"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lines, her wrath redoubled and she said to her, "Wilt speak before me in verse, O whore, and seek to excuse thyself for the mortal sins thou hast sinned? 'Twas my desire that thou shouldst return to thy husband, that I might witness thy wickedness and matchless brazenfacedness; for thou gloriest ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... Although we fear that after the decree issued by the Government this plot of ours will be displeasing to our honoured master, still we, who have eaten of your food, could not without blushing repeat the verse, 'Thou shalt not live under the same heaven nor tread the same earth with the enemy of thy father or lord,' nor could we have dared to leave hell and present ourselves before you in paradise, unless we had carried out the vengeance which you began. Every ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... same help to others. Countless instances of such happy expression could be cited by any one who has lived the last year in France. On the bodies of young soldiers have been found letters of farewell to their parents that made one think of some heroic Elizabethan verse; and the mothers robbed of these sons have sent them an answering cry ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... the Brunners were very willing to keep me, and strove to make a "Schweitzer child" of me, dressed me in clothes modelled after those which grandma wore when she was small, and by verse and legend filled my thoughts with pictures of their Alpine country. I liked the German language, learned it rapidly and soon could help to translate orders. Those which pleased grandma best were from the homes of Mr. Jacob Leese, Captain Fitch, Major Prudon, and General Vallejo; for their patronage ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... of his former thoughts. "What was I thinking about?" he asked himself; and when he remembered, he thought, "I will give my hand to the heavenly Father and go on without fear." At the second verse he rallied, rose to his feet, and joined in the singing. It was said afterward that his deep voice rang out above all the other voices, and that he sang in rapid and irregular time, going faster and faster ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be. Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... 1826, after his father's death. The parting took place about the twenty-fourth of June, 1814; and at the same time Shelley wrote a poem, of which fragments are given in the recently published "Relics." The verse shows, first, that Shelley was suffering severely from the chronic conflict which he had undergone, and, secondly, that he had found some novel comfort in the intercourse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... Bible, as he always does to Rosa, before he leaves for his business, and he paused on the words, "then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, and full of years, and was gathered to his people;" and he remarked that in this verse there was a most striking affirmation of a future existence; for that Abraham being gathered to "his people," must imply that these people yet lived, or why should mention be made of that fact? And now, in this beautiful evening hour, when ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... her bright, old eyes peered out from the gray shawl she held over her head with tremulous excitement. She was both laughing and panting as Rose Mary threw her arm around her and drew her into the door of the barn. "Sister Viney has consented in her mind about the party, all along of a verse I was just now a-reading to her in our morning lesson. Saint Luke says: 'It is meet that we should make merry and be glad, for this thy brother was dead and is alive again,' and at the same minute the recollection of how sick Mr. Mark has been hit us both. 'There now,' she says, ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... prisoners but the "regulars." Locked in separate cells, as in the District Jail, the suffragists could still communicate by song. The following lively doggerel to the tune of "Captain Kidd" was sung in chorus to the accompaniment of a hair comb. It became a saga. Each day a new verse was added, relating the day's particular ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... the best fighter won. Thoughts came up into his mind, as thoughts will in the silence of the desert; memories of other times and places, a word here, a scene there, having no relation to the matter in hand; and then one flashed up like the premonitions of the superstitious—a verse from the Bible that he had learned at his mother's ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... array, and the children from every tier see the queen and her attendants. As her majesty entered the park, the whole host raised their voices and began the national anthem. For a few moments the effect was sublime; it was, however, only during the first verse. The boys of the Irish Roman Catholic schools burst the limitations of their orders, and of their positions, and raised a tumultuous shout, which was caught up in an instant by the other children, and almost as soon by the vast multitudes who filled the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... memory of Bret Harte is on the Post street facade of the Bohemian Club, near Taylor. Characters from the prose and verse of the author are shown in bas-relief, including Salomy Jane, Yuba Bill, Tennessee's Partner, John Oakhurst and the Heathen Chinee. The Olympic Club, the Pacific Union Club on Nob Hill, the University Club, the Commonwealth, the Union League Club, the Commercial, the Transportation, the Concordia, ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... bickering among the competitors. But they all agreed in regretting the past splendour of their dynasty, and in detesting the upstart race of Campbell. The old feud had never slumbered. It was still constantly repeated, in verse and prose, that the finest part of the domain belonging to the ancient heads of the Gaelic nation, Islay, where they had lived with the pomp of royalty, Iona, where they had been interred with the pomp of religion, the paps of Jura, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... verse twice, with simple cunning, intending that Dick should hear. But Dick was waiting for the farewell of the men ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... powder. It was regularly shaken or changed. There were always flowers—often a single fine rose in a slender vase. On her dressing table, in a corner, you were likely to find three or four volumes—perhaps The Amenities of Book-Collecting; something or other of Max Beerbohm's; a book of verse (not Amy Lowell's). ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... of your country, Pledge Allegiance." The Pledge of Allegiance should be followed by one verse of the Star ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... pleasing and invigorating influence on the sympathies of those who read it. They composed together several of their excellent and most useful literary works. While Mrs. Barbauld was tarrying at Geneva, her brother addressed a letter in verse to her: ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... or gate—for that which is called in the text a gate, is twice in the next verse called a door—there is, I say, another gate, and that is the passage into the very heaven itself; the entrance into the celestial mansion-house, and that is the gate mentioned in the text, 3 and the door mentioned twice in the verse that follows. And this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is a propos to record here the revenge Swift took on Boulter for the accusation of inflaming the people. The incident was put by him into the following verse: ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... struck up one of his favorite chants. He kept us at least half an hour in the burning sun, till, being tired of kneeling, I made signs to him to leave off. But it was lost labor, for my servant pretended not to perceive me, and only multiplied his gestures and cries, repeating the same verse three ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... reminders, too, of the things which were happening across the sea, a cartoon or two, a small reproduction of a terrible Raemaeker print; verse, much of it— ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... heart and spirit to the root, Finds reluctant voice in verse that yearns like soaring fire, Takes exultant voice when music holds in high ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sent me out to see last week. A more sophisticated audience might have mistaken its brittle epigrammatic quality for brilliancy and its flippancy for cleverness. But not your ten-twenty-thirty's. In real life a husband doesn't psychanalyze his wife's lover. He horsewhips him. And that lovely blank-verse fantasy that you attempted on your own. That is the sort of thing you are going to stand for some day in the theater. I loved your wanting it. But right now, while you are on your way up to the goal, is where I come in. Sort of mediator between your ideals ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... happened to be flying over Castle William? Listen to another warning from this stainless poet of the South." She opened the newspaper feverishly, glanced quickly down the columns, and holding it high under the chandelier, read in a hushed but distinct voice, picking out a verse here and ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... are more lessons in the Book of Proverbs than most of us care to learn. There is a lesson in every verse of it, and a shrewd one. Certain I am, that for a practical, business man, who has to do his duty and to make his way in this world, there is no guide so safe as these same Proverbs of Solomon. In this world, I say; for they say little ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... nourished in later times, is also gone. But the mullet that is celebrated in Juvenal's verse, and the lampreys that once went to better Alexandrian luxury, are still the spoil of the fishers, the shrimps are delicate to the palate, and the marbles will endure as long as this rock itself. The rock lasts, ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... his translation of the Iliad,—a youthful purpose which he did not see fulfilled till the year 1860, when he had already touched the Psalmist's limit of life. In this translation he revived with admirable success an ancient species of Armenian verse, which bears, in flexibility and strength, comparison with the original Greek. Another of his great labors was the production of an Armenian Grammar, in which he reduced to rule and order the numerous forms of his native tongue, never before presented ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... come to the hamlet of Slackstead in Hursley Parish another reformer, Thomas Sternhold, who had been gentleman of the bed-chamber to Henry VIII., and had put thirty-seven Psalms into English verse, in hopes of improving the morals of the Court. John Hopkins and Robert Wisdom completed the translation of the Psalms, which Fuller in his history says was at first derided and scoffed at as piety rather than poetry, adding that the good gentleman ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... can talk And sixty miles a day can walk; Drink at a draught a pint of rum, And then be neither sick nor dumb Can tune a song, and make a verse, And deeds of Northern kings rehearse Who never will forsake his friend, While he his bony fist can bend; And, though averse to brawl and strife Will fight a Dutchman with a knife. O that is just the lad for me, And ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... numerous places where I had formerly quoted the German original. On some occasions, when first writing the lectures, I very probably used the English version of Faust by Bayard Taylor, but I have not the book at present at hand and cannot feel quite certain whether any of the verse translations are not my own. The little book makes of course no pretence to be a contribution to critical or biographical literature. It is meant especially for those who wish to know something more about the story of Faust ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... In my time the fellows that graduated were of a different sort from nowadays. They were lads who got shaved twice a week, and could scan all kinds of verse. ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... his art, he chose by preference, the most difficult, exact, and incorruptible vehicles—verse and engraving; and he aimed at adhering strictly to, and reviving, the traditional Italian methods, by going back to the poets of the stil novo, and the painters who were precursors of the Renaissance. His tendencies were essentially towards form; his mind more occupied by the expression ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... sleepless merchant weep, Whose richer hazard loads the deep. For me the blast, or low or high, Blows nought of wealth or poverty; It can but whirl in whimsies vain The windmill of a restless brain, And bid me tell in slipshod verse What honest prose might best rehearse; How much we forest-dwellers grieve Our valued friends our cot should leave, Unseen each beauty that we boast, The little wonders of our coast, That still the pile ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... are conversant with ancient history recite the following verse of Daksha, the son of Prachetas: That maiden, in respect of whom nothing is taken by her kinsmen in the form of dowry cannot be said to be sold.[293] Respect, kind treatment, and everything else that is agreeable, should all be given unto the maiden whose hand is taken ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... its maturity at any other time, and would surely have missed its most peculiar and cherished qualities if reared in any other place. The Ionian intellect of Athens culminates in Plato; Florence runs into the mould of Dante's verse, like fluid bronze; Paris secures remembrance of her wide curiosity in Voltaire's settled expression; and Samuel Johnson holds fast for us that London of the eighteenth century which has passed out of sight, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... one, to mark the division of the line. Ivaried the line as much as I could, introducing, often rashly, metrical changes; for the fault of this movement is its monotony. Ihave sometimes tried an iambic movement, but rarely; for this trochaic line with a beat at the end of each half-verse seemed to me to get the nearest to the sound of the Anglo-Saxon line, even though it is frequently un-similar to that line itself. Iused alliteration whenever I could, and stressed as much as possible the alliterated words, and ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... and as a short story exclusively occupied in illustrating one set of ideas or one disposition of character. As early as the 13th century, the word is used in French literature to describe an anecdote thus briefly and artistically told, in prose or verse. The fairy-tales of Perrault and the apologues of La Fontaine were alike spoken of as contes, and stories of peculiar extravagance were known as contes bleus, because they were issued to the common public in coarse blue paper covers. The most ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... manhood will help us to appreciate the genius of his art. "It is needful to know Dante as man" wrote Charles Elliot Norton, "in order fully to appreciate him as poet." The thought is expressed in another way by James Russell Lowell: "The man behind the verse is far greater than the verse itself and Dante is not merely a great poet but an influence, part of the soul's resources in time of trouble. From him the soul learns that 'married to the truth she is a mistress but otherwise a slave shut out of all liberty'" (The Banquet). ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... Camilla de Pisa which are marked by genuine passion, in Lothar Schmidt's Frauenbriefe der Renaissance. The famous Imperia, called by a Pope in the early years of the sixteenth century "nobilissimum Romae scortum," knew Latin and could write Italian verse. Other courtesans knew Italian and Latin poetry by heart, while they were accomplished in music, dancing, and speech. We are reminded of ancient Greece, and Graf, discussing how far the Renaissance ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the choir sings the anthem, Cum appropinquaret etc. When the procession is in the portico, two soprano singers reenter the basilica, and shut the door: then turning towards the door, they sing the first verse of the hymn Gloria, laus et honor[38] and the other verses alternately with the choir, which remains without. The subdeacon knocks at the gate with the cross, and it is immediately opened; the procession ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... was arriving at this conclusion, I recollected a verse of our poet Dante, which may be found in the first chapter of his "Purgatory," where he imagines he is leaving this hemisphere to repair to the other and attempting to describe ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... trembling lip; 'I was cross at doing my lessons with Aunt Theodora instead of mamma, and I was so sorry. But at night, something seemed to bring that verse, and I thought the Angels must have ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a modest effort to reproduce approximately, in modern measures, the venerable epic, Beowulf. Approximately, I repeat; for a very close reproduction of Anglo-Saxon verse would, to a large extent, be prose to ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... which she had brought from her native Italy. It was, indeed, a singular training-school for a girl of Mary Stuart's character. She saw about her a superficial chivalry and a most profound depravity. Poets like Ronsard graced the life of the court with exquisite verse. Troubadours and minstrels sang sweet music there. There were fetes and tournaments and gallantry of bearing; yet, on the other hand, there was every possible refinement and variety of vice. Men were slain before the eyes of the queen herself. The talk of the court ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... I ran along the road in advance of my parents, and, climbing a cliff, saw the breadth of the lake below me, golden under the sunset clouds, and very aptly recited, as they came up, Sir Walter's descriptive verse: ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... of being abused. Alcohol not one of these; alcohol always pernicious. Fiction, on the other hand, a good thing. Antiquity of fiction. In early days couched in verse. Civilisation prefers prose. Fiction, from the earlier ages, intended to convey Moral Instruction. Opinion of Aristotle defended against that of Plato. Morality in mediaeval Romance. Criticism of Mr. Frederic Harrison. Opinion of Moliere. Yet French novels usually immoral, and why. ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... apologized, and was about to retire, when one of the strangers called out, "Come in, Johnny Peep." This invitation the convivial poet readily accepted, and spent a very pleasant time with his newly-found companions. As the conversation began to flag, it was proposed that each should write a verse, and place it, together with two-and-six pence, under the candlestick, the best poet to take the half-crowns, while the unsuccessful rhymers were to settle the bill among them. According to Cunningham, Burns obtained the stakes ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... this a gem? It isn't just the thing to put your name to a valentine, they tell me, but this is something deeper and more poetic than such things usually are. It means mischief, as Cousin Dempster says. It is a proposal, buried in roses and veiled in sweet and modest verse, such as a lady might almost send at any time with a few blushes. It will reach him out in that vast wilderness of dead grass, where he has been deluded off by Mr. Sheridan, and has risked his precious life in a terrific manner, shooting great, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... is taught to notice all allusions that give him a clue to the sense of the passage, to grapple with the difficulties of construction, to break up sentences, and to distinguish between the principal and the subordinate thoughts both in prose and verse. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... per Thomam Hibernicum, 18 pence. 5. Sylva locorum communiuni per Ludovicum Granatensem, 30 pence. 6. Poetarum omnium flores, a mark. 7. Refutatio Cujusdam libelli de Jure magistratuum per Beccariam, 8 pence. 8. Chrysostomes Homilies and morals on the Ephesians, 24 pence. 9. Virgil in English verse by John Ogilbie, 24 pence. 10. Simon Patrick's Reflections on the devotions of the Roman Church, ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... put her hand out for the scroll he was unfolding, and cast her eyes along bars of music, while Agostino called a "Silenzio tutti!" She sang one verse, and stopped for breath. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... or other domestic festivals. After he has received the usual courtesies he produces the Wai, a book written in his own crabbed hieroglyphics or in those of his father, which contains the descent of the house from its founder, interspersed with many a verse or ballad, the dark sayings contained in which are chanted forth in musical cadence to a delighted audience, and are then orally interpreted by the bard with many an illustrative anecdote or tale. The Wai, however, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... and is translated thus in Henry G. Bohn's Epigrams of Martial (London, 1877): "You are at once morose and agreeable, pleasing and repulsive. I can neither live with you nor without you." It has been several times translated into English verse. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... disposition,—owing, I suppose, to my having been taken from my native land when I was so very young,—and I always felt very happy. My mistress took a great deal of notice of me, teaching me a great many things, and particularly songs. I used to sing a verse of an old song called 'Crazie Jane,' and another called 'The Maid of Lodi,' which used to be a great favourite with my mistress; and when I saw her coming in with some dainty bits from the dessert after dinner, I used to dance about ...
— The Cockatoo's Story • Mrs. George Cupples
... sent to me : Maiden, quench the glare of sorrow : Many a green isle needs must be : Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse : Men of England, wherefore plough : Methought I was a billow in the crowd : Mighty eagle! thou that soarest : Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed : Monarch of Gods and Daemons, and all Spirits : Month after month ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of Chih-li and Ho-nan adjoin. [Sidebar] He wanders from State to State. B.C. 497-484. He was now in his fifty-sixth year, and felt depressed and melancholy. As he went along, he gave expression to his feelings in verse:— 'Fain would I still look towards Lu, But this Kwei hill cuts off my view. With an axe, I'd hew the thickets through:— Vain thought! 'gainst the hill I nought can do;' and again,— 'Through the valley howls the blast, Drizzling ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... need not be so surprised. I have just been in Euripides's and Homer's company; I suppose I am full to the throat with verse, and the numbers come as soon as I open my mouth. But how are things going up here? what is ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... might yet do something for her—might yet interpose on her behalf, knowing, as he did, of course, that all idea of marriage between her, a Christian, and her Jew lover had been abandoned. At any rate she stood and sang the hymn, and when there came the accustomed lull at the end of the verse, she felt in her pocket for a coin, and, taking a piece of ten kreutzers, she stepped quickly up to the plate and put it in. A day or two ago ten kreutzers was an important portion of the little sum which she still had ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... they thought Grendel had indeed come, such power has verse like this in the mouth of a good reader, and they started ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... in prayer, I felt my soul in God in such a way that it seemed to me as if the world did not exist, I was so absorbed in Him. He made me then understand that verse of the Magnificat, "Et exultavit spiritus meus," so that I can never ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... Chinese tale, you know, Works upward from below. The sense of mine is none the worse If taken backward, verse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... had them in the compacter and higher shape of more Orientales, more Chants du Crepuscule, more Legendes, and so forth. We should have lost the easily losable laugh over bug-pipe and wapentake—for though Hugo sometimes thought sillily in verse he did not often let silliness touch his expression in the more majestical harmony—and we should have been spared an immensely greater body of matter which now provokes ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... odes compose but a small part of his writings. His epistles are the most perfect of his productions, and rank with the Georgics of Virgil and the satires of Juvenal, as the most perfect form of Roman verse. His satires are also admirable, but without the fierce vehemence and lofty indignation that characterized Juvenal. It is the folly rather than the wickedness of vice which he describes with such playful skill and such keenness of observation. He was the first to mould the Latin tongue to the Greek ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... humiliation and penalty. Nor is it only in the higher walks of tragedy, with its pomp and circumstances of action, that the poet here serves us. His humbler minstrelsy has soothed many an English heart from the tale of "Lycidas" to the elegiac verse of Tennyson. George Herbert still speaks to this generation as two centuries ago he spoke to his own. His quaint verses gather new beauties from time as they come to us redolent with the prayers and aspirations of many successions of the wives, mothers ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... just note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long; Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan; To after age thou shalt be writ the man, That with smooth air could'st humour best our tongue. Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire, That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn, or story. Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, who he woo'd to sing, Met in the milder ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... institution, and during his course took several prizes in Latin and Greek composition. Unusual abilities as a poet were also manifested very early, and when but twelve years old he wrote a poem in blank verse, which attracted the attention of the late Chief Justice Woodbury, then Governor of New Hampshire, who was so much surprised and gratified to find such talent in so young a boy, that he earnestly advised ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Le Roux de Lincy points out that this statement is exaggerated, for Margaret, instead of turning the whole of the New Testament into verse, merely wrote four Mysteries which mainly dealt with the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... innocence and pollutes the fanes of the people, breaks the sword of Justice and binds the Goddess of Liberty with chains of gold. It is lord of the land, the uncrowned king of the commonwealth, and its whole religious creed is comprised in the one verse, "To him that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance, while from him that hath not shall be taken ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... the creative class. They pay the tag of grandeur, and, attracted irresistibly to make, their living is usually weak and hapless. But you are so companionable—God has made you Man as well as Poet—that I lament the three thousand miles of mountainous water. Burns might have added a better verse to his poem, importing that one might write Iliads or Hamlets, and yet come short of Truth by infinity, as every written word must; but "the man's the gowd for a' that." And I heartily thank the Lady for her good-will. Please God she may be already well. We all ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Nemu, "to whom a free education was given at the House of Seti, and who is well known as a verse-maker and interpreter of dreams. His name is Pentaur, and it certainly must be admitted that he is handsome and dignified. He is line for line the image of the pioneer Paaker's late father. Didst thou ever ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... gratefully come to a welcome resting place. She turned her gaze out the open door where the forest fell away in vast undulations to a range of snow-capped mountains purple in the autumn haze, and a verse that Bill had once ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... particular day, or particular circumstance, made it a custom to present to their parents some token of their affection and gratitude, each of them would make a different offering, and most probably in a different manner. Some would pay their congratulations in themes of verse and prose, by some little devices, as their genius dictated, or according to what they thought would please; and, perhaps, the least of all, not able to do any of those things, would ramble into the garden, or the field, and gather what it ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... "Wayside Inn," with how consummate a skill the poet graces his modern line with the shadowy charm of ancient verse, by the mere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... that it is from beginning to end, and word for word, inspired; and that it existed before the Creation on what is called the "Preserved Tablet." This tablet was brought by the Archangel Gabriel from the highest to the lowest heaven, whence it was dictated sura [chapter] by sura, verse by verse, and word by word, to the Prophet Muhammad. Its matter is, however, taken for the most part from the Old Testament, especially the narrative portions of the Pentateuch; from the New Testament; from ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... ballads or arias—call them what you will—entirely disconnected and quite destructive to the continuity that must be the essence of every drama. This continuity is an absolute necessity to every spoken play; imagine the effect if Shakespeare or Ibsen had written little pieces of rhyming verse joined up by any jumble of nonsensical prose! Neglect of this fact led every opera composer before Wagner astray. We can imagine a pre-Wagner composer telling his librettist, "Now, mind you arrange that in certain parts the words will ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... elbow-chair, placed, on the dining-table, his scratch wig on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine, while his court around him resounded with such crambo scraps of verse as ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... stutters, or haltyng, the body wold be hurt w^t infecci: but in dede fautes of the mind crepe vpon vs more priuely, & also more quickely, & settel deper. The apostle Paul worthily gaue this honor vnto the verse of Mender, y^t he wold recite it in his epistels: Euyl comunicaci, corrupteth good maners: but this is neuer truer th[en] in infantes. Aristotle wh[en] he was axed of a certen m by what meanes he myghte bringe to pas, to haue a goodly horse: If he be brought ...
— The Education of Children • Desiderius Erasmus
... chorus to this verse Chan was seen tuning his instrument in the garden, and at the end sallied gallantly forth to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... the only members of the staff with literary aspirations. Others, like the late Andrew E. Watrous, had achievements of no mean order in prose and verse. Still others were sustaining the traditions of "The Press" as a newspaper office which throughout its history had been a stepping stone to magazine work and other forms of literary employment. Richard Harding Davis was on the paper and ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... consonants, and of mistaking inversion of language for poetry. Not one of these faults belongs to Collins. In almost all his poems the words follow their natural order, and are mellifluous beyond those of almost any other verse writer. If the Passions are not described with splendour, there is no such thing as splendour. If the beauties which he sought and attained are unnatural and extravagant, then the tests of correctness ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... a half had passed since Charles's great affliction, and the time had not been unprofitably spent either by himself or his friend. Both had read very regularly, and Sheffield had gained the Latin verse into the bargain. Charles had put all religious perplexities aside; that is, he knew of course many more persons of all parties than he did before, and became better acquainted with their tenets and their characters, but he did not dwell upon anything ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... Albinia had ever met, and she listened earnestly to her artless history, and pretty enthusiasms, and the story which she could not tell without tears, of her father's care, when the reward of her good behaviour had been the reading one verse in the quaint black letter of the old ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... correspondent T. J. (Vol. ii., p. 12.) may recollect the allusion to "scalping," in Psalm lxviii. 21.; upon which verse an argument has been based in favour of the supposition, that the aborigines of America are derived from the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... small manufacturing town, and Lanier was about as appropriately placed there as Arion would have been in a tin-shop, but he kept his humorous outlook on life, departing from his serenity so far as to make his only attempts at expressing in verse his political indignation, the results of which he did not regard as poetry, and they do not appear in the collection of his poems. His muse was better adapted to the harmonies than to the discords of life. Some lines written then ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... I know now what has turned your silly head: you come here to read! [SYLVETTE starts as she hears this. PERCINET also shows signs of fear as his father pulls the book from the youth's pocket.] Plays! [He drops the book in horror.] And verse! Verse! That's what has turned your head. Now I see why you talk about eyes and honeysuckle. I tell you, to be useful, a wall doesn't have to be beautiful. I am going to have all this green stuff taken away, and the bricks re-laid and the holes stopped up. I want a white wall and a high one to keep ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand
... two ago, could he have fashioned the whole verse. How easily everything was accomplished in those days. To be a poet: that was a fixed point on his horizon. Any number of joyous lyrics, as well as three plays not intended for the stage, had already dropped from his pen. He was an extraordinary success among his college friends; ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... ensued. Blackbeard was shot dead, his crew crying for quarter. Thirteen of the men were hung at Williamsburg. Blackbeard's skull, made into a drinking-cup, is preserved to this day. The great corsair's fate, Benjamin Franklin, then a printer's devil in Boston, celebrated in verse. ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... ethics and philosophy of the ancient dramatists, whom he had always admired, especially the tragedies of Euripides; he formed a complete moral anthology from that poet and from the works of Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch verse. Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of antique, distant, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the city He carols wild and free Some sweet unmeaning ditty In many a changing key; And each succeeding verse is Commingled with the curses Of those whose sleep ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... all I could do was to try to keep his mind from brooding on it, by making him tell me things about politics. This is the kind of man my brother is. He is an astonishing master of facts, and I suppose he never read a book yet, from a Blue Book to a volume of verse, without catching the author in error about something. He reads books for that purpose. As a rule I avoided argument with him, because he was disappointed if I was right and stormed if I was wrong. It was therefore a dangerous thing ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... represents the miller, the rest stand round him in a circle, and all dance round and sing the verse. When it comes to the spelling part of the rhyme, the miller points to a child who must ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... they reached the cottage, they had to put away their Sunday things; and when Amy came down her mother desired her to keep the baby while she got the tea ready. Amy thought it hard to be hindered in her plans; but she remembered the verse, "By love serve one another," and it came into her mind that Christ might be as pleased at her cheerfully giving up her own way to help her mother, as if she had been praying to him, and the thought made her happy, and she danced ...
— Amy Harrison - or Heavenly Seed and Heavenly Dew • Amy Harrison
... fat face in the clock could only speak as well as goggle its eyes!" he said, with a mirthless smile. "We should learn something then. What's the idea of it all—the rolling eyes, the moon, the stars, and a verse as lugubrious as a Presbyterian sermon on infant damnation. The whole ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Francis . . . he suddenly perished of a rotten ear . . . in that deaf ear that never would hear the truth of God" (December 5, 1560). We have little of Knox's poetry, but he probably composed a translation, in verse, of a Latin poem indited by one of "the godly in France," whence he borrowed his phrase "a rotten ear" (aure ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... hesitating whether to undertake a campaign of municipal house-cleaning, or to devote themselves to the study of the sonnet form in English verse, when an unusual opportunity for distinction opened before them. The daughter of the club's president was married to a professor in the State University of Michigan, and on one of her visits home she suggested that her mother's club invite to address it the Alliance Francaise lecturer ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Revelation, tenth verse, we read, "Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee the crown of life." Now this is quite as true in a psychological sense as it is in a scriptural sense. It is a great pity that we do not read the Bible far more for lessons in pedagogy. However, too many people misread the quoted ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village meeting-house. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his cry was lost to his own ear by its unison with ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... theos] in Christianity, so the [Greek: to ponaeron] is to be [Greek: o ponaeros],—and whether this is an express doctrine of Christ, and not merely a Jewish dogma left undisturbed to fade away under the increasing light of the Gospel, instead of assuming the former, and confirming the position by a verse from a poetic tissue of visual symbols,—a verse alien from the subject, and by which the Apocalypt enigmatized the Neronian persecutions and the apostacy through fear occasioned by it in ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... not so easy to write ballads descriptive of the bushland of Australia as on light consideration would appear. Reasonably good verse on the subject has been supplied in sufficient quantity. But the maker of folksongs for our newborn nation requires a somewhat rare combination of gifts and experiences. Dowered with the poet's heart, he must yet have passed his 'wander-jaehre' amid the stern solitude ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... afternoon. He had "addressed" the school, with earnestness it was true, but in a strain decidedly conventional. And the picture he made leading the singing, beating time with the hymn-book, and between the verses declaring that "he wanted to hear everyone's voice in the next verse," did not appeal very forcibly to her imagination. She fancied Sheldon Corthell doing these things, and could not forbear to smile. She had to admit, despite the protests of conscience, that she did prefer the studio to ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... courtier, colonizer, warrior, Raleigh now blossomed forth as a poet, and became a friend and patron of Edmund Spenser. He had much skill in verse, and he was never lacking in imagination. But his real talents did not lie in that direction, and as in so many other things, he soon found himself ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... The second verse of Genesis states, "And the earth was without form and void [i. e. waste and empty] and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The word teh[o]m, here translated deep, has been used to support the theory that the Hebrews derived their Creation ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... Our schoolma'am told us the other day that it is generally best to use short words instead of long words in writing or speaking, and she gave us a verse to copy as a specimen. She said that it was written by a man who was perfect master of seven languages, knew six others very well, was at home with another eight, and read with a lexicon four more,—in all twenty-five ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... that he lived to be eighty-four, "without a day's illness;" he was a practical, successful business man, an official in the Bank of England. His love of literature and the arts is proved by the fact that he practised them constantly for the pure joy of the working; he wrote reams and reams of verse, without publishing a line. He had extraordinary facility in composition, being able to write poetry even faster than his son. Rossetti said that he had "a real genius for drawing." He owned a large and valuable library, filled with ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... thus euphemistically referred to was scarcely more than a three-legged stool, which he occupied four mornings in the week, the rest of his time being spent at home in the arduous task of writing tragedies in blank verse. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... a more beautiful and telling use of precious stones in his verse than did Shakespeare, the author believed that if these references could be gathered together for comparison and for quotation, and if this were done from authentic and early editions of the great dramatist-poet's works, it would give the literary and historical ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... of paragraph—flowers were always so inspiring. Those pink petals were just about to fall. Yet, somehow, that made them seem all the lovelier. She could almost write a poem about that idea! Would Mr. Martin mind if, now and then, she worked in a little verse or two? It would make Society reporting more interesting. For, she had to admit, Society Life in Cherryvale wasn't thrilling. Just lawn-festivals and club meetings and picnics at the Waterworks and occasional afternoon card-parties where the older women ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... book the general had been reading. It was the Bible, and open at the twenty-second chapter of the Book of Joshua. His eye fell full upon the twenty-second verse, which was marked. "The Lord God of gods, the Lord God of gods, he knoweth, and Israel he shall know; if; it be in rebellion, or if in transgression against the Lord, (save us ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... mean exactly either. I believe a series of small satirical leaflets, in verse or prose, to be sold cheap or distributed free about the streets, would be very useful. If we could find a clever artist who would enter into the spirit of the thing, we might have ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... also, O bull of the Bharata race, is the tirtha of the royal ascetic, Nriga viz., the river Payoshni, which is delightful and full of waters and visited by Brahmanas. There the illustrious Markandeya, of high ascetic merit sang the praises in verse of king Nriga's line! We have heard respecting the sacrificing king Nriga that which really took place while he was performing a sacrifice in the excellent tirtha called Varaha on the Payoshni. In that sacrifice ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... great form of Greek prose literature, was as diligently cultivated, and has left as many examples for modern perusal. The works of the earlier philosophers were in verse, while Socrates, the first of the moral philosophers, left no writings, doing his work with tongue instead of pen, though he forms the leading character in Plato's philosophic dialogues. In Plato we have the most famous of the world's philosophers, ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... stepped forward while Edith retired. She lighted the third branch which crackled and threw up numberless red sparks, after which she chanted the last verse: ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... encouragement to such studies in this age. It is true, indeed, I have now and then wrote a poem or two for the magazines, but I never intend to write any more; for a gentleman is not paid for his time. A sheet is a sheet with the booksellers; and, whether it be in prose or verse, they make no difference; though certainly there is as much difference to a gentleman in the work as there is to a taylor between making a plain and a laced suit. Rhimes are difficult things; they are stubborn things, sir. I have been sometimes longer ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... to tell, in a great many cases, whether a comparison which suddenly suggests itself is a new conception or a recollection. I told you the other day that I never wrote a line of verse that seemed to me comparatively good, but it appeared old at once, and often as if it had been borrowed. But I confess I never suspected the above comparison of being old, except from the fact of its obviousness. It is proper, however, that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Unlike one of the most recently discovered English poets who is a Bengalee, and another who is a full-blooded Yak, Mr. Spudd is, we believe, a Navajo Indian. We believe this from the character of his verse. Mr. Spudd himself we have not seen. But when he forwarded his poems to our office and offered with characteristic modesty to sell us his entire works for seventy-five cents, we felt in closing with his offer that we were dealing not only with ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... voice of inspiration, as to make it the foundation of a new style and school in poetry. His strength, as it so often happens, arises from the excess of his weakness. But he has opened a new avenue to the human heart, has explored another secret haunt and nook of nature, 'sacred to verse, and sure of everlasting fame.' Compared with his lines, Lord Byron's stanzas are but exaggerated common-place, and Walter Scott's poetry (not his prose) old wives' fables.(2) There is no one in whom I have been more disappointed than in ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt |
