"Poetical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at this and other periods of its history. One of these, Mariam or Mary, the daughter of Abu-Yakub Al-ansari, who rose into celebrity in the latter years of Al-hakem, appears to have been one of the earliest bas-bleus on record. Independent of her poetical talents, she gave lectures at her residence at Seville "in rhetoric and literature; which, united to her piety, virtue, and amiable disposition, gained her the affection of her sex, and procured her many pupils: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... managers wuz the first wimmen that wuz ever officially commissioned by Congress, and never have wimmen swung out so, or, to be poetical, never have they cut so wide and broad a swath on the seedy old fields of Time, as they do to this Fair. They can exhibit with the best of the contestants, men or wimmen, and by act of Congress represent their own sect ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... Gurneys, possessed of as much real intellectual life as London can boast of to-day. What, again, might not be said of the influence upon writers from afar. Read Kingsley's Hereward the Wake, Mr. Swinburne's Midsummer Holiday, Charles Dickens' description of Yarmouth and Goldsmith's poetical description in his Deserted Village, where clearly Houghton was intended. {153} These, and a host of other memories touch the heart of all good East Anglians, but that East Anglians do not forget the living in doing honour to the dead is indicated by this gathering to-night. ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... fugitive experimentings of Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt and Richard Strauss, Illowski modelled himself upon Tschaikowsky. He read everything musical and poetical in type, and his first attempt, when nearly thirty, was a symphonic setting of a poem by a half-forgotten English poet, Robert Browning, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," and the music aroused hostile German criticism. Here is a young ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... thousand, there must be soft notes and sonorous tones; so sweet jangled sounds were showered down: but we liked better than the confused chiming the solemn notes of the great bell striking the hour. There is something very poetical about this chime of bells high in the air, flinging down upon the hum and traffic of the city its oft-repeated benediction of peace; but anybody but a Lowlander would get very weary of it. These chimes, to be sure, are better than those in London, which became a nuisance; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... silent. Though every sentiment of her heart, and all that inclination which is the offspring of the warm and poetical illusions of love, tempted her to declare a readiness to sacrifice every other consideration to the engrossing and pure affections of woman, opinion with its iron gripe still held her in suspense on the propriety of braving ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... taken down by Sir Walter Scott from his mother's recitation, for Jamieson's book of ballads. Jamieson later quarrelled bitterly with Sir Walter, as letters at Abbotsford prove. A variant is given by Kinloch, and a longer, less poetical, but more historically accurate version is given by Buchan. The House of Waristoun is, or lately was, a melancholy place hanging above a narrow lake, in the northern suburbs of Edinburgh, near the Water of Leith. Kincaid was the name of the Laird; according ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... hitherto, and may forever remain, without any injury to the subject. Men of ninety-five are likely enough to go off suddenly, without violent joy—violent exertion, or even grape-stones. The story of the grape-stone is told also of Anacreon. Perhaps in both cases it was a poetical fiction to mark the love of wine which distinguished these two personages; for Sophocles is accused by Athenaeus of licentiousness and debauchery, particularly when he commanded the Athenian army. In like manner it is asserted by Pausanias that Bacchus appeared to Aeschylus ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... In the poetical myths of the ancients the sun is yearly overpowered by cold or by the destructive agencies in Nature. Astronomically, or astrologically, it wanders in darkness and desolation during the winter months; in fact dies, and descends into hell in order that he may rise at the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... falling with the gentle undulations of the billows." One does not like to play the role of an iconoclast, but probably these islands were always pretty much as they are to-day. The "floating" idea is a poetical license, and was born in the imaginative brain of the Spanish writers. Had Prescott ever seen them, he would doubtless have come to the same conclusion. "Hanging" gardens do not necessarily depend from anything, "floating" ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... hand, has his own strength, his own "virtues," or manfulnesses, in the good old sense of the word: but they are not for the most part picturesque or even poetical. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... savage. The syllables which begin or end the words are harsh and curiously startling. A woman is a trip or a moll (une largue). And it is poetical too: straw is la plume de Beauce, a farmyard feather bed. The word midnight is paraphrased by twelve leads striking—it makes one shiver! Rincer une cambriole is to "screw the shop," to rifle a room. What a feeble expression is to go to bed in comparison with "to doss" (piausser, make a new skin). ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... clear enough. One sees in a moment that the Sargassos, of which there are several species on Tropical shores, are a genus of themselves and by themselves; and a certain awe may, if the beholder be at once scientific and poetical, come over him at the first sight of this famous and unique variety thereof, which has lost ages since the habit of growing on rock or sea-bottom, but propagates itself for ever floating; and feeds among its branches a whole family of fish, crabs, cuttlefish, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... children. She half smiled at the remembrance of a description given of the impression produced by her appearance on the journey by her friend the Abbe Arnauld; he had ecstatically compared her to Latona seated in an open coach, between a youthful Apollo and a young Diana. In spite of the abbe's poetical extravagance, Madame de Sevigne recognized, in this moment of retrospect, the truth of the picture. That, indeed, had been a radiant moment! Her life at that time had been so full, and the rapture so complete—the rapture of possessing her children—that ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... I visited the parish priest of Libmanan (Ligmanan), who, possessing poetical talent, and having the reputation of a natural philosopher, collected and named pretty beetles and shells, and dedicated the most elegant little sonnets. He favored me ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... and then some deeper, more spiritual thinker begins to question this method of reasoning, begins to wonder whether it is quite adequate; and we have a magnificent poetical expression of this kind of critical thought in the Book of Job. This Book of Job is any way and every way worthy of your careful attention. It is the nearest to a dramatic production of anything in the Bible. James Anthony Froude said once in regard to it that, if it were ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... leisure to read Dante—I have never read a page of him; yet I am sure the "Divina Commedia" is one of the grandest books in the world—though I am not sure whether the reading of it would raise one's life and give it a nobler purpose, or simply be a grand poetical treat. That is a question you are beginning to be able to answer: I doubt if I shall ever (at least in this life) have the opportunity of reading it; my life seems to be all torn into little bits among ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... contented and unambitious frame of mind, and entertained no hankering after any official distinction, but day after day of his life took delight in gazing at flowers, planting bamboos, sipping his wine and conning poetical works, he was in fact, in the indulgence of these pursuits, as happy as ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... spirit, and contributed not a little to the elevation of his nephew to the throne, though he declined all patronage at his hands, refusing all honours and appointments; has been compared to Burns, but he lacked both the fire and the humour of the Scottish poet. "His poetical works," says Professor Saintsbury, "consist entirely of chansons political, amatory, bacchanalian, satirical, philosophical after a fashion, and of almost every other complexion that the song ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... romances of the Middle Ages. These dissertations, utterly worthless in themselves, have obviously nothing in common with the so-called "Prose Edda," the first part of which, containing fifty-three chapters, forms a complete synopsis of Scandinavian mythology, derived principally from the Poetical Edda. ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... creature about whom more poetical nonsense has been written. He has been extolled to the skies as patient, long-suffering, the friend of man, and what not. In reality he is a grumbling, discontented, morose brute, working only under compulsion and continual protest, and all writers who know anything of him agree in the above estimate ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... the poem, wonderfully correct and conscientious as a translation, is inferior in poetical merit to that of Stephens, who, as we see, instead of choosing modern words, is careful to retain many of the picturesque old rune equivalents. This we perceive at once if we compare Stephens' four lines, beginning "Christ was on Rood ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... England. Out of work and wages for himself and his troupe, "disgusted at the age and clime, barren of every glorious theme," Phoebus Apollo determined to emigrate. Berkeley had reported favorably of the new Western Continent: it was a land of poetical promise to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... said I, "source inexhausted of all that is precious in our (poetical) joys, or costly ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... air of solemn pomp and sober dignity about the classical buildings that harmonises better with the sense of wealth and grave security that is so characteristic of the place. The Gothic buildings seem a survival, and have thus a more romantic interest, a more poetical kind of association. But the classical porticos and facades seem to possess a nobler dignity, and to provide a more appropriate setting for modern Oxford; because the spirit of Oxford is more the spirit of ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... bore so little resemblance to what history has preserved of those fine countries, so often moistened with the blood of man. The ingenious fables of mythology likewise occurred to his mind, and imparted to his language something of a poetical, and, I may say, of an inspired character. The sight of the kingdom of Minos led him to reason on the laws best calculated for the government of nations; and the birthplace of Jupiter suggested to him the necessity of a religion for the mass of mankind. This animated conversation ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... 2: Just as human reason fails to grasp poetical expressions on account of their being lacking in truth, so does it fail to grasp Divine things perfectly, on account of the sublimity of the truth they contain: and therefore in both cases there is need of signs by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... monotonous 'plash' of the paddle-wheels, the sort of solitude in the midst of such a crowd, the gradually lengthening distance behind, with the lessening, as gradual, in front, and the always novel feeling of approach to a new country—these elements impart a sort of dreamy, poetical feeling to the scene. Even the calm resignation of the wrapped-up shadows seated in a sort of retreat, and devoted to their own thoughts or slumbers, add to this effect. With which comes the thought ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald
... Poet?" To my delight he had replied to me with a qualified affirmative, saying that in the productions he had "discerned a real faculty, and perhaps a future poet. I say perhaps," he added, "because I do not know your age, and because there are so many poetical blossoms which never come to fruit." He had, furthermore, advised me "to write as much as I felt impelled to write, but to publish nothing"—at any rate, for a couple of years. Three years had passed, and I had neither published anything—that is to say, in book form—nor had I had any further ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... book to provide something of an introduction to the poetical literature of the post-Augustan age. Although few of the writers dealt with have any claim to be called poets of the first order, and some stand very low in the scale of poetry, as a whole the poets of this period have suffered greater neglect than they deserve. Their ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room.—Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical. ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the city in a kind of panic. The stillness is awful. A longer stay would reduce one to a state of melancholy madness. A few poets, however, have been able to endure, and even to love, the sepulchral stillness of the city. But to appreciate Venice one must be strongly poetical. ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... in the mush and it is confidently believed that whoever finds the first almond will be the first to be married. While eating the mush, each one is expected to make rhymes about the rice and the good luck it is to bring them, and the most remarkable poetical effusions are in order on ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... there are Hearts and Homes. The poetical spirit of this accomplished lady has hovered over that sacred spot, Home, sweet Home, and there sung, like the Bethlehem angels, those sweet melodies of love. They are published, she tells us "chiefly for the author's dear children, relatives ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... the absurdity of substituting a knowledge of words for a knowledge of things. As M. Condillac's is a work of high reputation, we may be allowed to make a few remarks on its practical utility, and this may, perhaps, afford us an opportunity of explaining our ideas upon the use of metaphysical, poetical, and critical works, in early education. We do not mean any invidious criticism upon Condillac, but in "Practical Education" we wish to take our examples and illustrations from real life. The abbe's course of ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... joined the local club, of course, and when Bunch read some of his poetical outbursts at a free-and-easy one evening, Society got up on its hind legs and with one voice declared my old pal Jefferson to be the logical successor to Robert H. Browning, Sir Walter K. Scott, Bert Tennyson, or any other poet that ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... how it happened, that small brooks, such as this, kept the same situation for ages, notwithstanding earthquakes, by which even mountains have been changed, and agriculture, which produces such a variation upon the surface of the earth. CAMBRIDGE. 'A Spanish writer has this thought in a poetical conceit. After observing that most of the solid structures of Rome are totally perished, while the Tiber ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... alas! again and again, in thousands of hearts, the true Christ must die the bitter death upon the cross because the truest word that he inspired one of his dearest favorites to utter was besmirched by a flat lie, and his most beautiful poetical image destroyed by a grossly ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... aid; and he always gave gaily, freely, as if giving were the greatest joy, outside of the theatre, a man could have. Everyone who knew him loved him, and there was no note of sadness in his daily life, though there seems to be one in his poetical pictures. Because of his generous ways he was known as "Pere Corot." He sang as he worked, and loved his fellowmen all the time; but most of all, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... past, and that an ideal past. What we have to notice there is that this kind of rule, which has been usual in all great ages of poetry, is apparently not an artificial or arbitrary thing but a tendency that grew up naturally with the first great expressions of poetical feeling. ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... long interval, set his eyes again upon Ida's face, he felt a curious change come over him. All the vague ideas and more or less poetical aspirations which for five long years had gathered themselves about that memory, took shape and form, and in his heart he knew he loved her. Then as the days went on and he came to know her better, he grew to love her more and more, till ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... me in a dream, but it changed much in the making, foreshadowing, it may be, a change that may bring a less dream-burdened will into my verses. I never re-wrote anything so many times; for at first I could not make these wills that stream into mere life poetical. But now I hope to do easily much more of the kind, and that our new Irish players will find ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... that, as a part of the people, he loved the people and sympathised with their hopes and fears, and joys and griefs; and yet Hooven, grimy and perspiring, with his perpetual grievance and his contracted horizon, only revolted him. He had set himself the task of giving true, absolutely true, poetical expression to the life of the ranch, and yet, again and again, he brought up against the railroad, that stubborn iron barrier against which his romance shattered itself to froth and disintegrated, flying spume. His ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... never been at Wrangerton since his father died, twelve years ago. He does not like the place, so he only comes to London when he is in England, and papa goes up to meet him on business, but he is too poetical ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as a remnant of that beautiful Grecian mythology that deified and poetized everything; and even to us she is still the 'rosy-fingered daughter of the morn.' The 'Levant,' 'Orient,' and 'Occident' are all of them poetical, for they are all true translations from nature. The 'Levant' is where the sun is levant, raising himself up. 'Orient' will be recognized as the same figure from orior; while 'occident' is, of course, the opposite ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the English, which has destroyed all quantitative relation between accented and unaccented syllables, often wearing away the latter altogether at the termination of words, and always impoverishing their vowel sounds. In the ninth century A.D. this new enunciation was giving rise to a new poetical technique founded upon accent and rhyme, which first essayed itself in folk-songs and ballads,[1] and has since experimented in the same variety of forms as ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... state what he does not propose to prove. The thing I do not propose to prove, the thing I propose to take as common ground between myself and any average reader, is this desirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate always seems to have desired. If a man says that extinction is better than existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then he is not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a man prefers nothing I can give ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... series of Songs by a thread of poetical narrative, my chief object has been to combine Recitation with Music, so as to enable a greater number of persons to join in the performance, by enlisting as readers those who may not feel willing or competent to take ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... shapes. In the reigns of the first James and the first Charles these forms attracted not a little attention from the poets of the period. The rugged lines of Taylor, "the Water Poet," are among the best known, and if not of great poetical merit, they show considerable descriptive skill, and enable us to realise the fashions of his day. In his "Superbiae Flagellum," he describes a great variety of beards in his time, but omitted his own, which is ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... abundant use of figures, again, we may recognize the same truth. Metaphors, similes, hyperboles, and personifications, are the poet's colours, which he has liberty to employ almost without limit. We characterize as "poetical" the prose which uses these appliances of language with any frequency, and condemn it as "over florid" or "affected" long before they occur with the profusion allowed in verse. Further, let it be ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... sensuality, no place for superstition, or for costly insolence. Let us have learned and faithful historical painting—touching and thoughtful representations of human nature, in dramatic painting; poetical and familiar renderings of natural objects and of landscape; and rational, deeply-felt realizations of the events which are the subjects of our religious faith. And let these things we want, as far as possible, be scattered abroad and made ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... heresies of Gib. By another division of the family, the laird, Clem, and Gib, who were men exactly virtuous, swallowed the dose of Dand's irregularities as a kind of clog or drawback in the mysterious providence of God affixed to bards, and distinctly probative of poetical genius. To appreciate the simplicity of their mutual admiration it was necessary to hear Clem, arrived upon one of his visits, and dealing in a spirit of continuous irony with the affairs and personalities of that great city of Glasgow where he lived ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a delightful book, in which all defects of structure and form are atoned for by a wonderful amount of energy, geniality, freshness, poetical feeling, and moral elevation. And furthermore, we think, no one can read it without saying to himself that he would like to see and know the writer. Long may he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... ancient poems in picture. I would humbly propose, for the benefit of our modern smatterers in poetry, that they would imitate their brethren among the ancients in those ingenious devices. I have communicated this thought to a young poetical lover of my acquaintance, who intends to present his mistress with a copy of verses made in the shape of her fan; and, if he tells me true, has already finished the three first sticks of it. He has likewise promised me to get the measure of his mistress's marriage finger with a design ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... to be poetical on a dog called Muggins," remarked Wilkinson; "Tray seems to be the favourite name. Cowper's dogs are different, and Wordsworth has Dart and Swallow, Prince and Music, something like Actaeon's dogs in 'Ovid.' ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... the North. It was joined afterwards by many of the bravest and best born of the Saxon nobles, refusing to dwell under the yoke of the Norman. Scott, in "Count Robert of Paris," which, if not one of his best romances, is yet full of truth and beauty, has described this renowned band with much poetical ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... both palms in a gesture of protestation. "Oh, Rash, please don't be poetical. It gets on my nerves. I can't stand it. I like you in every mood but your sentimental one." She came to a halt beside the mantelpiece, on which she rested an elbow, turning to look at him. "Now tell me, Rash! Suppose I wasn't in the world at all. Or suppose you'd ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... their unpleasing likenesses. The somewhat loose satin evening-dress, with the shepherdess's crook, was absurd enough; and no very great improvement upon the earlier taste of complimenting portraits with the personation of the heathen deities. The poetical pastoral, however, very soon descended to the real pastoral; and, as if to make people what they were not was considered enough of the historical of portrait, even this took. We suspect Gainsborough ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... own superstitions and its own ballads." Mr. Hare contrives to convey much of the characteristic impression of each town. Pretty little wood-cuts are called in to his aid, but the best illustrations of his text are the poetical quotations and exquisite prose-bits from Ruskin, Swinburne, Symonds and others whose pens sometimes turn into the pencil of a great painter. The author's own descriptions are extremely faithful and charming. To those who have made ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... me again today upon being the only composer of our days—of these days of deafening orchestral effects and poetical quackery—who has despised the new-fangled nonsense of Wagner, and returned boldly to the traditions of Handel and Gluck and the divine Mozart, to the supremacy of melody and the ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... dreams, the simple and poetical dreams of all the poor girls who are shut up from one year's end to the other in a shop and who see the noisy life of the streets go while they think of the calm and pleasant life in the country, of life under the trees, under the bright sun shining ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... eyes full of sweet reasonableness, her nose that of the classic heroines of Greece, and her willowy form such as Sir Joshua Reynolds would have delighted to paint in a portrait, that would have been one more justification of the poetical phrase, "Art is ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... exception. These he never cared for, or regarded as the noble knowledges for a king or man. History and Moral Speculation; what mankind have done and been in this world (so far as "History" will give one any glimpse of that), and what the wisest men, poetical or other, have thought about mankind and their world: this is what he evidently had the appetite for; appetite insatiable, which lasted with him to the very end of his days. Fontenelle, Rollin, Voltaire, all the then French lights, and gradually others that lay deeper ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... from opinions which I began to consider as the dreams of superstition, or the artful inventions of designing hypocrisy. My mother's books were left behind at the different quarters we removed to, and my reading was principally confined to plays, novels, and those poetical descriptions of the beauty of virtue and honour, which ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... can't part with those pictures when I say good-by to-day. You will find me calling here again and again, till you are perfectly sick of me. Look at this sea piece. Who thinks of the brushes and palette of that painter? There, truth to Nature and poetical feeling go hand in hand together. It is absolutely lovely—I ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... me," said Kettle, "it was sheer nobility of character. I had a good deal of talk with that young gentleman, sir. He was a splendid fellow. He had a true poetical soul." ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... a tempest on the lake was reckoned a mere joke, and that the drawing-room of the Casa Grande had been decorated with a fancy portrait of himself, hanging to the half-way cross, with his legs in the water, and underneath, a poetical description of his sufferings to the tune of "Malbrouke s'en va-t-en guerre, ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... about the middle of September, 1870, I arrived at Kingston, Ontario, and took lodgings at the "City Hotel," where I intended to remain for a few days. I was then on a tour selling a poetical work which I had written, entitled: "The Canadian Minstrel." After tea, that evening, I stepped up stairs to the sitting-room, and sat down to write a letter to my friends at home. Shortly afterwards, and while seated there alone, a ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... no doubt in the mind of the judicial critic that in the pages of "A Love Episode" the reader finds more of the poetical, more of the delicately artistic, more of the subtle emanation of creative and analytical genius, than in any other of Zola's works, with perhaps one exception. The masterly series of which this book is a part furnishes a well-stocked gallery of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... without a word, hoisted his fat portmanteau on the driver's seat, and then disappeared in the van. In a minute he reappeared. On the back of one of his poetical ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... conflicted too strenuously with his own. He did not in the least object to-night, for instance, to dropping late into the prayer-meeting. There were not many people there, and all the windows were open, and there was something poetical and sweet about the atmosphere. Besides, the singing was unusually good for such a place. Above all the other voices arose Ida Slome's sweet soprano. She sang like a bird; her voice, although not powerful, was thrillingly sweet. Harry looked at her as she sang, and ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... dialogue may be noted, such as (1) the acute observation that Meno prefers the familiar definition, which is embellished with poetical language, to the better and truer one; or (2) the shrewd reflection, which may admit of an application to modern as well as to ancient teachers, that the Sophists having made large fortunes; this must surely be a criterion of their powers of teaching, ...
— Meno • Plato
... overhung him by dispatching Charlet, one of the valets, with letters to the court of Louis, announcing the arrival of the Ladies of Croye at Liege. At length his natural buoyancy of temper returned, much excited by the title of an old romaunt [a poetical romance] which had been just printed at Strasbourg, and which lay beside him in the window, the title ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... as a delightful addition to their sources of enjoyment. It is a volume rich in solace, in entertainment, in inspiration, of which the possession may well be coveted by every lover of poetry. The pictorial illustrations of the work are in keeping with its poetical contents, and the beauty of the typographical execution entitles it to a place among the choicest ornaments of the library."—New ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... was, must have been a capital judge of dogs, like many other poetical gentlemen. Still, other men than poets are sometimes good judges, and great lovers of dogs; but the mass of people are quite as well satisfied with one kind of dog as with another, so that it be a dog; and they ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... archiater. He was born in Crete. He was the inventor of a compound medicine called after himself, "Theriaca Andromachi." He gave directions for making it in a poem of 174 lines. This poem is quoted by Galen, who explains that Andromachus gave his instructions a poetical form to assist memory, and to prevent the likelihood ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... dissection, if the operation could tend to point out the nature and the means of curing any peculiar malady. But as my habits of thinking and acting, as well as my rank in society, were fixed long before I had attained, or even pretended to, any poetical reputation,[18] and as it produced, when acquired, no remarkable change upon either, it is hardly to be expected that much information can be derived from minutely investigating frailties, follies, or vices, not very different in number ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... from times long anterior to the Reformation, when they had been employed as armour of proof by the credulous vulgar against the Robin Goodfellows, urchins, elves, hags, and fairies of earlier superstition. I regret that I cannot throw more light upon it. The concluding lines are not deficient in poetical spirit. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... A SUGGESTION.—In a new poetical play at the Opera Comique there is a good deal of hide-and-seek. It might have had a second title, and been appropriately called The Queen's Room; or, Secret Passages in the Life of ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... novel, the theme of which occasionally touches upon the same problems—problems involving love, freedom of expression, the right to live one's life in one's own way—he is revealed to be no less a master of the prose form than of the poetical. While the book is one for mature minds, the skill with which delicate situations are handled and the reserve everywhere exhibited remove it from possible criticism even by the most exacting. The ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... best and latest authorities have been appreciated. Thus, in the History and Description of Fruits, the Transactions of the Horticultural Society are frequently and pertinently quoted to establish disputed points, as well as the journals of intelligent travellers and naturalists; with occasional poetical embellishments, which lend a charm even to this ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... time you had called me by my Christian name. I don't suppose you've the remotest notion how splendid it sounds when you say it. There is something poetical, ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... trenchant and terse. He received the congratulations of the company on being timed by a wine—instead of a water-clock; and this affront, it is said, he was content to put up, for the consideration of 8 pounds. But what of that? Wait till you get a patron who has poetical or historical tendencies, and spouts passages of his own works all through dinner: you must praise, you must flatter, you must devise original compliments for him,—or die in the attempt. Then there are the beaux, the Adonises and Hyacinths, as you must be careful to call ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... becomes necessary to admit a prosaic fact hitherto concealed from the Reader. Narcissus rode a bicycle. It was, I must confess, a rather 'modern' thing to do. But surely the flashing airy wheel is the most poetical mode of locomotion yet invented, and one looks more like a fairy prince than ever in knickerbockers. Whenever Narcissus turned his gleaming spokes along some mapped, but none the less mysterious, county—road, he thought of Lohengrin in his barge ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... abstracted, chiding, precise, mournfully kind, solemnly considerate. I believe it in my heart to have been wholly otherwise, and I think of Him as one with whom any simple and affectionate person, man, woman, or child, would have been entirely and instantly at ease. Like all idealistic and poetical natures, he had little use, I think, for laughter; those who are deeply interested in life and its issues care more for the beauty than the humour of life. But one sees a flash of humour here and there, as in the story of the unjust judge, and of the children in the market-place; and that He ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... declared the elder Miss Hyde. "Don't you remember, sister, what a quantity of poetical pieces he knew by heart when he was ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... to our special notice, as their tenets have had the good fortune to furnish Pope with the beautiful machinery with which he has adorned the Rape of the Lock. There is also, of much later date, a wild and poetical fiction for which we are indebted to the same source, called Undine, from the pen of ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... nearer to the norm of poetry. We might register its wistfulness, praise the appealing nakedness of its diction and pass on. If that were indeed the culmination of Edward Thomas's poetical quest, he would stand securely enough with others of his time. But he reaches further. In the verses on his 'home,' which we have already quoted, he passes beyond these limits. He has still more to tell of the experience of the soul fronting its ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... so, under too many a memorable circumstance, to allow the title to be disputed by any one. An indefatigable rhymester, he had, during the whole of the journey, overwhelmed with quatrains, sextains, and madrigals, first the king, and then La Valliere. The king was, on his side, in a similarly poetical mood, and had made a distich; while La Valliere, like all women who are in love, had composed two sonnets. As one may see, then, the day had not been a bad one for Apollo; and, therefore, as soon as he had returned to Paris, Saint-Aignan, who knew beforehand that his verses ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... public, the writer being fully aware that not unfrequently he has failed in giving his version that cast and turn, which constitute no slight part of the beauty of the original; a point the accomplishment of which the poetical Translator ought, in all instances, to bear particularly in view, but which he will invariably find the most difficult part of the task which he has undertaken; in comparison with which the rendering ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... where the comforts of science and modern improvements were concerned. There were lifts, or elevators, now in the castle of Skrae, though Blake always went by the old black corkscrew staircases, holding on by the guiding rope, after the poetical manner ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... interested in the subject will find some admirable observations in Lessing's Hamburger Dramaturgie, 11tes. and 12tes. Stueck, where the critic compares the ghost of Ninus in Voltaire's Semiramis with the ghost in Hamlet. He condemns the former because it is nothing more than a poetical machine, while Shakespeare's is one of the persons of the drama. His position is essentially the same ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... was not very communicative in general, but he was proud of his father-in-law. "Carleon Anthony, the poet, you know." Proud of his celebrity without approving of his character. It was on that account, I strongly suspect, that he seized with avidity upon the theory of poetical genius being allied to madness, which he got hold of in some idiotic book everybody was reading a few years ago. It struck him as being truth itself— illuminating like the sun. He adopted it devoutly. He bored me with it sometimes. Once, just to shut him up, I asked quietly if this theory which ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... for that. In a way, the position in which we stand to each other is a kind of poetical justice. I don't blame myself, either, for I always did loathe a cad and Stokes is a cad par excellence. He visited, more or less on suffrance, at two or three houses where I used to go a good deal, in my palmy days. How he got asked, originally, I don't exactly know, for the people weren't a ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Poetical Works of Jean Ingelow. New Edition, reprinted, with Additional Matter, from the 23rd and 6th Editions of the two volumes respectively; with 2 Vignettes. 2 ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... more connection between geographical place-names and poetical inspiration than is generally recognized; one of the chief reasons why there are so few really great poems about Russia in our language is that you can't possibly get a rhyme to names like Smolensk and Tobolsk ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... possession of a variety of copies in various stages of preservation, and to the task of selecting a standard text among such a diversity of materials he brought a knowledge of old manners and phraseology, and a manly simplicity of taste, such as had never before been united in the person of a poetical antiquary." ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... fifteenth letter of the Opus Epistolarum he recalls the impressions and recollections of that memorable visit, in the following terms: "Do you remember, Scandiano, with what enthusiasm we dedicated our days to poetical composition? Then did I first appreciate the importance of association with the learned and to what degree the mind of youth is elevated in the amiable society of serious men: then, for the first time, I ventured to think ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... deeper poetical rather than a religious or doctrinal interest which drew Browning in these Italian years, again and again to seek his revealing experiences of souls amid the eddies and convulsions, the exultations and the agonies, brought into the world by the amazing "revelation of God in Christ." It is ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Poetical legends, generally founded on, and blended with, traditionary facts, help us to form some idea of the character and habits of the aboriginal races; but history, and even tradition, seldom carry us further ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... made by the substitution of another word radically different, went, the past tense of wend or wind. "O'er hills and dales they wend their way." "The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea." Go and wend convey to our minds nearly the same ideas. The latter is a little more poetical, because less used. But originally their signification was quite different. So with the parts of the verb to be. They were consolidated as a matter of convenience, and now appear in their respective positions to express the idea of ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... expression that a greater prude than Mrs. Ashwood would have objected to, yet every sentence seemed to end in a caress. There was not a line of poetry in it, and scarcely a figure or simile, and yet it was poetical. Boyishly egotistic as it was in attitude, it seemed to be written less OF himself than TO her; in its delicate because unconscious flattery, it made her at once the provocation and excuse. And yet so potent was its ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... called back, and had then projected his unfailing, anxious question: "Can you tell me how far it is to Poetical?" ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... of this startling unfolding of the poetic gift, of this passage of a soft and dreamy boy into the keenest, boldest, sternest of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration—the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and ends of man. But it was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... accept its meaning in its own terms? You know the lesson is given us under the form of a story about money. Money was given to the servants to make use of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid his Lord's money. Well, we in our poetical and spiritual application of this, say that of course money doesn't mean money—it means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the world ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... world; and that "the millions of spiritual beings who walk the earth unseen" would be rendered visible, and become the friends, companions, and instructors of mankind. In the seventeenth century more especially, these poetical and fantastic doctrines excited the notice of Europe; and from Germany, where they had been first disseminated by Rosencreutz, spread into France and England, and ran away with the sound judgment of many clever, but too enthusiastic, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... have always been disposed to protest against. The best-known masterpieces of this form have, not during the study of them but when hearing them performed, always left me cold; indeed, often positively pained me. The stiffness of the musical and still more of the poetical form always seemed to me absolutely incongruous with the high dramatic feeling of the subject. To see and hear gentlemen in dress coats, white cravats, yellow gloves, holding music books before them, or ladies in modern, often extravagant, toilets singing ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... were just as good as the Blaisdells, if I do say it. There were a lot that wanted me—oh, I was pretty THEN, Mr. Smith." She laughed, and bridled again self-consciously. "But I took Jim. He was handsome then, very—big dark eyes and dark hair, and so dreamy and poetical-looking; and there wasn't a girl that hadn't set her cap for him. And he's been a good husband to me. To be sure, he isn't quite so ambitious as he might be, perhaps. I always did believe in being somebody, and getting somewhere. Don't ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... works are in themselves a literary curiosity. There are to be found both in Sanscrit poetry and in the Sanscrit drama a certain amount of poetical sentiment and romance, which have, in every country and in every language, thrown an immortal halo round the subject. But here it is treated in a plain, simple, matter of fact sort of way. Men and women are divided into classes and divisions in the same way that Buffon and other ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... changing all the odd bits of character which chance may show him into rhythmic forms, and chirps and sings as perpetually as the cricket. Friends he has without number, who stop before his bench, from which he administers poetical justice to all persons, to have a long chat, or sometimes to bring him a friendly token; and from the dark interior of his drawer he often brings forth an orange, or a bunch of grapes, or handful of chestnuts, supplied by them, as a dessert ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... because it introduces,—without, apparently, any consciousness of the inconsistency, and certainly with no apology for it,—names founded sometimes on the history of plants, sometimes on their qualities, sometimes on their forms, sometimes on their products, and sometimes on their poetical associations. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... SIR WALTER SCOTT'S POETRY, making 32 elegant little volumes of high external finish, enclosed in an artistic case, measuring only 91/4 inches in width, 101/4 inches in height, and 33/4 inches in depth. The poetical volumes are adorned with frontispieces and illustrations representative of the best known Scottish scenery, or of places which the genius of the poet has ...
— M. P.'s in Session - From Mr. Punch's Parliamentary Portrait Gallery • Harry Furniss
... own sweet-singing Welsh folk), the Thracians. At first the number of the Muses was indefinite, and they had no names. Then three were named—one of Meditation (Melete), one of Memory (Mneme), and one of Song (Aoeide)—a much prettier embodiment of the impression made on a poetical mind by rock-pools and cascades and leafy gorges than the formal and redundant nine of later times. One can associate the primitive three with a museum of natural history; but the later official goddesses, each insisting on her own department of poetry, are ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... Jorlan, sister of Berald des Baux. But the other account is that he made love to both ladies at once, and that Adelasia cast him off because she found that his fickle heart was turning to the fresher charms of Laura. Anyhow, he made his rejection by Adelasia the subject of poetical laments, and prosecuted with vigour his siege of the heart and virtue of his patron's sister. And then he pursued with the same ardour the conquest of Eudoxia, wife of William, Count ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... that warning and encouragement which it gave to the Living to be mindful of their Duty, says, That the Greeks, as to what concern'd the Rewards of the Just, and the Punishment of the Impious, had nothing among them but invented Fables and Poetical Fictions which never wrought upon Men for the Amendment of their Lives; but on the contrary, were despis'd and laugh'd at ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... under the influence of one of his nurse's tales, which were always of the mysterious, of the extraordinary, of the terrible, and poetical. ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... miles from Bathurst. I should say about 4,000 head of cattle. Luxury without refinement. Plenty to eat, drink, and read. Hostess's name—Carr. She is a well-preserved creature, about thirty-four years of age, and a clever woman—not in a poetical sense, but in the widest worldly acceptation of the term. At the same time, I should be sorry to be her husband. Women have no business with a brain like hers—that is, if they wish to be women and not sexual ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... legend of the confusion of tongues, it is probable that there were many similar traditions attached to the great temples of Babylonia, and as time goes on, and the excavations bring more material, a large number of them will probably be recovered. Already we have an interesting and poetical record of the entry of Bel and Beltis into the great temple at Niffer, probably copied from some ancient source, and Gudea, a king of Lagas (Telloh), who reigned about 2700 B.C., gives an account of the dream which he saw, in which he was instructed by the gods to build or rebuild the temple ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... towards them was that same eager curiosity with which I regarded the ungerminated sprout within the seed, or the undiscovered mystery under the dust covering of the earth. My enthusiasm was kept up with the hope of bringing to light some unknown poetical gems as I went deeper and deeper into the unexplored darkness ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... I wrote my sonatas (the first ones of the second period) was more poetical than the present (1823); such hints were therefore unnecessary. Every one at that time felt in the Largo of the third sonata in D (op. 10) the pictured soulstate of a melancholy being, with all the nuances of light and shade which occur in a delineation of ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... different forms, in which idol-worship was prominent; but all agreed in acknowledging one supreme God, Allah, in whose name solemn oaths were taken. Once in the year the tribes gathered in Mecca for their devotions; and a great fair in the vicinity, attended by a poetical contest, made the city prosperous. The town was made up of separate Septs, or patriarchal families, each under its own head, of which septs the Omayyads were of principal importance, and had charge of the Kaaba. Mohammed belonged to the Hashimites, another and ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... this is premised, there are some latitudes, like poetical licences in other cases, which a tradesman is and must be allowed, and which by the custom and usage of trade he may give himself a liberty in, which cannot be allowed in other cases to any man, no, nor to the tradesman himself out of his ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... of those books of which literary dreamers are apt to grow fanatically fond—books by the old English writers, full of phrases and conceits half quaint and half sublime, interspersed with praises of the country, imbued with a poetical rather than orthodox religion, and adorned with a strange mixture of monastic learning and aphorisms collected from the ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... if he be not blinded by that partiality, which the midwife is apt to conceive for the productions, that she is the instrument of bringing into the world, the Pastoral Romance contains as much originality, as much poetical beauty, and is as happily calculated to make a deep impression upon the memory, as ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... That Feat of Poetical Activity mentioned by Horace, of an Author who could compose two hundred Verses while he stood upon one Leg, [3] has been imitated (as I have heard) by a modern Writer; who priding himself on the Hurry of his Invention, thought it no small Addition to his Fame ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the mysticism of St John's own nature enabled him to remember and report with sufficient accuracy the words of our Lord, always, it seems to me, of a recognizably different kind from those of any of the writers of the New Testament—chiefly, perhaps, in the simplicity of their poetical mysticism. ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... Hopkins, has proved himself worthy of the name he bears. His poetical effusions are equally creditable to his head and his heart, displaying the highest order of genius and powers of imagination and fancy hardly second to any writer of the age. He is destined to make a great sensation in ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Book of Verse for Boys. DAVID NUTT, London.) This is his appreciation:—Mr. HENLEY has tacked his name to a collection which contains some noble poems, some (but not much) trash, and a good many pieces, which, however poetical they may be, are certainly not heroic, seeing that they do not express "the simpler sentiments, and the more elemental emotions" (I use Mr. HENLEY's prefatory words), and are scarcely the sort of verse that boys are likely, or ought to care about. To be sure, Mr. HENLEY guards himself on the score ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... pug-nosed, poetical, pert and pink; and at first glance to the unwary, she shows signs of gentleness and intelligence. Her age is anywhere from eighteen to twenty-eight. At twenty-eight she begins to evolve into something ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... only a few terms' standing, wrote the first canto the same evening, and the intrinsic merit of the poem will recommend it to most readers. But it will be doubly interesting when considered as one of the first, if not the very first, of the poetical productions of that eminent and distinguished scholar. In it may be traced the dawnings of that genius which was afterwards to delight the world in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... Biographical Sketches, a rapid view of the characteristic attributes of both, and an Introductory Essay on the Origin and Progress of English Poetical Literature. 8vo., cloth, gilt ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... evidently Webster's, and their quality is not such as to make us unreasonably impatient for any further manifestations of his poetical skill. In the year 1654 he published another tract of singular interest and curiosity, in which he attacks the Universities and the received system of education there, always with vigour and various learning, and frequently with success. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... a genius for friendship as well as for gathering together choice books. Sir Walter Scott addressed verses to him. Professor Porson wrote emendations for him in his favorite copy of Athenaeus. To him was inscribed Dr. Ferrier's poetical epistle on Bibliomania. His virtues were celebrated by Dibdin and by Burton. In brief, the sketch of Heber in The Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1834, contains a list of forty-six names,—all men of distinction by birth, learning, or genius, and all men who were proud ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... not composing a poetical ode; she was not feigning fictitious sentiments; her looks, the sound of her voice, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... us that the waters were parted into twelve ways, one for each tribe, and that the length of the road was three hundred miles! But Scripture, with characteristic reticence, is silent about all but the fact. That is enough. We gather, from the much later and poetical picture of it in Psalm lxxvii., that the passage was accomplished in the midst of crashing thunder and flashing lightnings; though it may be doubted whether these are meant to be taken as real or ideal. At all events, we have to think of these two millions of people—women, children, and followers—plunging ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... no coldness of temperament but of a deliberate philosophy. The pregnant force of his language in dealing with those dearest to him—his wife, his sister, his brother—is proof enough of this. The frequent allusions in his correspondence to the physical exhaustion brought on by the act of poetical composition indicate a frame which, though made robust by exercise and temperance, was by nature excitable rather than strong. And even in the direction in which we should least have expected it, there is reason to believe that there were capacities of feeling in him which never ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... Carlyle upon Kingsley is plain enough throughout, down to the day when Carlyle led Kingsley to approve the judicial murder of negroes in Jamaica. Kingsley himself tells us, by the mouth of Alton Locke (chap. ix.), "I know no book, always excepting Milton, which at once so quickened and exalted my poetical view of man and his history, as that great prose poem, the single epic of modern days, Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution." Kingsley's three masters were—in poetry, Tennyson; in social philosophy, Carlyle; in things moral and ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... against the weight of such attractions, all centred as it were in one effort to please herself. His flattery was deep for it was respectful—his tastes were her tastes—his opinions her opinions. On the formation of their acquaintance they differed on some trifling point of poetical criticism, and for near a month the colonel had maintained his opinion with a show of firmness; but opportunities not wanting for the discussion, he had felt constrained to yield to her better judgment, her purer taste. The conquest of Colonel ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... I arrived at Elm Lodge in a state of feeling containing about equal parts of the intensely poetical ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... This poetical republican, being so disagreeably disturbed, started up in a passion, and, opening the door, no sooner perceived who had interrupted him, than he flung it in his face with great fury, and cursed him for his impertinent ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... was in its fall, according to a poetical expression of our own, and the morning bright, as the fairest and swiftest bark that navigated the Leman lay at the quay of the ancient and historical town of Geneva, ready to depart for the country of Vaud. This vessel was called the Winkelried, in commemoration of Arnold ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... life's graces and none of its serious concerns,—their paltry prepossessions, their vulgar sequaciousness, their invincible ignorance, their absorption in a petty self. And especially is this phase of thought to be expected in a boy whose heart blindly nourishes the seeds of poetical passion. It was Godwin's sincere belief that he held girls, as girls, in abhorrence. This meant that he dreaded their personal criticism, and that the spectacle of female beauty sometimes overcame him with a despair which he could not ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... and a poet; and this certainly was not a poetical incident. "Mrs. Lyndsay," he cried, in a tragic horror—(it would have been more in good taste to have said nothing about it)—"Are you forced to devote your valuable time to mending old socks ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... order of sanctity came the third division, the 'Writings,' and these again were subdivided into three groups: the poetical Books of the Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; the 'Rolls' or 'Readings' (seven volumes)—Solomon's Song, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, and one volume containing Ezra and Nehemiah; and, lastly, in a separate ...
— The Bible in its Making - The most Wonderful Book in the World • Mildred Duff
... have wound up such sentimental exercises with gazing out on the moonlit scene; but nine degrees below zero was unfavourable for the wooing of Diana. The "cold light of stars" was no poetical figure, and Bluebell, frozen back to the prosaic, piled up the stove, and crept into bed, where her waking dreams soon merged into ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... proceeding was fashionable at the time, as no less a personage than Sir Walter Scott had led the way, and he had been preceded by Burns in the practice. But whereas Burns made no secret of what he did and greatly enhanced the poetical value of the songs and ballads he altered, Scott and his friends, Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Leyden, and others, indulged in what they described as the "mystification" of their acquaintances by these semi-forgeries. Like theirs, Villemarque's work had usually an historical or legendary ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... returned to the skies by the same conveyance in which he had descended. This legend was communicated by Clark to Schoolcraft, when the latter was compiling his "Notes on the Iroquois." Mr. Schoolcraft, pleased with the poetical cast of the story and the euphonious name, made confusion worse confounded by transferring the hero to a distant region and identifying him with Manabozho, a fantastic divinity of the Ojibways. Schoolcraft's volume, absurdly entitled "The Hiawatha Legends," has ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... composed by men of poetical talents, in some of which the adventures of the gods were celebrated and in others the vices and absurdities of individuals were attacked with much asperity. The works of all those poets probably died with them; nor is there any reason to believe ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... and place much less violated than they frequently are on our own stage. The grandeur and gravity of the subject, the rank and dignity of the personages, the tragical catastrophe, and the strict award of poetical justice, might satisfy the most rigid admirer of Grecian rules. The translator has thought it necessary to adhere to the original by distinguishing the first act (or Proem) from the four which follow it: but the distinction ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... romance about Chris and the young man. Christina Shine had only recently been raised to the pedestal in his fond heart formerly occupied by an idol who had betrayed his youthful affections, disappointed his hopes, and outraged his sense of poetical fitness. He espoused her cause with his whole soul, ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Idealist,' and the name adhered to him. At two-and-twenty he published a volume of poems, obviously derived from study of Shelley, but marked with a certain freshness of impersonal aspiration which was pleasant enough. They had the note of sincerity rather than the true poetical promise. The book had no successor. Having found this utterance for his fervour, Egremont began a series of ramblings over sea, in search, he said, of himself. The object seemed to evade him; he returned to England from time to time, always in appearance more restless, but always ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... due weight which the squire gives to traditional saws and ancient opinions, yet I am happy to find that he makes a firm stand for the credit of this loving month, and brings to his aid a whole legion of poetical authorities; all which, I presume, have been conclusive with the young couple, as I understand they are perfectly willing to marry in May, and abide the consequences. In a few days, therefore, the wedding ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... reasons on which I based my instinctive inference. So I took up a strong strategic position. 'I have an intuition that I saw him in the village this morning,' I said. 'Family likeness, perhaps. I merely jumped at it as you spoke. A tall, languid young man; large, poetical eyes; an ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... Greeks (which Canova in a degree possessed), but united to it a readiness of invention and a simplicity of design truly astonishing. Though Canova was his superior in the manual part, high finishing, yet in the higher qualities, poetical feeling and invention, Flaxman was as superior to Canova as was Shakespeare to the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... one side of the hut there was a hog-pen and a small stable for a cow; but on the other the trees of the virgin forest, which had never been disturbed in that glen, overshadowed the roof. This somewhat poetical arrangement was actually the consequence of a compromise between the tenants of the cabin, the negro insisting on the accessories of his rude civilization, while the Indian required the shades of the woods to reconcile ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... comb behind, and a pair of tight cornucopias at the temples. What does our modern artist do but flare it to right and left, lift it wavily over her forehead, revel in the oriental superabundance, and really seem to swear we shall admire it, against our traditions of the vegetable, as a poetical splendour. The head of the heiress is in a Jovian shower. Marigolds are in her hand. The whole square of canvas is like a meadow on the borders of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... After Shih Hsiang-yn's return home, Pao-y and the other inmates spent their time, as of old, in rambling about in the garden in search of pleasure, and in humming poetical compositions. But without further reference to their doings, let us take up our narrative with ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... "Yuan," says Arthur H. Smith, was "a man of a wholly different stripe" from the one removed, and "if left to himself he would speedily have exterminated the whole Boxer brood, but being hampered by 'confidential instructions' from the palace, he could do little but issue poetical proclamations, and revile his subordinates for failure to ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... time of taxes, shall consult a great critic employed in the custom-house, in order to propose what tax may be proper to put upon knives, seals, rings, hangings, wrought-beds, gowns and petticoats, where any of those commodities bear mottoes, or are worked upon poetical grounds. ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... remarked, that the conditions under which each worked were completely different from those surrounding the other. Izaak Walton, the author of many singularly interesting biographies, and of the quaint half-poetical Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man's Recreation, the great classic "Discourse of Fish and Fishing," was a London tradesman, while his equally celebrated contemporary John Evelyn, author of Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees, the classic ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... side is terribly exaggerated. But all strong natures like hers are given to exaggeration. Wendell Phillips never tells the truth, and yet he always tells the truth. He is a man of strong convictions, and always pronounces his conviction strongly. He has a poetical nature, is a word-painter, and, therefore, indulges in the license of the poet and painter. Mrs. Stowe belongs to this school of writers. The lamb and lion are united in the Negro character. Mrs. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... say factitious, standard of taste, according to which, just as,—though a hemorrhage from the nose, howsoever ill-timed, distressing, or even dangerous to the patient, is comic,—one from the lungs is poetical and tragic; and an extravasation of blood about the heart is not inappropriate to the demise of the most romantic civil hero, (who would seem, indeed, capable of escaping an earthly immortality only by means of pulmonary disease ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... follies for her sake. Ah well, there were gallants enough. And one found favor in madame's eyes; at least, so it seemed to him. In the summer months they promenaded the gardens of La Place Royale, on the Cours de la Reine, always at dusk. When it grew colder this gallant, who was of a poetical turn of mind, read her verses from Voiture, Malherbe, or ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath |
