"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may be pardoned for quoting a sonnet which had a great vogue in the late 'seventies showing the impression that Maurice de Gu['e]rin made. It was a great surprise to find part of the sestette copied in the "Prose Writings" of Walt Whitman, who very rarely quoted any verse. ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... friends everywhere in that corner of the world. His near neighbour at Cap Brun, M. Noel Blache, leader of the local bar, a famous teller of Provencal stories and declaimer of Provencal verse, said of him: "He knows our country and our legends better than we know them ourselves." In the years during which he lived for part of the twelvemonth at Toulon he had followed every winding of the coast, had explored all the recesses ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... be the next wedding—what shall I devise for that? That will also be the ending of a long lawsuit. But he should have sung the last verse—the prettiest of all. Mathieu!" Paul lifted his voice, calling ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... manufacturing town, and Lanier was about as appropriately placed there as Arion would have been in a tin-shop, but he kept his humorous outlook on life, departing from his serenity so far as to make his only attempts at expressing in verse his political indignation, the results of which he did not regard as poetry, and they do not appear in the collection of his poems. His muse was better adapted to the harmonies than to the discords of life. Some lines written then furnish a ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... heroism which contents itself with celebrating the deeds of others. His own conduct embodied the most noble conceptions of his imagination, and his life and death exhibited a splendid example of the patriotism which breathed throughout his verse. He was born at Dresden in 1791. His education was of the most careful kind. He was not only instructed in various branches of learning, but the elegant accomplishments of the fine arts were added, and the exercises of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... in the eyes of the big boys, Jill had sent over a tall, red flannel night-cap, which she had been making for some proposed Christmas plays, and added the following verse, for she was considered a gifted ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... 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 bear to make him commit suicide. The above was not the accusation made against ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... sometimes," said Maude. "How about Admiral Kempenfelt and the Royal George? See Fourth Class Reader for full particulars in verse." ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... the sixth chapter of Dickens' memorable Pickwick, sings certain verses which he styles "indifferent" (the only verse, by the way, to be found in all that great writer's stories), and which relate to the ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... with definite words in the verse, they endured very impatiently, too, epithets, metaphors, comparisons, poetic words—lyricism, in short; those swift escapes into nature, those soarings of the soul above the situation, those openings of poetry athwart drama, so frequent in Shakspere, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... too short, white hose, an old Prince Albert coat, buttoned up wrong, a battered silk hat (called a "topper," by the way) and a violently red nose. His first song was about his recent wedding; he had evidently married an old maid of rather sad appearance. The first verse told of the wedding and the wedding dinner; and how they then went upstairs to their room, and, as soon as they got into the room she wanted him to kiss her. But he ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... most unfavourable verdict. Nobody, they say, would rejoice more than themselves if their conclusions should be shown to be completely or partly erroneous, for they are all of them penetrated with love for the fatherland Italy. But they relate, with chapter and verse, a large number of peculiar transactions which show that the goods were very improperly and very hastily auctioned, and that those who reaped the benefit were nearly always the same people. To give one instance, some ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... of the original has here a long passage conceived in a style too oriental for the English reader. We subjoin a specimen, and it seems doubtful whether it should be printed as prose or verse: "Any writard who writes dynamitard shall find in me a never-resting fightard"; and he goes on (if we correctly gather his meaning) to object to such elegant and obviously correct spellings as lamp-lightard, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the old kirkyard, one sees the graves of many of the bard's friends, whom he has immortalised in verse. At the farther end, close to the river Doon, stands the ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... until great drops of sweat dripped from its round open mouth. Sometimes, when he could not play fast enough to satisfy his eagerness, he ran his finger up and down the vents. Then, suddenly lowering his instrument, he would scream, in a strong peasant-voice, verse after verse of the novena, to the accompaniment of the zampogna. One was like a slow old Italian vettura all lumbered with luggage and held back by its drag; the other panting and nervous at his work as an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... do not understand the verse of Lichtenstein, do not correctly understand, do not ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... colonizer, warrior, Raleigh now blossomed forth as a poet, and became a friend and patron of Edmund Spenser. He had much skill in verse, and he was never lacking in imagination. But his real talents did not lie in that direction, and as in so many other things, he soon found himself ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... 