"Elegy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... see this more plainly when we come to transcribe some of Sir Philip Sidney's work. There is no irreverence in it. Nor can I take it as any sign of hardness that Raleigh should treat the visual image of his own anticipated death with so much coolness, if the writer of a little elegy on his execution, when Raleigh was fourteen years older than at the presumed date of the foregoing verses, describes ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... with the soft heartbeat just felt through the folds of muslin and broadcloth! But it takes very little to spoil everything for writer, talker, lover. There are a great many cruel things besides poverty that freeze the genial current of the soul, as the poet of the Elegy calls it. Fire can stand any wind, but is easily blown out, and then come smouldering and smoke, and profitless, slow combustion without the cheerful blaze which sheds light all round it. The one Reader's hand may shelter the flame; the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... works, will find that he takes nearly as much pleasure in critically expounding his theory of poetry as in making poems. This is as far as it can be from the case of the spontaneous village minstrel dear to elegy, who has no theory whatever, although sometimes he may have fully as much poetry as Whitman. The whole of Whitman's work is deliberate and preconceived. A man born into a society comparatively new, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... allusions to the life and aspects of the country, and what a loss were there! The reign of the iambic couplet confined, but could not suppress, this native music; Pope notwithstanding, there came the "Ode to Evening" and that "Elegy" which, unsurpassed for beauty of thought and nobility of utterance in all the treasury of our lyrics, remains perhaps the most ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... of an old shatter'd press, and one small, worn-out font of English which he was then using himself, composing an Elegy on Aquila Rose, before mentioned, an ingenious young man, of excellent character, much respected in the town, clerk of the Assembly, and a pretty poet. Keimer made verses too, but very indifferently. He could not be said to write them, for ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the broadest and most meritorious sense of the word: he was the creator of philosophic poetry in France. Until Jocelyn appeared, in 1836, the form of poetic expression was confined chiefly to the ode, the ballad, and the elegy; and no poet, with the exception of the author of 'Moise' and 'Eloa', ever dreamed that abstract ideas and themes dealing with the moralities could be expressed ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... struggle; and "in the bleak December" the mortal remains were followed from the temple where his youth worshipped, to the snow-clad knoll at Greenwood; garlands and tears, the ritual and the requiem, eulogy and elegy, consecrated the final scene. By a singular coincidence, the news of his decease reached the United States simultaneously with the arrival of the ship in James River with the colossal bronze statue of Washington, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... Departs; as often in poetry and earlier English. Cf. Goldsmith, D. V. 171: "Beside the bed where parting life was laid;" Gray, Elegy, 1: "the knell of parting day," etc. On the other hand, depart was used in the sense of part. In the Marriage Service "till death us do part" is a corruption of "till death us depart." Wiclif's Bible, in Matt. xix. 6, has "therfor a ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... a temperament; but his condolences are graduated to the unimpassioned scale of social requirement. Even for Sir Philip Sidney his sighs are regulated by the official standard. It was in an unreal world that his affections found their true object and vent, and it is in an elegy of a lady whom he had never known that he puts into the mouth of a husband whom he has evaporated into a shepherd, the two most naturally pathetic verses he ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... dismiss the miscellaneous poetry of this period, without some notice of the "Coplas" of Don Jorge Manrique, [28] on the death of his father, the count of Paredes, in 1474 [29]. The elegy is of considerable length, and is sustained throughout in a tone of the highest moral dignity, while the poet leads us up from the transitory objects of this lower world to the contemplation of that imperishable existence, which Christianity has opened beyond the grave. ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... or dramatic purpose, as might be expected from an idyllic or elegiac poet who should suddenly assume the buskin of tragedy. Let us suppose that Moschus, for example, on the strength of having written a sweeter elegy than ever before was chanted over the untimely grave of a friend and fellow-singer, had said within himself, "Go to, I will be Sophocles"; can we imagine that the tragic result would have been other than tragical indeed for the credit of his gentle name, and comical indeed ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... assign a lower place to the poet who could order those words "religion's," "Saint Ben," "Psalter" and the rest of them, with such inspired good fortune. And yet we know that Paradise Lost is a greater work than this little flight of certain song, greater, too, than the poet's own elegy. ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... poet gives to Moore of his early poems, he says little about his exquisite lyrics, and less about "The Death and dying Words of Poor Mailie," or her "Elegy," the first of his poems where the inspiration of the muse is visible; but he speaks with exultation of the fame which those indecorous sallies, "Holy Willie's Prayer" and "The Holy Tulzie" brought from some of the clergy, and the people of Ayrshire. The west of Scotland is ever ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... doctrine of life. What he felt at the time may be inferred from a striking essay upon the 'Wealth of Nature,' which he contributed to the 'Saturday Review' of September 24, 1859.[76] It may be considered as a sermon upon the text of Gray's reflections in the 'Elegy' upon the 'hearts once pregnant with celestial fire' which lie forgotten in the country churchyard. What a vast work has been done by the unknown! what must have been the aggregate ability of those who, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... an elegy, the first of the poems in Anna Seward’s “Poetical Works,” having reference to the sad event, ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... a man whose eminence was once allowed by the eminent, and whose accomplishments were confessed by the accomplished, in the latter part of a long life supported himself by an uncommon expedient. He had a standing elegy and epithalamium, of which only the first and last were leaves varied occasionally, and the intermediate pages were, by general terms, left applicable alike to every character. When any marriage became known, Settle ran to the bridegroom with his epithalamium; ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... whip-poor-will, an American bird, and not the conventional lark or nightingale, although the elves of the Old World seem scarcely at home on the banks of the Hudson. Drake's memory has been kept fresh not only by his own poetry, but by the beautiful elegy written by his friend Fitz-Greene Halleck, the first stanza of which is ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... new ideas of duty and destiny, to wondrous thoughts and aspirations; and they would not down at my bidding. Over and over again I tried to banish them, but the inward and spiritual ear was open, and the sad strains of Schubert's "Elegy of Tears," and "The Wanderer," and the "Ave Maria," seemed my sorrow, my wanderings and my prayers. Sadness was not my nature; I was as cheerful as the bird that sings, save a mighty something which clung to me and overshadowed me like the enormous ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... animals that haunt the banks of rivers and the shores of the sea, and was probably used by the prophet with a reference to the seal species, which suckle their young in the manner described in his pathetic elegy. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... poet, it is taken for granted that he can sit down at any moment and spin off any number of verses on any subject which may be suggested to him; such as congratulations to the writer's great-grandmother on her reaching her hundredth year, an elegy on an infant aged six weeks, an ode for the Fourth of July in a Western township not to be found in Lippincott's last edition, perhaps a valentine for some bucolic lover who believes that wooing in rhyme is the way to win the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shoulder through the window to the dying day, and lightly sighed. The time was April's end, and had been squally, with violent storms; but the last onslaughts of the north-wester had routed the rain-clouds. The day was dying under a clear saffron sky, and a thrush piped its mellow elegy. Miss Percival heard him, and listened, smiling with her lips, and with her eyes also which the serene light soothed. Her lips barely moved, just relaxed their firm embrace, but no more. She held the light ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Public Preface Dedication The Wrexham Eisteddfod and the "Death of Saul" Historical Note DEATH OF SAUL Episode the First Episode the Second Episode the Third Episode the Fourth Palm Sunday in Wales Elegy on the late Crawshay Bailey, Esq. Nash Vaughan Edwardes Vaughan; a Monody Monody on the Death of Mrs. Nicholl Carne Elegiac Stanzas on the Death of Mrs. Grenfell In Dreams Mewn Cof Anwyl: on the Death of John Johnes, Esq., ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... pliagxa. Eldest (first born) unuanaskito. Elect (choose) elekti. Elect (by ballot) baloti. Election elekto. Elector elektanto. Electric elektra. Electricity elektro. Electrify elektrigi. Elegance eleganteco. Elegant eleganta. Elegy elegio. Element elemento. Elementary elementa. Elephant elefanto. Elevate altigi. Elevation (height) altajxo. Elf koboldo, feino. Elicit eltiri. Elide elizii. Eligible elektebla. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... mission to the unfriendly court of Philip II., where the mortifications which he encountered, joined to the insalubrity of the climate, so impaired his health that he found himself obliged to solicit his recall, which he did in an Ovidian elegy addressed to the queen. The petition of the poet was granted, but too late; he sunk under a lingering malady in October 1565, a few ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... influence drew from mine. 530 How could it otherwise? for not in vain That very morning had I turned aside To seek the ground where, 'mid a throng of graves, An honoured teacher of my youth was laid, [Z] And on the stone were graven by his desire 535 Lines from the churchyard elegy of Gray. [a] This faithful guide, speaking from his death-bed, Added no farewell to his parting counsel, But said to me, "My head will soon lie low;" And when I saw the turf that covered him, 540 After the lapse ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... consecrated ground who has not reaped enjoyment from the labors of that man's life. And as the simple epitaph meets the eye, and is read in an audible tone, the heart-felt invocation, "Blessings on his memory!" is his oft-repeated elegy. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... essayed poetry, celebrating the magnificence of the Pope and Cardinal Caesar, whom, in his verses on the Borgia Steer, he described as his greatest benefactor. Apparently he was also the author of the elegy on the death of the Duke of Gandia, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... specimen of Elizabethan "Billingsgate" that has come down to us. It was a versatile pen that could turn from passages like these to the epic narrative of the duel, or Tamyra's lyric invocation of the "peaceful regents of the night" (II, ii, 158), or Bussy's stately elegy upon himself, as he dies standing, propped ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... my view, All is strange, yet nothing new; Endless labour all along, Endless labour to be wrong; Phrase that time hath flung away, Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode, and elegy, and sonnet. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... nothing of our attachment, nor could conceive why my name should affect her at such a time. I knew nothing of her illness, being at Harrow and in the country, till she was gone. Some years after, I made an attempt at an elegy—a very dull one.[25] ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... how indecent will it look for you to stand fright'ning folks at your window, when you should have been in your coffin this three hours? In short, what with undertakers, imbalmers, joiners, sextons, and your damn'd elegy hawkers, upon a late practitioner in physick and astrology, I got not one wink of sleep that night, nor scarce a moment's rest ever since. Now I doubt not but this villainous 'squire has the impudence to assert, that these are entirely strangers to him; he, good man, knows nothing of the ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... suggests, though perhaps it does not compel, a later date; further, it is not exactly in favour of the Davidic authorship of either of these psalms that they are found in a section which was obviously interpolated later.[2] On the other hand, there can be no reasonable doubt that the incomparable elegy over Saul and Jonathan in 2 Samuel i. 19-27 is David's. Poetically it is a gem of purest ray; but, though its position in the book of Jashar[3] shows that it was regarded as a religious poem, it strikes no distinctively religious note. The little fragment on the death of Abner, 2 Sam. ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... or ed. A.—In the old copies this elegy is marked "Elegia v." The fifth elegy (beginning "Nox erat et somnus," &c.) was ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... colours of imagination" in "The Ancient Mariner." The practice might be classed as a sort of personification; but how utterly different in its effect from the conventional "literary" personifications of the eighteenth century—of Gray in the "Elegy," for instance! Grandeur, and Envy, and Honour, in that admirable poem, are not real persons to the imagination; the abstraction remains an abstraction. But in Coleridge's poem all nature is alive with the life of men. Other elements ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... largely of the liberality of the government. John Home, a Scotchman, was rewarded for the tragedy of Douglas, both with a pension and with a sinecure place. But, when the author of the Bard, and of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, ventured to ask for a Professorship, the emoluments of which he much needed, and for the duties of which he was, in many respects, better qualified than any man living, he was refused; and the post was bestowed on the pedagogue under whose care the favorite's ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... centre of delight. The bird (ordain'd to be Music's first martyr) strove to imitate These several sounds; which when her warbling throat Fail'd in, for grief down dropt she on his lute, And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness To see the conqueror upon her hearse To weep a funeral elegy of tears. He look'd upon the trophies of his art, Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes; then sigh'd, and cry'd "Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge This cruelty upon the author of it. Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, Shall never more betray a harmless peace To an untimely ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... among many other pieces, Jeffreys's Elegy, the Letter to the Lord Chancellor exposing to him the sentiments of the people, the Elegy on Dangerfield, Dangerfield's Ghost to Jeffreys, The Humble Petition of Widows and fatherless Children in the West, the Lord Chancellor's Discovery and Confession made ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Lachrymarum, or a Fountain of Tears; the lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah in verse, with an Elegy on Sir Charles ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... the site of Macdonald's house, where the haughty Lord of Sleat ended his career. ["Genealogy of the Macras" and the Ardintoul MS. "This Donald Gorme was son to Donald Gruamach, son to Donald Gallach, son to Hugh, natural son to Alexander, Earl of Ross, for which the elegy made on his death calls him grandchild and great grandchild to Rhi-Fingal (King ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... debut that was almost coincident with his death. His "Royal Civic Function" showed what a hand had been lost to Punch; but it was his delightful "New Year's Ode: To the Winner of the St. Nisbett—Season, 1844," that was the best of his rare contributions. It was at once an elegy of Mrs. Nisbett, and a prayer and prophecy that she might again be seen on the boards. The ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... George Almont was summoned to leave its earthly tenement. When the small procession that had followed his remains to their last resting-place turned from the new-made grave, the two following lines from Gray's Elegy came unbidden to ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... imperfect Christian draperies. Small blame it is therefore to Tegner that Schiller's poems furnished him with frequent suggestions and sometimes also with metres. Schiller had, in "The Gods of Greece," sung a glorious elegy on the Olympian age which stimulated his Swedish rival to write "The Asa Age," in which he regretted, though in a rather half-hearted way, the disappearance of Odin, Thor, and Freya. The poem, it must be admitted, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Elegy on the Prophet (Abhak!) is well known and to comment it would be tedious." Quoth Omar "Who is at the door?" and quoth Adi, "Among them is Omar ibn Abi Rabi'ah, the Korashi;[FN96] whereupon the Caliph cried, "May Allah show him no favour neither quicken ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... plaited his hair and spake, saying, "I am a descendant of Ali;" and he entered the city along with the caravan from Hijaz, saying, "I come a pilgrim from Mecca;" and he presented a Casidah or elegy to the king, saying, "I have composed it!" The king gave him money, treated him with respect, and ordered him to be shown much flattering attention; till one of the courtiers, who had that day returned from a voyage at sea, said, "I saw him ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... fourteen-syllable, arranged as a couplet. The choriambic I thought might be exchanged for a heroic stanza, in which the first line should rhyme with the fourth, the second with the third, a kind of "In Memoriam" elongated. Lastly, I have chosen the heroic quatrain proper, the metre of Gray's "Elegy," for the two Odes in the First Book written in what is called the Metrum Alcmanium, "Laudabunt alii," and "Te maris et terrae," rather from a vague notion of the dignity of the measure than from any distinct sense ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... bon-mot, "To say 'everybody is talking about him' is a eulogy. To say 'every one is talking about her' is an elegy," is no longer true, more's the pity. More's the pity, I mean, because such a delicious bit deserves a longer life. I could weep over the early death of an epigram with a hearty spirit, which is second only to the grief I feel at a good story spoiled for relation's sake. Cleverness, like beauty, ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... after, when despair had sunk into a softened recollection, that it was possible even to breathe forth that wail over the Flowers of the Forest which all Scotland knows. In the first shock of such an appalling event there is no place for elegy. There was a broken cry of anguish throughout the country, echoed from castle and cottage, where the poor women clung together, mistress and maid equal in the flood of common loss: and there was at the same time a strained and terrible rallying ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... Court, Trinity College Library, and some fifty churches, inevitably fall into the background. So when the world has admitted that a poet has disputed the supreme palm of epic with Homer and Virgil, it hardly cares to remember that he has also challenged all rivals in such forms as the Pastoral Elegy, the Mask, and the Sonnet. De minimis non curat might be applied to such cases without any very violent extravagance. The first thought that must always rise to the mind at the mention of Milton's name must be the stupendous achievement ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... out, let them remember that the jury is not all agreed; for Octavia was of his party, and was of the first quality in Rome: she was also present at the reading of the sixth AEneid, and we know not that she condemned AEneas, but we are sure she presented the poet for his admirable elegy ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... poems are several that are marked by fancy and feeling, and a graceful versification, of one of which, an elegy, these are ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... out of a poke, and a ring with W. S. engraved on it, found in the churchyard some years ago, and, no doubt, dropped there by the poet himself, while absorbed in the composition of his famous and world-renowned elegy. ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... autumn evening was bright; and the general, under the clear starlight, visited his stations, to make his final inspection and utter his last words of encouragement. As he passed from ship to ship, he spoke to those in the boat with him of the poet Gray, and the 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' "I," said he, "would prefer being the author of that poem to the glory of beating the French to-morrow;" and, while the oars struck the river as it rippled in the silence of the night air under the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... school, but now he had it in his power to study a great author entire, and as a whole. Never before did he fully appreciate the "thunderous lilt" of Greek epic, the touching and voluptuous tenderness of Latin elegy, the regal pomp of history, the gorgeous and philosophic mystery of the old dramatic fables. Never before had he learnt to gaze on "the bright countenance of truth, in the mild and dewy air of delightful studies." Those who decry classical education, do so from inexperience ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... felt to be capricious tyranny. In other respects I loved him much, for he had a strong turn for literature, read poetry with taste and judgment, and composed verses himself, which had gained him great applause among his messmates. Witness the following elegy upon the supposed loss of the vessel, composed the night before Rodney's celebrated battle of April the 12th, 1782. It alludes to the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... I cannot but think that the far-famed stanza in Gray's Elegy, where he discovers men of genius in peasants, as Shenstone has in children, was suggested by ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... 4. Horace was doubtless attracted by the frank nature of Tibullus (Ep. i. 4, 1, 'Albi, nostrorum sermonum candide iudex'), and by the community of taste which led them both to imitate the classical Ionic rather than the Alexandrian elegy. Horace corroborates the statement of Life i. ('insignis forma cultuque corporis observabilis') that Tibullus had a fine ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... a yarahui or mournful elegy, of which there are so many in the Quichua language. The singers of them ...
— Apu Ollantay - A Drama of the Time of the Incas • Sir Clements R. Markham
... was an old damaged press, on which Franklin exercised his skill in repairing, and a small worn-out font of type. Keimer himself, who seems to have been a grotesque compound of knave and crank, was engaged at once in composing and setting up in type an elegy on the death of a prominent young man. He is the only poet to my knowledge who ever used the composition-stick instead of a pen for the vehicle of inspiration. The elegy may still be read in Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia, and on perusing it we may well ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... Writer of Epic and Elegy.—Epic poetry narrates in grand style the achievements of heroes—the poet telling the story as if present. It is simple in construction and uniform in meter, yet it admits of the dialogue and the ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... secretly composed some elegiac verses, and getting them by heart, that it might seem extempore, ran out into the place with a cap upon his head, and, the people gathering about him, got upon the herald's stand, and sang that elegy which begins thus:— ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... clever elegy on the death of Goody Morse, who "For forty years or more ... contrived the while No little dust to raise" in the rooms of the students of Harvard College, is to be found in Harvardiana, Vol. I. p. 233. It was written by Mr. (afterwards Rev.) Benjamin Davis Winslow. In the poem which ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... true." He would talk freely with his friends over a glass of wine of Shakespeare's visits to his father's house, and would say "that it seemed to him that he wrote with Shakespeare's very spirit." Of his reverence for Shakespeare he gave less questionable proof in a youthful elegy in which he represented the flowers and trees on the banks of the Avon mourning for Shakespeare's death and the river weeping itself away. He was credited, too, with having adopted the new spelling of his name D'Avenant (for Davenant), so as ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... perplexing search his mother found the desired poems, most of them in first editions, at the Olliers, Vere Street, London. She took home also three volumes by another poet, John Keats, who, she was told, was the subject of an elegy by Shelley. Browning never forgot the May evening when he first read these new books, to the accompaniment, he said, of two nightingales, one in a copper-beech, one in a laburnum, each striving to outdo the other in melody. A new imaginative world was ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... lost his distinguished friend and correspondent the Prince of Hesse, and astronomy one of its most active and intelligent cultivators. His grief on this occasion was deep and sincere, and he gave utterance to his feelings in an impassioned elegy, in which he recorded the virtues and talents of his friend. Prince Maurice, the son and successor of the Landgrave, continued, with the assistance of able observers, to keep up the reputation of ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster
... embittered heart, craving for sympathy, which he cannot meet with in his fellow-man, finds traces of it in the sighing of the trees or the moaning of the sad sea-wave. Our Poet Laureate, in his great elegy, has abundantly illustrated this impulse of the imagination to reflect its own emotional colouring on to inanimate things: ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... was present. Hardly a dip of an oar was heard from the flotilla as it was borne down the river, but from Beauport and Levis came the constant roar of cannon. Every moment was carrying him to fame and death, and perhaps it was some foreboding of his fate that led him to repeat the words of Gray's Elegy, which from that hour has become more famous in ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... lies, whose spotless fame Invites a stone to learn her name: The rigid Spartan that denied An epitaph to all that died, Unless for war, in charity Would here vouchsafe an elegy. She died a wife, but yet her mind, Beyond virginity refined, From lawless fire remain'd as free As now from heat her ashes be: Keep well this pawn, thou marble chest; Till it be call'd for, let it rest; For while this jewel here is set, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Harrow-on-the-Hill. It was, I observe, written as long ago as 1838, so that it can be reproduced without much danger of hurting the feelings of those who may have known and loved the subject of this touching elegy. The name of the victim was Port, and the circumstances of his death ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... discloses not, save to select worshippers, and will leave the world without any one hardly but me knowing how stupendous a creature he is. I am perfecting myself in the "Ode to Eton College" against Thursday, that I may not appear unclassic. I have just discovered that it is much better than the "Elegy." ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... when widow of William Parr, the only person who was ever Marquis of Northampton, had married Sir Thomas Gorges, uncle of Lady Douglas Howard, the subject of this elegy. Mr. (afterwards Sir) Arthur Gorges was himself a poet, and the author of the English translation of Bacon's tract De Sapientia Veterum, published in 1619. See Craik's Spenser and his Poetry, Vol. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... this task Tickell loyally addressed himself. In the spring of 1721 appeared, in four sumptuous quartos, the collected edition of Addison's works. It was prefaced by the biography which is here reprinted, and to the biography was appended that noble and pathetic elegy which will make Tickell's name as ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... funeral elegy on Ann Bradstreet, the Eve of our female minstrelsy?" interrogated Miss Hurribattle; "there are two lines in it which are still in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... parents almost as much as children, when we advised that a great deal of poetry should not be read by very young pupils; the labour and difficulty of explaining it can be known only to those who have tried the experiment. The Elegy in a country church-yard, is one of the most popular poems, which is usually given to children to learn by heart; it cost at least a quarter of an hour to explain to intelligent children, the youngest ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... been at all times extravagance and credulity itself. They looked upon this young villain as a martyr, and at once dedicated an elegy to him, in which I was compared with Medea, Circe, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... be begun three days before the advent of the Messiah. Then he will appear in Palestine, and will utter a lament over the devastation of the Holy Land, and his wail will be heard throughout the world. The last words of his elegy will be: "Now peace will come upon earth!" When the evil-doers hear this message, they will rejoice. On the second day, he will appear again and proclaim: "Good will come upon earth!" And on the third his promise will be heard: "Salvation ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... those of his deceased schoolfellows, such as Lousteau, Bianchon, and other famous natives of the province, who, it is said, knew the dreamy, melancholy boy, and his precocious bent towards poetry. An elegy called Tristesse (Melancholy), written at school; the two poems Paquita la Sevillane and Le Chene de la Messe; three sonnets, a description of the Cathedral and the House of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, with a tale ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... of being purified by tears. As one grows intoxicated by breathing the odor of faded roses, Rodolphe again became so by reviving in recollection that past life in which every day brought about a fresh elegy, a terrible drama, or a grotesque comedy. He went through all the phases of his strange love from their honeymoon to the domestic storms that had brought about their last rupture, he recalled all the tricks of his ex-mistress, repeated all ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... poetical feeling and musical gifts. The character is the nearest one gets in Hebrew to the best heroines of the troubadours. Immanuel and she exchange verses, but the path of flirtation runs rough. They are parted, she, woman-like, dies, and he, man-like, sings an elegy. Even more to Immanuel's credit is his praise of his own wife. She has every womanly grace of body and soul. On her he showers compliments from the Song of Songs and the Book of Proverbs. If this be the true man revealed, then his light verses of love addressed to other ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... matter of record that it took the poet Gray seven years to write his famous poem, 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard.' Had he been proficient in stenography, he could have done it in seven minutes. We have had students who have written it in ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... failed to make the most of them. He was indolent and fond of good living, and was restive under discipline, as is evident in his work and in his irritation at Malherbe. He had a gift of keen observation, and his satires excelled in interest what he composed in the more lyrical forms of ode and elegy. ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... Ibn Abi Hafsa, of this family, who made such a mistake (in a poet depending on the beneficence of the exalted) as to commit himself to the sweeping statement, in his elegy on the death of Maan, the Emir, that patronage had died with him. "It is said," Ibn Khallikan relates, "that Marwan, after composing this elegy, could never gain anything by his verses, for, as often as he celebrated the ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will vary with the different modes of poetry;—and that splendour of particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and proof of vile taste in a tragedy or an ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... was himself almost drunk, was seized with the notion of satirizing bald pates and branded rascals, but when he had exhausted his chilly wit, he returned at last to his poetry and recited this little elegy ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... large place near London," his mother told him. "It's near Eton and Windsor and Stoke Poges where Gray wrote his Elegy, which we learned last summer. You remember, don't you?" she asked anxiously, for she wanted Mark to cut a figure with ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... and, at the same time, great poets belonged to this period. One was Philetas of Cos, founder of the Grecian elegy, celebrated and affectionately saluted centuries later by Andre Chenier. Of his works only a few terse fragments remain. Another was Asclepiades of Samos, both elegiac and lyric, of whose epigrams, (short elegies) those preserved to us are charming. Yet another was the sad and charming Leonidas ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... iambics, choriambics, elegies, hymns, epigrams seventy-three—and of these last alone can we say that they are in any degree readable; and they are courtly, far-fetched, neat, and that is all. Six hymns remain, and a few fragments of the elegies: but the most famous elegy, on Berenice's hair, is preserved to us only in a Latin paraphrase of Catullus. It is curious, as the earliest instance we have of genuinely ungenuine Court poetry, and of the complimentary lie which does not even pretend to be true; the flattery which will not take the trouble ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... intuition of eternal love in the past, we find this longing for the infinite breathing through poetry in the form of elegy; in sad recollections of a faded world of demigods and heroes; and in the plaints for the loss of man's native home in Paradise, in the faint and dying echoes of the happy innocence of creation before the first outbreak of evil, and the consequent ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at work on this masterpiece, which had been begun in England, under the encouragement of Sidney, probably before 1580. The knightly Sidney died heroically at the battle of Zutphen, in 1586, and Spenser voiced the lament of all England in the beautiful pastoral elegy Astrophel which he composed in memory of "the ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... pudding, and two tureens of vegetables, disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too, received distinguished marks of their attention; and a "spice-cake," which followed by way of dessert, vanished like a vision, and was no more found. Its elegy was chanted in the kitchen by Abraham, Mrs. Gale's son and heir, a youth of six summers; he had reckoned upon the reversion thereof, and when his mother brought down the empty platter, he lifted up ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... aisles and arches that had stood so many centuries the political changes of Europe. One morning when the sun was flooding the building and casting the colours of the windows in rich patterns on the floor, I sat under the gallery at the west end and read Shelley's great elegy. I remember those wonderful last lines and I thought how, like an unshattered temple, the great works of literature survive the tempests of national strife. My mind was carried far away, beyond the anxieties and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... an expedition to the library. What shall I bring? There is Mosheim's 'Ecclesiastical Ancient History'; that has a solid, venerable sound. Or, if you prefer poetry, I will get Gray's 'Elegy.' That cannot be a literary mushroom, for he was twenty years writing it. But perhaps it is Tupper you would like. That would suit your mood ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... and author of the "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard," was born on December 26, 1716, in London, and was the only survivor of twelve children. At Eton he formed friendships with Horace Walpole, Thomas Ashton, and Richard West, who were later his chief correspondents. At Cambridge, where ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... 'cello solo of a mildly bravura nature. (Note the fantastic accents on weak beats in measures 18, 22, 23, and 24.) In the third variation comes a complete contrast in mood; the key is changed to A-flat minor and the theme is transformed into an elegy, all its joy crushed out. The movement abounds in impassioned dissonances, always emphasized by sf marks, and the throbbing pulsations of the bass—in the second phrase—give a tragic intensity of feeling. With the fourth variation there enters that ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... violet and a silver eglantine and pansy. A century later the prizes offered were an amaranthus of gold of the value of 400 livres, for the best ode, a violet of silver, valued at 250 livres, for an essay in prose, a silver pansy, worth 200 livres, for an eclogue, elegy or idyl, and a silver lily of the value of sixty livres, for the best sonnet or hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary,—for religion is mixed up with merriment, and heathen with Christian rites. He who gained a prize three times was honored with the title of Doctor en gaye science, ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... thought in His inimitable elegy, which every reader will immediately recollect. Can it be imagined, that nature, which does nothing in vain, nor indeed without a reference to the being who is eminently signalized as lord of the lower creation, has been at pains to decorate these spots, but in anticipation, if one may ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... Characteristic Temperament of Nations Greek Particles Latin Compounds Propertius Tibullus Lucan Statius Valerius Flaccus Claudian Persius Prudentius Hermesianax Destruction of Jerusalem Epic Poem German and English Paradise Lost Modern Travels The Trinity Incarnation Redemption Education Elegy Lavacrum Pallados Greek and Latin Pentameter Milton's Latin Poems Poetical Filter Gray and Cotton Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare Dryden Dr. Johnson Scott's Novels Scope of Christianity Times of Charles I. Messenger of the Covenant Prophecy Logic of Ideas and of Syllogisms W. S. Lander's Poetry ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... proceed further it may be proper to say that the father of our Oliver had a sister who married William Hampden of Bucks, and this woman was the mother of John Hampden, who was deemed worthy of mention in "Gray's Elegy" and also in several prose works, notably the court records of England. The family of Oliver traced to that of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex; although such is the contempt for pedigree by men who can themselves do things, that Oliver once disclaimed Thomas, as much as to say. "There has been only ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... MURILLO'S influence over the human heart, that his genius enabled him to embellish truth, and to present it with all its graces and attractions to the understandings of all those who are endowed with an innate love of the beautiful. His pictures, like Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-yard, may with equal truth be said 'to abound in images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... affirmation or denial by throwing it into the form of a question. It is a figure frequent in poetry and emotional prose. The following example from Gray's "Elegy" will be sufficient ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... attractions, he never recrossed the Atlantic; for his Joanna died soon after, and his promising son, being sent to the father, was educated in England, became a midshipman in the navy, and was lost at sea. With his elegy, in which the last depths of bathos are sadly sounded by a mourning parent,—who is induced to print them only by "the effect they had on the sympathetic and ingenious Mrs. Cowley,"—the "Narrative of a Five Years' ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... This vehement elegy, in which truth was mingled with deception, completely duped the marquise. Claude Vignon had told Conti the reasons for his departure, and Beatrix was, of course, informed of them. She determined therefore to behave with generosity and give the cold shoulder to Calyste; but at ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... that was June, And cold is August's panting heart of fire; And in the storm-dismantled forest-choir For thine own elegy thy winds attune Their wild and wizard lyre: And poignant grows the charm of thy decay, The pathos of thy beauty, and the sting, Thou parable of greatness vanishing! For me, thy woods of gold and skies of ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... general interest, and had met with no sale. Burns had as yet published nothing. But two poetic masterpieces, dealing with the joys and sorrows of village folk, were fresh in Englishmen's memory. One was The Elegy in a Country Churchyard, the other was The Deserted Village. Both had left a deep impression upon their readers—and with reason—for two poems, more certain of immortality, because certain of giving a pleasure ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... not come to this conclusion without much thought. She composed an Ode to Despair, an Elegy to an Unhappy Woman, and a Triolet to Interfering Dukes, before her mind was made up. She also considered very seriously what she would look like in a little cottage in the middle of the forest, dressed in a melancholy grey and holding ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... is History but the story of the bygone? The elegy, too, comes to us as the last lamenting, sadly solemn swan-song of that glorious golden time. And, indeed, are not all poesies but various notes of that mighty diapason of Thought and Feeling, that has, through the ages, been singing itself ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Gray's Pindaric Odes are, I believe, generally given up at present: they are stately and pedantic, a kind of methodical borrowed phrenzy. But I cannot so easily give up, nor will the world be in any haste to part with his Elegy in a Country Church-yard: it is one of the most classical productions that ever was penned by a refined and thoughtful mind, moralising on human life. Mr. Coleridge (in his Literary Life) says, that ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... that she had not read English poets who sang the praise of tea: English poets were in those days an unknown quantity in French education, and especially in New France until after the conquest. But Wolfe opened the great world of English poetry to Canada as he recited Gray's Elegy with its ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 68: Sepulchral altars.—Ver. 480. The 'sepulchralis ara' is the funeral pile, which was built in the form of an altar, with four equal sides. Ovid also calls it 'funeris ara,' in the Tristia, book iii. Elegy xiii. ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Evans's Illustrations to Granger, is Sir H. Wotton, from the picture in the Bodleian Library, engraved by Stow. In Sir Henry's Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, is his chapter "On Ancient and Modern Agriculture and Gardening." Cowley wrote an elegy ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... readers may like to peruse the following curious variations of the well-known line from Gray's "Elegy," "The ploughman homeward ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... the shade of his own bays, Great Ben they'll see, whose sacred lays The learned ghosts admire, and throng To catch the subject of his song. Then Randolph in those holy meads, His Lovers and Amyntas reads, Whilst his Nightingale, close by, Sings his and her own elegy. From thence dismiss'd, by subtle roads, Through airy paths and sad abodes, They'll come into the drowsy fields Of Lethe, which such virtue yields, That, if what poets sing be true, The streams all sorrow can subdue. Here, on a silent, shady green, The souls of lovers oft ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... The elegy of Tickell, maliciously called by Steele "prose in rhyme," is alike inspired by affection and fancy; it has a melodious languor, and a melancholy grace. The sonnet of Gray to the memory of West is a beautiful effusion, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... disgrace befell me, or he may have noted that I was too raw and young an Atlas to carry the first-class Family Mansion in a knowing manner. Be this as it may, the Beadle did what Melancholy did to the youth in Gray's Elegy—he marked me for his own. And the way in which the Beadle did it, was this: he summoned me as a Juryman on his ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... I leave the general concern To track our Hero on his path of Fame: He must his laurels separately earn— For fifty thousand heroes, name by name, Though all deserving equally to turn A couplet, or an elegy to claim, Would form a lengthy lexicon of Glory, And, what is worse ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... is, of course, the old story which is ever new. The civil wars have inspired many pathetic compositions, and poems like Salome Urena's apostrophe to the ruins of colonial times, Bienvenido S. Nouel's elegy on the ruins left by the late revolutions, and Enrique Henriquez' "Miserere!", gems of verse, are veritable cries of anguish at the desolation wrought by fratricidal strife. Perhaps it is the poets' sorrow at the misfortunes of their country which is the cause of the note ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... Latin elegy "containing the briefest summary of the miseries and calamities of the human race." A painter adds a picture ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Ode or Elegy rhymed couplets numbering more than thirteen: If shorter it is called a "Ghazal." I have not thought it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... literary province of the mother country." To this amazing statement one can only rejoin that if "The Biglow Papers," the "Harvard Commemoration Ode," "Under the Old Elm," the "Fourth of July Ode," and the Agassiz elegy are English provincial poetry, most of us need a new map and a new vocabulary. Of both series of "Biglow Papers" we may surely exclaim, as did Quintilian concerning early Roman satire, "This is wholly ours." It is true that Lowell, like every young poet of his generation, had steeped himself ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... Ovid wrote him a fine elegy (p. 115); and Domitius Marsus a neat epigram. The former promised him an immortality equal to Homer's; the latter sent him to Elysium at Virgil's side. These excessive eulogies are the more remarkable in that Tibullus stood, proudly or indolently, aloof from the court. He never flatters Augustus ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... race reached a high degree of civilization at a very early period. They have always been distinguished by a love of poetry, especially for the elegy, and they abound in tales, legends and proverbs. Until the middle of the twelfth century they had their own independent kings, since then they have been alternately conquered by the Russians and Swedes; but like the ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... resolved to give up the law and devote himself entirely to self-culture. He settled at Cambridge, and gave all his time to study and to the cultivation of his mind. The first of his poems to appear in print was the "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," published in 1747. His "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" was not published until 1750, although it had been written and handed about in manuscript several years before. The post of Poet-Laureate was offered him in 1757, on the death of Colley Cibber; but he did not accept ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... had not dawned. Goldsmith and Gray, both recently dead, serve to illustrate the condition in which the most exquisite polish and refinement of language has been developed until there is a danger of sterility. The 'Elegy' and the 'Deserted Village' are in their way inimitable poems: but we feel that the intellectual fibre of the poets has become dangerously delicate. The critical faculty could not be stimulated further without destroying all spontaneous impulse. The reaction ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... was a great admirer of the poet Gray. As he went the rounds for final inspection on the beautiful starlight evening before the attack, he remarked to those in the boat with him. "'I would rather be the author of The Elegy in a Country Churchyard' than to have the glory of beating the French to morrow," and amid the rippling of the water and the dashing of ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... upon looking up the church which gave rise to Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," intending when we got there to have a little scene over it; Mr. S., in all the conscious importance of having been there before, assuring us that he knew exactly where it was. So, after some difficulty with our coachman, and ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Braunschweig and around to Leipzig. While the songs repay study, they are rather marked by a pianistic meditation than a strictly lyric emotion. "Aufmunterung zur Freude" is a tame allegretto; "Wehmuth" is better; "Taeuschung" is a short elegy of passion and depth; "Ruhe in der Geliebten" is best in its middle strain where it is full of rich feeling and harmony. The ending is cheap. "Der gefangene Saenger" is only a slight variant at first on the "Adieu" credited to Schubert; ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... as much," said the Reverend John. "I've seen McTurk being hounded up the stairs to elegise the 'Elegy in a Churchyard,' while Beetle and Stalky went ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... feuilletonwise in a newspaper." I know you will have the goodness to tell Mr. Hawthorne this, with my love. Mr. Chorley saw the entrance of the Empereur into the Tuileries. He looked radiant. The more I read that elegy on the death of Daniel Webster, the more I find to admire. It is as grand as a dirge upon an organ. Love to the dear W——s ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... exquisite fineness, and distinguishing sagacity, which as it was active and busy, so it was vigorous and manly, keeping even pace with a rich and strong imagination, always on the wing, and never tired with aspiring; there are many of his first essays in oratory, in epigram, elegy and epic, still handed about the university in manuscript, which shew a masterly hand, and though maimed and injured by frequent transcribing, make their way into our most celebrated miscellanies, where they mine with uncommon lustre. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... The name and dedication which the brother gave to his principal work are an imperishable shrine of his affection for his sister, "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia." Spenser refers to her as "most resembling in shape and spirit her brother dear." She wrote a beautiful elegy on his death at Zutphen: Great loss to all that ever did him see; Great loss to all, but greatest loss to me. The renowned experimental philosopher, Robert Boyle, and his sister, Catherine, the very accomplished and famous countess of Ranelagh, were a noted ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... over the green hill flies the inconstant sun. 2. The epic poem recites the exploits of a hero tragedy represents a disastrous event comedy ridicules the vices and follies of mankind pastoral poetry describes rural life and elegy displays the tender emotions of the heart. 3. Wealth may seek us but wisdom must be sought. 4. The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. 5. Occidental manhood springs from self-respect Oriental manhood finds its greatest satisfaction in self-abasement. [Footnote: In this sentence ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... shakes his head at Tom Moore; but Pope is his especial favourite; and if anything in verse has his heart, it is the "Rape of the Lock." Peter Pindar he partly dislikes, but Anstey, the "Bath Guide," is high in his estimation; and with him "Gray's Odes" stand far above those of Collins'. Of the "Elegy in a Country Church" he thinks, as he says, "like the rest of the world." "Shenstone's Pastorals" he has read. Burns he praises, but in his heart thinks him a "wonderful clown," and shrugs his shoulders at his extreme ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... can only call the sense of the Eternal. How beautiful, how consoling, that her last book should have been that translation, such as only one who was at once true poet and true scholar could have made, of the sweetest medieval elegy 'The Pearl'!" And Miss Bates, in her preface to the posthumous volume of "Folk-Ballads of Southern Europe", illumines for us the scholarship which went into these close ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... of the poetic hierarchy. It is not the most popular poet who is necessarily the greatest; Wordsworth never had half the popularity of Scott or Moore. It is not the multitude of remembered passages which settles the rank of a metrical composition as poetry. Gray's "Elegy," it is true, is full of lines we all remember, and is a great poem, if that term can be applied to any piece of verse of that length. But what shall we say to the "Ars Poetica" of Horace? It is crowded ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Nancy was gone; and Harry Esmond blushed that he had not a single tear for her, and fell to composing an elegy in Latin verses over the rustic little beauty. He bade the dryads mourn and the river-nymphs deplore her. As her father followed the calling of Vulcan, he said that surely she was like a daughter of Venus, though ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... railway whistle is seldom heard and the smoke of the factory darkens not the long summer days? Away, in the smooth "Flying Dutchman"; past Windsor's glorious towers and Eton's playing-fields; past the little village and churchyard where a century and a half ago the famous "Elegy" was written, and where, hard by "those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade," yet rests the body of the mighty poet, Gray. How those lines run in one's head this bright summer evening, as from our railway carriage we note the great white dome of Stoke ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... epicure, knew coffee as few men before him or since. In his historical elegy, contained in Gastronomy as a Fine Art, or the Science of Good ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... utters them in a didactic tone, as of one who can speak with the commanding voice of Delphic wisdom. The moralizing of Bacchylides is rather an utterance of quiet meditation, sometimes recalling the strain of Ionian gnomic elegy. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... glories of empire, was to be sacrificed to the mad notion of petty "State Sovereignty," by a sworn band of desperadoes. How sad when other generations would ask, where is the Federal Government, to be answered only by poets, who would sing her elegy, as in the past they have sang that ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... poems in Dodsley's Collection. Mr. Fitzherbert found him one morning, apparently, in such violent agitation, on account of the indisposition of his son, as to seem beyond the power of comfort. At length, however, he exclaimed, 'I'll write an Elegy.' Mr. Fitzherbert being satisfied, by this, of the sincerity of his emotions, slyly said, 'Had not you better take a postchaise and go and see him?' It was the shrewdness of the insinuation which made the story be ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... grief, of tender, spiritual love, of faith and peace, of the heart's heaven smiling through tears, is this tone-elegy! So should the passion-music close, and not with fugue of praise and triumph like an oratorio. How sweetly, evenly, the harmony flows on,—a broad, rich, deep, pellucid river, swollen as by countless rills from all the loving, bleeding, and believing hearts in a redeemed humanity! ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... the wretched lot of orphans. See, arms have been sculptured on this tomb, though it belongs to a woman: but the daughters of heroes may have their monuments adorned with the trophies of their fathers; what a beautiful union is that of innocence and valour! There is an elegy of Propertius which paints better than any other writing of antiquity, this dignity of woman among the Romans, more imposing, more pure than the worship paid to them during the age of chivalry. Cornelia, dying in her youth, addresses to her husband the most affecting consolations ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... the Book of the Upright is included that touching elegy which David sang after the death of Saul and Jonathan, and which stands next to the Song of Deborah as one of the earliest surviving examples of Old Testament literature. [Footnote: "Student's Old Testament," Vol. ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... circumstances. There are, no doubt, writers in the present age, who, did they meet with proper encouragement, might be capable of producing what would last to posterity, and be read and admired by them. We have some good poets, such as the authors of Elfrida, the Church-yard Elegy, and the Poem on Agriculture; a performance which would have been highly valued in an Augustan age, and is the best, perhaps the only Georgic in our language. By the great manner in which the author has executed the ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... Gray and with intolerance of Pope. Cf. "Biographia Literaria," ch. 2: "I felt almost as if I had been newly couched, when, by Mr. Wordsworth's conversation, I had been induced to re-examine with impartial strictness Gray's celebrated Elegy. I had long before detected the defects in The Bard; but the Elegy I had considered as proof against all fair attacks; and to this day I can not read either without delight, and a portion of enthusiasm. At all events whatever pleasure I may have lost by the clearer perception of the faults in certain ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Historical works have suffered a heavier fate. The latter class, consisting of his commentary on his consulship and his history of his own times, is altogether lost. Of the former, which consisted of the heroic poems Halcyone, Limon, Marius, and his Consulate, the elegy of Tamelastes, translations of Homer and Aratus, epigrams, etc., nothing remains, except some fragments of the Phaenomena and Diosemeia of Aratus. It may, however, be questioned whether literature has suffered much by these losses. We are far, indeed, from ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Song for the Princess Charlotte of Wales" was only surpassed in feebleness by Coleridge's "Israel's Lament." Campbell composed a laboured elegy, which was "spoken by Mr ... at Drury Lane Theatre, on the First Opening of the House after the Death of the Princess Charlotte, 1817;" and Montgomery wrote a hymn on "The Royal ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron |
