"Poesy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meliorating influence of time, had a gradual though slow effect, in changing grief into meek resignation. Her lute, long endeared by the remembrance of Eustace, was now attuned to deplore the death of him who had restored her the treasure. When sorrow can flow in poesy, it becomes more plaintive than agonizing; and possibly the reader will be pleased to see that the long-protracted years of Constantia's anguish were soothed by those alleviations, which, in mercy to man, are permitted imperceptibly to soften the ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... contrary to be a mere goatherd or ditcher-lout, so great and shocking is the change. What can we think of this? he who just now was seen a professed droll, or e'en shrewder than such in gay speech, this same becomes more boorish than a country boor immediately he touches poesy, nor is the dolt e'er as self-content as when he writes in verse,—so greatly is he pleased with himself, so much does he himself admire. Natheless, we all thus go astray, nor is there any man in whom thou canst not see a Suffenus in some one point. ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... It [Poesy] was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the shews of things to the desires ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... rumoured, to everybody's astonishment, that she had married a widower in a provincial town—she who belonged to the realms of Poesy! ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... in 1579 published "The School of Abuse, or a Pleasant Invective against Poets, Players, Jesters, and such like Caterpillars." Yet this Gosson dedicated his work to Sir Philip Sidney, a great lover of plays, and one who has vindicated their morality in his "Defence of Poesy." The same puritanic spirit soon reached our universities; for when a Dr. Gager had a play performed at Christchurch, Dr. Reynolds, of Queen's College, terrified at the Satanic novelty, published "The Ouerthrow of Stage-plays," 1593; a tedious invective, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Wonder then this Kingdom should have been revered at Home, and admired Abroad; when Religion formed, Erudition nurtured, Philosophy strengthened, History preserved, Rhetorick adorned, Musick softened, and Poesy refined, the National Wisdom and Accomplishments; to all which was added, a thorough Knowledge of Tactics, and great Skill and Agility in all the ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... sun, the sky, the sea, the wind—Bowles had said, the ship's properties are only blue bunting, coarse canvas, and tall poles. "So they are," admits Byron, "and porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and flesh is grass; and yet the two latter at least are the subjects of much poesy. . . . Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical, the Parthenon or the rock on which it stands. . . . Take away Stonehenge from Salisbury plain and it is nothing more than Hounslow Heath or any other unenclosed down. . . . There can be nothing more poetical ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... slipp'd idly from me. Our poesy is as a gum, which oozes From whence 'tis nourish'd: the fire i' the flint Shows not till it be struck; our gentle flame Provokes itself, and like the current flies Each bound it chafes. What ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... Filipinos do this here with greater dignity and respect. When they write, they heighten their style with so many rhetorical phrases, metaphors, and pictures, that many who think themselves poets would be glad to do as much; and yet this is only in prose. For, when it comes to poesy, he who would understand it must be very learned in their language, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... excellent reading, and the appreciation of the modern classics is displayed in one of her poems—an admirable apostrophe to the character and works of Dante. This poem, which was published some time since, Mrs. Hopper once recited to us, and both mamma and I were struck with the true ring of poesy ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... again repeated, laying her delicate hand gently on my head. "I fear you have a great deal to contend with in this rough world. The flowers of poesy are sweet, but poverty is a barren soil, my child. The dew that ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... torrid sunset burns with gold Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul A passion burns from basement unto cope. Poesy, poesy, I'd give to thee As passionately my rich laden years, My bubble pleasures, and my awful joys, As Hero gave her trembling sighs to find Delicious death on wet Leander's lip. Bare, bald, and tawdry, as a fingered moth Is my poor life; but with one smile ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... Fancy loves to dwell, And on the crest of some huge mountain-thought Placing the glory of thy fleecy cloud, To make its frowning grandeur greater still, And heighten all its beauteous mystery. Thro' the sweet-coloured plains of Poesy Thou flowest like a sweetly-sounding stream, Here, rushing furious o'er the rocky crags Of wild, original thought, and there, 'neath bowers Of imagery, winding on thy way Peaceful and still towards the fadeless sea Of all enduring immortality. ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... with us, a charm divine, Our people, loving verse, will still, Unknowing of their art, entwine Garlands of poesy at will. Their simple language suits them best: Then let them keep it and ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... sweep it, overcome By all its clouds incumbent: O be true To your soul, dearest, as my life to you! For if that soil grow sterile, then the whole Of me must shrivel, from the topmost shoot Of climbing poesy, and my life, killed through, Dry down and perish to the ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... Poesy! thou sweet'st content That e'er Heaven to mortals lent, Though they as a trifle leave thee Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee; Though thou be to them a scorn That to nought but earth are born; Let my life no longer be Than I ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... who talk much of poesy and know nothing about it, declaim against the habits of life in the provinces. But put your forehead in your left hand, rest one foot on the fender, and your elbow on your knee; then, if you compass the idea of this quiet and uniform scene, this ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... heresy, and not poesy. We woo the sweet nymph Algebra; we would conduct you into the presence of the elusive, ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Mother chid her sons Not of the giant brood, who did create Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain Set moving by an abject blood, that waked To wanton under elements more benign, And planted aliens on Olympian heights; - Imagination's cradle poesy Become a monstrous pressure upon men; - Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed By light from her, born of the love of her, Their lordship the illumined brain rejects For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, Her other name. So spake she in their heart, Among ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp lookout in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... of the Middle Ages was divided into sacred and profane, both were altogether Christian according to their kind; for if sacred poesy sang of the Jewish race and its history, the only race which was regarded as holy, or of the heroes and legends of the Old and New Testaments, and, in brief, the Church—still all the life of the time was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... looked Morning in the eyes and forsook his allegiance to Night, and one by one the lesser hills about Mondana's knees greeted the Morning. And all the while in the plains the shapes of cities came looming out of the dusk. And Kongros stood forth with all her pinnacles, and the winged figure of Poesy carved upon the eastern portal of her gate, and the squat figure of Avarice carved facing it upon the west; and the bat began to tire of going up and down her streets, and already the owl was home. And the dark ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... also to poesy) being Ibn Khallikan's real heroes, let me say something of each. A Traditionist was a learned man intimate with the Koran, whose duty it was to separate the spurious traditions which so naturally would have collected around such a figure as ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... collected these flowers of colonial poesy, which prove that the old Conquerors were much more expert with the sword than with the pen. Hist. del Peru, Parte 1, lib. 2, cap. 93.] [Footnote 27: "Fue recibimiento mui solemne, con universal alegria del Pueblo, por verse libre de Tiranos; i toda la Gente, a voces, bendecia al ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... time he settled in London, his mind was more occupied with literary projects than with steady application; nor had poesy, for which Nature peculiarly designed him, sufficient attractions to chain his wavering disposition. It is not certain whether his irresolution arose from the annoyance of importunate debtors, or from an original infirmity of mind, or from these causes ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... object of the work is, not to infuse a passion, but to inculcate a just and sober taste for dramatic poetry and acting, the editors propose to give, seriatim, a history of the drama from its origin, with strictures on dramatic poesy, and portraits of the best dramatic poets of antiquity. To this will succeed the history of the British stage, with portraits of the most celebrated poets, authors, and actors who have flourished on it, and strictures ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... motionless and sullen. Misled by my puny appearance, a woman—taking me for a sleepy child—slid softly into the place beside me, with the motion of a bird as she drops upon her nest. Instantly I breathed the woman-atmosphere, which irradiated my soul as, in after days, oriental poesy has shone there. I looked at my neighbor, and was more dazzled by that vision than I had been by the scene ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... went on to sing the choicest and most affecting poesy to many and various modes, till our senses were bewitched and the very room danced with excess of delight and surprise at her sweet singing; and neither thought nor reason was left in us. When we had sat awhile ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... gibes at it in the mouths of Gonzalo's rascally comrades; and it follows that Gonzalo's further phrase, "to excel the golden age," proceeds from Montaigne's previous words: "exceed all the pictures wherewith licentious poesy hath proudly embellished the golden age." The play was in all probability written in or before 1610. It remains to show that on his first reading of Florio's Montaigne, in 1603-4, Shakspere was more deeply and widely influenced, though ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... its pages. We are not saying too much when we say that its versatile editor—Ella Farman, is more fully at home in the child's wonder-land than any other living American writer. She is thoroughly en rapport with her readers, gives them now a sugar plum of poesy, now a dainty jelly-cake of imagination, and cunningly intermixes all the solid bread of thought that the child's mind can digest and assimilate.—York ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... in a youngster writing verses. The glamour of poesy is gone. I remember how the few women who wrote poetry in those days were looked upon as miraculous creations of the Deity. If one hears to-day that some young lady does not write poems one feels sceptical. Poetry now sprouts long before the highest Bengali class is reached; so that no modern ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... But his mother stroked his hair and called him her big boy.... He tramped out to Bone Stillman's shack, impatient for the hand-clasp of the pioneer, and grew eloquent, for the first time since his home-coming, as he described Professor Frazer and the delights of poesy. A busy week Carl had in Joralemon. Adelaide Benner gave a porch-supper for him. They sat under the trees, laughing, while in the dimly lighted street bicycles whirred, and box-elders he had always known whispered that this ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... town, as if nothing were left but the mere recollection of what it once was. How different the picture sixty years ago, when all the literary world looked thither for the last oracle from one of these high-priests of poesy! Book-publishers went there to make proposals for the editorship of magazines, or for some other new literary enterprise. Napoleon himself craved an audience with Goethe, and it is the strongest grudge held by the Germans against the master of their literature ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... she says, "when Lord Byron's face is shadowed over with the pale cast of thought, and then his head might serve as a model for a sculptor or a painter to represent the ideal of poesy. His head is particularly well formed: his forehead is high, and powerfully indicative of his intellect: his eyes are full of expression: his nose is beautiful in profile, though a little thickly shaped. His eyebrows are perfectly drawn, but his mouth is perfection. Many ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... thoughts of his soul. From the "Annunciation" to the various scenes from the life of Christ; from the "Virgin among the saints," in the corridor, to the decoration of the room which Cosimo had built for himself in his favourite convent, all breathe such sweet poesy in the grace and simplicity of the varied scenes, that one cannot look at ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... unheard of outside her parish and forgotten at her death—is immortalized as a peeress of Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, and has been for a century loved and mourned of all the world. We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the heroines whose charms have attuned the fancy and aroused the impassioned muse of enamoured bards; readers have always exhibited a natural avidity to realize the personality of the beings who inspired the tender lays—prompted often by mere curiosity, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... Nature, who knows so much better than man about everything, cares nothing at all for the little distinctions, and when she elects one of her children for her most important work, bestows on him the rich gift of poesy, and assigns him a post in the greatest of the arts, she invariably seizes the opportunity to show her contempt of rank and title and race and land and creed. She took Burns from a plough and Paul from an elevator, and Paul has done for his own people ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... and Java at all on their Reading Matter. She liked Henry James and Walter Pater and he preferred Horse Papers and the Comic Supplement. Sometimes when she would wander off into the Realms of Poesy he would follow her as far as he could, and then sit down and wait for her to get through rambling and ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... certain poesy in his taste for the country. He liked to see a woman with a tall flexible figure glide through the dusky shrubberies of the park; only that woman must be dressed in white. He hated gowns of a dark color and had a horror of stout women. As for pregnant women, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... ever expressed so much ardour and eagerness for the entertainments of the theatre as the Greeks, and especially the Athenians. The reason is obvious: as no people ever demonstrated such extent of genius, nor carried so far the love of eloquence and poesy, taste for the sciences, justness of sentiments, elegance of ear, and delicacy in all the refinements of language. A poor woman, who sold herbs at Athens, discovered Theophrastus to be a stranger, by a ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... read in your little volume, your 19th Effusion, or the 28th or 29th, or what you call the "Sigh," I think I hear you again. I image to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together thro' the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy. When you left London, I felt a dismal void in my heart, I found myself cut off at one and the same time from two most dear to me. "How blest with Ye the Path could I have trod of Quiet life." In your conversation you had blended so many pleasant fancies, that they ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... of Poesy the rattle-jointed Tin Lizzie of Free Verse and the painted jazz wagon of Futurism and the cheap imitation of the Chinese palanquin must turn aside, they have no right of way, these literary road-lice ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... of one famed city from another, the size and general appearance of each; they see as many as possible of celebrated pictures and works of art, and mark carefully dimensions, age, and all details concerning them. Men, too, whom the world regards as great men, whether because of wisdom, poesy, warlike achievements, or of wealth and station, they seek to take by the hand and in some degree to know; at least to note their appearance, demeanor, and mode of life. Writers belonging to this class of travellers are not to be undervalued; returning home, they can give much useful ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... "Dryden," says Dr. Johnson, "may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine, upon principles, the merit of composition. . . Dryden's 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy' [1667] was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing."[6] The old theater was dead and Shakspere now emerged from amid its ruins, as the one unquestioned legacy of the Elizabethan age to the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... to Valmiki, bird of charming song, Who mounts on Poesy's sublimest spray, And sweetly sings with accent clear and strong Rama, aye ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... little familiar with from my own home, for that's just the way we eat at home. Or just simply take the names, the personal names that adorn the people up there, and that we also had in large numbers at home, take a name like Ingeborg,—a harp-chord of the most immaculate poesy. And then the sea—they have the Baltic up there! ... In short, I am going up there, Lisaveta. I wish to see the Baltic again, hear these names again, read those books on the spot; and I wish to stand on the terrace of Kronborg, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... is he with this same wretched rhyme, That never does he know so blest a time As when he writes away, and fondly deems He rivals Homer's god-enraptured dreams; And wonders in his pride, himself to see, The very pattern-pink of poesy. Alas! Suffenus, while I laugh at thee, The world, for aught I know, may laugh at me. It is the madness of each one to pride Himself on that 'twere better far to hide; Nor know the faults in that peculiar sack Which AEsop says is hanging ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... unearthly scream of an unknown bird or animal coming from some mysterious, undefinable quarter completes an ideal Western picture, a poem, a dream, that fully compensates for the discomforts of the preceding hour. The inspiration of this beautiful scene awakes the slumbering poesy within, and I am inspired to compose a poem-"Moonlight in the Rockies"-that I expect some day to see the world ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... but they come not, and so a good dinner lost, through my own folly. And so to dinner alone, having since church heard the boy read over Dryden's Reply to Sir R. Howard's Answer, about his Essay of Poesy, and a letter in answer to that; the last whereof is mighty silly, in behalf ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... origin of the instrument, the word "shell" is often used as synonymous with "lyre," and figuratively for music and poetry. Thus Gray, in his ode on the "Progress of Poesy," says: ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... their imitation; and poets, while they imitate, instruct. The feigned hero inflames the true; and the dead virtue animates the living. Since, therefore, the world is governed by precept and example, and both these can only have influence from those persons who are above us; that kind of poesy, which excites to virtue the greatest men, is of the greatest ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... is there that I the singer hear the very essence of song; certainly not on earth has true poesy its birth; certainly it is within the heavens that one hears the lovely coyol bird lift its voice, that the various quechol and zacuan birds speak together, there they certainly praise the ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... agonies that remain forever dumb and unrevealed! When I was young,—how long ago that seems! yes, though my actual years are taut thirty, I feel an alder-elde of accumulated centuries upon me—when I was young, the dream of my life was Poesy. Perhaps I inherited the fatal love of it from my mother—she was a Greek-and she had a subtle music in her that nothing could quell, not even my father's English coldness. She named me Theos, little guessing what a dreary sarcasm that name would prove! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Arts and Sciences our Isle hath shone" (This deep discovery is mine alone). Oh "British poesy, whose powers inspire" My verse—or I'm a fool—and Fame's a liar, "Thee we invoke, your Sister Arts implore" With "smiles," and "lyres," and "pencils," and much more. 30 These, if we win the Graces, too, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Though he wrote for Englishmen in their own tongue, his fame was celebrated by the French poet, Eustace Deschamps, as the "great translator" who had sown the flowers of French poesy in the realm of Aeneas and Brut the Trojan. His broad geniality stood in strong contrast to the savage patriotism of Minot. In becoming national, English vernacular art did not become insular. Chaucer wrote in the tongue of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... POSEY, or POESY. A nosegay. I shall see you ride backwards up Holborn-hill, with a book in one hand, and a posey in t'other; i.e. I shall see you go to be hanged. Malefactors who piqued themselves on being properly equipped for that occasion, had always a nosegay to smell to, and a prayer ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... certain, or even likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the difference between Kirke White and Keats. And this talk about "University" poets seems somewhat otiose unless it can be shown that Cambridge and Oxford directly encourage poesy, or aim to do so. I am aware that somebody wins the Newdigate every year at Oxford, and that the same thing happens annually at Cambridge with respect to the Chancellor's Prize. But—to hark back to the butcher and ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... been publishing more poesy—I wish he would send me his 'Sir Edgar', [5] and Bland's 'Anthology', to Malta, where they will be forwarded. In my last, which I hope you received, I gave an outline of the ground we have covered. If you have not been overtaken by this despatch, Hobhouse's tongue is at ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... oft have I invoked thee for my Muse And found such fair assistance in my verse As every alien pen hath got my use And under thee their poesy disperse. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... think that in treating this matter, it is important to make known to our readers the ancient superstitions, the vulgar or common opinions, and the prejudices of nations, to be able to refute them, and bring back the figures to truths, by freeing them from what poesy had added for the embellishment of the poem, and the amusement ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... later, Sir Philip Sydney, in his "Defence of Poesy," says: "The final end of learning is to draw and lead us to so high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clay lodgings, ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... loved everything that in any way is elegant and ornate in society: names, manners, talents, titles. Madcap as I assuredly was, I looked upon all this as vanity, and went in quest of intimacy and simplicity combined with poesy. Thanks to God, I found them in Zoe, who was really a person of merit, and, moreover, a woman with a heart as eager ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... club, but it was doubtless a successor of the famous Echo Club of Boston memory, for, like that erudite body, it takes pleasure in trying to better what is done. On the occasion of the meeting of which the following gems of poesy are the result, the several members of the club engaged to write up the well-known tradition of the Purple Cow in more elaborate form than the quatrain made famous by Mr. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... design'd! to charm our civil rage With verse, and plant bays in an iron age! But hath steel'd Mars so ductible a soul, That love and poesy may it control? Yes! brave Tyrtaeus, as we read of old, The Grecian armies as he pleas'd could mould; They march'd to his high numbers, and did fight With that instinct and rage, which he did write. When he fell lower, they would straight retreat, Grow soft and calm, and temper their bold heat. ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... and poesy Of hasheech and of wine, vain speeds Beneath Bohemia's brilliant sky On ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... imposing production, yet we could not consider ourselves as fulfilling our promise, (of holding up to our countrymen a faithful mirror of Pushkin's poetry,) had we omitted to attempt versions of the slighter and more delicate products of his poesy. It is true that, in passing through the deteriorating process of translation into another language, the lighter works suffer most, and are more likely to lose that exquisite delicacy of expression, and that transparent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... nowadays who reads Cowper—that charming, domestic poet who wrote 'The Task', and invested even furniture with the glamour of poesy? Alas! to many people Cowper is merely a name, or is known only as the author of the delightfully quaint ballad of John Gilpin. Yet he was undoubtedly the Poet Laureate of domesticity, and every householder ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... this side of the boundary, and no account were to be taken of his thoughts and doings, except in a kind of curious appendix at the end of the general register? What if philosophy, at a certain extreme range, and of a certain kind, tends of necessity to pass into poesy, and can hardly help being passionate and metrical? If so, might not the omission of poets, purely as being such, from a conspectus of the speculative writers of any time, lead to erroneous conclusions, by giving ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... of that delicate plant: the storm comes afterward to perfect its life. Vaughan first saw the light in a rural district of great beauty. His songs bear witness to it. Indeed he is known by his own designation, a fragrant title in the sweet fields of English poesy, as the Swan of the Usk, though he veiled the title in the thin garb of the Latin, "Olor Iscanus." Another fortunate circumstance was the personal character of his education, at the hands of a rural Welsh rector, with whom, his twin brother for a companion, he passed the years of youth in what, ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... That other men should work for me In the rich mines of poesy, Pleases me better than the toil Of smoothing, under harden'd hand, With attic emery and oil, The shining point for wisdom's wand, Like those THOU temperest 'mid the rills Descending from thy native hills. He who would build his fame ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... we find in excluding from the honours of unaffected warmth and elevation the madness prepense of pseudo-poesy, or the startling hysteric of weakness over-exerting itself, which bursts on the unprepared reader in sundry odes and apostrophes to abstract terms. Such are the Odes to Jealousy, to Hope, to Oblivion, and the like, in ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... wretchedness, how can he induce her to make shipwreck in the midst of all this luxury on the decks of two beds. What advantage is it that we have made the whole universe subserve our existence, our delusions, the poesy of our life? What good is it to have instituted law, morals and religion, if the invention of an upholsterer [for probably it was an upholsterer who invented the twin beds] robs our love of all its illusions, strips it bare of the ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... to you a long letter of dedication, which I suppress, because, though it contained something relating to you which every one had been glad to hear, yet there was too much about politics, and poesy, and all things whatsoever, ending with that topic on which most men are fluent, and none very amusing—one's self. It might have been re-written—but to what purpose? My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and firmly-established fame; and with my most hearty ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... was a poet of talent, had before his conversion been surnamed Prince of Poesy and crowned at the capital by the emperor. One day while visiting a relative who was a nun at San Severino in the March of Ancona, Francis also arrived at the monastery, and preached with such a holy impetuosity ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... learned court, had been advancing with a steady and rapid progress; and it may be interesting to contemplate the state of one of its fairest provinces as exhibited by the pen of an able critic, who in the year 1589 gave to the world an Art of English Poesy. This work, though addressed to the queen, was published with a dedication by the printer to lord Burleigh; for the author thought proper to remain concealed: on its first appearance its merit caused it to be ascribed to Spenser by some, and by others to Sidney; but it was traced ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... business not to excite but to control and allay. So we continue to prohibit the poetry which is imitation, however supreme, and allow only hymns to the gods, and praises of great men. We must no more admit the allurements of poesy than the attractions ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... dancing called [Greek omitted] unless the representation be lively and graceful, decent and unaffected. And, in short, we may aptly transfer what Simonides said of painting to dancing, and call dancing mute poetry, and poetry speaking dancing; for poesy doth not properly belong to painting, nor painting to poesy, neither do they any way make use of one another. But poesy and dancing share much in common especially in that type of song called Hyporchema, in which is the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... said that the gift of poesy is innate—that is, a poet is born a poet, and, thus endowed by Heaven, apparently without study or art, composes things which verify the saying, Est Deus in nobis, etc. Thus the poet of nature, ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Cupid's fires be out, and his bow broken, Thy verses, neat Tibullus, shall be spoken. Our Gallus shall be known from east to west; So shall Lycoris, whom he now loves best. The suffering plough-share or the flint may wear; But heavenly Poesy no death can fear. Kings shall give place to it, and kingly shows, The banks o'er which gold-bearing Tagus flows. Kneel hinds to trash: me let bright Phoebus swell With cups full flowing from the Muses' well. Frost-fearing myrtle shall impale my head, And of sad lovers I be often ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... as more generally stated, a Thracian. Pieria was a country on the south-east coast of Macedonia, through which ran a ridge of mountains, a part of which were called Pieria, or the Pierian mountain. The inhabitants are celebrated in the early history of the music and poesy of Greece, as their country was one of the earliest seats of the worship of the Muses, and Orpheus was said to have been buried there. It is most probable that Phaedrus was carried away in slavery ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... prosaic among us some love of poesy, though unacknowledged? And who, in romantic youth or sober age, has not been touched by the tragic story of the dispersion of the ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... chiefs luxuriate in the possession of unbounded knowledge. Rapid circulation of the currency has been found to constitute national wealth. A general diffusion of knowledge is the necessary condition of civilisation. Poesy is no longer content to dwell at court. Chemistry has chosen the path which Bacon pointed out to her; and whilst she has found a new field of action, has been enriched by treasures of knowledge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... as Sor Ines de la Cruz (Mexico) is part of Spanish literature. Only recently has she been indicated as her nation's first folklorist and feminist! Her poems have found their way into the anthologies of universal poesy. The most distinguished Spanish poetess of the nineteenth century, Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, was a Cuban by birth, going later to Spain, where she was readily received as one of the nation's leading literary ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... may I be permitted to subjoin a few stanzas? Old Izaak Walton hath put songs and sylvan poesy in plenty into the mouths of his anglers and rural dramatis personae, and shall I be blamed for following, in all humility, his illustrious example? Perchance—but hold! it is one of the fairest of summer ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... that species were not immutable, but his words were so veiled in the language of poesy that they naturally went unchallenged. But now the grandson of Doctor Erasmus Darwin came forward with the net result of thirty years' continuous work. "The Origin of Species" did not attack any one's religious belief—in fact, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... she loved the tales, the legends, the popular songs and stories of those days. How greedily did she listen to her nurse! and what marvels did the eloquent old woman unfold, to the young, burning imagination of her foster child! Anastasia, sometimes abandoning herself to poesy, would forget sleep and food; sometimes her dreams concluded the unfinished tale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... 'mid blossoms straying, Where Hope clung feeding like a bee,— Both were mine! Life went a-maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy When ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... — N. poetry, poetics, poesy, Muse, Calliope, tuneful Nine, Parnassus, Helicon^, Pierides, Pierian spring. versification, rhyming, making verses; prosody, orthometry^. poem; epic, epic poem; epopee^, epopoea, ode, epode^, idyl, lyric, eclogue, pastoral, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The poesy of this young Lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction from that exact standard. His effusions ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... the next day all the doctors of the different faculties and such of their pupils as were of fame and note, on the third day the rest of the scholars with the milites, townsmen, and many burgesses. It was a costly and noble act; the authentic and ancient times of poesy were thus in some measure renewed, and neither present nor past time can furnish any record of such a solemnity having ever taken ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... our meeting, and you care not to hasten it! Is life but a disillusion, then, and are the flowers of our garden faded away? I have wept—I have prayed—I have passed sleepless hours—I have shed bitter, bitter tears over your letter! To you I bring the gushing poesy of my being—the yearnings of the soul that longs to be loved—that pines for love, love, love, beyond all!—that flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur! Your heart beats no quicker at the kneeling appeal of my love!—your proud eye ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a man of many parts, Who in his coffer mind Had stored the Classics and the Arts And Sciences combined; The purest gems of poesy Came flashing from his pen— The wholesome truths of History He gave ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... General's pardon! . . . Suddenly he ran back to the castle, hardly knowing what he was doing, and soon reached the salon. His Excellency was still at the piano humming in low tones, his eyes moistened by the poesy of his dreams. But the breathless old gentleman did not ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... study. Herein he wrote of "the witchery of Italy"—the land he loved next to his own. His letters give glorious glimpses of the Arno, their strolls to Bellosguardo's heights, the churches, monasteries, costumes, and songs of the peasants—all attuned to poesy. Frequent were the exchanges of civility between the author's study and the good old curato across the lane. Cooper wrote of him: "The man has some excellent figs, and our cook, having discovered it, lays his trees under contribution." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... may not have had faults as far as form is concerned, but very likely they were without any intrinsic value. His mind was still engrossed with other things than the real poesy of music. Notwithstanding this, under cover of such performances as these, he believed he could announce himself to the family as a musician. They regarded such efforts at composition however as a mere transitory passion, which would disappear like others especially ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... genius, her juvenile condition abundantly contributed: the locality of her birthplace, rich in landscape scenery, and associated with family traditions and legends of curious and chivalric adventure, might have been sufficient to promote, in a mind less fertile than her own, sentiments of poesy. In the application of her talents she was influenced by another incentive. A loose ribaldry tainted the songs and ballads which circulated among the peasantry, and she was convinced that the diffusion of a more wholesome minstrelsy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... despite his headlong experiences on the Concho, was unimpaired, so to speak. He patted the neck of the rangy roan which he bestrode, and settled himself to the serious task of expressing his inner-most being in verse. He dipped deep into the Pierian springs, and poesy broke forth. But not, however, until he had "cinched up," as he mentally termed it, the saddle of his Pegasus ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... masters men! For thee I grew A midnight student o'er the dreams of sages. For thee I sought to borrow from each grace, And every muse, such attributes as lend Ideal charms to love. I thought of thee, And passion taught me poesy—of thee, And on the painter's canvas grew the life Of beauty! Art became the shadow Of the dear starlight of thy haunting eyes Men call'd me vain—some mad—I heeded not; But still toil'd on—hoped on—for it was sweet, If not to win, ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... you must continue to be a sculptor, and with the talents of which you have already given proofs, I wish you to make a statue of Saint-Ursula. That is a subject which does not lack either interest or poesy. Saint-Ursula, virgin and martyr, was, as is generally believed, a daughter of prince of Great Britain. Becoming the abbess of a convent of unmarried women, who were called with popular naivete the Eleven Thousand Virgins, she was martyred ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... present. In the course of a year his mind was accustomed to pass in a grand solar sweep through all the zodiacal signs of the intellectual heaven. Sometimes it was in the Ram, sometimes in the Bull; one month he would be immersed in alchemy, another in poesy; one month in the Twins of astrology and astronomy; then in the Crab of German literature and metaphysics. In justice to him it must be stated that he took such studies as were immediately related to his own profession in turn ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... God, let gross opinion sink and be damn'd As deep as Barathrum, If it may stand with your most wish'd content, I can refell opinion and approve The state of poesy, such as it is, Blessed, eternal, and most true divine: Indeed, if you will look on Poesy As she appears in many, poor and lame, Patch'd up in remnants and old worn rags, Half starved for want of her peculiar food: Sacred invention, then I must confirm Both ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... he, "all but the verses."—[Plutarch, Whether the Athenians more excelled in Arms or in Letters.]—Having contrived the subject, and disposed the scenes in his fancy, he took little care for the rest. Since Ronsard and Du Bellay have given reputation to our French poesy, every little dabbler, for aught I see, swells his words as high, and makes his cadences very ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... long to find out that he had a weakness for poetry (as his seniors sometimes spoke of it). Writing to his friend Loring, probably at the beginning of the Christmas vacation, 1836, he says, "Here I am alone in Bob's room with a blazing fire, in an atmosphere of 'poesy' and soft coal smoke. Pope, Dante, a few of the older English poets, Byron, and last, not least, some of my own compositions, lie around me. Mark my modesty. I don't put myself in the same line with the rest, you see.... Been quite 'grouty' ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... the good Hiller, who is a pupil of Hummel and a youth of great talent, came off very successfully the day before yesterday. A symphony of his was received with much applause. He has taken Beethoven for his model, and his work is full of poesy and inspiration. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Walpole, glows with grateful fire. The streams of royal bounty, turned by thee, Refresh the dry remains of poesy." ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... It is only necessary to be bold to obtain favours. Alas! mad little one, get thee to bed again, sleep; thou art panting from thy journey; perhaps thou hast been further than the present time. Now dry thy fair naked feet, stop thine ears, and return to love. If thou dreamest other poesy interwoven with laughter to conclude these merry inventions, heed not the foolish clamour and insults of those who, hearing the carol of a joyous lark of other days, exclaim: Ah, the ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... wonder that made vague her form, Oped on a figure splendent so to view; Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm Of warring rainbows it endeared grew To shape of her who 'gan descending slow, Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low: 'Twas Beauty's self, and ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... with a flood of compliments, which I can never hope to merit, you request my opinion of your translation of a Latin verse that has been applied to me. If I were, which I really am not, sufficiently skilled in your excellent language to be a proper judge of its poesy, the supposition of my being the subject must restrain me from giving any opinion on that line, except that it ascribes too much to me, especially in what relates to the tyrant, the Revolution having been the work of many able and brave men, wherein it is sufficient ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... silence; but he is evidently worthy of being enrolled in that little constellation of remote but never-failing luminaries who shine in the highest firmament of literature, and who, like morning stars, sang together at the bright dawning of British poesy. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... spirituelle features, lit by beautiful eyes and surmounted by a wealth of straight black hair; a form haggard, weazened by deformity, yet evidencing muscular toil; delicate hands and feet that like the features bespoke the poesy of soul within mis-shapen shell,—the hunchback scissors-grinder Pierre Frochard presented a remarkable aspect which, once seen, no ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... myrtle bowers comes the plash Of fountains, and the emerald flash Of parrots in the orange trees, Whose blossoms pasture humming bees. He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke Bears visions, that his master-stroke Is out of dirt and misery To light the fire of poesy. He sees the glory, yet he knows That others cannot see his shows. To them his smoke is sightless, black, His votive vessels but a pack Of old discarded shards, his fire A peddler's; still to him the pyre Is incensed, an enduring goal! He sighs ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... both wild and cultivated; tumultuous grandeur towers above, but in itself all proportions are human. The world that the traveller has lately viewed is here in miniature, modest and pure; his soul, refreshed, bids him remain where a charm of melody and poesy surrounds him with harmony and awakens ideas within his mind. Such a scene represents both life and ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... scene. In an open stretch of dazzling brilliancy the sea presented itself to his eyes like a delicate network of jewels finely strung on swaying threads of silver, and he gazed upon it as one might gaze on the "fairy lands forlorn" of Keats in his enchanting poesy. Never surely, he thought, had he seen a night so beautiful,—so perfect in its expression of peace. He walked leisurely,—the long shed which sheltered the air-ship was just before him, its black outline silhouetted against the sky—but as he approached it ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... adventuress, who had lived with him in Dapitan, and the religious ceremony was the only one then recognized in the islands. [14] The greater part of his last night on earth was spent in composing a chain of verse; no very majestic flight of poesy, but a pathetic monody throbbing with patient resignation and inextinguishable hope, one of the sweetest, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... give not up fair poesy, sweet lord, To such contempt! That I may speak my heart, It is the sweetest heraldry of art, That sets a difference 'tween the tough sharp holly And tender ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... with aerial wings Dance upon the trembling strings. Oh, lead me thou in strains sublime Thy sacred hill of oaks to climb, To haunt thy old poetic streams, And sport in fiction's fairy dreams, There let the rover fancy free, And breathe the soul of poesy! To think upon thy ravish'd crown, Thy warlike deeds of old renown; Thy valiant sons at Maelor slain, {75a} The stubborn fight of Bangor's plain, {75b} A thousand banners waving high Where bold Tal Moelvre meets the ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... staid New Englander write of his loving consort, eulogies in rhyme, and epitaphs, elegies, threnodies, epicediums, anagrams, acrostics, and pindarics, all speaking loudly of loving, "painful" care, if not of a spirit of poesy. And the even, virtuous tenor of the life in New England proved too a happiness and contentment equal to the marital results of more emotional and romantic love-making. There were some divorces. Madam Knight found that they were plentiful in Connecticut in 1704, as they are in that ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the opinion that o had commonly the long sound, as in tone, and supposes both words to have been pronounced like own. But was absolute identity in sound ever necessary to a pun, especially in those simpler and happier days? Puttenham, in his "English Poesy," gives as a specimen of the art in those days a play upon the words lubber and lover, appreciable now only by Ethiopian minstrels, but interesting as showing that the tendency of b and v to run together was more sensible then than now.[L] But Shakspeare unfortunately rhymes ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner—Let him on a certain day read a certain page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and reflect from it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it: until it becomes stale—But when will it do so? Never—When Man has arrived ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... daily roam, And of him little did his brothers see, He knew no pleasure in the gates of home, But pensive strolled beside the surging sea, Delighting in its vast sublimity, And in the thunders of its mighty roll, While all his love flowed forth in poesy, That love that fed the fountain of the soul: In her his youthful hopes were ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... admirers of true chivalry, as the mournful elegies which he poured out among the desert rocks of Caledonia,(1303) in honour of the peerless lady and his heart's idol, the incomparable Cynthia, will for ever preserve his name in the flowery annals of poesy. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... impetuously have I been winging Toward vaporous heights which beckon and beguile I sink back, saddened to my inmost mind; Even as I list a-dream that mother singing The poesy of sweet tone, and sadden, while Her voice is cast in troubled wake behind The keel of her keen spirit. Thou art enshrined In a too primal innocence for this eye - Intent on such untempered radiancy - Not to be pained; my clay can scarce endure Ungrieved the effluence near of essences ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... through Homer: I found poetry through Milton, whose Comus we had to read for examination by some learned Board. If any one thing definitely committed me to poesy it was that poem; and as has nearly always happened to me, the crisis of discovery came in a flash. We were all there ranked at our inky desks on some drowsy afternoon. The books lay open before us, the lesson, I suppose, prepared. But what followed ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... supreme disdain; As when we see the Miser bend insane O'er his full coffers, and in accents drear Deplore imagin'd want;—and thus appear To me those moody Censors, who complain, As [1]Shaftsbury plain'd in a now boasted reign, That "POESY had left our darken'd sphere." Whence may the present stupid dream be traced That now she shines not as in days foregone? Perchance neglected, often shine in waste Her LIGHTS, from number into confluence run, More than when thinly in th' horizon ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... crooked legs! Let him go and get a pair of well-wadded black silk stockings, and pull them over those horrid shanks; put a large gown and bands over beard and hide; and pour a dozen of lavender-water into his lawn handkerchief, and cry, and never make a joke again. It shall all be highly-distilled poesy, and perfumed sentiment, and gushing eloquence; and the foot SHAN'T peep out, and a plague take it. Cover it up with the surplice. Out with your cambric, dear ladies, and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... expect to escape, what he needs so greatly, the discipline of severe criticism; for he is aware that he has often wandered out of the beaten track, and has many times been too regardless of the established rules of rhythm, in his (oftentimes vain) search for the flowers of poesy. ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... compass vile: so that ye taught a school Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit, Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, Their verses tallied. Easy was the task: A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race! That blasphem'd the bright Lyrist to his face, And did not know it,—no, they went about, Holding a poor, decrepid standard out Mark'd with most flimsy mottoes, and in large ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... through which he then passed would have been perfect;—his athletic sports, his battles, his love of dangerous enterprise, gave every promise of a spirit fit for the most stormy career. But to the meditative pursuits of poesy, these dispositions seemed, of all others, the least friendly; and, however they might promise to render him, at some future time, a subject for bards, gave, assuredly, but little hope of his shining first ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... governor-spirits grave, Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news From steep-wall'd heavens, holy malcontents, Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all That brood about the skies of poesy, Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars; Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none With total lustre blazeth, no, not one But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist Of defect; yea, you masters all must ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... century shouted epigrams and affected being greater poets than they really were. It was a good sign, and it left its impress on French literature. Following in the footsteps of Francis I and the two Marguerites nobles vied with each other in their efforts to produce some epoch-making work of poesy or prose, and while they did not often publish for profit they were glad enough to see themselves in print. Then there were also the professional men of letters, as distinct from the courtiers with literary ambitions, the churchmen and courtly ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Dryden, Hallam says, 'His "Essay on Dramatic Poesy," published in 1668, was reprinted sixteen years afterward, and it is curious to observe the changes which Dryden made in the expression. Malone has carefully noted all these; they show both the care the author took with his own ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... the realists, if they like, go on proclaiming that all is prose, and the idealists that all is poesy. The last will have their rainy days, the first their days of sunshine. In all arts the victory remains with a privileged few, who go their own ways; and the discussions of the "schools" will pass ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... into exotic lands, and whose art, in appearance most simple, proved a genuine enchantment for the imagination. It was the time when M. Zola and his school stood at the head of the literary movement. There breathed forth from Loti's writings an all-penetrating fragrance of poesy, which liberated French literary ideals from the heavy and oppressive yoke of the Naturalistic school. Truth now soared on unhampered pinions, and the reading world was completely won by the unsurpassed intensity and faithful accuracy with which he depicted the alluring charms of far-off scenes, ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... [L. of BUNTHORNE] Though so excellently wise, For a moment mortal be, Deign to raise thy purple eyes From thy heart-drawn poesy. Twenty lovesick maidens see— Each is ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... of Morris was Poesy's own 'summer child.' Hope, love, and happiness, sunny-winged fancies and golden-hued imaginings, have nested ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Himself, so that people might not see Him. But she saw Him. Yes, He was there, she knew, and in the uplift of the moment there came to her child's heart a vision that never faded, a vision that many years later bore her up on the wings of poesy to fame. ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... poesy stand around me everywhere; They fill the earth and they fill my thought, they are in and above the air; But to-night they have shut their doors, they have shut their shining windows fair, And I am left in a desert world, with an aching as ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... and great faults, 'magnae; virtutes nee minora vitia,' is the poesy," says our author, "of the best natures." This poesy may be properly applied to the style of Browne; it is vigorous, but rugged; it is learned, but pedantick; it is deep, but obscure; it strikes, but does not please; it commands, but does ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... of fifteen years. It was born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III made his anti-Liberal coup d'etat ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... technique displayed in The Prince's Quest has characterized nearly every page of Mr. Watson's works. He is not only content to walk in the ways of traditional poesy, he glories in it. He has a contempt for heretics and experimenters, which he has expressed frequently not only in prose, but in verse. It is natural that he should worship Tennyson; natural (and unfortunate for him) that he can see little in ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... contemporary, Peacham; who seems to excel in a calm, easy, and graceful manner of composition. Both these eminent writers are distinguished for their scholastic and gentlemanly attainments; but in the "divine art of poesy" (in which light I mean here more particularly to display the powers of Braithwait) Peacham has no chance of being considered even as a respectable competitor with his contemporary. Mr. George Ellis, in his pleasing Specimens ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... impervious crags, but having been From youth our own adopted, he had passed Into a gentler service. And when first 100 The boyish spirit flagged, and day by day Along my veins I kindled with the stir, The fermentation, and the vernal heat Of poesy, affecting private shades Like a sick Lover, then this dog was used 105 To watch me, an attendant and a friend, Obsequious to my steps early and late, Though often of such dilatory walk Tired, and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... Celestial poesy! whose genial sway Earth's furthest habitable shores obey; Whose inspirations shed their sacred light, Far as the regions of the Arctic night, And to the Laplander his Boreal gleam Endear not less than Phoebus' brighter beam, — Descend thou also on my native land, And on some mountain-summit ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... men coming forward who shall inaugurate a better literature. . . . If ever there was a time when a magnificent field opened to young aspirants for literary renown, that time is the present. Every door is wide open. . . . All the graces of poesy and art and music stand waiting by, ready to welcome a bold new-comer. . . . Who will come forward and inaugurate a new era of bold, electrical, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... shifting scenes which unrolled themselves before him, that so he might have given us further reminiscence of the lands over which his Pegasus bore him. Such completeness of view, however, is alien to the poesy of Hawaii. ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... words up, as the martial line Before my eyes dissolved to nought:— "Soldier, these heroes all are mine; And I am Glory!" As a tomb That groans on opening, "Say, were thine," Cried the dark figure. "I consume Thee and thy splendors utterly. More names have faded in my gloom Than chronicles or poesy Have kept alive for babbling earth To boast of in despite of me." The other cried, in scornful mirth, "Of all that was or is thou curse, Thou dost o'errate thy frightful worth! Between the cradle and the hearse, What one of mine has lived ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... evermore controul, And Thought still lord it o'er her soul? Queen of all wonders and delight, Say, canst not thou possess her quite, Sweet Poesy! and balm distil For every ache, and every ill? Like as in infancy, thy art Could lull to rest that throbbing heart! Could say to each emotion, Cease! And render it a realm of peace, Where beckoning Hope led on Surprize To see ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... he sings immortal Fames—your own, My PHILIP, latest and not least—in strains That thrill our nerves and mount into our brains. If he would study less in GOSSON's "School" (That of "Abuse," o'er which you laid the rule In your "Defence of Poesy"), and stay Less in dim Orcus than Arcadia, Then—well, I might have well been spared this task. SPENSER, you penned your own; now may I ask Epithalamion-recipes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... they never intrude themselves upon our attention. Vigor, freedom, life, and action, the inspiration of genius, joy in existence, are his attributes, and while the muses are feminine, he is the god of poesy and music. So the Milo Venus has all the traits of womanhood, but not in excess, and her sweet, dignified presence reminds us that she is a goddess, and not a weak, self-conscious woman, like the Medicean image. But the type of womanhood in western ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the beautiful, sleek slithery bugs. Oh, to be a water-bug of poesy skipping across the flood of oblivion! Oh, to be ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... new; but in the standards by which he tries such terms there is something amusingly characteristic of his time. In the choice of words, "the first indiscretion is in the use of such words as to the readers of poesy (which are commonly Persons of the best Quality)"—it is only fair to reproduce Hobbes' capitalization—"are not sufficiently known. For the work of an heroic poem is to raise admiration (principally) for three virtues, valor, beauty, and love; to the reading whereof women no less ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... misunderstood; and your heart was empty; death was in your eyes, and you were the very Colossi of grief. But tell me, you noble Goethe, was there no more consoling voice in the religious murmur of your old German forests? You, for whom beautiful poesy was the sister of science, could you with their aid find in immortal nature no healing plant for the heart of their favorite? You, who were a pantheist, and antique poet of Greece, a lover of sacred forms, could ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... fades a star in space? Hath not that soul A history in itself, a refluent tide Of mystery murmuring out of unplumbed deeps, On distant inaccessible strands, whereon Memory lies dead amid the monstrous wreckage Of jarring worlds? Are yonder stars above As spiritually, magnificently bright As Poesy feigns? May not some slumbering sense, A memory dim of those diviner days, When all the Heavens were yet aglow with God, Transfuse them through and through with glimmering grace And glory? Still the Stars within us shine, And Poesy is but a recollection Of Something ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves |
