"Poetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea voyage, and to say that I enjoyed it would be to state but the simple truth. The element of poetry was left largely out of my make-up and so I did not go into ecstasies over the foam-crested waves as did several of the party, but I was as fond of watching for the flying fish that now and then skimmed the waves and for the porpoises that often put ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... of Nature, but transcribed them into their books, out of the Practice of their own Common-wealths, which were Popular; as the Grammarians describe the Rules of Language, out of the Practise of the time; or the Rules of Poetry, out of the Poems of Homer and Virgil. And because the Athenians were taught, (to keep them from desire of changing their Government,) that they were Freemen, and all that lived under Monarchy were slaves; therefore ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... painful to witness. She was writing orders to Dublin tradesmen, and each order might have been printed in the Complete Letter-Writer, as a specimen of the manner in which young ladies should address such correspondents. Fanny had a volume of French poetry in her hand, but had it been Greek prose it would have given her equal occupation and amusement. It had been in her hands half-an-hour, and she had not ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... well—SOME poetry,' Alice said doubtfully. 'Would you tell me which road leads out of ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... confine itself to no single period or department of literature. Poetry, fiction, drama, biography, autobiography, letters, essays,—in all these fields is the material of ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... the whole territory in every map the Queen has consulted is "Columbia," but as there exists also a Columbia in South America, and the citizens of the United States call their country also Columbia, at least in poetry, "British Columbia" might be, in the Queen's ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... time I've found you poring over that old rhyme. What is the charm, Richard? Not its poetry I fancy." And the young wife laid a slender hand on the yellow, time-worn page where, in Old English text, appeared the lines ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... exploits we have nothing to do, save to notice that it must have been in the camp at Rakele, if not on the battle-field of Glenmalure, that Raleigh began his momentous friendship with Spenser, whose Shepherd's Calender had inaugurated a new epoch in English poetry just a month before Raleigh's departure for Ireland. It is scarcely too fanciful to believe that this tiny anonymous volume of delicious song may have lightened the weariness of that winter voyage of 1580, which was to prove ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... popular. He lent money at easy rates to the municipality, and made liberal distributions of corn, giving as much as a bushel and a half to every needy citizen. He spoke Greek and Latin with equal ease and eloquence; and had, we are told, an unsurpassed gift for reciting poetry. Sulla, who, for all his savagery, had a cultivated taste, was charmed with the young man, and would have taken him in his train. "I beseech you," replied Atticus, "don't take me to fight against those in whose company, but that I left Italy, I might be fighting ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... to the anthropomorphic religious poetry of Homer, Xenophanes elaborates the notion, or rather the abstract or purely verbal definition, of that which really is (to on) as inconclusive of all time, and space, and mode; yet so that all which can be identified concretely with mode and space and time ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... their kites to the basket. They had never tried them at home; it might be a good chance on the hills. Solomon John had put in some fishing-poles; Elizabeth Eliza, a book of poetry. Mr. Peterkin did not like sitting on the ground, and proposed taking two chairs, one for himself and one for anybody else. The little boys were perfectly happy; they jumped in and out of the wagon a dozen times, with new india-rubber boots, ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... added strength that he had long been accustomed to face the sternest aspect of the world. He had within his own mind two resources, often, perhaps normally, associated together, but seldom so fully combined as with him. In his most intimate circle he would draw upon his stores of poetry, particularly of tragedy; often, for instance, he would recite such speeches ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... voice, and gave each of us her hand, which was very soft and warm. She had something appropriate, I recollect, to say to every individual; and what she said to myself was this:—"I have long wished to know you, Mr. Coverdale, and to thank you for your beautiful poetry, some of which I have learned by heart; or rather it has stolen into my memory, without my exercising any choice or volition about the matter. Of course—permit me to say you do not think of relinquishing an occupation in which you have done yourself so much credit. I would almost rather give ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... every possible source of disturbance to this quietly maturing plan. He had no objection to have Gifted Hopkins about Myrtle as much as she would endure to have him. The youthful bard entertained her very innocently with his bursts of poetry, but she was in no danger from a young person so intimately associated with the yard-stick, the blunt scissors, and the brown-paper parcel. There was Cyprian too, about whom he did not feel any very particular ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... east there was a low, long bank of clouds like a mountain range, and as the poetry and melody of the lullaby rose from the little nest on my left, and stole into my thought, I saw a faint light above this line; then a group of mist-like clouds that moved toward me. Slowly the gray haze, ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... lee of a little hill, near the base of a great oak. Here a stream, six inches broad, an inch deep, but as clear as burnished silver, flowed from beneath a stony outcrop in the soil, and then trickled away, in a baby stream, down a little ravine. There was a strain of primitive poetry, the love of the wild, in Henry's nature, and he ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... seem not to know that poetry has its particular rules and precepts; and that history is governed by others directly opposite. That with regard to the former, the licence is immoderate, and there is scarce any law but what the poet prescribes ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... practised—did I summon to myself the assistance of chemical knowledge. On the first of the two, after following Marian to the inn at Blackwater (studying, behind a convenient waggon which hid me from her, the poetry of motion, as embodied in her walk), I availed myself of the services of my invaluable wife, to copy one and to intercept the other of two letters which my adored enemy had entrusted to a discarded maid. In this ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... traveling in Europe, mingled with the aristocratic classes, and he affected to look down upon the masses; but with all his snobbishness he had a wonderful faculty for endowing trifling occurrences with interest, and his letters have never been surpassed. He possessed a sunny nature, full of poetry, enthusiasm, and cheerfulness, and was always willing to say a pleasant word for those who treated him kindly, and never sought to ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... reading poetry lately, and romances, and such things. I used to think they were nonsense—good for nothing; because they came out so beautifully, and represented love to be so great an element in the world. But now I see they were not good enough; they are much below the truth; ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... Smith. Indeed, heathendom had a strong hold over the common English mind long after the public adoption of Christianity; and heathen sacrifices continued to be offered in secret as late as the thirteenth century. Our poetry and our ordinary language is tinged with heathen ideas even ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... a lovely piece of poetry can be made about your pockets full of long-legged creatures, that come crawling out and stretch their horrid long ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... opposite all at once asked me if I ever read anything better than Pope's "Essay on Man"? Had I ever perused McFingal? He was fond of poetry when he was a boy,—his mother taught him to say many little pieces,—he remembered one beautiful hymn;—and the old gentleman began, in a clear, loud ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... door-keepers of the mind; none of them commands an only way of access,—the deaf can read by sight, the blind by touch. It is not amid the bustle of the live senses, but in an under-world of dead impressions that Poetry works her will, raising that in power which was sown in weakness, quickening a spiritual body from the ashes of the natural body. The mind of man is peopled, like some silent city, with a sleeping company of reminiscences, associations, impressions, attitudes, ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... I am able to do, therefore I do not lack clothes, shoes, bracelets, and all beautiful things. But what will become of you? Aren't you able to do anything else but thinking, fasting, making poetry?" ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... not?' answered Roderick. 'Time and place are made for us, and not we for time and place. Is not good poetry as good at one place as at another? Or would you prefer dancing? there is scarcity of men; and with the help of nothing more than a few hours' jumping and a pair of tired legs, you may lay strong siege to the hearts of as many grateful beauties as ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... been reading books of poetry till you don't know what it is you do want. You've got your head full of claptraps and tantrums till you haven't a grain of sense belonging to you. I hate such ways. It's a spurning of the gifts of Providence not to have such a man ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... got one book—it's poetry— A bunch of pretty wrongs An Eastern lunger gave to me; He said 'twas "shepherd songs." But, though that poet sure is deep And has sweet things to say, He never seen a herd of sheep ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... said the Tutor: "but not, properly speaking, in the same way. However—you have not studied the father of poetry in the original, it would appear. ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... and the Wesleys furnish the foundation, and the materials of the superstructure are largely drawn from Doddridge, Cowper, Toplady, Montgomery, and others of kindred spirit, yet many beautiful things have been added from the later religious poetry, which are no less fervid in feeling, while less pronounced in doctrinal expression. These hymns are arranged in judicious general divisions, which are again analytically separated into special topics placed in logical sequence. After the hymns follow thirty-eight ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... isn't a lot of bunkum in higher education? I never found that people who were learned in logarithms and other kinds of poetry were any quicker in washing dishes or darning socks. I've done a good deal of reading when I could, and I don't want to "admit impediments" to the love of books, but I've also seen lots of good, practical folk spoiled by too much ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... is perhaps unexampled that a coinage practised for centuries with a certain technical skill should have essentially limited itself to always imitating two or three Greek dies, and always with increasing deformity. On the other hand the art of poetry was highly valued by the Celts, and intimately blended with the religious and even with the political institutions of the nation; we find religious poetry, as well as that of the court and of the mendicant, flourishing.(17) Natural science and philosophy also found, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... stimulating glimpses into the infinities. In our physical geography we shall read marvelous stories that outrival the romances of Dumas and Hugo. And geography as a whole will reveal herself as the cherishing mother of us all, providing us with food, and drink, and shelter, and raiment, giving us poetry, and song, and story, and weaving golden fancies for the fabric of ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... that there is more truth in science than in poetry—a vulgar error refuted both by reason and common sense. Poetry, being the expression of the necessary with the Absolute, must, in consequence, be nearer truth than science, which has, for the most part, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... sea was sparkling on the margin of the plate of expectation, there was Mr. Cheeseman, with a knife and fork, amid a presence of hungrifying goods that beat the weak efforts of imagination. Hams of the first rank and highest education, springs of pork sweeter than the purest spring of poetry, pats of butter fragrant as the most delicious flattery, chicks with breast too ample to require to be broken, and sometimes prawns from round the headland, fresh enough to saw one another's heads off, but for ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... are attached to Wisdom. Hoh is ashamed to be ignorant of any possible thing. Under Wisdom therefore are Grammar, Logic, Physics, Medicine, Astrology, Astronomy, Geometry, Cosmography, Music, Perspective, Arithmetic, Poetry, Rhetoric, Painting, Sculpture. Under the triumvir Love are Breeding, Agriculture, Education, Medicine, Clothing, ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... word for it. So I won't dance of a Sunday; but show me a pretty gall, and give me good music, and see if I don't dance any other day. I am not a droll man, dear, but I say what I think, and do what I please, as long as I know I ain't saying or doing wrong. And if that ain't poetry, it's truth, ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... and her people, drawn from every nook and corner of the map—pink, yellow, blue, red, and green countries. And though the story of California is not written, in all its romantic details, in the school-books of to-day, it is a part of the poetry of our late American history, full of strange and thrilling scenes, glowing with interest ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... had been long estranged from all animal food but fish, and every fermented liquor. According to the old Latin distich, the poetry of a water-drinker is said to be short-lived, and not fit to live: was this proverbial doom extended to what was not poetry, it might be checked by the prose of the Duke of Portland. Most of his common letters were among the models ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of several species. The best known in gardens are J. nudiflorum, yellow in earliest spring, J. officinale, the jessamine of poetry, with white flowers, and J. Sambac, the Arabian jasmine (and related species) with white flowers and unbranched leaves; these are not hardy without much protection north of Washington or Philadelphia, and J. ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... say to himself; "and if mother did but make up her mind she could take her share in them well enough. There was he walking about for two hours this evening with little Lucy in his arms, because she had fallen down and hurt herself; and there was mother lying on the sofa reading that book of poetry, as if nothing that happened in the house was any affair of hers. She is very nice and very kind, but I do wish she wouldn't leave everything for father to do. It might have been all very well before he lost his leg, but I do think she ought ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... shifted his position and answered, "No different from killing your first rabbit, if you don't sit down on the bank and watch it kick, and write poetry. Besides, you always have the pleasure of thinking it's a ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... the spirit of the out-of-doors—a strong-limbed, deep-chested, sun-bronzed creature, with a strain of gipsy blood that called to hers. He was moody, yet tender, roughly masculine, and yet possessed of the gentleness and poetry of a girl. He was violent tempered; he was brave; he rode a magnificent bay mare that worshiped ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable. For the world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... antiquity and importance is the Shih or the Book of Poetry. This work contains the religious views of its writers, also an account of the manners, customs, and events of the times to which they belong. For 5000 years, in China, Tien or Ti has expressed the moving or creating force in the universe. In ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... letters that began to pour in upon him after our Declaration, many of them from the highest placed men and women in the Kingdom, brought out more vividly than anything else the changed position of his country. Sonnets and verses rained upon the Embassy, most of them pretty bad as poetry, but all of them commendable for their admiring and friendly spirit. Of all these letters those that came from the steadfast friends of America perhaps gave Page the greatest satisfaction. "You will have been pleased at the universal tribute paid to the spirit as well as to the lofty and impressive ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... never imagine the subjects he takes up,—a perfect jumble, absolutely unintelligible,—lakes, stars, waves, billows! not a single philosophical image, not even a didactic effort! he is ignorant of the very meaning of poetry. He calls the sky by its name. He says 'moon,' bluntly, instead of naming it 'the planet of night.' That's what the desire to be thought original brings men to," added Gourdon, mournfully. "Poor young man! A Burgundian, and sing such stuff as that!—the pity of it! If he had only consulted me, I ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... Pym seemed to be turning and on the move in the same direction; but before he started he spoke to Rosamund with a flash of that guileless tact which redeemed much of his childish vanity, and with something of that spontaneous poetry which made it difficult, pedantic as he was, to call ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... departments of English literature, and arranged and annotated for the use of classes in schools. It will embrace, among other things, representative specimens from all the best English writers, whether of poetry or of prose; selections from English dramatic literature, especially of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; choice extracts from the writings of the great essayists; selections from famous English allegories; a volume of elegies and elegiacal poetry; studies ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... found a poem (not given by Snorre) which Gunhild (his wife) had made on King Eirik after his death, telling how Odin welcomed him to Valhal. The author or skald who composed it is not known, but it is considered to be one of the gems of old Norse poetry, and we here quote it in Vigfusson's translation in his "Corpus Poeticum", vol. i. pp. 260, 261. Gudbrand Vigfusson has filled up a few gaps from "Hakonarmat", the poem at the end of this Saga. We have changed Vigfusson's orthography of names, and brought them into harmony ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... of standing behind her with his hands over her shoulders holding her hands, and his face close to hers, and they would repeat over and over their favorite verses of the old tent-maker. They saw only the poetry and philosophy of the lines then—indeed, they agreed that the Wine was only an image, and that what was meant to be celebrated was some divinity, or maybe Love or Life. However, at that time neither of them had tasted the stuff that goes with ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... manners and customs. Adultery is no phenomenon; it is common enough—une affaire de canape... There must be some curb on women who commit adultery for trinkets, poetry, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Near the sun! Yes; only that obvious falsehood will convey to those who have not seen them the effect of some of the hypostyle halls, the columns of which seem literally soaring to the sky. And flowers of stone, you will say, rudely carved and rugged! That does not matter. There was poetry in the minds that conceived them, in the thought that directed the hands which shaped them and placed them where they are. In Egypt perpetually one feels how the ancient Egyptians loved the Nymphaea lotus, which is the white ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... soar to heaven and his coarse jests trail in the mire. He was touched with profound melancholy and yet he had a wholesome, ready laugh. His words are now brutal invectives and again blossom with the most exquisite flowers of the soul—poetry, music, idyllic humor, tenderness. He was subtle and simple; superstitious and wise; limited in his cultural sympathies, but very ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... as any man in the fair Southland. He got through somehow, but, betwixt me 'n you, Alf, I don't think Hettie thought she got her full money's worth, for she was countin' on a wonderful display of poetry and highfalutin' things that would be remembered an' placed to her credit for a long time afterwards. He got his foot in it several times. Once I heard Hettie sniff mighty nigh loud enough for him to hear it. It was when he said life wasn't what ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... find it difficult to imagine that it would be amenable to soft influences. But I have studied this inert mass, and, as each person has special characteristics, some being more partial than others to, say, Literary pursuits, Athletics, Music, Poetry, Engineering, Science, or Metaphysics, so I am able to show that this iron mass has not only a number of these "partials," some of which are extraordinarily beautiful and powerful, audible over long distances, but that by the lightest touch of certain small generating rubbers, ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... Dan'te was a contemporary of Guy II. and Walter de Brienne; and in his Divina Commedia he applies to Theseus, King of ancient Athens, the title so familiar to him, borne by the princely rulers in his own day. Chaucer, too—the bright herald of English poetry—had often heard of the dukes of Athens; and he too, like Dante, gives the title to Theseus. Finally, in the age of Elizabeth, when Italian poetry was much studied by scholars and courtiers, Shakspeare, in the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... a wooden cage, confining a mocking bird that had become acclimated to the death-dealing atmosphere of tobacco smoke, alcoholic fumes and poetry. All these the songster had endured and survived, nay, thriven upon, lifting up its voice in happy cadence and blithely hopping about its prison, the door of which Straws sometimes opened, permitting the feathered captive the dubious ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... allowed as is consistent with a regular cadence. Alliteration has been used to a large extent; but it was thought that modern ears would hardly tolerate it on every line. End-rhyme has been used occasionally; internal rhyme, sporadically. Both have some warrant in Anglo-Saxon poetry. (For end-rhyme, see 153, 154; ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... verbs and other parts of speech which cannot be illustrated by pantomime? It is almost inevitable that the child should use many words the meaning of which it does not understand, and when young children in school recite poetry at class-day exercises, it is almost certain that they do not understand the meaning of many of the words they use. Thus, it happens that they come {23} into the habit of using words and phrases without carefully examining ...
— How to Study • George Fillmore Swain
... beautiful and glowing description of English corn-gleaning given by Thomson, is felt by practical observers to be greatly too much of the Oriental hue, too redolent of the fragrance of a fanciful Arcadia. It is a pity that this interesting custom is not more faithfully transcribed into our national poetry; and it is with the hope that a future Burns may make the attempt, that the writer of this article ventures to give a short history of his gleaning-days, believing the subject to be interesting enough to engage the attention of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... with cartridges, from the other (dark blue) peeped 'Towson's Inquiry,' etc., etc. He seemed to think himself excellently well equipped for a renewed encounter with the wilderness. 'Ah! I'll never, never meet such a man again. You ought to have heard him recite poetry—his own, too, it was, he told me. Poetry!' He rolled his eyes at the recollection of these delights. 'Oh, he enlarged my mind!' 'Good-bye,' said I. He shook hands and vanished in the night. Sometimes I ask myself whether I had ever really seen him—whether it was ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... cambric which covered the folding frame that stood before her to keep the draughts from her as she lay on her board. Bright birds and flowers, figures and animals, covered one side, and on the other they put mottoes, bits of poetry, anecdotes, and short stories, so that Jill could lie and look or read without the trouble of holding a book. It was not all done at once, but grew slowly, and was a source of instruction as well as amusement to them all, as they read carefully, that they ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... Species”) who first discovered Anna Seward as a poetess. Happening to peruse some verses apparently written by her, he took an opportunity of calling at the Palace when Anna Seward was alone, and satisfied himself that she could write good poetry unaided, and that her literary abilities were of no ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... and trembled whilst I spoke. Englishmen do not often talk poetry—off the stage. ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... good old lady had scarcely spoken, save by expressive smiles and looks of approval. But now that her object is gained, and her daughter fast married (as she thinks), she suddenly assumes quite a new tone, "and never was heerd to speak so free." It would be difficult for poetry to comprehend any thing more strictly true and life-like ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... disturbance of the rational orbit, is yet one of those happy diseases which relieve the colourlessness of strict normality. It is a magic, a glamour, of the nature of personal affection, which only great poetry can fully express, and volumes of bad poetry cannot quite destroy. It has besides a real political value, binding the State together, and giving it a stronger moral coherence than can be attained by any legal or constitutional authority; a fact that is illustrated by those distressful countries ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... chapter we are concerned only with those Hindu Javanese works which are properly entitled to be classed as "literature." They are written in the Kavi or literary language. The term "Kavi" means the language of poetry, and this dialect is composed, to a great extent, of words of Sanscrit origin. Although the knowledge of Kavi was gradually lost after the Hindu supremacy was overthrown by the Mohammedans, modern Javanese contains ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... of itself and of things in general,—a nose that would push its way up in life, but so pleasantly that the most irritable fingers would never itch to lay hold of it. With such a nose a man might play the violoncello, marry for love, or even write poetry, and yet ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them. The nightingale, the singing-bird beyond all others, so difficult to tame, is the honoured guest, the privileged dweller in these rustic cages. With the rose, he is an essential part of Arab poetry. The woods round about Thagaste were full of nightingales. Not the least doubt that the child Augustin had felt the little musical throats of these singing-birds throb between his hands. His sermons, his heaviest ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... hymns, in honour of their Gods, are found among all people who have either religion or verse. There is scarcely any pagan poetry, ancient or modern, in which allusions to the national mythology are not so frequent as to constitute the most copious materials, as well as the most brilliant embellishments. The poets of Persia and Arabia, in like manner, have ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... about Hatto, however, is that which tells the manner of his death. The story has been enshrined in poetry by Longfellow, but we must be content to give it in plain prose. It tells us that a famine occurred in the land, and that a number of peasants came to the avaricious bishop to beg for bread. By his order they were shut up in a great barn, which then was set on ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... to harsh language, I am quite prepared to hear my 'poetic rendering' branded as a 'falsehood' and a 'fib.' The vituperation is unmerited, for poetry or ideality, and untruth are assuredly very different things. The one may vivify, while the other, kills. When St. John extends the notion of a soul to 'souls washed in the blood of Christ' does he 'fib'? Indeed, if the appeal to ideality is censurable, Christ ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... by the recovery of antique monuments. Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see in the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that passion for antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will discourse about the discovery of the solar system ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... characteristic of Jewish poetry is its religious strain. Great thinkers, men equipped with philosophic training, and at the same time endowed with poetic gifts, have contributed to the huge volume of synagogue poetry, whose subjects are praise of the Lord and regret for Zion. The sorrow for our lost fatherland has never ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... when in the shadow of death, of which this volume gives a prose translation. The poem is the farewell of the author to his friends, his country and the world. It is given in prose because in that style the spirit of the poet, indeed the poetry itself, can be rendered with better results, than by striving to sustain the poetic form. The poem would be regarded as happy and affecting in the thought that is in it, the images in which the ideas gleam, the pathos of resignation, the ascendency of hope, if ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... enlarging the heart, and productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the concoction? Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed or affected?—Passed like a cloud—absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry—clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your only Spa for these hypochondries—And now another cup of the generous! and a merry New Year, and many of them, to you all, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... soul that we should look into other worlds than our own, and Mr. Warman knows how to put us beside fireman and engineer and how to make us feel the poetry as well as the power of the tireless giants that fulfil for us moderns the ancient dream of the fire-breathing brazen bulls yoked for the ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... his Majesty; "there you have talent without artifice, poetry without rhapsody, satire without bitterness, pleasantry that is always apt, great knowledge of the human heart, and perpetual raillery that yet is not devoid of delicacy and compassion. Moliere is a most charming ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... floating in the pool and his gift of one of them to each of the baptized as he or she left the water—all such things did seem, long ago, so unconventional. Yet his own people recognized the beauty and poetry of them, and thousands of Bibles in Philadelphia have a baptismal rose from Dr. Conwell pressed ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... now seal it"—and their lips met. In the sky the moon first shineth, Then by countless stars is followed; So the first kiss, when once given, Is by hosts of others followed. But how many were by stealth robbed And paid duly back with interest, All this doth my song keep secret. Poetry and dry statistics Are, alas, not on good terms. Also Anton came now hurrying Through the garden with a message: "The three ladies from the convent, Who the first of May went with us To the fishing, send their ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... while Babbitt was a sound and standard ware from that great department-store, the State University. Ryland wore spats, he wrote long letters about City Planning and Community Singing, and, though he was a Booster, he was known to carry in his pocket small volumes of poetry in a foreign language. All this was going too far. Henry Thompson was the extreme of insularity, and Noel Ryland the extreme of frothiness, while between them, supporting the state, defending the evangelical ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... room without replying. The strain of poetry underlying the character of this strange, inscrutable man, his amazing love of Nature, his moments of almost womanish weakness and sentiment, astonished and mystified him. It was as if a hawk had acquired the utterly useless trick of fluting like a ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... aesthetic in his tastes, he devoted himself to poetry and the ancient classics; filled his home with the finest paintings and the most beautiful statuary, and had his gardens laid out in the most exquisite manner. And into that beautiful home he brought his young and lovely bride; ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... English Poetry" lay in MS. some years before it was published in 1589, speaks of the posies on trenchers and banqueting dishes. The author of "Our English Home" alludes to a very curious set, painted in subjects and belonging to the reign of James I., which was exhibited at the Society ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... should this be thought so odd? Can't men have taste who cure a phthysic; Of Poetry tho' Patron-God, Apollo ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... such a glowing, sparkling apparition as this come sailing out of the depths of the dark forest, was grand! Rectus said he felt like bursting into poetry; but he didn't. He wasn't much on rhymes. He had opportunity enough, though, to get up a pretty good-sized poem, for we were kept awake a long time after we went to bed by the boughs of the trees on shore scratching and tapping against the ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... your beautiful daughter." Mr. Gusher placed his hand to his heart again, bowed his head gracefully, and assumed a sentimental air. "Oh, I shall be so happy to have my home like zis. And your beautiful daughter—she would sing to me, and she would play me sweet music, and read to me some poetry. You shall zee I am so ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... possessed, and from the window of the morning-room, where he had just finished breakfast, he had an uninterrupted view of valley, town, and harbor—a two-mile riot of green, gold and white, and beyond the white the blue satin of the Mediterranean. Mr. Scobell did not read poetry except that which advertised certain breakfast foods in which he was interested, or he might have been reminded of the Island of Flowers in Tennyson's "Voyage of Maeldive." Violets, pinks, crocuses, ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... what it would fetch, some of the Forsytes—Aunt Hester, for instance, who had always been musical—could not help regretting that Francie's music was not 'classical'; the same with her poems. But then, as Aunt Hester said, they didn't see any poetry nowadays, all the poems were ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... rose the great height of Ben Grief, with his gaunt face gashed here by glowering groups of conifers, there by burns that ran down to the River Nagar like tears down a wrinkled old face. Marcella had read in poetry books about burns that sang and laughing waters that clattered to the sea for all the world like happy children running home from school. But the waters on Ben Grief neither laughed nor sang. Sometimes they ran violently, as though Ben Grief ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... the speaker. Indeed the anecdote is so plainly susceptible of this meaning and no other, that it would be hardly worth recording in its original state, were it not a proof of what may be (and very often is) affected not only in historical prose but in imaginative poetry, by the exercise of a little ingenious labour on the ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... would have dished the poetry. The cross-streets are all called by numbers; thus any domicile is readily found. The principal traverse street is an exception, being called "Broad;" it looks its name well, and extends beyond the town into the country: strange as it may ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of nature in India; in part to the dogged schematism of the Hindu mind, which dislikes to let go of any part of a thing from the beginning to end. On the one hand, their constant, almost too rhythmic resort to nature in their poetry, and on the other, their Ved[a]nta philosophy, or for that matter their Ars amatoria (K[a]mac[a]stra), the latter worked out with painstaking and undignified detail, illustrate the two points. Hence we find here a situation which is familiar enough in the Veda, ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... wrote, the sweep of his intellect demanded plenitude of expression; his imagination, if it dealt with life and death, must needs deal with them at times in the way of magnificence, which was natural to it; and his lyrical enthusiasm, fed by the prophetic poetry of the Old Testament, could not but find an escape in words. He sought no literary fame; his sermons were acts of faith, acts of duty. Out of the vast mass of his discourses he printed one, a sermon of public importance—that on ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... accompaniment of exquisite passion, rising, sinking, and now rising once more, in a struggle with vacillating sensual pleasure and base inclination to supersede others. Around the simple action there is an atmosphere of poetry. The play opens with the superstition of olden times, in the old nurse's tale about the life-egg, suggested to her by a crystal ball, with which the sisters are playing. Modern superstition is woven into the beautiful scene, where Hadda Padda, with heroically ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... direct my Aim, And bite Mankind, and Poetry Reclaim; I'll ever use my Wit another Way, And next the Ugliness ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... drown his sorrows this evening in the divine harmonies of nature. To succeed the better, he called poetry to his aid, for the great poets are the eternal mediators between the soul of things and our feeble hearts of earth and clay. He recited the distichs where Goethe has related in a tongue worthy of Homer or Lucretius the metamorphosis of the plants. This was placed like a preamble at ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... last twelve months in the possession of a third mate in the person of Mr. Langley. He is about twenty years of age, and would be a sensible fellow, were it not for a great taste for mischief, romance, theatres, cheap jewelry, and tight boots. He quotes poetry on the weather yard-arm, to the great dissatisfaction of Mr. Brewster, (to whom you will shortly be introduced,) who often confidentially assures the skipper that the third mate would have turned out a natural fool if his parents had not ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... rather to be a relief to her mind, for she threw her arms around my neck, and asked if this was all that had lately made me unhappy.—But, poor girl," added he, "she cannot realize the change we must undergo. She has no idea of poverty but in the abstract; she has only read of it in poetry, where it is allied to love. She feels as yet no privation; she suffers no loss of accustomed conveniences nor elegancies. When we come practically to experience its sordid cares, its paltry wants, its petty humiliations—then ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... us fill a bumper, and drink a health to those Who, "dropping into poetry," leave lesser wits to prose, And especially to HOZIER, who raised a ringing cheer, By his doggerel delightful on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... Hank hard and solemn and serious while he is saying that poetry at him. Hank fidgets and turns his eyes away. But the feller touches him on the breast with his finger, and makes him look ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... father, boring into him with a vicious eye; "take it off, serr; take off your dram! Stop! Somebody wrote something about that—some poetry or other. ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... his tastes were as peaceful as those of his ancestors. He had pets of all kinds, and he made collections of birds and insects. He was pretty diligent at school, but his studies there were not of the severer kind. He loved poetry; he founded a circulating library; and both before and after he went to Kenyon College, he was clerk in a bookstore. But deep within this quiet outside was the hot nature which fused the forces of the great war, and shaped them according to his relentless will. He became a successful ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... kinds: One's of the intellect, The understanding, one is of the soul. The x-ray lets the eye behind the flesh To see the ribs, or heart beat, choose! So men In their illumination see the frame-work Of life or see its spirit, so align Themselves with Science, Satire, or align Themselves with Poetry or Prophecy. So being ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... of some atmosphere, still and yet bracing, that I had met somewhere in literature. There was poetry in it as well as piety; and yet it was not poetry after my particular taste. It was somehow at once solid and airy. Then I remembered that it was the atmosphere in some of Wordsworth's rural poems; which are full of genuine freshness and wonder, and yet are in some incurable way commonplace. This ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... is why he has none of your aunt's joy in poetry. When I read to her Wordsworth's 'Brougham Castle,' he said that he had ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... countries where the imagination of the people, and the language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modern literature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound and common interests of life. One has, ...
— The Playboy of the Western World • J. M. Synge
... set around all that day sort of moping, with a green poetry book in her lap; and she had a letter in her hands. It didn't come by the Peanut route, neither, but by the postman. ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough
... that? Maybe your roads are so good and smooth that things do not shake on the road to town. But back in the Black Swamp of Ohio we had corduroy roads. Did you ever see a corduroy road? It was a layer of logs in the mud. Riding over it was the poetry of motion! The wagon "hit the high spots." And as I hauled a wagon-bed full of apples to the cider-mill over a corduroy road, the apples sorted out by the jolting. The big apples would try to get ...
— The University of Hard Knocks • Ralph Parlette
... hundreds of millions of English speaking people in all parts of the 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. ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... admire the courage of Tolstoi in attempting to live in accordance with his convictions, just as we admire Milton for his motives in abandoning poetry for politics. But our unspeakable regret at the loss to the world in both instances, when its greatest living author devotes himself to things done much better by men destitute of talent, makes us heartily sympathise with the attitude of the Countess, who hardly knew ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... between the two is placed the broad high-road. One carriage after another rolls over it; but I did not follow them, for my eye loves best to rest upon one point. A Hun's Grave lies there, and the sloe and blackthorn grow luxuriantly among the stones. Here is true poetry in nature. ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... adapted to inspire. I hope I shall be pardoned if I add my applause to the genius and learning of Mr. Maurice, who treads in the steps of his illustrious friend, and who has bewailed his death in a strain of genuine and beautiful poetry, not unworthy of happier ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... at our passions, Mr. Prescott, perhaps smiling is the word," he said. "Such a peace as that appeals to me. I am not fond of war and I know that you are not. I feel it particularly to-night. There is poetry in the heavens so calm and ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... been a solitary, given to wandering "by the river's brim," as he liked to say, thinking of poetry and his fiddle. Marietta, even at that time, had been learning tailoring to support her mother, and she looked upon Jerry with unstinted admiration as too distinctly set apart by high attainments ever to be considered a common earthly swain. But Jerry did all his duties as if he were not gifted. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... gods of antiquity the one which roused our young enthusiast to deepest admiration was Apollo, whose avatar was the sun, but whose spiritual significance was infinitely more, the light of the soul, the god of music, art, and poetry and all that ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Flood's, and as graceful and eloquent as Shiel's. There are few specimens of political oratory in the English language which rival some of the speeches of this young tribune. He was almost as gifted with his pen as with his tongue. His letters abound with pathos, and poetry of thought and feeling; his descriptions are graphic and lifeful; his analysis of character accurate and discriminating; his aspirations noble and pure. There was a pleasing fascination in his oratory and writing which never passed away. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a subtle poetry in the contemplation of ruin. With ruin itself, howbeit, there comes a prosaic dispelling of all idle dreams—a hard, a grim, a ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... to which Budge was the first to direct attention[685] and which Zimmern[686] clearly established. Each line consists of two divisions, and as a general thing four or eight lines constitute a stanza. The principle of parallelism, so characteristic of Biblical poetry, is also introduced, though not consistently ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... began, "calling himself the hobo poet, gets into Red Gap one day and makes the rounds with that there piece of poetry you see; pushes into stores and offices and hands the piece out, and like as not they crowd a dime or two bits onto him and send him along. That's what I done. I was waiting in Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale's office for ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... poetry, reader, that was upon the ticket. The conductor called around every now and then, especially if you were asleep, to look at your ticket, and every now and then a captain and a detail of three soldiers would want to look at your furlough. I thought ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... an Indian day school half a mile from her home, and two years in the Central School of the city of Brantford, was the extent of her educational training. But, besides this, she acquired a wide general knowledge, having been through childhood and early girlhood a great reader, especially of poetry. Before she was twelve years old she had read Scott, Longfellow, Byron, Shakespeare, and such books as Addison's "Spectator," Foster's Essays and ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... object they lose them all, and love teaches them a dialect much more prevailing, without the expense of duller thought: and they leave unsaid all they had so floridly formed before, a sigh a thousand things with more success: love, like poetry, cannot be taught, but uninstructed flows without painful study, if it be true; it is born in the soul, a noble inspiration, not a science! Such was Octavio's, he thought it dishonourable to be guilty of the meanness of a lie; and say he had no ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... earliest literary essay was the translation of Burger's "Lenore." Here, again, he encounters Scott; but Scott translated the ballad, and Dumas failed. Les mortes vont vite! the same refrain woke poetry in both ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... 'Animals of a Quiet Life,' by a Mr. Hare, too—so comical, I always think. It's good for you to be reading something. It is what your poor dear granny would have wished if she had been alive. Only it must not be poetry, Ruth, not poetry." ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... a fine taste for poetry,' said Mr. Delaford, so graciously, that Charlotte presumed to say, 'Oh, sir! is it true that you ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worth. Consequently many teachers have not been prepared to teach literature in the grades. Often they have assumed that the reading lesson would develop in the pupil an appreciation of good literature, not realizing that the reading lesson may cause pupils to dislike literature, especially poetry, unless it is supplemented by appropriate work in children's literature. If the student reads thoughtfully the literary selections in the following sections of this book, he probably will realize that children's literature is also literature for adults, and that it ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... involuntarily made humid the eyes of the beautiful Marion de Lorme. Nature had taken possession of her heart, despite her head; poetry filled it with grave and religious thoughts, from which the intoxication of pleasure had ever diverted her. The idea of virtuous love appeared to her for the first time in all its beauty; and she seemed as if struck with a magic ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... sharp and distinct reproductions of character which alone can present to the reader the mind and spirit of an age. Not a mere historian, he has nevertheless carefully consulted the original sources of information, has weighed testimonies, elicited theories, and... has interpolated the poetry of history with its ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... truth and light. Her works are the mirror of this progress. In reviewing them, the first point that strikes us is the precocity, or rather the spontaneity, of her poetic gift. She was a born singer; poetry was her natural language, and to write was less effort than to speak, for she was a shy, sensitive child, with strange reserves and reticences, not easily putting herself "en rapport" with those around her. Books were her world from her earliest ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... looked pure and pale in the dawn of Christmas Day. For the night was past, and above the distant hum of the streets the clear voices of some waits made the words of an old carol heard—words dearer for their association than their poetry: ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Hagerman was instructed to report to his Excellency as soon as Mackenzie had proceeded so far in the direction of treason that his conviction would be certain, and meanwhile he was permitted to invoke the Spirit of Freedom, both in prose and poetry, to his heart's content. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... we find this belief in the appearance of the gods in human form. It inspired the art and poetry of Greece. Rome believed that gods had charged in front of their armies and given their laws. The solemn, gloomy religion of Egypt, though it worshipped animal forms, yet told of incarnate and suffering ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... sometimes the swish and the tearing of sundry materials, and then the whirring and burning and tappings of Dulce's sewing machine, like a dozen or two of woodpeckers at work on an iron tree. And no one quoted any more poetry, for prose was heaped up everywhere about them, and their heads ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... an experiment I might try, which would illustrate to you a very important subject. Suppose I should call one of the boys, A, to me, and should say to him, 'I wish you to go to your seat, and transcribe a piece of poetry as handsomely as you can. If it is written as well as you can possibly write it, I will give you a quarter of a dollar. Suppose I say this to him privately, so that none of the rest of the boys can hear, and he goes to take his seat and begins ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... we wonder if in Greville's verses Each thought so brilliant and each line so terse is? For surely he in poetry must shine Who is, we know, so ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... published in Boston some years ago. Busts of Shakespeare and of Wordsworth appear at the front upper corners of the book-case, and these serve as pedestals to the machine when it is unfolded into a bedstead. This style, we are told by Professor Thorpe, has been officially indorsed by the poetry committee of the Chicago Literary Club. A second design, in royal octavo white pine, and omitting the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Herrick, is quoted at a ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... kindled his feelings, and embodied itself in the lofty and stately "Proem" already quoted. His quick and brilliant imagination saw shadows and figures of his ideas in the ancient mythology, which he worked out with curious ingenuity and often much poetry in his Wisdom of the Ancients. Towards the end of his life he began to embody his thoughts and plans in a philosophical tale, which he did not finish—the New Atlantis—a charming example of ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... His words and gestures made the ideas he described seem actual and present, but he seldom got them into marble; he probably found, upon trial, that they did not belong to sculpture. He had the ambition to make marble speak not its own language merely, but those of painting and of poetry likewise; and when this proved impossible he was unhappy and out of conceit with himself, On the other hand, he did good work in poetry and in prose; but neither did these content him. After all, my father's observation hit the mark; things came too easy ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... sees; hope foresees." [1] In other words, faith is apt to be content with what it has; hope ventures out to annex the wider provinces of the imagination. Faith is the prose of our religious life, hope is its poetry. ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... strange dialect has by rights, its own compartment in that great impartial case of pigeon-holes where there is room for the rusty farthing as well as for the gold medal, and which is called literature. Slang, whether the public admit the fact or not has its syntax and its poetry. It is a language. Yes, by the deformity of certain terms, we recognize the fact that it was chewed by Mandrin, and by the splendor of certain metonymies, we feel that ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... faculty for tearing out the heart of a book, reading it through at a gallop, but knowing what it said on all the points that interested him. Of verbal memory he had very little; in spite of all his reading I do not believe he knew half a dozen consecutive lines of poetry by heart. What he did know was the substance of what an author had written; how it fitted into his own scheme of knowledge; and where to find any point again when he wished ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... that of the descendants of Jacob. An Edomite of the third generation could enter "into the congregation of the Lord," and we hear of no rival deity in Edom to Yahveh of Israel. Indeed, in the old poetry of Israel Yahveh was said to have risen up "from Seir," and the charge brought against Edom by the prophet Obadiah is not that of idolatry or the worship of a "strange god," but of standing on the side of the "foreigners" on the ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... and it had never attracted her personally, but it was, nevertheless, something—a little piece of individual output thrown into the flowing river. She had never written, even when she was Gerda's age. Twenty years ago writing poetry hadn't been as it is to-day, a necessary part of youth's accomplishment like tennis, French or dancing. Besides, Neville could never have enjoyed writing poetry, because for her the gulf between good verse and bad was too wide to be bridged by her own achievements. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... father before him. He had long been an admirer of Clerambault, for his keen intelligence was not limited to his profession; indeed the extended flights of modern science have brought his domain close to that of poetry, it is itself the greatest of poems. Daniel was an enthusiastic reader of Clerambault's writings. They corresponded affectionately, knew each other's families, and the young man was a frequent visitor, perhaps not solely for the pleasure ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... had felt all that that enormous power could accomplish; in a moment he had exercised it, proved it, wearied of it. What had hitherto been the sum of human desires became as nothing. So often it happens that with possession the vast poetry of desire must end, and the thing possessed is seldom the thing ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... days—far better, I suspect,—and was not accustomed to it. She was, I have reason to believe, well educated—at all events, much above most persons in the station in life she then occupied; and, young as I was, she taught me to read, and to repeat poetry, and to sing psalms; and though I forget nearly all the events of my life at that time, I remember many of the verses she taught me; they have been a wonderful comfort to me through life. My mother had married unwisely, I have no doubt, and if she ever had any relations, they discarded ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... he, breaking off from the poetry, "'tis a marvel how content I feel! You would not believe it, the serene happiness that has come over me. 'Tis easy to explain, though: I have adjusted my affairs, provided for my wife, left nothing in ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... his childhood, and like almost all Russian gentlemen, he played very badly; but he loved music passionately. Strictly speaking, he did not love the art, the forms in which music is expressed (symphonies and sonatas, even operas wearied him), but he loved the poetry of music: he loved those vague and sweet, shapeless, and all-embracing emotions which are stirred in the soul by the combinations and successions of sounds. For more than an hour, he did not move from the ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... darkness which prevailed at the time of the Great Skirmish could endure; then, indeed, one could indulge the hope that the houses were all built by Wren, and the people all clean and beautiful. There is no poetry now." ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... the part where the scoundrel shows M. le Duc d'Orleans having the design to poison the King, and quite ready to execute his crime. It is the part where the author redoubles his energy, his poetry, his invocations, his terrible and startling beauties, his invectives, his hideous pictures, his touching portraits of the youth and innocence of the King, and of the hopes he has, adjuring the nation to save so dear a ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre |
