"Poem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... told in the 6th book of the "Masnavi," an enormously long sufi poem, written in Persian, by Jelad ed-Din, the founder of the sect of Muslim devotees generally known in Europe as the Dancing Dervishes, who died in 1272. This version differs from the Arabian in but a few and unimportant details: Arriving at Cairo, destitute and hungry, he resolves ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... Priscilla. I daresay you have read the story Longfellow made about them and John Alden. At the first John Alden did not go as a Pilgrim. He was hired at Southampton as a cooper, merely for the voyage, and was free to go home again if he wished. But he stayed, and as we know from Longfellow's poem he married Priscilla. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... requires no rhyme: the objects are so happily chosen, and the simple epithets convey ideas and feelings so congenial to each other, as to throw the reader into the very mood over which the personified being so beautifully designed presides. No other poem on the same subject has the same magic. It assuredly suggested some images and a tone of expression to Gray ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... happened to remember the title of a book this morning; a book I used to see back in the public library at home. It wasn't one I ever read. Maybe Tessie Kearns read it. Anyway, she had a poem she likes a lot written by the same man. She used to read me good parts of it. But I never read the book because the title sounded kind of wild, like there couldn't be any such thing. The poem had just a plain name; it was called 'Lucile,' but the book by the ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... known. The Dr. Byrom whose poem is here parodied is perhaps best remembered as the author of a once famous system of shorthand. He was born in 1691, went to the Merchant Taylor's School, and at the age of 16 was admitted a pensioner of Trinity College Cambridge. It was here that he wrote My ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... the reasons of his own are heard. A preface, therefore, which is but a bespeaking of favour, is altogether useless. What I desire the reader should know concerning me, he will find in the body of the poem, if he have but the patience to peruse it. Only this advertisement let him take beforehand, which relates to the merits of the cause. No general characters of parties (call them either Sects or Churches) can be so fully and exactly drawn, as to comprehend all the several members of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... don't know whether I'm going to shame or to light and joy. That's the trouble, for everything in the world is a riddle! And whenever I've happened to sink into the vilest degradation (and it's always been happening) I always read that poem about Ceres and man. Has it reformed me? Never! For I'm a Karamazov. For when I do leap into the pit, I go headlong with my heels up, and am pleased to be falling in that degrading attitude, and pride myself upon it. And in the very depths of that degradation I begin ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... He's been taken worse with a poem," said McTurk. "He'll go burbling down to the Pebbleridge and spit it all up in the study when ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... poem was written at two different times: the first part of it, which relates to the country, in the year 1704, at the same time with the Pastorals; the latter part was not added till the year 1713, in which it ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... readers will have the goodness to pardon me if I here present them with an exact copy of a Rhyming Letter which I received in answer to the poem above from my much respected and greatly lamented friend, the late Dr. Laycock, of Woodstock, Ont. I place it here because of the compliment he was kind enough to pay me on my rhyming abilities, and chiefly in ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... the people many words, but sometimes they were strong and beautiful, like an old poem, and in their own Venetian—not in the Latin which had been ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... to me hafter the ewent, and wanted me adwance 50 lb., so that he might purshew his fewgitif sister—but I wasn't to be ad with that sort of chaugh—there was no more money for THAT famly. So he went away, and gave huttrance to his feelinx in a poem, which appeared (price 2 guineas) in ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... punishment, a fear which led him to make so many sacrifices to the Church; the present, namely his life itself, for the saving of which he blindly obeyed Coyctier. This king, who crushed down all about him, was himself crushed down by remorse, and by disease in the midst of the great poem of defiant monarchy in which all power was concentrated. It was once more the gigantic and ever magnificent combat of Man in the highest manifestation of his ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... "to bully," is taken from the name of the Trojan hero Hector, in the famous old Greek poem, the Iliad. Hector was not, as a matter of fact, a bully, but a very brave man, and it is curious that his name should have come to be used in this unpleasant sense. The other great Greek poem, the Odyssey, has given us the name of one of ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... sacred poem that hath made Both heav'n and earth copartners in its toil, And with lean abstinence, through many a year, Faded my brow, be destin'd to prevail Over the cruelty, which bars me forth Of the fair sheep-fold, where a sleeping lamb The wolves set ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... della Rocca' (Maidens of the Crag), his last story, is more an idyllic poem than a novel. Claudio Cantelmo, sickened with the corruption of Rome, retires to his old home in the Abruzzi, where he meets the three sisters Massimilla, Anatolia, Violante: "names expressive as faces full of light and shade, and in which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... collection had {421} appeared at Stutgart in 1618. Many of his poems, which he had left in MS. with his brother Ludwig in Germany, perished with him during the horrors of the war. "What has become," Weckerlin feelingly exclaims, "of my Myrta, that dear poem, composed of so ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... of citizens, to manifest their respect for his character. He proceeded to the university, about 1 o'clock, when he was again greeted with the hearty cheers of the citizens, as he passed the high-way, and when he arrived. The public performances on this occasion, were an oration and a poem. The latter was prepared at very short notice, and had particular reference to the visit of the illustrious hero and philanthropist, Lafayette. It purported to be the vision of the Genius of Liberty. It was a felicitous ...
— Memoirs of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... say, but Helen, who will muddle things, says no, it's like music. The course of the Oder is to be like music. It's obliged to remind her of a symphonic poem. The part by the landing-stage is in B minor, if I remember rightly, but lower down things get extremely mixed. There is a slodgy theme in several keys at once, meaning mud-banks, and another for the navigable ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... be at rest. They were yours; fairly bought, and fairly sold. You bought them on the chance of their success, what no London bookseller would have done; and had they not been bought, they could not have been published at all. Nay, if you had not published 'Joan of Arc,' the poem never would have existed, nor should I, in all probability, ever have obtained that reputation which is the capital on which I subsist, nor that power which enables ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Conti, was the author, and did not deny it. All that hell could vomit forth, true and false, was expressed in the most beautiful verses, most poetic in style, and with all the art and talent imaginable. M. le Duc d'Orleans knew it, and wished to see the poem, but he could not succeed in getting it, for no one dared to show ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... only one whose virginal bosom, whose ardent and voluptuous forms, have realized for me the only woman of my dreams—of my dreams! She is the original of that ravishing picture called La Femme Caressant sa Chimere, the warmest, the most infernal inspiration of the genius of antiquity; a holy poem prostituted by those who have copied it for frescoes and mosiacs; for a heap of bourgeois who see in this gem nothing more than a gew-gaw and hang it on their watch-chains—whereas, it is the whole woman, an abyss of pleasure into which one plunges and finds no end; ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... sentiment. All through her life, she thought, she would strive to repay by worthiness the great debt of inspiration she owed to the school. She had not thought of it in just that grand way until she had heard Sheila Quinn, until Dana King had given the class prophecy, until Ginny had read the school poem, until Peggy Lee had presented the class gift to the school. A young alumna of the preceding class had welcomed the proud graduates. Dr. Caton had presented the Lincoln Award—to Dana King. A murmur had swept ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... him as an exercise. My books, all of which you are expecting, I have begun, but I cannot finish them for some days yet. The speeches for Scaurus and Plancius which you clamour for I have finished. The poem to Caesar, which I had begun, I have cut short. I will write what you ask me for, since your poetic springs are running dry, as soon ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... of the Senator from Wyoming, speaking in a fine, resonant voice which would do credit to any legislative hall, read the poem written by Miss Phoebe Cary for the celebration of Miss Anthony's fiftieth birthday, presented her with a brooch, a little American flag, made of gold and jewels, and said: "I feel honored on this, your eightieth birthday, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... impressions made by this or that aspect of the life of the University as it has been in different ages. Oxford is not an easy place to design in black and white, with the pen or the etcher's needle. On a wild winter or late autumn day (such as Father Faber has made permanent in a beautiful poem) the sunshine fleets along the plain, revealing towers, and floods, and trees, in a gleam of watery light, and leaving them once more in shadow. The melancholy mist creeps over the city, the damp soaks into the heart of everything, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... and overtures, and work them out by myself. On the other hand, I was spurred on by ambition to show what I could do at school if I liked. When the Upper School boys were set the task of writing a poem, I composed a chorus in Greek, on the recent War of Liberation. I can well imagine that this Greek poem had about as much resemblance to a real Greek oration and poetry, as the sonatas and overtures I used to compose at that time had to thoroughly professional ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... nationally interesting Poem, or Dramatic Satire, once famous, THE RAJAH IN LONDON (London, Limbo and Sons, 1889), now obliterated under the long wash of Press-matter, the reflection—not unknown to philosophical observers, and natural perhaps in the mind of an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... principally with the site of Troy. Well versed in the Iliad, he sought for, and believed he identified, the various localities mentioned in the Homeric poem. ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... just been reading your pleasant letter; and if I do not send you the poem you ask for so eloquently, I will give you a little bit of advice, which will do just as well,—won't it, my dear? I was interested in your account of various things going on at Oxbow Village. I am very glad you find young ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... before, was partly borrowed from Moliere's School for Husbands, partly from the Pretentious Young Ladies, and other of his plays. The first-mentioned French comedy owes part of its plot to Terence's Adelphi, hence the allusion to "his immortal Pen." in the above poem.] ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... leads to the conception of a wider and vaster fatherland, comprising all the peoples of the earth. Of these three stages in the progress of mankind, the fourth still remains to be attained. I have thought then of writing, as it were, a poem in four volumes, in four chants, in which I shall endeavor to sum up the philosophy of all my work. The first of these volumes is 'Fruitfulness'; the second will be called 'Work'; the third, 'Truth'; the last, 'Justice.' In 'Fruitfulness' the hero's name ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the dark purple ocean, with its purple sense of solitude and void. Not that he liked the sensation, but that it was the most unearthly he had felt. He had not yet happened on Rudyard Kipling's "Mandalay," but he knew the poetry before he knew the poem, like millions of wanderers, who have perhaps alone felt the world exactly as it is. Nothing attracted him less than the idea of beginning a new education. The old one had been poor enough; any new one could ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... "Your poem is very clever, but your drawing is damn poor. If I'm a Lucky Number I'll see you in the spring. In the meantime, for heaven's sake, don't try any more art. Stick to poetry." It was signed "Alexander Van Leshout," and was ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... farm with dilapidated buildings in the neighboring town of R——, mortgaging all, and our souls and bodies besides, for its payment. We hoped we had rounded the cape of storms which sooner or later looms up before every ship which sails the sea of life, for we had fully realized the truth of the poem— ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... with the eight and-twentieth day of the poem, and the same day, with its various actions and adventures is extended through the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and part of the eighteenth books. The scene lies in the field ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... you see," said Anne, "in the poem Elaine is in love with a knight named Lancelot, and he doesn't love her, and she dies, and when she is dead they put her on a barge and send her to the court of King Arthur, where Lancelot is one of the knights, and there is ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... clearness of his master, and to whom the Greek philosopher is mainly indebted for the extension and perpetuation of his fame. Some two centuries after the death of Epicurus, Lucretius [Footnote: Born 99 B.C.] wrote his great poem, 'On the Nature of Things,' in which he, a Roman, developed with extraordinary ardour the philosophy of his Greek predecessor. He wishes to win over his friend Memnius to the school of Epicurus; and although he has no rewards in a future life to offer, although his object appears to be ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Win coolly. "I believe it was an English admiral who backed Dewey up at Manila when the Germans tried to butt in. After that battle somebody wrote a poem about it and wrote the truth, too. This is ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... a deck is "monarch of all he surveys," like Robinson Crusoe of old, according to the poem, and as "his right there is none to dispute," both lads yielded to Burgesses sway, went down to their berths, rolled in just as they were, and the next minute were fast asleep, breathing more loudly than would have been pleasant to any ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... looked at her long and lovingly. "That you are with me is my greatest happiness. I was thinking to-day of a poem written by good old Claudius; it expresses my own feelings. It is an echo of ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... single frown. "And yet it is terribly misleading. I remember when we had the Walter Scott Tableaux and Recitations at the church last fall, and old Mr. Bertholf from Pompton was going to recite 'Lochinvar,' I had to suggest a change in the poem, lest the ignorant people in the village might get a wrong impression of dear Sir Walter Scott's principles. ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... finding, as he tells us, no comfort in any of the established institutions of his day, because confronted with the fraud and falsehood that infected them all, is one of the most pathetic figures in literature. As Skeat suggests, the object of his great poem was to secure, through the latitude afforded by allegory, opportunities of describing the life and manners of the poorer classes, of inveighing against clerical abuses and the rapacity of the friars, of representing the miseries caused by the great ...
— English Satires • Various
... pride of pomp, and power, He lov'd the realms of nature to explore; . . . Timothy Dwight (president of Yale), 1752-1817, The Conquest of Canaan. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature says that the poem was "written by the time he was twenty-two, but published when he was thirty-three ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... masterly lines upon the history of Jack and Jill. I can picture the smile of pitying contempt with which such a preposterous question would have been met. And I observe by the figures noted at the back of this poem that it received very few marks ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... possible pleasure to show them to him. "I shall be delighted to see them" was the reply, "but for some days I am rather busy; I will come next week." "You have had a visit from the author of 'Italy'," I observed; "people say that you like Mr. R.'s poem." "Oh yes, some passages are very beautiful. He is a man of considerable talent; but who was that person he brought with him? What a delightful man! I suppose it was Mr. L." I replied, "I believe they are ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... "The Last Leaf." Poem. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Illustrated by George Wharton Edwards and F. Hopkinson Smith. Boston: Houghton, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... predecessors of Caesar in the description of Britain. Recent as it is, it is important; since some of the details are taken from the voyage of Himilco, a Carthaginian. He supplies us with a commentary upon the word Demeter, in the so-called Orphic poem—a commentary ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... just as a first class confectioner made a splendid manager of our gas plant, and a successful Hoki-Poki merchant had the required push to keep our trolley systems going, so the Haberdasher had the precise kind of genius to manage the poets. He won't stand any nonsense from them, and any poem that he can't understand is immediately thrown into the Civic Waste-Basket, taken to the Municipal Ferry and used for fuel to run the boats. I guess we burn nineteen tons of refuse verse a day, don't ...
— Alice in Blunderland - An Iridescent Dream • John Kendrick Bangs
... it was evident that we were going to have a prolonged spell of grand weather SOME TIME, and read out a poem which was printed over the ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... existence, nor any profound convictions as to his own or the nation's duty in regard to its extinction. His first reference to the question appeared in connection with a notice made by him in the Free Press of a spirited poem, entitled "Africa," in ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... know a little poem called 'Empty Hands'?" she asked. "I set it to music one day because I liked ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... poem by a well-known author in one of the popular journals, a hummingbird's nest is shown the reader, and it has BLUE eggs in it. A more cautious poet would have turned to Audubon or Wilson before venturing upon such a statement. But then it was necessary to ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... fed by the cook who had ministered to official palates, his glass filled with wine from the cellar of him who represented royalty! These were very glorious imaginings; and little wonder that F., whose whole life was a Poem in its way, should feel that they almost overcame him. In fact, like the woman in the nursery song, he was ready to exclaim, "This is none of me!" but still there were abundant evidences around him that all was ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... objective life. In Shakespeare the dramatic form helps partly to make this more prominent, though the poet's spirit shines forth thus, independently of the mould which it imposes on itself. Of Milton we may say, too, that, in spite of the supernatural machinery of his greatest poem, it bears strongly impressed on it the political mark, and that in those minor pieces, where he is avowedly in the political sphere, he still rises to the full height of his majestic harmony and ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... be a poem—I wish I could find it again—about a man in a wild, lonely place who had a child and a dog. One day he had to go somewhere So he left the dog home to protect the child until he came back. The dog was a strong, faithful animal, with large, ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... been only lately directed by his friend to "The Scholar Gypsy," had declared that there was scarcely any latter-day poetry worth reading, and also that whatever the merits of Matthew Arnold's poem might be from any supposed artistic point of view, it showed that Arnold had no conception of the Romany temper, and that no gypsy who ever lived could sympathise with it, or even understand its motive in the least degree. Borrow's friend had challenged this, contending that howsoever Arnold's ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... sanctimonious Tenney. Yet there was New England tragedy, a streak of it, darkly visible, through all New England life. It would be ridiculous: old Tenney with his prayer-meetings and his wild appeals. And yet, he reflected, all tragedy was ridiculous to the sane, and saw before his mind's eye a satiric poem wherein he should arraign the great sad stories of the world and prove their ironic futility. But all this was the hurried commentary of the mind really bent on something actual, and from that actuality ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... Her eyes, lifted up to heaven, seemed to ask the realization of some gentle dream inspired doubtless by the author. Perhaps the nature of the dream might have been devised by the book—Tasso's Divine Poem! Maulear glided rather than walked to her, so fearful was he of destroying the beautiful tableau presented to him by chance. Then he paused some moments behind a screen of leaves, and looked at the beautiful dreamer, in mute but passionate adoration. As he scanned her ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... publisher alone—himself a man of letters, and who in youth had gone through the same bitter process of disillusion that now awaited the village genius—volunteered some kindly though stern explanation and counsel to the unhappy boy. This gentleman read a portion of Leonard's principal poem with attention, and even with frank admiration. He could appreciate the rare promise that it manifested. He sympathized with the boy's history, and even with his hopes; and then he said, ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... those two aspects of Reality which we call "created" and "uncreated," nature and spirit—to be as sharply aware of them, as sure of them, as we are of land and sea—is to be made free of the supersensual world. It is to stand for an instant at the Poet's side, and see that Poem of which you have deciphered separate phrases in the earlier form of contemplation. Then you were learning to read: and found in the words, the lines, the stanzas, an astonishing meaning and loveliness. But how much greater the significance of every detail ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... idyls, epics, dramas of human life, written in words that thrill and burn.... Each is a poem that has an immortal flavor. They are fragments of the author's early dreams, too bright, too gorgeous, too full of the blood of rubies and the life of diamonds to be caught and held palpitating ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... dearest Harriet. I have filled my letter with such matter as I had—too much with myself, perhaps, for any one but you; but unless I write you an epic poem about King Charlemagne, I know not well what else to write ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... upon Nature, but that it is the Reality, which, by means of the physical, is persistently striving to enter into our consciousness, to tell us what? [Greek: Theos agape estin] (God is Love). As in Thompson's suggestive poem, "The Hound of Heaven"—the Hidden which desires to be found—the Reality is ever hunting us, and will never leave us till He has taught us to know and therefore to love Him, and, as seen in our first view, the first step is to try to see through the woof of nature to ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... interrupting him; "and, sure, there's a pretty little poem my favourite Cowper wrote about it which I recollect I learnt by heart when I was a little girl, much smaller than you, Nell. The lines began thus— 'Toll for the brave, the brave that are no more,'—don't you remember them; I'm ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... poetic expression of the same thought is given by Spangenberg in a poem written during the voyage, and sent home to David Nitschmann to be set to the music of some "Danish Melody" known to them both. There is a beauty of rhythm in the original which the English cannot reproduce, as though the writer had caught the cadence ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... wretched D'Urfey down in the dirt beneath his feet; and strikes with all his strength full at the towering crest of Dryden." That is exactly where Macaulay is great; because he is almost Homeric. The whole triumph turns upon mere names; but men are commanded by names. So his poem on the Armada is really a good geography book gone mad; one sees the map of England come alive and march and ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... did read exceedingly well. The piece he selected was a very pretty and a very touching little song; and Harry's feelings were so deeply moved by the pathetic sentiments of the poem and their adaptation to the circumstances of the case, that he ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... controversy, is that Rabelais owed much to one of his contemporaries, an Italian, to the Histoire Macaronique of Merlin Coccaie. Its author, Theophilus Folengo, who was also a monk, was born in 1491, and died only a short time before Rabelais, in 1544. But his burlesque poem was published in 1517. It was in Latin verse, written in an elaborately fabricated style. It is not dog Latin, but Latin ingeniously italianized, or rather Italian, even Mantuan, latinized. The contrast between the modern form of the word and its Roman garb produces the most amusing ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... or indirectly, is the perpetual theme of Claudian. The youth and private life of the hero are vaguely expressed in the poem ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... poem represents an imaginary midnight review of Napoleon's Army. The skeleton of a drummer boy arises from the grave, and with his bony fingers beats a long, loud reveille. At the sound the legions of the dead Emperor come from their graves from every quarter where they fell. From Paris, from Toulon, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Dec. 13, 1717. He was a person of superior talents and learning. He published, with the sermon preached by Cotton Mather on the occasion, a poem on the death of his venerable colleague, Mr. Higginson, in 1708; and also a poem on the death of Rev. Joseph Green, in 1715. Although an amiable and benevolent man in other respects, it cannot be denied ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... style, arranging my thoughts, and enabling myself to communicate the knowledge I might amass. Of sermons I had written some dozens; and the most arduous of the efforts of poetry had been attempted by me; from the elegy to the epic poem, each had suffered my attacks. And, though I myself was not so well satisfied with my performances as to complete these daring labours, yet, I had so far familiarised myself to a selection of words, and phrases, as to be able ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... at the Circolo of getting up some little matter of welcome,—taking the horses from her carriage, and drawing her in, or some thing of that kind, and a serenata of course. Leandro is busy already with a poem for the occasion, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... of all the kind that pretends to be ignorant of one's own popularity; but surely he cared little for popularity. Here again he puts us in mind of a medieval poem. In Gilbert de Metz, one of our oldest epics, the daughter of Anseis is described seated at the window, "fresh, slim, and white as a lily" when two knights, Garin and his cousin Gilbert, happen to ride near. "Look up, cousin Gilbert," says Garin, "look. By our lady, what ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... mason at Langholm Building operations in the district Miss Pasley lends books to young Telford Attempt to write poetry Becomes village letter-writer Works as a journeyman mason Employed on Langholm Bridge Manse of Westerkirk Poem of 'Eskdale' Hews headstones and doorheads Works as a mason at Edinburgh Study of architecture Revisits Eskdale His ride ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... both are heroes of the strong arm; and the chivalry of Diarmit is not the same as the chivalry of Roland. Again, religion has its share in changing the ideals of a nation, and Constantine, the warrior of the Early English poem of "Elene," is far from being the same in character as the tender-hearted Constantine of "moral Gower's" apocryphal tale. The law-abiding nature of the earliest heroes, whose obedience to their king and their priest was absolute, differs almost entirely from the ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... above apostrophe to War in a Phi Beta Kappa poem of long ago, which we liked better before we read Mr. Cutler's beautiful prolonged lyric delivered at the recent anniversary of ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... known for three and forty years—Frederick Douglass. Mr. Johnson had just been reading the "Lady of the Lake," and so pleased was he with its great character that he wished me to bear his name. Since reading that charming poem myself, I have often thought that, considering the noble hospitality and manly character of Nathan Johnson—black man though he was—he, far more than I, illustrated the virtues of the Douglas of Scotland. Sure am I that, if any slave-catcher had entered his domicile ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... enough for a man who spent and gave like Timon. If anybody gave Timon a horse, he received from Timon twenty better horses. If anybody borrowed money of Timon and offered to repay it, Timon was offended. If a poet had written a poem and Timon had time to read it, he would be sure to buy it; and a painter had only to hold up his canvas in front of Timon to receive double ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit
... the Jew harshly, pushing him away. "Thou shalt go on till the end of time," answered the Saviour, in a stern though sorrowful tone. For further details, see the eloquent and learned notice by Charles Magnin, appended to the magnificent poem "Ahasuerus," by ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... almost immediately. In the September number of the Overland Monthly, 1870, of which magazine Mr. Harte was then editor, appeared "Plain Language from Truthful James," or "The Heathen Chinee," as the poem was afterwards called. A few weeks later, to my amazement, while turning the pages of Punch in the Mercantile Library, I came across "The Heathen Chinee;" an unique compliment so far as my recollection of Punch serves. To this generous ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... took an entirely different position. The mere bulk of the poem was considerable; and, putting for the instant entirely out of question its peculiarities of subject, metre, and general treatment, it was a daring innovation in point of class. The eighteenth century had, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... sending me large specimens of an epic poem which he was then composing, and desiring my remarks and corrections. These I gave him from time to time, but endeavor'd rather to discourage his proceeding. One of Young's Satires was then just published. I copy'd ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... matters for art in so far as they affect its appearance and take shape as form and colour in the mind of the artist, informing the whole process of the painting, even to the brush strokes. As in a good poem, it is impossible to consider the poetic idea apart from the words that express it: they are fired together ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... told me of on that occasion I think I shall never forget. As his friend was an hospitable, open-hearted man, well beloved and largely acquainted, it happened one day that some gentlemen dropped in to dinner, who were strangers to Stella's situation; and as the poem of 'Cadenus and Vanessa' was then the general topic of conversation, one of them said, 'Surely that Vanessa must be an extraordinary woman that could inspire the Dean to write so finely upon her.' Mrs. Johnson smiled, and answered, 'that ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... one to whom she was strongly attached, and that, after she had yielded, he showed her suspended on the gallows the lifeless remains of him for whose sake she had sacrificed her honour. This tale an impartial judge must reject. It is unsupported by proof. The earliest authority for it is a poem written by Pomfret. The respectable historians of that age, while they speak with just severity of the crimes of Kirke, either omit all mention of this most atrocious crime, or mention it as a thing rumoured but not proved. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... it so much—indeed I did," chimed in Quentina. "Why, Genevieve, I made a poem on it—a lovely poem just like Tennyson's 'Margaret,' you know; only I put in 'Hexagons,' and changed the ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... Schubert's mind at this time in connection with music, for the 'Hagar' was followed by another piece of even more lugubrious character, called 'Leichenfantasie' (Corpse-fantasia), a musical setting of Schiller's grim poem beginning: ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... the primitive condition of those other Saxons, English, and Jutes, who afterwards colonized Britain, during the period while they still all lived together in the heather-clad wastes and marshy lowlands of Denmark and Northern Germany. The early heathen poem of Beowulf also gives us a glimpse of their ideas and their mode of thought. The known physical characteristics of the race, the nature of the country which they inhabited, the analogy of other Germanic tribes, and the recent discoveries of pre-historic archaeology, all help us to ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... in treating this matter, it is important to make known to our readers the ancient superstitions, the vulgar or common opinions, and the prejudices of nations, to be able to refute them, and bring back the figures to truths, by freeing them from what poesy had added for the embellishment of the poem, and the ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... describe his funeral in the paper. All the court were present. And here's a poem too, of ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... The poem touched first on what was so prominent a feature in the history of Europe in the poet's youth—the evil of unrighteous and the good of righteous war, identifying the last with the successes of England when Napoleon ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... of his arrival at Wittenberg he celebrated Luther in a poem. He accompanied him to Leipzig. During the disputation there he is said to have assisted his friend with occasional suggestions or notes of argument, and thereby to have roused the anger of Eck. He now ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... rocky knoll which looked up both waterways, the three men halted to take a last glance at the Great Canon, the scene of a pilgrimage that had been a poem, though a terrible one. The Colorado here was not more than fifty yards wide, and only a few hundred yards of its course were visible either way, for the confluence was at the apex of a bend. The dark, sullen, hopeless, cruel ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... lately reading a poem, not long published, from the MSS. De Rerum Natura, by Neckham, the foster-brother of Richard the Lion-hearted. He quotes an old prophecy, attributed to Merlin, and with a sort of wonder, as if recollecting that England owed so much of its literary learning ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... say, between slaves, and friends or children. Friends do not ask for literal commands; but, from their knowledge of the speaker, they understand his half-words, and from love of him they anticipate his wishes. Hence it is, that in his Poem for St. Bartholomew's Day, he speaks of the "Eye of God's word;" and in the note quotes Mr. Miller, of Worcester College, who remarks in his Bampton Lectures, on the special power of Scripture, as having "this Eye, like that of a portrait, ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... and just as it reached the top of the pole and yielded its folds to the breeze the sun broke through the clouds and bathed it in a golden glory. The girls cheered and burst into a lusty rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner," after which Migwan's patriotic poem was recited ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... disposition and the unlimited character of the bias thereby presented to our mind. This truth can be applied to works in various branches of art, and also to different works in the same branch. We leave a grand musical performance with our feelings excited, the reading of a noble poem with a quickened imagination, a beautiful statue or building with an awakened understanding; but a man would not choose an opportune moment who attempted to invite us to abstract thinking after a high musical enjoyment, or to attend to a prosaic affair of common life after a high poetical enjoyment, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... ever with that name, a rosy flash Paints, for an instant, all my world. Nay, 'tis a little love-poem of my own; go ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... authority I have at hand to refer to, says, "After these transactions, he was treated with the greatest indignities, and at last inhumanly murdered in Berkeley Castle, and his body buried in a private manner in the Abbey Church, at Gloucester." The lines of Gray, in his celebrated poem of "The Bard," are familiar to most school-boys, where he alludes to the cries of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... children would be not only superfluous, but, in the degree in which critical comment drew the child's attention from the text, subversive of the desired result. Nor are there any notes on methods. The best way to teach children to love a poem is to read it inspiringly to them. The French say: "The ear is the pathway to the heart." A poem should be so read that it will sing itself in the hearts of ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... the dead. The fear of age and death is the shadow of the love of life; and on no people has it fallen with more horror than on the Greeks. The tenderest of their songs of love close with a sob; and it is an autumn wind that rustles in their bowers of spring. Here, for example, is a poem by Mimnermus characteristic of ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... talk of him! Somehow I can only see his beautiful, kind eyes and his tender mouth. I would as soon do a caricature of him as write a parody on a poem I loved.' ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... it drove away—Marceline on the front seat presenting the picture of discomfort; and Carmina opposite to her, unendurably pretty and interesting, with the last new poem on her lap—Mrs. Gallilee's reflections took their own bitter course. "Accidents happen to other carriages, with other girls in them. Not to my carriage, with that girl in it! Nothing will frighten my horses to-day; and, fat as he is, my coachman will not ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... philological book, a poem if you chose to call it so. Now, what a fine triumph it would have been for those who wished to vilify the book and its author, provided they could have detected the latter tripping in his philology—they ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... named Vigi, and I asked him if he was descended from the author of the thirteenth book of the "AEneid." He said he was, and that in honour of his ancestor he had translated the poem into Italian verse. I expressed myself curious as to his version, and he promised to bring it me in two days' time. I complimented him on belonging to such a noble and ancient family; Maffeo Vigi flourished at the beginning of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... black. "A dangerous personage; that poem of his cuts both ways; and then there was Pulci, that Morgante of his cuts both ways, or rather one way, and that sheer against us; and then there was Aretino, who dealt so hard with the poveri frati; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... furnished a model for the present undertaking. Throughout his criticism Addison had deprecated mere fault-finding and had urged the positive approach of emphasis on beauties. In the last twelve essays on Milton's poem he had shown a new way in critical writing, the way of particular as opposed to general criticism, with the selection of specific details for praise and explication; in his essay on the Imagination he had sought to find ...
— Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Written by Mr. William Shakespeare (1736) • Anonymous
... are partial; and those who are not, you deem enemies. Stick, therefore, to the shop; rely upon your mercantile or mechanical or professional calling; try your strength in literature, if you like; but, rely on the shop. If BLOOMFIELD, who wrote a poem called the FARMER'S BOY, had placed no reliance on the faithless muses, his unfortunate and much-to-be-pitied family would, in all probability, have not been in a state to solicit relief from charity. I remember that this loyal shoemaker ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... she had found to her great delight Longfellow's "Hiawatha." The strange meter, the musical Indian names, the delightfully described animals, all served to make the poem wonderfully fascinating to her. She thought a page or two of "Hiawatha" would greatly sweeten her somewhat bitter world this afternoon, and with her bag of scones in one hand and the book in the other she read on happily, quite unconscious that three pair ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... ravissans, delicieux, and, coming from such a celebrite litteraire as yourself, shall meet with every possible attention—in fact, had I required anything to confirm my own previous opinions, this charming poem would have done so. Bon jour, mon cher Monsieur Hugo, au revoir!"—and they part:—Justice taking off his hat and bowing, and the author of "Ruy Blas" quite convinced that he has been treating with him d'egal en egal. I can hardly bring my mind to fancy that anything is serious in France—it ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet. I assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird chiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in this, that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey albatrosses; and these I have frequently seen, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... strove his utmost to interest her, and with his vast stock of acquired knowledge, and his wonderfully artistic felicity of expression, he talked on and on, wandering from country to country, and age to age, till it all seemed to her like a strangely beautiful poem, full of yellow light and gleaming shadow, sometimes passionate and intense, at others fantastic and almost ethereal. Now and then she half closed her eyes, and his words, and their meaning, the form and the substance, seemed to come to her like richly blended music, stirring ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Applecross, John Mac Rae of Conchra, and John Murchison of Achtertyre. Their prowess on the field had been commemorated by one of their followers, John MacRae, who escaped and returned home, in an excellent Gaelie poem, known as "Latha Blar an t-Siorra," the " Day of Sheriffmuir." The fate of these renowned warriors was keenly regretted by their Highland countrymen, and they are still remembered and distinguished amongst them as "Ceithear Ianan na h-Alba," or The four ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... learnt its use from the Chinese, and it is probably from them that the mariners of Barcelona first introduced its use into Europe. The first mention of it is given in a treatise on Natural History by Alexander Neckam, foster-brother of Richard, Coeur de Lion. Another reference, in a satirical poem of the troubadour, Guyot of Provence (1190), states that mariners can steer to the north star without seeing it, by following the direction of a needle floating in a straw in a basin of water, after it had been touched by a magnet. But little use, however, seems to have been made of ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... pleasant (mirth-making) consul." Let it go before, or come after, a good sentence or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither suit well with what went before, nor has much coherence with what follows after, it is good in itself. I am none of those who think that good rhyme makes a good poem. Let him make short long, and long short if he will, 'tis no great matter; if there be invention, and that the wit and judgment have well performed their offices, I will say, here's a good poet, but an ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... likeness of his wife or sweetheart there. Sometimes, on the other hand, he was patriotically inclined and chose to devote this cherished space to a picture of the king or some national idol. Or maybe he was of literary bent and gave over the shrine to a religious text, a love poem, a maxim, or a moral admonition that he wished to keep daily before him. Even we ourselves often paste pictures in our watches. We have never, however, gone into the craze as the English of this particular era did. With them it was ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... June 5, 1866. Educated principally at common schools. He began to give lecture entertainments 1893, and has been for years one of the most popular lyceum men before the public. Frequent contributor of poems, stories, and articles to the leading magazines. His poem "How Did You Die?" has attained a nation-wide popularity. Among his books are "Just Then Something Happened," "The Story Club," "Told to the Little Tot," "Chronicles of the Little Tot," "I Rule the House," "Impertinent Poems," "Little, Songs for Two," "Rimes to be Read," "The Uncommon Commoner," ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... of the room was an unfinished water-colour drawing, propped up by a pile of richly gilded and ornamented books. The drawing, with its support, had been pushed back towards the middle of the table, to make way for a sheet or two of note-paper containing portions of a projected poem. And the presiding and inspiring genius of all this beautiful confusion ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... will be your first and last attempt of the kind. You are young; you bring me the everlasting volume of early verse which every man of letters writes when he leaves school, he thinks a lot of it at the time, and laughs at it later on. Lousteau, your friend, has a poem put away somewhere among his old socks, I'll warrant. Haven't you a poem that you thought a good deal of once, Lousteau?" inquired Dauriat, with a knowing glance at ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Her mother, with a connection that will probably strike the reader, had been fond of the book of Job, and Hetty had, in a great measure, learned to read by the frequent lessons she had received from the different chapters of this venerable and sublime poem—now believed to be the oldest book in the world. On this occasion the poor girl was submissive to her training, and she turned to that well known part of the sacred volume, with the readiness with which the ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... heads of houses. Another, Jean Cameron, who was the least comely of her family, but possessed of a commanding figure and powerful understanding, was married to Clunie, the Chief of the Clan Macpherson. She is said to have been celebrated in the pathetic poem, entitled "Lochaber no More," the poet, who laments his departure from Lochaber, and his farewell to his Jean, having been an officer in one of the regiments stationed ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... King William. But since the death of His Majesty, the poet has been living in poverty and obscurity in a humble lodging hard by the Haymarket. There it was that he received a visit one day from the two noble lords; and it hath since been whispered that a poem is a-preparing so fine in quality and so finished in style, that my Lord Godolphin is now fit to dance a hornpipe for joy, and has promised a bountiful reward to the genius whose brain has devised and whose hand has penned the lines. They say that the poem is to be ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... phrase, "These are not good rhymes." He translated any passages that struck him in his reading, excited by the examples of Ogilby's Homer and Sandys' Ovid. His boyish ambition prompted him before he was fifteen to attempt an epic poem; the subject was Alcander, Prince of Rhodes, driven from his home by Deucalion, father of Minos; and the work was modestly intended to emulate in different passages the beauties of Milton, Cowley, Spenser, ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... revelations of inventors or of their biographers leave no doubt as to the necessity of a large number of sketches, trials, preliminary drawings, no matter whether it is a matter of industry, commerce, a machine, a poem, an opera, a picture, a building, a plan of campaign, etc. "Genius for discovery," says Jevons, depends on the number of notions and chance thoughts coming to the inventor's mind. To be fertile in ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... were stripped and beaten with lashes; for correction—frequently for mere pastime—she would have them undressed and slapped vigorously with the back of the hand. Francoise of Rohan, cousin of Jeanne d'Albret, wrote the following poem: ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... is an exquisite prose poem—words strung on thought-threads of gold—in which a musician tells his love for one whom he has found to be his ideal. The idea is not new, but the opinion is ventured that nowhere has it been one-half so well carried out as in the 'Love Letters of a Musician.' The ecstacy ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... et Camees," Charpentier's Japanese-paper edition, with the Jacquemart etching. The binding was of citron-green leather, with a design of gilt trellis-work and dotted pomegranates. It had been given to him by Adrian Singleton. As he turned over the pages his eye fell on the poem about the hand of Lacenaire, the cold yellow hand "du supplice encore mal lavee," with its downy red hairs and its "doigts de faune." He glanced at his own white taper fingers, shuddering slightly in spite of himself, and passed on, till he came ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... purpose. There are creation and initiative in man assuredly, but they must not be interpreted as activities which deviate into paths of grotesque and arbitrary fancy. Our actions and ideas must issue from our world. Even a poem or work of art must make its appeal to the universal mind; any other kind of originality would wholly lack human interest and sever all creation and life from their root in human nature. But at least we must acknowledge that Bergson has done to the world of thought the great service of liberating ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... written them three months ago, at home in Cranston, Ohio, the evening after Anna McCord's "coming-out tea." "Milady" meant Mrs. McCord; she had "stilled" the conversation of her guests when Mary Kramer (whom the poem called a "sweet, pale singer") rose to sing Mavourneen; and the stanza closed with the right word to rhyme with "glove." He felt a contemptuous pity for his little, untraveled, provincial self of three months ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... this tradition, he says, from a ninety-year-old grandfather, whose father, Dropides, was the friend of Solon. Solon, lawgiver and poet, had heard it from the priests of the goddess Neith or Athene at Sais, and had begun to shape it into a heroic poem. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... of politics, and who taught the dangerous doctrine that a ruler, bent on exercising a benevolent despotism, is justified in employing any means to achieve his purpose; Ariosto (1474-1533), whose great poem Orlando Furioso displayed a powerful imagination no less than a rare and cultivated taste; and the unhappy mad Tasso (1544-1595), who in Jerusalem Delivered produced a bulky epic poem, adapting the manner of Virgil to a crusading subject, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... compelled to work! What a libel upon human nature is conveyed in this trait of savage credulity. The bitterest reproofs of man's wickedness are not only to be found in the varnished lessons of civilization. Here is a touching piece of simplicity upon which James Montgomery might found a whole poem. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various |