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 ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... some pretty descriptions of Nature here and there, and one or two of her ballads are very good, especially that called "A Story of Tours;" but her sonnets are none of them constructed after the genuine Italian model, and generally end with a couplet. Her blank verse is the worst of all. The most ambitious poem in the book is that called "A Day in the Life of Mary Stuart," a dramatic poem in three scenes, dated the last of January, 1567. It contains a scene between the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... Martial de Limoges contains this passage (Paris, Bibl. Nat., No. 2400.) "Adrian II., after the example of his predecessor of the same name, completed the Gregorian Antiphoner in several places. He also arranged a second prologue in hexameter verse to be chanted at High Mass on the first day of Advent. This prologue begins in the same way as another very short one composed by the first Adrian to be sung at all the Masses of this first Sunday in Advent, but that of Adrian II. is composed of ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... monotonous tones of a schoolboy's voice until he came to the sixteenth verse, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... consolation Emily turned over the pages of the ledger and found several more bits of verse, some very good for an untaught girl, others very faulty, but all having a certain strength of feeling and simplicity of language unusual in the effusions of young maidens at the ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Christians, won street after street, house after house; and when at last Mahommed rode up to the palace where Roman emperors had reigned for 1100 years, he was so much struck with the desolation that he repeated a verse ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... against the irony of existence, is a fascination that the "Kasidah" has in common with every great poem of the world. The materialism of the book is peculiar in that it is Oriental, and Orientalism is peculiarly mystical. The verse is blunt, and almost coarse in places, but here and there are gentler touches, softer tones, that search out the sorrow at the heart of things. It is worthy, in its power, of the praise of Browning, Swinburne, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Truly original and national as was the framework of the 'Canterbury Tales,' we can hardly doubt but that Chaucer was determined in the form adopted for his poem by the example of Boccaccio. The subject-matter, also, of many of his tales was taken from Boccaccio's prose or verse. For example, the story of Patient Grizzel is founded upon one of the legends of the 'Decameron,' while the Knight's Tale is almost translated from the 'Teseide' of Boccaccio, and Troilus and Creseide ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... house." Harris, like Joe's mother, was a constant reader of and a literal believer in the Bible. Tucker says that he "could probably repeat from memory every text from the Bible, giving the chapter and verse in each case. "This seems to be ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... late! Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years. And Theophrastus, at fourscore and ten, Had but begun his Characters of Men. Chaucer, at Woodstock with the nightingales, At sixty wrote the Canterbury Tales; Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last, Completed Faust when eighty ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... 'candlestick;' so when I could creep down I begged for a light, and it was granted. Then I flung myself on the bed and cried, until I could cry no longer. I rose up and tried to pray; the Saviour seemed near. I opened my precious little Bible, and the first verse that caught my eye was—'I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me.' O, my mother, could I tell you the comfort this was to me. I sat down, calm, almost happy, took my pen and wrote on ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... direction too human nature is limited, such fashions must necessarily reproduce themselves. Among other resemblances to later growths of Euphuism, its archaisms on the one hand, and [99] its neologies on the other, the Euphuism of the days of Marcus Aurelius had, in the composition of verse, its fancy for the refrain. It was a snatch from a popular chorus, something he had heard sounding all over the town of Pisa one April night, one of the first bland and summer-like nights of the year, that Flavian had chosen for the ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... must first Be tasted ere it work; the last exceeding All flavours else. Albeit thy thirst may now Be well contented, if I here break off, No more revealing: yet a corollary I freely give beside: nor deem my words Less grateful to thee, if they somewhat pass The stretch of promise. They, whose verse of yore The golden age recorded and its bliss, On the Parnassian mountain, of this place Perhaps had dream'd. Here was man guiltless, here Perpetual spring and every fruit, and this The far-fam'd nectar." Turning to the bards, When ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... had not sounded, and, though hammocks had been given out, neither watch could turn in. It was with particular glee, therefore, that we welcomed the news that "Steve" had composed an up-to-date verse to his "Tommy Atkins" song. After some persuasion—for he is a modest chap—he consented ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... friend, reentered the fight, drove the Trojans within their walls with immense slaughter, and satiated his revenge both upon the living and the dead Hector,—all these events have been chronicled, together with those divine dispensations on which most of them are made to depend, in the immortal verse of the Iliad. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... think that never Prose is read So good as that by Advertising bred, And every Verse Sapolian poets sing Brings laurel wreaths once twin'd ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... this horrible darkness disperse!" Said Willumberg's lord to the Seer of the Cave;— "It can never dispel," said the wizard of verse, "Till the bright star of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... and drank long life to Leonard and confusion to Devers, and then little Sanders tuned up his guitar and sang. He was just back from leave, and a popular lyric of the day was one they called "The Accent On," for the last line of every verse was "with the accent on" some syllable of the last word of the previous line. There was nothing especially poetic or refined about the composition, but the newspapers were ringing the changes on it. A popular comedian had sung and made much of it, and its composer had ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... above-mentioned Society in 1887. More or less complete translations have appeared in English, French, German, Swedish, Magyar, and Russian, besides specimens in Danish and Italian. Of these versions, the most elegant appear to me to be the abridged Swedish translations of Herzberg, in prose and verse. The recent German translation of Paul is most esteemed in Finland; though it was that of Schiefner, published in 1852, which inspired Longfellow to write his "Hiawatha." The "Kalevala" commences with creation-myths, ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... put a verse about the mountain and the Little Red House into a book of rhymes which I wrote for grown ups. I don't think they thought much about it. Very likely they said, "0h, it's just a house on a hill," and then forgot it, because they were too busy about ...
— A Book for Kids • C. J. (Clarence Michael James) Dennis
... might quote a verse from the same chapter: 'He who hath part in the first resurrection shall reign with Christ a thousand years.' So that the Millennium is beginning now, and ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... what she pleased, and was especially eager that she should do a prose translation of his songs against her opinion of its practicability. To please him she translated 'Almanzor' and several short poems into verse—the best translations I know. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... disconcerted only for a moment. Lifting his heart to God for guidance, the thought came into his mind to take a text suggested by the rude remarks of the Boer. So he opened the Bible to the fifteenth chapter of Matthew and read the twenty-seventh verse: "Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." Pausing a moment, he slowly repeated these words, with his eyes steadily fixed on the face of the Boer. Again pausing, a third time he quoted these appropriate words. Angrily the Boer cried out, "Well, well, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... her for an image of every heroine of whom she read in prose or verse, and for the realization of all the romantic day-dreams in which, as an escape from the joyless and sordid life of her home, she was learning to live and ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... Holy Ghost, the third Person in our Covenant God. He is with you; but if you plead the promise of the Father, 'which,' says Christ, 'ye have heard of Me, He will be in you.' He will fill your souls with His light, love, und glory, according to that verse which we ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... We meet in one scene with nothing but gross, selfish, unblushing, lying libertines of both sexes, who, as a punishment, we suppose, for their depravity, are condemned to talk nothing but prose. But, as soon as we meet with people who speak in verse, we know that we are in society which would have enraptured the Cathos and Madelon of Moliere, in society for which Oroondates would have too little of the lover, and Clelia too ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... full glory of the thing, that surpassing music which set Monksland talking for a week, was not reached till she came to the third verse. Perhaps the pure passion and abounding humanity of its spirit moved her. Perhaps by this time she was the thrall of her own song. Perhaps she had caught the look of wonder and admiration on the face of Morris, and was determined to show him that ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... but from the manufacturers themselves. He proposes to publish them for the benefit and enlightenment of his readers. But first a word of warning. There are perhaps some who believe that a poem should not only express high and noble thoughts, or recount great deeds, but that it should do so in verse that is musical, cadenced, rhythmical, instinct with grace, and reserved rather than boisterous. If any such there be, let them know at once that they are hopelessly old-fashioned. The New Poetry in its highest expression banishes form, regularity ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... Parleyings with Christopher Smart, under the similitude of 'some huge house,' thus describes the general run of that unfortunate poet's verse:— ...
— Life of Johnson, Volume 6 (of 6) • James Boswell
... verse of Corneille, whose application is exceedingly appropriate, and which should be upon the frontispiece of ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... this long and curious book—almost the only one which contains some verse, some of Balzac's own, some given to him by his more poetical friends—occupies full ten pages of M. de Lovenjoul's record. The first part, which bore the general title, was a book from the beginning, and appeared in 1837 in the Scenes de la Vie de Province. It had five chapters, and the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... up to it heart and soul, never letting it escape his thoughts. And his life, his health, lies in all this. His mind is always busy; his will and strength must always be exerting themselves. You may know that he long cultivated Latin verse with affection; and I believe that in his days of struggle he had a passion for journalism, inspired the articles of the newspapers he subsidised, and even dictated some of them when his most cherished ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... that a man can do so much to benefit his townsfolk out of the modest income of $2500 a year; and not only Pope, but Coleridge also, has found this a theme for verse. The house in which the "Man of Ross" lived is on the left-hand side of the market-place, and still stands, though much changed. It is now a drug-store and a dwelling. The floors and panelling of several of the chambers are of oak, while a quaint opening ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... Sundays, more especially if he has not altogether acted up to them! It is a suspicious congregation too (though perhaps not singularly so, for I have perceived others do the same), because whenever their priest names a chapter and verse for any text he may choose to insert in his discourse, instantly and with avidity each and all turn over the leaves of their Bibles, to see if it be really in the identical spot mentioned, or whether their pastor has been lying. This action may not be altogether suspicion; it may be ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... the five-guinea bank-note, while she read, with surprise, "Susan's Lamentation for her Lamb." Her mother leaned over her shoulder to read the words, but they were stopped before they had finished the first verse by another ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... published in 1868, which brought the name of George Eliot before the public as a poet. This work is a novel written in blank verse, with enough of the heroic and tragic in it to make the story worthy of its poetic form. The story is an excellent one, well conceived and worked out, and had it been given the prose form would have made a powerful and original novel. While it would doubtless have gained in definiteness of detail ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... Cassandra, hitherto placed ten years earlier. Senhor Braamcamp Freire points out that the Convent was only founded in 1509[46]. A scarcely less cogent argument for the later date is the finish of the verse and the exquisiteness of the lyrics, although the action is simple and the reminiscences of Enzina are many[47] (a fact which does not necessarily imply an early date: Enzina's echo verses are imitated in the Comedia de Rubena, 1521). We may note that the story of Troy is ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... were composed by the Rev. William Wilberforce Lord, D.D., a former rector of Christ Church, in this village, once hailed by Wordsworth as the coming poet of America. He had written some noble verse, but wilted beneath the scathing criticism of Edgar Allan Poe,[1] and after becoming a clergyman published little poetry. This epitaph alone, however, fully justifies Dr. Lord's earlier ambition, for no poet of his time could ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... I know not how, polite society was haunted by the obstinate fiction that it was the duty of a man of parts to express himself from time to time in verse. Any special occasion of expansion or exuberance, of depression, torsion, or introspection, was sufficient to call it forth. So we have poems of dejection, of reflection, of deglutition, ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... This mistake Bishop Hall is inclined to make, and Butler actually makes. The author of Hudibras, it seems, would have been too fortunate had he known where his own happiness lay—to wit in that "sting" of verse, which Cowper says prose neither ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... dear. Of course you remember Milton's Samson Agonistes. Agonistes indeed!" His wife was sitting stitching at the other side of the room; but she heard his words,—heard and understood them; and before Jane could again get herself into the swing of the Greek verse, she was over at her husband's side, with her arms round his neck. "My love!" she said. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... these words echoed from pulpit and Senate and palace and hovel; how they wuz sung in verse, printed in poems, printed in flaming lines of electric light everywhere! From city to country, you saw and heard these words, ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, "And He hath brought us into this place and hath given us this land, even a land that floweth with milk and honey." The Thanksgiving sermon was formerly one on which more ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... including the Biblical accounts of the Fall, are all, according to him, to be looked for in this naturalistic fable of the Vedas. No doubt the allegory which served as starting-point to this myth was not unknown to the Hebrews. We find it distinctly expressed in a verse of the Book of Job (chap. xxvi. 13), where it is said of God, "By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent." Here, indeed, by the parallelism of the two clauses of the verse, the former determines the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... bed-time. Oh, no. Good children are ever ready to obey their parents, and cheerfully go to bed when their parents wish. What is there more lovely than an obedient child! Let every little girl and boy learn this beautiful verse. I will ...
— Pleasing Stories for Good Children with Pictures • Anonymous
... convert, invert, pervert, advertize, inadvertent, verse, aversion, adverse, adversity, adversary, version, anniversary, versatile, divers, diversity, conversation, perverse, universe, university, traverse, subversive, divorce; (2) vertebra, vertigo, controvert, revert, averse, versus, versification, animadversion, vice versa, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... like human beings, with due and just consideration, and they will prove to you the wisdom of your course. Newspaper Poets gather about me in a body. I have all styles and gradations. They run the entire range from bad to fairly good; but there is one who writes a most exquisite verse. He is a tender, sympathetic, yet cynical man. Somehow he has slipped away. I was not able to hold him, nor did I wish or even dare to keep him. He is scornful of the world. He sees no reason why he should be here. He would ...
— The Inner Sisterhood - A Social Study in High Colors • Douglass Sherley et al.
... my parents' only child, an heiress, highly born, and highly educated. Every circumstance of humanity which could pamper pride was mine, and I battened on the poison. I painted, I sang, I wrote in prose and verse—they told me, not without success. Men said that I was beautiful—I knew that myself, and revelled and gloried in the thought. Accustomed to see myself the centre of all my parents' hopes and fears, to be surrounded by flatterers, to indulge in secret the still more fatal triumph of contempt ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... sae crouse, and maybe they'll get a fricht the noo." When the Vale scored their goal a wag, primed with a fair-sized pocket pistol, no doubt containing the best—well, every public-house salesman will tell you at anyrate, it is the "best," and charge for it, too, as "special"—began to lilt a verse of the popular pantomime song, "Their funeral's to-morrow," hinting heavily about the decline and fall of the Queen's Park. Many saw the point, and laughed; while others gave the jolly fellow a look that betokened contempt and dismay. "Wait till the second half," said a ...
— Scottish Football Reminiscences and Sketches • David Drummond Bone
... with either a wrangling lawyer or an hypocritical methodist. He was also the village poet, and frequently exercised his talents in praise of the waters, and likewise of any respectable person who came with intent to derive benefit from them. He is said to have kept annals in verse of its rise and progress, and also cases of cures performed by the virtues of the saline spring, and that he let them out to the visitors for their amusement, on certain terms. Admitting this to be true, is it not very singular that Mr. Bisset, nor his predecessor, Mr. Pratt, should neither ...
— A Description of Modern Birmingham • Charles Pye
... their solemnities of Juno should be called the Lysandria; and out of the poets he had Choerilus always with him, to extol his achievements in verse; and to Antilochus, who had made some verses in his commendation, being pleased with them, he gave a hat full of silver; and when Antimachus of Colophon, and one Niceratus of Heraclea, competed with each other in a poem on the deeds of Lysander, he gave the garland to Niceratus; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... cogency of reasoning more effective than the skill of the mere rhetorician. Sometimes they appeared in ballad form, and sometimes as simple narrative. The rough poet of the period (the American Revolution can boast of many) was Rednap Howell, who taught the very children to sing, in doggerel verse, the infamy of the proud officials who were trampling on their rights. A short selection from the many similar ones will be here presented for the ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... fact!— Attend, all ye who boast,—or old or young,— The living libel of a slanderous tongue! So shall my theme as far contrasted be, As saints by fiends, or hymns by calumny. Come, gentle Amoret (for 'neath that name, In worthier verse is sung thy beauty's fame); Come—for but thee who seeks the Muse? and while Celestial blushes check thy conscious smile, With timid grace, and hesitating eye, The perfect model, which I boast, supply:— Vain Muse! couldst thou the humblest sketch create ...
— The School For Scandal • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... (1878-)—Author and critic; born in Boston. Editor of "Anthology of Magazine Verse," published annually, "The Book of Georgian Verse," "The Book of Restoration Verse," contributor of literary criticisms to the Boston ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... all ages, have applied verse to the same use, as is still found to be the case among the North American Indians. Charlemagne, as we are told by Eginhart, "wrote out and committed to memory barbarous verses of great antiquity, in which the actions and wars of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... in 1799 and died in 1838, is the founder of Russian literature, and it is difficult to overestimate his influence. He is the first, and still the most generally beloved, of all their national poets. The wild enthusiasm that greeted his verse has never passed away, and he has generally been regarded in Russia as one of the great poets of the world. Yet Matthew Arnold announced in his Olympian manner, "The Russians have not yet had a great poet."* It is always difficult fully to appreciate poetry in ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... told me makes me think of a verse of 'The Mother's Evening Prayer,' in 'Miscellaneous Writings,'" [Footnote: By Mary Baker G. Eddy, page 389.] said Katherine, gently; and she repeated ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... merely a moral injunction, in which he predicts rhetorically the future backsliding of the people so as to impress it vividly on their imagination. (17) I say that Moses spoke of himself in order to lend likelihood to his prediction, and not as a prophet by revelation, because in verse 21 of the same chapter we are told that God revealed the same thing to Moses in different words, and there was no need to make Moses certain by argument of God's prediction and decree; it was only necessary that it should be vividly impressed on his imagination, and this could not be better accomplished ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part III] • Benedict de Spinoza
... therefore, what he did when he was upon earth, he is doing now, and will do till the end of the world. If we will believe this, and look at our Lord's doings upon earth as patterns and specimens, as it were, of his eternal life and character, then every verse in the gospels will teach us something, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... give you an original bit of verse which I have entitled, 'When the Blossoms Fill the Orchard, Molly Dear,'" ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... the intention early in their career with many of our best known prose writers, with Milton, and Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson, with Scott, Macaulay, and more lately with Matthew Arnold; writers of verse and prose who ultimately prevailed some in one direction, and others in the other. Milton and Goldsmith have been known best as poets, Johnson and Macaulay as writers of prose. But with all of them there has been a distinct effort in each ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... Isaiah, and the fourth verse, we read, "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares;" and by the context we know that these words are part of a description of that universal peace which will follow the preaching of the Gospel in every part of the world. This beautiful poetic image made use of by the prophet Isaiah, has ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... these shores a deeper, subtler, and more universal note than is heard in any other land touched by the Atlantic Sea. We have now writings in several departments of literature, and in both prose and verse, which are characterized by a breadth and largeness of suggestion, by a spirituality and a prophetic adherence to the moral sentiment, which justify all that has here been affirmed or reasoned. And our deepest thought finds a popular ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... he found himself walking homeward over the white road again. He had drunk wine enough to make him feel quite gay; and as he went he sang now and then a verse of a song about the joys of ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... that Henry Anderson had gathered from the mountains and canyons, and I could accept a verse carved on stone, and be delighted with the gift; but I couldn't accept hours of day labor at the present price of labor, so you will have to give me ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... enough pleased with a story of one of these answerers, who in a paper[6] last week found many faults with a late calculation of mine. Being it seems more deep learned than his fellows, he was resolved to begin his answer with a Latin verse, as well as other folks: His business was to look out for something against an "Examiner" that would pretend to tax accounts; and turning over Virgil, he had the luck to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... The Three Palaces.—Published originally on a similar occasion to the last story, in "A Volunteer Haversack," an extensive repertory of miscellaneous contributions in prose and verse, printed and sold at Edinburgh for a benevolent purpose ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... the Anglo-Saxon mind which causes a slight shrinking from art as such, perhaps associating it with deception or frivolity,—which tolerates it, and, strange to say, even produces it in verse, but really shrinks from it in prose. Across the water, this tendency seems to increase. Just as an Englishman is ashamed to speak well, and pooh-poohs all oratory, so he is growing ashamed even to write well, at least in anything beyond a newspaper; and we on this side have emancipated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... buttons was tramping along with a young girl in a tremendous hat. He snatched her hat off, she snatched off his; he kissed her, she smacked his face; he put her hat on his own head, she put on his hat; and then they linked arms and sang a verse of the Old Dutch. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... rejection in later times by Erasmus, Luther, Isaac Newton, Porson, and a long line of the greatest biblical scholars. And with this was thrown out the other like unto it in spurious origin and zealous intent, that interpolation of the word "God" in the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of the First Epistle to Timothy, which had for ages served as a warrant for condemning some of the noblest of Christians, even such men as Newton and Milton and Locke and ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... when we looked at the quotations she makes to support the praise she gives, we were speedily relieved from any self-reproach of this description. Passages are cited for applause, in which there is neither distinguishable thought, nor elegance of diction, nor even an attempt at melody of verse; passages which could have won upon her only (and herein these quotations, if they fail of giving a fair representation of the poet, serve at least to characterise the critic,) could have won upon her only by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Like most of those who are destined to reach the heights, Shakespeare seems to have grown slowly, and even at twenty-eight or thirty years of age his grasp of character was so uncertain, his style so little formed, so apt to waver from blank verse to rhyme, that it is difficult to determine exactly what he did write. We may take it, I think, as certain that he wrote more than we who have his mature work in mind are inclined ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... I have ceased to talk of her. If I wanted to say anything about Greece I should get down the Poetry Book and quote Lord Byron's fine old ranting verse. "The mountains look on Marathon—and Marathon looks on the sea." But "standing on the Persians' grave" Greece seems in the same humour that made Lord Byron give her up as ...
— The Angels of Mons • Arthur Machen
... he appeared in the house of Amaryllis and sent a servant to her asking her to breakfast with him. The Greek sent him in return a wax tablet on which she had written that she was shut up in her chamber writing verse, but that she had provided him a ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... shore, untrodden by any but the fisher going down at the ebb to seek king-crab for bait, or by his children, gathering driftwood on the stones, one little bird stays ever faithful to the same short range of shore. This is the rock-pipit—the "sea-lark" of Browning's verse. But that is a summer song. It is not only when ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... sent 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 it was agreeable ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... Lend thy pow'r, and lend thine ear! A Stranger trod thy lonely glades, Amidst thy dark and bounding Deer; Inquiring Childhood claims the verse, O let them not inquire in vain; Be with me while I thus rehearse The glories of ...
— Rural Tales, Ballads, and Songs • Robert Bloomfield
... to meet. He was a respected man, not only in his order, but at the University; not a great scholar—he learned Greek from Melanchthon in the first year of his professorship, and Hebrew soon after. He had no extensive book learning, and never had the ambition to shine as a writer of Latin verse; but he was astonishingly well-read in the Scriptures and some of the Fathers of the Church, and what he had once learned he assimilated with German thoroughness. He was the untiring shepherd of ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... clever forgery had been committed, that leaves had been inserted in ancient MSS., and that on these leaves the Pandits, urged by Lieutenant Wilford to disclose their ancient mysteries and traditions, had rendered in correct Sanskrit verse all that they had heard about Adam and Abraham from their inquisitive master. Lieutenant (then Colonel) Wilford did not hesitate for one moment to confess publicly that he had been imposed upon; but in the meantime the mischief had been done, his essays had been read all over ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... to music was curious, considering how impressionable he was to verse, and to songs of birds. He listened with an oppressed look, as to something the particular secret of which had to be reached by a determined effort of sympathy for those whom it affected. He liked it if she did, and said he liked ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been uttered but in the spirit of reflective patriotism, those notices are left to produce their own effect; but, among the many objects of general concern, and the changes going forward, which I have glanced at in verse, are some especially affecting the lower orders of society: in reference to these, I wish here to add a few words in ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... up his miscellaneous reading. He was specially devoted to poetry; and loved not only to recite verse upon verse aloud, but also to read to his friends and associates. As usual, his enthusiasm spread to others. One old lady has told me that she never had thought much of poetry till she heard him read it. Burns and Edwin Arnold and Tennyson were favorites; and there ...
— James B. Eads • Louis How
... Words. Sherlock upon Death. The fifteen Comforts of Matrimony. Sir William Temptle's Essays. Father Malbranche's Search after Truth, translated into English. A Book of Novels. The Academy of Compliments. Culpepper's Midwifry. The Ladies Calling. Tales in Verse by Mr. Durfey: Bound in Red Leather, gilt on the Back, and doubled down in several Places. All the Classick Authors in Wood. A set of Elzevers by the same Hand. Clelia: Which opened of it self in the Place that describes two Lovers ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... "The Prelude," is in the press of the Appletons, by whose courtesy we are enabled to present the readers of The International with the fourth canto of it, before its publication in England. The poem is a sort of autobiography in blank verse, marked by all the characteristics of the poet—his original vein of thought; his majestic, but sometimes diffuse, style of speculation; his large sympathies with humanity, from its proudest to its humblest forms. It will be read with ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... out its superfluous nervous excitement and vital spirit. Let the boiler blow off its steam. All repression is dangerous. And some injudicious folk, instead of encouraging the highly-charged mind and heart to relieve themselves by blowing off in excited verse and extravagant bombast, would (so to speak) sit on the safety-valve. Let the bursting spring flow! It will run turbid at first; but it will clear itself day by day. Let a young man write a vast deal: the more he writes, the sooner will the Veal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... tall, handsome youth—now a major in the army—was with him. From that time, till he left London, I was frequently in his company. He spoke of my pursuits and prospects in life with interest and with feeling—of my little attempts in verse and prose with a knowledge that he had read them carefully—offered to help me to such information as I should require, and even mentioned a subject in which he thought I could appear to advantage. "If you try your hand on a story," he observed, "I would advise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... 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 himself with a crutch, while with the ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... year our Politics found a fresh vent through the establishment of The Harrovian. I had dabbled in composition ever since I was ten, and had printed both prose and verse before I entered Harrow School. So here was a heaven-sent contributor, and one morning, in the autumn of 1869, as I was coming out of First School, one[9] of the Editors overtook ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... attention of our heroine and her friends as they occasionally rode by; and, pausing in their saddles to listen, enough of a tune would get into their heads and keep ringing there to turn their course that way again. Catching a charming tune, they "must get the words, at least a verse or two." So, from pausing outside to listen, they grew bolder, tied their horses, and civilly sat down inside, not only charmed with the songs, but curious to hear the fervent prayers and testimonies and occasional shouts of this bright-faced company. ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... give a proof of his art, praising Spring in a song thrilling with melody. Beckmesser interrupts him; he has marked the rhymes on the black tablet, but they are new and unintelligible to this dry verse-maker, and he will not let them pass. The others share his opinion; only Hans Sachs differs from them, remarking that Walter's song, though new and not after the old use and wont rules of Nueremberg, is justified all the same, ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... I believe a series of small satirical leaflets, in verse or prose, to be sold cheap or distributed free about the streets, would be very useful. If we could find a clever artist who would enter into the spirit of the thing, we ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... penetrate to the light? I think it is plain that St. Paul, while he calls upon us to believe, never intended that we should be passively credulous. [Footnote: My son might have further enforced his view by a passage from St. Paul, 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5 verse 21, had it occurred to him: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." By this the apostle implies, according to Archbishop Secker's commentary, all things which may be right or wrong according to conscience. And by "proving them" he means, not ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Hospital was obtained for him by that eminent judge Mr. Justice Buller, a former pupil of his father's; and he was entered at the school on the 18th July 1782. His early bent towards poetry, though it displayed itself in youthful verse of unusual merit, is a less uncommon and arresting characteristic than his precocious speculative activity. Many a raw boy "lisps in numbers, for the numbers come;" but few discourse Alexandrian metaphysics at the same age, for the very good reason that the metaphysics ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... singing—and of course it was their favorite, "One Wide River," that they sang, beginning with the very first verse. The words of the last stanza floated back to the West Dormitory girls as the others marched ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... of Fothergil symbolize the toes of his ever-fleecing soul — but he strides. Female poets undulate. Erotic male poets saunter. Tramp poets lurch and swagger. Fothergil, being a vers libre poet, a Prophet of the Virile, a Little Brother of the Cosmic Urge, is compelled by what his verse is to stride vigorously across rooms as if they were vast desert places, in spite of what his toes are. He strode magnificently, triumphantly, to the window and flung the shade up and looked out at the amorphous mist creeping in across the roofs. ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... intelligence of submission to artificial institutions. He felt, after he had once mastered the habit of the new yoke, that it became the source of continual and unforeseeable improvements even in thought, and he perceived that the reason why verse is a higher kind of literary perfection than prose, is that verse imposes a greater number of rigorous forms. We may add that verse itself is perfected, in the hands of men of poetic genius, in proportion ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... impressions of that time when every new page of Greek or Latin was a new perception of things beautiful. The world of the Greeks and Romans is my land of romance; a quotation in either language thrills me strangely, and there are passages of Greek and Latin verse which I cannot read without a dimming of the eyes, which I cannot repeat aloud because my voice fails me. In Magna Graecia the waters of two fountains mingle and flow together; how exquisite will be ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... the first of the Anglo-Latin poets, and he was a classical scholar at a time when to be so was a great distinction. Both in prose and verse, his style has the faults which belong to an age of revived study. His love of learning, his keen appreciation of its beauty and its value, have tended to inflate his sentences with an appearance of display. His poetic diction is simpler than that of his prose; but here, ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... of this hymn will be sung by the choir alone. The congregation is asked to stand and then to join in the second verse. The fourth verse will be ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... eyes were with his pet, you may be sure; and suddenly he stopped singing right in the middle of a verse, and gazed in wonder at the words which were carved low down at the base of the fountain, "I was thirsty, and ye ...
— Master Sunshine • Mrs. C. F. Fraser
... sad Consort, stealing through the gloom Of Hangs in mute anguish o'er the scutcheon'd hearse, Or graves with trembling style the votive verse. ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... 21st; the John Stanleys there and Lord Neaves. [Footnote: A lord of justiciary, one of the foremost authorities on criminal law in Scotland, and for more than forty years a regular contributor of prose and verse to Blackwood's Magazine.] Lady Ruthven ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... 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
... have been saying to me; but I was never capable of—and surely never guilty of—such a debauch of production. At this rate his works will soon fill the habitable globe, and surely he was armed for better conflicts than these succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse? I look on, I admire, I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition we all have for our tongue and literature I am wounded. If I had this man's fertility and courage, it seems to me ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... had perceived the mother's trick. He was himself trembling, too, lest the child should not know his lesson. What a disappointment it would have been to the mother! For a fortnight before she had taken baby every night on her knees and said, 'Now begin your fable.' She had taught it him verse by verse with the patience of an angel, and she had encouraged him to learn it with many a sugarplum. 'He is beginning to know his fable,' she said a hundred times to her husband. 'Really,' he answered, with an air ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... winter in Paris, little Wiedemann, as his parents tried to call him—his full name was Robert Wiedemann Barrett—had developed a decided turn for blank verse. He would extemporize short poems, singing them to his mother, who wrote them down as he sang. There is no less proof of his having possessed a talent for music, though it first naturally showed itself in the love of a ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... down with infinite contempt on the ignorant and boorish slaves of the pick. Poetry has, in consequence, little to say about the digger for coal. The song of "The Collier Laddie," attributed to Burns, is one of the very few pleasant pieces of verse ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... my still unwritten verse, 'Soleil si pale,' etc., it relates to the 11th, 12th, and 13th of October, and, generally, to the time of the battle in the woods, which lasted for our regiment from September 22nd to October 13th. What struck me so much was to see the sun ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... you 'launch?'—Now is your time. The people are tolerably tired with me, and not very much enamoured of * *, who has just spawned a quarto of metaphysical blank verse, which is nevertheless only a part of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... is the mere prelude of a mind growing in power, we have in it the promise of a fine poet.... In 'The Wandering Soul,' the verse describing Socrates has that highest note of critical poetry, that in it epigram becomes vivid with life, and life reveals its inherent paradox. It would be difficult to describe the famous irony of Socrates in more poetical and more ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... Works, in Prose and Verse. With Memoir, Portrait, and Facsimiles of Maps in 'Gulliver's ...
— Chatto & Windus Alphabetical Catalogue of Books in Fiction and General Literature, Sept. 1905 • Various
... make an assertion in their hearing without receiving a flat contradiction, especially when religious subjects were brought on the carpet. 'It is false,' they would say; 'Saint Paul, in such a chapter and in such a verse, says exactly the contrary.' 'What can you know concerning what Saint Paul or any other saint has written?' the priests would ask them. 'Much more than you think,' they replied; 'we are no longer to be kept in darkness and ignorance respecting these matters:' and then ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... contrary, It is written in the second canonical epistle of John (verse 4): "I was exceeding glad that I found thy children walking ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... noble descriptions which he had given of sumptuous palaces, beautiful porticoes, and pleasant fountains, in his Orlando Furioso, he replied, "that words were combined together with less expense than stones." To such a degree was he charmed with his own verse, and so much did he also excel in his manner of reading, that he was always disgusted if he heard his own writings repeated with an ill grace and accent. Accordingly, it is said, that, when he accidentally heard a potter singing a stanza of his Orlando in an incorrect ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 352, January 17, 1829 • Various
... also received an illumination from Von Buelow. This is a vivid tone picture, though without motto or verse. Starting with those fateful fifths in the bass, it moves over two pages fitfully gloomy and gay, till at the end of the second page a descending passage leads to three chords so full of grim despair as to impart the atmosphere of a dungeon. The player was hastily turning ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... a simple and popular one, dealing with the theme of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and having each verse ending with the word "Love." Conceive it, long ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... gag is the privilege and the property of the comic performer. The tragedian does not gag. He may require his part to be what is called "written up" for him, and striking matter to be introduced into his scenes for his own especial advantage, but he is generally confined to the delivery of blank verse, and rhythmical utterances of that kind do not readily afford opportunities for gag. There have been Macbeths who have declined to expire upon the stage after the silent fashion prescribed by Shakespeare, and have insisted upon declaiming the last dying speech with which ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... 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 ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... muttering all to himself, Just like a miser counting o'er his pelf? I do believe he's talking in blank verse, Or reasoning in rhyme, which would be worse. He's deaf; if he were blind, 't would suit us better, For then he couldn't read his ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... literary and artistic productions of Goethe previous to his settlement in Weimar. The references throughout are to the Weimar edition of Goethe's works. Except where otherwise indicated, the author is responsible for the translations, both in prose and verse. ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... eleven this lass Had a Sunday-school class, At twelve wrote a volume of verse, At thirteen was yearning For glory, and learning To be a professional nurse. To a glorious height The young paragon might Have grown, if not nipped in the bud, But the following year Struck her smiling career With a dull and a sickening thud! (I have shed a ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... bad memory, and did not understand one word of the catechism. These meetings, which began with prayer, were attended by all the children of the town and neighbourhood, with their mothers, and a great many old women, who came to be edified. They were an acute race, and could quote chapter and verse of Scripture as accurately as the minister himself. I remember he said to one of them—"Peggie, what lightened the world before the sun was made?" After thinking for a minute, she said—"'Deed, sir, the question is mair curious ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... feminine and unconjugal prefix; but, be that as it may, I wish simply to tell you that, at the instigation of a lettered friend, I have spent a few moments very wisely in reading your thin little book of verse, A Light Load. (ELKIN MATHEWS.) I feel now as if I had been gently drifting down a smooth broad river under the moonlight, when all nature is quiet. I don't quite know why I feel like that, but I fancy it must be on account of some serene and peaceful quality in your poems. Here, then, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... description, and it is in descriptive beauties that the Homeric hymn excels; its episodes are finished designs, and directly stimulate the painter and the sculptor to a rivalry with them. Weaving the names of the flowers into his verse, names familiar to us in English, though their Greek originals are uncertain, the writer sets Persephone before us, herself like one of them—kalykopis—like the budding calyx of a flower,—in a picture, which, in its mingling of a ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the love-songs are in a short, sweet rhythm, full of quaint conceits and word-music. I cannot put them into English verse, or give the flow of the originals in a translation. It always seems to me that Don Quixote was right when he said that a translation was like the wrong side of an embroidered cloth, giving the design without the beauty. But even ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... renown by the same valorous exploits. Augustina is the most to be envied, for her praises have been sung by a great poet; Mary Ambree has a noble ballad to perpetuate her fame; Molly Pitcher is still without the tribute of a verse to remind her countrymen occasionally of her splendid courage in ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... on the pillow. He opened it, but forgot to read, in consequence of his attention being arrested by the extreme thinness of his hands. Recovering himself, he turned to the twenty-first psalm, but had only read the first verse when the book dropt from his fingers, and he again fell ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... do want cheering up, Sam," said I, waiting till he had finished the verse. "The skipper's in a regular tantrum about you, and says you're to come ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... whose delightful writings in prose and verse have made his reputation national has achieved his master stroke of genius in this historical novel of revolutionary days ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... the sake of ostentation, know that sacrifice, O chief of the sons of Bharata, to be of the quality of passion. That sacrifice which is against the ordinance, in which no food is dealt out, which is devoid of mantras (sacred verse), in which no fees are paid to the brahmanas assisting to it, and which is void of faith, is said to be of the quality of darkness. Reverence to the gods, regenerate ones, preceptors, and men of knowledge, purity, uprightness, the practices of a Brahmacharin, and abstention from ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... quite evident that if such an open declaration had been made in plain prose, Daphne would have been angry; but in verse, 'twas nothing but a poetical license. Instead, therefore, of tearing it in pieces, and throwing it into the water, she folded it carefully up, and placed it in the pretty corset of white satin, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... a little song of flowers and sunshine that Eve began to carol over the carolling keys; the words fell into the sweetness of the air, that seemed laden with the morning murmur of bees and blossoms; it was but a verse or two, with a refrain that went repeating all the honeyed burden, till Luigi's face fairly burned with pleasure, where he stood at timid ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "The verse on creation; the void and formless earth rolling off in darkness; the Spirit of God on the waters; the mandate for light; the dividing of the floods; the fixing of the firmaments; the lifting of the sun and moon to the heavens; ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... eke on the judge's chin, Shall not my verse despise; It is more fit for a nutmeg, but yet ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... 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 ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez |
