"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perpetual bloodshed, and the everlasting wars of Rome were fought against barbarians far away, while Rome at home was prosperous and calm and peaceful. Then Virgil sang, and Horace gave Latin life to Grecian verse, and smiled and laughed, and wept and dallied with love, while Livy wrote the story of greatness for us all to this day, and Ovid touched another note still unforgotten. Then temple rose by temple, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... new man writing verse in the Tertiary, some of it quite first-rate. You might look at the last number. My blossom this ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the Sikh remembered in time, and William Connor had been escorted "Berkshire way" by Corporal Bagshot and Henry Withers. As the tale was told over and over again, there came softly from the lips of the only other Irishman in the regiment, Jimmy Coolin, a variant verse of the song that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mean exactly a noise," said Gerald, "but people read their verse of the psalm, and say Amen, and all that, quite loud. They don't leave it all to the clerk in ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... sent for Philoxenus, and bade him give his candid opinion of the verse. Now, Philoxenus was far too noble a man to tell a lie: and whenever he was consulted by Dionysius, he always boldly told the truth, whether it was ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... humble pen— Stupidities of critics, not of men. Be it mine once more the maunderings to trace Of the expounders' self-directed race— Their wire-drawn fancies, finically fine, Of diligent vacuity the sign. Let them in jargon of their trade rehearse The moral meaning of the random verse That runs spontaneous from the poet's pen To be half-blotted by ambitious men Who hope with his their meaner names to link By writing o'er it in another ink The thoughts unreal which they think they think, Until the mental eye in vain inspects The hateful ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... inquired, "of the passage on Social Systems?" I have forgotten to say that the poem was in blank verse, and divided into parts, each with an ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... the children from every tier see the queen and her attendants. As her majesty entered the park, the whole host raised their voices and began the national anthem. For a few moments the effect was sublime; it was, however, only during the first verse. The boys of the Irish Roman Catholic schools burst the limitations of their orders, and of their positions, and raised a tumultuous shout, which was caught up in an instant by the other children, and almost as soon by the vast multitudes who filled the park. The author of these pages has ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... celebrated as the deity of a particular measure of verse and thou shalt obtain the worship of all woman. Thy fame, O son, shall become unrivalled in the three worlds.'—Having granted him these boons, Vasava disappeared there and then. Matanga also, casting off his life-breaths, attained to a ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... the poet Gascoigne, who was a protege, of Raleigh's half-brother, issued his satire in blank verse, entitled The Steel Glass, a little volume which holds an important place in the development of our poetical literature. To this satire a copy of eighteen congratulatory verses was prefixed by 'Walter Rawely of the middle Temple.' These lines are perfunctory and are noticeable only ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... indebted to Mr. Stephens's translation, from which several lines are borrowed verbatim. The more careful reader will note the great aid given to a rhymeless metre by alliteration. I am not sure that this old Saxon mode of verse might not be profitably restored to our ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... verse, brother," she remarked, "though I am not sure that I consider it entirely proper reading for the young. Aren't you ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... another. Demperanceler, Temperenzler - Temperance man. Dessauerinn - A woman from Dessau. Deutschland - Germany. Die Hexe - The witch. Die wile as möhte leben - During all its life. Daz wolde er immer dienen Die wile es möhte leben. - Kutrun. XV. Aventiure, 756th verse. Dink - he, they think; my dinks - my thoughts. Dinked - he, they thought. Dishtriputet - Instead of attributed. Dissembulatin' - Dissembling. Dissolfed - Instead of resolved. D'lusion - Instead of allusion. Donnered,(Ger.) ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... sequence narrating his hapless passion. The poet had been as extravagantly assertive as poets in love usually are, and the sonnets were really notable; so the young man was swept into a gust of fame; all Italy read his verse and sympathized with him. The object of a popular poet's romantic and unfortunate love is always the object of curiosity and interest, as Anne Champneys discovered to her ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... an absurdity or a clever thing. Shtchitov was especially dreaded by those self-conscious, dreamy, and not particularly gifted youths who spend whole days in painfully hatching a dozen trashy lines of verse and reading them in sing-song to their 'friends,' and who despise every sort of positive science. One such he simply drove out of Moscow, by continually repeating to him two of his own lines. Yet all the while Shtchitov himself did nothing ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Ingram," read out that gentleman. "For nearly six years I have been trying to live by writing verse—ever since I was seventeen. Six years of passionate hope and longing, failure and failure, all years of wandering in the desert, of groping in the dark. I know no one—no one to criticise me—no one to encourage, ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... was a verse-maker. Poetry suited my emotions better than prose. The following is one of my ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... Suppose you sing me that last verse again. It had a taking charm. The music was like a ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... shall this be given to rhyme, By rhymesters of a knowing time? Ah! for the age when verse was clad, Being godlike, to be bad ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... which I have my own reasons for not giving, come below; and also a verse of the Bible, ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... that verse of the famous "Ballad of Bouillabaisse," which I have never been able to recite, or read aloud, and part of which I may at ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... verse adorn again Fierce War, and faithful Love, And Truth severe, by fairy Fiction drest. In buskin'd measures move Pale Grief, and pleasing Pain, With Horror, tyrant of the throbbing breast. A voice, as of the cherub-choir, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... could summon the Angel, or the Good Genius, not the Fiend? And do you not remember how he, deeply versed as he was for his age, in the mysteries of the nobler Platonism, which hints at the secrets of all the starry brotherhoods, from the Chaldean to the later Rosicrucian, discriminates in his lovely verse, between the black art of Ismeno and the glorious lore of the Enchanter who counsels and guides upon their errand the champions of the Holy Land? HIS, not the charms wrought by the aid of the Stygian Rebels (See this remarkable ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... solitary man, in the distant boat, indulging in the song of a fisherman. The strains were sweet, and the intonations plaintive to melancholy. The air was common to all who plied the oar in the canals, and familiar to the ear of the listener. He waited until the close of a verse had died away, and then he answered with a strain of his own. The alternate parts were thus maintained until the music ceased, by the two singing ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... truth, sir; I never heard it before tonight." "Do me the favour to hum it over again for me," said the musician. Hodgkinson complied. "Why you have the words of the song as well as the air." "Of one verse only, sir: but the next time, I shall catch the whole of it." The musician expressed his astonishment, and asked the boy where he lodged; to which John replied, "Off this way, sir," and ran away as fast as he could to Broad-mead, where he was resolved it should not be known, for ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... study raises a question as to the wisdom of assigning the committing of poetry, or Bible verses, or the reading of so many pages of a literary masterpiece as a punishment for some offense. How many of us have carried away associations of dislike and bitterness toward some gem of verse or prose or Scripture because of having our learning of it linked up with the thought of an imposed task set as penance for wrong-doing! One person tells me that to this day she hates the sight of Tennyson because this was the volume from which she was assigned many pages to ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... McPherson, to whom the thought of any mutilation of his fellow Scotchman's verse was as sacrilege, "and at last, poor Bertholf got so mixed up that he clean forgot the silly rot you'd taught him. And when he came to that part of the poem, he stammered for a second ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... and below, the light that seemed blown through it like the wind, the suggestion of hidden life beneath this tangled luxuriance, which she alone had penetrated,—all this was here. But, more than that, here was the atmosphere that she had breathed into the plaintive melody of her verse. It did not necessarily follow that Mr. Hamlin's translation of her sentiment was the correct one, or that the ideas her verses had provoked in his mind were at all what had been hers: in his easy susceptibility ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... attainments won the regard of his teachers, while his amiable manners endeared him to his classmates. While his principal delight was in the study of the Classics, he devoted much attention to mathematics and other studies. Like many other writers, some of his earliest efforts were in verse. Indeed it may be said of him, as of Pope, that he 'lisped ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... has long embodied in his person the virtues of the typical avenger of the wrongs of the poor and the oppressed against the tyranny of the rich and the powerful; his name has been honored and his manly deeds have been lauded in prose and verse by thousands in many lands for many centuries, exciting doubtless many a noble deed of self-denial, and spurring to the forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... runs counter to what might be expected as a Corollary of an Essay on the Art of Poetry, but contradicts his own usual practice and sentiments. In his Epistle to Augustus, instead of stigmatizing the love of verse as an abominable phrenzy, he calls it (levis haec insania) a slight madness, and descants on its good ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... to Pike Street Chapel, but only in the morning to hear Mr. Bradshaw, who was now an old man, and could not preach twice. On that particular Sunday on which Zachariah, Pauline, Mr. Allen, and George heard him he took for his text the thirteenth verse of the twelfth chapter of Deuteronomy: "Take heed to thyself that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place thou seest." He put down his spectacles after he had read these words, for he never used a note, ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... hope of my being able to enter with advantage on the fields of history opened by the splendid investigation of recent philologists, though I could qualify myself, by attention and sympathy, to understand, here and there, a verse of Homer's or Hesiod's, as the simple people did for ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... ran his thin, flexible brown fingers over the keys, struck into a Spanish serenade, and sang a verse of it in his brilliant but tricky tenor, with his languishing eyes upon ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... have dwelt in, for the stalls in which they have been fed, the pastures they have browsed in, and the wilds in which they have roamed. We all know that the natal soil has a sweetness in it beyond the harmony of verse. This instinct, I say, that binds all creatures to their country, never becomes inert in us, nor ever suffers us to want a memory of it. Those, therefore, who seek to fly their country can only wish to fly from oppression: and what other proof ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... my hand on that verse when I took the oath of office, on behalf of all Americans, for no matter what our differences in our faiths, our backgrounds, our politics, we must all ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... person is to him or herself the most interesting soul—yes, and body—in the universe, and now there is nothing of such infinite importance to me as this. I fear I shall never write again. All thought or plan, in prose or verse, seems dead in me: broken images and pictures that are wildly disconnected float through my tired mind. I have driven myself all day. I have been seated at my desk, with my pen in my hand, looking blankly at the paper. No words, no words! Just before my first book went to press, I overworked. I ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... this excellent method is that Gibbon in his Memoirs seems to think it was a novel discovery of his own, and would recommend it to the imitation of students, whereas it is as old as the days of Ascham at least. There is no indication that he ever in the least degree attempted Latin verse, and it is improbable that he should have done so, reading alone in Lausanne, under the slight supervision of such a teacher as Pavillard. The lack of this elegant frivolity will be less thought of ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... nothing." (v. 30.) The same is true of his teachings as of his works:—"The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of myself, (xiv. 10.) In all that "Jesus began both to do and to teach," (Acts i. 1,) he was instructed by his Father. These things are all plainly implied in the first verse. Indeed, the official actings of the three Persons in the Godhead had been frequently taught by Christ during the time of his personal ministry; and they are more fully and frequently recorded by the beloved disciple ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... Khalif than with a Colonel. He dwells in the romantic regions of life; but the romance is real. The hope is a true hope. The dream is a true dream. The picture is a painting, and not a chromo. The love is a passion, and not a dilettante episode. Cawein's art is a genuine art. His verse is exquisite. Out of the three hundred and thirteen poems in the five volumes under consideration there may be found hardly a false or broken harmony...."—JOHN CLARK RIDPATH, ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... Miss Green was really quite clever," said Elinor brightly. "She certainly read the verse attached to her's with a lot of expression. I didn't think she could be ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... the heavens, and during his progress to their highest point, all the great gods turn to his light, all the good spirits of heaven and earth gaze up to his face, surround him joyfully and reverently, and escort him in solemn procession. It needs only to put all these fragments into fine verse to make out of them a poem which will be held beautiful even in our day, when from our very childhood we learn to know the difference between good and poor poetry, growing up, as we do, on the best of all ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... hold," said Manicamp; "these are the things to which husbands cling most obstinately. Ah! what a pity M. Moliere could not have heard this man; he would have turned him into verse if he had." ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... left out that had for centuries equal authority with those that were put in. He also knows that many passages— and the very passages upon which many churches are founded—are interpolations. He knows that the last chapter of Mark, beginning with the sixteenth verse to the end, is an interpolation; and he also knows that neither Matthew nor Mark nor Luke ever said one word about the necessity of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, or of believing anything—not one word about believing the Bible or joining the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... commentator explains that the accusatives in the first line of verse 5 governed by hareyam in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the noise the congregation made in repeating a verse aloud (it was not a high church) to whisper to Dulcie: "Little Miss Grimstone, excuse me, but there's a—a note in the pew down by your feet. I ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the collar of his doublet, if the King should command it,—a grave argument to convince the deputies of an important company of the obedience due to kings, for which he was severely lampooned both in prose and verse. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the quaint, old-fashioned garb of the girls, seeming to make the ugly ones uglier and the pretty ones prettier. It was raining when he wrote and he felt depressed, but he sent his love in the form of a charming bit of verse wherein a tear was borne with the flowing water to testify to his tender regard for his "peerless sister." This letter, too personal for publication, his sister lately read to me, and it was a revelation of the matchless style so early acquired. In form it seemed ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... line inside the tattered orange covers, and their bright melodies had helped him over many a hard place after Grandma had left him. His favourite hymn was the last in the book, "The Hindmost Hymn," Grandpa called it, and every night of his life, unless he were too ill, he sang at least one verse of ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... of the habit of translating promises into prayers, immediately applying the truth thus unveiled to him. For example, after prolonged meditation over the first verse of Psalm lxv, "O Thou that hearest prayer," he at once asked and recorded certain definite petitions. This writing down specific requests for permanent reference has a blessed influence upon the prayer habit. It assures practical and ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... They discoursed national airs in a manner that thrilled and elated us, making the welkin ring with their excellent music. As the last echoes of a plaintive air died over the distant woods, and I crept into my lowly quarters for my rest, the poet's verse seemed full of ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... ceased. But the harp still kept up its rhythmic humming; and presently, muffled by distance and winding passages, as it seemed out from the very stones of the rugged tower, in a voice, harsh, strong, yet cultivated, came the second verse of that love-song, sung with a full heart, throbbing with a newborn hope, sung as never before had it been rendered in the old days when Blondel had taught it to Richard ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... 1640, by the clergymen, John Elliot, of Roxbury, Mr. Richard Mather, of Dorchester, and Mr. Thomas Weld,—was liked so much, that it was used by some congregations in England while I was there." "To gain sentiment," he says, for his own version, "I read every verse in English Bible and Polyglot; also in Hebrew, with Moulane's Interlineary, the Septuagint, the Chaldee, the ancient Latin, Latin versions of Syriac and Arabic, Castalio, Tremilius and Junius, Ainsworth and De Mies. When I met with difficulty I searched the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, April, 1886 • Various
... Had I begun, in all past efforts to remember, at the wrong end? Instead of trying to recollect the circumstances that immediately preceded the murder, ought I to have set out by trying to reinstate my First Life, chapter by chapter and verse by verse, from childhood upward? Ought I to start by recalling as far as possible my very earliest recollections in my previous existence, and then gradually work up through all my subsequent history to the date of ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... now and then during the reading of the hymn Mandy's eyes were turned upon him as if with new understanding. Enraged with himself, and more with the group of hoodlums behind him, Cameron stood for the closing hymn with his arms folded across his breast. At the second verse a hand touched his arm. It was Mandy offering him her book. Once more a snicker from the group of delighted observers behind him stirred his indignation on behalf of this awkward and untutored girl. He forced himself to listen to the words of the ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... a moment. Lifting his heart to God for guidance, the thought came into his mind to take a text suggested by the rude remarks of the Boer. So he opened the Bible to the fifteenth chapter of Matthew and read the twenty-seventh verse: "Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." Pausing a moment, he slowly repeated these words, with his eyes steadily fixed on the face of the Boer. Again pausing, a third time he quoted these appropriate words. Angrily the Boer cried ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... de Luton, of the early thirteenth century," he said slowly to himself. "The wolf guards the head of St. Edmund as it does in the seal of the Benedictine Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, while the Virgin with the Child is over the canopy. And the verse is ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... have got a grip of French and German. The truth is, unless a man can get the prestige and income of a Don and write donnish books, it's hardly worth while for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and be able to spin you out pages of the Greek dramatists at any verse you'll give him as a cue. That's all very fine, but in practical life nobody does give you the cue for pages of Greek. In fact, it's a nicety of conversation which I would have you attend to—much quotation of any sort, even in English is bad. It tends to choke ordinary remark. One couldn't ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Discharged upon the Maiden's Complaint Against Coffee, a dialogue in verse, also ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... thoroughly up to half-past ten. Songs about mothers-in-law, drunken wives, and wooden legs he roared at heartily. At ten-thirty entered a well-known artiste who was then giving a series of what he called 'Condensed Tragedies in Verse.' At the first two my country friend chuckled hugely. The third ran: 'Little boy; pair of skates: broken ice; heaven's gates.' My friend turned white, rose hurriedly, and pushed his way impatiently out of the house. I left myself some ten minutes later, and by chance ran against ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... own practice in painting or poetry; the rest were at the service of whoever would come in a friendly spirit and take them. I find among his letters to me, which I have just been reading once again, a paper of delightful suggestions about the cover of a book of verse; the next youth who waited upon him would perhaps be a painter, and would find that the great genius and master did not disdain the discussion of picture-frames. This was but the undercurrent of his influence; as we shall see more and more every year as the central decades of this century become ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... uttered these words there was something almost supernatural in the expression of his face—his attitude, proudly erect, offered a kind of defiance to the world,—and involuntarily Gwent, looking at him, thought of the verse in ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... resident of all this Arcadian region. The Abbe Delille was, indeed, born hereabout, within sight of the bold Puy de Dome, and within marketing-distance of the beautiful Clermont. But there is very little that is Arcadian, in freshness or simplicity, in either the "Gardens" or the other verse of Delille. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... nobler course on her part towards the child of genius whose good genius she had so signally failed to be, need not be disputed. It must be remembered, however, that De Musset on his side had not refrained during his lifetime from denouncing in eloquent verse the friend he had quarreled with, and satirizing her in pungent prose. Making every possible allowance for poetical figures of speech, he had said enough to provoke her to retaliate. It is impossible to suppose that there was not another side to such a question. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... to the fact that bed-bugs were supposed to be so large that they had to be shot!) and the skits about the commissary and various persons and deeds on the ship. In a way the freedom of comment reminded me a little of the Roman triumphs, when the excellent legendaries recited in verse and prose, anything they chose concerning the hero in whose deeds they had shared and whose triumphs they were celebrating. The stage, well lighted, was built on the aftermost part of the deck. We sat in front with the officers, and the sailors behind us in masses on the deck, on ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... looking backward on some beauties of my author, in his former books. There occurred to me the Hunting of the Boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good-natur'd story of Baucis and Philemon, with the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arriv'd the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... get that way often?" asked Dick in a whisper, as the cowboy began on the second verse of what promised to be a ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... he had formerly spoken of visible gifts and manifestations of the Spirit given to profit this Church withal, ver. 7 to 12. He also compares this Church of God to a visible organical body, consisting of many visible members, ver. 12, 13, &c. And in this 28th verse he enumerates the visible officers of this Church. 2. That here the Apostle speaks of one general visible Church; for he saith not churches, but church, in the singular number, that is, of one; besides, he speaks ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... Dubartas sayes of a fish called the Sargus; which (because none can express it better then he does) I shall give you in his own words, supposing it shall not have the less credit for being Verse, for he hath gathered this, and other observations out of Authors that have been great and industrious searchers into ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... however, perfectly serious about the production of an opera, Tracy furnishing verse to Emilia's music. He wrote with extraordinary rapidity, but clung to graphic phrases, that were not always supple enough for nuptials with modulated notes. Then Emilia had to hit his sense of humour by giving the words as they came ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he saw her conscious blush, turned pale instead of becoming red and embarrassed, and, save a slight compression of his lips, made no other movement. She sang the concluding verse of the ballad in a rather unsympathetic manner, and, after a light instrumental piece devoid of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... romantic epoch who are possessed of the classic temperament. But real criticism immediately suggests that prose has its place in painting as in literature. In literature we do not insist even that the poets be poetic. Poetic is not the epithet that would be applied, for instance, to French classic verse or the English verse of the eighteenth century, compared with the poetry, French or English, which we mean when we speak of poetry. Yet no one would think of denying the value of Dryden or even of Boileau. No one would even insist that, distinctly ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... it was somewhat of a mystery to her friends how Miss O'Dwyer managed to live there. A solicitor who had his offices on the ground-floor probably paid the rent of the whole house; but the profits of verse-making are small, and a poetess, like meaner women, requires food, clothes, and fire. Indeed, Miss O'Dwyer, no longer 'M. O'D.,' whose verses adorned the Croppy, but 'Miranda,' served an English paper as Irish correspondent. ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... these lines of verse On lips that rarely form them now; While to each other we rehearse: Such ways, such arts, such looks ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... vigorously rendered by a good brass band. All that has been written of man's noblest friend— from the dim, uncertain time when some unknown hand, in a leisure moment, dashed off the Thirty-ninth chapter of the Book of Job, to the yesterday when Long Gordon translated into ringing verse the rhythmic clatter of the hoof-beats he loved so well—all might find fulfilment in this unvalued beast, now providentially owned ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... lady violinists now, both very good players—but we had only a short spell of music in the music room on account of a choir practise, for to-morrow; the parson came and took our musicians down to the dining-room to sing over hymns and psalms, verse by verse. I heard the wheeze of the harmonium, and got back to my own chest-lid (sailor term for my own business)—"Every man to his own chest-lid and the cook to the foresheet," is it not a suggestive saying? ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... useful, but not the large crowd of subsequent exegetists. The argument chiefly aims at subverting the conception of religion as a continual observance of ceremonies. This is Judaic ritualism and of no value. It is better to understand a single verse of the psalms well, by this means to deepen one's understanding of God and of oneself, and to draw a moral and line of conduct from it, than to read the whole psalter without attention. If the ceremonies ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... rehearsall of warres, called Churchyard's Choise (1579), really a completion of the Chippes, and containing, like it, a number of detached pieces; A light Bondel of livelie Discourses, called Churchyardes Charge (1580); The Worthines of Wales (1587), a valuable antiquarian work in prose and verse, anticipating Michael Drayton; Churchyard's Challenge (1593); A Musicall Consort of Heavenly harmonie ... called Churchyards Charitie (1595); A True Discourse Historicall, of the succeeding Governors ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... was ominous. Ephraim Shine had noticed it and retreated a step or two, and stood for quite a minute, turning his boot this way and that, but with his eyes on Harry all the time. Now he cleared his throat, and called the number of the hymn. He read the first verse and the chorus with his customary unction, and, all having risen, started the singing ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... made an end of her verse, the Commander of the Faithful said to her, "O damsel, thou art in love." She replied, "Yes;" and he asked, "With whom?" Answered she, "With my lord and sovran of my tenderness, for whom my love is as the love of the earth for rain, or as the desire of the female ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... hesitating whether to undertake a campaign of municipal house-cleaning, or to devote themselves to the study of the sonnet form in English verse, when an unusual opportunity for distinction opened before them. The daughter of the club's president was married to a professor in the State University of Michigan, and on one of her visits home she suggested that her mother's club invite to address it the Alliance Francaise lecturer ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... and a half had passed since Charles's great affliction, and the time had not been unprofitably spent either by himself or his friend. Both had read very regularly, and Sheffield had gained the Latin verse into the bargain. Charles had put all religious perplexities aside; that is, he knew of course many more persons of all parties than he did before, and became better acquainted with their tenets and their characters, ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... injunction of Luther, how does it happen that this verse appears in the later editions of his Testament? I have looked into five or six editions, and have not found the verse in the two earliest. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... seems to have been duly esteemed and appreciated by his contemporaries; and every tasteful scholar will concur in the opinion that his truly elegant Sapphics deserve a place among the few volumes of modern Latin verse, which he would place near Cowper's more ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... entirely absorbed in the roasting fowl impaled upon a sharp stick which he held in his right hand. Then he presently broke again into verse. ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... poetry. But though he had the poet's heart, he had not the concentration of the great poet. All through his life he loved to string together verses, grave and gay. Some of his pasquinades are very clever; some of his serious verse is mellifluous enough; but as a poet he is not even a minor bard. Yet one of his early effusions, named Melville Island, written when he was twenty, was not without influence on his future. Such was its merit that Sir Brenton Halliburton, a very grand old gentleman indeed, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... final effort, the singer rendered some verses which described a vision of Britain being annihilated by America, and Ireland bursting her bonds. A carefully prepared crisis was reached in the last line of the last verse, where the singer threw out her arms and cried, "The star-spangled banner." Instantly a great cheer swelled from the throats of the assemblage of the masses. There was a heavy rumble of booted feet thumping the floor. Eyes gleamed with sudden fire, and calloused ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... early date. The "Cork-heeled Shoon," too, cannot be early, but ballads are subject, in oral tradition, to such modern interpolations. The verse about the ladies waiting vainly is anticipated in a popular song of the fourteenth century, on a defeat ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... glanced at the rivulet, And that pause than speech was worse, For his roving eye a saw-mill met, And, near it, the word which should be set At the end of the previous verse. ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... to Dante and the "Divine Comedy" we have plenty of proof. In the first place, there exist the two fine sonnets to his memory, which were celebrated in their author's lifetime, and still remain among the best of his performances in verse. It does not appear when they were composed. The first is probably earlier than the second; for below the autograph of the latter is written, "Messer Donato, you ask of me what I do not possess." The Donato is undoubtedly Donato Giannotti, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... highly and singularly gifted. My father possessed a memory not merely great or surprising, but absolutely astonishing. He could repeat nearly the whole of the Old and New Testament by heart, and was, besides, a living index to almost every chapter and verse you might wish to find in it. In all other respects, too, his memory was equally amazing. My native place is a spot rife with old legends, tales, traditions, customs, and superstitions; so that in my early youth, even beyond the walls ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... me understand, however, that it was rather the name than the man that had first attracted him. He said that the name was in itself a great incentive to blank-verse. He uttered it to me slowly, in a voice so much deeper than his usual voice, that I nearly laughed. For the actual bearer of the name he had no hero-worship, and said it was by a mere accident that he had chosen him as central figure. He had thought of writing a tragedy about Sardanapalus; ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... Laverentzen, in 1715, and reissued in 1851. The present version has been much helped by the translation of Seier Schousbolle, published at Copenhagen in 1752. It is true that the verses, often the hardest part, are put into periphrastic verse (by Laurentius Thura, c. 1721), and Schousbolle often does not face a difficulty; but he gives the sense of Saxo simply and concisely. The lusty paraphrase by the enthusiastic Nik. Fred. Sev. Grundtvig, of which there have been several editions, has ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... as you read, Eusebius, in honest rage. I could see you as in a picture, like the figure with the scourge in hand flying off the very ground, in Raffaelle's noble fresco, the Heliodorus; and now are you far more like a merryandrew in your mirth, and the quaint sly humour of the tale in verse has made you blind to the delinquencies of the quaffing Joan. Blind to their delinquencies! Stay your mirth a moment, Eusebius—are you not blind to your own? Now I remember me, you are a thief, Eusebius, however you may have settled that matter with your conscience. Have you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... thirty-seven stanzas; the second of seventy-two; the third of forty-eight; each stanza of eight ten-syllable verses, of which the first six rhyme alternately; the last two are a couplet. There is a short argument, in verse, prefixed to each poem. That of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... no less high and beautiful, when his human brethren were the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid with the common dust of life, who crossed his daily path, and the little child who played in it, were glorified if he beheld them in his mood of poetic faith. He showed the golden ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... one first in reading the Ode is the strange metrical structure. Evidently in a whim, and to suit his mock-heroic purpose, Milton chose a peculiar form of mixed verse, distantly suggested by the choruses of the Greek dramatists, and more closely by some precedents in Latin poetry. There are three Strophes, each followed by an Antistrophe, and the whole is wound up by a closing ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... old Mazey, not by the scanty directions given her, but by the sound of the veteran's cracked and quavering voice, singing in some distant seclusion a verse of the immortal sea-song—"Tom Bowling." Just as she stopped among the rambling stone passages on the basement story of the house, uncertain which way to turn next, she heard the tuneless old voice in the distance, ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... been used for verse in a way to heighten its romantic colouring. Such as the lines are, I subjoin them for the sake of their attempt to emphasize and ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... collection of poems must be my excuse for obtruding myself upon the reader. Having frequently had the pleasure as editor of The Canadian Monthly, of introducing many of Mrs. MacLean's poems to lovers of verse in the Dominion it was thought not unfitting that I should act as foster father to the collection of them here made and to bespeak for the volume at the hands at least of all Canadians the appreciative and ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... clasps and a leather covering he did not sell; nor did he sell the gilt-edged hymn-book. Between the leaves of his Bible he put his tablets—as a preacher his markers—the writing on each tablet confirming a verse in the place it was set. His labor over, he chanted: "Pen Calvaria! Pen Calvaria! Very soon will come to view." Men and women gazed upon him, envying him; and those who had Bibles and hymn-books hastened to do as ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... translation of the Scripture in such uncouth verse as to amount to burlesque, has been often quoted, and the just fame of a benefactor to learning has been obscured by that cloud of miserable rhymes. Candour will smile at the ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.04.06 • Various
... Night, Sir Toby Belch asks to have a "song for sixpence," the third verse of which has ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... dramatists except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to us almost unparalleled, ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... gentleman in a plaid traveling cap, who looked up from a magazine, turned his gaze out of the window with an expression of grave thoughtfulness. To himself, the old gentleman was irrelevantly quoting a line or two of verse: ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... of Winnipeg as the bells of St. Boniface ring the vespers from their turrets twain. Whittier, who never saw this quaint cathedral, has immortalized it in verse. The story is one of those bits of forgotten history so hard to get hold of in a day when Winnipeg measures its every thought ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... insist on Switzerland; and why not cross the Atlantic, to dictate laws in Pennsylvania and Chicago? But this same song has a better verse, calling that ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... as young as I might be, but I am a deal younger than I look. Listen, dearie, I have never FELT old yet! Isn't that a thing to be grateful for? I don't read much poetry, except it be in the Church Hymnal, but I cut a verse out of a magazine a year ago which just suits my idea of life, and, what is still more wonderful, I took the trouble to learn it. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote it, and I'll warrant him for a good, cheerful, trust-in-God man, or he'd ...
— The Man Between • Amelia E. Barr
... according to another, for three years his sleeping place was the vault within which his master was buried. It was at this time that he had the vision of "Jesus God," already referred to, between the years 1860 and 1865. Like Caedmon, he has described his vision in verse— ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... tavern-parties, and his wandering reveries, "Vacuae mala somnia mentis," about which so much has been written; all are painted in miniature, but in vivid colours, by his own hand. His idea of writing more dictionaries was not merely said in verse. Mr. Hamilton, who was at that time an eminent printer, and well acquainted with Dr. Johnson, remembers that he engaged in a Commercial Dictionary, and, as appears by the receipts in his possession, was paid his price ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... quite differently. Man is the centre of the account; that which does not directly refer to him is entirely omitted. The order in which the inhabitants of the earth were created, is not only not divided into the six day's works of the first account, and in verse 4 is not only directly taken as the work of a single day, in the expression [Hebrew: BAYWOM] (in the day, in which when), without especial stress being put upon the expression "one day," for [Hebrew: ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... I know if I make a breakdown you will not change. When I missed the English verse-prize last year (you remember, Bessie?) I had made so sure of it that I could hardly show my face at home. Mother was disappointed, but you just snuggled up to me and said, 'Never mind, Harry, I love you;' and you did ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... those days, through Britain, was performed 55 To turn all judgments out of their right course; But this is passion over-near ourselves, Reality too close and too intense, And intermixed with something, in my mind, Of scorn and condemnation personal, 60 That would profane the sanctity of verse. Our Shepherds, this say merely, at that time Acted, or seemed at least to act, like men Thirsting to make the guardian crook of law A tool of murder; [B] they who ruled the State, 65 Though with such awful proof before their eyes That he, who would sow death, reaps death, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... very diligent, and her favorite studies were music and poetry. She would spend several hours practicing every day, and her father had the most proficient of masters he could find to teach her the koto (Japanese harp), the art of writing letters and verse. When she was twelve years of age she could play so beautifully that she and her step-mother were summoned to the Palace to perform ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... the last verse there was also a rapid change in the expression of Miss Burton's face. There was something of her old pallor that has been mentioned before. She looked at him questioningly a moment as if to see if he were consciously ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... had finished the third verse, it occurred to the chief that they were bear-hunters, and that it was very unsportsmanlike behavior to sing on the chase. For all that they were all very jolly, throbbing with excitement at the thought of the adventures ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... fancy crochet stitch her aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but us, and we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. Diana gave me a beautiful card with a wreath of roses on it and a verse ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Redeemer (iii. 227-249) where the pronoun all through is markedly emphasized, it is printed mee the first four times, and afterwards me; but it is noticeable that these first four times the emphatic word does not stand in the stressed place of the verse, so that a careless reader might not emphasize it, unless his attention were specially led ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... you need not be so surprised. I have just been in Euripides's and Homer's company; I suppose I am full to the throat with verse, and the numbers come as soon as I open my mouth. But how are things going up here? ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... "Man-o'-War Jack," an English sailor from her Majesty's Australian colonies, was quite popular as a lullaby. It was a lugubrious recital of the exploits of "the Arethusa, Seventy-four," in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-oo-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... Nun, The Csars, and half a score other things at the age of about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be, to fall in love with them."—Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860, p.307.] Few boys read poetry, whether in verse or prose, and fewer still criticism or philosophy; to every normal boy the gate of good literature is the good story. It is the narrative skill of De Quincey that has secured for him, in preference to other writers of his class, the favor ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... the room, and left his audience to their own reflections. There was not one of them who was not more or less affected; but the deepest impression had been made on the heart of Edwards. The song seemed as if it had been made for him. The second verse, particularly, went thrilling to the very centre of ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... learning render themselves contemptible in the places where they live, while they are admired where they are known only by their writings."—Wace was a native of Jersey, but an author only at Caen. The most celebrated of his works is Le Roman de Rou et des Normans, written in French verse. He dedicated this romance to our Henry IInd, who rewarded him with a stall in ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... with AEschylus, and ends with the Church of England; begins with profane, and ends with holy innovations—scratching out old readings which every commentator had sanctioned; abolishing ecclesiastical dignities which every reformer had spared; thrusting an anapaeest into a verse, which will not bear it; and intruding a Canon into a Cathedral, which does not want it; and this is the Prelate by whom the proposed reform of the Church has been principally planned, and to whose practical wisdom the Legislature is called upon ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... I have kept to my old ways, and that is the way of beginning at the beginning. I disagree utterly with any Balbus who would build an absolute wall between romance and novel, or a wall hardly less absolute between verse- and prose-fiction. I think the French have (what is not common in their language) an advantage over us in possessing the general term Roman, and I have perhaps taken a certain liberty with my own title ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... if they were dabs at t'other sort of thing, For a man may make a song, you know, although he cannot sing; But lork! it's many folk's belief they're only good at prosing, For Catnach swears he never saw a verse of their composing; And when a piece of poetry has stood its public trials, If pop'lar, it gets printed off at once in Seven Dials, And then about all sorts of streets, by every little monkey, It's chanted like the "Dog's ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... she turns the leaf, feeling that, after all, there is a great deal of life and spirit in the world, and that dish-pans, pots, and kettles are mere phantoms of the imagination. The verse runs on so smoothly too. She could write whole books of poetry herself if she only had gone somewhere and improved herself. Then, as she reads on, the great, comfortable arm-chair, the soft carpet, the well-filled book-shelves and the subdued light, give her a vague, ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Florence. He was also employed by his father in transcribing for the press considerable portions of his poetical works; and these studies and exercises were of much use to him in enabling him to form a graphic and elegant literary style. His own compositions, both in prose and verse, were by this time pretty numerous, though nothing of his had found its way into print ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... in the wards every one noticed what a beautiful colour she had. "L'ange anglaise aux cheveux gris" had never been more popular. One poilu, holding up his envelope, remarked to his neighbour: "Elle verse des gouttes d'ciel, notr' 'tite gran'me." To them, grateful even for those mysterious joys "cat's cradles," francs were the true ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... for you. "Oh, the second verse doesn't rhyme."—"Doesn't?"—"And it ain't original, is it?" Well, I never heard that rhyme was necessary to make a poet, any more than colors to make a painter. And what if Moore did say the same thing twenty years ago? I am sure any writer would consider himself lucky ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... counties, and troops were moved into them. The excitement was general. London petitioned against the tax, and its example was followed by many other corporations and counties. Bute was violently assailed in print, by Wilkes in prose and by his friend Churchill in verse. A parliamentary opposition was organised; it was joined by Pitt and Temple, and had its headquarters at Wildman's tavern in Albemarle Street. Pitt spoke strongly against the tax in the commons. It ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the gospel to them, asking them to read the verse after you, word by word, and then sing it with you. I will gladly supply, at bare cost, Song Rolls in Chinese, containing familiar gospel hymns translated into Chinese and so conformed in metre to the English original that ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 6, June, 1889 • Various
... followed at the reading-desk by a member of the Academy who seemed visibly annoyed at having to be heard after me. Perhaps his fears were exaggerated. At any rate he was listened to without too much impatience. I am under the impression that it was verse that he read. ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... did you get that line of verse you quoted last night? The one about this vast city—heart all ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... one always seems not so pretty as the other? Seems to me some one told me once that the curved lines were 'the lines of beauty.'" But before he had time fairly to consider the subject, his rule, which he happened to be holding in his hand, showed him this little verse,— ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... beginning of each verse is indicated by rubricated letters; each verse is also divided into short phrases by small red points; these are indicated in the translation ...
— Egyptian Literature |
