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More "Metre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... useless? None of what is harsh, cramped, lame, or superfluous? When verses are being repeated, the whole theatre raises an outcry if there is one syllable too few or too many. Not that the mob knows anything about feet or metre; nor do they understand what it is that offends them, or know why or in what it offends them. But nevertheless nature herself has placed in our ears a power of judging of all superfluous length and all undue shortness in sounds, as much as of ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... carried off from the camp of Attila. The author of this poem is unknown, nor can I, on the vague and rather doubtful allusion to Thule, as Iceland, venture to assign its date. It was, evidently, recited in a monastery, as appears by the first line; and no doubt composed there. The faults of metre would point out a late date; and it may have been formed upon some local tradition, as Walther, the hero, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Regius, discovered in Iceland in 1642; to these are added other poems of similar character from other sources. The Younger Edda is a prose paraphrase of, and commentary on, these poems and others which are lost, together with a treatise on metre, written by the historian Snorri ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... words were even sweeter— Praising her eyes, her lips, her nose, her hair, With all the common tropes wherewith in metre The hackney poets overcharge their fair. Her shape was like Diana's, but completer; Her brow with Grecian Helen's might compare: Cupid, alas! was cruel ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the fantastic Smith, who had such an enormous number of things in his bag and who had protected him; and he also wrote a poem, which is rather difficult to understand in connection with the business, but which to him exactly described it. And the poem went like this; having no metre and no rhyming, and being sung to three notes and a quarter in a ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... 'I like that metre; let me try it,' and taking up a pencil, wrote those on the other side in an instant. I read them to Moore, and at his particular request I copied them for ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... have added to their tragedy! And how much have we lost, toward a true appreciation of their dramatic art, by losing almost utterly not only the laws of their melody and harmony, but even the true metric time of their odes! music and metre, which must have surely been as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their architecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form and of proportion. One thing we can understand—how this musical form of the drama, which still remains to us in lower shapes, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... that seemed to have deprived him at once of all metre, grammar, or even the power of coherent narration. At times a groan or a half-articulate cry would come from the "bunk" whereon Roger Catron lay, a circumstance that always seemed to excite Captain Dick to greater ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... word "all," the organist promptly strikes the chords of "Old Hundred," and, to its accompaniment, the Master calling up the Lodge, all unite in singing the long-metre doxology.) ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... more taxing of brains than most players care for. The ordinary rhyming game, without using paper, is for one player to make a remark in an easy metre, and for the next to add a line completing the couplet. Thus in one game that was ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... nonsense verses with which students of Latin composition are sometimes taught to begin their efforts, where words are used with no relative meaning, simply to familiarize the pupil with the mechanical values of quantity and metre, are not nonsense. It is only nonsense for nonsense' sake that is ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... deep gold fringe, which she meant to send to her new master of the horse, Lord Harcourt, who was to be at the dance, She wished to convey them in a copy of verses, of which she had composed three lines, but could not get on. She told me her ideas, and I had the honour to help her in the metre and now I have the honour to copy them from her own royal ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... chords of the introduction to his symphonic poem, Bisesa he never dreamed that his landlady was craning her head up from her pillows in a vain effort to discover the tune, or to reduce it to the known terms of short metre rhythm. His broken, irregular measures troubled her, as did also his broken, irregular hours of work. There were days when he rode far afield, or was seen lying on his back under the pines by the brookside, listening to the splash ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... divorce of sound and sense, a greater and greater carelessness for polish, and for the charm of musical utterance, and watch the clear and spirit-stirring melodies of the older poets swept away by a deluge of half-metrical prose-run-mad, diffuse, unfinished, unmusical, to which any other metre than that in which it happens to have been written would have been equally appropriate, because all are equally inappropriate. Where men have nothing to sing, it is not of the slightest ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... He's going thither, Makes prayers for the King, in sundry languages, Turns all his Proclamations into metre; Is really in love with the King, most dotingly, And swears Adonis was a Devil to him: A sweet King, a most comely ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... to some of the writers. The close adherence also which the majority of them manifest to the broadly marked types of "Horatian" and "Juvenalian" satire, both in matter and manner, is not a little remarkable. The genius for selecting from the classics those forms both of composition and metre best suited to become vehicles for satire, and adapting them thereto, did not begin to manifest itself in so pronounced a manner until after the Restoration. The Elizabethan mind—using the phrase of course in its broad sense as inclusive of the Jacobean and the early ...
— English Satires • Various
... of the letters, nothing can be more unfortunate than the correction of "princely;" Mr. Collier, on the other hand, follows Steevens and Malone, and reads "princely," observing the Tieck's reading ("precise") "sounds ill as regards the metre, the accent falling on the wrong syllable. Mr. Collier's choice is determined by the authority of the second folio, which he considers ought to have considerable weight, whilst Mr. Knight regards the authority of that edition as very trifling; and the only point of agreement between the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... spirit and in truth, they began to worship in outward observances, which is not the worship of God, but superstitious and idolatrous." "When singing in the spirit and with the understanding ceased, then people began to introduce the form of singing David's experiences, in rhyme and metre; and thus, in the apostacy, the form grew as a substitute for that which the saints had enjoyed in power; shadows were set up instead of the substance, and death ...
— On Singing and Music • Society of Friends
... tale!—but delicately perfumed As the sweet roadside honeysuckle. That's why, Difficult though its metre was to tackle, ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for Old Clay, and back he comes, and I mounted and off, jist as the crowd came up. The folks looked staggered, and wondered a little grain how it was done so cleverly in short metre. If I didn't quilt him in no time, you may depend; I went right slap into him, like a flash of lightning into a gooseberry bush. He found his suit ready made and fitted afore he thought he was half measured. Thinks I, friend ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... occasion are the same as those followed in the translation of Schiller's complete Poems that was published by me in 1851, namely, as literal a rendering of the original as is consistent with good English, and also a very strict adherence to the metre of the original. Although translators usually allow themselves great license in both these points, it appears to me that by so doing they of necessity destroy the very soul of the work they profess to translate. In ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... no knowledge (but vanity) in any other works than those in which their own education has consisted, so Henry Vavasour became at once the victor and victim of Bentleys and Scaligers, word-weighers and metre-scanners, till, utterly ignorant of everything which could have softened his temper, dignified his misfortunes, and reconciled him to his lot, he was sinking fast into the grave, soured by incessant pain into moroseness, envy, and bitterness; exhausted ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lowering the bottle into the water to the split ring on the rubber suspender. The best material for this purpose is cotton insulated electric wire knotted at every metre. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... difference between them is, that they borrow their phrases from a different and a scantier gradus ad Parnassum. If they were, indeed, to discard all imitation and set phraseology, and to bring in no words merely for show or for metre,—as much, perhaps, might be gained in freedom and originality, as would infallibly be lost in allusion and authority; but, in point of fact, the new poets are just as great borrowers as the old; only that, instead of borrowing from the more popular passages of their illustrious ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... not fore-shadow his poetry in the very least. It is quite free from the usual formal faults of a boy's verse, except some evidences of a deficient ear, especially for rhyme ("full" and "beautiful," "palaces" and "days"). It manages a rather difficult metre (the sixain rhymed ababcc and ending with an Alexandrine) without too much of the monotony which is its special danger. And some of the tricks which the boy-poet has caught are interesting and abode with him, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... quality and adaptation: —embraces the elegiac stanza: —trochaic, example of, said by MURR. et al. to be very uncommon; was unknown to DR. JOH. and other old prosodists: —the two examples of. in sundry grammars, whence came; a couplet of these scanned absurdly by HIL.; HART mistakes the metre of do.: —dactylic, example ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... sea. One day land arose out of the sea. The birth was of a revolutionary nature, there were earthquakes, volcanic craters, falling cities and dying men—but new land was there. Or else it moves slowly, invisibly, a metre or two in a century, and returns to the land it used to possess. Thus it restores the soil it stole from it, but cleaner, refined and full of vitality to live and to create. Such is the ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... member of one created unity, the whole a tree of healing and of comfort to the nations, a growth from small beginnings to mighty ends." And again: "As the growth is more and more closely watched and discerned, we shall more and more clearly see that his metre, his words, his grammar and syntax, move but with the deeper changes of mind and soul of which they are outward signs, and that all the faculties of the man went onward together. . . . This subject of the growth, the oneness of Shakespeare . . . is the special business of ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Paris only, but of all France. The interior arrangement of the sovereign court of justice outdoes our prisons in all that is most hideous. The writer describing our manners and customs would shrink from the necessity of depicting the squalid corridor of about a metre in width, in which the witnesses wait in the Superior Criminal Court. As to the stove which warms the court itself, it would disgrace a ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... said James; looking, however, rather proudishly at what I had said, and replacing his glasses on the brig of his nose, he then read us a screed of metre to the following effect; part of which, I am free to confess, is rather above my ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... others were only summaries, and are now lost. On the other hand, we have still the six books on music, likewise begun at Milan, which he finished, almost as an amusement, at Thagaste. They are dialogues between himself and his pupil, the poet Licentius, upon metre and scansion. But we know from himself that he intended to make this book longer, and to write a second part upon melody, that is to say, music, properly so called. He never found the time: "Once," he says, "the burthen of ecclesiastical affairs ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... shudder at the sight of metre or at the sound of rhyme whenever I am at the priory or Sir Philip at Fieldhead. Harmony, indeed! When did I whip up syllabub sonnets or string stanzas fragile as fragments of glass? and when did I betray a belief that those ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... much in Heywood's humorous and satirical style: it is written in the English ballad-metre, and consists of seven seven-line stanzas, each stanza, as was not unusual with Heywood, ending with the same, or nearly the same, line. ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various
... stanzas wholly altered from the original. But it is, nevertheless, greatly indebted to Mr. Stephens's translation, from which several lines are borrowed verbatim. The more careful reader will note the great aid given to a rhymeless metre by alliteration. I am not sure that this old Saxon mode of verse might not be profitably restored to ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... withdrawing from all commerce with virtue and vice is, it would seem, a licentiousness more curiously subtle and penetrating than any other; and the licentiousness of the verse is equal to that of the emotion; every natural instinct of the language is violated, and the simple music native in French metre is replaced by falsetto notes sharp and intense. The charm is that of an odour of iris exhaled by some ideal tissues, or of a missal in a gold case, a precious relic of the pomp and ritual of an archbishop ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... has deserted its old bed, and the lagoon has been formed behind the bar, or littoral cord, wave and storm working upon this long line of mud and sand succeed in breaking through; then, as the inclination of the land is but 0'm, 01 in the metre—almost nothing, the sweet and salt water mingle in these lakes, they never run dry, though in many ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... of Finn no one was ever admitted to be one of the Fianna of Erinn unless he could pass through many severe tests of his worthiness. He must be versed in the Twelve Books of Poetry and must himself be skilled to make verse in the rime and metre of the masters of Gaelic poesy. Then he was buried to his middle in the earth, and must, with a shield and a hazel stick, there defend himself against nine warriors casting spears at him, and if he were wounded he was not accepted. Then his hair was ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... Puttenham,) none example in English metre so well mayntayning this figure (Exargasia, or the Gorgeous) as that dittie of her Majestie Queen Elizabeth's own making, passing sweete and harmonical; which figure being, as his very original name purporteth, the most beautiful and gorgeous of all others, it asketh ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 476, Saturday, February 12, 1831 • Various
... in rhyme; and Browning's bent and faculty for both was very early pronounced. "I never can recollect not writing rhymes; ... but I knew they were nonsense even then." And a well-known anecdote of his infancy describes his exhibition of a lively sense of metre in verses which he recited with emphatic accompaniments upon the edge of the dining-room table before he was tall enough to look over it. The crowding thoughts of his maturity had not yet supervened ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... of twelve compositions, with no other internal connexion than that they are assigned respectively to the twelve months of the year. They are all different in subject, metre, character, and excellence. They are called AEglogues, according to the whimsical derivation adopted from the Italians of the word which the classical writers called Eclogues: "AEglogai, as it were aigon ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... shall not attempt to praise it: the roughness in the flow of lines constantly and quite irregularly varying in length can find little to defend it and many sensitive critics to denounce it. But there is hardly any doubt that this unevenness was due, not to a false ear for metre, but to a deliberate attempt to get rid of the unnatural formalism of correct rhymed verse. Rhyme is retained; but blank verse had only recently appeared and was still in ill favour. Edwards's device was another experiment in the same direction. Needless to say, alliteration is not called ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... de 52 ans Taille d'un metre 62 centimetres Perruque brun Front large Yeux gris-sanguin Nez moyen Barbe grisatre Vizage ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... acclimatization of the hexameter upon English soil has been an affair of more than two centuries. The attempt was first systematically made during the reign of Elizabeth, but the metre remained a feeble exotic that scarcely burgeoned under glass. Gabriel Harvey,—a kind of Don Adriano de Armado,—whose chief claim to remembrance is, that he was the friend of Spenser, boasts that he was the first to whom the notion of transplantation occurred. In his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... verses, Sexton's Daughter, Hymns of a Hermit, and I know not what other extensive stock of pieces; concerning which he was now somewhat at a loss as to his true course. He could write verses with astonishing facility, in any given form of metre; and to various readers they seemed excellent, and high judges had freely called them so, but he himself had grave misgivings on that latter essential point. In fact here once more was a parting of the ways, "Write in Poetry; write ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... nothing specially characteristic to make this desirable (as e.g., in the case of Islwyn, where I have thrown some of my translations into sonnet form) or where—as in the Song of the Fisherman's Wife—the metre, even if it could be reproduced, would not in English harmonise with the meaning. I ought perhaps to ask pardon beforehand for the audacity with which I have treated Ieuan Glan Geirionydd's ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... afterwards remarked with justice that its "ideas were better than the language or metre in which they were conveyed." Porson, with little magnanimity, as De Quincey complains, was severe upon its Greek, but its main conception—an appeal to Death to come, a welcome deliverer to the slaves, and to bear them to shores where ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... action to his posterity, not to poets alone, but to the authors of historical and scientific works. Let us first look at his varied form of speech, and afterward at his sound knowledge on matters of fact. All poetry grips the hearer by definite order of coordinated expressions, by rhythm and metre, since the smooth and flowing, by becoming at the same time grave and sweet, forces the attention by its action on the senses. Whence it comes to pass also that it delights not only by the striking and attractive parts, but easily persuades by the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... than a slight pleasure; but it is possible that I am prejudiced by a dislike of English anapaests (I am aware that the classic terms are not really applicable to our English metres, but the reader will underhand that I mean the metre of the lines just quoted.) I do not find these anapaests in the Elizabethan or in the seventeenth-century poets, or most rarely. They were dear to the eighteenth century, and, much more than the heroic couplet, are ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... news, too. An automobile had come in last night from Madrid, a sixty horse-power Merlin, and the chauffeur had reported snow half a metre deep on the mountains. The Merlin had stuck, he said, and had to be pulled out with oxen. Supposing the Duke intended going to Madrid instead of turning off by way of Salamanca, he—and incidentally we—seemed likely to come in ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... two tunes for the Sapphic metre, Greek and Latin, to which my sister, at my request, has added an accompaniment. Will you be so kind as to get Mrs. Nicholson to play the piano while you sing it, and tell me what is to be said to it? While dabbling in some of these tunes, I have ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... They walk to music, play to music, work to music, obey drill commands that would bewilder a guardsman to music, think to music, live to music, get so clearheaded about music that they can move their several limbs each in a different metre until they become complicated living magazines of cross rhythms, and, what is more, make music for others to do all these things to. Stranger still, though Jacques Dalcroze, like all these great teachers, is the completest of tyrants, knowing what is right and that he must and will have the ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... stereotyped lines except that the colossal nature of the fortifications entailed unprecedented sacrifice of life on the besiegers' part. The crucial point of the siege-operations was the capture of a position called 203-Metre Hill. This took place on November 30th after several days of the most terrible fighting ever witnessed, fighting which cost the Japanese ten thousand casualties. The importance of the hill was that it furnished a post of observation ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the poet in translating his own Alexandrines into French prose, not to produce verses; nor has he always avoided them. Here, for instance, is a distich which not only becomes French when translated word for word, but also reproduces exactly metre and rhyme:— ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... China. Therefore, they used the Chinese language almost entirely, the chief exception being in the case of the old poems, a great number of which appear in the Records and the Chronicles alike. The actual words of these poems had to be preserved as well as the metre, and therefore it was necessary to indite them phonetically. For the rest, the Nihon Shoki, which resulted from the labours of these annalists and literati, was so Chinese that its authors did not hesitate to draw largely upon the cosmogonic ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... to think that while the laconic George Crabbe, "Nature's sternest painter," was writing his rough couplets in the metre of Alexander Pope, and while Doctor Johnson was still tapping the posts of his London streets, as he went his way to buy oysters for his cat, William Blake—in mind and imagination a contemporary of Nietzsche and Whitman—should have been asserting the artist's right ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and then it turns out to be purely superficial. The resemblance of such a writer to Pope obviously does not go deep. Crabbe imitates Pope because everybody imitated him at that day. He adopted Pope's metre because it had come to be almost the only recognised means of poetical expression. He stuck to it after his contemporaries had introduced new versification, partly because he was old-fashioned to the backbone and partly because he had none of those lofty inspirations which naturally ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... later effort to discredit him in that respect. It is true that, like Browning and almost every other Victorian poet, he was really two poets. But it is just to him to insist that in his case (unlike Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"—"Flits by the sea-blue bird of March"—"Leafless ribs and iron horns"—"When the long dun wolds are ribbed ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... 'Pilgrim's Progress' had not existed. The 'Life of Mr. Badman,' though now scarcely read at all, contains a vivid picture of rough English life in the days of Charles II. Bunyan was a poet, too, in the technical sense of the word, and though he disclaimed the name, and though rhyme and metre were to him as Saul's armour to David, the fine quality of his mind still shows itself ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... mendicant, both knave and thief. A specimen of the metre will be seen by part of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... presidentship of the society, it won't be enough, of course, for me alone to preside; it will be necessary to invite two others to serve as vice-presidents; you might then enlist Ling Chou and Ou Hsieh, both of whom are cultured persons. The one to choose the themes and assign the metre, the other to act as copyist and supervisor. We three cannot, however, definitely say that we won't write verses, for, if we come across any comparatively easy subject and metre, we too will indite a stanza if we feel so disposed. But you four will positively have to do so. If you agree to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... this demands a briefer line,— A shorter muse, and not the old long Nine; Long metre answers for a common song, Though common metre does ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... they have the perception of identity and the perception of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakespeare, Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either of these laws. The perception of these laws is a kind of metre of the mind. Little minds are little, ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a song without metre; And, here again, nothing is wrong; (For nothing on earth could be neater) ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... expression of our authority, and the metre-gauge of our importance. By them the untutored mind of the poor Indian is enabled to estimate the amount of reverence due to each of us. This is the first purpose for which we are provided with Chupprassees. The second is that they may deliver our commands, post our letters, and ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... I tried the blank metre once, and it would not do, and so I had to begin again in lyrics. Something above an hundred lines is written, and now I am in two panics, just as if one were not enough. First, because it seems to me a very daring subject—a subject almost beyond our sympathies, and therefore ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... exclaimed Billy, with ardor, "I wish I could do something to show you how much I think of you for being so good to me. I don't know how. Would it make you happy if I was to learn a hymn for you,—a smashing big hymn—six verses, long metre, ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... of the stanzas written by him in this metre at the time of the Union, (beginning "Zooks, Harry! zooks, Harry!") he entitled them, "An admirable new ballad, which goes excellently well ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... does not occur in Aulus Gellius, but is a fragment in iambic metre from the Papia papae [Greek: peri e)nkomi/on] of M. Terentius Varro, cited by the grammarian Nonius Marcellus (De Comp. Doct., ii. 135, lines 19-23). Sigilla is a variant of the word in the text, laculla, a diminutive of lacuna, signifying a dimple in the chin. Lacullum is not to be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... to handle metre, he had sought to rejuvenate the fixed poetic forms. He turned the tail of the sonnet into the air, like those Japanese fish of polychrome clay which rest on stands, their heads straight down, their tails on top. Sometimes he corrupted ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... were! to rhyme with far A kind star did not tarry; The metre, too, was regular As schoolboy's dot and carry; And full they were of pious plums, So extra-super-moral,— For sucking Virtue's tender gums Most ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... delay. You will surely find something there which, for good or ill, is unique. You can name—or at least I can name—nothing to compare it with. Goldsmith and Crabbe have written of indoor themes; but their monotonous, if majestic metre, wearies the modern reader. But this is so varied, so flexible, so dramatic. It stands by itself. Confound the weekly journals and all the other lightning conductors which caused such a man to pass away, and to leave a total output of about five ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... keeping sheep once more, But not chief shepherd, as before, When sheep were his that grazed the shore, He who, as Corydon or Thyrsis, Might once have shone in pastoral verses, Bedeck'd with rhyme and metre, Was nothing now but Peter. But time and toil redeem'd in full Those harmless creatures rich in wool; And as the lulling winds, one day, The vessels wafted with a gentle motion, 'Want you,' he cried, 'more money, Madam Ocean? Address yourself to some one else, I pray; You shall ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... little on what seems to the critic to be the root of that matter. In the first place, I must entirely differ with those persons who have sought to create an independent prosody for English verse under the head of "beats" or "accents" or something of that sort. Every English metre since Chaucer at least can be scanned, within the proper limits, according to the strictest rules of classical prosody: and while all good English metre comes out scatheless from the application of those rules, nothing exhibits ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... very country of the Angles; judging by the coins found at the same time, it must belong to the third century. It measures 22 metres 67 centimetres in length, 3 metres, 33 centim. in breadth, and 1 metre 19 centim. in height. Specimens of Scandinavian ships have also been discovered. When a chief died his ship was buried with him, as his chariot or horse was in other countries. A description of a Scandinavian funeral (the chief placed on his boat, with his ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... his great surprise and wonder found a low ladder made of diamond bars, leading down into a small apartment all shining bright as if it were day. Here he found two columns of diamond bars, each a foot in thickness and a metre in height, whose brightness shot through all the corners like sunbeams. This subterranean chamber immediately led to another in which there was a big safe about five feet in height and three feet wide. He opened the safe, and from out of it flowed gold coins like water in torrents ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... as are accustomed to be sung on the boards of the theatre; but the latter were evidently of great antiquity, exhibiting the strongest marks of originality, the metaphors bold and sublime, and the metre differing from anything of the kind which it has been my fortune to observe in Oriental or ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... bards and the Biblical writers would have been superseded by the learned professors and the gentlemanly versifiers of later times! Is there to-day a popular poet, using the English language, who does not, in technical acquirements and in the artificial adjuncts of poetry,—rhyme, metre, melody, and especially sweet, dainty fancies,—surpass Europe's and Asia's loftiest and oldest? Indeed, so marked is the success of the latter-day poets in this respect, that any ordinary reader may well be puzzled, and ask, if the shaggy antique masters are poets, what are the refined ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... over, here, (amidst the woods and canes of that island where repose the bones of Columbus,) the song of Prince Hoel attached itself to my thoughts, and has been (involuntarily) put into rhyme. This song may be found in the first part of the poem mentioned. The lyric metre in which it now appears must rather injure than improve the belle nature of the original. Still I wish it to be published, as coming from my hand; because it gives me an opportunity of expressing, in some degree, my unqualified admiration of its composer. Well may he be called THE POET AND ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... writes rhymes is not necessarily a poet. So, too, there are poets who do not express their inspirations according to the rules of metre and syntax. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... substance was not more remarkable than the inequality in the mechanical expression of it. "The Forsaken Merman" is perhaps as beautifully finished as anything of the kind in the English language. The story is exquisitely told, and word and metre so carefully chosen that the harmony of sound and meaning is perfect. The legend itself we believe is Norwegan. It is of a King of the Sea who had married an earthly maiden; and was at last deserted by her from some scruples of conscience. The original features of it are strictly ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Gorresio's edition. That scholar justly observes: "The eleventh chapter, Description of Evening, is certainly the work of the Rhapsodists and an interpolation of later date. The chapter might be omitted without any injury to the action of the poem, and besides the metre, style, conceits and images differ from the general tenour of the poem; and that continual repetition of the same sounds at the end of each hemistich which is not exactly rime, but assonance, reveals the artificial labour ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... industry. The character of the gradients will be best understood by a reference to the map, with the aid of the following few figures. The towns of Galatz and Braila or Ibrail, situated on the Danube, are fifteen metres above the sea-level, a metre being, as the reader doubtless knows, equal to 1.095, or as nearly as possible 1-1/10 yard. At Bucarest, the capital, which is thirty or forty miles inland, the land rises to a height of seventy-seven metres;[6] still ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... marvellous, but I will make one remark: in the fourth line of the third strophe the metre leaves ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... language is false or intolerable English. The second marks the passages that struck me as flat or mean. The third is a note of reprobation, levelled at those sentences in which you have adopted that worst sort of vulgar language, commonplace book language. The last mark implies bad metre.' ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... apprehending that it may cost his readers some trouble to convince themselves that the greater part of the book is not mere prose, written out into the form of verse, he is persuaded that its melody is more obvious and perceptible than that of our vulgar measures. "One advantage," says Mr. Southey, "this metre assuredly possesses; the dullest reader cannot distort it into discord: he may read it with a prose mouth, but its flow and fall will still be perceptible." We are afraid, there are duller readers in the world than Mr. Southey ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... would in fact have been no end of it. With this turn, however, his time was not quite thrown away, nor his gravity. In conjunction with Dampier, Langley, and Serjeant, who were styled the learned Cons, he composed a very long English poem, in the same metre as the Bath Guide, and of which it was then held a favour to get a copy. He had so much of advanced life about him, that the masters always looked upon him as a man; and this serious manner followed him through ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the principal unit of both fluid and dry measures, is the contents of 1 cubic decimetre (decimetre 1/10 metre).) ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... seem to have lost all sense of exactness," said Mrs. Gradinger, "for the lines you have just read would not pass muster as classic. In the penultimate line there are two syllables in excess of the true Alexandrine metre, and the last line seems too long by one. Neither Racine nor Voltaire would have taken such liberties with prosody. I remember a speech in Phaedre of more than a hundred lines which is an admirable example of what I mean. I dare say some of you know ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... women are taught the same hard, angular, uniform style—but good, bad, or indifferent, this was Kate Aubrey's handwriting—and her pretty hand had rested on the paper while writing—that was enough. He resolved to turn the verses into every kind of Greek and Latin metre he knew of— ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... register, so that it embraced every form and degree of human thought, feeling, and emotion, and clothed them all, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the slightest to the most intense and concentrated, in the dress of exactly appropriate style and language. His metre also is a perfect vehicle of the language. If we think the range of his knowledge limited, yet it was all that his country and his age possessed, and it was very greatly more than has been supposed by readers that dwelt only on the surface. So long as the lamp of civilization shall not have ceased ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... spectator of others?[105] The Bacchic and Corybantic dances one can also modulate and quell, by changing the metre from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... spontaneously inflammable. Berdenich has reported a case of a parcel of carbide which yielded on the average 5.1 cubic foot of acetylene per lb., producing gas which contained only 0.398 gramme of phosphorus in the form of phosphine per cubic metre (or 0.028 per cent. of phosphine) and was spontaneously inflammable. But on examination the carbide in question was found to be very irregular in composition, and some lumps produced acetylene containing a very high proportion of phosphorus and silicon compounds. No doubt ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the ruthless denouncer of abuses, and is thoroughly filled with the spirit which, four years after the second recension of his book, found expression in the Peasants Revolt of 1381. With all the archaism of his diction and metre, Langland, even more than Chaucer, reflects ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... lines, which were in that form of verse known to the hymn-books as "common metre," was such as to convince the youth that, whatever occupation he might be compelled to follow for a time to obtain a livelihood or to assist his worthy parent, his true destiny was the glorious career of a poet. It was a most pleasing circumstance, that his mother, while she fully recognized ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... recurred to it; but the wells of fancy had never been dried, and the young people were happily putting together their bits of journal, their bits of history, the description of the great amphitheatre, a poem of Babie's on St. Louis's death, a spirited translation in Scott-like metre of Armine's of the opening of the AEneid, also one from the French, by Sydney, on Arab customs, and all Lord Fordham had been able to collect about Hippo, also "The Single Eye," by Allen, and "Marco's ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... very rough; one must climb up an almost perpendicular rocky wall. In certain places the road winds along upon rock ledges of only a metre in width, below which the sight drops into unfathomable abysses. May the Lord preserve the traveller from a fall! At one place, the way is upon long beams introduced into holes made in the rock, like a bridge, and covered up with earth. Brr!—At ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... modern in setting and ideas, and embodying her own ideals of social and moral progress. And to a large extent she succeeded. As a vehicle of her opinions, the scheme and style of the poem proved completely adequate. She moves easily through the story; she handles her metre with freedom and command; she can say her say without exaggeration or unnatural strain. Further, the opinions themselves, as those who have learnt to know her through her letters will feel sure, are lofty and honourable, and full of a genuine enthusiasm for humanity. As a novel, 'Aurora ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... where men would likewise perish if they did not go on horseback through this zone. There the earth breathes out carbonic acid gas through holes in the mountainside, killing all animal life. The gas clings to the earth in a layer about half a metre thick. Men on horseback pass above this and the horses always hold their heads way up and snuff and whinny in fear until they cross the dangerous zone. Here on the top of this mountain where the bad demon peruses the book of human destinies is the same ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... have written the numerals in letters, else the metre would not have come clear: they were really in figures thus, "II C. et XX," "XIII C. moins XII". I quote the inscription from M. l'Abbe Roze's admirable little book, "Visite a la Cathedrale d'Amiens,"—Sup. Lib. ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... and tells; he is the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. I took part in a conversation the other day concerning a recent writer of lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a music-box of delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... beginning from "Well," until the end, has, with several alterations rendered necessary by change of metre, been treated by Molire in his Amphitryon, Act ii., Sc. ...
— Don Garcia of Navarre • Moliere
... (a) in Metre known, With Strains has grac'd thee, humble as thy own; Who (b) G—l—n's Dullness did for thine discard, A better Critick, for as bad a Bard! Not unregarded let this Tribute be, Tho' humble, just; ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... story, and, no doubt, to acknowledge the source of his inspiration. On the whole, he carried out his intention, taking places, characters, and incidents as he found them, but recasting the materials and turning prose into metre. But here and there, to save himself trouble, he "stole his brooms ready made," and, as he acknowledges in the Preface, "adopted even the language of the story." Act ii. sc. 2, lines 87-172; act iii. sc. 4; and act v. sc. 1, lines 94-479, are, more ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... is discerning knows by the word; and the ignorant stands gaping. Some contemplate the Formless, and others meditate on form: but the wise man knows that Brahma is beyond both. That beauty of His is not seen of the eye: that metre of His is not heard of the ear. Kabr says: "He who has found both love and renunciation never descends ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... raise the tune. One looked at another uneasily; sundry persons coughed and cleared their throats, but all remained silent. Odell was not much of a singer, but had practised on "Old Hundred" so much, that he could lead that air very well; and the hymn happening, by good luck, to be set to a long-metre tune, he was able to start it. This done, the congregation joined in, and the singing went off pretty well. After praying and reading a chapter in the Bible, Odell sat down to collect his thoughts for ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... of words and syllables, and even of letters, should be carefully attended to; above all, it should be equable in style. There must also be quantity, which is necessary in prose as well as in verse: clauses, sentences, paragraphs, must be in due proportion. Metre and even rhyme may be rarely admitted; though neither is a legitimate element of prose writing, they may help to lighten a cumbrous expression (Symp.). The translation should retain as far as possible the characteristic qualities of the ancient writer—his freedom, grace, simplicity, ...
— Charmides • Plato
... know the last line, and, as he was but a poor poet, he was unable to make a line to fill the sense, metre, and rhyme. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... this particular one is universally acknowledged to be, except perhaps Liszt's Feux Follets. The most important point would appear to lie not so much in the interchange of the groups of legato and staccato as in the exercise of rhythmic contrasts—the alternation of two and three part metre (that is, of four and six) in the same bar. To overcome this fundamental difficulty in the art of musical reproduction is the most important thing here, and with true zeal it may ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom, stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecorded wanderers, that repeated it for a few years, and passed beneath ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... with immediate reference to metre and its various forms in verse, as an element in the general treatment of style or manner (lexis) as opposed to the matter (logoi) in the imaginative literature, with which as in time past the [270] education of the citizens of the Perfect City ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... believe that Sidney Lanier was much more than a clever artisan in rhyme and metre; because he will, I think, take his final rank with the first princes of American song, I am glad to provide this slight memorial. There is sufficient material in his letters for an extremely interesting biography, which could be properly prepared ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... 784. of the edition in one volume, Johnson, writing to Brocklesby, under date Sept. 2, 1784, calls Windham "inter stellas Luna minores." Boswell, in a note, says, "It is remarkable that so good a Latin scholar as Johnson should have been so inattentive to the metre, as by mistake to have written stellas instead of ignes." Now, with all due deference, a Captain of Native Infantry ventures to suggest that both stellas and ignes are wrong, and that Johnson was thinking of the noble opening of Horace's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... Chapman's "Iliad" was in a long measure, concluded without looking that it was alexandrine, and then attributes it generally to his "Homer." Chapman's "Iliad" is done in fourteen-syllable verse, and his "Odyssee" in the very metre that Dryden himself used in his own version,[35] I remark also what he says of the couplet, that it was easy because the second verse concludes the labor of the poet. And yet it was Dryden who found it hard for that very reason. His vehement abundance refused those ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... his father's wish that Tennyson competed for the English prize poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not inspiring. Thackeray wrote a good parody of the ordinary prize poem in Pope's metre:- ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... school. It was then proposed that a number of singing-books be obtained, and one of the scholars, who was well acquainted with common tunes, be appointed as chorister. Her duty should be to decide what particular tune may be sung each day, inform the teacher of the metre of the hymn, and take the lead in the exercise. This plan, being approved of by the scholars, was adopted, and put into immediate execution. Several brought copies of the Sabbath School Hymn-Book, which they had in their possession, and the plan succeeded beyond all expectation. The ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... rendering can hope to convey the poignancy and pathos of the original. The ideal translation, then, must be in verse, and perhaps the best way for us to determine which style and metre are most suited to convey to the modern reader an impression of the charm of Virgil, will be to take a brief glance at some of the best-known of the verse ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Recte beatum; rectius occupat Nomen beati, qui deorum Muneribus sapienter uti. There is also a decasyllabic variety of the Alcaic metre. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... every one's life he writes "poetry." His existence depends upon it. We wrote ten or fifteen verses ourselves once. Had we not written them just then and there, we might not be here. They were in long metre, and "Old Hundred" would have fitted ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... we do, of the great laws of Divine government and human polity, that composition in the arts should strongly affect every order of mind, however unlearned or thoughtless. Hence the popular delight in rhythm and metre, and in simple musical melodies. But it is also appointed that power of composition in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute of great intellect All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more or less, remember it: powers ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... from paying no attention, or little, to metre and versification. Except in some of his later blank verse, and in a few other cases, his very errors are just as often the result of hazardous experiments as of carelessness and inattention. In one very important matter, that of rhyme, he is perhaps the ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... the best tests in the world of what a poet really means is his metre. He may be a hypocrite in his metaphysics, but he cannot be a hypocrite in his prosody. And all the time that Byron's language is of horror and emptiness, his metre is a bounding 'pas de quatre.' ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... sister's, after they parted. But they were conducted by means of that marvel of marvels, the telegraph,—the chief of whose marvels is that it compels even a long- winded generation like ours to speak in very short metre. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... in verse, which is not against French rules, and which has been done by dramatists a hundred and twenty years later; but it is probably an error, being even more unlikely that citizens would express themselves in metre than that kings and heroes should give utterance with a certain solemnity which entails rhythm. Thus he wrote The Fashionable Prejudice, The School of Friends, Melanide, very pathetic, The School ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... The metre in which the epic is chanted resembles, to an English ear, that of Mr. Longfellow's 'Hiawatha'—there is assonance rather than rhyme; and a very musical effect is produced by the liquid character of the language, and by ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... 1898 Teubner) has "hippomanes fetae semina legit equae." Footnote u: Nubilaque iudico... Modern texts such as the 1907 Teubner give VII. 202 as "Nubilaque indico..." The word "iudico" does not fit the metre, and may be typographic error. ouranothen katagontes... The wording was reconstructed with the aid of the Loeb text, which had no ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... eight-syllable trochaic, which is the commonest metre used by the Esthonians and Finns. In the Kalevipoeg the verse usually flows continuously, while in the Kalevala it is arranged in distichs, almost every second line being a repetition of the first in other words; nor is the Kalevipoeg quite so full ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... Cleopatra. "Much of it has no doubt a thoroughly barbarian twang, and it is particularly in the Psalms—which we have now been reading, and which might be ranked with the finest hymns—that I miss the number and rhythm of the syllables, the observance of a fixed metre—in short, severity of form. David, the royal poet, was no less possessed by the divinity when he sang to his lyre than other poets have been, but he does not seem to have known that delight felt by our poets in overcoming the difficulties they have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and Metre.—A knowledge of this is indispensable in translating verse. To scan the lines will help you to determine the grammatical force of a word, and a knowledge of metre will enable you to grasp the poet's meaning as conveyed by the position which he assigns to the various words, and the varying ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... corresponding images in the brain; the stronger the feeling for the movement, i.e., the more the pupil concentrates while making that movement, the clearer will be the corresponding mental image, and the more fully will the sense for metre ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... it has been found that fresh basalt exposed to continually moving water will lose about 0.20 gramme per square metre of surface per year. The mineral orthoclase, which enters largely into the constitution of many granites, was found to lose under the same conditions 0.025 gramme. A glassy lava (obsidian) rich in silica ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... But I liked Scott's poems far better, and got from Ispahan to Edinburgh with a glad alacrity of fancy. I followed the "Lady of the Lake" throughout, and when I first began to contrive verses of my own I found that poem a fit model in mood and metre. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a peaceful spectator of others?[105] The Bacchic and Corybantic dances one can also modulate and quell, by changing the metre from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... amount of rhyme that comes to a printing office. The fact is that at some period in every one's life he writes "poetry." His existence depends upon it. We wrote ten or fifteen verses ourselves once. Had we not written them just then and there, we might not be here. They were in long metre, and "Old Hundred" would have fitted ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... trifles with a long preface? Still there is one thing of which I think I should advise you, and it is that I am thinking of calling these trifles "Hendecasyllables," a title which simply refers to the single metre employed. So, whether you prefer to call them epigrams, or idylls, or eclogues, or little poems, as many do, or any other name, remember that I only offer you "Hendecasyllables." I appeal to your candour to speak to me frankly about my tiny volume as you would to a ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... works as a living organism, each a member of one created unity, the whole a tree of healing and of comfort to the nations, a growth from small beginnings to mighty ends." And again: "As the growth is more and more closely watched and discerned, we shall more and more clearly see that his metre, his words, his grammar and syntax, move but with the deeper changes of mind and soul of which they are outward signs, and that all the faculties of the man went onward together. . . . This subject of the growth, the oneness of Shakespeare . . . is the special ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... of coal, however, was reckoned by Captain Palander at twelve cubic feet or 0.3 cubic metre an hour, with a speed of ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... the 'Pilgrim's Progress' had not existed. The 'Life of Mr. Badman,' though now scarcely read at all, contains a vivid picture of rough English life in the days of Charles II. Bunyan was a poet, too, in the technical sense of the word, and though he disclaimed the name, and though rhyme and metre were to him as Saul's armour to David, the fine quality of his mind still shows itself in the ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... called in other days the Parterre de Tiber, offered as remarkable an example of the terrace garden as was to be found in France, the terraces rising a metre or more above the actual garden plot and enclosing a ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... ambitiously frequent, that the writer evidently means rather to show his literature than his wit. It is surely sufficient for an author of sixteen, not only to be able to copy the poems of antiquity with judicious selection, but to have obtained sufficient power of language, and skill in metre, to exhibit a series of versification which had in English poetry no precedent, nor has ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... wish 'it' to be made? Deal, plain oak, or oak lead-lined? Oak with a lead lining is the best style. The body is a stock size,"—he felt for the feet, and proceeded to take the measure—"one metre seventy!" he added. "You will be thinking of ordering the funeral service at the church, sir, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... for herself by the suitor destined for her own hand. This is the main dramatic point; the thread is very slender, and is drawn out to its utmost limits through five acts of blank verse. The language and metre are scrupulously correct. But one cannot credit the play with any touch of poetry or imagination. It presents a trite theme tamely and prosaically. Congenital inability of the most inveterate toughness to appreciate dramatic poetry could alone account ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... think too lightly of the elation felt by one who, after learning this language out of the most absurd primers and according to the most ridiculous methods, nevertheless discovered it in its purity, and afterwards came to handle it in the charming rhythm of some artful metre, in the glorious precision of its structure and in all the melodiousness of ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Thought.—The striking reality and directness of this lyric, its immense emotional undercurrent, and its abrupt, almost gasping metre, admirably suited to the impassioned mood of the speaker,—these are a few of the qualities that combine to make "A Woman's Thought" one of the most remarkable poems in ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... even a brief summary of Day's career, and it must suffice us to mention that Archbishop Parker was among his patrons, and that the more important books which appeared from his press included Fox's "Acts and Monuments," 1563, and the "Psalmes in Metre with Music," 1571 (for the printing of which he received a patent dated June 2, 1568). His best known device, of which we give an example, has a double meaning; first it is a pun on his name, and secondly an allusion to ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doting over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ...
— Rab and His Friends • John Brown, M. D.
... begun. I tried the blank metre once, and it would not do, and so I had to begin again in lyrics. Something above an hundred lines is written, and now I am in two panics, just as if one were not enough. First, because it seems to me ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... translated other articles on ballooning from the French. It is also interesting that she retained in her translation the original units which Verne used (metre, feet, leagues), a practice forgotten until recently. This may be the first appearance of a work by Jules Verne in the ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... 6. The metre reverts here again to the asonante form, which is kept up for the remainder of this act. The vowels here used are e, e, ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... contain a free translation, and the first English version in prose and metre, of the purest recension of the most celebrated drama of the ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... whether proper names or not, and all nouns in the plural ending with any other letter than s, form the possessive by the addition of the apostrophe and the letter s. The only exceptions to this rule are, that, by poetical license the additional s may be elided in poetry for sake of the metre, and in the scriptural phrases "For goodness' sake." "For conscience' sake," "For Jesus' sake," etc. Custom has done away with the s and these phrases are now idioms of the language. All plural nouns ending in s form the possessive by the addition of the apostrophe only ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... allegorical poems, James Russell Lowell depicted the antagonism of sentiment to which I am referring as existing between Christ and his conventional worshippers. The poem is a slight thing: although strict in metre and perfect in rhyme, it is too flowing and fantastic to be classed high in literature. But if we view it as a scientific essay in dynamic sociology, it is admirable beyond criticism. As its meaning is quite ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... de Boreuil, Arnaud de Marveil, Bertrand de Born, mischievous progenitors of jongleurs, troubadours, provencals, minnesingers, minstrels, and singers of cansos and love chants! Confusion overtake and confound your modern descendants, the "metre ballad-mongers," who carry the shamelessness of the Middle Ages into the nineteenth century, and awake a sleeping neighborhood to the brazen knowledge of their loves and wanton fancies! Destruction and demoralization pursue these pitiable imitators of a barbarous age, when ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... road, only a slight depression now in the expanse of weeds. The automobile that had brought Evan was standing there. It was a shabby little landaulet with the top up. It looked like a taxi-cab but carried no metre. Beyond the line of the road the view was shut off by second-growth woods, with a larger tree ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... ever hear that song again! I was sure of it when I saw the word in the dictionary, for Vance Alden is so sensitive about a mistake. It is funny! Ilga—why, she'd never know whether it was good rhyme or metre or anything! But Vance didn't think of that. Now promise, both of you, that you won't ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... not know the last line, and, as he was but a poor poet, he was unable to make a line to fill the sense, metre, and rhyme. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... opportunity to say that my translation of BEOWULF, of which the last reprint was issued in 1910, is not in prose, as some have misconceived it, but it is in the same metrical form as the translations in the present volume,—an accentual metre in rough imitation of the original. I agree with Professor Gummere and others that this is a better form for the translation of Old English poetry than plain prose. It was approved by the late Professor Child nearly ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... improvement; and as the tutors were all of the orthodox university calibre, who imagine that there is no knowledge (but vanity) in any other works than those in which their own education has consisted, so Henry Vavasour became at once the victor and victim of Bentleys and Scaligers, word-weighers and metre-scanners, till, utterly ignorant of everything which could have softened his temper, dignified his misfortunes, and reconciled him to his lot, he was sinking fast into the grave, soured by incessant pain into moroseness, envy, and bitterness; exhausted by an unwholesome ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was probably Lissoy, in Ireland, where he grew up; but the village of his imagination is lovelier than any actual spot, and there is no use in hunting for it on the map. See the first note on The Traveller for remarks on metre, etc. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... sacrifices; four are the cardinal points; four is the number of letters; and four also, as is ever known, are the legs of a cow."[29] Vandin said, "Five is the number of fires; five are the feet of the metre called Punki; five are the sacrifices; five locks, it is said in the Vedas, are on the heads of the Apsaras; and five sacred rivers are known in the world."[30] Ashtavakra said. "Six cows, it is asserted by some, and paid as a gratuity on the occasion of establishing the sacred fire; six are ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... when he visited Vallombrosa with Crabb Robinson in 1837, wrote an inferior poem there, in a rather common metre, in honour of Milton's association ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... methods now govern the Muses, The modes of expression have changed with the times; That low is the rank of the poet who uses The old-fashioned verse with intentional rhymes. And quite out of date, too, is rhythmical metre; The critics declare it an insult to art. But oh! the sweet swing of it, oh! the clear ring of it, Oh the great pulse of it, right from the heart, Art or ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... been disused, but which retained its hold on the affections of the common people, who were of Anglo-Saxon stock. In the extracts we give from the poem, the measure is retained, but the words modernized, so far as can be done without injuring the sense or metre. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... of the State Studs did not credit the information sent from the Horde, so that in 1856 there was sent to the sitting committee a second metre, for the speed to be followed on it, the circumference of the circle having been previously measured. The president of the committee repotted that the measurement of the course was correct, except that in every 4 versts (2-2/3 miles) it was out 17-1/2 feet. The deficiency was then ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... equally characteristic, but less obvious, are forgotten. It is almost impossible for a translator to do justice to this sententious brevity unless the stanza in which he writes is in some sort analogous to the metre of Horace. If he chooses a longer and more diffuse measure, he will be apt to spoil the proverb by expansion; not to mention that much will often depend on the very position of the sentence in the stanza. Perhaps, in order to preserve these external peculiarities, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Miss Maxwell. "Though they don't amount to anything as poetry, they show a good deal of promise in certain directions. You almost never make a mistake in rhyme or metre, and this shows you have a natural sense of what is right; a 'sense of form,' poets would call it. When you grow older, have a little more experience,—in fact, when you have something to say, I think you may write very good verses. ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the ...
— Ion • Plato
... equalled Scott in the description of wild and simple scenes and the expression of wild and simple feelings. But I have said enough now of his poetry, in which, good as it is, Scott's genius did not reach its highest point. The hurried tramp of his somewhat monotonous metre, is apt to weary the ears of men who do not find their sufficient happiness, as he did, in dreaming of the wild and daring enterprises of his loved Border-land. The very quality in his verse which makes it seize so powerfully on the imaginations of plain, bold, adventurous men, often makes ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... busy, why, leisure Strikes him as wonderful pleasure: Faith, and at leisure once is he? Straightway he wants to be busy. Here we've got peace; and aghast I'm Caught thinking war the true pastime. Is there a reason in metre? Give us your speech, master Peter!" 10 I who, if mortal dare say so, Ne'er am at loss with my Naso "Sire," I replied, "joys prove cloudlets: "Men are the merest Ixions"— Here the King whistled aloud, "Let's —Heigho—go look at our lions." Such are ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... metronome,—time to which our own souls furnish tune, sweet or sorrowful, inspiriting or saddening, as we will. It is a curious experiment to try repeating or chanting lines in time and cadence following the patter of raindrops on windows. It will sometimes be startling in its effect: no metre, no accent fails of its response in the low, liquid stroke of the tender drops,—there seems an uncanny rapport between ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... estate,—and that authors, no longer the disinterested and suffering apostles, of art, have chosen rather to bear the wand of power and luxury than to be inspired. We can imagine his horror at the sacrilegious vulgarization of print, that people without taste rush into angelic metre, that dunces and sages thrive together on the public indiscrimination. How would he marvel to see literary reputations born, grow old, and die within a season, the owners thereof content to be damned or forgotten eternally for a moment's incense ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... there would in fact have been no end of it. With this turn, however, his time was not quite thrown away, nor his gravity. In conjunction with Dampier, Langley, and Serjeant, who were styled the learned Cons, he composed a very long English poem, in the same metre as the Bath Guide, and of which it was then held a favour to get a copy. He had so much of advanced life about him, that the masters always looked upon him as a man; and this serious manner followed him through his pastimes. He was fond ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Hubert," said the Minstrel, "but it is a wondrous tale, and fit to be put in metre to the ancient tune, 'Sorrow came to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... below, who seemed rather flattered by her attention, and would swim about, singing their sweetest songs to her alone. Passers-by were equally curious as to her, but a broken lyre gives forth no music, and her heart responded not with any more long metre hymns. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... that "Bitter-Sweet" was not this and that and t'other, but, after all said and done, it would remain an obstinately charming little book. It is not free from faults of taste, nor from a certain commonplaceness of metre; but Mr. Holland always saves himself in some expression so simply poetical, some image so fresh and natural, the harvest of his own heart and eye, that we are ready to forgive him all faults, in our thankfulness at finding the soul of Theocritus transmigrated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... those followed in the translation of Schiller's complete Poems that was published by me in 1851, namely, as literal a rendering of the original as is consistent with good English, and also a very strict adherence to the metre of the original. Although translators usually allow themselves great license in both these points, it appears to me that by so doing they of necessity destroy the very soul of the work they profess to translate. In fact, it is not a translation, but ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Actes of the Apostles translated into Englyshe metre, by Chrystofer Tye, Doctor in musyke, with notes to synge, and also to play upon the lute. Printed by Seres, 1553, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... river. Anxiously, anxiously have I sought one striking original idea in the whole poem (appalling in its length), but to no purpose. The transcendental literature of Germany absorbs all that, at first glance, arrests the attention. Without learning, imagination, or the attraction of a beautiful metre (like that of Tennyson's 'Princess'), I am at a loss to know what has given this poem its notoriety. Not its daring speculation, surely, for it is but a timid compromise ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... permanent. We set a thing down in ink—we print it in a book—because we feel it to be memorable, to be worth preserving. But to set this memorable speech down we must choose one of two forms, verse or prose; and I define verse to be a record in metre and rhythm, prose to be a record which, dispensing with metre (abhorring it indeed), uses rhythm laxly, preferring it to be various and unconstrained, so always that it convey a certain pleasure ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... all the restraints of rhyme and rhythm. But we pronounce this departure from literal truth a merit and not a defect. We consider Goethe's second "Iphigenie," written in verse, far preferable to the first one written in prose; nay, it is the rhythm or metre itself which communicates to the work its incomparable beauty. In a review of Longfellow's "Dante," published last year, we argued this very point in one of its special applications; the artist must copy his original, but he must not copy it ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... ages of writing, it has been found difficult or impossible to keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out of old epics. We later refer (Archaeology of the Epic) to the Chancun de Willame, of which an unknown benefactor printed two hundred copies in 1903. Mr. Raymond Weeks, in Romania, describes Willame as taking a place beside the Chanson ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... earth, there are very few but can repeat a part or the whole of "Mother Hubbard," and I have seen it somewhat asserted that it is to be found in almost every home in the civilised world. Its rude style of poetry tells nothing against it. The child knows nothing of correct metre: as long as there is a jingling rhyme it is satisfied. The dog is the domestic animal in millions of families, and in numberless cases is actually a more loved companion then brothers and sisters. A simple rhyme, therefore, about this attached, playful, and constant companion is sure to fascinate ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected—is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music perhaps that the soul most nearly attains the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... used by our author to denote the head of the State (e.g. Raja, Protector of men, Lord of men, &c.) to suit the metre or fancifully. In translation we have thought ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... They evolved the hexameter; the laisse of the Chansons de Geste; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the mediaeval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many cases, by the art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in professional and literary hands. The mediaeval ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... in a peat bog of Schleswig; that is in the very country of the Angles; judging by the coins found at the same time, it must belong to the third century. It measures 22 metres 67 centimetres in length, 3 metres, 33 centim. in breadth, and 1 metre 19 centim. in height. Specimens of Scandinavian ships have also been discovered. When a chief died his ship was buried with him, as his chariot or horse was in other countries. A description of a Scandinavian funeral (the chief placed ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... would be a true ballad all through, were it not that there is tacked on to it a long moral in an altered metre. I do not much value the moral, but the ballad is excellent, not only in much of its versification and in the turns of its language, but in the quaint and true picture it gives of the French nation. The drummer, either by himself or by some of his family, has drummed ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Denah, "I have done already almost half a metre of the piece I began at the same time. ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... Al-Aghlab al-Ajibi temp. Mohammed: the Alfiyah-grammar of Ibn Malik is in Rajaz Muzdawij, the hemistichs rhyming and the assonance being confined to the couplet. Al-Hariri also affects Rajaz in the third and fifth Assemblies. So far Arabic metre is true to Nature: in impassioned speech the movement of language is iambic: we say "I will, I will," not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... of this ministerial trio was printed in the year 1640, at Cambridge, and has the honor of being the first production of the North American press that rises to the dignity of a book. It was entitled, "The Psalms newly turned into Metre." A second edition was printed in 1647. "It was more to be commended, however," says Mr. Peirce, in his History of Harvard University, "for its fidelity to the text, than for the elegance of its versification, which, having been executed by persons of ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... music again changing with the metre.] Give up the scene, give up, ye sordid rocks, The last of Arnold in his English home, Which in your bosom lives for evermore, A deathless picture; England cast it out Not being English, and it shivered on, Coiling about the world, till it was caught And locked into ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... contrary to all expectations, was succeeded by a most abominable fog, thick and white like cotton-wool. These were hardly ideal conditions under which to close a rocky and unknown coast, but it had to be done. The trouble was that it was entirely useless taking soundings, as the twenty-metre depth-line on the chart went right up to the land. We crept slowly eastwards, till, when by dead reckoning we were ten miles inside the coast, the Navigator accidentally leant on the whistle lever; this action on his part probably saved the ship, as an immediate echo ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... l. 5. —in Nishadha lord of earth. I have accented this word not quite correctly Nishadha, in order to harmonise with the trochaic flow of my metre. It appears to be the same as Nishadha-rashtra and Nishadha-desa. See Wilford's list of mountains, rivers, countries; from the Puranas and other books. Asiatic Researches, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... several, hardly deserve to be dignified with so high a title. At no part of his life had Bunyan much title to be called a poet. He did not aspire beyond the rank of a versifier, who clothed his thoughts in rhyme or metre instead of the more congenial prose, partly for the pleasure of the exercise, partly because he knew by experience that the lessons he wished to inculcate were more likely to be remembered in that form. Mr. Froude, who takes a higher estimate of Bunyan's verse than is commonly held, remarks ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... comest thou,' sighed Shelley, not to Delight merely, but to the Spirit of Delight. Delight can be compelled beforehand, called, and constrained to our service—Ariel can be bound to a daily task; but such artificial violence throws life out of metre, and it is not the spirit that is thus compelled. That flits upon an orbit elliptically or parabolically or hyperbolically curved, keeping no man knows what trysts ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... for the later effort to discredit him in that respect. It is true that, like Browning and almost every other Victorian poet, he was really two poets. But it is just to him to insist that in his case (unlike Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"—"Flits by the sea-blue bird of March"—"Leafless ribs and iron horns"—"When the long dun wolds are ribbed with snow"—in all these cases one word is the keystone of an arch which ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... died here in the seventh century, and they who are not satisfied with his printed biographies will find one in manuscript of 550 pages, compiled in 1766, in the Cuomo Library at Naples.] treated in the heroic style and metre, as though he were a new Achilles. As a jeu d'esprit the book might pass; but it is deadly serious. Single men will always be found to perpetrate monstrosities of literature; the marvel is that an entire generation of writers should have worked themselves into a state of mind which ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... held on his way, deaf to all that did not move him or interest him, and fixing jealously on all that fed his fancy. Such books as Grimm's Fairy Tales and Masterman Ready were wells of delight, enacted as they were in a strange and exciting world; and he was sensitive, too, to the beauty of metre and sonorous phrases, learning poetry so easily that it was supposed to be a species of wilfulness in him that the Collects and texts, and the very Psalms—that seemed to him so unreal and husk-like then, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... chapter XI. in Gorresio's edition. That scholar justly observes: "The eleventh chapter, Description of Evening, is certainly the work of the Rhapsodists and an interpolation of later date. The chapter might be omitted without any injury to the action of the poem, and besides the metre, style, conceits and images differ from the general tenour of the poem; and that continual repetition of the same sounds at the end of each hemistich which is not exactly rime, but assonance, reveals the artificial ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... no longer read at all, and that there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew who read his uncle. The exception tends rather to support the rule, since it needed a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it. Finally, the metre does not permit it. One may not say: "Who reads me, when I am ashes, is my ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... read them without delay. You will surely find something there which, for good or ill, is unique. You can name—or at least I can name—nothing to compare it with. Goldsmith and Crabbe have written of indoor themes; but their monotonous, if majestic metre, wearies the modern reader. But this is so varied, so flexible, so dramatic. It stands by itself. Confound the weekly journals and all the other lightning conductors which caused such a man to pass away, and to leave a total output of about five ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ready, and lacked nothing except some furniture, which was daily expected. The barracks, 25 metres (81 feet) long and 8 metres (20 feet) wide, consisted of a solid wooden framework, with partitions either of timber or cement, constructed in the camp by native workmen. A corridor about 1 metre 75 (6 feet) wide runs all along the front of the building, and gives access to the chambers. These measure about 3 metres 50 (14 feet) by 4 metres (17 feet), and 4 metres (17 feet) from the wooden floor to the ceiling. All the interior walls ...
— Turkish Prisoners in Egypt - A Report By The Delegates Of The International Committee - Of The Red Cross • Various
... A Satire./ I had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew!/ Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers./ Shakspeare./ Such shameless Bards we have; and yet 'tis true,/ There are as mad, abandon'd Critics too./ Pope./ London:/ Printed for James Cawthorn, British Library,/ No. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... ballads is partially explained by the facility with which such things were composed. The Spanish ballad, or romance, was a stanza (redondilla, roundel) of four eight-syllable lines with a prevailing trachaic movement—just the metre, in short, of "Locksley Hall." Only the second and fourth lines rimed, and the rime was merely assonant or vowel rime. Given the subject and the lyrical impulse, and verses of this sort could be produced to order and in infinite number by poets of the humblest capacity. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... whence no travellers return." Thomas M. Blasdell, step this way, And tell me how you feel to-day? You thought I'd pass and let you go, Old twisted groove! but 'tis not so, Like charcoal, brimstone and salpetre. I'll touch you off now in short metre. 'Tis long since first your eye, my man, Along the rifle barrel ran; The "crotch" or "globe" was all the same, If you could only see the game. Or the "bulls-eye," the missile flew Into its centre straight and true, In the old days when practiced eye Was ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... it grow where it will, and I guess we raise about the best kind, which is common sense, and I warn't to be put down with short metre, arter that fashion. So I tried the old man; sais I, 'Uncle,' sais I, 'if you will divorce the eatables from the drinkables that way, why not let the servants come and tend. It's monstrous onconvenient and ridikilous to be a ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... this confusion: "The mere matter of all poetry—to wit, the appearances of nature and the thoughts and feelings of men—being unalterable, it follows that the difference between poet and poet will depend upon the manner of each in applying language, metre, rhyme, cadence, and what not, to this invariable material." What has become here of the substance of Paradise Lost—the story, scenery, characters, sentiments as they are in the poem? They have vanished clean ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "What does the young gentleman want now?" and I blubberingly answered, "I—want—to—go—go—home." I recovered from that attack with the aid of counter irritation by the application of birch, and emollients in the shape of scribbling verses to the metre of "dulce—dulce domum." The effects of the second are now before the reader, from which I opine he is the greatest sufferer, and this is dispersed by music, for the "retreat" has just been beaten, and I shall ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... containing moral maxims. (e) Hedyphagetica, 'On Gastronomy,' modelled on a hexameter poem by Archestratus (about B.C. 310). (f) Sota, so called from Sotades, after whom the Sotadean metre has been named. The book was probably of a lascivious nature. (g) Epigrams; the chief of which are ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... mastery of the problems of metre is for each student to tread alone. The best plan is to read aloud a considerable quantity. Then the technical language of the books will lose its terrors and the simplicity of construction of good poetry will become apparent. If the student will read so much of this poetry that his senses ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... stood pre-eminent and eclipsed the brightness of the rest: the latter were the compositions of a school of bards in the neighbourhood of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, among whom in like manner Hesiod enjoyed the greatest celebrity. The poems of both schools were composed in the hexameter metre and in a similar dialect; but they differed widely in almost every ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... weights was earlier than the art of writing, although the latter is of high antiquity. Latin poetry began in the lyrical form. Dancing was a common trade, and this was accompanied with pipers, and religious litanies were sung from the remotest antiquity. Comic songs were sung in Saturnian metre, accompanied by the pipe. The art of dancing was a public care, and a powerful impulse was early given by Hellenic games. But in all the arts of music and poetry there was not the easy development as in Greece. Architecture owed its first impulse to the Etruscans, who borrowed from the Greeks, ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... pet detestation which Landor nursed with great volubility. In 1860 all Anglo-Saxon Florence was reading with no little interest a poem in this metre, which had recently appeared, and which of course passed under the critical eye of the old Grecian. "Well, Mr. Landor, what do you think of the new poem?" I asked during its nine days' reign. "Think of it? I don't think of it. I don't want to be bothered with it. The book ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... checks which Aristotle's rules impose upon profligacy? The idea is more poetical, {452} and the line runs more smoothly; while the altered line is prosaic in comparison, and the metre is not correct. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various
... will be best understood by a reference to the map, with the aid of the following few figures. The towns of Galatz and Braila or Ibrail, situated on the Danube, are fifteen metres above the sea-level, a metre being, as the reader doubtless knows, equal to 1.095, or as nearly as possible 1-1/10 yard. At Bucarest, the capital, which is thirty or forty miles inland, the land rises to a height of seventy-seven metres;[6] still further ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... in "Ajax" are long. Here, the "j" is to be pronounced as a "double letter" (technically an affricate) as in English.] alter{i}us has always a short i and alIus a long i [The "i" in "alterius" is conventionally shortened in poetry to accommodate the metre.] ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... not good for metre. Even when an actress speaks her lines as lines, and does not drop into prose by slipping here and there a syllable, she spoils the tempo by inordinate length of pronunciation. Verse cannot keep upon the wing without a certain measure in the movement of the pinion. ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... the father, probably tempted by the alluring offers of a richer suitor, forbade the nuptials. Archilochus thereupon composed so bitter a lampoon upon the family that the daughters of the nobleman are said to have hanged themselves. Says SYMONDS, "He made Iambic metre his own, and sharpened it into a terrible weapon of attack. Each verse he wrote was polished, and pointed like an arrow-head. Each line was steeped in the poison of hideous charges against his sweetheart, her sisters, and her ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Clytaemnestra advances to the front. At the same moment the Choral Ode is finished and the Chorus take up their usual position during the Episodes, drawn up in two lilies in front of the Altar facing the Stage. They speak only by their Foreman (or Corypliceus), and use the ordinary Iambic Metre (equivalent ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... writer with very fair foreshadowing; but it does not fore-shadow his poetry in the very least. It is quite free from the usual formal faults of a boy's verse, except some evidences of a deficient ear, especially for rhyme ("full" and "beautiful," "palaces" and "days"). It manages a rather difficult metre (the sixain rhymed ababcc and ending with an Alexandrine) without too much of the monotony which is its special danger. And some of the tricks which the boy-poet has caught are interesting and abode with him, such as ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... some trouble to convince themselves that the greater part of the book is not mere prose, written out into the form of verse, he is persuaded that its melody is more obvious and perceptible than that of our vulgar measures. "One advantage," says Mr. Southey, "this metre assuredly possesses; the dullest reader cannot distort it into discord: he may read it with a prose mouth, but its flow and fall will still be perceptible." We are afraid, there are duller readers in the world than Mr. Southey ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... do not shed a tear, because You've heard my story told in metre, For I'm a Carpet, and he ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... ranges holding hands about an immensity of space. It was one of our giant days to his emotions, and particularly memorable to him through the circumstance that it insisted on a record in verse, and he was unused to the fetters of metre: and although the verse was never seen by man, his attempt at it confused his ideas of his expressive powers. Oddly too, while scourging the lines with criticism, he had a fondness for them: they stamped a radiant day in his mind, beyond the resources ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... unrivalled ability to handle metre, he had sought to rejuvenate the fixed poetic forms. He turned the tail of the sonnet into the air, like those Japanese fish of polychrome clay which rest on stands, their heads straight down, their tails on top. Sometimes he corrupted it by using only masculine rhymes to which he seemed ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... uneasily; sundry persons coughed and cleared their throats, but all remained silent. Odell was not much of a singer, but had practised on "Old Hundred" so much, that he could lead that air very well; and the hymn happening, by good luck, to be set to a long-metre tune, he was able to start it. This done, the congregation joined in, and the singing went off pretty well. After praying and reading a chapter in the Bible, Odell sat down to collect his thoughts for the sermon, which was, of course, to ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... taste is plain. There is plainly visible also, however, a keen sense for natural beauty and a manly admiration for healthy living. If in "Ashtaroth" and "Bellona" we recognise the swing of a familiar metre, in such poems as "The Sick Stockrider" we perceive the genuine poetic instinct united to a very clear perception of the loveliness of duty and ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... Metre and rhyme, I grant you—long and short—but show me the afflatus! They make verse with a penknife, like their wooden nutmegs. They are perfect Chinese for ingenuity and imitation, and the resemblance to the real Simon-pure is very perfect—externally. But ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... every seed had its way every year for five years, produce from a single plant ten thousand billions—enough to cover the whole area of the dry land of the world, allowing seventy-three plants to the square metre.[footnote*: "Natural History of Plants"—Kerner and Oliver] Perhaps God permits the seeming waste of such an overwhelming proportion of the seed formed, to show us the Fountain of Life that there is in Him; and to teach ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... of an ampere: A current in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length and negligible cross-section, 1 metre apart in vacuum, would produce a force equal to 2E-7 newton ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... told his father what he had done: "I have learned Welsh, and have translated the songs of Ab Gwilym, some ten thousand lines, into English rhyme. I have also learnt Danish, and have rendered the old book of Ballads into English metre. I have learned many other tongues, and have acquired some knowledge even of Hebrew and Arabic." He read and conversed with William Taylor; he read alone in the Guildhall of Norwich, where the Corporation ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and with his soul stirred by the events about him, Watts McHurdie, lying in the hospital, wrote the song that made him famous. They know in Sycamore Ridge that Watts is not much of a poet, that his rhymes are sometimes bad and his metre worse. But once his heart took fire and burned for a day sheer white, and in that day he wrote words that a nation sang, and now all the world is singing. And they are proud of him, and when people come to Sycamore Ridge on pilgrimages to see the author of the song, men do not smile in wonder; ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... inform the reader, that I had before written a Canto on the subject of this poem; but I was dissatisfied with the metre, and felt the necessity of some connecting idea that might give it a degree of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... one after another, slowly, solemnly, in a sort of inexorable metre, like the blows of ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... very neat quarto, to which the title "Miscellaneous Poems" might be given. I was pleased with this, as it gave me an opportunity of quietly imitating well-known and celebrated authors. I had composed a good number of so- called Anacreontic poems, which, on account of the convenience of the metre, and the lightness of the subject, flowed forth readily enough. But these I could not well take, as they were not in rhyme; and my desire before all things was to show my father something that would please him. So much the more, therefore, did the spiritual odes seem suitable, which ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Notwithstanding the Shower, he continued in the Garden, and never quitted it, till he had found one Moiety of the Tablet, which was unfortunately broke in such a Manner, that even the half Lines were good sense, and good Metre, tho' very short. But what was still more remarkably unfortunate, they appear'd at first View, to be a severe satyr upon the King: The ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... food for almost nothing, and people are starving here in St. Pierre; there is clothing for almost nothing, and poor girls cannot earn enough to buy a dress. The pretty printed calicoes (indiennes) that used to be two francs and a half the metre, now sell at twelve sous the metre; but nobody has any money. And if you read our papers,—Les Colonies, La Defense Coloniale,— you will find that there are sons wicked enough to beat their mothers: oui! yche ka batt manman! It is ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... will prefer whenever he can get them. Shakespeare in the historical plays is studious, wherever possible, to give the very words which he finds to have been used; and it shows how wisely he was guided in this, that those magnificent speeches of Wolsey are taken exactly, with no more change than the metre makes necessary, from Cavendish's Life. Marlborough read Shakespeare for English history, and read nothing else. The poet only is not bound, when it is inconvenient, to what may be called the accidents of facts. It was enough for Shakespeare ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... his thought he substituted for Lalage the fair-haired Bertha, quite regardless of the requirements of the metre. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... permanent of all the poetry of this age. Though written by both Troubadours and Trouveres, the latter were far superior in style and invention, and it is mostly their work which has survived. These romances were sometimes in prose, but more often in poetry of extremely smooth and flowing metre. ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... indication of these signs, in reproducing them in their throats, and moreover in adding the text, they exercise at the same time the hand, ear, and eye, and attain orthography and calligraphy quicker than you would believe; and, finally, since all this must be practised and copied according to pure metre and accurately fixed time, they learn to understand much sooner than in other ways the high value of measure and computation. On this account, of all imaginable means, we have chosen music as the first element of our education, for from this equally easy ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... worthless subjects, whose very flattery displays absence of taste and genius, as well as of modesty and shame. To a fellow of the name of Dagee, who sang the coronation of Napoleon the First in two hundred of the most disgusting and ill-digested lines that ever were written, containing neither metre nor sense, was assigned a place in the administration of the forest department, worth twelve thousand livres in the year—besides a present, in ready money, of one hundred napoleons d'or. Another poetaster, Barre, who has served and sung the chiefs of all former factions, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... and we thought that a pretty smart thing for a beginning. "Oh, never mind—go farther on—any—long meter," uttered his interlocutor, and he forthwith made a sanguine dash into the centre of the book, and gave out a hymn. The company got into a "peculiar metre" tune at once, and the singing was about the most comically wretched we ever heard. The lad who came in with the elderly men tried every range of voice in every verse, and thought that he had a right to do just as he liked with the music; the elderly men near him hammed ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... that any poem, original or translated, by Pope or Dryden or any of their school, really resembles in any degree the bucolic poetry of the Greeks. Mr. Morris, whose poems appear to me to resemble it more almost than anything I have ever seen, of course writes what is technically Pope's metre, and equally of course is not of Pope's school. Whether or no Pope and Dryden intended to resemble the old bucolic poets in style is, to say the least, immaterial. If they did not, there is no ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... there comes an Englishman nourished on this poetry, taught his trade by this poetry, getting words, rhyme, metre from this poetry; for even of that stanza which the Italians used, and which Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis and suggestion was probably given in France. Chaucer (I have already named him) fascinated his contemporaries, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Aymon, 1504.—A fine copy is offered at 15s. in a catalogue about 1760. Of the Famous history of the vertuous and godly woman Judith, 1565, all that is so far discoverable is that it is a translation in English metre by Edward Jenynges. A title-page, preserved among Ames's collections at the British Museum, is copied by me in Bibl. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... a single syllable is sufficient to make good English, good sense, and good metre of a passage which is otherwise defective in these three particulars. It retains the s in "labours," keeps the comma in its place, and provides that antecedent for "it," which was justly considered ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 74, March 29, 1851 • Various
... it is worth while to follow his career. His literary fate was what might have been expected. After the Persian war, the reputation of his verses rapidly decayed. Wits arose in Athens, who laughed so furiously at his style and his metre, in the Delphic oracles, that at length some echoes of their scoffing began to reach Delphi; upon which the god and his inspired ministers became sulky, and finally took refuge in prose, as the only shelter they could think of from the caustic ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... essential of the question that on this side of our nature we do emphatically love the form of the toad-stools, and not merely some complicated botanical and moral lessons which the philosopher may draw from them. For example, just as there is such a thing as a poetical metre being beautifully light or beautifully grave and haunting, so there is such a thing as a poetical metre being beautifully rugged. In the old ballads, for instance, every person of literary taste will be struck by a certain attractiveness in the ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... Apple-Jelly-Fish-Tree," and "Short Story" are the only poems in the book which seem to follow a clearly rhymed pattern. If any misguided schoolmistress had ever suggested that a poem should have rhyme and metre, this book would never have been "told." In "Moon Doves," however, there is a distinctly metrical effect without rhyme. But the great majority of the poems are built upon cadence, and the subtlety of this little girl's cadences are a delight to those who can hear them. ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... disgust with his profession, from which mood he was only delivered by recklessly abandoning these studies and indulging in an old enthusiasm for poetical literature. For two whole years he did nothing but write verse in every conceivable metre, and on every conceivable subject, from Wordsworthian sonnets on the singing of his tea-kettle to epic fragments on the Fall of Empires. His discovery at the age of five-and-twenty that these inspired works ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... thought that a grave error had been committed in selecting the narrow metre gauge; it was all very well for phosphate transport, but once the line over Feriana and the branch to Tozeur are completed, they would have to deal with other material, such as tourists, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... me see! What have I done already? I have learnt Welsh, and have translated the songs of Ab Gwilym, some ten thousand lines, into English rhyme; I have also learnt Danish, and have rendered the old book of ballads cast by the tempest upon the beach into corresponding English metre. Good! have I done enough already to secure myself a reputation of a thousand years? No, no! certainly not; I have not the slightest ground for hoping that my translations from the Welsh and Danish will be read at the end of a thousand years. Well, but ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... speech, beginning "Should we be silent and not speak," is nearly word for word from Plutarch, with some additional graces of expression, and the charm of metre superadded. I shall give the last lines of this address, as illustrating that noble and irresistible eloquence which was the crowning ornament of the character. One exquisite touch of nature, which is distinguished by italics, was beyond the rhetorician ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... verse and music have added to their tragedy! And how much have we lost, toward a true appreciation of their dramatic art, by losing almost utterly not only the laws of their melody and harmony, but even the true metric time of their odes! music and metre, which must have surely been as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their architecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form and of proportion. One thing we can understand—how this musical form ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... the Hebrew MSS. from which they translated, or added of themselves; the rest is made up of what are probably original phrases but omitted from the Hebrew by the carelessness of copyists; yet none of these differences is of importance save where the Greek corrects an irregularity in the Hebrew metre, or yields sense when the Hebrew ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... been stimulated by Wagner's operas and by the reading of such poems as William Morris' "Sigurd the Volsung". Prose has been selected as the medium of translation, since it is hardly possible to give an accurate rendering and at the same time to meet the demands imposed by rhyme and metre; at least, none of the verse translations made thus far have succeeded in doing this. The prose translations, on the other hand, mostly err in being too continuous and in condensing too much, so that they retell the story instead of ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... passed for a great poet, just as in the dark ages a person who could write his name passed for a great clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, and others whose only title to fame was that they said in tolerable metre what might have been as well said in prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were honored with marks of distinction which ought to be reserved for genius. With these Addison must have ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory by performances ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Daughter, Hymns of a Hermit, and I know not what other extensive stock of pieces; concerning which he was now somewhat at a loss as to his true course. He could write verses with astonishing facility, in any given form of metre; and to various readers they seemed excellent, and high judges had freely called them so, but he himself had grave misgivings on that latter essential point. In fact here once more was a parting of the ways, "Write in Poetry; write in Prose?" upon ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... because in Q1 line 31 begins 'And,' not 'Nay'; the Duke might say 'Nay' if he were cutting the previous speaker short, but not 'And.' (d) is surely no addition. If the lines are cut out, not only is the metre spoilt, but the obvious reason for Iago's words, 'I see, Sir, you are eaten up with passion,' disappears, and so does the reference of his word 'satisfied' in 393 to Othello's 'satisfied' in 390. (e) is the famous passage about the Pontic Sea, and I reserve it for the present. (f) ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... the well-known iambic trimeter, i.e. the metre of six feet (twelve syllables) used in all the speeches ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... the Iliad in hexameters, no man can tell; but having done so, he thereby constituted for ever the proper metre of Greek—and Latin—Epic poetry. But what a multitude of subjects, how different from one another does that, and every other Epic poem, comprehend! Glory to the hexameter! it suits them all. Now, in every Epic poem, and in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... At last they came crying that he was coming to the king's house, and fell to their dispute, but we would listen to neither party, for we were busy with a dispute about the merits of the Great and of the Little Metre; nor were we disturbed when they passed our door with sticks of enchantment under their arms, travelling towards the forest to contend against his coming, nor when they returned after nightfall with torn robes and despairing cries; for the click of our knives writing our thoughts in Ogham filled ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... will in this place give a few observations upon his Epitaphs,—the largest collection we have in our language, from the pen of any Writer of eminence. As the epitaphs of Pope and also those of Chiabrera, which occasioned this dissertation, are in metre, it may be proper here to enquire how far the notion of a perfect epitaph, as given in a former Paper, may be modified by the choice of metre for the vehicle, in preference to prose. If our opinions be just, it is manifest that the basis must remain the ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... attainable, or ruins the work you have already done. It has taken us a long time to find out how to make a flat surface, and when we were called upon to make the twenty-eight plane and parallel surfaces for the investigation of the value of the metre of the international standard, every one of which required an accuracy of one-twentieth of a wave length, we had a difficult task to perform. However, it was found that every surface had the desired accuracy, and some of them went far ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall
... pencilled on the wallpaper by the bed, and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent. Ella could resist no longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-poet, using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letter on his triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that moved his soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... as he had been on his first day in the cavalry, at hearing behind him the thunder of many hoofs. Having once become used to the noise, he was even thrilled by the swinging metre of it. A kind of wild harmony was in it, something which made one forget everything else. At such times Pasha longed to break into his long, wind-splitting lope, but he learned that he must leave the others no more than a pace or ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... metrical arrangement, Saxon poetry differed from our modern English as well as from the classical models, in that their poets followed no laws of metre, but arranged their vernacular verses without any distinct rules, but simply to please the ear. "To such a selection and arrangement of words as produced this effect, they added the habit of frequently omitting the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... father's wish that Tennyson competed for the English prize poem. The theme, Timbuctoo, was not inspiring. Thackeray wrote a good parody of the ordinary prize poem in Pope's metre:- ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... of Brahman, while such marks are set forth in the passages (discussed above) which refer to pra/n/a and the ether. Nor, again, is Brahman indicated in the preceding section, 'the Gayatri is everything whatsoever exists,' &c. (III, 12); for that passage makes a statement about the Gayatri metre only. And even if that section did refer to Brahman, still Brahman would not be recognised in the passage at present under discussion; for there (in the section referred to) it is declared in the clause, 'Three feet of it are the Immortal in heaven'—that heaven constitutes the abode; while ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... then, may well be included its power as a metre of the intellectual advance of mankind. In these splendid symbols man writes the record of his advancing humanity. How all is interwoven with the All! A petrified national mind will certainly appear in a petrified ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... examples of righteousness, shows that Ezekiel had the Deluge in his mind, and increases the significance of the underlying parallel between his argument and that of the Babylonian poet.(1) It may be added that Ezekiel has thrown his prophecy into poetical form, and the metre of the two passages in the Babylonian and Hebrew is, as Dr. Daiches points out, ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... schooldays, what had been inclination before was aroused to determination and the child neglected her lessons to write. A volume of crude verse fashioned after the metre of Meredith's "Lucile," a romantic book in rhyme, and two novels were the fruits of this youthful ardour. Through the sickness and death of a sister, the author missed the last three months of school, but, she remarks, "unlike my schoolmates, I studied ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... resolution;—in brief Schiller to the life! Besides this, a chorus for a concert! I have no longer any feeling for that kind of thing, and could not produce it at any price. I should not know where to take my inspiration. One other thing: my musical position towards verse and metre has undergone an enormous change. I could not at any price write a melody to Schiller's verses, which are entirely intended for reading. These verses must be treated musically in a certain arbitrary ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... is a constant metre of the orator. There are many audiences in every public assembly, each one of which rules in turn. If anything comic and coarse is spoken, you shall see the emergence of the boys and rowdies, so loud and vivacious, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... garments, and one of them sang a rough sort of song, the others accompanying him with gestures. They stretched out their hands, and alternately struck their feet against the ground with frantic contortions. The last words they repeated in chorus, and we easily distinguished a sort of metre, but I am not sure that there was any rhyme; the music ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... but sweeter Than ever a moondawn smiled, Moves, measured of no tune's metre, The song in ...
— A Dark Month - From Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works Vol. V • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... text: Italicized stanzas will be indented 5 spaces. Italicized words or phrases will be capitalized. Lines longer than 75 characters have been broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces. Also, some obvious errors, after being confirmed against other sources, have ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... I felt ashamed of the lightness of my own thoughts, but I had to tell him of my speculations upon after-the-war developments in aviation: nurses flying Voisins, with the cars filled with babies; old men having after-dinner naps in twenty-three-metre Nieuports, fitted, for safety, with Sperry gyroscopes; family parties taking comfortable outings in gigantic biplanes of the R-6 type; mothers, as of old, gazing apprehensively at speed-dials, cautioning fathers about "driving too fast," and ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... roughly coincides with that of the road, until the equator is reached, after which it strikes by a more direct route across the Mau plateau to the lake, which it reaches at Port Florence on Kavirondo Gulf. The railway is 584 m. long and is of metre (3.28 ft.) gauge, the Sudan, and South and Central African lines being of 3 ft. 6 in. gauge. The Uganda railway is essentially a mountain line, with gradients of one in fifty and one in sixty. From Mombasa it crosses to the mainland by a bridge half a mile long, and ascends the plateau till it reaches ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Thomas," quoth Mr. Richardson, "it is not seemly to jest over the Word of God. The writers of our Book of Psalms in metre held rightly, that God's altar needs no polishing; and truly they have rendered the words of David into ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Spanish metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom, stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecorded wanderers, that repeated it for a few years, ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... without meaning, or with no significance in the connection where they occur are used. These may serve merely to fill out a line or to meet the demands of metre. Such often appear to be names of the style of "Humpty Dumpty;" these may be phonetically happy, as similar ones often are in European riddles, fitting well with the word or idea to be called up. Marabotania is probably meaningless, merely for euphony. ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... number of repetitions in the tune, and has a chorus that is sung at the end of each verse. I have not presumed to arrange it in metre; but the following is the substance: "We are assembled in the habiliments of war, and will go in quest of our enemies. We will march to their land and spoil their possessions. We will take their women and children, and lead them into ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... adores that Pilgrim flock, The same that split old Plymouth rock, Their "Bay Psalm" when they tried to sing. Devoid of metre, sense, and tune, Who but a Puritanic loon Could have devised ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... pooh!—Booh!" off he rode for the Tavern, where he and the landlord had a haze, the landlord was notified to leave, short metre; and being fully revenged for the insult paid his millions, old Stephen Girard, the great Philadelphia financier, rode back to where he was better used for his money, and evidently better satisfied than ever, that money is mighty when brought ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... loyalty! There is an anthem to celebrate the Union of Hearts! It should be sung round a table, Gladstonians and Irish Home Rulers hand in hand, as in "Auld Lang Syne," and given out by Pastor W.E. Gladstone, as short metre, two lines at a time. Why not? Stranger things are happening ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... my rhyming be at fault, If e'er I chance to scribble dope, If that my metre ever halt, I err ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the metre is essential to the full sense of the meaning and of the beauty of all poetry. Even the rhymeless flow of blank verse is absolutely necessary to an accurate and entire perception of the effect the author intends to produce: it is in both cases as the colouring to a picture. It may ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... as you can all your present notions about the nature of verse and poetry. Take a sponge and wipe the slate of your mind. In particular, do not harass yourself by thoughts of metre and verse forms. Second: Read William Hazlitt's essay "On Poetry in General." This essay is the first in the book entitled *Lectures on the English Poets*. It can be bought in various forms. I think the cheapest satisfactory edition is in Routledge's "New ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... by a succession of groups identical in length. The prose writer, in fact, since he is allowed to be so much less harmonious, is condemned to a perpetually fresh variety of movement on a larger scale, and must never disappoint the ear by the trot of an accepted metre. And this obligation is the third orange with which he has to juggle, the third quality which the prose writer must work into his pattern of words. It may be thought perhaps that this is a quality of ease rather than a fresh difficulty; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... look at these badgers! with a long leg on one quarter and a short leg on the other. The wench herself might well and truly have said all that matter without the poet, bating the rhymes and metre. Among the girls in the country there are many such SHILLY-SHALLYS, who give themselves sore eyes and sharp eye- water; I would cure ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... stand ours, it follows that our race is presumably tougher than the ancient; for we have to bear, and do bear, the seeds of greater diseases than those the ancients carried with them. We may use, perhaps, the unvarying savage as a metre to gauge the vigour of the constitutions to whose contact he ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... universally acknowledged to be, except perhaps Liszt's Feux Follets. The most important point would appear to lie not so much in the interchange of the groups of legato and staccato as in the exercise of rhythmic contrasts—the alternation of two and three part metre (that is, of four and six) in the same bar. To overcome this fundamental difficulty in the art of musical reproduction is the most important thing here, and with true zeal it may even be ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... in this quotation, merely showing the metre, would have no appeal to us; with all its perfection and its proportion, rhyme and cadence, it would only be a construction. But when it is the outer body of an inner idea it assumes a personality. The idea flows ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... ununderstood. It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doating over her as his "ain Ailie," "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... brilliant, is full of meaning. It has an interlude of tender romance. "Coy Maiden" is a graceful thing, but hardly deserves the punishment of so horrible a name. "A Gypsy Dance" is too long, but it is of good material. It has an interesting metre, three-quarter time with the first note dotted. There is a good effect gained by sustaining certain notes over several measures, though few pianists get a real sostenuto. An "Allegro Patetico" (op. 12), ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... but neatly set for two in Mlle. Fouchette's chamber. A cold cut of beef, some delicate slices of boiled tongue, an open box of sardines, a plate heaped with cold red cabbage, a lemon, olives, etc.,—all fresh from the rotisserie and charcuterie below,—were flanked by a metre of bread and a litre of Bordeaux. The spread looked quite ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... called "The Form of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments, etc., used in the English Church at Geneva approved and received by the Church of Scotland, whereunto besides that was in the former books are also added sundry other Prayers with the whole Psalms of David in English Metre." As the Psalms occupied by far the greater part of the book it came to be commonly known as "The Psalm Book," and as such, with frequent additions, among which were several hymns and doxologies, it continued to be the recognized Book of Common Order of the Scottish ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... guided me on the present occasion are the same as those followed in the translation of Schiller's complete Poems that was published by me in 1851, namely, as literal a rendering of the original as is consistent with good English, and also a very strict adherence to the metre of the original. Although translators usually allow themselves great license in both these points, it appears to me that by so doing they of necessity destroy the very soul of the work they profess to translate. In fact, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... smiths at their forges Worked the red Saint George's Cannoneers; And the "villainous saltpetre" Rung a fierce, discordant metre Round their ears; As the swift Storm-drift, With hot sweeping anger, came the horseguards' clangor On our flanks. Then higher, higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... them, asking them to read the verse after you, word by word, and then sing it with you. I will gladly supply, at bare cost, Song Rolls in Chinese, containing familiar gospel hymns translated into Chinese and so conformed in metre to the English original that the time remains unchanged, and the teachers can sing the English words, if desirable, while the Chinese use their own. There is no more effective preaching of the gospel ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... possession, and that he set to work busily to make use of them. One of the most interesting of the poems reclaimed for him by Professor Skeat is a fragmentary "Compleynt," part of which is written in terza rima. While he thus experimented with the metre of the Divina Commedia, he made his first attempt to use the material provided by Boccaccio's Teseide in another fragment of great interest, that of Quene Anelida and Fals Arcyte. More than a third of this is taken up with another, and quite successful, metrical experiment in Anelida's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... by friends and colleagues. Compare a poem of William Morris with one by Lewis Morris. Compare Swinburne's Songs and Sonnets with Matthew Arnold's Obermann; Rudyard Kipling's Ballads with The Light of Asia. Have they any common standard of form, any type of metre? The purists doubt as to the style of Carlyle as a "model," but no one denies that the French Revolution and Hero-Worship, at least in certain passages, display a mastery over language as splendid as anything in our prose literature. Exactly the same might be said also of Esmond, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Rhigas, see Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 199, note 2. Hobhouse (Travels in Albania, 1858, ii. 3) prints a version (Byron told Murray that it was "well enough," Letters, 1899, iii. 13) of [Greek: Deute paides,] of his own composition. He explains in a footnote that the metre is "a mixed trochaic, except the chorus." "This song," he adds, "the chorus particularly, is sung to a tune very nearly the same as the Marseillois Hymn. Strangely enough, Lord Byron, in his translation, has entirely mistaken the metre." The first stanza ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the scientific mind, in so far as it is free and purely intellectual, lies in tracing their formal pattern. The mathematician can afford to leave to his clients, the engineers, or perhaps the popular philosophers, the emotion of belief: for himself he keeps the lyrical pleasure of metre and of evolving equations: and it is a pleasant surprise to him, and an added problem, if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them; much as if a composer found that the sailors could heave better ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... a crown, I can truthfully state 'Tis a metre long, nor curly nor straight, And it is as yellow as plumbic chromate In a slightly ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... has been found that fresh basalt exposed to continually moving water will lose about 0.20 gramme per square metre of surface per year. The mineral orthoclase, which enters largely into the constitution of many granites, was found to lose under the same conditions 0.025 gramme. A glassy lava (obsidian) rich in silica and in the chemical constituents of an average granite, was ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... Italian poesy, as novices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy, from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of our English metre and style.' The chief point in which Surrey imitated his 'master, Francis Petrarcha,' was in the use of the sonnet. He introduced this elaborate form of poetry into our literature; and how it has thriven ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... these lines, which were in that form of verse known to the hymn-books as "common metre," was such as to convince the youth that, whatever occupation he might be compelled to follow for a time to obtain a livelihood or to assist his worthy parent, his true destiny was the glorious career of a poet. It was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The sound of the metre is essential to the full sense of the meaning and of the beauty of all poetry. Even the rhymeless flow of blank verse is absolutely necessary to an accurate and entire perception of the effect the author intends to produce: it ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... river has deserted its old bed, and the lagoon has been formed behind the bar, or littoral cord, wave and storm working upon this long line of mud and sand succeed in breaking through; then, as the inclination of the land is but 0'm, 01 in the metre—almost nothing, the sweet and salt water mingle in these lakes, they never run dry, though in many cases not three ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... any case, and even in the disasters of war, would be working out advantages which, after the war was done, would give England many friends and fewer enemies, give her treaties and new territory, and set her higher than she was now by a political metre. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of both metre and sense, and the words untalk'd of and unseen make it nearly indisputable. I had at first thought it might be "rumorous eyes;" but the personification would then be wanting. Shakspeare has personified ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... expectations, was succeeded by a most abominable fog, thick and white like cotton-wool. These were hardly ideal conditions under which to close a rocky and unknown coast, but it had to be done. The trouble was that it was entirely useless taking soundings, as the twenty-metre depth-line on the chart went right up to the land. We crept slowly eastwards, till, when by dead reckoning we were ten miles inside the coast, the Navigator accidentally leant on the whistle lever; this action on his part probably saved the ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... poetry in the very least. It is quite free from the usual formal faults of a boy's verse, except some evidences of a deficient ear, especially for rhyme ("full" and "beautiful," "palaces" and "days"). It manages a rather difficult metre (the sixain rhymed ababcc and ending with an Alexandrine) without too much of the monotony which is its special danger. And some of the tricks which the boy-poet has caught are interesting and abode with ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... sitting at a pantomime (Forbidden treat to those who stood in fear of him), Roaring at jokes, sans metre, sense, or rhyme, He turned, and saw immediately in rear of him, His peace of mind upsetting, and annoying it, A ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... wonder that we should try to attribute the times of the year to children; their likeness is so rife among annuals. For man and woman we are naturally accustomed to a longer rhythm; their metre is so obviously their own, and of but a single stanza, without repetition, without renewel, without refrain. But it is by an intelligible illusion that we look for a quick waxing and waning in the lives of young children—for a waxing that shall come again another time, ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... in a theatre overpowered by stage agony, but a truer sympathy is that which may require some effort, pity for common, dull, and deadly trouble that does not break out in shrieks and is not provided with metre and scenery. ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... of resolution;—in brief Schiller to the life! Besides this, a chorus for a concert! I have no longer any feeling for that kind of thing, and could not produce it at any price. I should not know where to take my inspiration. One other thing: my musical position towards verse and metre has undergone an enormous change. I could not at any price write a melody to Schiller's verses, which are entirely intended for reading. These verses must be treated musically in a certain arbitrary manner, and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... pitiful Prior, for thy rude speech and curses canonical we do requite thee with song sweet-sung and of notable rhyme and metre. Curse, and Belsaye shall out-curse thee; laugh, and Belsaye ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... fragment the title of Epic Poem, though epic poems are growing out of fashion; because, in the structure, plan, and metre, the heroic model is followed. My authorities for facts, dates, and characters, are Vertot and Puffendorff. The latter I have only read in an English translation, dated 1702: the former I quote from a small Amsterdam edition, printed for Stephen Roger, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... "Should we be silent and not speak," is nearly word for word from Plutarch, with some additional graces of expression, and the charm of metre superadded. I shall give the last lines of this address, as illustrating that noble and irresistible eloquence which was the crowning ornament of the character. One exquisite touch of nature, which is distinguished by italics, was beyond the rhetorician and historian, and belongs ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... three, O'er the wide world wandering be.— First, the antenatal Peter, Wrapped in weeds of the same metre, The so-long-predestined raiment 5 Clothed in which to walk his way meant The second Peter; whose ambition Is to link the proposition, As the mean of two extremes— (This was learned from Aldric's themes) 10 Shielding from the guilt of schism The orthodoxal syllogism; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the phenomena in nine of them), and that they follow in all cases the same general laws. Those of the Lake of Geneva have received the most elaborate and prolonged investigation. In March, 1876, Forel established a self-registering tide-gauge (limni-metre enregistreur) on the northern shore of this lake, at Morges; and, with the cooeperation of P. Plantamour, another one was installed in June, 1877, at Secheron, near the city of Geneva, at the southern extremity. Since these ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... him, said: "By Jupiter, Socrates, you have done well in reminding me. With respect to the poems which you made, by putting into metre those Fables of AEsop and the hymn to Apollo, several other persons asked me, and especially Evenus recently, with what design you made them after you came here, whereas before, you had never made any. If, therefore, you care at all that I should ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... and tumult, the office and the weighing-stand. In the interior, the arrangements are those usually adopted,—the wooden benches are ranged around the parc, or pit, a large wire cage nearly five metres long and two and a quarter high, elevated on a platform about a metre from the floor. It has no top, but the upper portions of the walls present a smooth band of metal up which the rats cannot climb. The dog is introduced through a sliding door on the floor, and his antagonists are emptied from a box over the top. They are of three ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul ...
— Ion • Plato
... it be objected that (Brahman is) not (denoted) on account of the metre being denoted; (we reply) not so, because thus the direction of the mind (on Brahman) is declared; for thus ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... text and sometimes regarded as merely a commentary. To this division of the Pitaka belong the Dhammapada, a justly celebrated anthology of devotional verses, and the Sutta-Nipata, a very ancient collection of suttas chiefly in metre. Other important works included in it are the Thera and Theri-gatha or poems written by monks and nuns respectively, and the Jataka or stories about the Buddha's previous births[607]. Some of the rather miscellaneous contents of this Nikaya ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... be pure literature; as much so as the poem. But poetry—now that the day of the broad Homeric epic is past, or temporarily eclipsed—appeals to a taste too exclusive and abstracted for the demands of modern readers. Its most accommodating metre fails to house our endless variety of mood and movement; it exacts from the student an exaltation above the customary level of thought and sentiment greater than he can readily afford. The poet of old used to clothe in the garb of verse his every observation on life ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... given in 'Botanische Zeitung' 1871 page 537. See also Hildebrand on Hordeum in 'Monatsbericht d. K. Akad Berlin' October 1872 page 760.) I hear from Fritz Muller that there is a grass in Southern Brazil, in which the sheath of the uppermost leaf, half a metre in length, envelopes the whole panicle; and this sheath never opens until the self-fertilised seeds are ripe. On the roadside some plants had been cut down, whilst the cleistogamic panicles were developing, and these plants afterwards produced free or unenclosed panicles ...
— The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species • Charles Darwin
... SI definition of an ampere: A current in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length and negligible cross-section, 1 metre apart in vacuum, would produce a force equal to 2E-7 newton per metre ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... everything. It was but the other day that he would have it that I was wrong when I said that one of the windows in the Trianon was smaller than any of the others. It was the same size, said he. I brought Le Metre with his measures, and of course the window was, as I had said, too small. But I see by your clock that it is four o'clock. ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Iliad in hexameters, no man can tell; but having done so, he thereby constituted for ever the proper metre of Greek—and Latin—Epic poetry. But what a multitude of subjects, how different from one another does that, and every other Epic poem, comprehend! Glory to the hexameter! it suits them all. Now, in every Epic poem, and in few more than in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... that were near the present cathedral. But it was converted into a baptistery and ornamented with mosaics by the archbishop Neon of Ravenna (c. 449-459) as its inscriptions tell us and is signed with his monogram. The original floor is three metres below that we see, and a second floor about a metre and a half above the original floor has been discovered; this it would seem is that made by Neon, while a third remains about half a metre under the pavement we use, and upon this are set the eight columns, with ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... seriously damaging the interior. A desperate resistance followed, but the Russians finally retreated, destroying a part of the fort before they left. We also saw other defences, but had no time to study them, as a long rough drive ensued, in order to reach 203-Metre Hill, the ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... badger) were numerous. One day we dug a two-metre hole, and next day found eight live ones. They have teeth one and ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... two metres.... three metres....Here is the door....Mon Dieu, how easy it is! Only a small, simple bolt now separates me from the chamber, and I know that the bolt is located exactly one metre, forty-three centimeters, from the floor. So that, thanks to a small incision I am about to make, I can soon get ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... Geste; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the mediaeval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many cases, by the art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in professional and literary hands. The mediaeval minstrels and jongleurs (who ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... we should only get into trenches that might be costly or impossible to hold, and so it would be for the Germans on our side. But there is a kind of etiquette observed; loud vulgar talking on either side of the four-metre gap leads at once to bomb throwing. And meanwhile on both sides guns of various calibre keep up an intermittent fire, the German guns register—I think that is the right term—on the cross of Arras cathedral, ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... of the subjoined productions of the MUSAE LONDINENSES have failed of selection, may he discovered in their being penned in a metre unusual upon occasions of this sort, and in their not being written with that attention to stage effect, the want of which, like want of manners in the concerns of life, is more prejudicial than a deficiency of talent. There is an art of writing for the ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... literary career was the happy discovery of the author, Richard Braithwait. I transcribe it from the MS. volume from which James Boswell first gave to the world Shakspeare's verses "On the King." Southey has somewhere said that "the best serious piece of Latin in modern metre is Sir Francis Kinaston's Amores Troili et Cressidae, a translation of the two first books of Chaucer's Poem[1]; but it was reserved for famous BARNABY to employ the barbarous ornament of rhyme, so as to give thereby point and character ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... perfumed As the sweet roadside honeysuckle. That's why, Difficult though its metre was to tackle, I'm glad ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... measures and with diverse feet. The rhythm is easy and flows along trippingly from the tongue with such regular emphasis and cadence as to lead instinctively to a sort of sing-song in the recital of it. Ballads are more frequently written in common metre lines of eight and six syllables alternating. Such is the famous ballad of "Chevy Chace,"[5] which has been growing in popular esteem for more than three hundred years. Ben Jonson used to say he would rather have been the author of it than ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... a general collection, the "Orphan Ballads" would fill a whole chapter.[61] The simple ditty which we give here as another specimen of Polish popular poetry, exceedingly rude as it is in its form, and even defective in rhyme and metre, cannot but please and touch us by its ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... cent of phosphine to render it spontaneously inflammable. Berdenich has reported a case of a parcel of carbide which yielded on the average 5.1 cubic foot of acetylene per lb., producing gas which contained only 0.398 gramme of phosphorus in the form of phosphine per cubic metre (or 0.028 per cent. of phosphine) and was spontaneously inflammable. But on examination the carbide in question was found to be very irregular in composition, and some lumps produced acetylene containing ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... its position, consists the chief art of appropriate harmony. Accentuation of syllables, which seems, to answer the idea of long and short syllables in the dead languages, is the foundation of English, metre.—Tripple rhymes used with judgment have been admitted by the best English poets, and now and then the introduction of an Alexandrine, ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... them, which is not always the case?" This domestic tragedy La Chaussee wrote in verse, which is not against French rules, and which has been done by dramatists a hundred and twenty years later; but it is probably an error, being even more unlikely that citizens would express themselves in metre than that kings and heroes should give utterance with a certain solemnity which entails rhythm. Thus he wrote The Fashionable Prejudice, The School of Friends, Melanide, very pathetic, The School of Mothers, etc. It must ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... kind—but this has hitherto been without a name. For there is no common term we could apply to the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus and the Socratic dialogues on the one hand; and, on the other, to poetic imitations in iambic, elegiac, or any similar metre. People do, indeed, add the word 'maker' or 'poet' to the name of the metre, and speak of elegiac poets, or epic (that is, hexameter) poets, as if it were not the imitation that makes the poet, but the verse that entitles ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... ans Taille d'un metre 62 centimetres Perruque brun Front large Yeux gris-sanguin Nez moyen Barbe grisatre ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... engineer. Thereafter, the story of the siege followed stereotyped lines except that the colossal nature of the fortifications entailed unprecedented sacrifice of life on the besiegers' part. The crucial point of the siege-operations was the capture of a position called 203-Metre Hill. This took place on November 30th after several days of the most terrible fighting ever witnessed, fighting which cost the Japanese ten thousand casualties. The importance of the hill was that ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Science, then, may well be included its power as a metre of the intellectual advance of mankind. In these splendid symbols man writes the record of his advancing humanity. How all is interwoven with the All! A petrified national mind will certainly appear in a petrified national Science. And that sublime upsurging from the depths ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... you can all your present notions about the nature of verse and poetry. Take a sponge and wipe the slate of your mind. In particular, do not harass yourself by thoughts of metre and verse forms. Second: Read William Hazlitt's essay "On Poetry in General." This essay is the first in the book entitled *Lectures on the English Poets*. It can be bought in various forms. I think the cheapest satisfactory edition is in Routledge's "New Universal ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... respect, if in no other, my poem is beyond dispute superior to the Iliad and Paradise Lost. However, tastes differ, I am aware; and you may possibly prefer those two epics to mine! They are longer, it is true; but then I think it will be conceded, even by the critics of the POH school, that my metre is sufficiently long, even though my story is short. While others measure their verse by the 'feet,' I measure mine by the yard.' . . . D.'S paper, (of Georgia,) so thickly interlarded with French, and Italian synonymes for far more expressive English words, reminds us of an old 'ignorant ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... hoped at least partially to liberate the lurking devil of humor from his fetters, letting him caper, not, certainly, as he does in the Latin, but as he probably would have done had his creator written in English. In preserving the metre and double rhymes of the original, I have acted from the same reverent regard for the music with which, in the liturgy of the Church, the verses have become inseparably wedded that inspired Gen. Dix; ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... incited by Mr. Cardew, for he was an enthusiast for Milton. Mrs. Cardew was a bad reader; she had no emphasis, no light and shade, and she missed altogether the rhythm of the verse. To Catharine, on the other hand, knowing nothing of metre, the proper cadence came easily. They finished the first six hundred ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... find anywhere a false quantity or a hiatus. The Ambrosian hymns remained the type of all the hymnic poetry of succeeding centuries. Even Prudentius, great poet as he was, was manifestly influenced in the choice of metre and the composition of the strophe by the ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... of metre I would choose, this I think you will hardly guess: no other than ottave rime. All the rest, except iambic, are become insufferable to me. And how beautifully might the earnest and the lofty be made to ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... may see for himself by comparing the passage from the manuscript given in the appendix with the corresponding place in the text. Milton's own spelling revels in redundant e's, while the printer of the 1645 book is very sparing of them. But in cases where the spelling affects the metre, we find that the printed text and Milton's manuscript closely correspond; and it is upon its value in determining the metre, quite as much as its antiquarian interest, that I should base a justification of this reprint. Take, for instance, such a line ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... I will make one remark: in the fourth line of the third strophe the metre leaves something to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Langland's metre 'is more uncouth than that of his predecessors' (Hallam, Mid. Ag. Ch. IX: ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... the Codex Regius, discovered in Iceland in 1642; to these are added other poems of similar character from other sources. The Younger Edda is a prose paraphrase of, and commentary on, these poems and others which are lost, together with a treatise on metre, written by the historian Snorri ...
— The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday
... are a more subtle experiment in metre by the musician and poet, Campion, than even the following, Laura, which he himself sweetly commended as "voluble, and fit to express any amorous conceit." In Kind are her Answers the long syllables and the ...
— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell
... when the metre is carefully fitted to the tune (which is a work of time), and sung by a choir (with accent) of a thousand British Blue-jackets, will doubtless be ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... him repeated applause. Here, for instance, in Chap. X: "It has, all of it, the description (and we see clearly the fact itself had), a kind of pathetic grandeur, simplicity, and rude nobleness; something Epic or Homeric, without the metre or the singing of Homer, but with all the sincerity, rugged truth to nature, and much more of piety, devoutness, reverence for what is ever high in this universe, than meets us in those old ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... invariably I find myself in a flurried, not to say confused, state of mind upon being thrust physically into the crowded throng. However, affairs of a more pressing and a more personal nature as well soon claimed me. Upon reaching the appointed destination, my attention was directed to the fact that the metre-device attached to the taxicab registered no less a total than two ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... gambling frenzies, those tempests which arise, rage, destroy, and carry everything away without premonitory warning or possibility of arresting their course. All at once it was rumoured that land bought at five francs the metre had been sold again for a hundred francs the metre; and thereupon the fever arose—the fever of a nation which is passionately fond of gambling. A flight of speculators descending from North Italy swooped ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... peat bog of Schleswig; that is in the very country of the Angles; judging by the coins found at the same time, it must belong to the third century. It measures 22 metres 67 centimetres in length, 3 metres, 33 centim. in breadth, and 1 metre 19 centim. in height. Specimens of Scandinavian ships have also been discovered. When a chief died his ship was buried with him, as his chariot or horse was in other countries. A description of a Scandinavian funeral (the chief placed on his boat, with his arms, and burnt, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... the equator to either pole. This is something that does not vary in extent. A commission of five learned men, especially in mathematics, was appointed by the French Academy, at the instance of the government, to adopt a standard, and they made it a metre, which is the ten millionth part of the quadrant of a meridian. The metre is 3.28 feet of our measure, with five more decimal ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... version by John Oxenford published in "The Monthly Magazine" for 1842, which being in blank verse does not represent the form of the original, no complete translation into English has been attempted. Some scenes translated with considerable elegance in the metre of the original were published by Archbishop Trench in 1856; but these comprised only a portion of the graver division of the drama. The present version of the entire play has been made with the advantages which ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... wherever possible, to give the very words which he finds to have been used; and it shows how wisely he was guided in this, that those magnificent speeches of Wolsey are taken exactly, with no more change than the metre makes necessary, from Cavendish's Life. Marlborough read Shakespeare for English history, and read nothing else. The poet only is not bound, when it is inconvenient, to what may be called the accidents of facts. It was enough for ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... composition of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has regard only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected—is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... rhyme, some do not; Hilda evidently belongs to the second category. "Treasure," and "The Apple-Jelly-Fish-Tree," and "Short Story" are the only poems in the book which seem to follow a clearly rhymed pattern. If any misguided schoolmistress had ever suggested that a poem should have rhyme and metre, this book would never have been "told." In "Moon Doves," however, there is a distinctly metrical effect without rhyme. But the great majority of the poems are built upon cadence, and the subtlety of this little girl's cadences are a delight to those who can hear them. Doubtless her musical ...
— Poems By a Little Girl • Hilda Conkling
... thought of metre, he thought of rhyme. 'Twas a race between weary brains and time. He tried to write as he used to when His heart was as young as his ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... paying no attention, or little, to metre and versification. Except in some of his later blank verse, and in a few other cases, his very errors are just as often the result of hazardous experiments as of carelessness and inattention. In one very important matter, that of rhyme, he is perhaps the greatest master in our language; in single ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Attention to metre and euphony will generally enable us to assign, amongst the forms in which we pick up and note any particular proverb, the original and legitimate one; especially when combined with brevity and "pith." As a case in point, our friend Ludlum will serve our purpose ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... was naturally frequently rallied by his family on his inconstancy of purpose, but he pleaded in extenuation that versatility had very marked charms of its own. He produced one day a copy of verses, written in the Gilbertian metre, to illustrate his mental attitude, and they strike me as so neatly worded, that I will reproduce ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... great gusto. Why he should have taken it into his head to get a child, as I was, to write poetry I cannot tell. One afternoon he sent for me to his room, and asked me to try and make up a verse; after which he explained to me the construction of the payar metre of fourteen syllables. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... burning aspirations strewn through this profound and massive work, are lasting lessons for all womankind. It seems to have been much easier for most of the critics of this great work to feel its artistic faults, its jarring metre, and cumbrous forms, than to appreciate the transcendent nobleness and wisdom wrought into it from the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... book may be considered as having been hitherto overlooked or rejected, while in the alternative case it is to be understood that the original cast of the melody has at some former time been altered (frequently to suit the English common metre to which it was not at first conformable), and ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... through the ranks of Austrian spears. It is written in the Middle-High-German, by Halbsuter, a native of Lucerne, who was in the fight. Here are specimens of it. There is a paraphrase by Sir Walter Scott, but it is done at the expense of the metre and nave ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... off before and after, so that there is no possibility of avoiding it in reading. I venture to say that no real parallel can be found to this in Cic., it stands in glaring contradiction to his own rules about admitting metre in prose, Orator 194 sq., De Or. III. 182 sq. Solam censebant ... tale quale esset: probably from Plato's Tim. 35 A thus translated by Cic., Tim. c. 7 ex ea materia quae individua est et unius modi ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... him. In vigorous imitation, he sat down to the piano again, after a hasty dinner snatched in the neighbourhood; but as he was only playing scales, he propped open before him a little volume of Goethe's poems, which Johanna had lent him, and suiting his scales to the metre of the lines, read through one after another of the poems he liked best. At a particular favourite, he stopped playing and held the book ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... justly observes: "The eleventh chapter, Description of Evening, is certainly the work of the Rhapsodists and an interpolation of later date. The chapter might be omitted without any injury to the action of the poem, and besides the metre, style, conceits and images differ from the general tenour of the poem; and that continual repetition of the same sounds at the end of each hemistich which is not exactly rime, but assonance, reveals the artificial labour of a more recent age." The following ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... confusion: "The mere matter of all poetry—to wit, the appearances of nature and the thoughts and feelings of men—being unalterable, it follows that the difference between poet and poet will depend upon the manner of each in applying language, metre, rhyme, cadence, and what not, to this invariable material." What has become here of the substance of Paradise Lost—the story, scenery, characters, sentiments as they are in the poem? They have vanished clean away. Nothing is left but the form on one side, and on the other not even the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... he was for, without an instant's hesitation and just like a hunted creature at bay, he turned sharply on his heel and then ran back down the street as hard as he could tear. He passed close to within half a metre of Tournefort, and as he flew past he hit out with his left fist so vigorously that the worthy agent of the Committee of Public Safety, caught on the nose by the blow, staggered and measured his length upon ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... mirror, spies The shining of a flambeau at his back, Lit sudden ore he deem of its approach, And turneth to resolve him, if the glass Have told him true, and sees the record faithful As note is to its metre; even thus, I well remember, did befall to me, Looking upon the beauteous eyes, whence love Had made the leash to take me. As I turn'd; And that, which, in their circles, none who spies, Can miss of, in itself apparent, struck On mine; a point I saw, that darted ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... reflection on the distinction between gentle birth and a gentle life. Chaucer's translation was not made at second-hand; if not always easy it is conscientious, and interpolated with numerous glosses and explanations thought necessary by the translator. The metre of "The Former Life" he at one time or another turned into verse ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... your industry, Meyer, but it is your discretion which is sometimes at fault. These plans of the forts of Liege—they might as well be published in a magazine. We had them when they were made. We have received copies of every alteration. We know to a metre how far the guns will carry, how many men are required to man them, what stocks of ammunition are close at hand. Understand, therefore, my friend, that the sight of these carefully traced plans, which you hint to have obtained at the risk of your life, ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... they may still be called better than indifferent. One great merit Mr. Taylor has: rigorous adherence to his original; he endeavours at least to copy with all possible fidelity the term of praise, the tone, the very metre, whatever ...
— Nathan the Wise • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... given you tragedies, all sense defying, And singing men, in woful metre dying; This 'tis when heavy lubbers ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Beeching into 'A Book of Christmas Verse' 1895 and thence, incorrectly, by Orby Shipley in 'Carmina Mariana'. Stated in a letter to R. W. D. June 25, '83, to have been written to 'hang up among the verse com- positions in the tongues. ... I did a piece in the same metre as Blue in the mists all day.' Note Chaucer's account of the physical properties of the air, 'House of Fame', ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... dream my time away,— I 'm sure to rue it. The day is rather bright, I know The Muse will pardon My half-defection, if I go Into the garden. It must be better working there,— I 'm sure it's sweeter: And something in the balmy air May clear my metre. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... was over, grace was chanted and then the Zemiroth was sung—songs summing up in light and jingling metre the very essence of holy joyousness—neither riotous nor ascetic—the note of spiritualized common sense which has been the key-note of historical Judaism. For to feel "the delight of Sabbath" is a duty and to take three meals thereon a religions obligation—the ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... theme of the native lore reveals one of the true sources of our literary independence. Greece and Rome, England and Italy, have so long furnished, if they have not exhausted, the field of poetic culture, that it is, at least, refreshing to find both in theme and metre, ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... have been superseded by the learned professors and the gentlemanly versifiers of later times! Is there to-day a popular poet, using the English language, who does not, in technical acquirements and in the artificial adjuncts of poetry,—rhyme, metre, melody, and especially sweet, dainty fancies,—surpass Europe's and Asia's loftiest and oldest? Indeed, so marked is the success of the latter-day poets in this respect, that any ordinary reader may well be puzzled, and ask, if the shaggy antique masters ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... minds what it is they are going to say before they begin. This is superfluous effort, tending to cramp the style. It is permissible, if not essential, to select a subject—say, MUD—but any detailed argument or plan which may restrict the free development of metre and rhyme (if any) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, June 2, 1920 • Various
... of lines besides, of the like brevity and metre. In them he was said to be greater even than the immortal gods themselves, seeing that they came to render their homage unto him, together with all things else over which they bare rule, even as the greater ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... one volume, Johnson, writing to Brocklesby, under date Sept. 2, 1784, calls Windham "inter stellas Luna minores." Boswell, in a note, says, "It is remarkable that so good a Latin scholar as Johnson should have been so inattentive to the metre, as by mistake to have written stellas instead of ignes." Now, with all due deference, a Captain of Native Infantry ventures to suggest that both stellas and ignes are wrong, and that Johnson was thinking of the noble opening of Horace's ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... over with excitement, "I've discovered the measurements in the document. Why Old Barbe Rouge was a Frenchman, and of course used French measure,—the metre! Hurrah!" and I made the rocks echo with my excited ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... Your statue, which is intended for a convent of Ursuline nuns, must be in white marble. Height: one metre seven hundred and six millimetres; in other words, five feet three inches. As it will not be placed in a niche, you must carefully finish all sides of it. The costs of the work are to be taken out of the two hundred and fifty ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... flew into the House, but Arimazes. Notwithstanding the Shower, he continued in the Garden, and never quitted it, till he had found one Moiety of the Tablet, which was unfortunately broke in such a Manner, that even the half Lines were good sense, and good Metre, tho' very short. But what was still more remarkably unfortunate, they appear'd at first View, to be a severe satyr upon the King: ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... And/ Scotch Reviewers./ A Satire./ I had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew!/ Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers./ Shakspeare./ Such shameless Bards we have; and yet 'tis true,/ There are as mad, abandon'd Critics too./ Pope./ London:/ Printed for James Cawthorn, British Library,/ No. 24, Cockspur ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... the tutors were all of the orthodox university calibre, who imagine that there is no knowledge (but vanity) in any other works than those in which their own education has consisted, so Henry Vavasour became at once the victor and victim of Bentleys and Scaligers, word-weighers and metre-scanners, till, utterly ignorant of everything which could have softened his temper, dignified his misfortunes, and reconciled him to his lot, he was sinking fast into the grave, soured by incessant pain into ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to music, work to music, obey drill commands that would bewilder a guardsman to music, think to music, live to music, get so clearheaded about music that they can move their several limbs each in a different metre until they become complicated living magazines of cross rhythms, and, what is more, make music for others to do all these things to. Stranger still, though Jacques Dalcroze, like all these great teachers, is the completest of tyrants, knowing what is right and that ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... Napoleon, who endeavoured to apply philosophy to all the arts of life, decreed, that no public road in France should exceed an inclination of 4 deg. 46', or rise more than one metre in twelve. This proportion, it was estimated, would combine the maxima and minima of the powers; and, in spite of those malignant confederacies which he was so often called upon to overthrow, the labour of reducing many steep roads of France to this practicable ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnete homme in the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures of the old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse. I must except also from this last a certain late publication of Scots poems, which she has perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in the country, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... as has been seen, sundry stanzas, and I have changed the order of others. The text has nowhere been translated verbatim; in fact, a familiar European turn has been given to many sentiments which were judged too Oriental. As the metre adopted by Haji Abdu was the Bahr Tawil (long verse), I thought it advisable to preserve that peculiarity, and to fringe it with the rough, ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... monuments in Rome," says a modern writer, "were written in Saturnian verse, the oldest measure used by the Latin poets. It was probably derived from the Etruscans, and until Ennius introduced the heroic hexameter the strains of the Italian bards flowed in this metre. The structure of the Saturnian is very simple, and its rhythmical arrangement is found in the poetry of every age and country. Macaulay adduces as an example of this measure, the following line from the well-known ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... reading of such poems as William Morris' "Sigurd the Volsung". Prose has been selected as the medium of translation, since it is hardly possible to give an accurate rendering and at the same time to meet the demands imposed by rhyme and metre; at least, none of the verse translations made thus far have succeeded in doing this. The prose translations, on the other hand, mostly err in being too continuous and in condensing too much, so that they retell the story instead of ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... their literary aspect. One play in each volume, with Introduction, Notes, Essay on Metre, and Glossary. Based on the Globe text. From 144 to 224 pages. Cloth. ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... the station during the morning, trying in vain to damage his lost rolling stock. This booty was of immense value to us, and to a large extent it solved the transport problem which at this moment was a very anxious one indeed. The line was metre gauge and we had no stock to fit it, though later the Egyptian State Railways brought down some engines and trucks from the Luxor-Assouan section, but this welcome aid was not available till after the rains had begun and had made lorry ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... accept the old traditions, he is the ruthless denouncer of abuses, and is thoroughly filled with the spirit which, four years after the second recension of his book, found expression in the Peasants Revolt of 1381. With all the archaism of his diction and metre, Langland, even more than Chaucer, reflects ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... course, a steady refrain of Greek iambics, Greek anapaests, 'an easy and nice metre,' 'a hodge-podge lot of hendecasyllables,' and thirty alcaic stanzas for a holiday task. Mention is made of many sermons on 'Redeeming the time,' 'Weighed in the balance and found wanting,' 'Cease to do evil, learn to do well,' and the other ever unexhausted texts. ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... of old associations, or of especial adaptation, be always sung to the same melodies, while to others might be accorded greater facilities for variety. This only by way of suggestion. The common practice of selecting melodies for verses, hap-hazard, with regard only to the 'metre,' of course destroys all possibility of any especial characterization. If the original 'marriage' have been a congenial one, a divorce, with view to a second union, rarely proves advisable. The same verses may bear another musical ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the cave, took from his pocket a ball of string and a tape-measure, tied the string to the flint corner, fastened a pebble at the nineteenth metre and flung it toward the land side. The pebble at most reached the ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... the fourteenth century there comes an Englishman nourished on this poetry, taught his trade by this poetry, getting words, rhyme, metre from this poetry; for even of that stanza which the Italians used, and which Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis and suggestion was probably given in France. Chaucer (I have already ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... leave both my metre and my stomach to the gods," Horace had retorted, "if you will turn over to them your worry about Rome, and pluck the blossom of the hour with me. Augustus is safe in Spain, you cannot be summoned to the Palatine, and to-morrow is early enough for the noise of the Forum. By the way," ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... of ludicrous interludes. A jig was not in Shakespeare's time only a dance, but a ludicrous dialogue in metre; many historical ballads were also ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... absence of taste and genius, as well as of modesty and shame. To a fellow of the name of Dagee, who sang the coronation of Napoleon the First in two hundred of the most disgusting and ill-digested lines that ever were written, containing neither metre nor sense, was assigned a place in the administration of the forest department, worth twelve thousand livres in the year—besides a present, in ready money, of one hundred napoleons d'or. Another poetaster, Barre, who has served and sung ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... themselves that the greater part of the book is not mere prose, written out into the form of verse, he is persuaded that its melody is more obvious and perceptible than that of our vulgar measures. "One advantage," says Mr. Southey, "this metre assuredly possesses; the dullest reader cannot distort it into discord: he may read it with a prose mouth, but its flow and fall will still be perceptible." We are afraid, there are duller readers in the world than ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... than s, form the possessive by the addition of the apostrophe and the letter s. The only exceptions to this rule are, that, by poetical license the additional s may be elided in poetry for sake of the metre, and in the scriptural phrases "For goodness' sake." "For conscience' sake," "For Jesus' sake," etc. Custom has done away with the s and these phrases are now idioms of the language. All plural nouns ending in s form the possessive by the ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... commend mere trifles with a long preface? Still there is one thing of which I think I should advise you, and it is that I am thinking of calling these trifles "Hendecasyllables," a title which simply refers to the single metre employed. So, whether you prefer to call them epigrams, or idylls, or eclogues, or little poems, as many do, or any other name, remember that I only offer you "Hendecasyllables." I appeal to your candour to speak to me frankly about my ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... Schenectady. With several other students and two or three young ladies of the city we held services at the "poorhouse" every Sunday. Short exhortations with prayers and the singing of hymns composed the service, and I remember that one day, in giving out a hymn in long metre, I started it to a short metre tune, and had to go through it alone, the ladies whose business was the musical part of the service not being able to accommodate their measure to my leading. I made my solo as short as ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... "Charles I". But though not seldom successful in restoring the text, Mr. Rossetti pushed revision beyond the bounds of prudence, freely correcting grammatical errors, rectifying small inconsistencies in the sense, and too lightly adopting conjectural emendations on the grounds of rhyme or metre. In the course of an article published in the "Westminster Review" for July, 1870, Miss Mathilde Blind, with the aid of material furnished by Dr. Garnett, 'was enabled,' in the words of Mr. Buxton Forman, 'to supply omissions, make ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... I have been more successful with the metre than usual," she added, "having been guided by a little poem, a favourite of mine, which, as it also inculcates kindness to the brute creation, you will do well, Harry, to commit to memory. ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... by words and expressions still more ardent and glowing. What separates and distinguishes poetry is more particularly the ornament of verse; it is this which gives it its character, and is an essential, without which it cannot exist. Custom has appropriated different metre to different kinds of composition, in which the world is not perfectly agreed. In England the dispute is not yet settled which is to be preferred, rhyme or blank verse. But however we disagree about what these metrical ornaments ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... regulating it, so that the foliage should have grown again on the first stripped shrubs at the period when the leaves of the last plant were pulled off. About 12,000 tea shrubs are grown in this garden: they are regularly planted in quincunxes, and stand about one metre distant from each other; the greater number are stunted and shabby looking, probably owing to the aspect of the ground, which lies low, on the level of the sea, and exposed to the full rays of a burning sun; perhaps the quality of the soil ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... occupied his evenings his mornings were spent over a satirical fairy-poem, The Cap and Bells, in the metre of the Faerie Queene. This metre, however, was ill-suited to the subject; satire was not natural to him, and the ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... reason why the modern reader should have become tired of academic poetry. When poetry divorced itself from music and became the slave of fixed rules of metre which could not be imitated with any real success in English, it sealed its own fate as a beloved visitant to the hearts of the people. Pope and his coterie closed the door on lyrical poets like Thomas Campion, and in their hearts they, like Voltaire, rather despised Shakespeare ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... with insertions from Baeda. Historically it is worthless; but as a monument of our language it is beyond all price. In more than thirty thousand lines not more than fifty Norman words are to be found. Even the old poetic tradition remains the same. The alliterative metre of the earlier verse is still only slightly affected by riming terminations; the similes are the few natural similes of Caedmon; the battle-scenes are painted with the same ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... laid. The first play was written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. See Wolsey's soliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell, where,—instead of the metre of Shakespeare, whose secret is, that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm,—here the lines are constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play contains, through all its length, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... articles on ballooning from the French. It is also interesting that she retained in her translation the original units which Verne used (metre, feet, leagues), a practice forgotten until recently. This may be the first appearance of a work by Jules Verne in the ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... THE LITERATURE AND ITS DIVISIONS.—A greater part of the Sanskrit literature, which counts its works by thousands, still remains in manuscript. It was nearly all composed in metre, even works of law, morality, and science. Every department of knowledge and every branch of inquiry is represented, with the single exception of history, and this forms the most striking general characteristic of the literature, ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... start; that my just-discovered island, so gladly to have been self-appropriated, was found to have, sticking on one corner of it, the flag of another king; that the havoc of my brain, subsiding calmly into the pendulum regularities of metre, was much ado about nothing; and all those pretty fancies were the catalogued property of another. Such a subject, too! intrinsically worthy of a niche in the temple of Fame, besides Hope, Memory, and Imagination, if only one could manage it well enough to be named in the same breath with ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... to tally greatest bards, To limn their portraits, stately, beautiful, and emulate at will, Homer with all his wars and warriors—Hector, Achilles, Ajax, Or Shakspere's woe-entangled Hamlet, Lear, Othello—Tennyson's fair ladies, Metre or wit the best, or choice conceit to wield in perfect rhyme, delight of singers; These, these, O sea, all these I'd gladly barter, Would you the undulation of one wave, its trick to me transfer, Or breathe one breath ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... term gallant mast. If gallant mean brave, there are two words. If the words be two, there is a stronger accent on mast. If the accent on mast be stronger, the rhyme with fast is more complete; in other words, the metre favours the notion of the words being considered as two. Gallant-mast, however, is a compound word, with an especial nautical meaning. In this case the accent is stronger on gal- and weaker on -mast. This, however, is not the state of things that the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... the poet had in mind any special place when writing of "Sweet Auburn," it was probably Lissoy, in Ireland, where he grew up; but the village of his imagination is lovelier than any actual spot, and there is no use in hunting for it on the map. See the first note on The Traveller for remarks on metre, etc. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... two elements, an outer element of incident, an inner of passion and character. In view of these common features, we might be tempted at first sight to suppose the difference between the three kinds to be merely one of form, merely the difference between the vehicle of prose and the vehicle of metre. We shall find, however, on deeper inquiry, that to the true artist, who does not find his materials in the world, but creates them according to the inner laws by which the world and himself are governed, ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
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