"Poetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... creation was the crowning wonder, to which all else had, in a manner, tended.... Truly when we think of him,—newly made in GOD'S image,—surveying this world, yet fresh with the dew of its birth, and beautiful as it came from the Hands of its Maker,—it seems scarcely the language of poetry that then "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of GOD ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... as only an exile can know "how bitter is the bread of dependence and how steep the stranger's stairs." It was during his exile that Dante completed his immortal Divina Commedia, the child of his thought "cradled into poetry by wrong." Dante never again saw Florence for which he yearned with all the intensity of the Hebrew captives weeping on the rivers of Babylon for a sight of Jerusalem. Death came to free his undaunted soul in the year 1321 while ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... to the songs of the birds. The thoughts and feelings aroused or suggested by these songs are the topics of much of the world's enduring poetry. Longfellow, in his "Birds of Killing-worth" (Tales of a Wayside Inn) sings exquisitely of the use and beauty and worth of birds. Shelley, in his "Skylark", describes in glowing verse "the unbodied joy" that "singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest". Wordsworth ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... with bull-dog tenacity for three years, I should be able to learn something. Then the selection of a school was the next problem. By nature, there is no branch of study whatever which appeals to my taste. Nix on languages or literature! The new poetry was all Greek to me; I could not make out one single line of twenty. Since I detested every kind of study, any kind of study should have been the same to me. Thinking thus, I happened to pass front ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... but greatly differing as to their number and order, nature and power. For the gods of the philosophers 'know nothing of disease or old age or pain, and have not to cross the resounding Acheron;' nor do the philosophers accept as gods Strifes, or Prayers, which are found in poetry;[121] nor will they admit Terror and Fear as gods or as the sons of Ares. And on many points also they are at variance with the legislators, as Xenophanes bade the Egyptians, if they regarded Osiris as mortal, not to honour ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Emmanuel de Roda, who was a man of letters, a 'rara aves' in Spain. He liked Latin poetry, had read some Italian, but very naturally gave the palm to the Spanish poets. He welcomed me warmly, begged me to come and see him again, and told me how sorry he had ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... evidence of civilization. It addresses itself to the taste, and affords opportunity for its improvement. Taste is an element of mind. It is the spring-source of the fine arts, of all the embellishments of life, of poetry, and all that pertains to elegant literature. It is the grand refiner of life. Whatsoever cultivates the taste, develops properly its activities, and refines and elevates its pleasures, does a good office for man. And this is just the proper office ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... Percy had been, amongst other things, an actor of indifferent calibre; he had helped a barman in Canada, carried a chain for a railroad survey, done a bit of rubber-planting, and written poetry. He was, in fact, a man of many parts, and cultivated a frivolous demeanour and an eyeglass. Unkind acquaintances described him as the most monumental ass that has yet been produced by a painstaking world; personally, I think the picture a trifle harsh. Percy meant well; and it wasn't really his ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... surprised with the number of works I crept through; among which, my favourites were Byron's works throughout, with his life by Moore; Butler's Analogy, White's Farriery, and Dwight's Theology, which last is as full of poetry ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... might we call M. Alphonse Daudet an artist in pastels, so adroitly does he suggest the very bloom of color. No doubt M. Coppee's contes have not the sharpness of M. de Maupassant's, nor the brilliancy of M. Daudet's—but what of it? They have qualities of their own; they have sympathy, poetry, and a power of suggesting pictures not exceeded, I think, by those of either M. de Maupassant or M. Daudet. M. Coppee's street views in Paris, his interiors, his impressionist sketches of life under the shadows of Notre Dame, are convincingly successful. They are intensely to ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... impressed, for, starting with no other initiation into the mysteries of foreign relations than having had a father born in Wales and having spent his vacations in England, probably in the lake region studying the topography of Wordsworth's poetry,—a certain oft detected resemblance to Wilson must make Wordsworth his favorite poet, as he was Wilson's,—in ten days was he not a great Secretary of State; and in three months the greatest Secretary of State? To be sure, back of him was the strongest nation on the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... 'that the works of art, of poetry, or of music, which we possess are a grand inheritance from the past; and I would do all I could to preserve them intact for those ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... he'd be just as much the other way. He'd read to her, and he had a good many books, poetry, and all kinds of things stowed away in the part of the cave he called his own. And he'd talk about other countries that he'd been in, and the strange people he'd seen, by the hour together, while ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... rough, he was capable of a smoother polish, of a glossier enamel, than a more superficial, trivial nature. He was ever deeply thoughtful, and capable of profounder moods of meditation than the lightly-moved children of the South. Sighs, as from the boughs of Yggdrasil, ever breathed through his poetry from of old. He was a smith, an artificer, and a delver in mines from the beginning. The old Teutonic Pan was far more musical and awe-inspiring than his Grecian counterpart The Noon-spirit of the North was more wild than that of the South. How all the ancient North was alive in its Troll-haunted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... farther our forthcoming book, nor to forestall the critics in any more extracts, we shall lay before the reader two or three samples of work done according to this system. CARLYLE has furnished our raw material. His pages are so full of poetry that little time need be expended in selecting a fit piece for working up. See now if these be not sonnets which BOWLES might have been proud to claim. Each one is warranted to contain a thought; an hour or so would suffice for the completion ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... my success I rode over to dinner one night with one of the Companies in the Battalion which was in billets about a mile and a half away. Riding home along the flat, winding, water-logged lane by the light of the stars I nearly started off on the poetry lines again, but I got ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... than a peace where each sleeps on its arms,—which is but an Armed Peace. Such for weary years has been the condition of nations. Is Germany determined to prolong the awful curse? Will her most enlightened people, with poetry, music, literature, philosophy, science, and religion as constant ministers, to whom has been opened in rarest degree the whole book of knowledge, persevere in a brutal policy belonging to another age, and utterly alien to that superior civilization ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... as she was called; for to have answered to the name of Jasmine would have been to proclaim her sex at once. Even the grim old master smiled at her through his horn spectacles as she entered the school-house of a morning, and any graceful turn in her poetry or scholarly diction in her prose was sure to win for her his unsparing praise. Many an evening he invited the "young noble" to his house to read over chapters from Confucius and the poems of Le Taipoh; and years afterward, when he died, among his most cherished papers were ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... who is important as the first notable champion of English literature, and also as the pioneer editor of medieval poetry. In 1721 he began, with a group of Zrich friends, the publication of Discourse der Mahlern, a literary magazine for which the English Spectator served as a model. A defense of Milton, published in 1740, brought on the controversy ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... passionate lover of poetry; there even remain some poetical works of his composition; and he bears a rank among the Provencal poets or TROBADORES, who were the first of the modern Europeans that distinguished themselves by attempts of ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... poetry in my soul?" cried Andy. "You bet I have—tons and tons of it! Just listen to ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... affected the taste for chimneys, any more than his sinister prophecies concerning Elizabethan houses have been fulfilled; chimneys have continued, and paper-work houses remain still to help us if need be to understand the poetry, the drama, and the novel ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... heard—extols it above history and above philosophy, as the more divine in its origin, the more immediately and intimately salutary and sanative in its use. Are not Shakspeare and Milton two of our greatest moral teachers? CRITICISM opens to us the poetry we possess; and, like a magnanimous kingly protector, shelters and fosters all its springing growths. What is criticism as a science? Essentially this—FEELING KNOWN—that is, affections of the heart and imagination become understood subject-matter ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... lying about, and verses of poetry which were like pointed barbs in the flesh of Ebenezer Brown. But when the old man turned to Cairns suggesting the dismissal of the reporter, he received ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... morning until late at night, but at the hasty public meals. The love of trade is a reason why the literature of America is to remain for ever unprotected 'For we are a trading people, and don't care for poetry:' though we DO, by the way, profess to be very proud of our poets: while healthful amusements, cheerful means of recreation, and wholesome fancies, must fade before the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... Armada. A country where the mountains are impassable, and the fiords the only roads, just suited his taste. It even inspired him with a poem, Rornsdal Fiord, which appeared in Blackwood for April, 1883, and it gave him health, which is not always, like poetry, a pure gift ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... soldiers in my family. We have a marshal of France and two officers who died on the field of honor. I have perhaps obeyed a law of heredity. I believe rather that my imagination has carried me away. I saw war through my reveries of epic poetry. In my fancy I dwelt only upon the intoxication of victory, the triumphant flourish of trumpets and women throwing flowers to the victor. And then I loved the sonorous words of the great captains, the dramatic representations of martial glory. My father was in the third regiment of zouaves, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... published some very promising poems. Just because he happened to be a negro, a vast amount of adulation was heaped upon him. He showed the right sort of stuff, however, by not having his head turned and by going to work. Since those first publications he has done much creditable work both in poetry and in prose. His poetry is of the very best and his prose work has fine value. He writes genuine dialect, and he goes in for fine sentiment. Mr. Dunbar's volumes are ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... literature had appeared, nor had the tragedy of the world yet brought forth any great poetry. Monographs on special phases of German character, thought and culture, were plentiful in the bookstalls, and translations of Bernhardi and Treitschke sold ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... of its artistic development stands almost on a level with uncivilized peoples; Hellas developed with incredible rapidity out of its religious conceptions the myth and the worshipped idol, and out of these that marvellous world of poetry and sculpture, the like of which history has not again to show. In Latium no other influences were powerful in public and private life but prudence, riches, and strength; it was reserved for the Hellenes to feel the blissful ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... but he tie me up and then he say I am pretty—jolly he say, and he demand I show him to speak the French. So he commence to read my book of when I was little, the "Lectures Enfantines" and I make him say the little poetry that is on the page 3 and it say: "Cher petit oreiller," and then my great sister enter and she have on her bodice of Sundays and very much the powder of rice on the nose. And she say: "Go in the bed-chamber and amuse yourself, and I talk with this Monsieur Americain." ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... the only bond between them: there was an indefinable poetry of memories and dreams,—their own? or those of the men and women who had loved before them, who had been before them,—in them?... Without a word, perhaps without knowing it, they preserved the fascination ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... most brilliant incidents for their songs or ballads, which were chanted at the royal festivals and at the table of the Inca. *8 In this manner, a body of traditional minstrelsy grew up, like the British and Spanish ballad poetry, by means of which the name of many a rude chieftain, that might have perished for want of a chronicler, has been borne down the tide of rustic melody to ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... tranquil poetry of evening which gave to the bricks of the balustrade their orange tones, so soothing and so pure; in spite of the religious atmosphere of the hour, which softened the voices of the children and wafted them towards us, desire crept through my veins like the match to the bonfire. After ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... "Why, it seems to me that you have some beautiful sentiment, set to rhyme, to express almost every thought! You must love poetry. Does—does Dorothy ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... part of the century. In that day it would not have done to proclaim it, so tenacious is public opinion of its errors; but since that time, naval officers of rank have written on the subject, and stripped the Nile, Trafalgar, &c, of their poetry, to give the world plain, nautical, and probable accounts of both those great achievements. The truth, as relates to both battles, was just as little like the previously published ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... why, having this opinion of the present state of poetry in England, and having had it long, as my friends and others well know—possessing, or having possessed too, as a writer, the ear of the public for the time being—I have not adopted a different plan in my own compositions, and endeavoured to correct ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... to be your father, boy, and have done, in all things, the reverse of what I advised you. Therefore, I know I was wrong. We may sneer and speak of poetry when the words proceed from another, my boy; but, as inevitable as death, there comes to every man the knowledge that he stands accursed of Nature, who hasn't heard the voice of his own child ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... English people need to be told morning, noon, and night, not indeed the particular national characteristic which they have, since for this no particular name could be found, but rather what its evidences are; as, for instance, spontaneity in design, a passion for the mystical in poetry and the arts; a power in water-colour, in which they are perhaps quite alone, and certainly the first in Europe; and, above all, the chief, the master thing of ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... sympathetic environment, and again they illumined their religious tradition with all the culture which their environment could afford. The mingling of thought gave birth to a great literature, both creative and critical; to a striking body of lyric poetry; to a systematic theology, and ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... left out when speaking of the poetry of Daffodils. His stanzas are well known, while his sister's prose description of them is the most poetical of all: "They grew among the mossy stones; . . . some rested their heads on these stones as on a pillow, ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... dialogues. There is no mystic enthusiasm or rapturous contemplation of ideas. Whether we attribute this change to the greater feebleness of age, or to the development of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry in Plato's own mind, or perhaps, in some degree, to a carelessness about artistic effect, when he was absorbed in abstract ideas, we can hardly be wrong in assuming, amid such a variety of indications, derived from style as well as ...
— Philebus • Plato
... extract will be as much as the reader will have patience for. I think the verses are tolerably good for a boy not yet thirteen years old. The versification is, perhaps, as correct as that of most prize poems, and there is some go in the poetry. It cannot, however, lay claim to much originality. Even in the short extract just given I see the influence of three poets, Virgil, Scott, and Byron. The best that can be expected from the poetry of a boy is that he should give evidence ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... a confidante. But there lingered in his mind a strange and inexplicable bitterness towards the defunct Souris, who had first been the husband of this woman, who had had the flower of her youth and of her soul, and had even robbed her of some of her poetry. The memory of the dead husband marred the happiness of the living husband, and this posthumous jealousy tormented his heart ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... antiphonal singing and in the end dialogue and action. By the middle of the fourteenth century the laud came to be called "Divozione." After being written in a number of meters it finally adhered to the ottava rima, the stanza generally used in the popular poetry of the fifteenth century. It was the custom to sing these dramatic lauds or "Divozioni" in the oratories. Every fraternity had a collection of such lauds and that they were performed with much detail is ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... Americans before Cooper had written fiction at all, Washington Irving had been the only one to cease from a timid imitation of British models. But Irving's material was local, rather than national. It was Cooper who first told the story of the conquest of the American continent. He caught the poetry and the romantic thrill of both the American forest and the sea; he dared to break away from literary conventions. His reward was an immediate and widespread success, together with a secure place in the history of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... obtained. There are so many good books, that there is no necessity for wasting your precious time upon crude, ill-digested, or unprofitable works. You may, however, devote some time pleasantly and profitably, to reading the best English classics, both in poetry and prose; which, for the want of a better term, I shall include under the head of Literary, for the purpose of cultivating the imagination, improving the taste, and enriching your style. These should be selected with great discrimination and care, with reference both to their style ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... hundred years ago, when Rome was mistress of the world, and the Romans were braver and stronger than any one else, there lived a boy of thirteen whose name is still remembered. Lucius Valerius was fond of his lessons, but most of all did he love poetry; so, although he was only thirteen years old, he made up his mind that he would try to win the gold medal and ivory lyre which were given every five years to the boy who ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and replied: "In your case, the contrary ought to have happened. You would not be here, if she had had the idea only in her head!" Then Monsieur Beaurain was seized with rage, and turning to his wife, he said: "Do you see to what you have brought us with your poetry? And now we shall have to go before the Courts, at our age, for a breach of morals! And we shall have to shut up the shop, sell our good will and go to some other neighborhood! That's what it ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Rig Veda; the whole moral atmosphere is now surcharged with hocus-pocus, mysticism, religiosity, instead of the cheerful, real religion which, however formal, is the soul of the Rik. In the Br[a]hmanas there is no freshness, no poetry. There is in some regards a more scrupulous outward morality, but for the rest there is only cynicism, bigotry, and dullness. It is true that each of these traits may be found in certain parts of the Rig Veda, but it is not true that they represent there the ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... time, Governor of Ch'ang-sha. His wife, Lin, had given him a son named Ya-nei, or "In-the-Palace," who had that year reached the age of sixteen. He was well endowed, although not without tendency to wantonness; yet he had from childhood diligently studied the classics and poetry. He had only one really extravagant failing; to satisfy his appetite he needed more than three bushels of rice every day, and over two pounds of meat. We will say nothing of his drinking. In spite of all this, ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... of 'Georgian Poetry' carries to the end of a seventh year the presentation of chosen examples from the work of contemporary poets belonging to the younger generation. Of the eighteen writers included, nine appear in the series for the first time. The representation of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... sarcasm. In their other religious festivals also, choruses of fauns and bacchants chaunted songs and held up individuals to public ridicule. From such an humble germe has sprung up an art which in all parts of the world has, for centuries, administered to the advancement of poetry and elegant literature, and to the ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... of considerable influence and experience, and he was enterprising and progressive. He published most of the principal books of the day. The Edgeworths sent him their novels from Ireland, and Cowper his poetry from Olney. One day he gave the reading world Mrs. Barbauld's works for the young, and the next, the speculations of reformers and social philosophers whose rationalism deterred many another publisher. It was for printing the Rev. ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... I! (ejaculated the youth). Rhapsodists have a very exact acquaintance with epic poetry, I know, of course; but they are empty-pated ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... Of all the flock he should be the least black. It might be that in the energy of his pleasures he had exceeded other men, as he did exceed all other men in everything that he did and said. Who was so clever? who so bright? who so handsome, so full of poetry and of manly grace? How sweet was his voice, how fine his gait, how gracious his smile! And then in his brow there was that look of command which she had ever recognized in her father's face as belonging to his race as a Hotspur,—only added to it was a godlike ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... last died, and that miserably, in his bed. The innate taste of the Stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in the Court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial relations with the Low Countries and political associations with France. Poetry and scholarship were encouraged, if poorly rewarded—one remembers Dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a benefice—and relics and old records show that even in those stirring times life was not without its refinements and tasteful ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... been drawn by wit and curiosity, some are literal and real, as between poetry and painting, two arts which pursue the same end, by the operation of the same mental faculties, and which differ only as the one represents things by marks permanent and natural, the other by signs accidental and arbitrary. The one, therefore, is more easily and generally ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... doctor, I saw in a place called Cremorne Gardens a silly fellow of a Frenchman—present company excepted—try to fly with wings strapped to his arms. Of course he came a cropper and broke his back. I remember my dear old mother shaking her head and telling over to me that fine bit of poetry: ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... tall," linked forever to the dwarf Perrywinkle; there was my friend Porphyro, the poet, with his delicate genius shrivelled in the glare of the youngest Miss Lucifer's eyes; there they were, Beauty and the Beast, Pride and Humility, Bluebeard and Fatima, Prose and Poetry, Riches and Poverty, Youth and Crabbed Age— Oh, sorrowful procession! All so wretched, when perhaps all might have been so happy if they had only paired differently! I halted a moment to let the weird shapes drift by. As the last of the train melted into the darkness, my ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... As is natural in a period of tremendous political upheaval pamphlets sell by the thousand, speeches of Lenin and Trotsky are only equalled in popularity by Demian Biedny's more or less political poetry. Pamphlets and books on Marx, on the war, and particularly on certain phases of the revolution, on different aspects of economic reconstruction, simply written explanations of laws or policies vanish almost as soon as they are put on the stalls. The reading of this kind has been something ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... questions about his ambition, which was to be a teacher of English at Harvard or Yale. Not very consistently, but without ever wearying of the jest, they shadowed him to find out if he did not write poetry; and while no one had actually caught him, he was ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... had lain down to die, and had only succeeded in falling asleep, the Diana of the Tchoupitoulas, ranging the magnolia groves with bow and quiver, came upon them in all the poetry of their hope-forsaken strength and beauty, and fell sick of love. We say not whether with Zephyr Grandissime or Epaminondas Fusilier; that, for the ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... it would read like a burlesque, so I translate his narrative into my own dialect. He was a quick, clever lad, and the culture bestowed in a genteel academy was too narrow for him. He read a great deal of romance, and still more poetry. He neglected his school lessons, and he was dismissed after a few years as an ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... below it. As the engineer drew near he saw the stranger was not alone. Under shelter of the rocks a girl lay stretched at length on a loose camel's-hair rug; her head was hatless; in her hand she held, half open, a volume of poetry. She looked up as Eustace passed, and he noted at a glance that she was dark and pretty. The Cornish type once more; bright black eyes, glossy brown hair, a rich complexion, a ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... learned nevertheless. It would be a good thing to demonstrate this fact to a class; then the pupils would be satisfied to use the most economical procedure. The plan holds good whether the matter be prose or poetry. ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... lad, in a rare moment of self-expression, "you know the poetry says he cherished his sight and touch by temperance; that an idiot might see a straggling line and be content, but he had an eye that winced at false work, and loved the true. When it says his finger-tips were perfected by delicate rectitude of use, I think it means doing everything as it is done ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Park deg. we walk'd, deg.1 My friend and I, by chance we talk'd Of Lessing's famed Laocooen; And after we awhile had gone In Lessing's track, and tried to see 5 What painting is, what poetry— Diverging to another thought, "Ah," cries my friend, "but who hath taught Why music and the other arts Oftener perform aright their parts 10 Than poetry? why she, than they, ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... me flowers and writes me poetry. We exchange," she explained, and there came to her eyes a delightfully critical appreciation of her ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... soars the thistle-down, Lightly does it float—, Lightly seeds of care are sown, Little do we note. Watch life's thistles bud and blow, Oh, 'tis pleasant folly; But when all life's paths they strew, Then comes melancholy. Poetry ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which Sir James G. Frazer has studied in his Balder, London, 1913, pp. 95-152. The Fight with the Dragon is celebrated outside folk-tales in the lives of the saints (whence St. George, the titular saint of England, gets his emblem) in the saga of Siegfried, and in the poetry of Schiller, where it is made the subject of a moral apologue. The Medusa-witch, who transforms into stone, or destroys life in other ways, is quite a familiar figure in folk tales, but is usually thwarted, as here, by some ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... German keeps only as a high poetic word "ross", which is identical in origin with the English work-a-day "horse", and replaces it by "pferd", whose congener the English "palfrey" is almost confined to poetry and romance), the persistence of evolution till it becomes revolution in languages like English or Persian which have practically ceased to be inflectional languages, and many other problems. Into these Darwin did not enter, and they require a fuller investigation ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... has been more celebrated in poetry than any other song-bird. Shelley's famous poem is too long to quote and too symmetrical to present in fragmentary form. It is almost as musical as the sweet ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [August, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... Higgins, suddenly. 'Hoo speaks plain out what's in her mind. Hoo doesn't comprehend th' Union for all that. It's a great power: it's our only power. I ha' read a bit o' poetry about a plough going o'er a daisy, as made tears come into my eyes, afore I'd other cause for crying. But the chap ne'er stopped driving the plough, I'se warrant, for all he were pitiful about the daisy. He'd too much mother-wit for that. Th' Union's the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Cloud Cote, Eve's friends were patiently awaiting her return. Nolan was reading poetry aloud to himself in the roof garden, and Lieutenant Ames was laboriously picking chords on the piano, with Marie near him strumming on ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... but a few statesmen. There are few enough, but a few great in medicine, or in art, or in poetry. There are a few great travelers. But Dr. Livingstone stood alone as the great Missionary Traveler, the bringer-in of civilization; or rather the pioneer of civilization—he that cometh before—to ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... better. I'll ride up here in a couple of weeks' time with some books. You may keep them as long as you will. All winter, if you like. When I can get up here, we can talk them over, you and Landis and I. I'll try to choose some without pictures. There will be stories and some poetry, too." ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... although Watts and the Wesleys furnish the foundation, and the materials of the superstructure are largely drawn from Doddridge, Cowper, Toplady, Montgomery, and others of kindred spirit, yet many beautiful things have been added from the later religious poetry, which are no less fervid in feeling, while less pronounced in doctrinal expression. These hymns are arranged in judicious general divisions, which are again analytically separated into special topics placed in logical sequence. After the hymns follow thirty-eight doxologies, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Lady Mabel, much confused. "I have just been throwing away my powers of elocution in an attempt to make Colonel L'Isle perceive the beauties of a piece of model poetry, moulded in the purest Spanish taste. I thought him gifted with some poetic feeling, but he shows not the slightest sense of ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... assure you that it is true, and if you will ask him why he so frequently visits the valley, he certainly will not deny that he goes there for the purpose of meeting handsome Nanna, the daughter of old Mr. Lonner. He reads poetry to her, and under the pretence of teaching her the guitar, he finds an opportunity of pressing her pretty ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... a popular idea that opium gives pleasant dreams, and that it takes us away into the land of poetry, to which it is supposed to have conducted Coleridge and De Quincey. As a matter of fact, there are but few persons who get more out of opium than relief of pain, sense of comfort, and next day's remorses. The opium dream is not for all. I have known only four or five cases of habitual and distinct ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... save read, from morning to night. As my taste and appetite were gratified in nothing else, I indemnified myself by becoming a glutton of books. Accordingly, I believe, I read almost all the old romances, old plays, and epic poetry, in that formidable collection, and no doubt was unconsciously amassing materials for the task in which it has been my lot to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... of Edward the First, and it closed with the funeral of his mother, Queen Eleonore of Provence—a woman whom England was not able to thank for one good deed during her long and stormy reign. She had been a youthful beauty, she wrote poetry, and she had never scandalised the nation by any impropriety of womanly conduct. But these three statements close the list of her virtues. She was equally grasping, unscrupulous, and extravagant. In her old age she retired to the Convent of Amesbury, where her two granddaughters, Mary of England, ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... facts as significant. Volitional and inhibitory faculties largely developed; may be said to be a man of strong will-power end self-control. The following facts may be noted as possibly symptomatic of neurasthenia; fondness for the poetry of Whitman and Browning (see Nordau); tendency to dabble in irregular systems of medical practice; pronounced nervous and emotional irritability during adolescence; aversion to young women in society; stubborn clinging to celibacy. In posture, gait and general movements, the following may ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... which is presupposed in the Christian doctrine of Atonement, as the mediation of forgiveness through the suffering and death of Christ: and it is a truth also, if I am not much mistaken, to which all the highest poetry, which is also the deepest vision of the human mind, bears witness. We may distinguish natural law and moral law as sharply as we please, and it is as necessary sometimes as it is easy to make these sharp and absolute distinctions; but there ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... the tearing of sundry materials, and then the whirring and burning and tappings of Dulce's sewing machine, like a dozen or two of woodpeckers at work on an iron tree. And no one quoted any more poetry, for prose was heaped up everywhere about them, and their heads ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... hanaimosarke]; born of the earth, insensible to pain, bloodless. We will not reproach the poet for these mistakes; they were then generally believed, and were perpetuated long afterwards, until the exploring eye of scientific observation was directed upon them. And in minor poetry, whose principal merit lies in rhythm and harmony, we must not ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... the silken threads, and crawled sullenly out of sight. Withdrawing the key, she toyed with it, and glanced curiously at the mausoleum. Taking her handkerchief, she carefully brushed off the cobwebs that festooned the minarets, and murmured that fragment of Persian poetry which she once heard the absent master repeat to his mother, and which she had found, only a few days before, quoted by an Eastern traveller: "The spider hath woven his web in the imperial palaces; and the own hath sung her watch-song on the towers ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... she continued, 'is language to express the emotions which Such a scene calls up in the bosom! Poetry alone is the voice of the spiritual world, and we, who are not poets, must borrow the language of the gifted sons of Song. Oh, Enos, I wish you were a poet! But you feel poetry, I know you do. I have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... appearance which he always carried over his shoulder on the end of a long hickory stick and which I had by investigation at different times found to contain everything from clean linen to Sanskrit poetry for father. To-day I found the manuscript score of a new opera by no less a person than Hurter himself, which he insisted on having me hum through with him ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... where beauty of rhythm, melody of sound and nobility of thought were once regarded as the true tests, we now have in freak forms of poetry the exaltation of the grotesque and brutal. Hundreds of poets are feebly echoing the "barbaric yawp" of Walt Whitman, without the redeeming merit of his occasional sublimity ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... Robin is not precisely like our little American friend whom we call by that name, although, as the lines of poetry quoted above will show, in two ways he is the same as ours: he has a red breast, and he is the bird whom every one loves. Of all the little brothers of the air, in every land and clime, the pretty, jolly, neighborly Robin ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... class. You have reason good—for I find myself strangely disposed to be a very indulgent ghostly adviser on this occasion; and, notwithstanding 'you are the most offending Soul alive' (that is, if it is a crime to write elegant Poetry,) yet if you will come and dine with me on Thursday, and go thro' the proper course of penitence which shall be prescribed I will strive hard to assist you in expiating these poetical trespasses on this side of purgatory. Nay more, if it rests with me to direct your future ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... mind and brain work in mysterious ways. Radmore will never know, to the day of his death, the effect that this curious night drive had on the whole of his future life. He was not a man to quote poetry, even to himself, but to-night there came into his mind some words he had heard muttered by a corporal ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... predominance of the nervous system in his organization, excitable, and therefore needed and relished excitement—the more intense the better. He found this in his keen political tastes, in imaginative literature, and in fiction. In the highest kind of poetry he enjoyed the sweet pain of tears; and he all his life had a steady liking, even a hunger, for a good novel. This refreshed, lightened, and diverted his mind from the strain of his incessant exegesis. He used always to say that Sir Walter ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... thinking. "Blister wouldn't be bad," he announced. "Something about the vister causin' a blister. I don't know as you are aware of the fact, Sue, but I wrote consider'ble poetry when I was a young feller. Mrs. Crow's got 'em all tied up in a pink ribbon. It's a mighty funny thing that she won't ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... moral reflections begin again, and I copy no more diary. Mrs. Brewton liked my names for the twins. "They'll pronounce it Loyo'la," she said, "and that sounds right lovely." Later she sent me her paper for the Golden Daughters. It is full of poetry and sentiment and all the things I have missed. She wrote that if she had been sure the agent had helped Aqua Marine to swallow the ring, she would have let them smash his boxes. And I think she was a little in love with Shot-gun Smith. But what a pity we shall soon have no more Mrs. Brewtons! ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... Let her be happy, if she could keep her lover from him! And suddenly, he stopped in his tracks, for there on a sandwich-board just in front of him were the words: "Daphne Wing. Pantheon. Daphne Wing. Plastic Danseuse. Poetry of Motion. To-day at three ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the school-house of experience. All the discoveries of the young journalist were not of this grim character. He made another discovery altogether different, a real gem of its kind. The drag-net of a newspaper catches all sorts of poets and poetry, good, bad, and indifferent—oftener the bad and indifferent, rarely the good. The drag-net of the Free Press was no exception to this rule; but, one day, it fetched up from the depths of the hard commonplaces of our New England town life a genuine pearl. We will let Mr. Garrison ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... should have some book of beautiful poetry to while away an hour. You will blame me for not bringing one. Do not. I would sooner listen to your voice; and, indeed, there is a subject on which I wish to ask your ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... he screamed. "Oh, creation! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Oh, Lord! making love on the sly! getting spooney! taking romantic walks! reading poetry! and all to his own wife! Oh, ho, ho! Ha, ha, ha, ha! And he stole off with her at the masquerade, and made a 'passionate declaration'—to his—good thunder!—his wife! his own wife! Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! I'll ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... am afraid we are hardly ready for that. And there is scant time. I must be content to do without the poetry, this year, and ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... composition; to these I answer that Nature is the best Dictator, for all the hard dry studied rules that ever were prescribed will not enable any person to form an Air any more than the four and twenty letters, and strict Grammatical rules will qualify a scholar for composing a piece of Poetry, or properly adjusting a Tragedy without a Genius. It must be Nature; Nature must lay the Foundation, Nature must give the Thought. But perhaps some may think I mean and intend to throw Art entirely out of Question. I answer by no Means, for the more Art is displayed, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... Herr Rosegger's pen, but it exhibits a delicacy of touch, a keen penetration into the mysteries of human life, and a deep insight into nature in her various moods; and under all there is a strong current of romance and a great sense of the poetry of things—qualities that have made its author one of the foremost prose ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... am in such a fix. You remember Mary Smith? She has persuaded a young doctor friend of hers to start an album for original poems. He is such a nice fellow, though perhaps not very fond of poetry, if left to himself. But he has bought the album and has asked her to write on the first page. So she has come to me about it; and I am writing to ask if you would be a great brick and help us, because we get mixed up so with the feet, and I know it is nothing to you to write ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 9, 1914 • Various
... plans. Moreover, I possessed a clerk—a knave who had killed an abbot and fled from the monastery—a man of poetry, wit and sentiment. Whenever the letters lacked for ardor, and the lovers had grown too timid, him I set to forge a postscript, or indite new missives, which the rogue did most prettily, having studied love-making under the monks. And thus, Sir Fool, I courted and ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... on the hearthrug and stared very hard at the little volume of Henley's poetry that ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... Bor. Corpus Poeticum Boreale. The Poetry of the Old Northern Tongue from the earliest times to the thirteenth century. Edited by Gudbrand Vigfusson, M.A., and F. York Powell, M.A. 2 vols. ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... to make clear the real merits of her pet; she only knew that Poppy was more loving and lovable, more sympathetic and comprehending, than the majority of humans. She could count on Poppy's never jarring on any mood, whether grave or gay. Poppy adored listening to poetry read aloud, sitting immovable save for slowly blinking eyes for an hour at a stretch. She even had an appreciation for music, often remaining in the parlour throughout her mistress's practice period, and sometimes purring an accompaniment to tunes she especially ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... isn't quite well seen, even in Venice," Mrs. Erwin explained. "But she's rich, and her conversazioni are perfectly brilliant. She's very artistic, and she writes poetry,—Polish poetry. I wish she could hear you sing, Lydia! I know she'll be frantic to see you again. But I don't see how it's to be managed; her house isn't one you can take a young girl to. And I can't ask ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... that she did not. She had fancied that he was not quite— she hardly thought that ladies did read his works to any extent. "Cowper was my favourite poet in my youth," she said, "and I was very fond of Mrs. Hemans and Mrs. Barbauld. Their poetry is at once elegant and elevated in tone and spirit. I hope you ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... shouted the judge, rapping vigorously. "The sentence is this: the prisoner shall stand on his head for two seconds, then recite a piece of poetry, and then—in the course ...
— The Children's Portion • Various
... inviting; so much so, that I felt nowhere else so soon and so perfectly at home as here. Its people seem to be possessed of every virtue, and preeminent among them all, is that of hospitality which seems to be blooming in the hearts of all its citizens to-day, as did poetry in the mind of Shakespeare three hundred ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... had laboured to create. Even as prime minister of little Piedmont, he had spurned a parochial policy. He had no notion of a humble, semi-neutralised Italy, which should have no voice in the world. Cavour lacked the sense of poetry, of art; he hated fads, and he did not believe in the perfectibility of the human species, but his prose was the prose of the ancient Roman; it was the prose of empire. United Italy must be a great power ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... of her eye to the blade of a Yemen sword,—a comparison of frequent occurrence in Arabic poetry. ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... contrary! You shall hear Hymen—Cupids—not a cold machine; it is an organ alaif! She has privily sung to her Pericles, and ser, and if I wake not very late on Judgement. Day, I shall zen hear—but why should I talk poetry to you, to make you laugh? I have a divin' passion for zat woman. Do I not give her to a husband, and say, Be happy! onnly sing! Be kissed! be hugged! onnly give Pericles your voice. By Saint Alexandre! it is to say to ze heavens, Move on your way, so ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... those of the Homeric age. Story-telling is much appreciated by all classes. There are wandering minstrels who gain their livelihood by going from house to house to recite the stories in prose and poetry which they have learned by heart. Spindle and distaff are used in spinning the wool into yarn, which is then knit or woven into cloth ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... turn for dissipation, prevented his acquiring a perfect knowledge of any subject. His talents are however various, and this is sufficient for the circles in which he wishes to distinguish himself. He writes light poetry and fashionable letters, strums on the cithern, and pretends to draw with crayon. He took it into his head to attempt the portrait of Madam de Luxembourg; the sketch he produced was horrid. She said it did not in the least resemble ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... required the utmost efforts of their officers to prevent their rushing into profitless peril. The past and the present were triumphant; while, to many a mind of the higher cast, the future was, perhaps, more glittering than either. In the same imperishable eloquence of poetry— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... had no reason put before me for regarding such a change as anything but an unpleasant doom, which would cut me off, or ought to do so, from field sports, from poetry, from art, from science, from politics-for Christians, I was told, had nothing to do with the politics of this world-from man and all man's civilisation, in short; and leave to me, as the only two lawful indulgences, ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... moreover, a certain simplicity of taste which goes straight to the heart; and this is only to be found in the classics. In oratory, poetry, and every kind of literature, Emile will find the classical authors as he found them in history, full of matter and sober in their judgment. The authors of our own time, on the contrary, say little and talk much. To take their judgment as ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... class which get sore with drawing in a harness that God puts upon them, and in the adoption of which they have had nothing to do. A man of poetic sensibilities finds himself engaged in the pursuit of some humdrum calling. He sees how beautiful poetry is; he feels its influence upon his soul; but he has no power to create it. Another feels something of the divinity of music, but muscular facility has been denied to him so that he cannot play, and his voice is harsh or feeble so that he cannot sing. He melts and glows under the sway of eloquence, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... mean enough to pause and listen outside the sheltering yew-hedge near which they sat, might have questioned the poetry of their love-making, and have condemned an avowal of devotion punctuated by barbarous slang; but the silence that fell between them was full of tenderness and more easily understood than speech, and perhaps the moon—an inquisitive person ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... clustering around them many thrilling legends, stories, and events; some of them reaching far backward into the dim light of tradition; others having happened within the memory of men now living. All are strangely characteristic of the region, and are as full of poetry and pathos as the epics of ancient Greece, whose stories are the basis of the literature of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the by, we advise Miss Anthony not to go to jail. Perhaps she feels that she deserves some punishment for voting for General Grant, but it is a bailable offense. "Going to jail for the good of the cause" may do for poetry, but it becomes very prosaic when reduced to practice. Let Miss Anthony enter into bonds, adjust her spectacles, face her accusers, and argue her ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... And suddenly pointing me out with her finger: "You perhaps prefer this gentleman, who also writes poetry?" ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... history, and associate us with the great deeds of mutual ancestors. It is the romance of tradition that interests them; for they are great readers, these Americans, and know more of us, as a people, than we do of ourselves. We represent the warriors and the statesmen which they have clothed in the poetry of great deeds. If the nobility of this day disappoints them it is our own fault. When they learn that our greatness consists only in titles, we shall have little ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... practical without being prosaic. The rich ore of poetry, inseparable from all exquisitely fine organizations, lay beneath the daily current of his life, like golden veins in the bed of a stream, shining through the crystal waters that bore the most commonplace objects on their tide. He thoroughly ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... most onerous occupations of her life. To attire herself becomingly, and to give the Squire the dinners he best liked, in an order of succession so dexterously arranged as never to provoke satiety, were Mrs. Tempest's cardinal duties. In the intervals of her life she read modern poetry, unobjectionable French novels, and reviews. She did a little high-art needle-work, played Mendelssohn's Lieder, sang three French chansons which her husband liked, slept, and drank orange pekoe. In the consumption of this last article Mrs. ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... four evenings more to hear the rest of her novel, and another to discuss it. I shall get around to him in about a fortnight, at the rate things are going. He will keep. What do you suppose he is doing now? Writing poetry! He sent a piece a few days ago to the Century, and ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... curse, scorner with honor, been with men, beard with shared. For the last two we have a certain sympathy as archaisms, but with the rest we can make no terms whatever,—they must march out with no honors of war. The Yankee lingo is insoluble in poetry, and the accent would give a flavor of essence-pennyr'y'l to the very Beatitudes. It differs from Lowland Scotch as ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... he might have found it more difficult, when on his deathbed, to pardon his enemies. And, whatever people may say," continued Caderousse, in his native language, which was not altogether devoid of rude poetry, "I cannot help being more frightened at the idea of the malediction of the dead than ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... know.' Pringle had been in the Upper Fifth himself a year before, and he remembered that every summer term there descended upon that form a Bad Time in the shape of a poetry prize. A certain Indian potentate, the Rajah of Seltzerpore, had paid a visit to the school some years back, and had left behind him on his departure certain monies in the local bank, which were to be devoted to providing the Upper ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... test and at once air traffic was resumed and maintained. When this woman died the governments erected to her memory the finest and costliest monument that now stands on the whole world of Saturn. Of course, I went to see it. As I stood studying the poetry of the pillars, I looked overhead and saw one of the immense aerial ships carrying a pleasure party to a distant point. I cannot describe my feelings as I lingered in the presence of the sleeping ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... person who compared painting and poetry with one another was a man of refined feeling, who became aware of a similar effect produced upon himself by both arts. He felt both represent what is absent as if it were present, and appearance as if it were reality; that both deceived, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... poetry before breakfast," commanded Evelyn. "You might wait until I get strength to ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... ram, ruf: a contemptuous reference to the alliterative poetry which was at that time very popular, in preference even, it would seem, to rhyme, in the northern parts of the country, where the language was much more barbarous and unpolished than in ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Thwaite, where lived the survivors of a family long settled at Coniston—Miss Mary Beever, scientific and political; and Miss Susanna, who won Mr. Ruskin's admiration and affection by an interest akin to his own in nature and in poetry, and by her love for animals, and bright, unfailing wit. Both ladies were examples of sincerely religious life, "at once sources and loadstones of all good to the village," as he wrote in the preface to "Hortus Inclusus," ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... verse while the fermentation is yet going on, and before it has had time to compose itself and clarify into the ripe wine of expression. His rhymes are often faulty beyond the most provincial license even of Burns himself. Vigor without elegance will never achieve permanent success in poetry. We think, also, that he has too often of late suffered himself to be seduced from the true path to which his nature set up finger-posts for him at every corner, into metaphysical labyrinths whose clue he is unable to grasp. The real life of his genius ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... essential beauty, essential goodness, lent themselves to this substantialization, (hypostasis.)—G. ——We have retained this view of the original philosophy of Plato, in which there is probably much truth. The genius of Plato was rather metaphysical than impersonative: his poetry was in his language, rather than, like that of the Orientals, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... father's precepts or example. Virgil perhaps had tended his father's flock, as he pictures himself doing under the guise of Tityrus; certainly he spent many hours of youth "patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi" steeping his Celtic soul with the beauty and the melancholy poetry of the Lombard landscape: and so he came to know and to love bird and flower and the external ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... free enquiry up to the Apostles themselves. He urged me to read Lardner; said he had never read Paley nor the more recent Evidences, the materials of all of which are, however, taken from Lardner's work. Luttrell was talking of Moore and Rogers—the poetry of the former so licentious, that of the latter so pure; much of its popularity owing to its being so carefully weeded of everything approaching to indelicacy; and the contrast between the lives and ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... drawn from hitherto unpublished sources. Materials for such a work have not been found lacking. European authors abound with allusions to tobacco; more especially is it true of English writers, who have celebrated its virtues in poetry and song. All along the highways and by-paths of our literature we encounter much that pertains to this "queen of plants." Considered in what light it may, tobacco must be regarded as the most astonishing of the productions of nature, since it has, in the short period of nearly four centuries, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... was eying it jealously on the other, yet Affonso Henriquez made it an independent and permanent kingdom. This prince slaughtered Saracens and carried off honors on the field as fast as the Cid, but his deeds were not embalmed in an epic destined to become a storehouse of poetry for all the world. His chronicler did not come till about four centuries later, and then nearer and vaster achievements than those of Affonso Henriquez lay ready to his pen. At the birth of Camoens, in 1525, Portugal had gained her greatest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... shears and went swiftly across the sands and up the slope. He watched her with an admiring eye; and well he might, for it was the very poetry of motion. Hazel in his hours of health had almost given up walking; he ran from point to point, without fatigue or shortness of breath. Helen, equally pressed for time, did not run; but she went almost as fast. By rising with the dawn, by three meals ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... to see the profoundly philosophic nature of the selection. The Song of Songs is a frankly erotic love poem, written with no other aim than is common to such poetry, and its spiritualisation is due to the same process of reinterpretation that is applied to other parts of the Bible in order to make them agreeable to modern thought. Had it not been in the Bible, Christians ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... well to feed on many thoughts; There, as thou sittest peaceful, communing with Fancy, The precious poetry of life shall gild its leaden ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... death cometh the judgment. It will be easy for God, in the future world, to compensate his children a thousand-fold for all the ills they are called to suffer in this life. There is true Christian philosophy in the beautiful poetry of Bryant, ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... afternoon, swinging in my hammock in the grove reading a book of poetry, I came across those beautiful verses by Cowper, entitled, "Alexander Selkirk," and could not but think how true they were to my own lot in many points; in fact, few persons reading the poem could appreciate it as I did in my solitude, ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... stars! which are the poetry of heaven, If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires,—'tis to be forgiven, That in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, And claim a kindred with you; for ye are A beauty and a mystery, and create In ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... interminable arguments, the snatches of poetry, the hasty rushes to the keyboard; a composer was in travail. At the end of a year, Rentgen professed his satisfaction; Van Kuyp stood on the highroad to fame. Of that there could be no doubt; Elvard Rentgen would say so in print. Alixe ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the Chinese artist has not attempted. They have treated in turn mythological, religious and historical subjects of every kind; they have painted scenes of daily familiar life, as well as those inspired by poetry and romance; sketched still life, landscapes and portraits. Their highest achievements, perhaps, have been in landscapes, which reveal a passionate love for nature, and show with how delicate a charm, how sincere and lively a poetic feeling, they have interpreted its every aspect. ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... I was to see Griselda's fair face! She is a gem, and I am sure will prove a blessing as she moves about the world in her nobleness and purity, so exceedingly womanly and winning. The book is full of poetry, and held me spell-bound to the close. It is very musical, too, in its rich, pure English. I don't know how much of its poetic charm lies in the original or in your rendering, but as it is, it is "just lovely," as the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... uncle, the Duke, that splendid, old specimen of the hereditary legislator. Francis Markrute who was a good judge had said that he had made some decent speeches in the House of Lords already, and he would go on and do his best, and Zara would help him. He wondered if she liked reading and poetry. He was such a magnificently healthy sportsman he had always been a little shy of letting people know his inner and gentler tastes. He hoped so much she would care for the books he did. There was a deep ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... be the same name with Jyllian or Julian. "Jyl of Brentford's Testament" is mentioned in Warton's History of Poetry,- Vol. II. p. 40. The name repeatedly occurs in old ballads, sometimes as that of a man, at other times as that of a woman. Of the former is an instance in the ballad of "Knight and the Shepherd's Daughter,"—Reliques of Ancient Poetry, Vol. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... he thought, with more emphasis than reverence, and he rode along silently, slowly, a frown clouding his fresh, boyish brow, face to face with the prose of the existence he would fain have had all romance and poetry. ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... A Tale of Jerusalem The Sphinx Hop Frog The Man of the Crowd Never Bet the Devill Your Head Thou Art the Man Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling Bon-Bon Some words with a Mummy The Poetic Principle Old English Poetry ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Marshall, who was evidently fidgety. 'The room is rather warm. There's nothing in Vincent which irritates me more than those bits of poetry with which ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... the photograph may have accounted for a few days more or less—but on account of the fox-hunting, which had completely fascinated her. Horse, habit, and country were all in perfect accord; her prosaic and hum-drum practice at home was now transmuted into the purest poetry, and under the promptings of this new afflatus she developed a grace and a daring which accomplished the final and irrevocable conquest of ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... closely upon the daily business of living, of self-expression without friction and without futile desires. See this man who regularly studies every evening of his life! He has genuinely understood the nature of poetry, and his taste is admirable. He recites verse with true feeling, and may be said to be highly cultivated. Poetry is a continual source of pleasure to him. True! But why is he always complaining about not receiving his deserts in the office? Why is he ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... near the grave of the Wizard Merlin, down to Berwick and the sea, the Border "keeps" and towers are as frequent as castles on the Rhine. Each has its tradition, its memory of lawless times, which have become beautiful in the magic of poetry and the mist of the past. First comes Neidpath Castle, with its vaulted "hanging chamber" in the roof, and the rafter, with the iron ring to which prisoners were hanged, still remaining to testify to the lawless power ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... and spicy gales sound very pretty in poetry, but very little of them do we get in reality," said the master. "And when there is a blue sky there's such a dreadfully hot sun peeps out of it, that one feels as if all the marrow in one's bones was being dried up. But this won't last long. We ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... rise! No end of a fine show. Long bit of poetry about it in the guide-book, cribbed from Wordsworth or somebody. Can't say the page, as I tore out the leaf last night to put inside my boot, to help to keep my toes warm. Never expected to see the sun rise from the highest spot in England. Awful good score for me, though—very few do it, I fancy. ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... would hardly have been so patient of hearing so much poetry, if it had not been for the delight he always took in seeing his wife's opinion sought by a clever man, and he was glad to turn for amusement to Percy's curiosities. Over the mantel-piece there was a sort of trophy in imitation ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... age, I have observed, is more preposterous than the running judgments upon poetry and poets; when we shall hear those things commended and cried up for the best writings which a man would scarce vouchsafe to wrap any wholesome drug in; he would never light his tobacco with them. And those men almost named for miracles, who yet are so vile that if ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... religion. Thyrsis loved the forms of the old faiths, because of the poetry there was in them; and so he wrestled with Corydon's paganism. He tried to show her how one could read "Paradise Lost" and the English prayer-book, precisely as one read Virgil and Homer; to which Corydon answered that she had been ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... remain friends, but you shall not continually tarnish my poetry with your accursed science! I thank my Creator that He made me ignorant enough to admire the beauties of nature. You are continually peeping behind the scenes, and pointing out the grease paints, the lime-lights and the sham effects. Let me enjoy ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... me in my invalid condition, besides which, I perceived that the theme was a painful one to my companion; I therefore gradually drew the conversation into a lighter channel, and we were soon deep in the discussion of poetry, music, and painting, subjects in which we both seemed to be equally interested, and our enthusiasm upon which speedily broke down the slight barrier of reserve which had interposed itself between us at the commencement of the interview. ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood |
