"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Another verse, 'Could my tears for ever flow,' and after it, in rapid succession, spoke a man who had been a schoolmaster and fallen through drink and gambling; a man who, or whose brother, I am not sure which, had been a Wesleyan preacher, ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... Grotius who at eighteen years of age was illustrious as a poet, as a theologian, as a commentator, as an astronomer, who had written a poem on the town of Ostend which Casaubon translated into Greek measures and Malesherbes into French verse; that Grotius who when hardly twenty-four years old occupied the post of advocate-general of Holland and Zealand, and composed a celebrated treatise on the Freedom of the Seas; who at thirty years of age was an honorary councillor of Rotterdam. Afterward, when, as a partisan of Barneveldt, he ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... utter failure of her reign to present a single noble thought or impulse, a single evidence of sympathy with the immense mass of suffering, has been sharply commented on, not only in prose, but in the vigorous verse of Robert Buchanan. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... the harp still kept up its rhythmic humming; and presently, muffled by distance and winding passages, as it seemed out from the very stones of the rugged tower, in a voice, harsh, strong, yet cultivated, came the second verse of that love-song, sung with a full heart, throbbing with a newborn hope, sung as never before had it been rendered in the old days when Blondel had taught it to Richard ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... through the gate as he concluded the verse, waved his hand jauntily by way of everlasting adieu, and went off whistling the refrain with great spirit, and both ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... diligent, and her favorite studies were music and poetry. She would spend several hours practicing every day, and her father had the most proficient of masters he could find to teach her the koto (Japanese harp), the art of writing letters and verse. When she was twelve years of age she could play so beautifully that she and her step-mother were summoned to the Palace to ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... has its song. I will tell you the plot; you can turn it into verse and set it to music ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... the rhythms bent and tossed like boughs in that first stanza—and to notice, also, how regrettable the second stanza was. Nor shall I easily let slip the memory of Apparent Failure, thus recited. He would begin at the second verse, the "Doric little Morgue" verse. You were not to miss the great ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... was inevitably sure to come. The strong propensity of the national mind toward historical studies is illustrated by the large proportion of historical works among the masterpieces of our literature, whether in prose or in verse. It would seem as if our conscious poverty in historical monuments and traditions had engendered an eager hunger for history. No travelers in ancient lands are such enthusiasts in seeking the monuments ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... to heart and intelligence of submission to artificial institutions. He felt, after he had once mastered the habit of the new yoke, that it became the source of continual and unforeseeable improvements even in thought, and he perceived that the reason why verse is a higher kind of literary perfection than prose, is that verse imposes a greater number of rigorous forms. We may add that verse itself is perfected, in the hands of men of poetic genius, in proportion to the severity of this mechanical regulation. ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... these negative qualities, nevertheless he left a great school of philosophy, which beyond doubt is still felt in the intellectual and moral world. Despite this, Athens committed an unpardonable crime in putting Socrates to death. He, like other martyrs, shared the same fate of the mob. Lowell's verse very justly applies ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... about on holidays and playing with his fellows, he was wont to steal from them and walk into the fields, either alone with a book or with some one companion, if he could find any of the same temper. He wrote verse when very young, and says, "I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse as have never since left ringing there; for I remember when I began to read and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley
... personal enjoyment. Hence, it follows that not only to form a liaison, but even to contract marriage, is, from a Christian point of view, not a progress, but a fall. Love, and all the states that accompany and follow it, however we may try in prose and verse to prove the contrary, never do and never can facilitate the attainment of an aim worthy of men, but always make it more difficult. This ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... claimed that the prophecies of Meredith, Mr. Garvin, and Mr. Arnold Bennett were of the kind which ultimately assures the event. The reading-world dipped curiously into the pages about which there was so much conflict of opinion; it was startled and bewildered by a novel and difficult form of verse; and finally it agreed with the majority of critics that it was mostly nonsense—too Catholic to be catholic. The poems sold badly, the 'Hound of Heaven' faring best. It is a common mark of genius to be ahead of its ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... all the more apparent. She was not like Marjorie Fleming, that immortal little girl, who was wont to be angry when offensively condescending grown-ups addressed her as a babe in intellect. For Marjorie had no real sense of humour; all the humour of her literary composition, verse and prose, was of the unconscious variety. This child was only amused at being ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... by remarking that the subject of Colonial verse, and the immense future before the English-speaking poets, is allied to a question that is very great, the adequacy or inadequacy of English poetry—British, American, and Colonial—to the destiny of the race that produces it. The article enunciated the ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... deigned to write in verse, and Mademoiselle de la Valliere wished to repay your majesty in the same coin; that ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... read it to Wilson, who unbent from his antagonistic attitude towards poetry when he heard the subject of the verse. ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... laying his hand on the Curate's shoulder. "God dwells no more in books written with pens than in temples made with hands; and the sacrifice which pleases Him is not verse, but righteousness. Do you recollect, Queen Whims, what I wrote ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... in God. She made an arbor with some rude seats, nailed a blackboard to a tree, divided the people into four groups, and began to teach school. In the twilight every evening a great crowd gathered around her cabin for prayers. A verse of the Bible was read and explained, petitions were offered, one of the sorrow-songs was chanted, and then ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... out in grand chorus by the midshipmen, was caught up, after the first verse, by the marines in their berth, close to them; and from them passed along the lower deck as it continued, so that the last stanzas were sung by nearly two hundred voices, sending forth a volume of sound, that penetrated into every recess of the vessel, and entered ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... only repeating my last golden text," answered Jack. "We don't often have to give a feast, and as it was so extraordinary," said Jack, saying the big word impressively, "I thought of my verse. I suppose we'd better ask the people mother likes, and they are the poor, the halt, the blind, and the deaf; for we haven't any rich neighbors, nor any kinsmen, except ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... found a story or a series of sketches on the delights, adventures, and misadventures connected with bibliomania did not come impulsively to my brother. For many years, in short during the greater part of nearly a quarter of a century of journalistic work, he had celebrated in prose and verse, and always in his happiest and most delightful vein, the pleasures of book-hunting. Himself an indefatigable collector of books, the possessor of a library as valuable as it was interesting, a library containing volumes obtained only at the cost of ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... a fighter, so one fight more!" as she read sometimes in the "pretty" poetry her girls were always asking for—read steadily, even when she came to the last verse ...
— The Laurel Bush • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... little knowledge of Norwegian to dismiss this as dull and insipid prose, a part of which has accidentally been turned into mechanical blank verse. Moreover, the work is marked throughout by inconsistency and carelessness in details. For instance the king begins ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... Saladine for this matter, [Sidenote: R. Houed.] bicause that refusing to performe the articles of couenants, he had occasioned the enimie to slea those that had so valiantlie serued in defense of the citie, to the vttermost ieopardie of their liues. And heere is verified that knowne verse, Quicquid delirant ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (6 of 12) - Richard the First • Raphael Holinshed
... the boy is taught to notice all allusions that give him a clue to the sense of the passage, to grapple with the difficulties of construction, to break up sentences, and to distinguish between the principal and the subordinate thoughts both in prose and verse. ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... his own as unfortunate and inauspicious; till at length he took courage again after the death of Philip, who did not long outlive his victory at Chaeronea. And this, it seems, was that which was foretold in the last verse of the oracle, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... the Imagination, which, though it shall consider that Subject at large, will perhaps suggest to the Reader what it is that gives a Beauty to many Passages of the finest Writers both in Prose and Verse. As an Undertaking of this Nature is entirely new, I question not but it will be ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the missionary had to alter the words sometimes so as to make the Sechuana lines come right for the music; and the second verse really means: ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... not reprinted during the author's life. In Charles Doe's second catalogue of all Mr. Bunyan's books, appended to the first edition of the Heavenly Footman, March 1698, it is No. 37. A Book for Boys and Girls, or Country Rhymes for Children, in verse, on seventy-four things. This catalogue describes every work, word for word, as it is in the several title pages. In 1707 it had reached a third edition, and was 'ornamented with cuts';[4] and the title is altered to A Book for Boys and Girls, or Temporal Things ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... few books in the stand, he selected a volume of verse by Markham, and, turning the leaves aimlessly, chanced on ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... ff.). When his work is done he ascends to Heaven to sit by the side of the Father in glory; he conquers the Archontes, leads them captive in his triumph, strips them of their armour (Col. ii. 15; cf. the previous verse), sometimes even crucifies them for ever in their places in the sky.[164:2] The epistles to the Colossians and the Ephesians are much influenced by these doctrines. Paul himself constantly uses the language of them, but in the main we find him discouraging the excesses of superstition, reforming, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... his power to entertain and instruct them. On his own part, he gradually learned to write not merely with the hand, but also with the mind—to think. It was an easy transition for him from remembering the jingle of a commonplace rhyme to the constructing of a doggerel verse, and he did not neglect the opportunity of practising his penmanship in such impromptus. Tradition also relates that he added to his list of stories and jokes humorous imitations from the sermons of eccentric preachers. But tradition has very likely both magnified and distorted these ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... wuz jest singin'. At the last line o' each verse it says: 'An' the bell'wing thunders roar.' I've thought it over a heap o' times, but I've never rightly made out what a bell'wing thunder is. Thar ain't nothin' 'bout thunder that reminds me o' bells. Now what is ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... congregation joins. On this occasion, all was silent. After the lapse of a few minutes, Mr. Odell arose, and turning, in the Bible, to the chapter where the text, from which he was to preach, was recorded, read the verse that was to form the groundwork of his remarks. Before opening the subject, he stated, briefly, that he was the preacher who was to labour among them during the ensuing year, and hoped, in the Divine Providence, that good, both to them and to him, would ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... whether he did not think himself obliged to have no buttons to the collar of his doublet, if the King should command it,—a grave argument to convince the deputies of an important company of the obedience due to kings, for which he was severely lampooned both in prose and verse. ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... propos to record here the revenge Swift took on Boulter for the accusation of inflaming the people. The incident was put by him into the following verse: ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... thou whose measured muse Most sweetly sings Elizabethan views To shame ungentle smiths of journalese With thy sublimest verse, what words are these That shine amid the lines like jewels set But ere thine hour no bard had chosen yet? Didst thou in masterly disdain of too much law Not only limn the truths no others saw But also, lord not slave of written word, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... little girls did not remember the verse their teacher had given them the Sunday before. It was this: "A soft answer turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger." Emma's rough answer stirred up an angry feeling in Kitty's heart. ...
— Dew Drops - Volume 37, No. 18, May 3, 1914 • Various
... the greatest perfection. From the uncommon facility of rhyming which Dryden possessed, it cost him little labour to compose the most of his serious pieces entirely in rhyme. With the English, the rhymed verse of ten syllables supplies the place of the Alexandrine; it has more freedom in its pauses, but on the other hand it wants the alternation of male and female rhymes; it proceeds in pairs exactly like the French Alexandrine, and ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... precipitous on both sides of them. It was another crevasse, but not a long one. Presently the child came to a halt because the way ended and they could proceed no farther. He leaned against the rock and in a high-pitched, sweet voice sang part of a Sicilian ditty, neither starting the verse nor ending it, but merely trilling out ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... into that song with the full orchestra. It devastated the habitable earth for the next six months. Imagine, then, what its rage and pulse must have been at the incandescent hour of its birth! She only gave the chorus once. At the end of the second verse, 'Are you with me, boys?' she cried, and the house tore it clean away from her—'Earth was flat—Earth was flat. Flat as my hat—Flatter than that'—drowning all but the bassoons and double-basses that marked ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... could introduce thereinto so many distinct qualities of composition, and the woof of racy humour as well as of sprightly satire which he introduces with such consummate art into the texture of his verse is of as fine a character as any in our literature. In Langland's great allegory, the satire is earnest, grave and solemn, as though with a sense of deep responsibility; that in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales—nay, in all his poems—is genial, laughing, and good-natured; tolerant, ...
— English Satires • Various
... after verse without pause. There was no modulation, no phrasing, no interpretation; it was merely a steady fortissimo outpouring of a remarkable volume of tone for so small an instrument. And the full power of it was, to all appearance, sent upwards with intent to the gallery. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Revolution of 1830 liberated him; and in company with Mery, he celebrated the triumph of the people in one of their most brilliant efforts, L'Insurrection. From March 1831 to April 1832 they produced a series of verse satires issued weekly, the Nemesis, attacking the government and ministers of Louis Philippe. The small pension of which Barthelemy was the recipient was stopped. When the publication ceased there was a strong suspicion that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... to obtrude themselves. The feasts were to be celebrated with laughing, leaping, dancing, jests, and songs, and the jests were to be "without reflection." No man (and this smacks of Ben's arrogance) was to recite "insipid" poems, and no person was to be pressed to write verse. There were to be in this little Elysium of an evening no vain disputes, and no lovers were to mope about unsocially in corners. No fighting or brawling was to be tolerated, and no glasses or windows ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... pictured that scene the tempo of the verse changed: the music began softly to play a Schumann Reverie to the lines beginning: "But this triumphal cortege is not enough. The return of the army demands another cortege,"—the triumph of the Mutiles— the martyrs of the war who have given more than life to the defence of France—the most glorious ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... printed, it is now very scarce. Schmidt even had not seen it: and when he published his own edition, three years later, thought it the first. The Paris edition contains the best text, and has besides two Old-French translations, one in prose, the other in verse. The Berlin edition is, however, more valuable ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... has long awaited a prose work from the pen of this gifted writer that should deal with the sentiments and emotions as forcibly as she has done in verse. "Sweet Danger," represents that effort in the fullest sense. It is creating a sensation even among readers of the French school ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... long and elaborate epics, like Roland, and the romances in verse and prose, there were numberless short stories in verse (the fabliaux), which usually dealt with the incidents of everyday life, especially with the comical ones. Then there were the fables, the most famous of which are the stories of Reynard the Fox, which were satires upon the customs of ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... last words, his attention was suddenly attracted by the clear and sonorous voice of Rose-Pompon, who, knowing her Beranger by heart, had opened Philemon's window, and, seated on the sill, sang with much grace and prettiness this verse ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... science and for the pursuit of light literature. Under the same roof were gathered together geometers, astronomers, chemists, mechanicians, engineers. There were also poets, who ministered to the literary wants of the dissipated city—authors who could write verse, not only in correct metre, but in all kinds of fantastic forms—trees, hearts, and eggs. Here met together the literary dandy and the grim theologian. At their repasts occasionally the king himself would preside, enlivening the moment with the condescensions of royal relaxation. ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... manners, and without any definite plan, they have but one subject, the war of spiritual with natural order; and how can I dedicate such a book to anyone but to you, the one poet of modern Ireland who has moulded a spiritual ecstasy into verse? My friends in Ireland sometimes ask me when I am going to write a really national poem or romance, and by a national poem or romance I understand them to mean a poem or romance founded upon some ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... remain'd as one Assail'd by terror, and the sage replied: "If he, O injur'd spirit! could have believ'd What he hath seen but in my verse describ'd, He never against thee had stretch'd his hand. But I, because the thing surpass'd belief, Prompted him to this deed, which even now Myself I rue. But tell me, who thou wast; That, for this wrong to do thee some amends, In the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Rutter to M. Anthony Hickman his master touching a voyage set out to Guinea in the yeere 1562, by Sir William Gerard, Sir William Chester, M. Thomas Lodge, the sayd Anthony Hickman, and Edward Castelin, which voyage is also written in verse by ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... Dethcaen, the druidess, daughter of Cathvah the druid, the mighty wizard and prophet of the Crave Rue. His breast-plate [Footnote: A poetic spell or incantation. So even the Christian hymn of St. Patrick was called the lorica or breastplate of Patrick.] of power, woven of druidic verse, was upon Ulla [Footnote: Ulla is the Gaelic root of Ulster.] in his time, upon all the children of Rury in their going out and their coming in, in war and in peace. Dethcaen [Footnote: Dethcaen is compounded of two words which mean respectively, ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Hebrew Moses from his finding in the wicker basket on the Nile to his death on Mount Nebo and his burial in an unknown grave; following closely the Scripture account. It contains about 700 lines, beginning with blank verse of the common measure, and changing to other measures, but always without rhyme; and is a pathetic and well-sustained piece. Mrs. Harper recited it with good effect, and it was well received. She is a lady of much talent, ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... the monarch went on to argue in his own mind (though we need not say that blank verse is not argument) that what he had got it was his duty to keep, and that, if at one time he had entertained ideas of a certain restitution, which shall be nameless, the prospect by a CERTAIN MARRIAGE of ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of that country, as "a godly, pious, learned Englishman." I have heard that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in 1675, in the home-spun verse of that time and people, and addressed to those then concerned in the government there. It was in favor of liberty of conscience and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries that had been under persecution. The whole appeared to me to be written with a good deal of decent ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... eyes fixed anxiously upon our Indian allies, De Croix began to hum a popular tune of the day, riding meanwhile, hat in hand, with one foot out of the stirrup to beat the time. Then Jordan caught up the refrain, and sang a verse. I saw one or two of the older Indians glance around at him in ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... comedians who would have clutched at it so eagerly and given it so gross a turn—till a date more than two hundred years after Sappho's death. It is a myth which has begotten some exquisite literature, both in prose and verse, from Ovid's famous epistle to Addison's gracious fantasy and some impassioned and imperishable dithyrambs of Mr. Swinburne; but one need not accept the story as a fact in order to appreciate the beauties which flowered out from ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... of young Oxford at some length, replying vividly to here and there a Socratic interpolation on my part. After a while I began to grow irritated. His talk, like his verse, seemed to deal with unrealities. It was a negation of everything, save the intellectual. If he and his friends had been in power, there would never have been a war; there never would have been a German menace; the lamb would have ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... purpose of pursuing it as a regular profession; but, not meeting with much practice at first, he occupied a large portion of his time in literary pursuits, writing for the magazines and reviews. He also published a small volume of poetry, which contained many really brilliant specimens of verse. ...
— Married Life; Its Shadows and Sunshine • T. S. Arthur
... earnestness of her words, and mused. 'Then, like Cato the Censor, I shall do what I despise, to be in the fashion,' he said at last... 'Well, when I found all this out that I was speaking of, what ever do you think I did? From having already loved verse passionately, I went on to read it continually; then I went rhyming myself. If anything on earth ruins a man for useful occupation, and for content with reasonable success in a profession or trade, it is the habit of writing verses on emotional subjects, ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... Christian Sects;—and my Father said, the Prince was perfectly at home in the Polemic Doctrines of the Reformed (Calvinistic) Church, even to the minutest points. As my Father brought him proofs from Scripture, the Prince asked him one time, How he could keep chapter and verse so exactly in his memory? Father drew from his pocket a little Hand-Concordance, and showed it him as one help. This he had to leave with the Prince for some days. On getting it back, he found inside on the fly-leaf, sketched in pencil,"—what is rather notable to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the Sacred Colleges alone betrayed misgivings, fearing that the fine would be annually renewed, and even the wealth of Chelebi exhausted. Elsewhere, the Jewries were divided into factions, that fought each other with texts, and set the Word against the Word. This verse clearly proved the Messiah had come, and that verse that the signs were not yet fulfilled; and had not Solomon, the wise king, said that the fool gave belief at once to all indifferently, while the wise man weighed and considered before believing? Fiercely waged ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... mused the Admiral. "Bless my soul, how time flies! You were a young Ensign, Carey, and I well remember the letter you wrote me when this little lass came into harbor! Just wait a minute; I believe the scrap of newspaper verse you enclosed has been in my wallet ever ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... dressing as warmly as possible. It was quite a surprise, though, to me to find that the willow was of use in clothing people. The more we learn of the works of God, the better we shall understand that last verse of the first chapter of the Bible: 'And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.' The bees, too, are attracted by the willow catkins, but they do not want the down. On mild days whole swarms of them may be seen reveling in the sweets of the fresh ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... one evening it happened she had to remain enthroned until matins, saying, 'I am here by the will of God.' But at the first verse, she was delivered, in order that she should not miss the office. Nevertheless, the late abbess would not allow that this was an especial favour, granted from on high, and said that God did not look so low. Here are the facts of the case. Our defunct sister, whose canonisation the order ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... Mercy, an ardent and loyal patriot, married the notable republican, James Warren of Plymouth, and lived herself to write a compend of the "History of the American Revolution," together with a collection of patriotic verse. ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Percy translated Mallet.[53] Walter Scott, e.g., had given an abstract of the "Eyrbyggja Saga." Amos Cottle had published at Bristol in 1797 a metrical version of the mythological portion of the "Elder Edda" ("Icelandic Poetry, or the Edda of Saemund"), with an introductory verse epistle by Southey. Sir George Dasent's translation of the "Younger Edda" appeared in 1842; Laing's "Heimskringla" in 1844; Dasent's "Burnt Nial" in 1861; his "Gisli the Outlaw," and Head's "Saga of Viga-Glum" in 1866. William and Mary Howitt's "Literature and Romance of Northern Europe" ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... gone to the length of drawing up an extraordinary argument in defence of duelling based upon quotations taken from the Bible. The emperor takes as the text of his argument that verse of the writings of St. Paul, in which the Apostle declares that he would rather die than that anyone should rob him of his good name. William infers from this that the most eloquent and forcible of all the fathers ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... and spirit to the root, Finds reluctant voice in verse that yearns like soaring fire, Takes exultant voice when music holds ...
— A Century of Roundels • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... an outlaw's life to a disgraceful peace; and who, dying an old, old man, still kept his love of country undiminished, and sealed with his blood the liberty of his native land, declaring, as the poet Moore puts it in his glowing verse: ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... to make good his position as a fashionable teacher of singing, in spite of the defects plainly mentioned in the above verses. In the first verse, 'counter' is a musical term, here used with the meaning of 'to embroider' the tale. 'Knack' is still used in Yorkshire for 'affected talk.' 'Monachord' is the ancient one-stringed fiddle called Tromba Marina, and is here used as a joke on 'monachi' or 'holy water ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... recollect how many tumblers of whiskey-toddy each man drank after supper; but this I know, that about one o'clock in the morning, the bailie's grown-up son became insensible while attempting the first verse of "Willie brewed a peck o' maut"; and he having been, for half an hour before, the only other man visible above the mahogany, it occurred to my uncle that it was almost time to think about going, especially as drinking had set in at seven o'clock, in order that he might get home at a decent ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... to emerge into the light of day under the supposed sanction of classical examples. What the Visconti and the Borgias practised in their secret chambers, the sculptors exposed in marble and the poets in verse. All alike, however, were mistaken in supposing that antique precedent sanctioned this efflorescence of immorality. No amount of Greek epigrams by Strato and Meleager, nor all the Hermaphrodites and Priapi of Rome, had power to annul the law of ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... took to flight. When the pursuing general pressed him hard and called aloud—"It is a disgrace for a warrior to show his back to the enemy," Sadato reined his horse; upon this the conquering chief shouted an impromptu verse— ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... result of a sense of duty, which has taken the Author from quieter studies during a great public crisis. He obeyed the impulse with joy, because it took the shape of verse; but with more pain, on some accounts, than he chooses to express. However, he has done what he conceived himself bound to do; and if every zealous lover of his species were to express his feelings in like manner, to the ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... execution of his art, he chose by preference, the most difficult, exact, and incorruptible vehicles—verse and engraving; and he aimed at adhering strictly to, and reviving, the traditional Italian methods, by going back to the poets of the stil novo, and the painters who were precursors of the Renaissance. His ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... verse was more than I could stand. And it made Pepper Whitcomb pretty mad to be called Cock Robin, ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... what it was the only regular thing to teach; if they were slow, the thumb-screw must be tightened,—the exercises must be insisted on with increased severity, and a page of Virgil be awarded as a penalty, to encourage and stimulate a too languid inclination to Latin verse. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... miserable when this was not the case. If she was out of his sight for a moment the virtue seemed to have gone from him and he fell into the pathetic melancholy which he enjoyed in the days when he wrote a great deal of indifferent verse, and was burdened with the conviction that his mission in life was to ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... Then a roar of cheers, and then silence spread round the square like an inundation. And amid this silence the woman began to sing the Marseillaise. As she sang, the tears ran down her cheeks. Everybody in the vicinity was weeping or sternly frowning. In the pauses of the first verse could be heard the rattle of horses' bits, or a whistle of a tug on the river. The refrain, signalled by a proud challenging toss of Gueymard's head, leapt up like a tropical tempest, formidable, overpowering. Sophia, who had had no warning of the emotion gathering within her, sobbed ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... friend, the Quaker, holds that the last verse is the proper one, as it is the truest; but the wonderful is taken out of it, and children, accordingly, prefer the first. There is nothing wonderful in the cow jumping "under" the moon, but there is in the cow jumping "over" the ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Georgiana were reading 'Virgil' when I came to the school. I began the study of Latin alone, and at the end of the first year made a translation of 'Ovid' in verse, which was read at the final exhibition of the school, and regarded, I believe, as a very creditable performance. I was very much interested in poetry, and it was my dream to be a poet. I began a drama called 'Cleon.' The scene was laid in the court and time of the ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... would have this valley—or mountain-cleft, one should call it—described, only verse could do it for you,' Diana pursued, and stopped, glanced at his face, and smiled. She had spied the end of a towel peeping out of one of his pockets. 'You came out for a bath! Go back, by all means, and mount that rise of grass where you first saw me; and down on the other side, a ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and he read the verses quietly to himself until he came to the last but one: "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." As he finished the verse he cast a troubled look at his stepdaughter, who was quietly sewing on the other side of the fire. "Coals o' fire," he muttered under his breath, and the old look of terror came back into his eyes. Mary had never learnt to read, but she ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... straight on, verse after verse without pause. There was no modulation, no phrasing, no interpretation; it was merely a steady fortissimo outpouring of a remarkable volume of tone for so small an instrument. And the full ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... meeting that morning, partly, no doubt, because it had been reported that Mr. Jameson was to be there, and that made a little mistake of his and his wife's more conspicuous. The minister read that morning the twenty-third Psalm, and after he had finished the first verse Mrs. Jameson promptly responded with the second, as she would have done in her own church, raising her solitary voice with great emphasis. It would not have been so ludicrous had not poor Mr. Jameson, evidently seeing the mistake, and his face ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Deuteronomy," replied Ephraim, "the fifteenth verse. The passage itself refers to a slave, but it must be equally applicable to ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... would kindly inform a very imperfect Dutch scholar whether this sentence is intended as a quotation from Ecclesiastes xii., 13th verse,— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... never have been a source of poems for the canon, and one mentioned by Lonsdale, was the collection of verse published in four parts by J. Roberts beginning in 1731, The Merry-Thought: or, the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany, commonly known simply as The Bog-House Miscellany. Its contemporary reputation may be described as infamous. James Bramston, in his The Man of Taste (1733), mentioned ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... in Mr. Lipkind precious little of Lothario, Launcelot, Galahad, or any of that blankety-blank-verse coterie. There remains yet unsung the lay of the five-foot-five, slightly bald, and ever so slightly rotund lover. Falstaff and Romeo are the extremes of what Mr. Lipkind was the not unhappy medium. Offhand in public places, men would swap crop conditions and city ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... whin-pods[23] in the afternoon sun usurped the ear. The hot, sweet breath of the bank, that had been saturated all day long with sunshine, and now exhaled it into my face, was like the breath of a fellow-creature. I remember that I was haunted by two lines of French verse; in some dumb way they seemed to fit my surroundings and give expression to the contentment that was in me, and I kept repeating ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the last chapter of Mark's Gospel, and the sixteenth verse, and you will find these words: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be—." You know the last word of that sentence. It is an ugly word. I dislike intensely to think it, much less repeat it. It is one of those blunt, sharp, Anglo-Saxon ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... notice of the other written works of Sir Joshua—his "Journey to Flanders and Holland," his Notes to Mason's verse translation of Du Fresnoy's Latin poem, "Art of Painting," and his contributions to the "Idler." The former is chiefly a notice of pictures, and of value to those who may visit the galleries where most of them may be found; and in some degree his remarks will attach a value to those dispersed; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... arts and industry, And his achievements fair." THOMSON'S Castle of Indolence: Explanatory Verse to Canto II. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in midwinter to plant his palisades, to the time that the gallant Prideaux lay mangled in its trenches by the bursting of a cohorn—on the very eve of victory. These memories have been well expressed in graphic verse by a living Canadian poet—a denizen of the old borough of Niagara. [Footnote: William Kirby, Esq., in CANADIAN ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... have raved their wildest over the beauty of women's hands from the time when Adam had his first desire to write jingles—if he ever was so silly—to the present day of Kipling's entrancing verse. Shakespeare in his many tributes to the unfortunate young Juliet spoke of the "white wonder" of her hands, and there has probably never lived a versifier who has not, at one time or another, gone into paroxysms of poetry over "lovely fingers," and "dainty palms," and all that. ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... an end, my verse, Of this thy sad lament, Whose burden shall rehearse Pure love of true intent, Which separation's ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... laboratory (difference in time of recognizing words suddenly exposed a second time), which are more in the nature of "short cuts" and perhaps not so accurate a reproduction of normal memorizing as those employed by Kraepelin and Vogt (memorizing numbers and verse), and partly by the power of "autogenic reinforcement," which it is difficult to ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... the birth of Christ. His ancestor, Solon, was the great law-giver of Athens 600 years before the Christian era. Solon visited Egypt. Plutarch says, "Solon attempted in verse a large description, or rather fabulous account of the Atlantic Island, which he had learned from the wise men of Sais, and which particularly concerned the Athenians; but by reason of his age, not want of ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... The Comedian, or Philosophical Inquirer, the first number being for April, and the last for December, 1732. It contains some curious matter, and amongst other papers is, in No. 2., "A Letter in Prose to Mr. Alexander Pope, occasioned by his Epistle in Verse to the Earl of Burlington." It is very abusive, and was most probably written either by Cooke or Theobald. After quoting the following lines ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 188, June 4, 1853 • Various
... submitted to the Attic rhythm, so Latin poetry submitted gradually to the strict or rather painful metrical laws of the Alexandrines; e. g. from the time of Catullus, it is no longer allowable at once to begin a verse and to close a sentence begun in the verse preceding with a monosyllabic word or a dissyllabic ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the very first verse found the fireman's daughter on her death-bed. But the tune was familiar and pleasantly mournful, and, as the piano thumped the opening bars of the refrain for the second time, the hundreds of waiting men ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... person is said to have "a dogged disposition." Any one very much fatigued is said to be "dog weary." A wretched room or house is often called "a dog hole," or said to be only fit for "a dog." Very poor verse is "doggerel." It is told of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, that when a young nobleman refused to translate some inscription over an alcove, because it was in "dog-latin," she observed, "How strange a puppy ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... and he fluttered the pages of his book as he answered us slowly: "Restless, feverish Titans, forever challenging the great gods of Love and War. Give me the dappled shade of a green garden, the sable shadows quivering on a ground of gold, a book of verse by me to play with when I would be busy, and a swarm of sweet rhythms like colored butterflies floating about my drowsy senses. What to me are wars and rumors of wars in that delicious ease? What to me are the white breasts ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus." Hopes and fears, joy and pity, are alternately stirred in the heart of the watcher, as she bends over the tiny face, scanning every change that flits across it. Each verse suggests a ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... teach us that the earth must have been covered with water, and void of animate life, previous to its becoming the habitation of man. But they read their scriptures differently from us who think that this state of things was the actual beginning. There is no necessary connexion between the first verse of Genesis and the succeeding. The beginning of the existence of matter, and the state of vacuity and darkness whence the present order of things emerged, may have been, so far as the text is concerned, and were, as we know from ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... and it is so far from being marvellous that the one of dispersion should have been fulfilled, that it would have been more surprising if, out of all these, none should have taken effect. In Deuteronomy, chapter 28, verse 64, where Moses explicitly foretells the dispersion, he states that they shall there serve gods of wood and stone: 'And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... by anybody in elucidation of this enigma, the shepherd's wife once more called for a song. The same obstacles presented themselves as at the former time—one had no voice, another had forgotten the first verse. The stranger at the table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty by exclaiming that, to start the company, he would sing himself. Thrusting one thumb into the arm-hole of his waistcoat, he waved the other hand ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... remedie of the great decay of Poesie, and of abilitie to make Verse, and in respect of the common ignorance of Prosodie, no School-master be admitted to teach a Grammar School, in Burghs, or other considerable Paroches, but such as after examination, shall be found skilfull in the Latine Tongue, not only for Prose, but also for Verse; ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... an absurdity or a clever thing. Shtchitov was especially dreaded by those self-conscious, dreamy, and not particularly gifted youths who spend whole days in painfully hatching a dozen trashy lines of verse and reading them in sing-song to their 'friends,' and who despise every sort of positive science. One such he simply drove out of Moscow, by continually repeating to him two of his own lines. Yet all the while Shtchitov ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... verse began, and it was illustrated by a flaring symbolical picture in two compartments. In the first a throng of gaunt and miserable creatures was represented crawling with difficulty towards an immense barrel, astride which sat a lusty, hop-crowned ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... wondered what had jarred those silvery tones, and stolen the melody from the voice he had once thought almost seraphic. Music, and especially Bluebell's, had ever a potent charm for him. She had abandoned the song at the end of the verse, and glided without stopping, into an instrumental piece. There was a subdued hum of voices, but Bertie's was not among them, and Bluebell knew he was listening as of old. She had arranged some variations to their favourite valse, ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... done? It seems to me that the warlike interpretation of the scene is delightful; and those embattled fans—their perfumed breath comes down a hundred years in the verse! ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... called "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine," which you may some time read yourself, in stout English of early times; and as he sang, all listened to that noble tale of noble knight and his sacrifice to his king. But long before the Tinker came to the last verse his tongue began to trip and his head to spin, because of the strong waters mixed with the ale. First his tongue tripped, then it grew thick of sound; then his head wagged from side to side, until at last he fell asleep as though he never ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... easy to divine, this verse refers to Joseph, who was a lineal descendant from King David. Side by side with this somewhat vague indication may be placed the following passages ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... of "The Battaile of Agincourt" there is little to be said. It was first published in 1627, along with "Nimphidia," "The Shepheard's Sirena," and others of Drayton's best pieces. It was accompanied by three copies of congratulatory verse, reprinted here, the most remarkable of which is that proceeding from the pen of Ben Jonson, who admits that some had accounted him no friend to Drayton, and whose encomiums are to our apprehension largely flavoured with irony. Drayton, ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... "An old verse speaks about 'Socii dolorum' ('Friends in suffering'), and I must say that this consolation for the different nations of this state has been amply provided for. But nothing helps the union and brotherhood better than the common misfortune and common persecutions ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... heroism which contents itself with celebrating the deeds of others. His own conduct embodied the most noble conceptions of his imagination, and his life and death exhibited a splendid example of the patriotism which breathed throughout his verse. He was born at Dresden in 1791. His education was of the most careful kind. He was not only instructed in various branches of learning, but the elegant accomplishments of the fine arts were added, and the exercises of the body were not less attended ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... for a moment be supposed that any alteration of Shakspeare's text would be necessary, or would be allowed; as little is it to be supposed that Shakspeare would commence a play in his old-accustomed, various, and unequalled verse, and finish it in the easy, but somewhat lax and familiar, though not inharmonious numbers of a reverent disciple."—Tyas's Shakspeare, vol. iii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... powers 210 Preserve thy life from languid hours, Thou scholar, statesman, traveller, wit, Who prose and verse alike canst hit; Whose gay West-Indian on our stage, Alone might check this stupid rage; 215 Fastidious yet—O! condescend To range with an advent'rous friend: Together let us beat the rounds, ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell
... being a "poet" has never been considered out of the ordinary. On the contrary, a person unable to make up a verse or two would almost be considered exceptional. Yet, this requires considerable skill as the Icelanders are the only nation that has preserved the ancient common Germanic alliteration (found in all Germanic poetry till late medieval ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... Hughie spent an hour in the library, alone with his father. A golden hour, sacred to memories of the world's own childhood. He brought with him the book that was his evening's choice—Grimm, or Andersen, or AEsop. Already he knew by heart a score of little poems, or passages of verse, which Rolfe, disregarding the inept volumes known as children's anthologies, chose with utmost care from his favourite singers, and repeated till they were learnt. Stories from the Odyssey had come in of late; but Polyphemus was a doubtful experiment—Hughie ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... the telling of some series of connected incidents or events, whether real or fictitious, in prose or verse, orally or in writing; or the series of incidents or events thus related may be termed a story. In children's talk, a story is a common euphemism for a falsehood. Tale is nearly synonymous with story, but is somewhat archaic; it is used ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... He and Goldsmith said the same thing; only he said it in a softer manner than Goldsmith did; for he acknowledged that there was no poetry, nothing that towered above the common mark. You may find wit and humour in verse, and yet no poetry. Hudibras has a profusion of these; yet it is not to be reckoned a poem. The Spleen, in Dodsley's Collection, on which you say he chiefly rested, is not poetry[113].' BOSWELL. 'Does not Gray's ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... in the literary annals of our time strengthens as the days pass. If the stream of his genius flowed in gentle rivulets, it traveled as far and spread its fruitful influence as wide as many a statelier river. He was above all things a poet. In his prose as in his verse he has revealed the essential qualities of a poet's nature: he dealt with the life which he saw about him in a spirit of broad humanity and with genial sympathy. When he fashioned the tender triolet on the pitcher of mignonette, or sang of the little red ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... I shall be able to get through it—at least I hope so,' Kate answered, trembling with the sudden excitement of the news. 'I think I know all the words except the encore verse.' ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... a way peculiar. It is intended as blank verse, and it is true that the licences taken do not exceed those commonly allowed by the practice of dramatists such as Fletcher, but here they are wholly unregulated by any natural feeling for metre or rhythm, and the resuit can hardly be called pleasing. On the other hand, there are a few ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... chant the praises of a certain "lubly Chloe, whose eyes were like the stars, and whose 'breaf' was like the rose!" The fellow had a wonderfully melodious voice, and in listening to him as he strode easily along at a swinging pace, improvising verse after verse in honour of the unknown Chloe, I lost my bearings as well as my count of time, and was only brought back to a consciousness of the present by suddenly finding my head closely enveloped ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... and susceptible minds of the north. The contempt of the Hierosolymites for the Galileans rendered the separation still more complete. In the beautiful temple which was the object of all their desires, they often only met with insult. A verse of the pilgrim's psalm,[1] "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God," seemed made expressly for them. A contemptuous priesthood laughed at their simple devotion, as formerly in Italy the clergy, familiarized with the sanctuaries, witnessed coldly and almost jestingly the fervor ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Fanny, calling out to Henry Boyd, repeated the whole verse as Susan's poetry, bidding him ask Miss Lindsay if Montgomery could beat that. Susan was highly offended, saying that she considered herself insulted, and chose to walk ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell
... would, you grew dark an' sulky, and grumbled bekase you thought there was a family comin'. I tould you that night to take care an' not be committing sin; an' you may renumber, too, that I gev you chapter an' verse for it out o' Scripture: 'Woe be to the man that's born wid a millstone about his neck, especially if he's to be cast into the say.' The truth is, Fardorougha, you warn't thankful to God for him; and you see that afther all, it doesn't do to go to loggerheads wid the Almighty. Maybe, had ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... thin Books, all of a thin languid nature; but rational, clear; especially a Book of FABLES IN VERSE, which are watery, but not wholly water, and have still a languid flavor in them for readers. His Book on LETTER-WRITING was of use to the rising generation, in its time. Clearly an amiable, ingenious, correct, altogether good man; of pious mind,—and, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... class of literature which was neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, and after their preliminary talk and their monthly calendar, with its wonderful comments, gave the page or two that remained to anecdotes, poetry, and miscellaneous literature. The calendar was headed by verse, which was taken usually from English authors of the time, and sometimes was treated serially. Thus in one almanac the poem of "Porsenna in pursuit of the Kingdom of Felicity" trails along the head of the twelve months, and at the end is announced to ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... quarters; but, mistaking the index, she addressed herself to the Residency chaplain in strains of hyperbolical encomium. The mistake having been set right, much to the reverend gentleman's relief, the songstress overpowered my sensitive modesty by impassioned requests in verse that I should delay my departure; that, if I could not do so, I should take her away with me; and that, if this were beyond my power, I should at least remember her when I was far away. The which was an allegory and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... That, remember, cannot mean any alteration in the laws of nature by which man's labour should only produce for him henceforth thorns and thistles. For, in the first place, any such curse is formally abrogated in the eighth chapter and 21st verse of the very same document—"I will not again curse the earth any more for man's sake. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease." And next: the fact is not so; for if you root up the thorns and thistles, and keep ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... sung in unison. Anglican chants, which are of much more recent invention, are sung in harmony. Nearly all our Church music is based on the Gregorian chant. A single chant is an air consisting of two phrases, corresponding to the two parts into which every verse of the Psalms and Canticles is divided in our Prayer Book by a colon. A double chant consists of four parts. Sometimes the Canticles are sung to what is called a Service, which is a musical arrangement similar ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... Odes of Casimire (1646), here reproduced by permission from the copy in the Henry E. Huntington Library, is the earliest English collection of translations from the verse of the Polish Horace. It is also the most important. Acknowledged translations of individual poems appeared in Henry Vaughan's Olor Iscanus (1651), Sir Edward Sherburne's Poems and Translations (1651), the Miscellany ...
— The Odes of Casimire, Translated by G. Hils • Mathias Casimire Sarbiewski
... night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from the ribald jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse. Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... go; the birch has humble every-day uses. In Maine, the paper or canoe birch is turned to more account than any other tree. I read in Gibbon that the natives of ancient Assyria used to celebrate in verse or prose the three hundred and sixty uses to which the various parts and products of the palm-tree were applied. The Maine birch is turned to so many accounts that it may well be called the palm of this region. Uncle Nathan, our guide, said it was made especially for the camper-out; yes, and ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... nowhere alludes to feet! His ass most probably had feet, and so had Juvenal's verse (when he talks of his "satyra sumente cothurnum"); but neither Shakspeare nor Juvenal dreamed of any necessary connexion between the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... cypresses and grassy graves sing I— I hang with wreaths of song death's grief-grown cross, And weep, to music, for Life's infinite loss, And make the sweetest verse of bitterest woe, —I know the way because I love you so; But I have written griefs that I have known In other's heart's blood, never in my own. If you died what more could be sung or said? I could not sing of Death ...
— Landscape and Song • Various
... had always admired, especially the tragedies of Euripides; he formed a complete moral anthology from that poet and from the works of Sophocles, Menander, and others, which he translated into fluent Dutch verse. Becoming more and more interested in the subject, he executed a masterly rhymed translation of the 'Theban Brothers' of Euripides, thus seeking distraction from his own tragic doom in the portraiture of antique, distant, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... thing is to be read here, in every book. So I wasn't out of my mind after all! Here it is in the Odyssey, book first, verse 215, page 6 of the Upsala translation. It is Telemachus speaking to Athene. "My mother indeed maintains that he, Odysseus, is my father, but I myself know it not, for no man yet hath known his own origin." And this suspicion is harbored by Telemachus about Penelope, the most virtuous ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... stand, the ranks of the faithful, as they have stood yearly for centuries in the last week of Ramazan. As the trumpet notes of each recited verse die away among the arches, every man raises his hands above his head, then falls upon his knees, prostrates himself, and rises again, renewing the act of homage three times with the precision of a military evolution. At each prostration, performed exactly and simultaneously by that ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... forget the learned Havillan, our Book would be thought to be imperfect, so terse and fluent was his Verse, of which we shall give you two Examples, the one out of Mr. John Speed his Description of Devonshire, speaking of the ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... from whose broad bosom thrown Rushes the loud impetuous Rhone, And bears his waves with mazy sweep In rapid torrents to the deep— Oh for a Muse less weak of wing, High on yon Alpine steeps to spring, And tell in verse what they disclose As well as you have told in prose; How wrapt in snows and icy showers, Eternal winter, horrid lowers Upon the mountain's awful brow, While purple summer blooms below; How icy structures rear their ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... sang loudly, the other sweetly. The one was stronger, the other more cunning. The one rode horses with a long stirrup, the other with a short. The one was indifferent to danger, the other forced himself at it. The one could write verse, the other was quite incapable thereof. The one could read and quote Theocritus, the other read and quoted himself alone. The high gods had given to one judgment, to the other valour; but to both that measure of misfortune which is their Gift to ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... was, in fact, always easy to him, though he was entirely destitute of ambition. Certain scenes impressed themselves on the boy's mind with extraordinary vividness. Mr. Russell, the schoolmaster, used to read out every week a passage for the boys to turn into verse. He read finely, and Hugh noticed, with a curious surprise, that Mr. Russell was almost invariably affected to tears by his reading. But, on the other hand, a scene which he saw, when he and certain other boys were waiting to have their exercises ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Charles Larkyns, Commoner of Brazenface. The Newdigate Prize for English Verse was also ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... began to displace quantity and metre in Latin versification. Quantitative measures, like the Sapphic and Hexameter, were composed accentually. The services and music of the Church introduced new systems of prosody. Rhymes, both single and double, were added to the verse; and the extraordinary flexibility of medieval Latin—that sonorous instrument of varied rhetoric used by Augustine in the prose of the Confessions, and gifted with poetic inspiration in such hymns as the Dies Irae or the Stabat Mater—rendered ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... drunk, "and very loyal they were, and suited to the occasion"; upon which occasion, we are told, Mr. Hancock again "treated every person with cheerfulness." Throughout the land men with literary gifts, or instincts, delivered themselves of vigorous free verse, founded upon the antithesis of Freedom and Tyranny, and enforcing the universal truth that "in the unequal war Oppressors fall, the hate, contempt, and endless curse of all." In New York, on the occasion ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... Polly burst into a ringing peal of laughter and confessed that the pin had n't touched her, and Edgar called her a deceitful little wretch. This naturally occupied some time, and then there was the second verse:— ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... with missiles, and treated to all that hostile humour which is associated with practical joking. So vile was their language and conduct that "comedy" came to signify abuse and vilification. As the taste for music and rhythm became general in that sunny clime, even these rioters adopted a kind of verse, by which rustic genius could give additional point to scurrility. Thus arose the Iambic measure used at the festivals of Ceres and Bacchus, and afterwards fabled to have been invented by Iambe, the daughter of the King of Eleusis. Hence, also, came the jesting used in celebrating ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... wall of the first circuit all the mathematical figures are conspicuously painted—figures more in number than Archimedes or Euclid discovered, marked symmetrically, and with the explanation of them neatly written and contained each in a little verse. There are definitions and propositions, &c. &c. On the exterior convex wall is first an immense drawing of the whole earth, given at one view. Following upon this, there are tablets setting forth for every separate country the customs both public and private, the laws, the origins and ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... beauty, the feeling of purity and aloofness from sordid things, conveyed by the fine touch on all our senses of light, colour, form, and air, and motion, and rare tinkling sound. The magic is like a spirit mood of Shelley's lyric verse. And, what is perhaps most wonderful, this delicate delight may be enjoyed without fear in the coldest weather. It does not matter how low the temperature may be, if the sun is shining, the air dry, and the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds |
