"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, at least ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... wonderful than one as to which we may appeal to any of our readers that happened some twenty years ago to visit the town of Stirling, in Scotland. No such person can have forgotten the poor, uneducated man Blind Jamie who could actually repeat, after a few minutes consideration any verse required from any part of the Bible—even the obscurest and most unimportant enumeration of mere proper names not excepted. We do not mention these facts as touching the more difficult part of the question before us, but facts they are; and if we find so much difficulty in ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... turned as much as possible from the singers, he stood very stiff and erect, staring at the printed page. Loudly as they had sung the first verse they seemed to sing the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds, in a dunghill. The result is an octavo of forty-six pages, of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were professed and acted on by the unlettered Apostles, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... various occasions and wept many tears over the sad state of the country. For in the nation, as well as in Sycamore Ridge, great things were stirring. Watts McHurdie filled Freedom's Banner with incendiary verse, always giving the name of the tune at the beginning of each contribution, by which it might be sung, and the way he clanked Slavery's chains and made love to Freedom was highly disconcerting; but ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... the third verse, it occurred to the chief that they were bear-hunters, and that it was very unsportsmanlike behavior to sing on the chase. For all that they were all very jolly, throbbing with excitement at the thought of the adventures which they were about to encounter; and concealing ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in it, were glorified if he beheld them in his mood of poetic faith. He showed the golden links of the great ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... plodding slowly down the trail, did not swerve when the bushes parted suddenly at one side, as she finished this verse of her song, but Madge Brierly looked about with a quick alertness. The sound of the rustling leaves and crackling twigs might mean a friend's approach, they might mean the coming of one of the very enemies whom the song had hinted ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... "addressed" the school, with earnestness it was true, but in a strain decidedly conventional. And the picture he made leading the singing, beating time with the hymn-book, and between the verses declaring that "he wanted to hear everyone's voice in the next verse," did not appeal very forcibly to her imagination. She fancied Sheldon Corthell doing these things, and could not forbear to smile. She had to admit, despite the protests of conscience, that she did prefer the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... alone betrayed misgivings, fearing that the fine would be annually renewed, and even the wealth of Chelebi exhausted. Elsewhere, the Jewries were divided into factions, that fought each other with texts, and set the Word against the Word. This verse clearly proved the Messiah had come, and that verse that the signs were not yet fulfilled; and had not Solomon, the wise king, said that the fool gave belief at once to all indifferently, while the wise man weighed and considered before believing? Fiercely waged the battle of texts, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... martlet" (act i. scene 6), as including in it a reference to the verse, "Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts," we pass to the following passage, for which we do not believe there is any explanation but that suggested to us by the passage ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... question, what the point is in which they differ from the orators, formerly it appeared to be chiefly rhythm and versification, but of late rhythm has got a great footing among the orators. For whatever it is which offers the ears any regular measure, even if it be ever so far removed from verse, (for that is a fault in an oration,) is called "number" by us, being the same thing that in Greek is called [Greek: ruthmos]. And, accordingly, I see that some men have thought that the language of Plato and Democritus, although it is not verse, still, because it is borne along ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... from full-page engravings to quaint end pieces, and include descriptive pieces of every character, are exceptionally abundant, and surprisingly good. Full of pleasurable reminders are the stories which are told in picture as well as verse. We have the old water-wheel making music in the village glen; the old farmhouse with its outlook upon brook and meadow; the little ones repeating their evening prayers. In brief, all that makes home sacred—its joys and sorrows, its welcomes and its farewells, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... can almost see it move, it goes so fast. But the modern reader can't get it. It won't mean to him what it meant to the early Greek. The setting, the costume, the scene has all got to be changed in order to let the reader have a real equivalent to judge just how good the Greek verse is. In my translation I alter it just a little, not much but just enough to give the passage a form that reproduces the proper literary value of the verses, without losing anything of the majesty. It describes, I may say, the Directors of the American Industrial ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... strange thing is that no one in the world has a nicer sense of the beauty of SHAKSPEARE'S verse than Mr. BARKER. Indeed he protests in his preface: "They (the fairies) must be not too startling.... They mustn't warp your imagination—stepping too boldly between SHAKSPEARE'S spirit and yours." (The italics are my own ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 18, 1914 • Various
... of disgust with his profession, from which mood he was only delivered by recklessly abandoning these studies and indulging in an old enthusiasm for poetical literature. For two whole years he did nothing but write verse in every conceivable metre, and on every conceivable subject, from Wordsworthian sonnets on the singing of his tea-kettle to epic fragments on the Fall of Empires. His discovery at the age of five-and-twenty that these ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... at the sight that presented itself. The whole verse was repeated, and the whole dance gone through again in the sight and hearing of that gentleman. Was the boy mad? Had the strain of business ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... table lay a Bible, which the steward occasionally read. Though it was now two o'clock in the morning, he was not sleepy; he was too much excited to think of slumber. He opened the good book mechanically, turned its leaves, and read a verse here and there; but he was thinking all the time of the luxurious gayety of the French capital, and the pleasures which thirty-eight hundred and fifty ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic
... handsome, his face had a sort of dignity that compelled respect, but he was shortsighted too, and his nose was rather broad and flat. If he lacked the comeliness of outward form, he loved all beauteous things, and was in many ways the most extraordinary man of his age; his verse, for instance, has just that touch of genius which seems to be wanting in the work of contemporary poets. His love for Lucrezia Donati, in whose honour the tournament of 1467 was popularly supposed to be held, though in reality it was given to celebrate his betrothal ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... written verse in his youth and composed oratorical poetry when dedicating various monuments in his district, saw in these solitary men on the mountain side, blackened by the sun and smoke, with naked breasts and bare arms, a species of priests dedicated to the service of a fatal divinity that was ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fisherman to himself, 'I have ever passed through the forest unharmed, why should I fear that evil will befall me here?' and he began to repeat aloud a verse ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... more marvellously has gathered from all ages and nations, and arts and tongues. We are, in respect of the argument, reminded of Bacon's multifarious knowledge, and the exuberance of his learned fancy; whilst the many?lettered diction recalls to mind the first of English poets, and his immortal verse, rich with the spoils of all sciences and ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... existence. A tragic adventure at the outset of his career; his imprisonment during the American War; and afterwards his services with the Highlanders throughout the wars of the period. He was remarkable for the immense size and powerful structure of his person. In a verse from one of the many Gaelic songs written in honour of Fear an Earrachd, alluding to his majestic form and figure when in the Highland costume, ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... the other,—and carrying a few small volumes in his pocket to study in spare moments in the fields. "The collection of songs" he tells us, "was my vade mecum. I pored over them driving my cart or walking to labour, song by song, verse by verse, carefully noting the true, tender, sublime or fustian." He lingered over the ballads in his cold room by night; by day, whilst whistling at the plough, he invented new forms and was inspired by fresh ideas, "gathering round him the memories and the traditions of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... vengeance. "You shall fly from the quivering blanket, despatched to the stars." The suspense was fearful while awaiting the utterance of the ultimate syllable—how perfectly and permanently have I acquired this pithy verse! ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... fata libelli," as Terentianus Maurus says, in a frequently quoted verse. If Cromwell's Commissioners were hard on Duns, the Visitors of Edward VI. were ruthless in their condemnation of everything that smacked of Popery or of magic. Evangelical religion in England has never been very favourable to learning. Thus, ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... Flowers and Boughs, for their Reception. If they chanced to like one more than another, they would be cutting her Name in the Table, or Chalking out her Figure upon a Wall, or talking of her in a kind of rapturous Language, which by degrees improved into Verse and Sonnet. These were as the first Rudiments of Architecture, Painting, and Poetry among this Savage People. After any Advantage over the Enemy, both Sexes used to Jump together and make a Clattering with their Swords and Shields, for Joy, which in a few Years produced several Regular Tunes ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to a worse fate than any he had depicted. Atreus was the name of the composition, and in the manner of Euripides[16] it advised some one of the subjects of that monarch to endure the folly of the ruling prince. Tiberius, when he heard of it, declared that the verse had been composed against him at this juncture and that "Atreus" was merely a pretence used on account of that monarch's bloodthirstiness. And adding quietly "I will have him play the part of Ajax," he brought pressure to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... order is followed, the idea, "Diana of the Ephesians" is conceived with no special reference to greatness; and when the words "is great" are added, the conception has to be remodeled: whence arises a loss of mental energy and a corresponding diminution of effect. The following verse from Coleridge's 'Ancient Mariner,' though somewhat irregular in structure, well illustrates the ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... Pythian Apollo out of the gains you have earned, and pay honours to him out of the plunder, the booty, and the spoils. Banish licentiousness from among you." Having read aloud these words, translated from the Greek verse, he added, that immediately on his departure from the oracle, he had paid divine honours to all these deities with wine and frankincense; and that he was ordered by the chief priest of the temple, that, as he had approached the oracle and ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... the better right to do, as, whatever may have been the degree of their merits, the best papers had certainly been written by himself. He was well read in English literature, had a correct taste, and wrote readily and happily, both in prose and verse. He was more than ten years older than Jane, and had, I believe, a large share in directing her ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... tastes—a bad poet, as is evidenced by his one slim volume of verse. He was a poseur, proof of which is to be found in his patronage of Sam Stay—who, by the way, has escaped from the lunatic asylum; I ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... there was never a sermon preached in Riverdale that had the effect that the death of this wicked man had, and it reminded her of a verse in the Bible: "He made a pit and he digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made." Mrs. Wood said that her husband had written about the finding of Mr. Barron's body to his English relatives, and had received a letter from them in which they seemed relieved to hear that he was ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... place at the promontory of Myonnesus between Teos and Colophon; the Romans broke through the line of the enemy, and totally surrounded the left wing, so that they took or sank 42 ships. An inscription in Saturnian verse over the temple of the Lares Permarini, which was built in the Campus Martius in memory of this victory, for many centuries thereafter proclaimed to the Romans how the fleet of the Asiatics had been defeated before the eyes ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the Author was treading in a path already so admirably trod by THOMSON; and might be adding one more to an attempt already so often, but so injudiciously and unhappily made, of transmuting that noble Poem from Blank Verse into Rhime; ... from its own pure native Gold into an alloyed Metal of incomparably less splendor, ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... on the dining-table, his scratch wig on one side, his head crowned with a bottle-slider, his eye leering with an expression betwixt fun and the effects of wine, while his court around him resounded with such crambo scraps of verse ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... you an old woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one, with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... being sorry that my quarters are to be sent to four cities of the kingdom, I wish I had limbs enow to be dispersed into all the cities of Christendom, there to remain as testimonies in favor of the cause for which I suffer." This sentiment, that very evening, while in prison, he threw into verse. The poem remains; a single monument of his heroic spirit, and no despicable ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... story of the melon-seller was related by a correspondent of The Times in 1846, and is told by Browning in a letter to Miss Barrett of Aug. 6 of that year. Thus subjects of verse rose up in ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... name were popular in Athens when that city was celebrated throughout the world for its wit and its learning. Both Socrates and Plato delighted in them; Socrates, we read, having amused himself during the last days of his life with turning into verse some of Aesop's "myths" as he called them. Think of Socrates conning these fables in prison four hundred years before Christ, and then think of a more familiar picture in our own day—a gaunt, dark-faced, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... as long as the human race shall delight in the study of the human heart, not because of the chastity and clearness of his diction, not because of the supremacy of his imagination, nor because of the variety of his melodious verse,—not even because of the matchless combination of all these charms; but the Bard of Stratford lives and shall live because his sanity enabled him to see the "God of things as they are," and his passion penetrated into the deepest sorrows and rose ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... The Nilghai sang that verse twice, with simple cunning, intending that Dick should hear. But Dick was waiting for the farewell of the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... described by our Author, who has also kept religiously to the Form of Words, in which the three several Sentences were passed upon Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. He has rather chosen to neglect the Numerousness of his Verse, than to deviate from those Speeches which are recorded on this great occasion. The Guilt and Confusion of our first Parents standing naked before their Judge, is touched with great Beauty. Upon the Arrival of Sin and Death into the Works of the Creation, the Almighty ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... verse of an old-time song, at least she thought she could. The admiral said nothing could have induced him to sing for company if his voice had been as harsh and cracked as hers, but he said it was a fact that everybody ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... like Mary's little lamb, only it's different," said Jonny Bushytail, the squirrel boy, as he remembered the verse about the lamb in school. Only this time ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... in the Australian vocabulary. Suddenly a shell burst over the platoon and killed a few men. After the wounded had been cared for, the Padre regained the attention of his congregation and gave out the last verse of "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow." There was one man for whom I had a great admiration—a clergyman in civil life but a stretcher-bearer on the Peninsula—Private Greig McGregor. He belonged to the 1st Field Ambulance, and I frequently saw him. He always ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... ill-fitting policeman's coat buttoned over his soiled, ragged blouse. Truly it is fit that I should recite his deeds in a kitchen and not in a library. When was the heroic policeman sung in homeric verse before? When—" ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... in verse 1 is significant. The first day of the seventh month was the commencement of the great festival of tabernacles, the most joyous feast of the year, crowded with reminiscences from the remote antiquity of the Exodus, and from the dedication of Solomon's Temple. How long had passed since Cyrus' decree ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the Fly. The Pretie Paradoxe, by Synesius, next commences, and extends as far as sign. D. v. b. This portion of the tract is, of course, merely a translation, but it includes a passage or two from Homer, cleverly rendered into English verse. Here we come to the word Finis, and here, I take it, it was originally intended that the tract should end; but as it was thought that it would hardly be of sufficient bulk for the money (4d., or ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... the service provided on that occasion read to you. Nay, perhaps, if you are a good lad, I, child, shall give you a sermon gratis, wherein I shall demonstrate how little regard ought to be had to the flesh on such occasions. The text will be Matthew the 5th, and part of the 28th verse—Whosoever looketh on a woman, so as to lust after her. The latter part I shall omit, as foreign to my purpose. Indeed, all such brutal lusts and affections are to be greatly subdued, if not totally eradicated, before ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... upon examination of that way wherein he was educated, he left it, and thereby became a star of the first magnitude indeed. It is said, that while he was regent in the college of St. Andrews, Mr. Sharp being then a promising young man there, he several times wrote this verse ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... not mean that these times are gone: they are alive (in a modern fashion) in many places in the world; some of my friends have described them in prose and verse. I only mean to say that I never was there; I was born unlucky. I am willing to do my best, but I live in the commonplace. Once or twice I have rashly tried my hand at dark conspiracies, and women rare and radiant in Italian bowers; but I have a friend who is sure to say, "Try and tell us ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... flat tombstone of rough Island sandstone, so overgrown with ivy that we could hardly read its lengthy inscription, recording his whole history in brief, and finishing with eight lines of original verse composed by his widow. I do not think that poetry was Great-grandmother King's strong point. When Felix read it, on our first Sunday in Carlisle, he remarked dubiously that it LOOKED like poetry but didn't ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... is to be noted under this head that Wright, in a note to the Latin story we have already quoted, gives from John of Bromyard's Summa Predicantium another English version of the verse— ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... tell him, and to have heard a song (by-the-bye, I have forgotten that) sung in the thunderstorm, solos by Charley, chorus by the friends, describing the career of a booby who was plucked at college, every verse ending: ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... passed, when after paying off the Urania, as Rayner was passing along a street in Exeter, he heard a stentorian voice singing a verse of a sea ditty. The singer, dressed as a seaman, carried on his head the model of a full-rigged ship, which he rocked to and fro, keeping time to the tune. He had two wooden legs in the shape of mopsticks, and was supporting ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... Barrett's hair have stood on end if Virgil had written "Arma virumque canto?" Yet surely that false quantity would have been not more repugnant to the genius of Latin verse than her transposition of accent in the word lament is at variance with the plainest proprieties of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... "The Bride's Prelude," a story in verse, after merely glancing at the opening of the tale, devotes eight stanzas to description introduced for the purpose of background and atmosphere. Two of them are ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... truth; Or mark and learn the fact betimes That flattery is the nurse of crimes. Friendship, which seldom nears a throne, Is by her voice of censure known. To one in your exalted station A courtier is a dedication; But I dare not to dedicate My verse e'en unto royal state. My muse is sacred, and must teach Truths which they slur in courtly speech. But I need not to hide the praise, Or veil the thoughts, a nation pays; We in your youth and virtues trace The dawnings ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... 4) For over a thousand years the composition of Japanese and Chinese verse has formed part of a liberal education, like the composition of Latin verse among ourselves. The Court has always devoted much time to the practice of this art. But the poems of former Emperors were little known, because the monarchs themselves remained ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... well known that the Romanists have sometimes founded their argument, in support of the claims of the Papacy, very mainly upon this verse; starting with the assumption, of which there is no proof, that the Pope is the successor of S. Peter, and asserting that a power was hereby given to S. Peter which the other Apostles did not possess. The weakness of the argument becomes clear when it is known that the same words were repeated ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... said Madam Rachel, as she sauntered along the walk, the children around her, "that you will not like the verse that I am going to talk with you about this evening, very well, ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... he was scarce conscious that he was almost alone in the chill emptiness of the church. Indeed, a strange feeling stole upon him, that he heard his wife's voice singing the solemn gladness of the last verse along with him, as they had sung it together near forty years ago when she had first come to the hill kirk ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... in temper, topic, treatment and form, is his originality in style; an originality which is again due, in large measure, to the same prevailing cause. His style is vital, his verse moves to the throbbing of an inner organism, not to the pulsations of a machine. He prefers, as indeed all true poets do, but more exclusively than any other poet, sense to sound, thought to expression. In his desire of condensation he employs as few words as are consistent ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... Lays" were an important and curious element in the literature of the Middle Ages; they were originally composed in the Armorican language, and the chief collection of them extant was translated into French verse by a poetess calling herself "Marie," about the middle of the thirteenth century. But though this collection was the most famous, and had doubtless been read by Chaucer, there were other British or Breton lays, and from one of those the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... veteran. Wounded at Port Hudson, June 28, 1863. A machinist by trade. A careful observer and student of nature, he discovered Aspidium simulatum at Follymill, Seabrook, N.H., in 1880. (Whittier's "My Playmate," verse 9.) He discovered also the hybrid Aspidium cristatum x Marginale. He published his little book, "Ferns and Fern Allies of New England," in 1896. Died ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... effort Lilias quieted herself, and read on till she came to the eleventh verse: "'Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; but afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... questions in geography, put with an innocent affectation of a humble desire for information. In short, they played upon him lightly as they touch the piano. And Eve carolled a song, and David accompanied her on the fiddle; and at the third verse Lucy chimed in spontaneously with a second, and the next verse David struck in with a base, and the tepid air rang with harmony, and poor David thrilled with happiness. His heart felt his voice mingle and blend with hers, and even this contact was delicious to his ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... opinion the greatest Englishman of his own time was Lord Shaftesbury, and the greatest Englishwoman Florence Nightingale. Those who were acquainted with his poetry would not have felt this surprise. There is much in his verse, neglected though it now be, which deserves a high place in our national literature. But in his later days—or, rather, throughout his life—the world refused to see his more serious side, and treated him as the humorist and the wit, the cynic, and the kind-hearted but ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... flat of soulless, bodiless, non-existent books, appeared to beckon me, went down on my knees, and opened it as far as its position would permit, but could see nothing. I got up again, lighted a taper, and peeping as into a pair of reluctant jaws, perceived that the manuscript was verse. Further I could not carry discovery. Beginnings of lines were visible on the left-hand page, and ends of lines on the other; but I could not, of course, get at the beginning and end of a single line, and was unable, in what I could read, to make any guess at the sense. ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... without regular measures, and too often in blank verse; the rhymes are not always sufficiently correspondent. He is particularly unhappy in coining names expressive of characters. His lines are commonly smooth and easy, and his thoughts always religiously pure; but who is there that, to so much piety and innocence, does not wish for a greater ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... accomplished, poetry ended in the very words with which it sang its own praises. If, then, poets called painting dumb poetry, he could retort by dubbing poetry blind painting. In common with his successors, Leonardo could not escape from this fallacy, which, in overlooking all save descriptive verse, was destined to burden ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... appreciation of the book. There is no new light but rather a confusing shadow thrown on the character of Joseph by the foolish conundrum concerning Pharaoh making a ruler out of him. Sending a child to the Bible to discover the shortest verse, the longest, the middle one, etc., trains him to regard it as an odd kind of book, to think of it as a dictionary, and ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... noise it made, and by the leaking which was now much more than ordinary, wee were in great feare it would haue shaken in sunder, so that now also we had iust cause to pray a litle otherwise than the Poet, though marring the verse, yet ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, v. 7 - England's Naval Exploits Against Spain • Richard Hakluyt
... adventures in exploration of Albemarle Sound, Chowan River and Chesapeake Bay, of the return of his disappointed colony to England in Drake's vessels, and the tragic fate of little Virginia Dare and of John White's colony, have all been told in fiction, song and verse. ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... end of the second verse, her fingers slipped from the keys and fell to her sides while she bowed her head and sat for a moment immovable. And then her shoulders moved slightly and a tiny smothered sound came from her throat. ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... extreme surprise, Fabre received from the Duc de Choiseul a packet containing a drama, in which he found his own history related in verse, by Fenouillot de Falbaire. It was entitled "The Honest Criminal." Fabre had never been a criminal, except in worshipping God according to his conscience, though that had for nearly a hundred years been pronounced a crime by ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... birds, in Virgil's verse, See Hope's hands redden, as she rends her hair, They would grow human—would not glut, but share; Nor, then, shed human semblance for man's curse— As ye do, who from want, hold warmth and fair, And gorge your bulks to ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... concerned, I am simply stupid: when read I cannot follow it. I did not understand the half of that poem. I never have been a student of English verse, and indeed that part of my nature which has to do with poetry, has been a good deal neglected. Will you let me take those verses ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... contrary, is poetry in its most democratic form, and it is a fundamental principle with it, rather to risk all the confusion of anarchy, than to destroy the independence and privileges of its individual constituents,—place, verse, characters, even single thoughts, conceits, and allusions, each turning on the pivot ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... in getting through my part of the performance without laughing; but my vexation at being surprised into taking a part in such a piece of buffoonery, greatly helped me in resisting my sense of the ludicrous. At the end of every verse, Barton grasped my hand in the most demonstrative manner, and commenced shaking it vigorously, looking me all the while solemnly in the face, and shaking away through the entire chorus, thereby producing a number of quavers, which, though not set down in the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... to give chapter and verse. The position had been extremely delicate. Even now she could barely speak of it—she had gone through too much. To be more explicit"—she bridled—"would trench upon the immodest, almost. But just this ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Banyan tree, they sat down, Siddhartha right here, Govinda twenty paces away. While putting himself down, ready to speak the Om, Siddhartha repeated murmuring the verse: ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... Pylades? No, this fellow is too ragged, and seems to eat too much; but as one must not be too capricious in prison, let us make use of the hour—I will recount my adventure to Mademoiselle de Launay, and she will put it into verse for the Chevalier Dumesnil." ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... be introduced with charm and effect. A few lines of verse, judiciously interspersed with the conversation; pearls of the thought of our great masters of the world of rhyme falling from the ruby lips of the young and fair daughters of Eve, have often caused a masculine heart to beat faster and to be thrown around the lovely borrower ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... do not understand the verse of Lichtenstein, do not correctly understand, do not ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... that "they saw the light and were afraid, but they heard not," that is, understood not, the voice. That the voice was in the Hebrew is asserted in the twenty-sixth chapter and the fourteenth verse. We often hear a man's voice, and fail at the same time—say we did not hear because we did not understand the words uttered. Such is the latitude of the original term translated by the word hear. So there is no contradiction here. The term hear in one passage is used with ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 11, November, 1880 • Various
... arouse interest, and justify it by the result. Miss Lowell is the sister of President Lowell of Harvard. Her art, however, needs no reflection from such distinguished influence to make apparent its distinction. Such verse as this is delightful, has a sort of personal flavour, a loyalty to the fundamentals of life and nationality. . . . The child poems are particularly graceful." — 'Boston Evening Transcript', ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... seated themselves when the first notes of that quaint old ballad, "The Mistletoe Bough," sounded from the piano in the drawing room, Nora O'Malley appeared in the archway, and in her clear, sweet voice sang the first verse ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... Venice. It was the solitary man, in the distant boat, indulging in the song of a fisherman. The strains were sweet, and the intonations plaintive to melancholy. The air was common to all who plied the oar in the canals, and familiar to the ear of the listener. He waited until the close of a verse had died away, and then he answered with a strain of his own. The alternate parts were thus maintained until the music ceased, by the two singing ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... childhood, and the details that might with another be set down as chronicles of the nursery will be seen to have their importance in the case of this boy who set himself consciously to be famous when he was eight, wrote fine imaginative verse before he was thirteen, and killed himself aged seventeen and ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... the conqueror must insist on Switzerland; and why not cross the Atlantic, to dictate laws in Pennsylvania and Chicago? But this same song has a better verse, ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by, Strange things within their belted orbs appear. 255 Like animated frenzies, dimly moved Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes, Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead Sculpturing records for each memory In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce, 260 Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world: And they did build vast trophies, instruments Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold, Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls 265 With sightless ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... but I had not remarked it. It was not cut all through, but someone had cut it up to the 86th page and had evidently paused to read a poem called "Listen Beloved," the paper knife lay between the leaves. Whoever it was must have read it over and over, for the book opened easily there, and one verse struck me forcibly: ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... being hardly reported to their friends, and, when reported, hardly believed—awakened keen sympathy on their behalf. Shelley and Byron, and many others of less note, had sung their virtues and their sufferings in noble verse and enlarged upon them in eloquent prose, and in England and France, in Switzerland, Germany, and the united States, a strong party of Philhellenes was organized to collect money and send recruits for ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... delineation of the last verse in the third song (in which the rests in the voice part and the motive in the accompaniment, enlivened by the rhythm [Here follows in the original an illegible sign. In the song there come in here, in place of the quaver movement which has prevailed hitherto, some long-sustained ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... observed the stranger, pausing to take a pull at the bottle. "And now, widow," he continued, "attend to the next verse, for it consarns a friend ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Common Herd. But the fact is, his proud spirit was chafed and fretted at the spectacle of sordid self-seeking that everywhere met his gaze, and excess of sentiment made him forgetful of syntax. "Mark me, my friend, I am not to be bought," he continued in unconscious blank verse. "I shall take my pick, sir, and you will take this check." And he handed the amazed publisher a check for five hundred dollars. "I sicken, sir," he continued, "of this qualmish air of half-truth that I have breathed so long. I am going to read these ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various
... I think of the beautiful town That is seated by the sea; Often in thought go up and down The pleasant streets of that dear old town, And my youth comes back to me. And a verse of a Lapland song Is haunting my memory still: 'A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... misery was Samson's blessedness. The 'howbeit' of verse 22 is more than a compensation for all the wretchedness. The growth of his hair is not there mentioned as a mere natural fact, nor with the superstitious notion that his hair made him strong. God made him strong on condition ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was the nom de plume of a talented literary gentleman of the city of New York, who wrote much in humorous prose and verse. His real name was Charles G. Halpine. After an honorable service in the war, rising to high rank, he was elected Register of New York, and died suddenly while in office, in 1868. The following sketches from his pen, published during the war, give an account of matters connected ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... fiction a year ago," she explained. "Before that I'd done nothing except scribble a little verse at home." ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... the city He carols wild and free Some sweet unmeaning ditty In many a changing key; And each succeeding verse is Commingled with the curses Of those whose sleep disperses ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... to her inveterate love of smoking, her physician says, "Much has been written in prose and verse on the advantages and mischief of smoking tobacco.... All I can say is, that Lady Hester gave her sanction to the practice by the habitual use of the long Oriental pipe, which use dated from the year 1817, or ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... of simple human emotion, at a time when a selfish or thoughtless spirit would have leaped in exultation, touched the heart of England deeply, and was rightly held of happy omen. The nation's feeling is aptly expressed in the glowing verse of Mrs. Browning, praying Heaven's blessing on the "weeping Queen," and prophesying for her the love, happiness, and honour which have been hers in no stinted measure. "Thou shalt be well beloved," said the poetess; there are very few sovereigns of whom it could ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... and its Divisions.—2. The Language; Ethnographical Elements of the Latin Language; the Umbrian; Oscan; Etruscan; the Old Roman Tongue; Saturnian Verse; Peculiarities of the Latin Language.—3. The ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... lost sight of. We must remember that the ancient writer had not a small compact reference Bible at his side, but, when he wished to verify a reference, would have to take an unwieldy roll out of its case, and then would not find it divided into chapter and verse like our modern books but would have only the columns, and those perhaps not numbered, to guide him. We must remember too that the memory was much more practised and relied upon in ancient times, especially ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... epigrammatic expression; and a slender volume for teaching Latin lyrics, called Lucretilis, the exercises being literally translated from the Latin originals which he first composed. Lucretilis is not only, as Munro said, the most Horatian verse ever written since Horace, but full of deep and pathetic poetry. Such a poem as No. xxvii., recording the abandoning of Hercules by the Argonauts, is intensely autobiographical. He speaks, in a parable, of the life of Eton going on without him, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... his arm, and her eyes shone upon him. 'It will not be your gospel, Walter, that I know. Some day you will be a rich man, perhaps, and then you will show the world what a rich man can do. Isn't there a verse in the Bible which says, "Blessed is he that considereth the poor"? You will consider the poor then, Walter, and I will help you. We shall be able to do it all the better because we have been so ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... think the knowledge that he had written a few bits of incomparable verse helped Poe to live? If he had invented a pill or a headache powder, he would have slept on down and ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... music is sacred. There are tunes and jinglings that I shouldn't call so; but neither do I call them music, just as I distinguish between bad or foolish verse, and poetry. Everything worthy of being called art is sacred. I shall keep telling you that till in self-defence you are forced to think about it. And now I shall play the piece whether you ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... carefully prepared, from certain mineral and vegetable substances, and it was no fault of his, if he did not on each occasion, somehow or other, add to his own stock of knowledge; getting at one time perhaps a verse or two read by his uncle, which finished the history of Joseph, or puzzling out for himself the difference between the shape of a C and a G, till he could quite distinguish them; or being told by his uncle some wonderful legend ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... beautifully: his voice was so deep and flexible; and his countenance answered so well to every modulation of his voice. Constance was touched by the reader, but not by the verse. Godolphin had great penetration; he perceived it, and turned to the speeches of Satan in Paradise Lost. The noble countenance before him grew luminous at once: the lip quivered, the eye sparkled; the enthusiasm of Godolphin was not comparable to that of Constance. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 1813. His Rhyme and Revolution in Germany (CONSTABLE) is not so much a history of the scrambling undignified revolutionary movements culminating in the year 1848, as a collection of contemporary comment thereon, in prose and verse. The prose is generally bad; the verse is generally very bad; and one turns with relief to the author's connecting links, wishing only at times that he would not worry about proving his point quite so thoroughly. The bombast and the bullying, the self-pity and the cruelty, and, most of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... and my coat-pockets, as well as my mail, began to be filled with spelling literature. I would go out for a walk, and during this exercise some paper or pamphlet would be slipped into the coat, which I would discover upon my return. I remember pulling out a little book of verse, beginning:— ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... formalists who spend much time in writing propriety to journals, to which they serve as foolometers. In a letter to the Athenaeum, speaking of the way in which people hawk fine terms for common things, I said that these people ought to have a new translation of the Bible, which should contain the verse "gentleman and lady, created He them." The editor ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... maybe such folk find company in reading," said the shopkeeper. "Here is a book may please her," and she took up a thin volume and opened it. "'Tis a book of verse, but 'tis well thought of. I see but little sense in verse myself; but, for ...
— A Little Maid of Massachusetts Colony • Alice Turner Curtis
... inimitable . . .'s"—mentioning a name which I had never heard till then. "Will you permit me to look at it?" said I. "With pleasure," he answered, politely handing me the book. I took the volume, and glanced over the contents. It was written in blank verse, and appeared to abound in descriptions of scenery; there was much mention of mountains, valleys, streams and waterfalls, harebells, and daffodils. These descriptions were interspersed with dialogues, which, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... chap., 7th verse, occurs an interrogation which furnishes something more than a hint of the practice among the Jews of child sacrifice. "Shall I give my first born for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... girl, who was safely in charge of a nurse and maid at all times, and she was invariably the picturesque center of a group of admirers recruited from every capital of the civilized world. Letty Gerald was a talented woman, beautiful, graceful, artistic, a writer of verse, an omnivorous reader, a student of art, and a sincere and ardent admirer ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... want of a midsummer verse, In the flush of the midsummer splendor? For the Empress of Ind shall I pull out my purse And offer a penny to lend her? Who cares for a song when the birds are a-wing, Or a fancy of words when the least little thing Hath message ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... to be as good as a lord, when nothing has been born to you,—that I call very much. And there are women, and pretty women too, Mr. Finn, who have spirit enough to understand this, and to think that the man, after all, is more important than the lord." Then she sang the old well-worn verse of the Scotch song with wonderful spirit, and with a clearness of voice and knowledge of music for which he had hitherto never given ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... long embodied in his person the virtues of the typical avenger of the wrongs of the poor and the oppressed against the tyranny of the rich and the powerful; his name has been honored and his manly deeds have been lauded in prose and verse by thousands in many lands for many centuries, exciting doubtless many a noble deed of self-denial, and spurring to the forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... should have had to listen to all the morning but for my thinking of that album, which I'm glad has amused you both, my dears, so well. Ah, children, children, there's nothing like having something to do. I'll tell you something one of the poets, Cowper I think, has written about this in his homely verse:— ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... for Philoxenus, and bade him give his candid opinion of the verse. Now, Philoxenus was far too noble a man to tell a lie: and whenever he was consulted by Dionysius, he always boldly told the truth, whether ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... imitating pearls. Either view—possibly both—may be right. I will only say that with an occasional exception for some piece of rebelliousness or even levity which may have taken my fancy, I have tried to choose no verse but such as ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... to King Henry V and Madame Catherine of France a boy, half English and half French, who would go to Egypt and pluck the Grand Turk's beard.[894] On his death-bed the conqueror Henry V was listening to the priests repeating the penitential psalms. When he heard the verse: Benigne fac Domine in bona voluntate tua ut aedificentur muri Jerusalem, he murmured with his dying breath: "I have always intended to go to Syria and deliver the holy city out of the hand of the infidel."[895] These were his last words. Wise men counselled Christian ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... I know, was my grandfather's one and only attempt at verse; and its apparent application to the wreck of the Belle Fortune is a coincidence which ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... motion. He strips Folly to the skin, displays the imposture of the creature, and is content to offer her better clothing, with the lesson Chrysale reads to Philaminte and Belise. He conceives purely, and he writes purely, in the simplest language, the simplest of French verse. The source of his wit is clear reason: it is a fountain of that soil; and it springs to vindicate reason, common-sense, rightness and justice; for no vain purpose ever. The wit is of such pervading spirit that it ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the poet, miner, and soldier, who but recently was a picturesque figure on the hotel porch at Saratoga Springs, was one of the young Californians who was "out with Walker," and who later in his career by his verse helped to preserve the name of his beloved commander. I. C. Jamison, living to-day in Guthrie, Oklahoma, was a captain under Walker. When war again came, as it did within four months, these were the men who made Walker ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... from which she was beginning to be inexorably borne away. The wide river of a world's life, to which the rillet of her own small existence had been carelessly winding, was all at once clearly in sight. She could almost have written verse! She yearned to tell her whole history, but not one personal question could she lure from Hugh. Silently she recalled the story of her Creole grandmother, married at fifteen—her own present age. That ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... some tangible memento of his home and people beyond the seas. So sovereigns were thrown away and photographs were kept. I tore the fly-leaf out of the Bible that Queen Alexandra had given to the ship, with her own writing in it, and also the wonderful page of Job containing the verse: ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Art plies his tools, arid Commerce spreads her sail, And wealth is wafted in each shifting gale. The sons of Odin tread on Persian looms, And Odin's daughters breathe distilled perfumes; Loud minstrel Bards, in Gothic halls, rehearse The Runic rhyme, and "build the lofty verse:" The Muse, whose liquid notes were wont to swell To the soft breathings of the' olian shell, Submits, reluctant, to the harsher tone, And scarce believes the altered voice her own. And now, where Csar saw with proud disdain [22] The wattled hut and skin of azure stain, Corinthian ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... chorus to this verse Chan was seen tuning his instrument in the garden, and at the end sallied gallantly forth to sing the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... no one after all had been squared. Well, if no one had been squared it was because every one had been vile. No one and every one were of course Beale and Ida, the extent of whose power to be nasty was a thing that, to a little girl, Mrs. Beale simply couldn't give chapter and verse for. Therefore it was that to keep going at all, as she said, that lady had to make, as she also said, another arrangement—the arrangement in which Maisie was included only to the point of knowing it existed and wondering wistfully what it was. Conspicuously ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... When Seti I., two centuries later, commanded the Poet Laureates of his court to celebrate his victories in verse, the latter, despairing of producing anything better, borrowed the finest strophes from this hymn to Thutmosis IIL, merely changing the name of the hero. The composition, unlike so many other triumphal ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the same day, as I was reading and meditating on the fourth chapter of the Acts, twelfth verse, under the solemn apprehensions of eternity, and reflecting on my past actions, I began to think I had lived a moral life, and that I had a proper ground to believe I had an interest in the divine favour; but still ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... loved the refrain that recurred at the end of each verse with only the change of a word. It was her little Jean's lullaby, who became, at the caprice of the words, turn and turn about, General, Lawyer, and ministrant at the altar in her ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... you think the bush is purer and that life is better there, But it doesn't seem to pay you like the 'squalid street and square'. Pray inform us, City Bushman, where you read, in prose or verse, Of the awful 'city urchin who would greet you with a curse'. There are golden hearts in gutters, though their owners lack the fat, And we'll back a teamster's offspring to outswear a city brat. Do you think we're never jolly where the trams and buses rage? Did you hear the gods in chorus when ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... Burton meant to use them for another, and a grimmer purpose—in fact a final one. The portfolio which he carried contained a dilapidated old blank book, such as one buys in a crossroads store, a volume of verse, and an automatic pistol, carefully loaded. When the now inevitable moment came which should leave his family roofless—he would not ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... read to him that he might hear it, and to read now whatever might come of it!... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on reading the eleventh chapter of St. John. She went on to the nineteenth verse: ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... (white crow) an honest one be found; He'll better, wiser go for what we say. Should some ripe scholar, gentle and benign, With candour, care, and judgment thee peruse: Thy faults to kind oblivion he'll consign; Nor to thy merit will his praise refuse. Thou may'st be searched for polish'd words and verse By flippant spouter, emptiest of praters: Tell him to seek them in some mawkish verse: My periods all are rough as nutmeg graters. The doggerel poet, wishing thee to read, Reject not; let him glean ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... proud, but there's a verse of Scripture that fits you. 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.' I know your age—you are just seventeen, I'm only nineteen, just two years older than you. You have no feeling for me. Suppose I had none ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... corner. There was a little window; the moon throwed his shadow in the room. They said, 'I sure do like my new master.' Another said, 'I sure do.' The other one said, 'This is the best place I ever been they so good to us.' Then they sung a verse and prayed and got quiet. They heard him leave, seen his shadow go way. Heard his house door squeak when he shut his door. Then they got up easy and dressed, took all the clothes they had and slipped out. They walked nearly in a run ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... Schmidt even had not seen it: and when he published his own edition, three years later, thought it the first. The Paris edition contains the best text, and has besides two Old-French translations, one in prose, the other in verse. The Berlin edition is, however, more valuable on account of ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... now performed by about one hundred and fifty men and women. They seated themselves in ranks in one of the courtyards of the pa, stripped to the waist. An old chieftainess, who moved along the ranks with regular steps, brandishing an ornamental spear in time to her movements, now recited the first verse of a song in a monotonous, dirge-like measure. This was joined in by the others, who also kept time by quivering their hands and arms, nodding their heads and bending their bodies in accordance with each ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... to write a play which shall convey to the general public an impression of antiquity is to make the characters speak blank verse and abstain from reference to steam, telegraphy, or any of the material conditions of their existence. The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex which civilization and philosophy ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw |
