"Poetess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ability. Will, not talent, governs the world. From what pathway of eminence were women more traditionally excluded than from the art of sculpture, in spite of Non me Praxiteles fecit, sed Anna Damer?—yet Harriet Hosmer, in eight years, has trod its full ascent. Who believed that a poetess could ever be more than an Annot Lyle of the harp, to soothe with sweet melodies the leisure of her lord, until in Elizabeth Barrett's hands the thing became a trumpet? Where are gone the sneers with which army surgeons and parliamentary orators opposed Mr. Sidney Herbert's ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... praise in the "Revue des Deux Mondes"; but the other, the writer of the present notice, has a melancholy satisfaction in having been a little earlier still in sounding the only note of welcome which reached the dying poetess from England. It was while Professor W. Minto was editor of the "Examiner," that one day in August, 1876, in the very heart of the dead season for books, I happened to be in the office of that newspaper, and was upbraiding the whole body of publishers for issuing no books ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... beneficient disposition of Mrs. Montagu was as notorious as her intellectual superiority. It may be interesting here to observe that after her husband's death, in 1775, she doubled the income of poor Anna Williams, the blind poetess who resided with Dr. Johnson, by settling upon her an annuity of ten pounds. The publication of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," in 1781, occasioned a coolness between the doctor and Mrs. Montagu, on account of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... Honeysuckle), one of several lais by a twelfth-century poetess, MARIE, living in England, but a native of France, tells gracefully of an assignation of Tristan and Iseut, their meeting in the forest, and their sorrowful farewell. Marie de France wrote with an exquisite sense of the generosities and delicacy of the heart, and with a skill in narrative construction ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... ministers; and there proved to be a historian among the Bowdens, who gave some fine anecdotes of the family history; and then appeared a poetess, whom Mrs. Todd regarded with wistful compassion and indulgence, and when the long faded garland of verses came to an appealing end, she turned to ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... a large party here last night: Horace Smith came: like his brother James, but better looking: and said to be very agreeable. Do you [know] that he gives a dreadful account of Mrs. Southey: that meek and Christian poetess: he says, she's a devil in temper. He told my mother so: had you heard of this? I don't believe it yet: one ought not so ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Sappho appears to be neither a classical play of the serene, typical quality of Iphigenia nor a Kuenstlerdrama in the sense in which Tasso is one. Grillparzer was not inspired by the meagre tradition of the Lesbian poetess, nor yet by anything more than the example of Goethe; he took only the outline of the story of Sappho and Phaon; his play is almost to be called a romantic love story, and the influence strongest upon ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Japan throughout the Nara and the Heian epochs. The ninth and tenth centuries produced such poets as Ariwara no Yukihira and his younger brother, Narihira; Otomo no Kuronushi, Ochikochi no Mitsune, Sojo Henjo, and the poetess Ono no Komachi; gave us three anthologies (Sandai-shu), the Kokin-shu, the Gosen-shu, and the Shui-shu, as well as five of the Six National Histories (Roku Kokushi), the Zoku Nihonki, the Nihon Koki, the Zoku Nihon Koki, the Montoku Jitsuroku, and the Sandai ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Christian Church. The gentlest spirits of those days looked to fire and sword for the bringing in of unity and obedience; they never dreamed that Christian charity could mean charity towards the whole human race. Wherefore, on the strength of prophecy, the poetess expects the Maid to destroy the infidel and the heretic, or in other words ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... condemned to death for some great political wrong. She saved him, and for her sake he received pardon. Here is the Lady Helena—she is not beautiful, but look at the intellect, the queenly brow, the soul-lit eyes! She, I need not tell you, was a poetess. Wherever the English language was spoken, her verses were read—men were nobler and better for reading them. The ladies of our race were such that brave men may be proud of them. Is it not ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... from such and such a house; and that now he is taken up with her moral regeneration; that rumour, naturally, also reached the studying girls, who frequented the student circles. And so, none other than Simanovsky once brought to Liubka two female medicos, one historian, and one beginning poetess, who, by the way, was already writing critical essays as well. He introduced them in the most serious ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... which chaste order you are now the queen: Witness their homage when they come and strew Your walks with flowers, and give their crowns to you. Your leafy throne, with lily-work possess, And be both princess here and poetess. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... duties pleasant; she loved her sisters with devoted friendship, and she had many little happinesses in her patient, cheerful, unselfish life. Would that I could show her as she was!—not the austere and violent poetess who, cuckoo-fashion, has usurped her place; but brave to fate and timid of man; stern to herself, forbearing to all weak and erring things; silent, yet sometimes sparkling with happy sallies. ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... probability the third inscription. The Antiquities of Westminster (1711), quoting the inscription, gives Aphara. Sometime in the eighteenth century a certain Thomas Waine restored the inscription and added to the two lines two more:— Great Poetess, O thy stupendous lays The world admires and the Muses praise. The name was then Aphara. The Biog. Brit., whilst insisting on Aphara as correct and citing the stone as evidence, none the less prints Apharra. Her works usually have Mrs. A. Behn. One Quarto misprints ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... is a very pretty poetess (her "Lines to a Faded Tulip" and her "Plaint of Plinlimmon" appeared in one of last year's Keepsakes); and Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the snowy forehead of his bride, pointed out to her, in one of the innumerable pockets of the desk, an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and six charming ...
— A Little Dinner at Timmins's • William Makepeace Thackeray
... members of its own sex. This happened especially with the women of the island of Lesbos, whence this aberration was, and still continues to be named, "Lesbian love," for it has not yet died out: it survives among us. The poetess Sappho, "the Lesbian nightingale," who lived about six hundred years before our reckoning, is considered the leading representative of this form of love. Her passion is glowingly expressed in her hymn to Aphrodite, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... BAILLIE, JOANNA, a poetess, born at Bothwell, child of the Presbyterian manse there; joined a brother in London, stayed afterwards with a sister at Hampstead; produced a series of dramas entitled "Plays of the Passions," besides many others, both comedies and tragedies, one of which, the "Family Legend," was acted in the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... one gets to the kernel, and good, kind John Whittier, who has the fervor of the poet ingrafted into the tough old Quaker stock, and Mr. Stoddard, and Mrs. Lippincott, and Mrs. Sparks, and the Philadelphia Poetess, and dear Mr. and Mrs. W——, and your capital critics and orators. Remember me to all who think of me; but keep the choicest tenderness ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... poetess Sappho, the only female of Greece who ever ranked with the illustrious poets of the other sex, and whom Alcaeus called "the dark-haired, spotless, sweetly smiling Sappho." Lesbos was the center of AEolian culture, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... father's admiration of 'The Land o' the Leal' was such, that he said no woman but Miss Ferrier was capable of writing it. And when I used to shew him song after song in MS., when I was receiving the anonymous verses for the music, and ask his criticism, he said—'Your unknown poetess has only one, or rather two, letters out of taste, viz., choosing "B. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... poetess who gave to the world that rich, soulful, and exquisite poesy, "The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck." It is said the ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... Garrow in social intercourse would have had to look up, as to one on a higher intellectual level than her own. But Elizabeth Barrett was one of them. I am not talking of acquirements. Nor was my wife thinking of such when she used to speak of the poetess as she had known her at that time. I am talking, as my wife used to talk, of pure native intellectual power. And I consider it to have been no small indication of the capacity of my wife's intelligence, that she so clearly and appreciatingly ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... in London named Campanari, lately bought for a trifle a portrait which has proved to be a genuine Michel Angelo. It represents the famous Vittoria Colonna, wife of the Marchese Pescara, the General of Charles V. She was herself distinguished as a poetess as well as by the impassioned love and adoration of the great painter, who not only took her portrait, but left behind him several sonnets in her honor. Campanari, though himself confident of the genuineness of the picture, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... which the complaisant inhabitants had put there,—an apotheosis which reminds us of the worst slavery of imperial Rome under Caligula and Domitian. Some of the greatest names of Italy, such as Petrarch, Boiardo, Ariosto, the wonderful prodigy Olympia Morata, and the celebrated poetess Vittoria Colonna—the friend of Michael Angelo—were connected with this brilliant court. The well-known French poet Clement Marot fled to it to escape persecution in his native country. Calvin found a refuge ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the room with board'll be ten dollars a week," she said with flattering emphasis. "A well-known poetess has just left it to be married. It's not large, but, being at the back of the ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... is a less gentle nature. She is a poetess not so much of the heart and soul as of the impulsive temperament and the strong will. She has not passed through any vacillating development, nor has naturalism been for her as for Helene Boehlau a mere preparatory school or ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... ornament of friendship, love and truth. That fair one, whose matchless eloquence divine, Finds out the sacred pores of man sublime, Tells us, a female of Kilrush doth shine. In point of language, eloquence, and ease, She equals the celebrated Dowes now-a-days, A splendid poetess—how sweet her verse, That which, without a blush, Downes might rehearse; Her throbbing breast the home of virtue rare, Her bosom, warm, loving and sincere, A mild fair one, the muses only care, Of learning, sense, true ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... to have such a poetess in the Social Six," said Charlotte, making her a sweeping bow with her hand on ...
— Glenloch Girls • Grace M. Remick
... to which alone it seemed properly to belong. Mr. Glasse has done as much for Caractacus by giving it up to the Greek. Of the two Odes, which are all, excepting some few fragments, that remain to us of the Lesbian poetess, he has introduced Translations into his drama. There is more glitter of phrase than in the versions made, if I recollect right, by Ambrose Phillips, which are inserted in the Spectator, No. 222 and 229; but much less of that passionate emotion which marks the original. Most of ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... with all the softness and grace and beauty of the most feminine of her sex, possessed all the daring, energy, vigor, wisdom of the bravest and most intriguing man—accomplished to the utmost in all the liberal arts, a poetess and minstrel unrivalled by professional performers, a dancer more finished and voluptuous than beseemed a Roman matron, a scholar in both tongues, the Greek as well as her own, and priding herself on her ability ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... career, and fate appeared to me so strange, grovelling, and miserable, that I never for a moment doubted the whole dreary picture was from the life. I thought in describing the "rustic poetess," in giving the details of her vulgar provincial and disreputable metropolitan notoriety, and especially in touching on the ghastly catastrophe of her fate, he was faithfully recording facts—thus, however repulsively, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... biggest on 'em all. I surmised it was kinder dangerous, havin' always experienced a religious awe of the "water of life," and not knowin' but what this might be it. "Here goes," said I; "faint heart never won fair lady," for rite at the foot was that bootiful poetess to whom allusion has been made, lookin' straight at me with all ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... him; she had the poetess Julia Balbilla amongst her court ladies. They landed wherever there was anything of interest to be seen, and there was more in those days than there is now. They admired the great pyramids, the colossal ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... on the slip of deck with a lady from Lake Superior, niece of the accomplished poetess Mrs. Hemans, and she tried to arouse me into admiration of the shore of Lake Ontario; but I confess that I was too much occupied with a race which we were running with the American steamer Maple-leaf, to look at the flat, gloomy, forest-fringed coast. There is an inherent ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... wondering, as we saw the magnificent pageant of Forepaugh's circus sweep down our majestic boulevards and superb thoroughfares yesterday; as we witnessed this imposing spectacle, we say, we could not help wondering how many people in all the vast crowds of spectators knew that there ever was such a poetess as Sappho, or how many, knowing that there was such a party, have ever read her works. It has been nearly a year since a circus came to town; and in that time public taste has been elevated to a degree by theatrical and operatic performers, such as Sara Bernhardt, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... fear, How frail the tenure of existence here; What unforeseen calamities prevent, Alas! how oft, the best resolved intent; And, therefore, this poor volume I address To thee, dear friend, and sister poetess! ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... revival in Bengal, Swami Vivekananda, was the most impressive and picturesque figure at the Chicago Parliament of Religions in 1893 and made converts in America and in Europe, amongst them in England the gifted poetess best known under her Hindu name as Sister Nivedita. How strong was the hold regained by the purely reactionary forces in Hinduism was suddenly shown in the furious campaign against Lord Lansdowne's Age of Consent Bill in 1891 which brought Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a Chitawan Brahman of Poona, ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... Queens-Village, Long Island. In 1760 Hammon published a poem, eighty-eight lines in length, entitled "An Evening Thought, Salvation by Christ, with Penettential Cries." In 1788 he published "An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley, Ethiopian Poetess in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years of age, and soon became acquainted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ." These two poems do not include ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... about that.—A poet doesn't want to marry a poetess, nor a philosopher a philosopheress. A man may make himself a fool by putting himself in the way of certain refusal; but I take it the broad rule is that a man may fall in love with any lady who habitually sits ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... Ode of this great Poetess, which is likewise admirable in its Kind, and has been translated by the same Hand with the foregoing one. I shall oblige my Reader with it in another Paper. In the mean while, I cannot but wonder, that these two finished Pieces have never been attempted before by any of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... between the Rev. Enoch Corser, then pastor of the Tilton Congregational Church, and Mary Baker. "They discussed subjects too deep to be attractive to other members of the family. Walking up and down in the garden, this fine old-school clergyman and the young poetess as she was coming to be called, threshed out the old philosophic speculations ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... had broken off her engagement promptly. But when Garnet, by mail, still flattered and begged, the poetess, with no notion of relenting, but in her love of dramatic values and the gentle joy of perpetuating a harrowing suspense, had parleyed; and only just now had her tyrannical son forced a conclusion unfavorable to the unfortunate suitor. So ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... "She's a poetess," he went on, "and her work has appeared in lots of good magazines. My idea is that she would be utterly horrified if she knew, and could never be quite the same to me again. But I want you to meet her and ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... in London, England, in the year 1817, and was the most popular poetess of her day. When a young girl, she gave herself so completely up to reading that her father threatened to burn her books. She began to write at an early age, and contributed poems and essays to various ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... poetess who flourished in a very early age of Greek literature. Of her works few fragments remain, but they are enough to establish her claim to eminent poetical genius. The story of Sappho commonly alluded to is that she was passionately in love with a beautiful youth named Phaon, and failing ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... were a poetess, Nora! I'm sure Aunt Janice will let us have all the flower guests ...
— The Quest of Happy Hearts • Kathleen Hay
... from want of the common comforts of life. Lady Morgan, so well known as Miss Owenson, a brilliant and accomplished woman, is now to some extent dependent upon the public charity, administered in the form of a pension of less than five hundred dollars a year. Mrs. Hemans, the universally admired poetess, lived and died in poverty. Laman Blanchard lost his senses and committed suicide in consequence of being compelled, by his extreme poverty, to the effort of writing an article for a periodical while his wife lay a corpse ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... repeated, as he finished the second reading of the letter and thrust it into his pocket. "I knew there was somethin' i' the wind wi' that little girl! The memory o' my own young days when I boarded and captured the poetess is strong upon me yet. I saw it in the rascal's eye the very first time they met—an' he thinks I'm as blind as a bat, I'll be bound, with his poetical reef-point-pattering sharpness. But it's a strange discovery he has made and must be looked into. The young dog! He gives ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... would, however flattering, be rather a source of fresh anxiety and perplexity. He took a volume from the single shelf of books that was slung against the wall; it was a volume of Corinne. The fervid eloquence of the poetess sublimated his passion; and without disturbing the tone of his excited mind, relieved in some degree its tension, by busying his imagination with other, though similar emotions. As he read, his mind became more calm and his feelings deeper, and by the ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... especially the younger men, naturally speak English well, and therefore the Queen is in this respect only somewhat ahead of her more accomplished subjects. But, as we have already stated, she is a poetess, and her verses are often marked by great depth of feeling. She possesses, too, considerable scientific knowledge and great taste in art, and one of her chief desires is to promote national industry. She ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... times the apartment of the lord and his lady, and here they had knelt and listened to the holy office without mingling with their dependants below. This room, if we had the good fortune to obtain lodgings in the mansion, was to belong to the poetess, for it was full of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... who “for many years held a high rank in the annals of British literature,” to quote the words of Sir Walter Scott, has generally passed unnoticed. It is the aim of this book to resuscitate interest in the poetess, and in the literary circle over ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... distracting anxieties and excited brain, all heightened by the natural inspirations of the place and the hour, soon became to her vivid realities. And her burning thoughts at once insensibly ran into the form and spirit of one of the many beautiful plaints of England's gifted poetess: ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... The last-named book, a collection of homosexual prose-poems, attracted considerable attention on publication, as it was an attempt at mystification, being put forward as a translation of the poems of a newly discovered Oriental Greek poetess; Bilitis (more usually Beltis) is the Syrian name for Aphrodite. Les Chansons de Bilitis are not without charm, but have been severely dealt with by Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (Sappho und Simonides, 1913, p. 63 et seq.) as "a ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... poetess," whispered the judge as he lifted Lucy from the waggon. "Go on writing, my dear; we will hear of you yet." And he kissed her as he set her to the ground, and added softly, "You have done an old man good to-day though you ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... perpetually striving to understand and to be understood by others. Her mouth also showed the same fragile tenderness of feeling, and altogether she seemed intended to be—if not herself a musician or a poetess—at least the wife of a musician or poet ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Irish poetess in exile—Boston does not consider itself a place of exile—would prefer to be represented by one of her more serious poems; and probably she had good reasons for placing first in her volume the following which is called ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... poetess is asked to combine into one word-picture the ideas of a triangle, of a square and of a circle. After a short pause, taken up (as we may believe) by what Ernst Mach calls the conflict of ideas, and which I think of as imageless ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... in the language of the Know Nothing salutation, "It is time for work;" for "what signifies self, if a single spark of that genius of liberty worthy of the past, can be bequeathed unquenchably to the future?" In the language of a fair poetess: ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... rest of it. His own work in this kind is thought to resemble most closely the "Psyche" of the Irish poetess, Mary Tighe, published in 1805[30] on the well-known fable of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. It is inferred that Keats knew the poem from a mention of the author in one of his pieces. He also wrote an "Ode to Psyche," which seems, however, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... enough we find among "the family traditions" of the same Clotilde, that Justine de Levis, great-grandmother of this unknown poetess of the fifteenth century, walking in a forest, witnessed the same beautiful spectacle which the Italian Unknown had at Cambridge; never was such an impression to be effaced, and she could not avoid leaving ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... are a poetess!' exclaimed the delighted minister. 'But do you really think the angels weep? Would it not destroy the joy of that place where sorrow and sighing ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... the frequenters of Will's, Cromwell was familiar. He had done more than take a pinch out of Dryden's snuff-box, which was a point of high ambition and honor at Will's; he had quarrelled with him about a frail poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, whom Dryden had christened Corinna, and who was also known as Sappho. Gay characterized this ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... columns; and I will turn philosopher and evolve a new system that will forever send Plato and Zeno, Epicurus and Timon, to the most remote and spider-spun cupboard of the most old-fashioned library, and you shall be a poetess, a Sappho, an Erinna, who shall tinkle in Latin metres sweeter than they ever sing in Aiolic. And so we will fleet the time as though we were Zeus ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... not even yet exhausted. The right of a sovereign to hold his lands was now, by the public law of Europe, to be decided by his strength, The rights of the people were treated as not existing. Truly, as our most gifted poetess has sung— ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... single propositions. That the French Revolution led to an immense augmentation of happiness, both for the French and for mankind, can only be denied by the Pope. That it secured its beneficent results untempered by any mixture of evil, can only be maintained by men as mad as Doctor Pangloss. The Greek poetess Corinna said to the youthful Pindar, when he had interwoven all the gods and goddesses in the Theban mythology into a single hymn, that we should sow with the hand and not with the sack. Corinna's monition to the singer is proper to the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... vocal and instrumental, appears natural to them; neither is their genius for literature to be despised. Many instances are recorded of men of eminence among them. Witness Ignatius Sancho, whose letters are admired by all men of taste. Phillis Wheatley, who distinguished herself as a poetess; the Physician of New Orleans; the Virginia Calculator; Banneker, the Maryland Astronomer, and many others, whom it would be needless to mention. These are sufficient to show, that the Africans whom you despise, ...
— Anti-Slavery Opinions before the Year 1800 - Read before the Cincinnati Literary Club, November 16, 1872 • William Frederick Poole
... sensitive soul, and of the vague yearnings for the infinite, which an enforced study of the heartlessness of California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight-wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some reflections on the vanity of his pursuit,—he supplied several mining-camps with whiskey ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... island of Lesbos was the hearth and home of the earlier lyric poets. Among the earliest of the Lesbian singers was the poetess Sappho, whom the Greeks exalted to a place next to Homer. Plato calls her the Tenth Muse. Although her fame endures, her poetry, except ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... forms of Gaelic are more poetic than those of most languages, and could have originated only with a poetic people, while mistress Conal was by no means an ordinary type of her people; maugre her ill temper and gruffness, she thought as well as spoke like a poetess. This, conjoined with the gift of the second sight, had helped to her ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... them one! 20 And 'tis my faith, that there's a natural bond Between the female mind and measured sounds, Nor do I know a sweeter Hope than this, That this sweet Hope, by judgment unreproved, That our own Britain, our dear mother Isle, 25 May boast one Maid, a poetess indeed, Great as th' impassioned Lesbian, in sweet song, And O! of holier ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... almost amounts to illusion on dark air. To take a character as it was, and delicately sound its stops, suited one so curious in observation, curious in invention. So he painted the portraits of Ludovico's mistresses, Lucretia Crivelli and Cecilia Galerani the poetess, of Ludovico himself, and the Duchess Beatrice. The portrait of Cecilia Galerani is lost, but that of Lucretia Crivelli has been identified with La Belle Ferronniere of the Louvre, and Ludovico's pale, anxious face still remains in the Ambrosian. Opposite ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... of the gentle poetess with regard to the Mass, for the beauty and solemnity of the verse, which is quite in keeping with the nature ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... Tuatha De Danann (with the exception of seven of them who were interred at Talten [which was the third 'Cemetery of the Idolaters']) were buried at Brugh, i.e., Lugh, and Oe, son of Ollamh, and Ogma, and Carpre, son of Etan, and Etan (the poetess) herself, and the Dagda and his three sons (i.e., Aedh, and Oengus, and Cermait), and a great many others besides of the Tuatha De Dananns, and Firbolgs ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... Prince Frederick William of Prussia to Victoria Adelaide Mary, eldest daughter of the Queen of England; and the visit of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, to Canada, in 1860, were events of sufficient magnitude to arouse the patriotism of our Canadian poetess, and we find reference made to them in this and ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... to efface himself any longer. The clever sister urged in vain that it was her petticoats which had conquered, and not his verse. He went to Paris to claim his honours, and introduce himself as the admired poetess to La Roque and Voltaire. Voltaire bitterly resented the joke; La Roque affected to enjoy it; but nevertheless advised its perpetrator to get out of Paris as fast as possible. The trick had answered for once. It would not be wise ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... he meant it still, increasingly difficult as it appeared. But all the talk of the lonely soul, of the eternal isolation of the spirit, in which man was doomed to live, all the tinsel sentimentalisms of which the talk of the bilingual poetess had mainly consisted, afforded perhaps as poor a pabulum as he could anywhere have found. There was he, with that sore-stricken heart of his, so sore-stricken, indeed, that it was well-nigh numbed, and here for the first time in his life he had met a woman of more than common surface ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... She bore him no children, and survived him, living to the age of eighty-four. His second wife was also a cousin, being the daughter of a daughter of Babar, who had married Mirza Nuruddin Muhammad. She was a poetess, and wrote under the nom de plume, Makhfi (the concealed). His third wife was the daughter of Raja Bihari Mall and sister of Raja Bhagwan Das. He married her in 1560. The fourth wife was famed for her beauty: ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... schools. The playing of the Belleville is technically the finer of the two; Clara's is more impassioned. The tone of the Belleville caresses, but does not penetrate beyond the ear; that of Clara reaches the heart. The one is a poetess; the other ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... diplomatist and disciple of the Machiavellian Binkie! It was he who had given Lady Jane that copy of poor Briggs's early poems, which he remembered to have seen at Queen's Crawley, with a dedication from the poetess to his father's late wife; and he brought the volume with him to Brighton, reading it in the Southampton coach and marking it with his own pencil, before he presented it to the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... BARRETT BARRETT, afterwards MRS BROWNING, the greatest poetess of this century, was born in London in the year 1809. She wrote verses "at the age of eight— and earlier," she says; and her first volume of poems was published when she was seventeen. When still a girl, she broke a blood-vessel ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... a lady spoken for herself, the portrait left us might have appeared more tender, if less dignified, than any drawn even by a devoted friend. Or had the Great Poetess of our own day and nation only been unhappy instead of happy, her circumstances would have invited her to bequeath to us, in lieu of the "Portuguese Sonnets," an inimitable "donna innominata" drawn not from fancy but from feeling, and worthy to occupy ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... have spoken again of those handsome dames, if the large, full-length portrait of Madame Deshoulieres, in an elaborate white deshabille, (it was really a fine picture, and, like the much decried and seldom read efforts of the poetess, better at the second look than at the first), had not reminded me, by the expression of the mouth, which is large, full, and sensual, of the peculiar coarseness of Madame de Stael's portrait by Gerard. When I saw it two years ago, at Coppet, in bright sunshine, I ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... think ilka bonny lassie bude to be a poetess—for hoo sud she be bonnie but by the informin' hermony o' her bein'?—an' what's that but the poetry o' the Poet, the Makar, as they ca'd a poet i' the auld Scots tongue?—but haith! I ken better ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... genuineness. Critics shake their heads over its many quotations and allusions to Hannah's song and to other poetical parts of the Old Testament, and declare that these are fatal to its being accepted as Mary's. Why? must the simple village maiden be a poetess because she is the mother of our Lord? What is more likely than that she should cast her emotions into forms so familiar to her, and especially that Hannah's hymn should colour hers? These old psalms provided the mould into ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... our table-d'hote in the Adler an old German lady named Helmine von Chezy, who had a reputation as a poetess. With her I sometimes conversed. One day she narrated in full what she declared was the true story of Caspar Hauser. Unto her Heine had addressed ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... calamities. Unhappily there was only about L100 open on the pension list, and this the minister assigned in equal portions to Mrs. G—— and a distressed lady, grand-daughter of a forfeited Scottish nobleman. Mrs. G——, proud as a Highland-woman, vain as a poetess, and absurd as a bluestocking, has taken this partition in malam partem, and written to Lord Melville about her merits, and that her friends do not consider her claims as being fairly canvassed, with something like a demand that her petition be submitted to the King. This is not the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... class. Sweeter and prouder yet would be his sensations when, talking poetry while he sold spelling-books, he should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart, of a fair country schoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a wearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look at. But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon had halted for the night and his stock of books was transferred to some crowded bar-room. Then would he recommend to the multifarious ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Not only was she quite able to give an account of her experiences (she was at least between eighteen and nineteen years of age), but it is known that she had a veritable passion for pen and ink, a passion which in after years won her no mean reputation as a poetess. And, more than this, she seems to have enjoyed a far greater share of Jeffrey's attentions than did any other member of the family. "My sister Hetty, I find," remarks the observing Samuel, "was more particularly troubled." And Emilia declares, almost in the language of complaint, that ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... Messrs. Ticknor & Fields' reprint of his poetical works. His growing popularity calls for the present publication. We would fain number ourselves among the admirers of the husband of Elizabeth Barrett; the man loved by this truly great poetess, to whom she addressed the refined and imaginative tenderness of the 'Portuguese Sonnets?' of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... paralysis had frightened the proprietor who suggested his removal to a private hospital, but M. Dobronowska had preferred to be attended to in the house, a little out of St. Denis, of an acquaintance. It was Mr. Lesperon's, the abode of a once noted poetess, whose husband had enjoyed Dobronowska's hospitality in Finland and who had tried to repay ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... daurna: dare not.—There can hardly exist a poem more truly tragic in the highest sense than this: nor, except Sappho, has any Poetess known to the ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... homestead. It needs no orthodox minister to prove to a badly mated pair that there is a hell; they are there now. Sometimes a grand and gracious woman will be thus incarcerated, and her life will be a crucifixion, as was the case with Mrs. Sigourney, the great poetess and the great soul. Sometimes a consecrated man will be united to a fury, as was John Wesley, or united to a vixen, as was John Milton. Sometimes, and generally, both parties are to blame, and Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable scold, and ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... agreeable neighbours at Albury; also Lady Wilde, admirable both for prose and poetry on Scandinavian subjects, and her eloquent son Oscar, famous for taste all the world over; and as another duplicate the Gaelic historian and cheerful singer, Charles Mackay, with his charming daughter, the poetess. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... gathering of Pacifists in the home of a school-teacher. They made heart-breaking speeches, and finally little Ada Ruth, the poetess, got up and wanted to know, was it all to end in talk, or would they organize and prepare to take some action against the draft? Would they not at least go out on the street, get up a parade with banners of protest, and go to jail as Comrade Peter ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... to be drawn out, people soon discovered; but he liked to sit on the lawn and listen and take observations. He was not backward, but his tastes were simple. He was seemingly quite as much at ease in the presence of a Chicago poetess with a practised—a somewhat too practised—laugh or a fellow employee risen, like himself, to a point ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... in remote Herefordshire, the not yet eleven-year-old poetess had already "cried aloud on obsolete Muses from childish lips" in various "nascent odes, epics, and didactics." At this time, she tells us, the Greeks were her demi-gods, and she dreamt much of Agamemnon. In the same year, in suburban Camberwell, a little ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... poetess whom Mr. Browning quotes at the close of this poem. The painter so generously eulogized is ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... of Sarum's visitation sermon, already mentioned, were added some verses "by that excellent poetess, Mrs. Anne Wharton," upon its being translated into English, at the instance of Waller by Atwood. Wharton, after he became ennobled, did not drop the son of his old friend. In him, during the short time he lived, Young found ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... poetess looked up, flushed and triumphant. "It was as easy as nothing. Just hear!" And she read slowly, ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... prophetess of the Israelites; Queen Esther, who, with the counsel of her cousin, Mordecai, not only saved the Jews from extermination, but lifted them from a condition of slavery into prosperity and power; Dido, the founder of Carthage; Sappho, the eminent Grecian poetess; Hypatia, the eloquent philosopher; Mary, the mother of Christ; Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra; the mother of St. Augustine; Elizabeth of Hungary; Queen Elizabeth of England; Queen Isabella of Spain; the Empress Maria Theresa; Margaret the Great of Denmark; Catherine the Great of Russia, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... invites, as Beauty did before. To day one of their Party ventures out, Not with design to conquer, but to scout. Discourage but this first attempt, and then They'll hardly dare to sally out again. The Poetess too, they say, has Spies abroad, Which have dispersed themselves in every road, I'th' Upper Box, Pit, Galleries; every Face You find disguis'd in a Black Velvet Case. My life on't; is her Spy on purpose sent, To hold you in a wanton Compliment; That so you may not censure what she ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... all shut our eyes, and imagine ourselves on the beach," said Ellen, who was the poetess of ...
— The Nursery, September 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... from the North, was heart and soul a Union man, notwithstanding the fact that one of his daughters was the first wife of Major Thomas J. Jackson, who developed into the world-renowned "Stonewall" Jackson. Another daughter was the great Southern poetess, Mrs. Margaret J. Preston, and Dr. Junkin's son, Rev. W. F. Junkin, a most lovable man, became an ardent Southern soldier and a chaplain in the Confederate ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... Judgment—reckless, but clever and trenchant. The consistency and industry of Southey's life caused him to be appointed poet-laureate upon the death of Pye; and in 1835, having declined a baronetcy, he received an annual pension of L300. Having lost his first wife in 1837, he married Miss Bowles, the poetess, in 1839; but soon after his mind began to fail, and he had reached a state of imbecility which ended in death on the 21st of March, 1843. In 1837, at the age of sixty-three, he collected and edited his complete poetical works, with copious ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... [104] Thence an easy entrance is gained to the Hebrew Paradise, with its abounding trees "pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden"; and finally arises a sight of the "better land" of the Christian poetess, the incorruptible and undefiled inheritance of the Christian preacher, the prospect which is "ever vernal and blooming,—and, best of all, amid those trees of life there lurks no serpent to destroy,—the country, through whose vast region we shall traverse ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... which rain down on the brief period of adolescence with great tenderness. God forgive us if we ever speak harshly to young creatures on the strength of these ugly truths, and so sooner or later, smite some tender-souled poet or poetess on the lips who might have sung the world into sweet trances, had we not silenced the matin-song in its first low breathings! Just as my heart yearns over the unloved, just so it sorrows for the ungifted who are doomed to the pangs of an ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Poetry, the child of passion and of thought. Hence, before the real cares of existence claim them, the young, who are abler yet lonelier than their fellows, are nearly always poets; and Florence was a poetess. In minds like this, the first book that seems to embody and represent their own most cherished and beloved trains of sentiment and ideas, ever creates a reverential and deep enthusiasm. The lonely, and proud, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... apothecary in Cork-street, Burlington-gardens, with whom he and Mrs. Williams generally dined every Sunday. There was a talk of his going to Iceland with him, which would probably have happened had he lived. There were also Mr. Cave, Dr. Hawkesworth, Mr. Ryland, merchant on Tower Hill, Mrs. Masters, the poetess, who lived with Mr. Cave, Mrs. Carter, and sometimes Mrs. Macaulay, also Mrs. Gardiner, wife of a tallow-chandler on Snow-hill, not in the learned way, but a worthy good woman; Mr. (now Sir Joshua) Reynolds; Mr. Millar, Mr. Dodsley, Mr. Bouquet, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... of the poetess, Rhodopis returned, with her little daughter, to Naukratis, where she was welcomed as a goddess. During this interval Amasis, the present king of Egypt, had usurped the throne of the Pharaohs, and was maintaining ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... mark the cold and bright page of the Comus; the noble Platonism—the high and rare love for what is abstractedly good, these were not "sonorous and trumpet-speaking" enough for the heart of one meant by Nature for a heroine or a queen, not a poetess ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... curious frontispieces known to all readers of seventeenth century books. A further wait for reinforcements takes place, and the author basely avails herself of it for a no doubt to herself very congenial (they actually called her in "precious" circles by the name of the great poetess) and enormous Histoire of no less a person than Sappho, which fills the last 250 pages of the first (nineteenth) volume and about as much of the second (twentieth) or last. It has very little connection with the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... and noble end? (OLIVER embarrassed) You, Oliver, you might in time be a great inventor, and know all about the insides of the most complicated machines. You, Evangeline (EVANGELINE rises, poses by fireplace, one hand on mantel. JOYCE laughs—she pulls her hair), might develop into a great poetess; your mother tells me that you already write verses about the moonlight. They all start like that, only unfortunately some of them stay like it. (She sits again.) You, Bobbie, you are artistic, too, you might without undue strain become a world ...
— I'll Leave It To You - A Light Comedy In Three Acts • Noel Coward
... "Gardner looked up in his face, but spoke not a word, being mortally shot through the head." The widow of Captain Gardner (Ann, sister of Sir George Downing) became the successor of Ann Dudley, the celebrated poetess of her day, by marrying Governor Bradstreet, in ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... youthful Pope wrote literary letters, being even decoyed into patching and revising the old beau's senile verses. Another of his correspondents was Henry Cromwell—Gay's "honest, hatless Cromwell, with red breeches," who at this time was playing the part of an elderly Phaon to the Sappho of a third-rate poetess, Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas. The epistles of the boy at Binfield to these battered men about town, when not discussing metres and the precepts of M. the Abbe Bossu, in a style modelled upon Balzac and Voiture, are sometimes sorry reading. But both Wycherley and Cromwell were wits ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... a poetess only last year, And good at my art, for a woman, men said. But this woman, this, who is agonized here, The east sea and west sea rhyme on ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Erskine Epigrams by Thomas Moore. To Sir Hudson Lowe Dialogue To Miss —- To —- On being Obliged to Leave a Pleasant Party, etc. What my Thought's like? From the French A Joke Versified The Surprise On —- On a Squinting Poetess On a Tuft-hunter The Kiss Epitaph on Southey Written in a Young Lady's Common-place Book The Rabbinical Origin of Women Anacreontique On Butler's Monument Wesley On the Disappointment of the Whig Associates of the Prince Regent, etc Lamb To Professor Airey ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... allegro, serves also for interlude as well as postlude, and the air and accompaniment of both stanzas are unvaried, save at the cadence of the latter stanza. The intense poesy of Anna Reeve Aldrich, a poetess cut short at the very budding of unlimited promise, deserved better care than this from a musician. Two of Smith's works were published in Millet's "Half-hours with the Best Composers,"—one of the first substantial recognitions of the American ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... compliment, considering the word which had to make room for "Sydneida." Works without number were dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, not only because she was what she was, and a poetess of some renown, but because she was the Mary Sidney of ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... of Juno; a middle-class Englishman employed in some business capacity in town; a pair of very young honeymooners from the "up-country"; a Louisiana poetess, who wore the long, cylindrical ringlets of 1830, and who was attending a convention the Daughters of Dixie; two or three males and females, best described as et ceteras; and myself. "I shall only take a mouthful for the sake of nourishment," Juno was announcing, "and then I shall ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... live in Berlin, Vienna, Milan, or London, the latter for preference. There she would have full scope for her genius in producing pamphlets. "Oh yes," says the "god who had descended on earth"; "she has talent, much talent, in fact far too much, but it is offensive and revolutionary." This poetess-politician, who said brave things and wrote amazing diatribes against her "god," was in truth one of the most servile creatures on earth. She pleaded to be allowed to come back to her native land, and pledged herself to a life of retirement, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... recorded at Dilly's was April 15, 1778, when Johnson and Boswell dined there, and met Miss Seward, the Lichfield poetess, and Mrs. Knowles, a clever Quaker lady, who for once overcame the giant of Bolt Court in argument. Before dinner Johnson took up a book, and read it ravenously. "He knows how to read it better," said Mrs. Knowles to Boswell, "than ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... contemporary with Mrs. Stowe: Mrs. L. H. Sigourney, for example, a Hartford poetess, formerly known as "the Hemans of America," but now quite obsolete; and J. G. Percival, of New Haven, a shy and eccentric scholar, whose geological work was of value, and whose memory is preserved by one or two of his simpler poems, ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers |
