"Alexandrine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'The mind has the gift, by an act of creation, of bringing before it abstractions and generalisations which have no counterpart, no existence, out of it.'[88] Parenthetically, we may remark that passages like this show how wide of the truth Mr. Barry is when he speaks of Newman as a 'thorough Alexandrine.' To deny the existence of universals, to regard them as mere creations of the mind, is rank blasphemy to a Platonist; and the Alexandrines were Christian Platonists. No more misleading statement could be made about Newman's philosophy than to associate him with Platonism of any kind, whether Pagan ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... the individual artist-mind has had occasion to emerge, there our gaze is riveted, our criticism challenged, our admiration won. The frescoes of Signorelli, the bas-reliefs of the Pisani, the statuary of Lo Scalza and Mosca, the tarsia of the choir stalls, the Alexandrine work and mosaics of the facade, the bronzes placed upon its brackets, and the wrought acanthus scrolls of its superb pilasters—these are the objects for inexhaustible wonder in the cathedral of Orvieto. On approaching a building ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Alexandrine couplets, and is, I believe, the only English poem of any length written in this metre since Drayton's Polyolbion. Browning's metre has scarcely the flexibility of the best French verse, but he allows himself occasionally two licenses not used in French since ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... are prescribed for a malady of the eyes in the Ebers papyrus. Herophilus, one of the first scholars of the Alexandrine Museum, studied not only the bodies of executed criminals, but made his experiments also on living malefactors. He maintained that the four cavities of the human brain are ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of Milton whilst in the act of having the proof read to him. Mr. Landor silently prints it in italics, without assigning his objection; but, of course that objection must be—that the line has one foot too much. It is an Alexandrine, such as Dryden scattered so profusely, without asking himself why; but which Milton never tolerates except in the choruses ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... feet are;— First, into Whig Pindarics rambling, Then in low Tory doggrel scrambling; Now love his theme, now Church his glory (At once both Tory and ama-tory), Now in the Old Bailey-lay meandering, Now in soft couplet style philandering; And, lastly, in lame Alexandrine, Dragging his wounded length along, When ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... The popular epics were written in assonating lines of variable length. There were also numerous monkish narrative poems (mester de clerecia) in stanzas of four Alexandrine lines each, all riming ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... English equivalent of the language of Attic tragedy, was a shibboleth of romanticizing poets, like Thomson and Akenside. The reason was twofold: rhyme came stamped with the authority of the French tragic alexandrine; and, secondly, it meant constraint where blank verse meant freedom, "ancient liberty, recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming."[26] Pope, among his many thousand rhymed couplets, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... imaginative and inventive tales. Of this class was "Tristam de Leonois," written in 1190; the "San Graal," and "Lancelot." In the same century appeared "Alexander," a poem which became so celebrated that poetry, written in the same measure, is to this day called Alexandrine verse. ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... principal wants. Some years before, the Parisians had been very much displeased at the establishment of import dues on all alimentary substances. The writers of that epoch preserved the burlesque Alexandrine, which was placarded all over the town, on the erection of the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... celebrated,—namely, the deeds of Alexander the Great,—mixed fantastically the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome with the then prevailing ideas of chivalry, and with the figments of fairy lore. (The metrical form employed in these poems gave its name to the Alexandrine line later so predominant in French poetry.) The volume of this quasi-epical verse, existing in its three groups, or cycles, is immense. So is that of the satire and the allegory in metre that followed. From this latter store of stock and example, Chaucer drew to supply his muse with material. ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... jamais chose plus belle." Here is an Alexandrine written three hundred years ago, as simple as bon jour. Professor Aytoun is more ornate. After elegantly complimenting the spring, and a description of her Royal Highness's well-known ancestors ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... candles burning steadily. Round it passes a ceaseless stream of people, coming and going, gazing at their Duke. He is attired in crimson hose and doublet of black damask. Black velvet slippers are on his feet, and his ducal cap is of black velvet. The mantle of the Garter, made of dark-blue Alexandrine velvet, hooded with crimson, lined with white silk damask, and embroidered with the badge, drapes the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... Prior was not the first inventor of this stanza; for excepting the alexandrine close, it is to be found in Churchyard's Worthies of Wales. See his introduction ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the Marche of orient, Was graunted be comun assent To Sem, which was the Sone eldeste; For that partie was the beste And double as moche as othre tuo. And was that time bounded so; 560 Wher as the flod which men Nil calleth Departeth fro his cours and falleth Into the See Alexandrine, Ther takth Asie ferst seisine Toward the West, and over this Of Canahim wher the flod is Into the grete See rennende, Fro that into the worldes ende Estward, Asie it is algates, Til that men come unto the gates 570 Of Paradis, ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... composition, so constructed that the initial letters of the lines, taken consecutively, form words. The fancy for writing acrostics is of great antiquity, having been common among the Greeks of the Alexandrine period, as well as with the Latin writers since Ennius and Plautus, many of the arguments of whose plays were written with acrostics on their respective titles. One of the most remarkable acrostics was contained in the verses cited by ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... to be regretted that this splendid poem should show Cowley as the writer of the alexandrine that divides into two lines. For he it was who first used (or first conspicuously used) the alexandrine that is organic, integral, and itself a separate unit of metre. He first passed beyond the heroic line, or at least he first used the alexandrine freely, at his pleasure, amid ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... through their agents.[6] It would be easy to increase this list of examples. The absolute monarchy, theocratic and bureaucratic at the same time, that was the form of government of Egypt, Syria and even Asia Minor during the Alexandrine period was the ideal on which the deified Caesars ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... this city that he had a secret interview with his brother Lucien, with whom he wished to be reconciled, but on one absolute condition, sine qua non. It will be remembered that Lucien, against the First Consul's wishes, had married Alexandrine de Bleschamps, widow of M. Jouberthon; who, after being a broker in Paris, had died in Saint Domingo, whither he had followed the French expedition. Napoleon, who was anxious to marry Lucien with Queen Marie Louise, daughter of Charles IV. of Spain, and widow of Louis I., King of Etruria, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand |
