"Poetess" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to AEsop and the compilation which bore his name during the so-called Dark Ages. It first occurs in the old French metrical Roman de Renart entitled, Si comme Renart prist Chanticler le Coq (ea. Meon, tom. i. 49). It is then found in the collection of fables by Marie, a French poetess whose Lais are still extant; and she declares to have rendered it de l'Anglois en Roman; the original being an Anglo- Saxon version of AEsop by a King whose name is variously written Li reis Alured (Alfred ?), or Aunert ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... object of her passion. She may have celebrated the beautiful and mythical Phaon in such a manner that the verses were supposed to refer to a lover of her own. The account of her leap from the Leucadian rock is rather a poetical image, than a real event in the life of the poetess. The true conception of the erotic poetry of Sappho can only be drawn from the fragments of her odes, which, though numerous, are for the most part very short. Among them, we must distinguish the Epithalamia or hymeneals, which were peculiarly adapted to the genius of the poetess ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... day, but a few hours earlier, she had perused these pages, wondering how the unknown gifted poetess beyond the sea had so accurately etched the suffering in her own young heart, the loneliness and misery that seemed coiled in the future like serpents in a lair. Now, holding that bruised palpitating heart under the steel-clad heel of pride, she ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Louise Labe was so called, because in early life she embraced the profession of arms, and gave repeated proofs of great valor. She was also called La Belle Cordiere. Louise Labe was a poetess, and has left several sonnets full of passion, and some good ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... you feel that language fails; but if the falls cannot be described, the ideas which are conjured up in the mind, when we contemplate this wonderful combination of grandeur and beauty, are often worth recording. The lines of Mrs Sigourney, the American poetess, please me most. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... rising; and concluding that there a spring was sure to be found, he offered a prayer on their behalf, and registered the solemn vow, "Upon this spot, in Thy name, I will build for them the first house." He laid their needs before Lady Gersdorf, and the good old poetess kindly sent them a cow; he inspected the site with Christian David, and marked the trees he might fell; and thus encouraged, Christian David seized his axe, struck it into a tree, and, as he did so, exclaimed, "Yea, the sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... another Ode of this great Poetess, which is likewise admirable in its Kind, and has been translated by the same Hand with the foregoing one. I shall oblige my Reader with it in another Paper. In the mean while, I cannot but wonder, that these two finished Pieces ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... wondering, as we saw the magnificent pageant of Forepaugh's circus sweep down our majestic boulevards and superb thoroughfares yesterday; as we witnessed this imposing spectacle, we say, we could not help wondering how many people in all the vast crowds of spectators knew that there ever was such a poetess as Sappho, or how many, knowing that there was such a party, have ever read her works. It has been nearly a year since a circus came to town; and in that time public taste has been elevated to a degree by theatrical and operatic performers, such as Sara Bernhardt, Emma Abbott, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... sighing to her spectral form: "O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line; Where are those songs, O poetess divine Whose very arts are love incarnadine?" And her smile back: "Disciple true and warm, Sufficient now are thine." ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... Whitman, and, indeed, most of the celebrities of the time, in this country, are contributors. The volume will be welcome, as a choice specimen of American literary talent, and a graceful souvenir of the distinguished poetess in whose ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... singing songs which he extemporized while at his work. There is no doubt that his granddaughter, the subject of this sketch, inherited much of her poetic talent from him; though her family is connected with that of Mrs. Felicia Hemans, the English poetess, whom though in some respects she resembles, we hesitate not to say she greatly surpasses in grandeur of ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... Charles Lamb which have not so far been recorded elsewhere. Miss Betham, who was born in 1776, was a miniature painter by profession, and so far as can be judged by reproductions a good one. She was a poetess, too, and the compiler of a Biographical Dictionary of Celebrated Women. In 1797 she published a volume of Elegies, which in 1802 was sent to Coleridge by his friend Lady Boughton, and of which a short piece, "On a Cloud," transported ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... concord to the Christian Church. The gentlest spirits of those days looked to fire and sword for the bringing in of unity and obedience; they never dreamed that Christian charity could mean charity towards the whole human race. Wherefore, on the strength of prophecy, the poetess expects the Maid to destroy the infidel and the heretic, or in other words the Turk ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... called, and among them Mrs. Bloomfield Moore; she talked well and we made friends, and she proposed to call for us and take us a drive, to which we agreed. After she had gone Mr. Childs told me she was a poetess and a millionaire, and was supposed to be engaged to Browning the poet. A man was then told off to escort us over the building, and a wonderful place it is. All the printing and editorial work and "job" work so beautifully arranged and everything in such perfect order. The ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... literature was just beginning to develope itself had a theory of my own upon the subject, and regarded her with unwonted respect in consequence. Her abstraction appeared to me exactly that of an author when contemplating some great work, and I had no doubt but she would turn out a poetess. Both conjectures were characteristic, and both, as ...
— Honor O'callaghan • Mary Russell Mitford
... 1773, though held in servitude, and without the advantages or privileges of the schools of the day, accomplishing herself by her own perseverance; Phillis Wheatley appeared in the arena, the brilliancy of whose genius, as a poetess, delighted Europe and astonished America, and by a special act of the British Parliament, 1773, her productions were published for the Crown. She was an admirer of President Washington, and addressed to him lines, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... or the very pot-herbs of the Schoolmistress of Shenstone, the balms of the simplicity of a cottage. Not to know and feel this, is to be deficient in the universality of Nature herself, who is a poetess on the smallest as well as the largest scale, and who calls upon us to admire all her productions; not indeed with the same degree of admiration, but with no refusal ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... was very dear to her, the least and homeliest duties pleasant; she loved her sisters with devoted friendship, and she had many little happinesses in her patient, cheerful, unselfish life. Would that I could show her as she was!—not the austere and violent poetess who, cuckoo-fashion, has usurped her place; but brave to fate and timid of man; stern to herself, forbearing to all weak and erring things; silent, yet sometimes sparkling with happy sallies. For to represent her as she was would be her ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Revolution, died at Hampsted, near London, on the evening of Sunday, the twenty-third of February, at the great age of nearly ninety years. During the principal part of her life she lived with a maiden sister, Agnes—also a poetess—to whom she addressed her beautiful Birthday poem. They were of a family in which talent and genius were hereditary. Their father was a Scottish clergyman, and their mother a sister of the celebrated Dr. William Hunter. They were born at Bothwell, within a short distance of the rippling ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... recorded at Dilly's was April 15, 1778, when Johnson and Boswell dined there, and met Miss Seward, the Lichfield poetess, and Mrs. Knowles, a clever Quaker lady, who for once overcame the giant of Bolt Court in argument. Before dinner Johnson took up a book, and read it ravenously. "He knows how to read it better," said ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... to a soulful poetess at dinner one night, and that dreamy one turned her sad eyes upon him. "Have you no other ambition, Mr. Herford," she demanded, "than to force people ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... daughter, may I ask, Colonel Burr, anticipating extraordinary rank for her? Had you in mind Theodosius the First, called the Great, or the second and more famous emperor of the name? Eudosia was a Roman empress, wife of the second Theodosius. She was a poetess." ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... des Deux Mondes"; but the other, the writer of the present notice, has a melancholy satisfaction in having been a little earlier still in sounding the only note of welcome which reached the dying poetess from England. It was while Professor W. Minto was editor of the "Examiner," that one day in August, 1876, in the very heart of the dead season for books, I happened to be in the office of that newspaper, and was upbraiding the whole body of publishers ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... to be the lot of the nationalists and democrats to produce leaders who could thrill the imagination of men by lofty teachings and sublime heroism; who could, in a word, achieve everything but success. A poetess, who looked forth from Casa Guidi windows upon the tragi-comedy of Florentine failure in those years, wrote that what was needed was a firmer union, a more practical and intelligent activity, on the part both of the people and of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... persons—who with all the softness and grace and beauty of the most feminine of her sex, possessed all the daring, energy, vigor, wisdom of the bravest and most intriguing man—accomplished to the utmost in all the liberal arts, a poetess and minstrel unrivalled by professional performers, a dancer more finished and voluptuous than beseemed a Roman matron, a scholar in both tongues, the Greek as well as her own, and priding herself on her ability to charm the gravest and most ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... passing through the meteoric showers which rain down on the brief period of adolescence with great tenderness. God forgive us if we ever speak harshly to young creatures on the strength of these ugly truths, and so sooner or later, smite some tender-souled poet or poetess on the lips who might have sung the world into sweet trances, had we not silenced the matin-song in its first low breathings! Just as my heart yearns over the unloved, just so it sorrows for the ungifted who are doomed to the pangs of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sallower-looking and sadder-looking he gets. I think the company of a lovely stranger might be of great cheer to his heart, and it will be interesting to witness the meeting between them. It may be," added the poetess, "that they have already met, on his travels before he settled here. It may be that they are old friends—or ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... considering the word which had to make room for "Sydneida." Works without number were dedicated to the Countess of Pembroke, not only because she was what she was, and a poetess of some renown, but because she was the Mary Sidney of ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... Maccabees, and wife of the monster, Herod the Great. Each of these, to do justice to their merits, or to the transactions which rendered them famous, would require a biography. The mere mention of their names must suffice just here. Who has not read or heard of Sappho, the Greek poetess, concerning whose life and moral character there has been so much controversy—one class of writers condemning in unstinted measure, as all and utterly vile; the other class applauding her as being possessed of every virtue? Says one of the latter: "In Sappho, a warm and profound ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... the pen of Miss Marcella A. Fitzgerald, the gifted poetess of Notre Dame Convent, San Jose, were published in the San Francisco Monitor, at the time of ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... of words in reference to gender. 1st. By words which are different; as boy, girl; uncle, aunt; father, mother. 2d. By a different termination of the same word; as instructor, instructress; lion, lioness; poet, poetess. Ess is a contraction from the hebrew essa, a female. 3d. By prefixing another word; as, a male child, a female child; a man servant, a maid servant; a ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... say much more in praise of the budding poetess's effort, for fear of making her conceited; but that night, after the verses had been read to a delighted father, and the young author had gone happily off to ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... more special mention. "L. E. L." (Letitia Elizabeth Landon), the poetess who was "dying for a little love," spent the greater part of her life here. She was born at No. 25, and educated at No. 22, both of which have now disappeared. Shelley stayed here for a short time, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... the worshiped beauty, the woman of fashion, and of literature. No one has turned so many heads, by the loveliness of her person, and the bewitching fascination of her manners, as Lady Barbara. She is a wit, a poetess, a connoisseur in art; and what can be so dangerously delightful as all these characters in a fashionable beauty, and a woman, moreover, of such rank and wealth? She does the honors of her house to the mutual friends and noble connections ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... heartlessness of California society produced in the poetic breast, impressed Mr. Tretherick, who was then driving a six-mule freight wagon between Knight's Ferry and Stockton, to seek out the unknown poetess. Mr. Tretherick was himself dimly conscious of a certain hidden sentiment in his own nature; and it is possible that some reflections on the vanity of his pursuit—he supplied several mining camps with whisky and tobacco—in conjunction with ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... soberly, this drunken poetess! hath she perhaps overdrunk her drunkenness? hath she become ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... on the dog as this gifted poetess. Her dog Flush is described so well that Landseer could paint the creature almost to a hair. She has entered into the very feeling created in us by this favoured pet of our race. The beautiful stanzas[58] I have copied ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... the Earl of Shaftesbury over Public Health; and Conolly and Charles Kingsley and Tom Taylor and Rawlinson bore witness side by side with Florence Nightingale. Sir James Stephen presided over Social Economy. Isa Craig, the Burns poetess, is one of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... Johnson, whose relation to the lord Willoughby engaged him for the advantageous post of lieutenant general of Surinam, and six and thirty islands, to undertake a voyage, with his whole family, to the West-Indies, at which time our poetess was very young. Mr. Johnson died at sea, in his passage thither; but his family arrived at Surinam, a place so delightfully situated, and abounding with such a vast profusion of beauties, that, according to Mrs. Behn's description, nature seems to have ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... one! 20 And 'tis my faith, that there's a natural bond Between the female mind and measured sounds, Nor do I know a sweeter Hope than this, That this sweet Hope, by judgment unreproved, That our own Britain, our dear mother Isle, 25 May boast one Maid, a poetess indeed, Great as th' impassioned Lesbian, in sweet song, And O! of holier mind, and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ilka bonny lassie bude to be a poetess—for hoo sud she be bonnie but by the informin' hermony o' her bein'?—an' what's that but the poetry o' the Poet, the Makar, as they ca'd a poet i' the auld Scots tongue?—but haith! I ken better an' waur noo! There's gane the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... inhabitants had put there,—an apotheosis which reminds us of the worst slavery of imperial Rome under Caligula and Domitian. Some of the greatest names of Italy, such as Petrarch, Boiardo, Ariosto, the wonderful prodigy Olympia Morata, and the celebrated poetess Vittoria Colonna—the friend of Michael Angelo—were connected with this brilliant court. The well-known French poet Clement Marot fled to it to escape persecution in his native country. Calvin found ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... acquaintance, and, in the humour of her ideas, I wrote some lines, which I enclose to you, as I think they have a good deal of poetic merit; and Miss Nimmo tells me that you are not only a critic but a poetess. Fiction, you know, is the native region of poetry; and I hope you will pardon my vanity in sending you the bagatelle as a tolerable offhand jeu d'esprit. I have several poetic trifles, which I shall gladly leave with ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... bought for a trifle a portrait which has proved to be a genuine Michel Angelo. It represents the famous Vittoria Colonna, wife of the Marchese Pescara, the General of Charles V. She was herself distinguished as a poetess as well as by the impassioned love and adoration of the great painter, who not only took her portrait, but left behind him several sonnets in her honor. Campanari, though himself confident of the genuineness ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... in 1891 at New York City, to Miss Elaine Goodale, a finely cultured young lady from Massachusetts, herself a poetess and prose writer of more than ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... d'Alba: of this I have seen only a copy; it might have been painted on the words, "Now Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." The figure is that of a young Jewess, between girl and womanhood, in whose air and eye are expressed at once the princess of the house of David, the poetess, and the thoughtful sequestered maiden. She is sitting on the ground, the book of the prophets in one hand, lying listless at her side; the other hand is placed beneath the chin of her infant son, who looks inquiringly into her face. She does not see him—her eye has a sorrowful, far-darting ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the rest of it. His own work in this kind is thought to resemble most closely the "Psyche" of the Irish poetess, Mary Tighe, published in 1805[30] on the well-known fable of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. It is inferred that Keats knew the poem from a mention of the author in one of his pieces. He also wrote an "Ode to Psyche," which seems, however, to have been inspired by an engraving in Spenser's "Polymetis." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... mean only that. You mustn't be so literal about everything. I mean let's not become baggy-minded. Take Flora again. Flora was her class poetess and I don't believe she has a literary thought or a book in her head now except her account book. Let us improve ourselves, Albert. Read evenings and subscribe to the Symphony ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... information with equal gravity. He was still unsophisticated enough to be impressed at hearing a woman called a poetess. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... dangerous, havin' always experienced a religious awe of the "water of life," and not knowin' but what this might be it. "Here goes," said I; "faint heart never won fair lady," for rite at the foot was that bootiful poetess to whom allusion has been made, lookin' straight at me with ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... of this solemn ordinance ourselves, or see others partaking of it, how well we may say in the beautiful lines of Havergal, the English poetess: ...
— The Life of Jesus Christ for the Young • Richard Newton
... this band of martyrs, for he suffered death under circumstances of exceptional brutality on the morning of August 20th 1799, in the piazza in front of the church of the Carmine, together with two Neapolitans of noble rank, Giuliano Colonna and Gennaro Serra, and with the poetess, Eleonora Pimentel, a Portuguese by birth but the widow of a Neapolitan officer. All went nobly to their doom amidst the execrations of the demoralised bloodthirsty mob of lazzaroni, yelling at and insulting the "Jacobins," and kept back ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Sappho was a poetess who flourished in a very early age of Greek literature. Of her works few fragments remain, but they are enough to establish her claim to eminent poetical genius. The story of Sappho commonly alluded to is that she was passionately in love ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... of Mrs. Montagu was as notorious as her intellectual superiority. It may be interesting here to observe that after her husband's death, in 1775, she doubled the income of poor Anna Williams, the blind poetess who resided with Dr. Johnson, by settling upon her an annuity of ten pounds. The publication of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," in 1781, occasioned a coolness between the doctor and Mrs. Montagu, on account of the severity ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... where I was. But he had done two things: he had set my conscience at rest, and he had awakened my delicacy. I made a great effort, once more dismissed the recollections of the night, and fell once more to brooding on my saintly poetess. At the same time, I could not quite forget that I had been locked in, and that night when Felipe brought me my supper I attacked him warily on ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... we will press things so that you shall be in Sarkeld by the end of the month. My son! my dear boy! how you loved me once!—you do still! then follow my directions. I have a head. Ay, you think it wild? 'Tis true, my mother was a poetess. But I will convince my son as I am convincing the world-tut, tut! To avoid swelling talk, I tell you, Richie, I have my hand on the world's wheel, and now is the time for you to spring from it and gain your altitude. If you ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... such a prodigality of partisan fury and public corruption. Walpole scattered his purchase-money everywhere; he sowed with the sack and not with the hand, to adopt the famous saying applied by a Greek poetess to Pindar. In supporting two candidates for Norfolk, who were both beaten, despite his support, he spent out of his private fortune at least 10,000 pounds; one contemporary says 60,000 pounds. But the Opposition ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... time past been much charmed with the writings of a certain Miss Berwick, who, he knew, to be a contributor under a feigned name. When at last the lady confided her real name, and he discovered in the young poetess the daughter of his dear friends, Mr.[16] and Mrs. Procter, the "new sensation" caused him intense surprise, and the greatest pleasure and delight. Miss Adelaide Procter was, from this time, a frequent contributor ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... ideas of a triangle, of a square and of a circle. After a short pause, taken up (as we may believe) by what Ernst Mach calls the conflict of ideas, and which I think of as imageless trials and errors, the poetess evolves the following phantasy: "Detaching one corner of the mosquito netting, lo, I behold the moon." This resolution left nothing ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... Mason's character, career, and fate appeared to me so strange, grovelling, and miserable, that I never for a moment doubted the whole dreary picture was from the life. I thought in describing the "rustic poetess," in giving the details of her vulgar provincial and disreputable metropolitan notoriety, and especially in touching on the ghastly catastrophe of her fate, he was faithfully recording facts—thus, however repulsively, yet conscientiously "pointing a moral," if not "adorning ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... period, towards the end of the sixteenth century, report likewise the name of a lady, Svietana Zuzerich, as an Illyrian poetess; called also Floria Zuzzeri, as an Italian poetess; for she wrote with success in both languages. Several other ladies followed the example, as Lucrezia Bogashinovich, Katharina Pozzo di ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... there: there I might Virgil see: Many brave wits I found, some looser rhymes, By others writ, hath pleased the ancient times: Ovid was one: after Catullus came: Propertius next, his elegies the name Of Cynthia bear: Tibullus, and the young Greek poetess, who is received among The noble troop for her rare Sapphic muse. Thus looking here and there (as oft I use), I spied much people on a flowery plain, Amongst themselves disputes of love maintain. Behold ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... stand the test well) and dear Bayard Taylor, a man soundest and sweetest the nearer one gets to the kernel, and good, kind John Whittier, who has the fervor of the poet ingrafted into the tough old Quaker stock, and Mr. Stoddard, and Mrs. Lippincott, and Mrs. Sparks, and the Philadelphia Poetess, and dear Mr. and Mrs. W——, and your capital critics and orators. Remember me to all who think of me; but keep the choicest tenderness for ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... Vienna, Milan, or London, the latter for preference. There she would have full scope for her genius in producing pamphlets. "Oh yes," says the "god who had descended on earth"; "she has talent, much talent, in fact far too much, but it is offensive and revolutionary." This poetess-politician, who said brave things and wrote amazing diatribes against her "god," was in truth one of the most servile creatures on earth. She pleaded to be allowed to come back to her native land, and pledged herself to a life of retirement, but the great man's faith in his own sound judgment ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... wife to share his glory; and, accordingly, in the year 1760, he married. If we believe his own account, he was the happiest of Benedicts for fourteen years; but all of a sudden, without warning, without reason, and (though she was a poetess) without even rhyme, his household gods were broken, and all his happiness engulfed. It was a second edition of the Lisbon earthquake. The opposite party denied the fourteen years' felicity, and talked wonderful things about cuffs and kicks bestowed on the spouse—and maledictions ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... who “for many years held a high rank in the annals of British literature,” to quote the words of Sir Walter Scott, has generally passed unnoticed. It is the aim of this book to resuscitate interest in the poetess, and in the literary circle over which she ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... and he meant it still, increasingly difficult as it appeared. But all the talk of the lonely soul, of the eternal isolation of the spirit, in which man was doomed to live, all the tinsel sentimentalisms of which the talk of the bilingual poetess had mainly consisted, afforded perhaps as poor a pabulum as he could anywhere have found. There was he, with that sore-stricken heart of his, so sore-stricken, indeed, that it was well-nigh numbed, and here for the first time in his life he had met a woman of more than common ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... a gathering of Pacifists in the home of a school-teacher. They made heart-breaking speeches, and finally little Ada Ruth, the poetess, got up and wanted to know, was it all to end in talk, or would they organize and prepare to take some action against the draft? Would they not at least go out on the street, get up a parade with banners of protest, and go to jail as Comrade Peter ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... a woman to sound a woman's heart, and she found there was still love enough under the ruffled waters to warrant the hope of peace and tranquillity. The young Doctor went to her for counsel in the case of a hysteric girl possessed with the idea that she was a born poetess, and covering whole pages of foolscap with senseless outbursts, which she wrote in paroxysms of wild excitement, and read with a rapture of self-admiration which there was nothing in her verses to justify or account for. How sweetly Number Five dealt with that poor ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... vision, whilst the little lamp-flame, wavering in breaths of air, cast strange shadows about the room. On the walls were faded frescoes, one of which represented the poetess Proba on her knees before St. Agnes. Impelled by her fears, Aurelia of a sudden knelt before this picture, and prayed silently to the virgin martyr. Then Veranilda rose from the couch, and knelt beside her. Having solaced their souls, they kissed ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... now began to circulate more freely round the table, and the tongues of the company to get looser in their heads. Miss Snooks also commenced talking at a greater stretch than she had hitherto done. I soon found out that she was a poetess, and had written a couple of novels, besides two or three tragedies. In fact, her whole conversation was about books and authors, and she did us the favour of reciting some of her own compositions. She was also prodigiously sentimental, talked much about love, and was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... of Mrs. Browning, praying Heaven's blessing on the "weeping Queen," and prophesying for her the love, happiness, and honour which have been hers in no stinted measure. "Thou shalt be well beloved," said the poetess; there are very few sovereigns of whom it could be so truly said that they have been well beloved, for not many have so well deserved it. The faith of the singer has been amply justified, as time has made manifest the rarer qualities joyfully divined in ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... in this loose boyish talk of Percival that he had found the way, not only to Helen's heart, but to her soul. For in this she (grand, undeveloped poetess!) recognized a nobler poetry than we chain to rhythm,—the poetry of generous deeds. She yearned to kiss the warm hand she held, and drew nearer to his side as she answered: "And sometimes, dear, dear Percival, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... readers of seventeenth century books. A further wait for reinforcements takes place, and the author basely avails herself of it for a no doubt to herself very congenial (they actually called her in "precious" circles by the name of the great poetess) and enormous Histoire of no less a person than Sappho, which fills the last 250 pages of the first (nineteenth) volume and about as much of the second (twentieth) or last. It has very little connection with the text, save that Sappho and Phaon (for the self-precipitation at Leucas is treated as ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... not perhaps unmixed with amusement, we were very soon in conversation. She talked of Nice, of Baden-Baden, and London; then she got to literature—I cannot remember how—and a moment later she was vouchsafing to me the intimate information that she was a poetess, and had contributed an anonymous poem to a certain lately published collection. Then, having caught my name on a printed label, she said, with a smile, "Is it possible that you are on your way to Torquay?" I answered that I should be there shortly, and, while elaborating this proposition, I managed ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... his two successful pieces. My love to your boy Kenney, my boy James, and all my dear girls, and also to Rose; I hope she still drinks wine with you. Thank Lou-Lou for her little bit of letter. I am in a fearful hurry, or I would write to her. Tell my friend the Poetess that I expect some French verses from her shortly. I have shewn Betsy's and Sophy's letters to all who came near me, and they have been very much admired. Dear Fanny brought me the bag. Good soul you are to think ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... she was passionately fond of music. A curious instance of this peculiarity of hers occurred at Rome, when a large party were assembled to listen to a celebrated improvisatrice. My mother was placed in the front row, close to the poetess, who, for several stanzas, adhered strictly to the subject which had been given to her. What it was I do not recollect, except that it had no connection with what followed. All at once, as if by a sudden inspiration, the lady turned ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... poetess, perhaps, you exaggerate everything so terribly. Mamma is not troubled, she only has neuralgia. Father does not dine with us because he has so many invitations, and Pan Kranitski struck his nose against something which you, in poetic imagination, took for crying. Men never cry, and sensible ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... other. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress—a girl of twenty—a peeress that is to be, in her own right—an only child, and a savante, who has always had her own way. She is a poetess—a mathematician—a metaphysician, and yet, withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions, and a tenth ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... bemused in beer, A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer, A clerk, foredoomed his father's sou to cross, Who pens a stanza, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Deborah as a Poetess—Paraphrase of her remarkable Song, composed to celebrate the victory ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Thomas Moore. To Sir Hudson Lowe Dialogue To Miss —- To —- On being Obliged to Leave a Pleasant Party, etc. What my Thought's like? From the French A Joke Versified The Surprise On —- On a Squinting Poetess On a Tuft-hunter The Kiss Epitaph on Southey Written in a Young Lady's Common-place Book The Rabbinical Origin of Women Anacreontique On Butler's Monument Wesley On the Disappointment of the Whig Associates of the Prince Regent, etc Lamb To Professor Airey Sydney Smith On Lord Dudley and Ward ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton |
