the metre of the original were published by Archbishop Trench in 1856; but these comprised only a portion ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... became celebrated. When Seti I., two centuries later, commanded the Poet Laureates of his court to celebrate his victories in verse, the latter, despairing of producing anything better, borrowed the finest strophes from this hymn to Thutmosis IIL, merely changing the name of the hero. The composition, unlike so many other triumphal inscriptions, is not a mere piece of official rhetoric, in which the poverty ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of the jongleurs and the trouveres, past the periods of La Fontaine and Voltaire, down to the present. The conte is a tale, something more than a sketch, it may be, and something less than a short story. In verse it is at times but a mere rhymed anecdote, or it may attain almost to the direct swiftness of a ballad. The Canterbury Tales are contes, most of them, if not all; and so are some of the Tales of a Wayside Inn. The free-and-easy tales of Prior ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... Mary, had been published in the "New Bedford Mercury," the editor of which very excellent paper said they were charming, though he never paid me a penny for them. It may interest all aspiring female poets to know that these little attempts at verse found their way into the "Home Journal," and were highly praised by it, as is everything written by Marys ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... rich, is due to neglect to decide in advance what direction one's reading shall take, and neglect to keep the book of the moment close at hand. The biographer of Lucy Larcom tells us that the aspiring girl pinned all manner of selections of prose and verse which she wished to learn at the sides of the window beside which her loom was placed; and in this way, in the intervals of work, she familiarised herself with a great deal of good literature. A certain man, now widely known, spent his boyhood on a farm, and largely educated himself. He ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... supper, or on the river while the family were taking their evening airing. Their newest performance was an arrangement of Lord Dorset's lines—"To all you ladies now on land," set as a round. There could scarcely be anything prettier than the dying fall of the refrain that ended every verse:— ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... a little ballet, "Le Rossignol," in which Montessu and Noblet used to be famous in those days, and which Mr. Wagg transferred to the English stage as an opera, putting his verse, of which he was a skilful writer, to the pretty airs of the ballet. It was dressed in old French costume, and little Lord Southdown now appeared admirably attired in the disguise of an old woman hobbling about the stage with a faultless ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... atmosphere of those tiny rooms fell upon her spirit like dew. As well as love there was music. The father sat at the organ, and as he played and sang, his strong, tender spirit seemed to ring through the hymns. 'Just one verse!' the Adjutant would say, as she dropped in ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... were to be found.... He had no Bible; he went to borrow one from Platosha. She was astonished; but she got out an old, old book in a warped leather binding with brass clasps, all spotted with wax, and handed it to Aratoff. He carried it off to his own room, but for a long time could not find that verse ... but on the other hand, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... bravely, but he would have had first to pull himself together. She abounded in news of the situation at home, proved to him how perfectly she was arranging for his absence, told him who would take up this and who take up that exactly where he had left it, gave him in fact chapter and verse for the moral that nothing would suffer. It filled for him, this tone of hers, all the air; yet it struck him at the same time as the hum of vain things. This latter effect was what he tried to justify—and with the success that, grave ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... was this same irresolute and undiscerning Dokhturov—Kutuzov hastening to rectify a mistake he had made by sending someone else there first. And the quiet little Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... refer to any production in verse upon the defeat of the Armada, Lord Burghley (who had probably made inquiries of the Bishop) seems to have been actuated by some extraordinary and uncalled-for delicacy towards the King of Spain. Waiting an explanation, I ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... criticism is acute. Poor Alfieri! in his wild life and his stormy passions he threw out all the redundance of his genius; and his poetry is but the representative of his thoughts, not his emotions. Happier the man of genius who lives upon his reason, and wastes feeling only on his verse!" ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... evident that no one after all had been squared. Well, if no one had been squared it was because every one had been vile. No one and every one were of course Beale and Ida, the extent of whose power to be nasty was a thing that, to a little girl, Mrs. Beale simply couldn't give chapter and verse for. Therefore it was that to keep going at all, as she said, that lady had to make, as she also said, another arrangement—the arrangement in which Maisie was included only to the point of knowing it existed and wondering wistfully what it was. Conspicuously at ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... us yet. I behold, without regret, Beauty in new forms recast, Truth emerging from the vast, Bright and orbed, like yonder sphere, Making the obscure air clear. He shall be of bards the king, Who, in worthy verse, shall sing All the conquests of the hour, Stealing no fictitious power From the classic types outworn, But his rhythmic line adorn With the marvels of the real. He the baseless feud shall heal That estrangeth wide apart Science from her sister ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... the next wedding—what shall I devise for that? That will also be the ending of a long lawsuit. But he should have sung the last verse—the prettiest of all. Mathieu!" Paul lifted his voice, calling ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... looked out from my own heart upon the world. I had all within me that makes contentment of the present, because I had that which can make me forget the present. I had the power to re-people—to create: the legends and dreams of old—the divine faculty of verse, in which the beautiful superfluities of the heart can pour themselves—these were mine! Petrarch chose wisely for himself! To address the world, but from without the world; to persuade—to excite—to command,—for these are the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... power, and uplifted high above all men, yet blood-fierce his mind, his breast-hoard, grew, no bracelets gave he to Danes as was due; he endured all joyless strain of struggle and stress of woe, long feud with his folk. Here find thy lesson! Of virtue advise thee! This verse I have said for thee, wise from lapsed winters. Wondrous seems how to sons of men Almighty God in the strength of His spirit sendeth wisdom, estate, high station: He swayeth all things. Whiles He letteth right lustily ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... eternal fitness of things. Providence blessed him with a wife, his opposite in every respect. When extremes meet, a perfect whole is the result; and in this case it was a perfect marriage, fit to be sung by poets and embalmed in verse. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... increased not a little since those days, nearly a century ago, when the unhappy Shelley could find peace and solitude in his darkest hours of unrest upon these shores, where it would be well-nigh impossible for a twentieth-century poet to espy a retreat for soothing his soul in verse. Yet somehow, during the drowsy noontide rest when the active life of the South ceases, if only for an hour or so, it is still possible to catch the spirit in which that melancholy wanderer indited one of his most exquisite lyrics:—sunshine, clear sky, murmuring seas, ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... through the forest, swaying a little as he walked. He sang in a gravelly voice, pausing now and then to remember a new verse. ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... II. Spenser III. Spenser's immediate followers IV. The regular eclogists V. Lyrical and occasional verse VI. Milton's Lycidas and Browne's Britannia's Pastorals VII. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... cities of the kingdom, I wish I had limbs enow to be dispersed into all the cities of Christendom, there to remain as testimonies in favor of the cause for which I suffer." This sentiment, that very evening, while in prison, he threw into verse. The poem remains; a single monument of his heroic spirit, and no despicable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... the critical spirit. No poet has written with more nicely calculated art; none has passed a cooler judgment upon the popular taste of his generation. We know that Chaucer despised the "false gallop" of chivalrous verse; we know that he had small respect for the marvels of Arthurian romance. And his admiration is at least as frank as his contempt. What poet has felt and avowed a deeper reverence for the great Latins? What poet has been so alert to recognize the master-spirits of his ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... systematic study of American poetry, and, therefore, does not pretend to exhaustiveness. All the poets from 1776 to 1900 who are worthy of recognition are here treated simply, yet suggestively, and in such a manner as to illustrate the growth and spirit of American life, as expressed in its verse. Each writer is represented by an appropriate number of poems, which are preceded by brief biographical sketches, designed to entertain and awaken interest. The explanatory notes and the brief critical comments give much ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... gestures; while the priests stood by, carefully recording her words, and then reducing them into a sort of obscure signification. They finally digested them for the most part into a species of hexameter verse. We may suppose the supplicants during this ceremony placed at a proper distance, so as to observe these things imperfectly, while the less they understood, they were ordinarily the more impressed with religious awe, and prepared implicitly to receive what was ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... Perhaps for that very reason he made a better probate judge—a more human judge—than any of the smart lawyers could have made. The little gray-haired judge was a poet, and not an unpublished poet. I will not stop to pass judgment on those thin volumes of verse, elegantly printed and bound, that from time to time appeared in the welter of modern literature with the judge's name. The judge was fonder of them, no doubt, and perhaps prouder of them than Bright, Seagrove, and Bright are of their large retainers. And I believe ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... rounds the great circle of the year, and icy winter ruffles the waters with Northern gales. I fix against the doorway a hollow shield of brass, that tall Abas had borne, and mark the story with a verse: These arms Aeneas from the conquering Greeks. Then I bid leave the harbour and sit down at the thwarts; emulously my comrades strike the water, and sweep through the seas. Soon we see the cloud-capped Phaeacian towers sink away, skirt the shores of Epirus, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... with pinions clipped, Of all the means my father left me stripped, Want stared me in the face, so then and there I took to scribbling verse ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... a popular German poet, born at Detmold; was engaged in commerce in his early years, but the success of a small collection of poems in 1838 induced him to adopt a literary career; subsequently his democratic principles, expressed in stirring verse, involved him in trouble, and in 1846 he became a refugee in London; he was permitted to return in 1848, and shortly afterwards was the successful defendant in a celebrated trial for the publication of his poem "The Dead to the Living," after which fresh prosecution ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... moment he was entirely absorbed in the roasting fowl impaled upon a sharp stick which he held in his right hand. Then he presently broke again into verse. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the prophet Micah, chapter vi., verse 6. Here is a reference to human sacrifice, to which the Israelites were prone from time to time, following the example of ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... like yours, so in his prayer he said, "Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy statutes; and I shall keep it unto the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart." Psalms 119:33,34. Then I always liked the verse above these verses, which I also have marked, and have quoted many times to others. "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee." (verse 11). So we do need to desire to know what is right and what is wrong, seek after understanding, and ...
— The Key To Peace • A. Marie Miles
... him!" After that he took the boy's training seriously in hand, and his artless pride concealed itself in a severity that knew no bounds of words. When Sam confessed his wish to write a drama in blank verse, his grandfather swore at him eagerly and demanded every detail of what he called the ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... where I usually say my prayers. I knelt, and folded my hands, and shut my eyes, and began to recite the Te Deum in my head, trying to attend to it. I did attend pretty well, but it was mere attention, till I felt slightly softened at the verse—"Make them to be numbered with Thy saints in glory everlasting." For my young mother was very good, and I always think of her when the choir comes ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... sing this verse he will not know what your song is about, but he will slap you on the back, laugh, and call you Bon Homme chez nous, but do not get mad at this; it is a compliment and not a ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... said to Philip, "I beg of you, tell me of whom is the prophet speaking? Of himself or of some one else?" Then Philip, taking this verse as his text, told him the good news about Jesus. As they went along, they came to some water, and the Ethiopian said, "Here is water. What prevents my being baptized?" So he ordered the chariot to stop, and both went down ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... soulless, bodiless, non-existent books, appeared to beckon me, went down on my knees, and opened it as far as its position would permit, but could see nothing. I got up again, lighted a taper, and peeping as into a pair of reluctant jaws, perceived that the manuscript was verse. Further I could not carry discovery. Beginnings of lines were visible on the left-hand page, and ends of lines on the other; but I could not, of course, get at the beginning and end of a single line, and was unable, in what I could read, to make any guess ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... ashore amid the dust and smells of the native quarter. Turning a corner in the bazaar suddenly they heard Louis's voice joined with the red-haired man's in a futile song they sang night and day: it was a song about a man who went to mow a meadow; the second verse was about two men; the third about three and so on, as long as the singer's voice lasted out. It was the red-haired man's boast that he had once kept up to five hundred. As Marcella turned the corner ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... of the legitimate sphere of prose in England by the spirit of poetry, weaker or stronger, has been something far deeper than is indicated by that tendency to write unconscious blank verse, which has made it feasible to transcribe about one-half of Dickens's otherwise so admirable Barnaby Rudge in blank-verse lines, a tendency (outdoing our old friend M. Jourdain) commoner than Mr. Saintsbury admits, such lines being frequent ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... The verse uplifted him unreasonably. He went below to pack his baggage. He said good-bye to the officers, painfully conscious that they were grinning behind his back, and was rowed ashore ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... from the ethics and philosophy of the ancient dramatists, whom he had always admired, especially the tragedies of Euripides; he formed a complete moral anthology from that poet and from the works of Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch verse. Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of antique, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
