"Poetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are very tender and easy. The author seems to have a particular genius for that kind of poetry, and a judgment that much exceeds the years, you told me he was of. It is no flattery at all to say, that Virgil had written nothing so good at his age. I shall take it as a favour if you will bring me acquainted with him; and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... wood-engraving, and the magazine was to do his memory honour by his admirable illustrations. But in fact it never did any one honour, nor brought any one profit. It was a penny popular affair, containing condensed information about innumerable subjects, no fiction, and little poetry. The woodcuts were of the crudest and most frightful sort. It passed through the hands of several editors and several publishers. Hawthorne was engaged at a salary of five hundred dollars a year; but it appears that he got next to nothing, and did not stay in the ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... life of the people, though Shinto was never entirely suppressed. "All education was for centuries in Buddhist hands; Buddhism introduced art, and medicine, molded the folklore of the country, created its dramatic poetry, deeply influenced politics and every sphere of social and intellectual activity. In a word, Buddhism was the teacher under whose instruction the Japanese nation grew up. As a nation they are now grossly forgetful of this fact. Ask an educated ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... lasted thirty-five years. Luise had brought him three children; and seems to have been, in all respects, an excellent Wife. She was ingenious in intellectuals as well as economics; had a taste for poetry; a boundless enthusiasm for her Brother; seems to have been an anxious Mother, often ailing herself but strenuously doing her best ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... got yourself a mutant?' 'No,' I replied. 'He's completely normal in every respect, physically and otherwise. He's a bit brighter than average, perhaps—ninety-eight six in his studies, including elementary astrophysics. He speaks brilliantly, composes poetry, even invents little gadgets. He's a genius, maybe, but not a mutant.' Then I asked myself, 'how do you account ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... to her brother. A hard, wearing life, however, had told a good deal upon her, and trouble had somewhat imbittered her nature. She had not the vein of humor which had stood Raeburn in such good stead. Severely mater-of-fact, and almost despising those who had any poetry in their nature, she did not always agree very well with Erica. The two loved each other sincerely, and were far too loyal both to clan and creed to allow their differences really to separate them; but there was, undoubtedly, something in their natures which jarred. Even Tom found it hard at times ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... letter to me: "Homo sum humani nihil a me alienum puto," as translated and practically illustrated by them. Such a doctrine would give wide authority to every one for the most dangerous intermeddling with the affairs of others. It will do in poetry—perhaps in some sorts of philosophy—but the attempt to make it a household maxim, and introduce it into the daily walks of life, has caused many a "homo" a broken crown; and probably will continue to do it. Still, though a slaveholder, I freely acknowledge my ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... peroration to the glowing account of the battle of Pittsburg Landing, we quote as an illustration of the vein of poetry that pervades his writings: ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... and Poetry, compared Palace of the Regent, its costly fitting Partridge, John, his tomb and errors Parks of London, their utility and capability ——, noblemen's, their inutility Patronage, cause of war Parish allowances to the poor Panorama from Wimbledon Common Paper circulation always ruinous ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... lustful acts done by me, or witnessed; it is written therefore with absolute truth, and without any regard whatever for what the world calls decency. Decency and voluptuousness in its fullest acceptance, cannot exist together, one would kill the other; the poetry of copulation I have only experienced with a few women, which however neither prevented them, nor me from ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... 'bus of his, heard the boys yell. Didn't he hop out o' the wagon as spry as a chimpanzee, skin over the fence, an' jump into the pond, swim out there an' tow the boy in! Yes, ma'am, he saved that boy's life then an' no mistake. That man can read me to sleep with poetry any night he has a mind to. He's a plumb fine little ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... and appreciation of Hazlitt, the present editor desires to make general acknowledgement—to Alexander Ireland, Mr. W. C. Hazlitt, Mr. Birrell, and Mr. Saintsbury. Mention should also be made of Mr. Nichol Smith's little volume of Hazlitt's Essays on Poetry (Blackwood's), and of the excellent treatment of Hazlitt in Professor Oliver Elton's Survey of English Literature from 1780 to 1830, which came to hand after this edition had been completed. A debt of special gratitude is owing to Mr. Glover ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... you know what he replied when I asked him why he did so?—"Poetry! Poetry!" he said. Oh, he ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... talk were heavy and solid, his poetry and metaphors were ponderous and labored. Yet Mabel listened to him now, neither facing nor avoiding him, looking down at her hands, laid, one above the other, upon the window-sill, the image of ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... in which Charley now lived, that of the infernal navvies, had taught him to laugh at romance; but it had not been so successful in quelling the early feelings of his youth, in drying up the fountains of poetry within him, as had been the case with his cousin, in that other school in which he had been a scholar. Charley was a dissipated, dissolute rake, and in some sense had degraded himself; but he had still this chance of safety ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... spent two hours of a precious Saturday afternoon learning poetry, for she had failed miserably in the last literature test; Josephine had been her companion in disgrace, and had even had to spend a precious Friday evening "in durance vile" because of ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... Poetry means more to us and we get more enjoyment from reading it when we understand some of the difficulties that the poet has in writing it and can recognize those things which ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... author calls it; so is "Tess"; but it fills the reader with a kind of sullen rage to be an eye-witness of the foul and brutal: he is asked to see a drama develop beside a pig-sty. It is therefore, intensely unesthetic which, if true, is a word of condemnation for any work of art. It is deficient in poetry, in the broad sense; that, rather than frankness of treatment, is the trouble ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... young Russian girl, Marie Bashkirtzeff. She wrote some prose and poetry and did some painting. She lived and died very young from TB on the French Riviera in Nice. Not particularly pretty, nor particularly striking, she had nevertheless a tremendous personality. In fact so striking that the city of Nice after her death created a Museum Bashkirtzeff ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... is a very simple matter, you see, to separate every line of poetry into groups of syllables, and in every group to place one accented syllable and one or more syllables that are not accented. Such a group is called a foot. Thus in each of the first two lines in this poem ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... seemed to be turning and on the move in the same direction; but before he started he spoke to Rosamund with a flash of that guileless tact which redeemed much of his childish vanity, and with something of that spontaneous poetry which made it difficult, pedantic as he was, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... sea than shipwreck and fire, more frights and horrors, mateys, than famine, blindness, and cholera," said the old seaman with a slow motion of his eyes round upon the little company of sailors. "I remember a line of poetry—'a thing of beauty is a joy for ever.' Can any man here tell me who wrote that? Well, I suppose it is a joy so long as it remains a beauty, but d'ye see it's got to remain, ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... there is any such danger in this case," said Virginia. "But the Marchese is very handsome, and rather romantic, and he sings like an angel. Oh, yes, I am almost in love with him when he sings—or I was till yesterday. And how he dances! It's poetry. When I am waltzing with the Marchese Loria I invariably make up my mind that I will accept him next time he asks. Then, afterward, something holds me back. To-day, in that valley of shadows, he affected me quite ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... the domain of American politics. Inside that field his knowledge was comprehensive, minute, critical. Beyond it his learning was limited. He was not a reader. His recreations were not in literature. In the whole range of his voluminous speaking it would be difficult to find either a line of poetry or a classical allusion. But he was by nature an orator; and by long practice a debater. He could lead a crowd almost irresistibly to his own conclusions. He could, if he wished, incite a mob to desperate deeds. He was, in ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... Cadwallader Perkins. Do yuh like that name? Do yuh think it drips sweetness and poetry, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... hymns care has been taken to choose those that are most characteristic of their authors, their times and the movements out of which they were born. While the translator has sought to produce faithfully the metre, poetry and sentiment of the originals, he has attempted no slavishly literal reproduction. Many of the finest Danish hymns are frankly lyrical, a fact which greatly increases the difficulty of translation. But while the writer is conscious that his translations at times fail to ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... 'xactly sure o' the precise words in this case, but that's the sentiment, and everybody knows that sentiment is everything in poetry, whether ye understand it or not. Fire away, leftenant, an' don't be long-winded if ye can ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... In the drawer of the old piece of furniture which stood just at the right hand of his own arm-chair there were various books hidden away, which he was sometimes ashamed to have seen by his clients,—poetry and novels and even fairy tales. For there was nothing Mr. Wharton could not read in his chambers, though there was nothing that he could read in his own house. He had a large pleasant room in which to sit, looking ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... have often been pictured by writers of poetry and prose, but without reaching the head of Strathearn these beauties can be only partially seen. The drive from Crieff to Lochearnhead in a summer day is universally regarded as one of the finest in all Scotland. To within a mile or so of St. Fillans ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... refreshment, and a walk of three miles, I arrived at Studley Park. The fairy effect produced on entering this beautiful retreat is almost indescribable. We suddenly exchange the field and forest scenery for all the poetry of prospect. On the right is a declivity clothed with laurel, and stretching far away; and on the left a lofty and well trimmed fence of laurel, forms a screen or curtain to the valley beneath; the sighing of distant woods and the dashing of waterfalls, break ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... life he had steeped himself in books, knowing the poetry and romance of nearly every nation. Now he disliked them. If she wanted books he would choose them for her. She would read the love-songs of the revolutionists to their goddess Liberty, the haunting words of those who had suffered for a time, and escaped the Siberian Ice-Hell. The fanaticism ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... mystics as the Dark Night of the Soul, is not mentioned in Indian manuals as an episode of the spiritual life, for such an interruption would hardly harmonize with their curriculum of regular progress towards enlightenment. But mystic poetry testifies that in Asia as in Europe this feeling of desertion and loneliness is a frequent experience in the struggles and adventures of the soul. It is apparently not necessary, just as the incidental joys and triumphs ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... laid down Rules for Rhetorick or Poetry, advise the Writer to work himself up, if possible, to the Pitch of Sorrow which he endeavours to produce in others. There are none therefore who stir up Pity so much as those who indite their own Sufferings. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... English poet, born near London in 1812. He was educated at London University, and spent most of his life in Italy. He was the author of many volumes of poetry. He died at ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... He, too, wrote poetry, like Pearse, under whom he was at school, but he was better known and his verse of a higher standard. He seems almost to have had an inkling of his future fate, and might also be said to have deliberately chosen the lost cause ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... finally lost altogether. The operations of her intellect could be checked, while the organs of sound would still continue to exert themselves. For instance, while her thoughts were occupied on the poetry and air of Lord Byron's song, "The Maid of Athens," the chain was unrolled; and when she had reached the line, "My life, I love you!" the stupor had increased; a cold statue-like aspect crept over the face — the voice sank — the limbs became rigid ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... say it here: with my poetical productions I was never satisfied any more than with my attempts at drawing. My verses seemed mere farthing dips compared with the resplendent poetry of our country which I read and loved, but my efforts employed and brightened many an hour in my youth that otherwise would ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... taste by which literature is to be judged and relished. Even those who never acquire any very competent knowledge of, or love for pictures, do acquire a respect for art, connect it with classical poetry—the highest poetry, with Homer, with the Greek drama, with all they have read of the venerated works of Phidias, Praxiteles, and Apelles; and having no too nice discrimination, are credulous of, or anticipate by remembering what has been done and valued—the honour of the profession. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Bulbul is very fond of Clara; and Tom Bulbul, who took George's message to Heeltap, is always hanging about the studio. At least I know that I find the young jackanapes there almost every day, bringing a new novel, or some poisonous French poetry, or a basket of flowers, or grapes, with Lady Betty's love to her dear Clara—a young rascal with white kids, and his hair curled every morning. What business has HE to be dangling about George Rumbold's ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aversion. Where did the printer get these stories? This question was answered. "I will tell you what," said the printer, "we none of us know what to make of the writer of these articles. He writes poetry, and morality, and history: I am a printer, and corrector of the press, and may pretend without vanity to be a tolerably good judge of these matters: he writes them all to my mind extremely fine; and yet he is no more than a Jew." [To my honest printer this seemed as strange, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... curb her wings, and descend from poetry to prose, in order to narrate the particular adventures ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... accomplish his object, the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, and a wreath more unfading shall entwine itself in the lapse of future ages around the name of Smithson than the united hands of history and poetry have braided around the name of Percy ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... hope they would have walked out, yet, to the eye of the artist, there was nothing coarse or offending, simply a most beautiful harmony of motion. The girl's beauty, her grace and youth, and the slight lissomness of all her body lent to the dance a poetry, a refinement it would not ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... floods of nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face seldom lost its expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound knowledge of his art and its history, his culture was large and loose, dominated by a love of poetry. At thirty-two he had not yet passed the age of ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... d'Angouleme was the first to write prose that can be read without the aid of a vocabulary; in verse, she excels all poets of her time in sympathy and compassion; her poetry is "a voice which complains—a heart which suffers and which tells us so." "It is not so much her own deep sentiment that is reflected, but her emotion, which is both intellectual and sympathetic, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... an irresistible fascination about the regions of northern-most Grant Land that is impossible for me to describe. Having no poetry in my soul, and being somewhat hardened by years of experience in that inhospitable country, words proper to give you an idea of its unique beauty do not come to mind. Imagine gorgeous bleakness, beautiful blankness. It ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson
... Harpers and people had their favourite clans and names—a favour won most readily by those who were free both with purse and with sword. The Gordons of the North; and, in the South, Graemes, Scotts, Armstrongs, Douglases, are among the races that figure most prominently in ballad poetry. The great house of Douglas, in particular, is in the eyes and lips of romance and legend more honoured than the Stewarts themselves. The Douglas is the hero of both the Scottish and English versions of Chevy Chase. Hume of Godscroft, in his History of ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... Carlos, in the land of the Basques. This hero was Roland, the nephew of the great emperor Charlemagne, who has been given by romantic fiction the first place among the legendary Paladins of France, and made memorable in epic poetry as the hero of the celebrated "Orlando Furioso" of Ariosto, and the less notable "Orlando ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... just then to do the marketing for the day; she considered this the duty of a wife, and she fulfilled it often enough to keep her sense of it alive, but she much preferred to forage with him in the afternoon; that was poetry, she said, and the other was prose. He would have liked to talk the proposition over with her; to realize the compliment while it was fresh, to grumble at it a little, and to be supported in his notion that it would be bad business just then for him to undertake a task that might draw ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... Rig-veda hymns which there is reason to look upon as the oldest portion of Vedic poetry, the character of Indra is that of a mighty ruler of the firmament, and his principal feat is that of conquering the demon Vritra, a symbolical personification of the cloud which obstructs the clearness ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... knife has cut you may find plainly displayed in Dr. Kellner's little book. He sees the throttling influence of an ever alert and bellicose Puritanism, not only in our grand literature, but also in our petit literature, our minor poetry, even in our humour. The Puritan's utter lack of aesthetic sense, his distrust of all romantic emotion, his unmatchable intolerance of opposition, his unbreakable belief in his own bleak and narrow views, his savage cruelty of attack, his lust for relentless and barbarous persecution—these ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... dogmas and our history are not true, or not "true" in the historical or scientific sense of the word? To ask for such truth in the sphere of theology is as pedantic as to ask for it in the sphere of poetry. Poetical truth means, not that certain events actually happened, or that the poetical "machinery" is to be taken as an existing fact; but that the poem is, so to speak, the projection of truths upon the cloudland of imagination. It reflects and gives sensuous images of truth; but ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the grand duke only made a pretence of loving literature. A certain Abbe Fontaine, a clever man, amused him with a little natural history, the only science in which he took any interest. He preferred the worst prose to the best verse, not having sufficient intellect to enjoy the subtle charms of poetry. In reality he had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Thus might we call M. Alphonse Daudet an artist in pastels, so adroitly does he suggest the very bloom of color. No doubt M. Coppee's contes have not the sharpness of M. de Maupassant's, nor the brilliancy of M. Daudet's—but what of it? They have qualities of their own; they have sympathy, poetry, and a power of suggesting pictures not exceeded, I think, by those of either M. de Maupassant or M. Daudet. M. Coppee's street views in Paris, his interiors, his impressionist sketches of life under the shadows of Notre Dame, are convincingly successful. They are intensely to be enjoyed by those ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... yet untainted by the tide of outing travel, was a spot to inspire dreams, poetry, and canvases covered with ocean lore. Its many coves and inlets where the tides ebbed and flowed among the weed-covered rocks; its bold cliffs, sea washed, and above which the white gulls and fish-hawks ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. That the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alterations of exhibition, and approaches nearer than either to the appearance ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... which binds a man to his mother. The one who bore him is not faultless, for motherhood brings new gifts of feeling, sometimes sacrificing judgment and clear vision to selfish unselfishness. It is only in fiction and poetry that such love is valued now, for the divine blindness which does not question, which asks only the right to give, has lost beauty in our age of reason ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... about it; between 'the warm precincts of the cheerful day' and the cold solitudes of the inactive night has been the commonplace and stock-in-trade of moralists and thoughtful men from the beginning; has given pathos to poetry, solemnity to our days; and has been the ally of base as well as of noble things. For to say to a man, 'there are twelve hours in the day of life, and then comes darkness, the blackness that swallows up all activity,' may either be made into a support of all lofty and noble thoughts, or, by the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... first Fifteen Psalms of David, translated into Lyric Verse: Proposed as an Essay, supplying the Perspicuity and Coherence according to the Modern Art of Poetry; not known to have been attempted before in any Language. With a Preface containing some Observations of the great and general Defectiveness of former Versions in Greek, Latin, and English. By Dr. [James] Gibbs. London: printed by J. Mathews, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... another of these Northern peoples, gave their name to France, and the Belgae gave theirs to Belgium. The older name of Britain did not die out, but it was seldom used. It has really been used much more in modern times than it ever was in the Middle Ages. It is used especially in poetry or in fine writing, just as Briton is instead of Englishman, ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... draw Severne to her. But for once she was too excited to listen to reason. She was tempest-tossed. "I will go—I will go," she repeated, as she walked the room wildly, and flung her arms aloft with reckless abandon, and yet with a terrible majesty, an instinctive grace, and all the poetry of a great soul wronged ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... have been "a dear little house"; it would have been a palatial residence with a dance-hall at the top and a wine-cellar at the bottom thereof. I have always observed that when the money comes in the poetry flies out. Bread and cheese and kisses are all well enough for poverty-stricken romance, but as soon as a poor man receives a windfall his thoughts turn inevitably to a contemplation of the probability of ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... seats. She did not know that men were looking at her, as she raised her clear warbling voice amid the silvery trebles of the choir, and uttered with all the expressiveness of genuine emotion those strains of poetry and passion which thrilled from the heart to the harp of the warrior-prophet and poet-king. And never did truer prayers come from a woman's lips than those which her heart offered as her head ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... my plans. Moreover, I possessed a clerk—a knave who had killed an abbot and fled from the monastery—a man of poetry, wit and sentiment. Whenever the letters lacked for ardor, and the lovers had grown too timid, him I set to forge a postscript, or indite new missives, which the rogue did most prettily, having studied love-making under the monks. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... the critic and to the public, I would wish that this work might be tried by the rules rather of poetry than prose, for according to those rules have been both its conception and its execution; and I feel that something of sympathy with the author's design is requisite to win indulgence for the superstitions ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wishing for when they pray,—for more riches, and more comfort, and more security, and more importance. And God is such a long way off. I can't feel Him, and the pew hurts my back.' She used to read me some, out of a book of poetry, and one verse I got by heart—I guess ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... excuse me," said Theophilus; "but I cannot help being reminded of what an English reviewer once said,—that a lady's facts have as much poetry in them as Tom Moore's lyrics. Of course poetry is always agreeable, even ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... adjectives. He should know how to sketch a scene, to paint a picture, to give life and action. He should be a poet and a dramatist, a painter and an actor. He should cultivate his imagination. He should become familiar with the great poetry and fiction, with splendid and heroic deeds. He should be a student of Shakespeare. He should read and devour the great plays. From Shakespeare he could learn the art of expression, of compression, and all the secrets of ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... school was the unflinching frankness with which it faced a problem belonging to intimate life and barring public discussion, yet closely connected with the economic conditions of society: the problem of sex. The curious revival of pagan eroticism in lyric poetry and the growing tendency toward a scientific cynicism in fiction were supplemented by attempts to handle sex from the standpoint of modern psychology and social ethics in drama. With works of that class has the name of Frank Wedekind become ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... much afraid 'I say') that so 'great a slip' might be attended with 'still greater' and 'worse': for 'your' Horace, and 'my' Horace, the most charming writer that ever lived among the 'Pagans' (for the 'lyric kind of poetry,' I mean; for, the be sure, 'Homer' and 'Virgil' would 'otherwise' be 'first' named 'in their way') well observeth (and who understood 'human nature' better ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... were woven together, and trembled with the electric shock of two souls thrilled with a worship of the beautiful, and the solemn poetry of the past. ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... bond of that mutual admiration - or rather mutual hero-worship - which is so strong among the members of secluded families who have much ability and little culture. Even the extremes admired each other. Hob, who had as much poetry as the tongs, professed to find pleasure in Dand's verses; Clem, who had no more religion than Claverhouse, nourished a heartfelt, at least an open-mouthed, admiration of Gib's prayers; and Dandie followed ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a volume of Cowper and found his account of the three pet hares. Ellen read it, and then several of his smaller pieces of poetry. Then followed a long talk about hares and other animals; about Cowper and his friends and his way of life. Time passed swiftly away; ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... most entertaining Fables ever written in any language, and made them a model of literary perfection; yet our translators and compilers have somehow neglected him. His Fables are lyric poetry of a high order, and this alone has doubtless been a barrier to a better acquaintance with his work when transferred to our own tongue. Done into prose, the Fables are no longer La Fontaine, but take their place with the ...
— Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks - From the French of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... custom with this good and faithful mother to have a little talk with her boys, every night before their bed time, of what had passed during the day. Sometimes she told them stories, sometimes they repeated poetry. ...
— True Stories about Cats and Dogs • Eliza Lee Follen
... her was August von Shierbrand. He loved her apparently in spite of himself. She did not in the least accord with his romantic ideas of what a woman should be. He was something of a poet, and a specialized judge of poetry, and he liked women of the sort who inspired a man to write lyrics. He had tried unavailingly to write lyrics about Kate, but they never would "go." He ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... poetry and song is there anything more exquisitely touching than the lofty and inspired dirge wailed out in tremulous tones—in memoriam—and ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... here an errant swell hit the vessel a tremendous blow on the broadside, making her roll heavily to starboard, and bringing up through the skylights sounds of breaking goblets thrown from the sideboards in the saloon below, while the passenger who hated marine poetry was capsized from his steamer chair and landed sprawling on the deck. A small group of young people on the forward part of the upper deck were passing the day in watching the swells and forecasting the effect of each upon the steamer, rejoicing in the rush upward followed ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... is under the influence of the emotions we need not go to science to learn, for all human experience and all literature are overflowing with evidence that shows the extent of this relation. Scripture is full of it; the heart in Hebrew poetry represents the entire life, we might almost say. Not less forcible is the language of Shakespeare, as for instance, in ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... his verses may not have understood that he was a poet; but, be it remembered, those verses were in a language not native to the writer. Those who are able to understand such fragments of his patois-poetry as still survive, declare that it is marked by tenderness and verve; even if this be not so, a man may lack the power of expression and yet have the poet's temper; Alain was certainly of a deep and sensitive ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... throngs, accompanied by guards of honor; yet perhaps it is well that the idea which I represent should be applauded by crowds and accompanied by guards of honor. The pomp and circumstance of war attract the fancy of the multitude; the armored knight moves across the page of romance and of poetry and kindles the imagination of youth; the shouts of the crowd, the smiles of beauty, the admiration of youth, the gratitude of nations, the plaudits of mankind, follow the hero about whom the glamor of military glory dims the eye ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... I lately remarked in another publication, I know of no other animal of which the quest calls forth the combined characteristics of the ibex, the stag and the tiger-hunter. Some of my own experiences I have described in 'Seonee;' but let those who wish to learn the poetry of the thing read the glowing, yet not less true pages of Colonel Walter Campbell's 'Old Forest Ranger;' and for clear practical information, combined also with graphic description, the works of Captain J. Forsyth and ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... father's house in George Square, Edinburgh. His lameness and solitary habits had made him a good reader, and he used to read aloud to his mother, Pope's translation of Homer and Allan Ramsay's "Evergreen;" his mother had the happiest of tempers and a good love of poetry. In the same year he was sent to the High School, Edinburgh, under the celebrated Dr. Adam, who made him sensible of the beauties of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... of Poetry in the University of Oxford has not forgotten the rock whence he was hewn, this simple story may give an hour of entertainment. I offer it to you because I think you have met my friend Dickson McCunn, and I dare to ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... for fower year,—since he war a boy," continued Mr. McCorkle in a loud whisper. "Allers the same, bless you! Can jerk a rhyme as easy as turnin' jack. Never had any eddication; lived out in Missooray all his life. But he's chock full o' poetry. On'y this mornin' sez I to him,—he camps along o' me,—'Milt!' sez I, 'are breakfast ready?' and he up and answers back quite peert and chipper, 'The breakfast it is ready, and the birds is singing free, and it's ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... historians he did a service to young students of history which was, in its way, unique. He showed them a great historian at work. In his comparison of authorities, in his references to and fro, in his appeal to every source of illustration, from fable to architecture, from poetry to charters, he made us familiar not only with his results, but with his methods of working. It was a priceless experience. Year after year he continued these lectures, informal, chatty, but always vigorous and direct, eager ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... the Commedia. Any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. Theology strikes the keynote; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. If from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... necessities and experiences of his own heart and history, and so by degrees gained power of the only true kind—that, namely, of rousing the will, not merely the passions, or even the aspirations of men. The poetry in which he had disported himself at college now came to the service of his prose, and the deeper poetic nature, which is the prophetic in every man, awoke in him. Till after they had lived together a good ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... all that ran and swam, and flew, or only grew, possessing that extensive familiarity with things which shows equal sweetness of sympathy and playful penetration. Most refreshing to me was his unstudied lore, the unwritten poetry which common life presents to a strong and gentle mind. It was a great contrast to the subtleties of analysis, the philosophic strainings of which I had seen too much. But I will not attempt to transplant it. May it profit others as it did me in the region where it ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... Steubenville in 1814, of a family of North Carolina Quakers, and as a boy his tastes were as peaceful as those of his ancestors. He had pets of all kinds, and he made collections of birds and insects. He was pretty diligent at school, but his studies there were not of the severer kind. He loved poetry; he founded a circulating library; and both before and after he went to Kenyon College, he was clerk in a bookstore. But deep within this quiet outside was the hot nature which fused the forces of the great war, and shaped ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... has lived in a tenement always. The mother used to take care of her baby when she could, and then leave her to the neighbors. But the mother must have been unusual, too, for she taught Tania all sorts of poetry and music when Tania was only a tiny child. Indeed, Tania knows a great deal more about literature than I do now," confessed Madge honestly. "It isn't so strange, after all, that Tania pretends. Why, she and her mother used to play at pretending ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... romance has been from time to time claimed for Vergil's poetry, though those who employ such terms seldom agree in their definition of them. His romanticism may be more easily explained by his early devotion to the Catullan group of poets, and the Celtic traits—whatever they may be—by the close racial affiliations ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... noisy, but they laughed at me mostly. I was rough enough and bad enough in those days; as rough as the rest, and as bad as the rest, I suppose, but yet I seemed to have my notions a little different from the others. "Jake's poetry," they ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... in silence, are forging the thunderbolts and the firebrands. Penetrating into this huge circuit, where all is out of measure, gigantic, the mind cannot repress some movement of terror and wonder; the imagination recals those dread temples which Poetry, of old, had consecrated to the ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Paterson and Henry Lawson were writing for the Sydney 'Bulletin' in 1892 when Lawson suggested a 'duel' of poetry to increase the number of poems they could sell to the paper. It was apparently entered into in all fun, though there are reports that Lawson was bitter about it later. 'In Defence of the Bush', included in this selection, was one of ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... rather have him come along," decided Robert Day, "than to find the wagon. For he could make a camp anywhere, and speak his poetry all the time. What fun he must have if he wants to stay in the woods all night. I expect if he wanted to hide he could creep into that cart and stretch out, with his face where he could smell the honey and ginger cakes. I'd like to have a cart and ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... for, starting with no other initiation into the mysteries of foreign relations than having had a father born in Wales and having spent his vacations in England, probably in the lake region studying the topography of Wordsworth's poetry,—a certain oft detected resemblance to Wilson must make Wordsworth his favorite poet, as he was Wilson's,—in ten days was he not a great Secretary of State; and in three months the greatest Secretary of State? To be ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... to introduce you today to the fairy-land of science - a somewhat bold promise, seeing that most of you probably look upon science as a bundle of dry facts, while fairy- land is all that is beautiful, and full of poetry and imagination. But I thoroughly believe myself, and hope to prove to you, that science is full of beautiful pictures, of real poetry, and of wonder-working fairies; and what is more, I promise you they shall be true fairies, whom you will love just as much when you are ...
— The Fairy-Land of Science • Arabella B. Buckley
... began to make her bright little needle fly almost as swiftly as if it had been in a sewing-machine. While she sewed she hummed the following words, which, as Uncle Morris said, had more truth in them than poetry: ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... themes, but have treated them in the plainest language. I have not done that, not because I have greater austerity than they—by no means, but because I am not quite so daring. Otherwise, I am aware that Catullus has laid down the best and truest regulations governing this style of poetry in his lines: "For it becomes a pious bard to be chaste himself, though there is no need for his verses to be so. Nay, if they are to have wit and charm, they must be voluptuous ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... intermitted unless by some overruling necessity. He then enters at large into the advantages of such a practice, and into the mode of conducting it, and proceeds to suggest other subsidiary studies in history, biography, and poetry, concluding with the advice of the serving-man to a young student, in Shakspeare—"Study ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy |
