"Poet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Southey, the poet, says that the firing of the 16th was heard at Antwerp, but not that of the 18th. It is an extraordinary but indisputable fact that the firing at Waterloo was heard in England. The Kentish Gazette of Tuesday, 20th June 1815 (published therefore before any one in England, ...
— A Week at Waterloo in 1815 • Magdalene De Lancey
... pleasure, like that of the hunter, is in the chase; and that the brightest beauty loses half its merit, as the fairest flower its perfume, when the willing hand can reach it too easily. There must be doubt—there must be danger—there must be difficulty; and if, as the poet says, the course of ardent affection never does run smooth, it is perhaps because, without some intervening obstacle, that which is called the romantic passion of love, in its high poetical character and colouring can ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... to eloquence, Mr. Townsend. I was merely recalling to Miss Hamlyn's attention the beautiful lines of our immortal poet, Owen Meredith, which run, as ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... a godsend you are to us all!" said Leonard, enthusiastically. "I am one of the great army of poets who can't sing, but a poet nevertheless." ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... is vanity"— Most modern preachers say the same, or show it By their examples of true Christianity: In short, all know, or very soon may know it; And in this scene of all-confessed inanity, By Saint, by Sage, by Preacher, and by Poet, Must I restrain me, through the fear of strife, From holding up ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... circumstance, I conceive our author's catch was improperly so called.], is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet: their love is ardent; but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion, or rather fanaticism, has produced a Phyllis Wheatly; but it could not produce a poet. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more credit to the heart than ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... that De Warenne, though a man of honor, was not one of virtue. Though his amiable nature made him gracious in the midst of hostility, and his good dispositions would not allow him to act disgracefull in any concern, yet duty to God seemed a poet's flight to him. Educated in the forms of religion, without knowing its spirit, he despised them; and believing the Deity too wise to be affected by mere virtuous shows of any kind, his ignorance of the sublime benevolence, which disdains not to provide ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... than the depths of Egypt must we sound if we are to discover the secret of Carnac. What mean these stones? What means faith? What signifies belief? What is the answer to the Riddle of Man? In the words of Cayot Delandre, a Breton poet: ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... respectable member of the intellectual classes, living in a highly respectable environment, when he finds that he has committed homicide; and he might make the details as gruesome as he liked. But there was no need to shock the sensitive when he made his choice of the circumstances in which the poet, Stephen Byrne, inadvertently throttles his housemaid. It is a fault, too, that his scheme only interests him so far as it concerns Stephen and his society, and that the horror of the tragedy from what one may loosely call the victim's point ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... turning of poetry into prose can be best understood by considering the obstacles against the adequate turning of prose into poetry. Prose notes tracing out the course of the future poem may, no doubt, be made, and usefully made, by the poet (as Wordsworth said in an admirable letter to Gillies), unless, indeed, the notes form too elaborate an attempt at a full prose expression of the subject-matter, in which case, so soon as the poet tries to rise on his winged words, his wingless words are likely to act as a dead weight. ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... that Plato is a dramatic writer, whose real opinions cannot always be assumed to be those which he puts into the mouth of Socrates, or any other speaker who appears to have the best of the argument; or to repeat the observation that he is a poet as well as a philosopher; or to remark that he is not to be tried by a modern standard, but interpreted with reference to his place in the history of thought and the opinion ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... completes the history of these stirring January days, as written by Ibsen himself. It occurs in a letter to a Danish journalist, Otto Borchsenius. "It may well be," the poet writes, "that the play is in several respects rather daring. But it seemed to me that the time had come for moving some boundary-posts. And this was an undertaking for which a man of the older ...
— Ghosts • Henrik Ibsen
... pale light of a candle. A lurid glare is shed over the cavern-like place. The reflection plays curiously upon the corrugated features of the old man, who, his favorite cat at his side, reclines on a stubby little sofa, drawn well up to the fire. The poet would not select Maria as his ideal of female loveliness; and yet there is a touching modesty in her demeanor, a sweet smile ever playing over her countenance, an artlessness in her conversation that more than makes up for the want of those ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... and men in power, will not be troubled with any but such as can do their business with little trouble to the master. They do not consider what mischief they are preparing for their country. Shenstone, the poet, seems to have thought of this when he says, in a case ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... The poet from whose lips of flame Wine drew the songs, the full sighs, Performs the business just the same When masticating bull's-eyes; The knight who bids a fond "Farewell, Love's large, but honour's larger!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... was nothing, it would only be another instance of mutability, another blank made, another void left in the heart, another confirmation of that feeling which makes him so often complain—'Roll on, ye dark brown year, ye bring no joy in your wing to Ossian!'" "The poet Gray, too," says Wilson, "frequently in his Letters expresses his wonder and delight in the beautiful and glorious inspirations of the Son of the Mist." Even Malcolm Laing—Macpherson's most inveterate foe—who edited Ossian for the sole purpose of ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... daughter? A fellow can work himself into a terrible state of worry over the dear, unprotected people, when he has nothing else better to take up his mind. But after a Scotchman goes crazy over a girl—well, when the whole of 'em hold Poet Bobby Burns up as the type of their race, they know ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... A poet has said that life is the dream of a shadow: he would better have compared it to a night of fever! What alternate fits of restlessness and sleep! what discomfort! what sudden starts! what ever-returning thirst! what a chaos ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Countess, my son, was eighteen, and her husband was forty. Count Roberto had the heart of a poet, but he walked with a limp and his skin was sallow. Youth plucks the fruit for its color rather than its flavor; and first love does not serenade its mistress on a church-organ. In Italy girls are married as land is sold; if two estates adjoin two lives ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... Acuna's death, Rodrigo de Vivero was sent from Nueva Espana to govern the Philippines ad interim, where he arrived June 15, 1608. He remained less than one year in this poet, and was then made governor of Panama. In April, 1609, arrived his successor, Juan de Silva, a member of the Order of Santiago; and distinguished by military service in Flanders. He governed the Philippines ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... The indications and tally of time, Perfect sanity shows the master among philosophs, Time, always without break, indicates itself in parts, What always indicates the poet is the crowd of the pleasant company of singers, and their words, The words of the singers are the hours or minutes of the light or dark, but the words of the maker of poems are the general light and dark, The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... that "an intelligence which reflects is one that originally had a surplus of energy to spend, over and above practically useful efforts." Does it not follow that when we make the poet spend all his energy in the practically useful effort of running to fires, we prevent him from enjoying the very advantage which made man a reflective being, to say nothing ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... II, flying from the armies of his Queen and the turbulent barons, took ship for Lundy, but was driven back to Wales by contrary winds. And of this event a poem was made in the reign of James I, which is quoted by Westcote as written by a "modern poet," though he does not give us the name. The verse still retains a smack of the Elizabethan diction—not the Shakespeare magic, indeed, but the euphuistic, antithetical, fantastic balance ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... romantic school of Germany lost itself in the Middle Ages, was overpowered by their influence, came to ruin by its vain dreams of renewing them. Heine, with a far profounder sense of the mystic and romantic charm of the Middle Age than Goerres, or Brentano, or Arnim,[152] Heine the chief romantic poet of Germany, is yet also much more than a romantic poet: he is a great modern poet, he is not conquered by the Middle Age, he has a talisman by which he can feel—along with but above the power of the fascinating Middle Age itself—the power of ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the older Greek poet of the name. It is unknown when he lived, but he belongs to a period earlier than that of authentic history. Aristotle (Hist. of Animals, vi. 5) quotes this line, and in Bekker's edition the last word is [Greek: alegizei], which I have translated. Sintenis ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... nay more, he knew by the shape of the solid structure, how far the spirit could range, and saw the barrier beyond which it could not pass: the mazes of fancy he explored, measured the stretch of thought, and, weighing all in an even balance, could tell whom nature had stamped an hero, a poet, ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... broader and deeper background of experience and environment, which by some divine special privilege belongs to the poetic imagination, it is easier to set apart and contrast these opposing words and sympathies in a poet; but here we find them evoked in a restricted locale- an English county-where the rich, cool tranquil landscape gives a solid texture to the human show. What, I think, impresses one, thrills, like ecstatic, half-smothered strains of music, ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... became distinguished in Church and State. Among them was Sylvester Larned, the eloquent preacher of New Orleans, Levi Parsons and Pliney Fisk, first missionaries to Palestine, Carlos Wilcox, the poet, Silas Wright, afterwards Governor of New York State, and Samuel Nelson, now on the Bench of the Supreme Court ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... is filled with a sense of disappointment at the paucity of thrift and vegetation, the poet and the artist will still find enough to delight the eye and fire the imagination in Spain. The ever transparent atmosphere, and the lovely cloud effects that prevail, are accompaniments which will hallow the desolate sierras ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... the poet and art critic, confessed that some of his choicest lyrics had been composed when he was using a loofah. But it must be applied rhythmically, to the accompaniment of a soft hissing sound such as was affected by stable-hands when grooming high-mettled steeds. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... the original circle was broken by the death of Spottiswoode. From 1864 to Spottiswoode's death in 1883 the original circle remained unbroken; the meetings "were steadily continued for some twenty years, before our ranks began to thin; and one by one, geistige Naturen such as those for which the poet so willingly paid the ferryman, silent but not unregarded, took ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... bones about it!' he interrupted. 'Of course it struck you! and let me tell you I was devilish lucky not to strike myself. When I entered this apartment I shone "with all the pomp and prodigality of brandy and water," as the poet Gray has in another place expressed it. Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminy- piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle—not a man, sir, not a man! Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the devil have ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her nephew, Alan Ruthven, artist and poet, pure of heart and clean of life, that Jack Charrington came to know Ruthven Hall and its dwellers. The young men first met in London, and later in Edinburgh, where both were pursuing their professions with a devotion that did not forbid attention ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... "A poet might expect you to," said the doctor. "In the circumstances, I do not. I shall feel that you have done your whole duty if you will try to nurse them when the time comes. You must have a long rest, and they must grow some before you'll discover what they mean to you. There's always ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... black boat, just as Dante described him in the "Inferno," on muddy Acheron, raising his oar to strike some laggard soul. As the bark touches the bank, pushed on by Divine justice, all these souls strive to fling themselves ashore, so that fear, as the poet says, is changed into longing. Afterwards they receive from Minos their sentence, to be dragged by demons to the bottomless pit, where are marvellous contortions, grievous and desperate as the place demands. In the middle ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... home then," I said scornfully. The Feldscher, who was a short stocky man, with a red face and melancholy eyes (something like a prize-fighter turned poet), dismissed them. They went off in a ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... did not change his imperturbable and melancholy calm. "And now, little one," he said, dropping on one knee before the half-frightened Polly, "child of Jenkinson, now that thy perhaps too excitable sponsor has, in a poet's caprice, abandoned thee for some newer fantasy, confide in me thy distress, to me, thy Knight, and tell the ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... angels' wings, I knew whose poet-fancy conferred them. If her forehead shone luminous with the reflex of a halo, I knew in the fire of whose irids that circlet of holy flame ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... philosopher nor physician, though he affected to be both. G was a genealogist. H was an herald who helped him. I was an inquisitive inquirer who found reason for suspecting J to be a Jesuit. M was a mathematician. N noted the weather. O observed the stars. P was a poet who peddled in pastorals, {317} and prayed Mr. Urban to print them. Q came in the corner of the page with his query. R arrogated to himself the right of reprehending every one who differed from him. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 20, March 16, 1850 • Various
... where we the characters may finde Of ev'ry Nobler and each baser minde. Desert has here reward in one good line For all it lost, for all it might repine: Vile and ignobler things are open laid, The truth of their false colours are displayed: You'l say the Poet's both best Judge and Priest, No guilty soule abides so sharp a test As their smooth Pen; for what these rare men writ Commands the World, both ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... cisterns made within the enclosure; and all the Arvernians crowded to his feasts. Bituitus displayed before the Romans his barbaric splendor. A numerous escort, superbly clad, surrounded his ambassador; in attendance were packs of enormous hounds; and in front; went a bard, or poet, who sang, with rotte or harp in hand, the glory of Bituitus and of the Arvernian people. Disdainfully the consul received and sent back the embassy. War broke out; the Allobrogians, with the usual confidence and hastiness of all barbarians, attacked alone, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... night before the battle of Newbury, in which he was slain, in the year 1643, has often been referred to by persons who believe in dreams. James Montgomery, the poet, has in touching lines assisted to keep the dream from ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... To a Poet a thousand years hence Riouperoux The Town without a Market The Balled of Camden Town Mignon Felo de se Tenebris Interlucentem Invitation to a young but learned friend . . . Balled of the Londoner The First Sonnet of Bathrolaire The Second Sonnet of Bathrolaire The Masque of the ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... ungenerous and malicious hint that the writer was at Rome, within the reach of Bonaparte. The information reached the ears for which it was uttered, and an order was sent from Paris to compass the arrest of Coleridge. It was in the year 1806, when the poet was making a tour in Italy. The news reached him at Naples, through a brother of the illustrious Humboldt, as Mr. Gillman says—or in a friendly warning from Prince Jerome Bonaparte, as we have it on the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... at once. In spite of all its shortcomings I have a profound belief that not woman, as the poet has it, but ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... recipe. A ball later the middle and leg stumps were lying in picturesque attitudes some yards behind the crease, and Curtis was beginning that "sad, unending walk to the pavilion", thinking, with the poet, ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... A true poet in Australia is highly appreciated. Simple as their songs appear, there are in them many niceties which a European cannot detect; it is probable that what is most highly estimated by this people is that the cadence of the song, and ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... trend Judah Ha-Levi (1085-1140) stands out as a notable exception. In him the disapproval of having Judaism subsumed under formulas of a philosophic stamp comes again to the surface. His being a poet even more than a philosopher enabled him to get a better insight into the inwardness of Judaism than that obtained by the intellectualists with their analytic scalpels. This is apparent in his well-known "Al-Khazari." The story goes that the Khazar king, after ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... making," was hence an aristocratic art. The able composer, man or woman, even if of low rank, was sure of patronage as the haku mele, "sorter of songs," for some chief; and his name was attached to the song he composed. A single poet working alone might produce the panegyric; but for the longer and more important songs of occasion a group got together, the theme was proposed and either submitted to a single composer or required line by line from each member of the group. In this way each line as it was composed was offered ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... magazine of 1877 there appeared a version of some insolent lines addressed by "A Russian Poet to the Empress of India." To these the first of the two following sonnets was designed to serve by way of counterblast. The writer will scarcely be suspected of royalism or imperialism; but it seemed to him that an insult levelled ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... age demands upon the subject of antique Irish history—an exact and scientific treatment of the facts supplied by our native authorities—will be demanded for ever. It will never be supplied. The history of Ireland will be contained in this huge publication. In it the poet will find endless themes of song, the philosopher strange workings of the human mind, the archeologist a mass of information, marvellous in amount and quality, with regard to primitive ideas and ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... long course, had passed his meridian by many hours, the service was performing in the choir, and a few persons entering by the door into that part of the Abbey Church which is so well known by the name of Poet's Corner, proceeded through the unseemly stockade which the chapter have erected, and took their seats. One only, a female, declined to pass, notwithstanding the officious admonitions of the vergers that she had better move ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... not visited for the sake of these lovely prospects so much as its celebrity as a birth-place. This little hamlet and former fortress, perched on a mountain top, is, perhaps, little changed in outward appearance since a soldier-poet, destined to revolutionise France with a song, was born there a hundred years ago. The immortal, inimitable Marseillaise, which electrified every French man, woman, or child then, and stirs the calmest ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... we found nothing but olives, and scarcely any bread. Horace, in his retreat at Tibur, never boasted of a repast more light and frugal; but olives, which might have afforded a satisfactory meal to a poet, devoted to study, and leading a sedentary life, appeared an aliment by no means sufficiently substantial for travellers climbing mountains. We had watched the greater part of the night, and we walked for nine hours without finding ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... playing are a trinity of H's—head, hand and heart. I try at once to awaken thought, to give a wider outlook, to show that piano playing is the expression, through the medium of tone, of all that the poet, painter and philosopher are endeavoring to show through other means: to this end I endeavor to stimulate interest in the wonders of the visible universe, the intellectual achievements of men and the ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... without breaking it, however, and he continued to talk of how words like "Nature," and "God," and "Liberty" are on every lip, yet none is able to define their meaning. Liberty he instanced as a word around which poems have been written, "yet no poet could tell what he was writing about; at best we can only say of liberty that we must surrender something to gain something; in other words, liberty is a compromise, for no one can be free to obey every impulse the moment one ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... fiercer abasement and humility, half heathenish customs and strange, unaccountable impulses to crime. One of these days, this people— understand they are far lower than the class whence Derozio, the man who imitated Byron, sprung—will turn out a writer or a poet; and then we shall know how they live and what they feel. In the meantime, any stories about them cannot be absolutely correct in ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... having the simplicity which history demands. M. Droz, a professor, blames Shakespeare for his mixture of the serious and the comic. Nisard, another professor, thinks that Andre Chenier is, as a poet, beneath the seventeenth century. Blair, an Englishman, finds fault with the picture of the harpies in Virgil. Marmontel groans over the liberties taken by Homer. Lamotte does not admit the immortality of his heroes. Vida is indignant at his similes. In short, all the ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... do. They did not complain, and why should we complain for them? Peaceful life was not what they desired, and an honourable death had no terrors for them. Theirs was the old Grecian spirit, and the great heart of the Theban poet lived again ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... existence of one supreme God, as most of the heathen did; but if they did, "they did not under any form, symbol, or hieroglyphic, represent the idea of the unity of God," as is fully proved by Wilkinson.[50] On the contrary, the monuments confirm the satirical sketch of the poet,[51] as to the "monsters mad Egypt worshiped; here a sea-fish, there a river-fish; whole towns adore a dog. This place fears an ibis saturated with serpents; that adores a crocodile. It is a sin to violate a leek or onion, or break them with a bite." Cruel wars were waged between ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... mere historian may be excused from following these vagaries. To him Chaucer's Prioress, like Chaucer's monk and Chaucer's friar, will simply be one more instance of the almost photographic accuracy of the poet's observation. The rippling undercurrent of satire is always there; but it is Chaucer's own peculiar satire—mellow, amused, uncondemning, the most subtle kind of satire, which does not depend upon exaggeration. The literary critic has ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... afternoon air was heavy with the heat that quivered visibly above the great cast-iron wood stove in the centre of the schoolroom; the boys drowsed in their seats, or hummed sleepily over their lessons; the chilblains gnawed away at the poet's feet, but heaven had opened to him, and he was rapt far from all the world of sense. The music which he had followed through those poems his father read was no longer a mystery; he had its key, its secret; he might hope to wield its charm, to lay its spell upon others. ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... rhymes and tried to write sonnets. I encouraged writing games among my young people, and it is surprising how much cleverness could be developed. I can write verses with ease, but very rarely could I rise to poetry; and therefore I fear I was not encouraging to the budding Australian poet. ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... inferior? Is ours a lower order of people? Why should I, even in Caesar's presence; feel the shrinking of a slave? Tell me especially why, if I have the soul, and so choose, I may not hunt the honors of the world in all its fields? Why may not I take sword and indulge the passion of war? As a poet, why may not I sing of all themes? I can be a worker in metals, a keeper of flocks, a merchant, why not an artist like the Greek? Tell me, O my mother—and this is the sum of my trouble—why may not a son of Israel do all a ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... Man seldom sets up for a Poet, without attacking the Reputation of all his Brothers in the Art. The Ignorance of the Moderns, the Scribblers of the Age, the Decay of Poetry, are the Topicks of Detraction, with which he makes his ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... sure to fall before the gun of the fowler. There was a specimen of the female bird in the Museum of the Mechanics' Institution, but I am not sure about its history, and I have some reason to suppose it was shot in Jersey. Our venerable national poet, Mr. George Metivier, has many allusions to the Oriole in his early effusions, whether written in English, French, or our vernacular dialect. It seems to have been an occasional visitor at St. George's; but in Mr. Metivier's ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... part on the side of Charles I. against the parliament during the Civil War, and subsequently was conspicuous in the intrigues that led to the restoration of Charles II. In his own day he had a great reputation as a poet. His tragedy, The Sophy, and his translation of the Psalms are now forgotten, but he is still remembered for one piece, Cooper's Hill, in which occur the well-known lines addressed to ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... alphabet and many a ginger-nut and decorative bonbon. And from her, too, he had set forth, with tears, in his new Eton jacket and broad white collar, to go to Mr. Chapman's preparatory school for little boys at Slough. Here he remained for several years, acquiring a respect for the poet Gray and a love of Slough peppermint that could only cease with life. Here too he made friends with Robert Green, son of Lord Churchmore, who was afterwards to be a certain influence in his life. His existence at Slough was happy. Indeed, so great was his affection ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... about Divine matters, and was desirous of publishing them among common men; but when he left off that attempt, he recovered his understanding again. Moreover, he informed him of Theodectes, the tragic poet, concerning whom it was reported, that when in a certain dramatic representation he was desirous to make mention of things that were contained in the sacred books, he was afflicted with a darkness in his eyes; and that ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... interrupted the doctor, "if sane people always talked as rationally and sensibly as some of the very maddest of my poor friends sometimes do, there would be fewer foolish things said in the world. What remark is that the great poet puts into the mouth of Polonius, speaking of Hamlet? 'How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.' My dear Mr. Lynde, it was your excellent good sense that convicted you! By the way, I believe ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the seas, was admired in foreign lands. I possess a manuscript letter of Heine's dated from Mainz in 1830, requesting a friend to send him this novel: the German poet represents, in the request, the literary class which has always lauded Fielding's finest effort, while the wayfaring man who picks it up, also finds it to his liking. Thus it secures and is safe in a double audience. Yet we ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... irregular manner, adding to its peculiarity and beauty. The pretty little chapel which ornaments the place was erected in 1812, on the site of an older structure. The neighbourhood is studded with attractive villas; but the most interesting of the residences is that of the lamented Poet Wordsworth, at ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... upon which the senses can lay hold. It is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to the prime operation of the power of God, and has, therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its exercise creation. Poet means maker. We must not forget, however, that between creator and poet lies the one unpassable gulf which distinguishes—far be it from us to say divides—all that is God's from all that is man's; a gulf teeming with infinite revelations, but a gulf over which no man can pass to find out ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... said the Man, "me, the heir of all the ages, as the poet called me. Why, you nasty little animal, do you know that I have killed hundreds like you, and," he added, with a sudden afflatus of pride, "thousands of other creatures, such as pheasants, to say nothing of deer and larger game? ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... is the plain nature of the argument drawn from the Revolution maxims, enforced by a supposed disposition in the Catholics to unite with the Dissenters. Such it is, though it were clothed in never such bland and civil forms, and wrapped up, as a poet says, in a thousand "artful folds of sacred lawn." For my own part, I do not know in what manner to shape such arguments, so as to obtain admission for them into a rational understanding. Everything of this kind is to be reduced at last to threats of power. I cannot say, Vae ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the seemingly effeminate Italian temperament, as brave as our men were at Elands River. The reason of Brutus's seeming coldness and hardness during the quarrel is set forth in a startling manner later on, as only the greatest poet in this world could ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... he cried enthusiastically, "you are a great poet! You have called an uncreated being out of the void. How much more godlike that is than if you had only ferreted out the mere facts! Indeed, the mere facts are rather commonplace ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... beam in my eye, I hope," says Joyce, laughing; "and, at all events, it doesn't mean that either. The poet who wrote ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... revolve round the globe for ever and ever: both of these suppositions were highly gratifying, because they were both marvellous; and though the story on which they were founded plainly sprang from the inventive brain of a poet, no one had ever been so odiously statistical as to attempt a contradiction of it. I now mentioned the story as a report to Lady Hester Stanhope, and asked her if it were true. I could not have touched upon any imaginable ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... be spared from the practice of my profession and the necessary cares of life, to satisfy my countrymen now living and to gratify the age ensuing in this kind."[263] To Holland's simple acceptance of his rightful place, it is pleasant to add the lines of the poet Daniel, whose imagination was stirred in true Elizabethan fashion by the larger relations of the translator. Addressing Florio, the interpreter of Montaigne to the English people, he thanks him on behalf of both author ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... the great Grecian writers of tragedy, was born at Eleusis, in 525 B.C. He was the son of Euphorion, who was probably a wealthy owner of rich vineyards. The poet's early employment was to watch the grapes and protect them from the ravages of men and other animals, and it is said that this occupation led to the development of his dramatic genius. It is more ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... lay here long ago, quite a poor little broken doll, he used to sing to me. More than that, he used to make songs, bringing in whatever little jokes we had between us. More than that, he often does so to this day. O! I'll tell of you, father, as the gentleman has asked about you. He is a poet, sir." ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... the real woods, the real lake and the real flowers? As in the picture, the boy's face was made by the outline of the tree and the shrubbery, and the hair was shown by the shading of the grass, so also may we find great hidden truths in nature all about us. The poet Bryant, in ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... marvelous thing a good after-dinner cigar is! In the smoke of it the poor man sees his ships come in, the poet sees his muse beckoning with hands full of largess, the millionaire reverts to his early struggles, and the lover sees his divinity in a ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... most. makar, poet. mannie, diminutive of man. mells, mallets, mauls. menners, manners. middenheid, top of the dunghill. miracklous, miraculous, very drunk. mirk, darkness. mischanters, misfortunes. mischeef, mischief. morn's morn, to-morrow morning. ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... comedy, and satirical burlesques, are enacted for the entertainment of great audiences, who are thrilled, delighted, or amused. In compositions strictly dramatic the characters, as with us, speak and act for themselves; but in the epic the poet recites the adventures ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... a State which held such diversified interest as that of Colorado, a fitting resort for the invalid, the pleasure seeker, artist, scientist or poet. No place but some haunt of the Muses could boast the ethereal beauty of a "Glen Eyrie," and no wonder the "Garden of the Gods" is supposed to have once been the abode of "Great Jove himself," and that there fair Venus bathed her beauteous ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... dining-saloon, breakfast, luncheon and dinner; cabin housekeeper and luggage man at the ports; and always a natty, stiffly starched jacket with a metal number; and "Yes, sir!" and "No, sir!" and "Thank you, sir!" his official vocabulary. Fine job for a poet! ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... greatest benefit to his country, the warrior, the statesman or the poet? Rowton, p. 17: Speeches ...
— Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Debate Index - Second Edition • Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
... (1530-84) was the greatest poet of Poland during its existence as an independent kingdom. His Laments are his masterpiece, the choicest work of Polish lyric poetry ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... found among the bones, received without doubt among the wounds of his last mortal combat. The name of this accomplished and Christian cavalier has ever remained a popular theme of the chronicler and poet, and is endeared to the public memory by many of the historical ballads and songs of his country. For a long time the people of Cordova were indignant at the brave count de Urena, who they thought had abandoned Don Alonso in his extremity; but the Castilian ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... cultured society shown to us in Pliny's Letters as diffused all over Italy remained strangely silent. Of all the streams of tradition which descended on this age, the schools of law and grammar alone kept their course; the rest dwindle away and disappear. Sixty years pass without a single poet or historian, even of the second rate; one or two eminent jurists share the field with one or two inconsiderable extract-makers and epitomators, who barely rise out of the common herd of undistinguished ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... beer-drinking, woman- worshiping, man-baiting Brann of Texas may have been the particular and only Brann to have developed the colossal courage and fighting fearlessness that gave his poet's soul the reach and stature, the strength and vigor to raise himself above the mere music ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... was a social favourite; a poet, and a real poet, and a troubadour, as well as a Member of Parliament; travelled, sweet-tempered, and good-hearted; amusing and clever. With catholic sympathies and an eclectic turn of mind, Mr. Vavasour ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... him of those times when he plighted the most eloquent of vows, and procured from me a small pecuniary accommodation; and yet I would see him - see him did I say - HIM - alas! such is woman's nature. For as the poet beautifully says - but you will already have anticipated the sentiment. Is ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... others. The Present!—the Present!—its amusements, its gayeties, its fashions, absorbs nearly all their thoughts. They have little relish to look towards the future, except to anticipate the continuance of the novelty and joyousness of the spring-time of life. The poet utters a most salutary admonition ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... earth and all its tribes of life. When we speak of making a better world of this, we ought to mean the physical world as well as the social world and the moral world. It is a true insight of faith which makes the poet say:— ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... you're going to let uncleanly scruples like that stand in your way, you'd better retire to the poet's corner, and stay there. You can fill that much space, any way; but you are not built for a reporter. When ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... nearly all the shortcomings of modern art; of the weakness of what is known as official or academic art no less than of the extravagance of the art of opposition. The artist, being no longer a craftsman, working to order, but a kind of poet, expressing in loneliness his personal emotions, has lost his natural means of support. Governments, feeling a responsibility for the cultivation of art which was quite unnecessary in the days when art was spontaneously produced in answer to a natural demand, have tried to put an artificial ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... interested. The lines had a little touch of poetry. He refrained for some time from breaking through the gossamer web of the poet's fancy. At last, however, as he heard nothing further, he ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... breath as barbarous rubbish by the proclamations of the young admirers of antiquity. The manifesto of the new movement, the Dfense et Illustration de la langue franaise by JOACHIM DU BELLAY, bade the poet "leave to the Floral Games of Toulouse and to the puis of Rouen all those old French verses, such as Rondeaux, Ballades, Virelais, Chants royaux, Chansons, and other like vulgar trifles," and apply himself to rivaling the ancients in epigrams, elegies, odes, satires, epistles, ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... one feels for the bedouin, for the heretic, the philosopher, the solitary, the poet; and there is a fear in that hate. I, who am always for the minority, am exasperated by it. It is true that many things exasperate me. On the day that I am no longer outraged, I shall fall flat as the marionette from which one withdraws ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... misrepresented the meaning of those authors to posterity." I introduced Didymus and Eustathius to Homer, and prevailed on him to treat them better than perhaps they deserved, for he soon found they wanted a genius to enter into the spirit of a poet. But Aristotle was out of all patience with the account I gave him of Scotus and Ramus, as I presented them to him; and he asked them, "whether the rest of the tribe were as great ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... respecting the appointment of a paid chairman, and he, a barrister of some standing, to preside at Quarter Sessions, and to have besides (if my recollection be correct) some civil power. This was then in the contemplation of the Ministry; and as the poet says "coming events cast their shadows before" evidently the shadow of the present county courts. The letter is dated from ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... when the nobility of Britain were said, by the poet laureate, to be the admirers and protectors of the arts, and were acknowledged by the whole nation to be the patrons of music—William and Henry, youths under twenty years of age, brothers, and the sons of a ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... expound to him the miraculous results of compound interest, and recommend investments. "Ay, man?" Dand would say; "and do you think, if I took Hob's siller, that I wouldna drink it or wear 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his very eyes in books, Sat a lone wight, nor stout nor lean, Nor old nor young, but just between, Poring along the figured columns Of those most unmelodious volumes, Intently as if there and then He conned the fate of gods and men. Methought that brow so full and fair Was formed the poet's wreath to wear; And as those eyes of azure hue, One moment lifted, met my view, Gay worlds of starry thoughts appeared In their blue depths serenely sphered. Just then the voice of one unseen, All redolent of Hippocrene, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... " You're in a hurry." This impetuous manner of exit from business seemed to appeal to him. " To-morrow," he repeated smiling. In reality he was some kind of a poet using his millions romantically, spending wildly on a sentiment that might be with beauty or without beauty, according to the momentary vacillation. The vaguely-defined desperation in Coleman's last announcement appeared to delight him. He grinned and placed the points of his fingers ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... not know what possessed me to make a scene, before we got out of the presence of the sultan, but it all came to me sudden, like an inspiration comes to a poet. I had been eating some fruit that I bought in a paper bag, and when I had eaten the last of it, I wondered what I would do with the bag, and then I thought what fun it would be to blow the bag up, and suddenly burst it, when ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... poet, Auntie, trying to be a man of the world. That was the real mischief in his life, if ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... changes; early one morning in the pleasant month of June, as the poet might say, Dr. Pendleton St. Clair Smith was to be seen before his toilet glass in the flourishing city of Syracuse,—giving the finishing stroke to his highly-cultivated beard. The satisfaction with which he made this demonstration, evinced the sereneness of his mind and the confidence ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... rabble forthwith streamed off in pursuit of me, so that I was like a mad poet hunted by chimeras. Having fairly the start of them, however, I succeeded in making my escape, and soon left their merriment and riot at a good distance in the rear. Its fainter tones assumed a kind of mournfulness, and were finally lost in the hush and solemnity of the ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... late Norman.... He tells the story of the Patrons and Incumbents, and gives a complete list.... Mr. Draper has piously preserved all the Mortuary Inscriptions. Among them we notice a name which will be familiar to some of our readers: John William Inchbold, painter and poet."—Spectator. ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... features of the venerable structure, several of its chambers, the old garden, and, in particular, the noble park, with its spreading prospects, its picturesque views of the Hall, "like bits of Mrs. Radcliffe,"—as the poet Shelley once observed of the same scene,—its deep glades, through which the deer come lightly tripping down, its uplands, slopes, brooks, brakes, coverts, and groves, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... it into a variety of shapes. In the reigns of the first James and the first Charles these forms attracted not a little attention from the poets of the period. The rugged lines of Taylor, "the Water Poet," are among the best known, and if not of great poetical merit, they show considerable descriptive skill, and enable us to realise the fashions of his day. In his "Superbiae Flagellum," he describes a great variety of beards in his time, but omitted his ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... assistance."—John de Bertaut lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century: he was principal almoner to Mary de Medicis, and was afterwards in high favor with Henry IV. to whose conversion he is said to have mainly contributed. He likewise distinguished himself as a poet.—A third bishop of Seez, Serlo, already mentioned, was a man of such commanding eloquence, that, when he had the honor of preaching before Henry I. and his court, at Carentan, in 1106, he declaimed with so much effect ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... a poet. He sang his own pieces, playing the accompaniment on a harp. Vasari says he sang his songs, playing his own accompaniment on a flute, but I think this ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... that flutters tow'rds the light, He spreads his pinions for a loftier flight. The chilling frowns of critics may retard, But cannot kill, the ardour of the Bard, For, gaining wisdom by experience taught, As grass grows strong from wounds by mowers wrought, Success will come the Poet's fears to assuage, Crowning his ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... [q], that this king gave, at one time, one hundred shillings to master Henry, his poet: also the same year he orders this poet ten pounds. [FN [q] ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... forgot my object. What did it matter that I should find my bluejay? Was it worth while to go on? Was anything worth while, indeed, except to dream and muse, lulled by the music of the "laughing water"? Ah! if one were a poet! ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... so tenderly beautiful, takes the poet-king on the most susceptible side of his character. All his history shows him as a man of wonderfully sweet, chivalrous, generous, swiftly compassionate nature. And so, when he hears the story of a mean, heartless selfishness, all that is best in him kindles into a generous ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... stolid characteristics that belong to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted as their representative man. Foremost in the roughest of professions, he was as delicately organized as a woman, and as painfully sensitive as a poet. More than any other Englishman he won the love and admiration of his country, but won them through the efficacy of qualities that are not English, or, at all events, were intensified in his case and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... poet who, however, by the spirit of his work, belongs rather to the succeeding epoch than to his own. This was BAUDELAIRE, whose small volume—Les Fleurs du Mal—gives him a unique place among the masters of the poetic art. In his form, indeed, he is closely related to his contemporaries. ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... ready to turn out at a moments warning, saying, "It is a bad sheep that cannot carry its own wool." He was a Latin scholar, and as I have been told, a bachelor of laws, a good rhetorician, and something even of a poet. He was very devote to the Holy Virgin, and to St Peter, St James, and St John the Baptist. His oath was, "By my conscience." When angry with any of his friends, he used to say, "may you repent it;" and when in great warmth, the veins of his throat and forehead used to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... from III. xxviii. it follows that everyone endeavours, as far as possible, to cause others to love what he himself loves, and to hate what he himself hates: as the poet* says: "As lover let us share every hope and every fear: ironhearted were he who should love what the other leaves."** [* Ovid, "Amores," II. xix. 4,5] [** Spinoza transposes the verses: "Speremus pariter, pariter ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... of '63, was, I am forced to say, not "inspired by the following lines of Swinburne," for the one simple reason that those lines were only written, in my studio, after the picture was painted. And the writing of them was a rare and graceful tribute from the poet to the painter—a noble recognition of work by the ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... and spiritual goods do not belong to one man to the exclusion of another. If one man knows a science, that does not prevent others from knowing it; on the contrary, it helps them to acquire the knowledge. If one man is a great artist or poet, that does not prevent others from painting pictures or writing poems, but helps to create the atmosphere in which such things are possible. If one man is full of good-will toward others, that does not mean that ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... states of society, which they had before their eyes and whose spirit they shared. They simply transferred what was passing in the world around them to the realm of re-presentative intellect; an external phenomenon was thus translated into an internal conception. In the same way the poet operates upon the material supplied him by his emotions, projecting it into an image ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... family was early and constantly associated with literature. Spencer, the poet, belonged to it, and to one of its members he has dedicated his "Tears of the Muses." It was for Alice Spencer that Milton is said to have written his "Arcades," and Sir John Harrington has celebrated her memory by an epigram. The Sacharissa of Waller was the Lady Dorothy Sidney, wife of the first ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... revenue by tampering with the coinage, a policy which was continued by his successors, until it became an intolerable grievance to his subjects. In vain did the Pope thunder against Philip;[1] in vain did the greatest poet ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien
... funds necessary for an extensive foreign tour. I made no opposition, but asked his reasons for such a plan; he alleged the miserable sensations he had in his stomach, which were no longer endurable. Knowing what power over Kant a quotation from a Roman poet had always had, I simply replied—'Post equitem sedet atra cura,' and for the present he said no more. But the touching and pathetic earnestness with which he was continually ejaculating prayers for warmer weather, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey |
