"Rhymer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Thomas, distinguished by the name of the Rhymer, and whose intimacy, it is said, became so great with the gifted people, called the Faery folk, that he could, like them, foretell the future deed before it came to pass, and united in his own person the quality of bard and of soothsayer. But of late years ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... the ease of doing it, nor the graces of it: which is manifest in his "Juvenilia" or verses written in his youth, where his rhyme is always constrained and forced, and comes hardly from him, at an age when the soul is most pliant, and the passion of love makes almost every man a rhymer, though not a poet. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... time of Pope there has been a glut of lines of this sort; and we are now as little disposed to admire a man for being able to write them, as for being able to write his name. But in the days of William the Third such versification was rare; and a rhymer who had any skill in it passed for a great poet, just as in the dark ages a person who could write his name passed for a great clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, and others whose only title to fame was that they said in tolerable metre what might have been as well said in prose, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... advertisements; he publishes the works of audacious authors and sensational books, and had the honor of sharing with Charles Bazile, the poet, an imprisonment at St.-Pelagie. He received this thin-faced rhymer coldly. Amedee introduced himself, and at once there was a broad smile, a handshake, and a connoisseur's greedy sniffling. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in Berwickshire, with manufactures of ginghams and other textiles. In its vicinity stand the ruins of the "Rhymer's Tower," alleged to have been the residence ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... out of the house; but my memory enables me to send you the words very correctly, I think. After some observations on other periodicals, the writer goes on to say: 'The "New Monthly Magazine" has not one heavy article. It is rich in poetry, including some fine sonnets by the Corn Law Rhymer, and a fine although too dreamy ballad, "The Poet's Vow." We are almost tempted to pause and criticise the work of a writer of so much inspiration and promise as the author of this poem, and exhort him once again, to greater clearness of expression and less quaintness in the choice of his phraseology; ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... twain and languorous lids of eyne, breasts like pomegranates twin and dainty, lips like double carnelian, a mouth as it were the seal-of Solomon, and teeth ranged in a line that played with the reason of proser and rhymer, even as ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... ago, there lived in the south of Scotland a very wonderful man named Thomas of Ercildoune, or Thomas the Rhymer. ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Denham, Waller, Cartwright, Ben Johnson, Sir John Berkenhead, and Dryden himself, a name more than equal to all the rest. But the works of our authors have not escaped the censure of critics, especially Mr. Rhymer the historiographer, who was really a man of wit and judgment, but somewhat ill natured; for he has laboured to expose the faults, without taking any notice of the beauties of Rollo Duke of Normandy, the King and No King, and the Maids Tragedy, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... a hackney coach standing at the corner of Frascati's waiting for some gambler; he awoke the driver, was driven home, went to bed, and slept the sleep of the dissipated, which for some queer reason—of which no rhymer has yet taken advantage—is as profound as that of innocence. Perhaps it is an instance of the proverbial axiom, ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... of the rhymer put each of us in a delectable mood. The notes of a harp and violins came from the lower deck in the form of a seductive Italian melody. White ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... and manner in that remarkable work bearing far more resemblance to the great German Incomprehensible than to any thing in the English language, certainly not excepting Mr. Carlyle's own masterly articles in the Edinburgh Review on Burns, Elliot the Corn-Law Rhymer, etc. Besides reading every book that came within my reach, I now commenced the still more objectionable practice of scribbling verses without stint or stay; some, I suppose, in very bad Italian, and some, I am sure, in most indifferent English; but the necessity was on me, and perhaps an eruption ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... them. And I fear it must be owned that there are people not a few who take delight in having their parties and appearances chronicled in this small-beer manner, and that there are several grains of truth contained in the good-humoredly sarcastic lines in which that clever rhymer "C.S.C," parodying the Proverbial Philosophy of Mr. Tupper, gives worldly advice to young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... an empty rhymer Who lies with idle elbow on the grass, And fits his singing, like a cunning timer, To all men's prides and fancies as they pass. 60 Not his the song, which, in its metre holy, Chimes with the music of the eternal ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... is man! how changeable his mind! His promises are naught, too oft we find; I vowed (I hope in tolerable verse,) Again no idle story to rehearse. And whence this promise?—Not two days ago; I'm quite confounded; better I should know: A rhymer hear then, who himself can boast, Quite steady for—a minute at the most. The pow'rs above could PRUDENCE ne'er design; For those who fondly court the SISTERS NINE. Some means to please they've got, you will confess; But none with certainty the charm possess. If, howsoever, I ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... took up the same business on his own account with success. He is best known by his poems on behalf of the poor and oppressed, and especially for his denunciations of the Corn Laws, which gained for him the title of the Corn Law Rhymer. Though now little read, he had considerable poetic gift. His principal poems are Corn Law Rhymes (1831), The Ranter, and The ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... Ebenezer Elliott, the "Corn-Law Rhymer," gave voice to the sufferings of the poor in rude but vigorous verse, which appealed to the excited feelings of thousands in such words ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... believe, a great reputation in England as yet, but in India he seems to be well known. From a collection of criticisms appended to his volume it appears that the Overland Mail has christened him the Laureate of Hindostan and that the Allahabad Pioneer once compared him to Keats. He is a pleasant rhymer, as rhymers go, and, though we strongly object to his putting the Song of Solomon into bad blank verse, still we are quite ready to admire his translations of the Pervigilium Veneris and of Omar Khayyam. We wish he would not write sonnets with fifteen lines. A fifteen-line sonnet is as bad a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Middle-English poem of the thirteenth century preserved in the so-called Auchinleck MS. of the library of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, and familiar to English readers from the edition published by Sir Walter Scott. The poem was probably composed by the famous Thomas the Rhymer of Ercyldoune or Earlstown in Berwickshire. A reliable edition by G. P. MacNeill has been published by the Scottish Text Society, with an introduction giving a full and interesting account of the legend in ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... how could a poor rhymer like me appear amongst the great celebrities of Paris? I have sold eighteen hundred copies of my little pieces of poetry (in pamphlet form), and certainly all who speak Gascon know them well. Remember that there are at least six millions of ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... antispast[obs3], blank verse, ictus. elegiacs &c. adj.; elegiac verse, elegaic meter, elegaic poetry. poet, poet laureate; laureate; bard, lyrist[obs3], scald, skald[obs3], troubadour, trouvere[Fr]; minstrel; minnesinger, meistersinger[Ger]; improvisatore[obs3]; versifier, sonneteer; rhymer, rhymist[obs3], rhymester; ballad monger, runer[obs3]; poetaster; genus irritabile vatum [Latin]. V. poetize, sing, versify, make verses, rhyme, scan. Adj. poetic, poetical; lyric, lyrical, tuneful, epic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Alfred Tennyson, Come and share my haunch of venison, I have, too, a bin of claret, Good, but better when you share it. Though 'tis only a small bin There's a stock of it within, And, as sure as I'm a rhymer, Half a butt of Rudesheimer, Come, among the sons of men ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... Edward the Second's deposition and death was enacted in England, a drama of a lighter kind was performed among his new made earls in Ireland. The Lord Arnold le Poer gave mortal offence to Maurice, first Earl of Desmond, by calling him "a Rhymer," a term synonymous with poetaster. To make good his reputation as a Bard, the Earl summoned his allies, the Butlers and Berminghams, while le Poer obtained the aid of his maternal relatives, the de Burghs, and several desperate conflicts took place between them. The Earl of Kildare, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... moment of spending. The cottage grew to a mansion, and the mansion to a castle. The farm by the Tweed made him long for a farm by the Cauldshiel's loch, and the farm by the Cauldshiel's loch for Thomas the Rhymer's Glen; and as, at every step in the ladder, his means of buying were really increasing—though they were so cruelly discounted and forestalled by this growing land-hunger,—Scott never realized into what troubles ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... adventurer—and an overweening Highland pride in her descent from James I., the greatest of the Stuarts, through his daughter Annabella, and the second Earl of Huntly. This union suggested the ballad of an old rhymer, beginning— ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Thomas Occleve, a dull rhymer, who, in his Governail of Princes, a didactic poem translated from the Latin {43} about 1413, drew, or caused to be drawn, on the margin of his MS. a colored portrait of his "maister dere ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... of De Foe! What does not my own poor self owe to thee? England has better bards than either Greece or Rome, yet I could spare them easier far than De Foe, 'unabashed De Foe,' as the hunchbacked rhymer styled him. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... fade from our sight. Lately I have grown to be a sad rhymer, and shall end my letter with hints of a life sweeter than these records of mine. More and more I feel that my wine of letters is poured by the poets, not handed as cold sherbet by the philosophers. Some day I may speak more fully upon these things. Meanwhile, secretly and constantly, I turn over ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... grateful to thee; and to lose no time, I mean to go about it forthright.' Lisa, having anew besought him amain thereof and promised him to take comfort, bade him God speed; whereupon Minuccio, taking his leave, betook himself to one Mico da Siena, a mighty good rhymer of those days, and constrained him with prayers ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... deserves honorable mention for his high sense of the functions of poetic art; for the skill with which his dramas are constructed, and for the overflowing picturesqueness which fills his "King Arthur." Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, is vigorous in conception, and Hood has a remarkable union of grotesque humor with depth of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... my little listening dears With open mouths and open ears, Like a rhymer whose only art is That of telling a plain unvarnish'd tale, To let you know I must not fail, What became ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... night, and that Nanny, Mrs Duncomb being confined to bed, had gone to look for help, possibly from her sister, and to find a woman who would lay out the body of the old servant. With this in her mind Mrs Love descended the stairs once more, and went to look for another friend of Mrs Duncomb's, a Mrs Rhymer. ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... 1804 he published, from the Auchinleck Manuscript in the Advocates' Library, the ancient metrical tale of "Sir Tristrem;" and, in an elaborate introduction, he endeavoured to prove that it was the composition of Thomas of Ercildoune, better known as Thomas the Rhymer. He published in 1805 "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," an original ballad poem, which, speedily attaining a wide circulation, procured for him an extensive reputation, and the substantial ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... certain acerbity of temper may be forgiven in a man who has just assisted (against all his instincts) in an act of poltroonery. He explained, too, that it was a genuine, if loosely remembered, quotation from Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer. "Yet in circumstances of peril," he went on, "and in moments of depression, you cannot think what sustenance I have derived ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... requesting me to furnish a few verses for some occasion which he professed to be interested in. I am satisfied, of course, that it is a forgery. I know you would not do such a thing as to ask a brother rhymer, utterly exhausted by his centennial efforts, to endanger his health and compromise his reputation by any damnable iteration of spasmodic squeezing. [Laughter.] So I give you warning that some dangerous person is using your name, and taking advantage of the great love ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... she can on her pittance until the time comes for her despairing plunge into the Serpentine. It is true that the poet invited the poor creature to come and stay with him; but what a piece of unparalleled insolence toward a wronged lady! The admirers of the rhymer say, "Ah, but Harriet's society was not congenial to the poet." Congenial! How many brave men make their bargain in youth and stand to it gallantly unto the end? A simple soul of this sort thinks to himself, "Well, I ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... for instance, in the family of Mar, which can boast of great antiquity, there being, perhaps, no title in Europe so ancient as that of the Earl of Mar. This curse has been attributed by some to Thomas the Rhymer, by others to the Abbot of Cambuskenneth, and by others to the Bard of the House at that epoch. But, whoever its author, the curse was delivered prior to the elevation of the Earl, in the year 1571, to be the Regent of Scotland, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... in a sense; But just a rhymer like by chance, An' hae to learning nae pretence; Yet, what the matter? Whene'er my muse does on me glance, I ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... marriage there appeared a ballad by some Scotch rhymer, which has been lately reprinted in a collection of the "Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland;" and as it bears testimony both to the reputation of the lady for wealth, and that of her husband for rakery and extravagance, it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... auld-light or new-light as ye like, for my own part I am not much taken up with any of your warlock and wizard tribe; I have no brew of your auld Major Weir, or Tam o' Shanter, or Michael Scott, or Thomas the Rhymer's kind, knocking in pins behind doors to make decent folk dance, jig, cut, and shuffle themselves to death—splitting the hills as ye would spelder a haddy, and playing all manner of evil pranks, and sinful abominations, till their crafty maister, Auld Nick, puts them to ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir |
