"Poesy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... opinion was the same as Phil's and Malcolm's. Long after the conversation passed to other topics, Mary puzzled over the fact that the three knightliest-looking men she knew, the three who, she supposed, would make ideal lovers, had laughed at one of the most romantic situations in all poesy, and had agreed that Elaine was silly and sentimental. Maybe, she thought with burning cheeks, maybe they would think she was just as bad if they knew how she had admired Elaine and imagined herself in her place, and actually cried over the poor maiden ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of poesy and know nothing about it, declaim against the habits of life in the provinces. But put your forehead in your left hand, rest one foot on the fender, and your elbow on your knee; then, if you compass the idea of this quiet and uniform scene, this ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... Poesy! thou sweet'st content That e'er Heaven to mortals lent, Though they as a trifle leave thee Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee; Though thou be to them a scorn That to nought but earth are born; Let my life no longer be Than I am in ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... by the sapphire sea, Crooning of summers rich from long ago, Dreamer mid dreams, thy peerless face aglow With rare romance and passionate poesy; Hath time's delirium taken even thee, Mother of Petrarch, Raphael, Angelo? And dost thou purblind speed to weltering woe, Dead to the wonder ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp lookout in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes an effort of philosophy to shake off these ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... superiority came from the inward essence which seems to break from the inner to the outer of his figures. Form with him was what it is with us,—a medium by which to communicate ideas, sensations, feelings; in short, the infinite poesy of being. Every figure is a world; a portrait, whose original stands forth like a sublime vision, colored with the rainbow tints of light, drawn by the monitions of an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which points to the past of its whole ...
— The Hidden Masterpiece • Honore de Balzac
... to pass from the world of actual Welsh history into such a world as this. But side by side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy and romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier bards, their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew in ode after ode, in songs extravagant, monotonous, often prosaic, ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... Heaven the sacred fire And swept to earth with it o'er land and sea. He lit the vestal flames of poesy, Content, for this, to brave ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... is to give instruction and pleasure combined; for the unrestricted range of these 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 ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... animals was the last noise that awakened the echoes slumbering among the darksome walls of the ancient house. The two dogs and the two horses were the only remaining vestiges of the splendors of its chivalry. An imaginative man seated on the steps of the portico and letting himself fall into the poesy of the still living images of that dwelling, might have quivered as he heard the baying of the hounds and the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... prejudices,—criminals, no doubt, but certainly remarkable through certain of the qualities that make great men, and recruiting their number only among men of mark. That nothing might be lacking to the sombre and mysterious poesy of their history, these Thirteen men have remained to this day unknown; though all have realized the most chimerical ideas that the fantastic power falsely attributed to the Manfreds, the Fausts, and the Melmoths can suggest to the imagination. To-day, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... not for you, here should my pen have rest, And take a long leave of sweet poesy; Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west, Should hear no more my oaten melody. Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile Unperfect lie, and make no further known The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle, Till ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... anecdotes and early traditions of the frontier around which lingers an aroma of love, has clothed them with new life, adorned them with bright colors, endowed them with fresh and vernal perfume and then woven them into a wreath with the magic art of poesy. From out of a group of stern features on Plymouth rock, graven with the deep lines of austere and almost cruel duty, the sweet face of Rose Standish looks winningly at us. The rugged captain of the Pilgrim band wooes Priscilla Mullins, through his friend John Alden, and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... and a joyous heart made him sing in spite of himself, and the song of birds was the one he loved best to imitate. The others were inclined to jeer at these words, but Hans Sachs saw in them a beautiful nature, fine poesy. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... ransom From those twin jailers of the daring heart— Low birth and iron fortune. For thee I grew A midnight student o'er the dreams of sages. For thee I sought to borrow from each grace, And every muse, such attributes as lend Ideal charms to love. I thought of thee, And passion taught me poesy—of thee, And on the painter's canvas grew the life Of beauty! Art became the shadow Of the dear starlight of thy haunting eyes! Men call'd me vain—some mad—I heeded not; But still toil'd on—hoped on—for it was sweet, If not to win, to ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... is it certain, or even likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the difference between Kirke White and Keats. And this talk about "University" poets seems somewhat otiose unless it can be shown that Cambridge and Oxford directly encourage poesy, or aim to do so. I am aware that somebody wins the Newdigate every year at Oxford, and that the same thing happens annually at Cambridge with respect to the Chancellor's Prize. But—to hark back to the butcher ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... attitude of superiority and even of disapproval. The verse of those self-taught rhymers was rude and simple, and wanting in those conventional ornaments, borrowed from classic or other sources, which for the time being were the recognised hallmarks of poesy; the moral lessons it taught were not apparent, nor even discoverable. It is curious to note how early this tone of reprobation, of contempt, or at best of kindly condescension on the part of the official priesthood of letters towards ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... is my joy that it scares me. It is the first cigar I have smoked for ten years. Oh yes, I grant I have begun as many as ten a day in my room; but those I scorched, bit, chewed and threw away; I never smoked them. This one I am really and truly smoking and the smoke it exhales is a cloud of poesy spreading grace and charm about it. What an interest I take in all I see. These little shops, which display at regular intervals their motley assortment of wares, fill me with delight. Here especially is one which I cannot forbear stopping ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... is nothing new; but in the standards by which he tries such terms there is something amusingly characteristic of his time. In the choice of words, "the first indiscretion is in the use of such words as to the readers of poesy (which are commonly Persons of the best Quality)"—it is only fair to reproduce Hobbes' capitalization—"are not sufficiently known. For the work of an heroic poem is to raise admiration (principally) for three virtues, valor, beauty, and love; to the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... and Sciences our Isle hath shone" (This deep discovery is mine alone). Oh "British poesy, whose powers inspire" My verse—or I'm a fool—and Fame's a liar, "Thee we invoke, your Sister Arts implore" With "smiles," and "lyres," and "pencils," and much more. 30 These, if we win the Graces, too, we gain Disgraces, too! "inseparable train!" "Three who have stolen their witching airs from ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognize his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... who gave to the world that rich, soulful, and exquisite poesy, "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck." It is said the ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... continued Jack. "Painting is vastly superior to either music or poetry. In the first place, it requires no interpreter between itself and the public;—what, for example, remains of a melody after a concert? nothing but the recollection. Poesy may excite admiration in the retirement of one's chamber; your nostrils are, as it were, reposing on the bouquet, though often you have still a difficulty in smelling anything. But if once you give life to canvas, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... Stephen Gosson, who in 1579 published "The School of Abuse, or a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars." Yet this Gosson dedicated his work to Sir Philip Sidney, a great lover of plays, and one who has vindicated their morality in his "Defence of Poesy." The same puritanic spirit soon reached our universities; for when a Dr. Gager had a play performed at Christchurch, Dr. Reynolds, of Queen's College, terrified at the Satanic novelty, published "The Ouerthrow of Stage-plays," 1593; a tedious invective, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news From steep-wall'd heavens, holy malcontents, Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all That brood about the skies of poesy, Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars; Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none With total lustre blazeth, no, not one But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks His ray, opaqued with intermittent ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Genius with supreme disdain; As when we see the Miser bend insane O'er his full coffers, and in accents drear Deplore imagin'd want;—and thus appear To me those moody Censors, who complain, As [1]Shaftsbury plain'd in a now boasted reign, That "POESY had left our darken'd sphere." Whence may the present stupid dream be traced That now she shines not as in days foregone? Perchance neglected, often shine in waste Her LIGHTS, from number into confluence run, More than when thinly in th' ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... rays? And that vapours which do breathe From the Earth's gross womb beneath, Seem unto us with black steams To pollute the Sun's bright beams, And yet vanish into air, Leaving it unblemished fair? So, my Willy, shall it be With Detraction's breath on thee: It shall never rise so high As to stain thy poesy. As that sun doth oft exhale Vapours from each rotten vale, Poesy so sometime drains Gross conceits from muddy brains; Mists of envy, fogs of spite, Twixt men's judgments and her light; But so much her power may do, That she ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... displayed in one of her poems—an admirable apostrophe to the character and works of Dante. This poem, which was published some time since, Mrs. Hopper once recited to us, and both mamma and I were struck with the true ring of poesy so apparent in it. ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... years. It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III made his anti-Liberal coup d'etat and reigned over France until 1870. He was overthrown by a popular ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... Owen (Mr. Longfellow's shadow) swoops down on us occasionally on the wings of poesy. I don't always comprehend the poesy, and sometimes would like to cut the wings, but Owen can't be stopped. Every event is translated into verse; even my going to Newport by the ten-o'clock train, which sounds prosy enough, inspires him, and the next morning he comes in with a poem. Then ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... with water washt the stains away. From their own well they fetcht it, and heapt high The Mound. Then certain goatherds, being by, Poured milk and yellow honey on the grave, Minding the Muses' honey which he gave Living, that old man stored with poesy. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... 'Tis poesy, whose hands with kindly art, Of kindred feelings weaves this mystic band, To knit the Scottish to the Iranian strand, And reach wherever ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... profound knitting of brows, we produced what, in the innocence of youth, we called a poem!—an epic, on our adventure. I still preserve the old scrawl of it, in several different youthful hands, on crumpled sheets of yellowed paper. It has little value as poesy, but I would not part with it for autograph copies of the masterpieces of Kipling, ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... of that delicate plant: the storm comes afterward to perfect its life. Vaughan first saw the light in a rural district of great beauty. His songs bear witness to it. Indeed he is known by his own designation, a fragrant title in the sweet fields of English poesy, as the Swan of the Usk, though he veiled the title in the thin garb of the Latin, "Olor Iscanus." Another fortunate circumstance was the personal character of his education, at the hands of a rural Welsh rector, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... flower of Siena, that youngest of the angels, that fount of poesy—what of her? What had she to say to such a certainty as this of mine? In my mind's eye I saw them stand together, she and Virginia, those two beautiful girls, Virginia a head the taller, proudly erect, with arms folded over her chest, and her dark brows forming a bar across ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... the chaffing note in his voice, but his tone was grave and respectful, and after a quick glance at him, Blaney replied, "Yes, and the inner graces of poesy and music of ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... along the footway. I thought that those piles must be remnants of meat sold for a trifling price, and that all those wretched people were rushing upon them to feed. I drew near, and discovered my mistake. The heaps were not heaps of meat, but heaps of violets. All the flowery poesy of the streets of Paris lay there, on that muddy pavement, amidst mountains of food. The gardeners of the suburbs had brought their sweet-scented harvests to the markets and were disposing of them to the hawkers. From the rough fingers of their peasant ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... "Soft, soft, my honored friend! Lament not so! Were you not even now in Atlantis, and have you not at least a pretty little copyhold Farm there, as the poetical possession of your inward sense? And is the blessedness of Anselmus aught else but a Living in Poesy? Can aught else but Poesy reveal itself as the sacred Harmony of all Beings, as the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... this girl, I need scarcely say, was the Monimia of the novel, nor was her Orlando a feigned character, although a highly-ornamented one; in truth, alas! for the shadowy beauty of romance, alas! for the spell of gorgeous poesy, he was not more made for a hero than was Dulcinea del Toboso for a heroine, being the young butcher of the village!! "Often and often," said the intelligent friend who favoured me with the account, "has he supplied ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... pleasure in coming hither. With deep emotion we crossed the threshold over which Goethe's coffin was borne, and with light step ascended the broad, easy staircase of the house that we had so often heard described. Half-effaced frescoes, which had gleamed over the head of the king of poesy, looked down upon us, and our eyes wandered over the bronze figures past which Goethe had walked day ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... greatly, the discipline of severe criticism; for he is aware that he has often wandered out of the beaten track, and has many times been too regardless of the established rules of rhythm, in his (oftentimes vain) search for the flowers of poesy. ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... gleaming drops of dew, And like the Swans, across my soul my dreams will lightly sweep, And my heart blissful throbbing, ghostly tears of rapture weep. O Spring I feel thy coming! And behold Thee, Poesy! ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... at least," adds Ernst Willkomm, "in such an upgathering of these disjointed tones of tradition, could only accomplish something that satisfied me by searching out the profound hidden meaning of the people's poesy: and I have at last gone no further than attempting to compose these detached fragments of tradition, Lusatianwise and popularwise, from the people's own telling, into a whole. Upon this scheme only could alike the poetical worth of the tales, and the portraiture ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... the most beautiful thoughts for children that ever found vent in poesy, and beautiful ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... thou well, thou secret lore: Necromancy, Alchemy! Formulas shall bind no more, And our art is poesy. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... in the ripeness of the beautiful genius which was not to know decay while life endured. Emerson had emerged from the popular darkness which had so long held him a hopeless mystic, and was shining a lambent star of poesy and prophecy at the zenith. Hawthorne, the exquisite artist, the unrivalled dreamer, whom we still always liken this one and that one to, whenever this one or that one promises greatly to please us, and still leave without a rival, without a companion, had lately returned from his long sojourn ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... on the winds of poesy, had sipped his tepid coffee and nibbled his burnt toast in fine abstraction until he came upon a selection which his soul recognized. He had found words to the music that was ringing in his heart. It was then that he propped the book open before him, and determined not to close ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, And every sweetness that inspir'd their hearts, Their minds, and muses, on admired themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they 'still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein as in a mirror we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder at the least Which ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... business not to excite but to control and allay. So we continue to prohibit the poetry which is imitation, however supreme, and allow only hymns to the gods, and praises of great men. We must no more admit the allurements of poesy than the attractions of ambition or ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... creation, no play of fancy and humor, no subtle charm of the ideal life, no grace and delight of expression, which are essential to literature. The perpetual twilight and chill of the New England Puritan world were an arctic winter in which no flower of poesy bloomed and no bird sang. One of the French players who came to this country with Rachel says, in his journal, with a startled air, as if he had remarked in Americans a universal touch of lunacy, that he was invited to take a pleasure-drive to ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... a certain poesy in his taste for the country. He liked to see a woman with a tall flexible figure glide through the dusky shrubberies of the park; only that woman must be dressed in white. He hated gowns of a dark color and had a horror of stout women. As for pregnant women, he had such an aversion for ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... receive this by Mr. Baretti, a gentleman particularly intitled to the notice and kindness of the Professor of poesy. He has time but for a short stay, and will be glad to have it filled up with as much as he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... that "The Land of Green Ginger" was a very dirty place where horses were kept: a mews, in short, which none of the Muses, not even with Homer as an exponent, could exalt ([Greek: Epea pteroenta en athanatoisi theoisi]) into the regions of poesy. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... divines bestowed on his witty, but graceless effusions, could not be enough for one who knew how fleeting the fame was which came from the heat of party disputes; nor was he insensible that songs of a beauty unknown for a century to national poesy, had been unregarded in the hue and cry which arose on account of "Holy Willie's Prayer" and "The Holy Tulzie." He hesitated to drink longer out of the agitated puddle of Calvinistic controversy, he resolved to slake his thirst at the pure well-springs of patriot feeling and domestic ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... before me went; I sole pursued, List'ning their speech, that to my thoughts convey'd Mysterious lessons of sweet poesy. But soon they ceas'd; for midway of the road A tree we found, with goodly fruitage hung, And pleasant to the smell: and as a fir Upward from bough to bough less ample spreads, So downward this ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... interest to the bibliophile in this department is the copy of Ancient and Critical Essays upon English Poets and Poesy, edited by Joseph Hazlewood, 2 vols. 4to, London, 1815. This is Hazlewood's own copy, and it is enriched and decorated by him in the most extravagant style of the bibliomaniac school in which he ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... end I speak not, but thy name— Thy name which thou lamentest—that shall be A song in all men's speech, a tongue of flame Between the burning lips of Poesy; And the nine daughters of Mnemos'y-ne, With Prince Apollo, leader of the nine, Shall make thee deathless in their minstrelsy! Yea, for thou shalt ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... fanning. 'The girl has lost her head,' she thought; and then dismally, 'I have gone too far.' She instantly decided on secession. Now the MONS SACER of the Frau von Rosen was a certain rustic villa in the forest, called by herself, in a smart attack of poesy, Tannen Zauber, and by everybody else ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... read (Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John! That these my words prophetic may not err)[Sec.4] All that was said, or sung, and lost, or won, By vaunting Wellesley or by blundering Frere,[Sec.a] He that wrote half the "Needy Knife-Grinder,"[Sec.5] Thus Poesy the way to grandeur paves—[Sec.b] Who would not such diplomatists prefer? But cease, my Muse, thy speed some respite craves, Leave legates to the House, and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... settled in London, his mind was more occupied with literary projects than with steady application; nor had poesy, for which Nature peculiarly designed him, sufficient attractions to chain his wavering disposition. It is not certain whether his irresolution arose from the annoyance of importunate debtors, or from an original ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... and libretto's his: A work renowned, whose formidable name, Linked with his own, repels the assault of fame From the high vantage of a dusty shelf, Secure from all the world except himself;— Who told the tale of "Culture" in a screed That all might understand if some would read;— Master of poesy and lord of prose, Dowered, like a setter, with a double nose; That one for Erato, for Clio this; He flushes both—not his fault if we miss;— Judge of the painter's art, who'll straight proclaim The hue of any color you ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... with pleasure I prefer him with all his folly, rot, sentiment, and mixed metaphors, to the whole modern school in France. It makes me laugh when it's nonsense; and when he gets an effect (though it's still nonsense and mere Poery, not poesy) it wakens me. CE QUI NE MEURT PAS nearly killed me with laughing, and left me - well, it left me very nearly admiring the old ass. At least, it's the kind of thing one feels one couldn't do. The dreadful moonlight, when they ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the Art of English Poesy, published in 1589, when English poetry was starting on a particularly glorious period, says, 'In these days all poets and poesy are despised, they are subject to scorn and derision,' and 'this proceeds through the barbarous ignorance of the time—in other ages it was not so.' Then Jonson, in his 'Discoveries,' lamenting the decline of literature, says, 'It is the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... "Our poesy is as a gum Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our gentle flame Provokes itself, and like the current flies Each bound ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... lief-hebbers, lovers or fanciers, and their collection as lief-hebbery, things of their love. The Dutch call everything for which they are impassioned lief-hebbery; but their feeling being much stronger than their delicacy, they apply the term to everything, from poesy and picture to tulips and tobacco. The term wants the melody of the languages of genius; but something parallel is required to correct that indiscriminate notion which most persons associate ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... of the skies all come and go Early and late; From the old world's divine and distant date, From the sublimer few, Down to the poet who but yester-eve Sang sweet and made us grieve, All come, assembling here in order due. And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate, With Erato and all her vernal sighs, Great Clio with her victories elate, Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes. Oh friends, whom chance or change can never harm, Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom to die, Within whose folding soft ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... heading over which we need not linger. He who specialises in this class of literature may be either a student of English poesy or a lover of prosody. If the former, the following volumes will be of ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... Was his existence merely in the poet's brain, or did he walk this planet somewhere,—and when? In a copy of the "Bibliotheque Orientale," which once belonged to the author of that exquisite little gem of poesy beginning with a wish that Abou's tribe might increase, I find (the leaf is lovingly turned down and otherwise noted) the following account of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... thee! Is ever on my tongue; In all my proudest poesy That chorus still is sung; It is the verdict of my eyes, Amidst the gay and young: I love thee—I love thee! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... her sons Not of the giant brood, who did create Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain Set moving by an abject blood, that waked To wanton under elements more benign, And planted aliens on Olympian heights; - Imagination's cradle poesy Become a monstrous pressure upon men; - Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed By light from her, born of the love of her, Their lordship the illumined brain rejects For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, Her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... find out that he had a weakness for poetry (as his seniors sometimes spoke of it). Writing to his friend Loring, probably at the beginning of the Christmas vacation, 1836, he says, "Here I am alone in Bob's room with a blazing fire, in an atmosphere of 'poesy' and soft coal smoke. Pope, Dante, a few of the older English poets, Byron, and last, not least, some of my own compositions, lie around me. Mark my modesty. I don't put myself in the same line with the rest, you see.... Been quite 'grouty' all the vacation, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... and if so, under what name could he have had a stronger motive for publishing his poems than that of SWINBURNE? So austere a theologian would naturally shrink from revealing his excursions into the realms of poesy, and under this disguise he was safe from detection. Lastly, while Sir W. ROBERTSON NICOLL has always championed the Kailyard School, SWINBURNE lived at The Pines. The connection is obvious; as thus: Kail, sea-kale, sea-coal, coke, coker-nut, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... to my terminology as exalting too much the common man, as putting sacred things to profane use, as demeaning prophecy and nobility and poesy, I shall answer that it is because of the narrowing definitions of convention that only the makers of verses, and not all of those, are poets, that only men of certain birth or ancestry or favor are dukes, and that prophets have entirely disappeared. And I bring to my support the more liberal ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... nothing, the Pretty Preacher asks us solemnly, to be said against our own? And the sun is hot, and we are speechless. It was shameful of us to put down the Spanish Gipsy, and let it return unfinished to Mudie's! Never did rebuke so fill us with shame at our want of imagination and of poesy. But already the Preacher has passed to politics, and is deep in Mr. Mill's prophecies of coming events. She is severe on the triviality of the House, or the quarrelsome debates of the past Session. She passes by our murmured excuse ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... that she could ever forget him? Ah! Those days had been the sweetest in all her existence; the romance of her life, the blue flower that all women, even the most ordinary, carry within their memories like a breath of poesy. ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... witchery of Italy"—the land he loved next to his own. His letters give glorious glimpses of the Arno, their strolls to Bellosguardo's heights, the churches, monasteries, costumes, and songs of the peasants—all attuned to poesy. Frequent were the exchanges of civility between the author's study and the good old curato across the lane. Cooper wrote of him: "The man has some excellent figs, and our cook, having discovered it, lays his trees under contribution." He continues: "One small, green-coated, ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... its harshness and angles, its strains and hurts; but who in later years could have flung wide the gates of the kingdom where everything is beautiful and good, and where ugliness is as surely doomed to destruction as evil to punishment? Even poesy in our times turns from the Castalian fount whose crystal-clear water becomes an unclean pool and, though reluctantly, obeys the impulse to make its abode in the dust of reality. Therefore I plead with voice and pen in behalf ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and the instrument was complete [From this origin of the instrument, the word "shell" is often used as synonymous with :"lyre," and figuratively for music and poetry. Thus Gray, in his ode on the "Progress of Poesy," says,— "O Sovereign of the willing soul, Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs, Enchanting shell! The sullen Cares And Frantic Passions hear thy soft control."] The cords were nine, in honor of the nine Muses. Mercury gave ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... wonder that made vague her form, Oped on a figure splendent so to view; Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm Of warring rainbows it endeared grew To shape of her who 'gan descending slow, Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low: 'Twas Beauty's self, and ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... body sweet Might never feel a young life beat And leap within it. Ah, what cry That mistress e'er heard poet sigh Could voice thy beauty? Or what chant Of music be thy ministrant? Since thou art Music, poesy Must both thy spouse and ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... and not poesy. We woo the sweet nymph Algebra; we would conduct you into the presence of the elusive, seductive, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... (Saxon Daeges ege) has often been cited as fragrant with poesy. It is the Day's Eye: ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... time. For it is only after the Restoration that criticism begins. "Dryden," says Dr. Johnson, "may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine, upon principles, the merit of composition. . . Dryden's 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy' [1667] was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing."[6] The old theater was dead and Shakspere now emerged from amid its ruins, as the one unquestioned legacy of the Elizabethan age to the world's ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... century shouted epigrams and affected being greater poets than they really were. It was a good sign, and it left its impress on French literature. Following in the footsteps of Francis I and the two Marguerites nobles vied with each other in their efforts to produce some epoch-making work of poesy or prose, and while they did not often publish for profit they were glad enough to see themselves in print. Then there were also the professional men of letters, as distinct from the courtiers with literary ambitions, the churchmen and courtly attaches of all ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... remain forever dumb and unrevealed! When I was young,—how long ago that seems! yes, though my actual years are taut thirty, I feel an alder-elde of accumulated centuries upon me—when I was young, the dream of my life was Poesy. Perhaps I inherited the fatal love of it from my mother—she was a Greek-and she had a subtle music in her that nothing could quell, not even my father's English coldness. She named me Theos, little guessing what a dreary sarcasm that name ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguarded praise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martial than poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy." Unpopular at first, he began to like school when he had fought his way to be a champion, and from his energy in sports more than from the impression produced by his talents had come to be recognized as a leader among his fellows. Unfortunately, towards the close of his course, in 1805, the headship ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... land and language. There was one thing that characterized the somewhat isolated New York group of young writers in his early prime—especially himself and his nearest associates, such as Taylor and Boker, and, later, Aldrich and Winter. They called themselves squires of poesy, in their romantic way, but they had neither the arrogance nor the chances for a self-heralding, more common in these chipper modern days. They seem to have followed their art because they adored it, quite as much as for what it could do ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... of America, superstition has not established its empire as in the old countries of Europe, where the evening mists give to objects fantastic aspects, and tend naturally to reflections upon the supernatural. From this arises the sombre poesy of the north, which has peopled our land with ghosts and phantoms. In the American solitude people fear the living more than the dead, and Cuchillo had too much to fear from men to waste many thoughts upon the ghost ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... known unto you, That whereas in the course of our care and watchings over the order and police of all and sundry the manufacturers, retainers, and vendors of poesy; bards, poets, poetasters, rhymers, jinglers, songsters, ballad-singers, etc., etc., etc., etc., male and female—We have discovered a certain nefarious, abominable, and wicked song or ballad, a copy whereof we have here inclosed; Our Will therefore is, that Ye pitch upon and appoint the most execrable ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... strange in a youngster writing verses. The glamour of poesy is gone. I remember how the few women who wrote poetry in those days were looked upon as miraculous creations of the Deity. If one hears to-day that some young lady does not write poems one feels sceptical. Poetry now sprouts long ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... rhyme, and the crowd or rustic fiddle took the place of the old "gleebeam" for accentuation of the measure and the meaning of the song, we come to the ballad-singer as Philip Sidney knew him. Sidney said, in his "Defence of Poesy," that he never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that he found not his heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet, he said, "it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... wedding day, has made the England of to-day the poorer by one of her most promising sons. Infinite charity! Infinite courage! Infinite truth! Infinite humility! Who could do justice in prose to those rare and godlike qualities? No: miserable, weak, and ineffectual though my gift of poesy may be, yet I will not let those qualities pass away from the minds of all, save the few that knew him well, without following in the footsteps (though at an immeasurable distance) of the divine author of "Lycidas," by endeavouring to render to his cherished ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... poet disport himself, jumping about on the topmost branches of his Garden of Poesy, but ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... Though so excellently wise, For a moment mortal be, Deign to raise thy purple eyes From thy heart-drawn poesy. Twenty lovesick maidens see— Each is kneeling on ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... thank not this voiceless dabbler in ink for the mercy, that travelling not a week before I reached London, I chanced into the company of a stranger, who fell captive to my wit, and displayed so lively a tooth for the sweets of Parnassus—to wit, my poesy—that, hearing I was about to issue the same imprint, prayed me enrich him with a copy. The which I condescended to promise him. Being thus established in a brotherhood of poetic kinship, we opened our hearts one to another. And in our talk he confessed to me that he was ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... over stately and storied ruin, and to forget for evermore, while within the wondrous precincts, that aught more prosaic exists than the heroes of history, the fairest visions of art and dreams of poesy. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... that's just the way we eat at home. Or just simply take the names, the personal names that adorn the people up there, and that we also had in large numbers at home, take a name like Ingeborg,—a harp-chord of the most immaculate poesy. And then the sea—they have the Baltic up there! ... In short, I am going up there, Lisaveta. I wish to see the Baltic again, hear these names again, read those books on the spot; and I wish to stand on the terrace of Kronborg, where the ghost ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... its deepest cell the image of one no more,—one who was "not of the earth, earthy;" one in whom love was the essence of thoughts divine; one whose shape and mould, whose heart and genius, would, had Poesy never before dreamed it, have called forth the first notion of spirits resembling mortals, but not of them,—no, Gertrude! while I remember you, the faith, the trust in brighter shapes and fairer natures than the world knows of, comes clinging to my heart; ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... The Florentine: Dante. Used here, seemingly, as a symbol of the highest attainments in poesy, his (the speaker's) reverence for which is so great that he would rather put his cheek under his lady's foot than that poetry should suffer any indignity at his hands; yet in spite of all the possibilities open to him through his enthusiasm for poetry, he prefers wasting ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... Sage. "The prose of the Restaurateur—which by the way sounds as if I were alluding to the literature of the Restauration,—hath insensibly superseded the poesy of the peerless Portuguese. Well, Gentlemen, in vain may 'sterner Albion' glory in the profusion of wealth and the pomp of 'glad repast,' unless also she breeds heroes to adventure and poets to celebrate. As you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various
... . a great man fallen this day." They did know it, humble as his station might be; and more than one of his admirers has since visited the little deserted office where he worked on the Van line and ransacked its drawers and cupboards for hidden gems of poesy he might have left behind him. Alas! nothing more inspiring was ever found there than faded way-bills and torn invoices! But who shall say that there is no romance clinging close around even the humblest, ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... the meliorating influence of time, had a gradual though slow effect, in changing grief into meek resignation. Her lute, long endeared by the remembrance of Eustace, was now attuned to deplore the death of him who had restored her the treasure. When sorrow can flow in poesy, it becomes more plaintive than agonizing; and possibly the reader will be pleased to see that the long-protracted years of Constantia's anguish were soothed by those alleviations, which, in mercy to man, are permitted imperceptibly to soften ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... and there she sleeps, in peace, after many a conflict with her stormy nature and after many sorrows and pains. What terrific ideals of the imagination she made to be realities of life! What burning eloquence of poesy she made to blaze! What moments of pathos she lived! What moods of holy self-abnegation and of exalted power she brought to many a sympathetic soul! Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... life but a disillusion, then, and are the flowers of our garden faded away? I have wept—I have prayed—I have passed sleepless hours—I have shed bitter, bitter tears over your letter! To you I bring the gushing poesy of my being—the yearnings of the soul that longs to be loved—that pines for love, love, love, beyond all!—that flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur! Your heart beats no quicker ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... place apart in this group of Catholic reformers. His mysticism is of a kind peculiar to himself. His Cathechisme chretien pour la Vie interieure, which is scarcely ever read outside St. Sulpice, is a most remarkable book, full of poesy and sombre philosophy, wavering from first to last between Louis de Leon and Spinoza. Olier's ideal of the Christian life is what he calls "the state ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... Talma saw him, and at once pronounced him a genius. In his memoirs, he declares that he said, "Alexander Dumas, I baptize you a poet, in the name of Shakspeare, Corneille, and Schiller. Return to your native village, enter your study, and the angel of Poesy will find you there, and will raise you by the hair, like the Prophet Habakkuk, and transport you to the spot where duty ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... had told no more than the simple truth. Jasper Dale, under all his shyness and aloofness, possessed a nature full of delicate romance and poesy, which, denied expression in the common ways of life, bloomed out in the realm of fancy and imagination. Left alone, just when the boy's nature was deepening into the man's, he turned to this ideal kingdom for all he believed ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... have divined that Khalid soon or late was coming? Did he not call enough to him, and aloud? "Get thee behind me on this dromedary," our Scribe, reading his Al-Mutanabbi, would often say to his comrade, "and come from this desert of barren gold, if but for a day,—come out with me to the oasis of poesy." ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... recommencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet for games of strength[1] or skill, for the recitation of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours;[2] nor for the advancement of science, like our co-temporaries in the British and European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the hand which he had, in the spirit of poesy, raised towards the clouds as he made the above appeal, and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... our civil rage With verse, and plant bays in an iron age! But hath steel'd Mars so ductible a soul, That love and poesy may it control? Yes! brave Tyrtaeus, as we read of old, The Grecian armies as he pleas'd could mould; They march'd to his high numbers, and did fight With that instinct and rage, which he did write. When he fell lower, they would straight retreat, Grow soft ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum daemonum, because it fireth the imagination; and yet, it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt; such as we ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon |
