"Versification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... collection, are the 'Essay on Criticism,' the 'Rape of the Lock,' and the 'Essay on Man.' On the first, which (with Dr. Johnson's leave) is the feeblest and least interesting of Pope's writings, being substantially a mere versification, like a metrical multiplication-table, of common-places the most mouldy with which criticism has baited its rat-traps; since nothing is said worth answering, it is sufficient to answer nothing. The 'Rape of the Lock' is treated with the same delicate sensibility that we might ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... He knows that she has fine abilities, but that they must be disciplined by trial and endeavor before her life can be rounded by success and triumph. He has seen several of her early attempts at versification; pleased and even delighted with them, he has shown them to a few of his most intellectual friends. Eager and earnest for the elevation of the colored people, he has been pained at the coldness with which ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... his priests he took to reading by himself, for which he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. He learned versification from Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of Alcander, he imitated every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statius, Homer, Virgil. In a few years he had dipped into a great number of the English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. "This I did," he says, "without any design, except to amuse ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... indebted to this very necessity of finding out new forms of expression, and to the occasional faults to which it led, for a poetical language rich and varied and magnificent beyond all former, and almost all later example. His versification is, at once, the most smooth and the most sounding in the language. It is a labyrinth of sweet sounds, "in many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out"—that would cloy by their very sweetness, but that the ear is constantly relieved and enchanted ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the rhymes and regular versification, in the mouths of the inferior actors, who have not the art to conceal them, is, to an English ear at least, very unpleasing, and indeed almost destructive of theatrical illusion; and as a number of such actors must necessarily ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... of a similar kind in this instance as it was in that of Mr. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: little corrections, in point of Orthography; and still fewer of Grammar: sometimes of Diction; and sometimes of Versification. For some of the best of these emendations I have been indebted to one, in mentioning of whom I should have had an affectionate Pride: and have more in that Modesty which forbids the mention. They are, as I have said, few of any kind: For of emendations I have been anxiously sparing. Little ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... Locrine, none of 'the life of human character or the life-likeness of dramatic dialogue has suffered from the bondage of rhyme or has been sacrificed to the exigences of metre.' But when all is said, when an unparalleled skill in language, versification, and everything that is verbal in form, has been admitted, and with unqualified admiration; when, in addition, one has admitted, with not less admiration, noble qualities of substance, superb qualities of poetic ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versification which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... poetry, notably his odes on "Tea," and the "Eulogy of Moukden" as the cradle of his race, was translated by Pere Amiot, and attracted the attention of Voltaire, who addressed to the emperor an epistolary poem on the requirements and difficulties of Chinese versification. The French thus rendered a material service in making China better known to Europe and Europe better known in China, which, although it may be hard to gauge precisely, entitles them still to rank among those who have opened up China to Europeans. The history of China, ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the affairs of his own consular year. The story is not a happy one, but the lines are harmonious. It is often worth our while to inquire how poetry has become such as it is, and how the altered and improved phases of versification have arisen. To trace our melody from Chaucer to Tennyson is matter of interest to us all. Of Cicero as a poet we may say that he found Latin versification rough, and left it smooth and musical. Now, as we ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... all come to town as soon as he can see an opening for getting you there; and as nothing of the sort has offered itself to him, this will be the very thing. Of course, if I succeed wonderfully well in my schemes for story- tellings, readings of my ballads and poems, lectures on the art of versification, and what not, we need have no lodgers; and then we shall all be living a happy family—all taking our share in ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... is the best primer. No matter if the rhymes be nonsense verses; many a poet might learn the lesson of good versification from them, and the child in repeating them is acquiring the accent of emphasis and of ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... music, for the musician, has an intellectual essence. Out of simple chords and melodies, which at first catch only the ear, he weaves elaborate compositions that by their form appeal also to the mind. This side of music resembles a richer versification; it may be compared also to mathematics or to arabesques. A moving arabesque that has a vital dimension, an audible mathematics, adding sense to form, and a versification that, since it has no subject-matter, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Temple of Fame, 1715. In a collection of his works printed in 1717 he included the Epistle of Eloisa and Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady, two poems inimitable for pathetic beauty and finished melodious versification. ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... the following little history has presumed to borrow the peculiar style of versification from ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... been at work on some more of the Young Astronomer's lines. I find less occasion for meddling with them as he grows more used to versification. I think I could analyze the processes going on in his mind, and the conflict of instincts which he cannot in the nature of things understand. But it is as well to give the reader a chance to find out for himself what is going on in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... to the requirements of the actor who is to pay him for his work. And that this is the truth may be seen by the countless plays that a most fertile wit of these kingdoms has written, with so much brilliancy, so much grace and gaiety, such polished versification, such choice language, such profound reflections, and in a word, so rich in eloquence and elevation of style, that he has filled the world with his fame; and yet, in consequence of his desire to suit the taste of the actors, they have not all, as some of them have, come as near perfection as they ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... commence an inquiry into questions of rhythm, verse-structure, and rhyme. There is, I believe, no good, concise, cheap handbook to English prosody; yet such a manual is greatly needed. The only one with which I am acquainted is Tom Hood the younger's *Rules of Rhyme: A Guide to English Versification*. Again, the introduction to Walker's *Rhyming Dictionary* gives a fairly clear elementary account of the subject. Ruskin also has written an excellent essay on verse-rhythms. With a manual in front of ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... such fragments as the scope and design of my book will allow me to offer. Had there been no such passages, I might have regarded the plays as but remotely connected with my purpose, and mentioned them merely as a dramatic form of religious versification. I quote from the Coventry Miracles, better known than either of the other two sets in existence, the Chester Plays and those of Widkirk Abbey. The manuscript from which they have been edited by Mr. Halliwell, one of those students ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... perhaps there is no schooling so good for an author as his own youthful indiscretions. After this effort Dryden seems to have lain fallow for ten years, and then he at length reappears in thirty-seven "heroic stanzas" on the death of Cromwell. The versification is smoother, but the conceits are there again, though in a milder form. The verse is modelled after "Gondibert." A single image from nature (he was almost always happy in these) gives some ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... major prophets. If his geese were swans, they were not all Swans of Avon. He had even incurred the deadly suspicion of classicism by differing from his young friends, the Punctuist Poets, when they produced versification consisting exclusively of commas and colons. He had a more humane sympathy with the modern flame kindled from the embers of Celtic mythology, and it was in reality the recent appearance of a Cornish ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... just occurred to me that you could give me a hint or two at versification. I have just commenced, but I find it no easy matter, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... salted by an irony which is a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously, Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the form by introducing real rustics and turning it ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... perusing the works of Dryden, he discovered the most perfect fabrick of English verse, and habituated himself to that only which he found the best. ... New sentiments and new images others may produce; but to attempt any further improvement of versification will be dangerous. Art and diligence have now done their best, and what shall be added will be the effort of tedious toil and needless curiosity". [Footnote: Life of Pope. Johnson's Works, xi. pp 194, 195.] But Johnson failed to see that his ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... Greek models were the artificial modes employed by cultivated writers. However this may be, there is no doubt that, together with the decline of antique civilisation, accent and rhythm began to displace quantity and metre in Latin versification. Quantitative measures, like the Sapphic and Hexameter, were composed accentually. The services and music of the Church introduced new systems of prosody. Rhymes, both single and double, were added to the verse; and the extraordinary flexibility of medieval Latin—that sonorous instrument ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... have beaten our ancestors; seldom can we take up a paper or a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great names; the age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; and truly may we consider that the very abundance of good versification has lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous minstrels, with whom ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... stand side by side. Lover had more versatility of talent, taking him partly outside the field of literature. He made the most of his powers: nothing which he has written gives the idea that he might have done it better. He was a poet, which Lever was not, and had an easy command of versification and language. His songs, while they show no high poetic qualities, are excellent of their kind, and his facility in turning an impromptu verse is shown in this scrap from the book before us in praise of a friend ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... Minstrelsy.' The latest ballad really in the old popular manner known to me is that of 'Rob Roy,' namely, of Robin Oig and James More, sons of Rob Roy, and about their abduction of an heiress in 1752. This is a genuine popular poem, but in style and tone and versification it is wholly unlike 'The Queen's Marie.' I scarcely hope that any one can produce, after 1680, a single popular piece which could be mistaken for a ballad of or near ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Shakespeare's genius can be adequate. In knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judgment, he has no rival. It is true of him, as of no other writer, that his language and versification adapt themselves to every phase of sentiment, and sound every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expressions, mixed metaphors, indefensible ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a lumbering proclivity that way, and so forfeits the confidence of grave sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable and unprecedented prescription she had waited for so long, seemed all of a piece to poor mamma: ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the small folio appeared with a fine portrait, still dear to the collector, which contains for the first time what may be called the "garden-poetry" of our author, together with some specimens of his political and satirical versification. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... the cemetery of the Escurial, with the dust of many a better worthy. [32] The extracts selected from it by Castro, although occasionally exhibiting some fluent graces with considerable variety of versification, convey, on the whole, no very high idea of taste ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... class happened to find that Matthew viii. 28-33 and Luke viii. 26-33 contain the same account, that of the demons entering into the swine. Very odd! chapters tallying, and verses so nearly: is the versification rightly managed? Examination is sure to show that there are monstrous inconsistencies in the mode of division, which being corrected, the verses tally as well as the chapters. And then how comes it? I ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... century, to the effect, that a Scottish officer, serving in Egypt, had been much affected on hearing a soldier's wife crooning to herself the original words of the air. We have inserted in the text Imlah's second version, as being somewhat smoother in versification. It is the only song which we have transcribed from his volume, published in 1841. But the most popular words which have been attached to the air and chorus were the composition of a student in one of the colleges ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... dancing-song; the lyric lai, virtually identical with the descort, consisted of stanzas which varied in structure; the motet, a name originally applied to pieces of church music, was freer in versification, and occasionally dealt with popular themes. Among forms which cannot be included under the general title of chansons, are those in dialogue derived from the Provencal literature; in the tenson or debat the two interlocutors ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... hundred years, and without teacher or example displayed the excellences which came to be preferred to all others in the eighteenth century. "These poems of his," says his editor in that age (1718), "having stood the test of above a century, and the language and the versification being still pure and elegant, it is to be hoped they will still shine among his countrymen and preserve his name." At this time, and for long afterwards, Drayton, save for an occasional reprint of his "Nimphidia" among miscellaneous collections, ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... or impassioned recitation, adapted to the subject. Poems, however humble in their kind, if they be good in that kind, cannot read themselves; the law of long syllable and short must not be so inflexible,—the letter of metre must not be so impassive to the spirit of versification,—as to deprive the Reader of all voluntary power to modulate, in subordination to the sense, the music of the poem;—in the same manner as his mind is left at liberty, and even summoned, to act upon its thoughts and images. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... allowance for the difference of languages in which they wrote, there was a surprising affinity between his own works and those of that celebrated Theban; and as a confirmation of this truth, he immediately produced a sample of each, which, though in spirit and versification as different as the Odes of Horace and our present poet-laureat, Peregrine did not scruple to pronounce altogether congenial, notwithstanding the violence he by this sentence offered to his own conscience, and a certain alarm to his pride, that was ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... his poem, somewhat as the bards of major epic are supposed to have done. Surprisingly, in view of this technique of composition, the poem is well integrated, and consistently smooth and fluent in its versification.[51] ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... with him. I was not satisfied with the knowledge alone of all that had any relation to our religion, but made also a particular search into our histories. I made myself perfect in polite learning, in the works of the poets, and in versification. I applied myself to geography, to chronology, and to speak our Arabian language in its purity; not forgetting, in the mean time, all such exercises as were proper for a prince to understand. But one thing I was mightily in love with, and succeeded in to admiration, was, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... of the nose, and required to be constantly treated with peppermint; secondly, that something peculiar in the temperature of my pantry, made the brandy-bottles burst; thirdly, that I was alone in the world, and much given to record that circumstance in fragments of English versification. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... has not and cannot have them; it is the poetry of the builders of an age of prose and reason. Though they may write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be masters of the art of versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... It would have roused any dean with a particle of spirit in him. After all, a high ecclesiastic cannot sit still and listen to profane condemnation of one of the Psalms of David, even if it has undergone versification at the hands of Dr. Watts. The conduct of McNeice and Malcolmson was offensive and provocative. The noise made by the crowd was maddening. There is every excuse for Babberly's sudden loss of temper. But the Dean's anger was more than excusable. It was justified. ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... called "The Historie of the Colyer," acted by the Earl of Leicester's men; but it was doubtless Ulpian Fulwell's "Like will to Like, quod the Devil to the Colier," printed in 1568. The structure, phraseology, versification, and language of "Grim, the Collier of Croydon," are sufficient to show that it was written before 1600: another instance to prove how much the arrangement of the plays made by Mr Reed was calculated to mislead. Some slight separate proofs of the age of this piece are pointed out in the ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the highest sense of the word, a great dramatist. Shakspeare is the only one of that age. Marlowe had a rare imagination, a delicacy of sense that made him the teacher of Shakspeare and Milton in versification, and was, perhaps, as purely a poet as any that England has produced; but his mind had no balance-wheel. Chapman abounds in splendid enthusiasms of diction, and now and then dilates our imaginations with suggestions of profound poetic depth. Ben Jonson was a conscientious and intelligent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... this "Wiland," when Liszt makes its first acquaintance, should inspire him as I was once inspired by it, I ask him to consider it as his property. The design is quite complete; all that remains to be done is simple versification, which every fairly skilful writer of verse might execute: Liszt will easily find one. In the more important places, I have written the verses myself. To do more is at present impossible to me; even the copying out gave ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... supply his text. He was capable of writing excellent poetry, but he seems to have cultivated this talent too little. The English verses prefixed to his book, which possess beautiful imagery, and great sweetness of versification, have been frequently published. His Latin elegiac verses addressed to his book, shew a very agreeable turn ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... never verse) to a perfection of melody, harmony, and variety which has never been surpassed. Shakspeare, then, found a language already to a certain extent established, but not yet fetlocked by dictionary- and grammar-mongers,—a versification harmonized, but which had not yet exhausted all its modulations, or been set in the stocks by critics who deal judgment on refractory feet, that will dance to Orphean measures of which their judges are insensible. That the language was established is proved by its comparative uniformity as used by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the last years of his life, the poem found him with his vocabulary fully developed and his versification perfected; and these are points eminently essential in narrative verse. When Dryden began his literary career, he had but just left the university, and his speech smacked somewhat of the pedantry of the classical scholar of the times. Then came the Restoration with its worship of French ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... bestow, or from a sense of natural inaptitude, certain it is that my young friend could never be induced to any further essays in this kind. He affirmed that it was to him like writing in a foreign tongue,—that Mr. Pope's versification was like the regular ticking of one of Willard's clocks, in which one could fancy, after long listening, a certain kind of rhythm or tune, but which yet was only a poverty-stricken tick, tick, after all,—and that he had never seen a sweet-water ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... externals of poetry. Minds with some breadth but with little depth are not thoroughly original. Their sense of the beautiful busies itself necessarily with that for which they have the readiest gifts; and their readiest gifts being words more than ideas, versification more than thought, form more than substance, they turn out verse, chiefly narrative, which captivates through its easy flow, its smooth sensuousness of diction, its gloss. Take a poet so celebrated, in ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... in this volume are written in what the French call "Vers Libre", a nomenclature more suited to French use and to French versification than to ours. I prefer to call them poems in "unrhymed cadence", for that conveys their exact meaning to an English ear. They are built upon "organic rhythm", or the rhythm of the speaking voice with its necessity for breathing, rather than upon a strict metrical system. They differ from ordinary ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... assiduously studied, and infinitely preferred to that of Pope. Into Chapman's it must be assumed that he had not looked—certainly he has left no sonnet on the subject. Milton was perhaps his best-loved bard. "When I was travelling in Italy (he says), I made two authors my constant study for versification,—Milton and Crowe" (The italics are ours.) It is an odd collocation; but not unintelligible. William Crowe, the now forgotten Public Orator of Oxford, and author of Lewesdon Hill, was an intimate friend; a writer on versification; ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... earliest Greek work which purported to treat the constellations qua constellations, of which we have certain knowledge, is the [Greek: Phainomena] of Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 403-350 B.C.). The original is lost, but a versification by Aratus (c. 270 B.C.), a poet at the court of Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedonia, and an [Greek: Exegesis] or commentary by Hipparchus, are extant. In the [Greek: Phainomena] of Aratus 44 constellations are enumerated, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... answer surely is: We owe it to our nineteenth century poets, and particularly to Tennyson, Swinburne, and William Morris. Years ago Mr. R.H. Horne said most acutely that the principle of Chaucer's rhythm is "inseparable from a full and fair exercise of the genius of our language in versification." This "full and fair exercise" became a despised, almost a lost, tradition after Chaucer's death. The rhythms of Skelton, of Surrey, and Wyatt, were produced on alien and narrower lines. Revived by Shakespeare and the later Elizabethans, it fell into contempt again until Cowper once ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... are truly original and faithful, and are touched with the hand of a Master.... His versification occasionally displays an energy and harmony which might decorate even ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... a man can find perfect satisfaction in the versification of the 'Essay on Man,' we can understand his saying of 'Lycidas,' that 'the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleasing.' In one of the 'Ramblers' we are informed that the accent in blank verse ought properly to rest upon every second syllable ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... or Cambridge. Thus, the drama of Athens naturally was assumed as the model of modern imitation; but on it was ingrafted, not the vehemence and nature of the Greek originals, addressed to all mankind, but the measured march of heroic versification, intended for a narrow and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... head-mistress, seeing that she was a clever child, retained her as pupil teacher. Quiet, gentle, and caring little for the amusements of girls of her own age, her chief pleasure was in composing verse, much of which is still in existence. The following lines are from her 'Versification of David's lament over Saul and Jonathan,' which was written when she was thirteen ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... husband asked me three times, and three times I said no. And then he took to writing verses—and I saw there was but one way to stop him. So we were married. Ask her; ask her again—and again. You can always resort in the end to versification. And now," the lady concluded, rising, "I have spoken, and I leave you to your fate. I'm obliged to return to the hotel, to hold a bed of justice. It appears that my innocent darlings, beyond there, innocent as ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... cited his judgment seemed perfectly justified, and even if he was wrong, it is interesting to note that this poor sailor and night-watchman was ready to rise up and criticise an eminent dignitary and scholar on rather delicate points of versification and the finer distinctions ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... every fireside before the little girl said her last good-night to it. So far there had been some bright witticisms and sarcasms in rhyme, and the clergy had penned verses for wedding and funeral occasions. The Rev. John Cotton had indulged in flowing versification, and even Governor Bradford had interspersed his severer cares with visions of softer strains. Anne Dudley, the wife of Governor Bradstreet, with her eight children, had found time for study and writing, and about 1650 had a volume of verse ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... nothing else, forbid him all quiet, steady, rational labor? Should we force him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the laws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to discover in the works of previous writers? Whatever gifts the boy had, would much be likely to come of them so treated? unless, indeed, they were so great as to break through ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... is similar; the pieces are about the same length and the writers have adopted the same iambic octo-syllable, with alternate rhymes. Now, my ancestor's poem is not excelled in grace by anything within the range of our literature; but there's nothing else in it whatever. Eliza Cook's versification is, in a measure, forced and imperfect, her language occasionally homely and rugged, but the strong beating of a sincere, sympathetic heart is audible in ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... even of the ancients: but you have been sparing of the gall; by which means you have pleased all readers and offended none. Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent, but was not happy enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression. That which is the prime virtue and chief ornament of Virgil, which distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Dr. Johnson with respect to the time when these additional lines were inserted.... I suspect they were added in 1613, after Shakspeare had quitted the stage, by that hand which tampered with the other parts of the play so much as to have rendered the versification of it of a different colour from all the other ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... sense of triumph over the difficulties of our language, the satisfaction of approaching in a novel and perceptibly felt manner one of those excellences which, as much as anything, contributes to the permanent charm of Catullus, his dainty versification, will more than compensate for any shortcomings which the difficulty of the task has made inevitable. The same may be said of the elaborately artificial poem to Camerius (c. lv.), and the almost unapproachable Attis (c. ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... of his life. It has always seemed to me that Dr. Watts's rank as a poet has never been properly appreciated. If ever there was a poet born, he was that man; he attained without study a smoothness of versification, which, with Pope, was the result of the intensest analysis and most artistic care. Nor do the most majestic and resounding lines of Dryden equal some of his in majesty of volume. The most harmonious lines of Dryden, that I know of, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... may be so far satisfactory to our readers, we are under the necessity of claiming their charitable forbearance for the strangers of the mountain whom we are to introduce to their acquaintance. The language, and, in some respects, the imagery and versification, are as foreign to the usages of the Anglo-Saxon as so many samples of Orientalism. The transfusion of the Greek and Latin choral metres is a light effort to the difficulty of imitating the rhythm, or representing the peculiar vein of these song-enamoured mountaineers. Those who know how a favourite ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Teutonic races poetry was not distinguished by either of the peculiarities—rime or metre—which mark off modern verse from prose, so far as its external form is concerned. Our existing English system of versification is not derived from our old native poetry at all; it is a development of the Romance system, adopted by the school of Gower and Chaucer from the French and Italian poets. Its metre, or syllabic arrangement, is an adaptation from the Greek quantitative prosody, handed down through Latin ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... citation of Milton, intended to strengthen Mrs. Renshaw's argument, really weakens it; for while he undoubtedly condemns rhyme, he laments in the course of this very condemnation the lame metre which is sometimes concealed by apt rhyming. "Some Views on Versification," by Clara I. Stalker, is an essay written from a sounder and more conservative point of view. The middle course in poetical composition, which avoids alike wild eccentricities and mechanical precision, has much to recommend ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... hundred individual traits expressive of their peculiarity and their caprice, and this is incompatible with the great epic style. It is by no means accidental that Scherenberg is unable to get away from the most arbitrary crabbed versification in his historical genre poems celebrating Frederick the Great. The capricious heroes with pigtails do not tolerate smooth verses. The favorite verse-form of their day, however, the stiff alexandrine, characterizes the Pigtail ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... to their particular condition had come into use, and though poetry was neither a common nor a brilliant property of the mind, among a people thus disciplined in ascetic practices, it early exhibited its power in quaint versification, that was always intended, though with a success it is almost pardonable to doubt, to redound to the glory of the Deity. It was but a natural enlargement of this pious practice, to adapt some of these spiritual songs to the purposes ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Biz," to show what is coming, so that one can get ready to cry or laugh, as the case may be—a kind of sign-board, a milestone, to tell where we are going, and how fast we go. The readers then call her attention to the solid columns of the other papers, and the versification of the World. She said she did not like the dead calm. She liked the breaking up into verses, like her songs. That is a good thing; it gives the reporter time to take breath and sharpen his pen, and think of some witty thing to say; for life is a hard battle ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... innate in her, for already at the age of five she wrote letters to her grandmother and half-brother (a natural son of her father's). When she was seven, Deschartres, her grandmother's steward, who had been Maurice Dupin's tutor, began to teach her French grammar and versification, Latin, arithmetic, botany, and a little Greek. But she had no liking for any of these studies. The dry classifications of plants and words were distasteful to her; arithmetic she could not get into her head; and poetry was not her language. History, on the other hand, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... literal translation of this astonishing chorus; it is impossible to represent in another language the melody of the versification; even the volatile strength and delicacy of the ideas escape in the crucible of translation, and the reader is surprised to find a caput ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... impossible to deny to it rapidity, spirit, and a full sound; the lines are never lame, and the sense is carried forward with an uninterrupted, impetuous rush. But it is not equal. After passages of really admirable versification, the author falls back upon a sort of loose, cavalry manner, not unlike the style of some of Mr. Browning's minor pieces, and almost inseparable from wordiness, and an easy acceptation of somewhat cheap finish. There is nothing here of that compression which is the ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of metrical arrangement which he loved to repeat, but he could not go beyond them. How very limited his perceptions of this kind were, we may be convinced by reading his strictures on Dionysius the Halicarnassian in the Rambler, and the opinions on Milton's versification, which in the Idler he has put into the mouth of a minute critic, only to ridicule them, though they are indeed founded in truth. Johnson was not one of those whom Plato calls the [Greek: philaekooi kai philotheamones], "who gladly acknowledge the beautiful wherever it is met with, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... century was the leading intellectual nation, and the example of the refined and over-polished manner of writing there prevalent had much to do with the growth in England of a fondness for affected mannerisms and fancied ornaments of language. The new ideas in regard to poetry and versification which Wyat and Surrey had brought from Italy, were but the beginning of an extensive Italian influence. It was not without reason that Ascham inveighed against "the enchantments of Circe brought out of Italy to mar men's manners ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... happy, we protest against the innovation. In this dangerous experiment of Poe's, however, we are forced to do what he would have us do—admire the ingenuity of the poet, together with his knowledge of effect, rhythmical and dramatic, his flexibility and strength of versification, and marvellous faculty of word painting. This propensity to make all things subservient to the advancement of Art is not always productive of present good to one's fellow beings, whatever may be the results to posterity, as the luckless women who cross ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had at least a smattering of the Italian. Samuel Daniel was an Italian scholar; for his whole system of versification is founded on that model. Spenser, too, was well acquainted with the language; for, long before any English version of Tasso's "Gerusalemme" had appeared, he had translated many passages which occur in the "Faery Queen" from that poem, and—without any public acknowledgment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... extinction of the drama, the fashionable school of poetry,—a school without truth of sentiment or harmony of versification,—without the powers of an earlier, or the correctness of a later age,—was left to enjoy undisputed ascendency. A vicious ingenuity, a morbid quickness to perceive resemblances and analogies between things apparently heterogeneous, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... is much more regular. Rapin says a great deal of that Prince of the Latin Poets, tho' indeed he can never say enough, "He had an admirable Taste, says he, of what's natural, an excellent Judgment for the Order, and an incomparable Delicacy for the Number and Harmony of his Versification." And adds, "That the Design of the Poem is, if we consider it in all its Circumstances, the most judicious and best-laid that ever was or ever will be." There is indeed a prodigious Variety in Virgil, and yet the same Soul visible in every Line. His own great Spirit informs his Poetical ...
— Epistle to a Friend Concerning Poetry (1700) and the Essay on Heroic Poetry (second edition, 1697) • Samuel Wesley
... of Salisbury, eminent as a Latin and English poet. His early sonnets were highly intellectual and artistic in their versification. His memoirs of the poet Pope, and of other distinguished persons, were extremely popular, but did not obtain the lasting fame ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... like Silentiarius very much (that is my inference), since you have kept him so short a time. And I quite agree with you that he is not a poet of the same interest as Gregory Nazianzen, however he may appear to me of more lofty cadence in his versification. My own impression is that John of Euchaita is worth two of each of them as a poet. His poems strike me as standing in the very first class of the productions of the Christian centuries. Synesius and John of Euchaita! ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... sans doute, mais qu'il etoit au dessus de ses forces de surmonter. D'ailleurs, il a voulu donner un poeme: ce qui l'oblige a prendre le ton poetique, et a faire des descriptions poetiques, ou soi-disant telles. Enfin ce poeme est en vers elegiaques. Or qui ne sait que cette sorte de versification, dont le propre est de couper la pensee de deux en deux vers et d'assujettir ces vers au retour continuel d'une chute uniforme, est peut etre celle de toutes qui convieent le moins en genre descriptif? Quand ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... trepan. [42] He employed the short and sad remains of his life in turning the Consolation of Boethius into English. The translation was published after the translator's death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some very unsuccessful attempts to enrich our versification with new metres, and on account of the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under a thin veil of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public compassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. He complained that the tribunal which had sentenced him to death had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... What more does he than mean?"—Id. "He is surprised to find himself at so great a distance from the object with which he set out."—Id.; also Murray cor. "Few rules can be given which will hold good in all cases."—Lowth and Mur. cor. "Versification is the arrangement of words into metrical lines, according to the laws of verse."—Johnson cor. "Versification is the arrangement of words into rhythmical lines of some particular length, so as to produce harmony by the regular alternation of syllables differing in quantity."—L. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to Latin literature lay partly in introducing the use of the hexameter and other metres from Greek in place of the old Saturnian metre. His versification is, of course, rough in comparison with that of later writers, the principal ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... of continuing to deal with shepherds, thunderstorms, and personifications, he dealt with the actual circumstances of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid these might be. And, second, in a time when English versification was particularly stiff, lame, and feeble, and words were used with ultra-academical timidity, he wrote verses that were easy, racy, graphic, and forcible, and used language with absolute tact and courage as it seemed most fit to give a clear ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was taught to their predecessors in the glorious reign of the Fatimites—and which was then transcendent and even new: the Koran and all its commentaries; the subtleties of syntax and of pronunciation; jurisprudence; calligraphy, which still is dear to the heart of Orientals; versification; and, last of all, mathematics, of which the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... counterfeit, affair, fashion; (2) factor, factotum, malefaction, benefaction, putrefaction, facile, facsimile, faculty, certificate, edifice, efficacy, prolific, deficient, proficient, artifice, artificer, beneficiary, versification, unification, exemplification, deify, petrify, rectify, amplify, fructify, liquefy, disaffect, refection, comfit, pontiff, ipso facto, de facto, ex post facto, au fait, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... be the worse wife for being learned[222]; in which, from all that I have observed of Artemisias[223], I humbly differed from him. That a woman should be sensible and well informed, I allow to be a great advantage; and think that Sir Thomas Overbury[224], in his rude versification, has very judiciously pointed out that degree of intelligence which is to be desired in a ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... of his inventions, and the minute artifice of his poetic machinery, repelled the public taste. The Linnaean system, partly indecent, and partly ridiculous, was felt to be wholly unfitted for the blazonry of versification; and his poem, the labour of years, sank into obscurity as rapidly as it had risen into distinction. It is now wholly unread, and almost wholly forgotten; yet it contains bold passages, and exhibits from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... to trace the manner and versification of Hudibras to earlier writers, especially in Cleveland's satires and in the Musarum Deliciae of Sir John Mennis (Pepys's Minnes) and Dr James Smith (1605-1667). But if it had few [v.04 p.0887] ancestors it had an abundant offspring. A list of twenty-seven ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... style and composition it makes a much nearer approach to what soon afterwards became the language of the stage, such as we find it in the works of Shakespeare, and of some of his most gifted contemporaries. Wilson, doubtless, saw the necessity, in 1588, of adopting some of those improvements of versification in which Marlowe had led the way; he therefore laid aside (excepting in a few comic scenes) his heavy, lumbering, and monotonous fourteen-syllable lines (sometimes carried to a greater length for the sake of variety) ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... F. D. Allen's treatise /On Greek Versification in Inscriptions/ (Boston, 1888) gives an account of the slight changes in structure (caesura, etc.) between earlier ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... for water and the fountain-nymph for wine. Isolated examples even of the political allusions formerly so strictly prohibited in the Roman theatre are found in these mimes.(11) As regards metrical form, these poets gave themselves, as they tell us, "but moderate trouble with the versification"; the language abounded, even in the pieces prepared for publication, with vulgar expressions and low newly-coined words. The mime was, it is plain, in substance nothing but the former farce; with this exception, that the character-masks ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... though licensed in 1601, was not published till 1603, the year of the piratical publication of the First Quarto of HAMLET, in which the play lacks much of its present matter, and shows in many parts so little trace of Shakspere's spirit and versification that, even if we hold the text to have been imperfectly taken down in shorthand, as it no doubt was, we cannot suppose him to have at this stage completed his refashioning of the older play, which is undoubtedly the substratum ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... think that these lines do you no discredit. Your versification is tolerably easy, and your ear seems to be just. The perusal of your little poem upon the whole gave me much pleasure; and if it is not asking too great a favour, I shall be highly obliged to you for ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... genuine lovers of the English tongue have ever since perused with delight, while those who are discouraged by its apparent crabbedness, have yet grown familiar with his thoughts in the smoother and more modern versification of Dryden and Pope. From that time the principles of true taste have been more or less cultivated, while with equal career independence of thought and an ardent spirit of discovery have continually proceeded, and made a rapid advance ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... is the misfortune of our tragedy to have almost no other verse than what it has in common with epic poetry, elegy, pastoral, satire, and comedy; whereas the learned languages have a great variety of versification. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Raffaelle, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Titian, Poussin,—in a word, every painter deserving the name of master: for lines here may be called the tracks of thought, in which we follow the author's mind through his imaginary creations. They hold, indeed, the same relation to Painting that versification does to Poetry, an element of style; for what is meant by a line in Painting is analogous to that which in the sister art distinguishes the abrupt gait of Crabbe from the sauntering walk of Cowley, and the "long, majestic march" of Dryden from the surging ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... the schools of art, from Milan to Naples, during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Of Sannazzaro's poem, Mr. Hallam says, that "it would be difficult to find its equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification." It is not the less true, that even its greatest merits as a Latin poem exercised the most perverse influence on the religious art of that period. It was, indeed, only one of the many influences which may be said to have demoralized the artists of ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... favourite model; and although he has written no such condensed masterpieces of satire as the characters of Shaftesbury and Buckingham, yet his works as a whole are not much inferior, and justify the idea that had his life been spared, he might have risen to the level of "Glorious John." His versification, too, is decidedly of the Drydenic type. It is a free, fierce, rushing, sometimes staggering, race across meadow, moor, and mountain, dreading nothing except repose and languor, the lines chasing, and sometimes tumbling ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... at such leisure moments as have been accorded to one who, during the whole time of their composition, has had to apply himself, almost without cessation, to the performance of newspaper press duties; and those who know anything about such things need not be told that a taste for versification is, to a press-man, as a rule, what poverty is to most people—a very inconvenient and by no means a profitable companion. In my own case, however, the inconvenience has been a pleasure, and I have no reason to find fault as to profit. From the fitful ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... serious poem published by Shelley; but it was also the first of his compositions which revealed the greatness of his genius. Rarely has blank verse been written with more majesty and music; and while the influence of Milton and Wordsworth may be traced in certain passages, the versification, tremulous with lyrical vibrations, is such as only Shelley could ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... hear sounds at repeated intervals, we owe the pleasure, which we receive from musical time, and from poetic time, as described in Botanic Garden, V. II. Interlude III. And to this the pleasure we receive from the rhimes and alliterations of modern versification; the source of which without this key would be difficult ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... were withheld all the manifestations of the Lord. We do agree at Oxford that the Pollio of Virgil is our Saviour. True, it is the dullest and poorest poem that a nation not very poetical hath bequeathed unto us; and even the versification, in which this master excelled, is wanting in fluency and sweetness. I can only account for it from the weight of the subject. Two verses, which are fairly worth two hundred such poems, are from another pagan; he was forced to sigh for the church without knowing her. ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... ever wrote." He probably meant by this that it was the first verse he ever wrote "that he cared to preserve," those specimens I have introduced being only given as marking the steps crude and faltering by which he attained a facility and technique in the art of versification seldom surpassed. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... and other Poems; with a Life of the Author; Remarks on his Language and Versification: a Glossary and Index; and a concise ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... sea, and ardently longed for the opportunity to witness, if not to participate in, a sea-fight. His desire was gratified in a singular way. He had printed in a Hartford paper a very felicitous versification of Farragut's 'General Orders' in the fight at the mouth of the Mississippi. This attracted Farragut's attention, and he took steps to learn the name of the author. When it was given, Commodore Farragut (he was not then Admiral) offered Mr. Brownell the position of master's-mate ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... arises from the absence of fault, and all that fault which arises from the absence of merit—of high poetic merit, we mean, for in music it is equal to any of his poems. Much has been said about the model which he followed in his versification, the majority of critics tracing in it an imitation of Fairfax's Tasso. The fact seems to be that Waller, with a good ear, had a very limited theory of verse. He worshipped smoothness, and sought it at every hazard. ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... title of an anonymous poem in three books, published by James Monroe and Co., Boston. Polished and graceful to an uncommon degree in its versification, this little poem exhibits a fine contemplative vein, and a pervading tone of genuine pathos. The influence of favorite authors is too perceptible in its composition for entire originality, many of the lines sounding like reminiscences ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Mr. Crown's versification, by quoting a speech which he puts into the mouth of an Angel, in the Destruction of Jerusalem. The Angel is represented as descending over the altar prophesying the fall of that ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... barefooted, wearing at the best a thin, ragged coat that had been black but was green-brown with age, and he made his spunks as well as sold them. He brought Bacon and Adam Smith into Thrums, and he loved to recite long screeds from Spenser, with a running commentary on the versification and the luxuriance of the diction. Of Jamie's death I do not care to write. He went without many a dinner in order to buy ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... famous all over this nation Centuries after myself shall have died; People will point to my versification— I, who was born on the Lower ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... nice-looking once, and I amused myself with fancying that I loved her. She was to me the summer pilot of an empty heart unto the shores of nothing. It was then that I acquired that facility in versification which has since so often helped to bind a book, or line a box, or served to curl a maiden's locks. She, learned reams of those verses by heart, and still repeats them. Her good looks and my illusions have passed away: but those verses—those thrice accursed verses, remain. How they ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... poems, published by Messrs. Ward, Lock and Tyler, Warwick House, Paternoster Row. The authoress states that the poems have been written at various times and under various circumstances, and several of them have already appeared separately in the columns of journals as occasional contributions. The versification is good and the true spirit of poetry runs through the volume. Mrs. Battersby's descriptions of scenery in Canada as well as in this country are very pleasing, and the language employed is evidently that ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly, imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this rarity flourishes are in general as ill ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... these singers were the troubadours, who were traveling minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers, 1087-1127. Among the kind of songs cultivated by these singers were ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... was very popular and very widely practised; for versification is very easy when people are in the habit of using it freely, and a verse is much more easily remembered than a line of prose. For many generations legends were versified. It must be remembered that verse and poetry are often very far apart; and poetry is as difficult to compose as ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... thought that Racine had strength sufficient to make him the equal of Corneille. "Sire," said the comic poet, "Racine has already surpassed Corneille by the harmonious elegance of his versification, and by the natural, true sensibility of his dialogue; his situations are never fictitious; all his words, his phrases, come from the heart. Racine alone is a true poet, for he ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... painted, with BURDETT, late Old Glory, and now Old Corruption. As for the poetry, when we consider the capacities of the learners, that cannot be too simple, too homely. The House, however, may order a Committee of Versification, if it please; all that we protest against is D'ISRAELI ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... Although these units do not perfectly correspond in their number of verses or in divisions which are strictly parallel, nevertheless I have divided them in this fashion with a view to convenience or the reader, rather than conformity with the ancient rules of versification. In other respects a poem of this kind should, perhaps, more correctly be called monostrophic. The metres are in part regularly patterned and in part free. There are two Phaleucian verses which admit a spondee in the third foot, a practice often followed ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... 15. Shakespeare: Language, Versification, and Method of Dramatic Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... thirteenth year, periodically writing, and as judgment ripened, destroying volumes of manuscripts, while at the same time he evinced uncommon diligence at his books and studies. The poetic talent was, indeed, strongly developed. His power of versification was early and well formed, and the pieces which were published anonymously at a maturer period, as "Geehale," and "The Iroquois," &c., have long been embodied without a name in our poetic literature. But this faculty, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... seemed to dwell upon these peculiarities of versification as being distinctively ecclesiastical and therefore spiritually edifying, and brought up the musical rear of such couplets with long-drawn and profoundly impressive "shy-un's" and "i-tee's;" but these irregularities found little favor ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... number of the 'American Review', the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of 'fugitive poetry' ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and 'pokerishness.' It is one of those 'dainties bred in a book' which we feed on. It will stick to the memory ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... the poet, "is a wild rhapsody, miserably deficient in versification, but as the sentiments are the genuine feelings of my heart, for that reason I have a particular pleasure in conning ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Ferguson was a far more important and more useful contributor, whose work was full of talent, whose versification was clever and pointed, and whose topical "Punch's Fairy Tales" (with obtrusively obvious morals) are models of their kind. His "Little Frenchman's First Lesson" (May 18th, 1844) purports to be a translation ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... feelings is given by an utterance at the beginning of this period. Nobody had less tendency to indulge in versification. When a man has anything to say, he observes to Lord Lytton on one occasion, as an excuse for not criticising his friend adequately, 'I am always tempted to ask why he cannot say it in plain prose.' I find now that he once wrote ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... many of the other poems. Miss Whitney evidently despises foot-notes as utterly as Tennyson, and leaves much unexplained in her titles and in the poems themselves, which might help us to understand them, if we knew it. Obscurity of thought and a lack of facility in versification cause evident defects in her otherwise fine book; on the other hand, she is never flat and seldom feeble, but writes as one whose thoughts and feelings move on a high level, sustained by a familiarity with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... three hundred burning cresaets, the city was strewn with flowers and decorated with triumphal arches, the Guilds of Rhetoric amazed the world with their gorgeous processions, glittering dresses and bombastic versification, the burghers all, from highest to humblest, were feasted and made merry, wine flowed in the streets and oxen were roasted whole, prizes on poles were climbed for, pigs were hunted blindfold, men and women raced in sacks, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hundred mean and dishonest Artifices employ'd to discredit this Edition, and to cry down its Editor, I have all the Grounds in Nature to be aware of Attacks. But tho' the Malice of Wit join'd to the Smoothness of Versification may furnish some Ridicule; Fact, I hope, will be able to stand its Ground against Banter ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... splendid Ode to Cromwell—a worthy companion of Milton's glorious sonnet—which is not generally known, and which we transfer entire to our pages. Its simple dignity and the melodious flow of its versification commend themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of war. It is energetic and impassioned, and probably affords a better idea of the author, as an actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the "soft Lydian airs" of the poems that we ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... we consider his versification, we shall be sensible what a share of praise is due to his invention in that also. He was not satisfied with his language as he found it settled in any one part of Greece, but searched through its different dialects with this particular view, to beautify and perfect his numbers he considered ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... pathos of Goethe, Klopstock, or Schiller there was something in the playfulness of his imagination, in the tenderness of his sensibility, in the sunny cheerfulness of his philosophy, and in the harmony of his versification, which ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward |
