"Metrical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Plot. The story existed in many forms, mostly Italian. Shakespeare took it from Arthur Broke's metrical version (Romeus and Juliet), and possibly consulted the prose version in William Painter's Palace of Pleasure. The tale had been dramatised and performed before Arthur Broke published his poem in 1562. The play (if it existed ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... imperfect, but the pedant comes to its defence with a tribrachys or an anapaest, and sets it right at once by applying to one language the rules of another. If we may be allowed to change feet, like the old comic writers, it will not be easy to write a line not metrical. To hint this once, is sufficient. (see 1765, VI, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... which Hayward and some of his reviewers have instituted in advance against the possibility of a good and faithful metrical translation of a poem like Faust, they seem to the present translator full of paradox and sophistry. For instance, take this assertion of one of the reviewers: "The sacred and mysterious union of thought with verse, twin-born and immortally ...
— Faust • Goethe
... imitation implies persons acting, it necessarily follows, in the first place, that Spectacular equipment will be a part of Tragedy. Next, Song and Diction, for these are the medium of imitation. By 'Diction' I mean the mere metrical arrangement of the words: as for 'Song,' it is a term whose ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... pasquil on the Commander in Chief, or a tirade against the Government, was sure to be eagerly read and warmly approved of. As a specimen of this kind of literature, and an illustration of the public opinion of the time, I may translate here one of those metrical tirades. Though it was never printed, it ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... translation of Homer, by Mr. T. A. Buckley, has just appeared in London. No prose version will cause any just notion of the spirit of Homer. Of the half dozen metrical translations published recently, we think that of our countryman Munford the best. Henry W. Herbert has given us parts of the Iliad in admirable style. No one, however, has yet equalled old Chapman—certainly not Pope ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... published in the same year as the first French version, that is, in 1825; both were exceedingly imperfect. Since then several other translations in prose and verse have appeared in both languages, especially in English,—though the "twenty or thirty metrical ones" of which Mr. C.T. Brooks speaks in his preface are probably to be taken as a mere mode of speech,—and lately one by this gentleman himself, in our very midst. This latter comes, perhaps, as near to perfection as it is possible for the reproduction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... his Old Celtic Romances, from which I have borrowed a touch or two. I have neither extenuated nor added aught but the last sentence of the Fairy Maiden's last speech. Part of the original is in metrical form, so that the whole is of the cante-fable species which I believe to be the original form of the folk-tale (Cf. Eng. Fairy Tales, notes, p. 240, ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... of weights and measures, known as the metrical, was planned, and a new mode of reckoning time was introduced. The names of the months were altered, titles being given them expressive of the character of each. Each month was divided into three periods of ten days each, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Prose Style of Poets" in the "Plain Speaker": "What is a little extraordinary, there is a want of rhythmus and cadence in what they write without the help of metrical rules. Like persons who have been accustomed to sing to music, they are at a loss in the absence of the habitual accompaniment and guide to their judgment. Their style halts, totters, is loose, disjointed, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... gymnastics, or legerdemain, of which the object is to win the admiration of the crowd. That is not so. Metre is born as all beauty is born the universe through. The current set up within well-defined bounds gives metrical verse power to move the minds of men as vague ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... original versions of Ibsen's early plays is interesting, and might, if satisfactorily elucidated, throw considerable light on the development of his genius. It is evident that he was in this early period experimenting in metrical forms. He employed blank verse in Catiline, in the original version of The Grouse in Justedal, and even as late as 1853 in the revision of The Warrior's Barrow. There can be no question but that he was here following the Ochlenschlaeger tradition. Unrhymed ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... Gentlemen, we discussed the difference between verse, or metrical writing, and prose. We traced that difference (as you will remember) to Music—to the harp, the lyre, the dance, the chorus, all those first necessary accompaniments which verse never quite forgets; and we concluded that, as Music ever introduces emotion, which is indeed her proper and only ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... ancient authors as well as of those of other countries, and, all things considered, a literal version in prose appears to present the fewest disadvantages, for it disarms the translator of the temptation to poetical flights and metrical ingenuity, and brings us nearer to the man and the age to be immediately and ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... can ever be made popular here, it must be in the manner generally adopted by Mr. Mac-Carthy in the specimens, six in number, which are here translated, preserving, namely, the metrical form, which is one of the characteristics of the old Spanish drama. This medium, through which it partakes of the lyrical character, is no accident of style, but an essential property of that remarkable creation of a poetic ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... war song of the Wollof, though it lacks the sonorous and metrical elements of real poetry, contains true military aggressiveness, mixed with ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... safe, as far as possible, by your unions. The social and recreative side of life you have now taken over into your keeping, you order recreation which shall be as music or as poetry in your associated lives, harmonious, melodious, rhythmic, metrical. All that I have said to-night leads up to this, that the Associated Life is necessary for the enjoyment and the attainment of the best and the highest things that the world can give, as the Guild and the Company formerly, and the Trade Union is now, for the safeguarding ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... Peter know that John Brown's favourite minister 'held the sacred and apostolical succession of the Scottish priesthood.' Little would he have thought of apologizing to the English reader for 'the antique and ballad verses' of our metrical version of the Psalms. Indeed, so devoid was he of learning, that he could scarce have valued at a sufficiently high rate the doctrines of Oxford; and so little gifted with taste, that he would have probably failed to appreciate the sublimities of Brady and Tate. Nor could Peter have ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... Metrical compliment is an ample reward for my strains: you are one of the few votaries of Apollo who unite the sciences over which that deity presides. I wish you to send my poems to my lodgings in London immediately, as I have several alterations and some additions ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... "This word, during the middle ages, was indiscriminately applied to Pagans and Mahometans; in short, to all nations (except the Jew's) who did not profess Christianity." Mr. Ellis's specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. i. page 196, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... enough? I half think so.) But my great point is a fear that you are one of those who are unjust to our old Tennyson's Duke of Wellington. I have just been talking it over with Symonds; and we agreed that whether for its metrical effects, for its brief, plain, stirring words of portraiture, as—he "that never lost an English gun," or—the soldier salute; or for the heroic apostrophe to Nelson; that ode has never been surpassed in any tongue ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... palm and span from the width of his hand and the spread of his fingers, his foot from the length of the organ so named; his cubit is the distance from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow, and his fathom is the space he can measure with his outstretched arms. [Footnote: The French metrical system seems destined to be adopted throughout the civilized world. It is indeed recommended by great advantages, but it is very doubtful whether they are not more than counterbalanced by the selection of too large a unit of measure, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... because its ending was not tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, and others, and in the excellent prose version (Inferno) of John Aitken Carlyle, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... "Chirurgerie," with portrait of the translator, appeared in 1565. He would have been an eminently suitable father, distinguished alike in his art and his character, author of "The Court of Virtue," and many metrical Bible translations; but he died in 1566, and the Stratford Dr. John Hall was born in 1575. Halliwell-Phillipps[187] suggests that he may have been connected with the Halls of Acton, Middlesex, because he left ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... and the drama which followed them would have been lost had they succeeded in their object, and their verse would have been constrained into the warped and ugly forms of Sternhold and Hopkins, and those with them who composed the first and worst metrical version of the Psalms. When their idea reappeared for its fulfilment phantasy and imagery had temporarily worn themselves out, and the richer language made simplicity possible ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... preferred, and where obvious typographical errors have been rectified. Every minute particular in which the second 4to differs from the first, I have thought it unnecessary to note. The absurd punctuation and faulty metrical arrangement of the old copy have not been followed; and I must be allowed to add that I have retained the original spelling only in accordance to the decision of ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... which furnish us with direct or indirect evidence concerning them hardly enable us to form an opinion. But we know that (the cavilling spirit of Chaucer's burlesque "Rhyme of Sir Thopas" notwithstanding) the efforts of English metrical romance in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were neither few nor feeble, although these romances were chiefly translations, sometimes abridgments to boot—even the Arthurian cycle having ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the provincialisms to be met with in this volume, I may say that the reader will not find one which is not (as I believe) either native or imported with the early settlers, nor one which I have not, with my own ears, heard in familiar use. In the metrical portion of the book, I have endeavoured to adapt the spelling as nearly as possible to the ordinary mode of pronunciation. Let the reader who deems me overparticular remember this caution ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... the usual form. The retained que is therefore emphatic.—Voeux very frequent in poetry for prieres, for metrical reasons. The whole expression is elliptical: qui te rend [a moi en ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... for hereditaments, specimens, Walter Scott's Border Minstrelsy, Percy's collection, Ellis's early English Metrical Romances, the European continental poems of Walter of Aquitania, and the Nibelungen, of pagan stock, but monkish-feudal redaction; the history of the Troubadours, by Fauriel; even the far-back cumbrous old Hindu epics, as ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... diabolic connections appear in the metrical romances of the twelfth or thirteenth century, as well as in those early Anglo-Norman chroniclers or fabulists, who have been at the pains to inform us of the pre-historic events of their country. The author of the romance-poem of the well-known Merlin—so famous in British prophecy—in ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... P[a]li and Burmese. The P[a]li is by far the more ancient, including as it does the Buddhist scriptures that originally found their way to Burma from Ceylon and southern India. The Burmese literature is for the most part metrical, and consists of religious romances, chronological histories and songs. The Maha Yazawin or "Royal Chronicle," forms the great historical work of Burma. This is an authorized history, in which everything unflattering ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... in the metrical version. No that I would preen my faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. "Who go to sea in ships," they ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expressions, gentle reader, which occur in the notes to the life of Robin Hood, prefixed to the ballads which go under his name: 1795. 2 vols. 8vo.—also a Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy in the first vol. of Ancient Metrical Romances, 1802, 3 vols. 8vo. A very common degree of shrewdness and of acquaintance with English literature will shew that, in Menander and Sycorax, are described honest TOM WARTON and snarling 'mister' ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics— which are in the original, my Indians tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention—display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my live long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much the growth of the common soil as the grass and the rushes. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, ...
— Gitanjali • Rabindranath Tagore
... breath and finer spirit of all knowledge,' according to Wordsworth, the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science'—that poetry irrespective of rhyme and metrical arrangement which is as immortal as the heart of man, is distinctive in Mr. Allen's work from the first written page. Like Minerva issuing full-formed from the head of Jove, Mr. Allen issues from his long years of silence and seclusion a perfect master of his art—unfailing ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... ballad. Mr. Train acknowledged his letter with gratitude, and the little book reached him just as he was about to embark in the lighthouse yacht. He took it with him on his voyage, and, on returning home again, wrote to Mr. Train, expressing the gratification he had received from several of his metrical pieces, but still more from his notes, and requesting him, as he seemed to be enthusiastic about traditions and legends, to communicate any matters of that order connected with Galloway which he might not himself think of turning to account; "for," said ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... avenues of study; led me to explore "fresh fields and pastures new," to which, but for her help, I might not have found my way for many a year to come. My reading, till now, had been almost wholly English or classical; she sent me to the old French literature—to the Chansons de Geste; to the metrical romances of the Trouveres; to the Chronicles of Froissart, Monstrelet, and Philip de Comines, and to the poets and dramatists ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... expressive of intense and rapturous delight, very strange to listen to in such a place and from an old man's lips. Then the language he spoke changed from English into Gaelic, and there came a kind of hymn of adoration. His sentences followed each other in metrical balance like the Latin of the old liturgies, and suited themselves naturally to a subdued melody, half chant, half cry, like the mourning of the keeners round a grave. At last, rising from his knees, ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... thing at which, as it seems to me, a Horatian translator ought to aim, is some kind of metrical conformity to his original. Without this we are in danger of losing not only the metrical, but the general effect of the Latin; we express ourselves in a different compass, and the character of the expression is altered accordingly. For instance, one of Horace's leading features ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick. Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... earlier period of the English stage, after the play was concluded, the audience were commonly entertained by a Jig. As no piece of that kind is extant, we are unable to ascertain its nature with precision; but it appears to have been a ludicrous metrical composition, either spoken or sung by the Clown, and occasionally accompanied by dancing and playing on the pipe and tabor. More persons than one were sometimes employed in a jig; and there is reason to ...
— Kemps Nine Daies Wonder - Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich • William Kemp
... represents accurately enough the use of the word rhapsodia in the latter periods of Greek literature. Suppose the word canto to be taken in its literal etymological sense, it would indicate a metrical composition meant to be sung or chanted. But what constitutes the complexity of the idea in the word rhapsodia is that both its separate elements, the poetry and the musical delivery, are equally essential; neither is a casual, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... sometimes, perhaps not infrequently, the verse is rugged or uncouth where the sense does not call for such form, and there are lines that not only remind us of De Quincey's dictum that certain words should be "boiled before they are eaten," but which have no metrical flow at all; they defy any sort of scansion and read like rough prose. But a poet has a right of appeal to the sum of his manifest excellencies rather than to his defects, and if we take Browning's best work we find a harmony of movement superior ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... stability of which is of great importance to the duration of a language, because the first change will naturally begin by corruptions in the living speech. The want of certain rules for the pronunciation of former ages, has made us wholly ignorant of the metrical art of our ancient poets; and since those who study their sentiments regret the loss of their numbers, it is surely time to provide that the harmony of the moderns ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... is very little art. Rhyme, although it is known to the mountaineers, is seldom used, and their poetry is, as a rule, nothing more than rhythmical or blank verse broken into irregular stanzas of from seven to eleven metrical feet. This kind of verse they improvise with great readiness and facility. It seems to be the form of expression which their stronger feelings naturally take. I have heard an Avarian mother chant amid her sobs an improvised but rhythmical lament over the body of her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... from amid what Horace often reminds us are essentially plain prose essays in conversational form, their hexametral garb an unpoetical accident. Two versions present themselves to the unclassical student. The first is Conington's scholarly rendering, hampered sometimes rather than adorned by its metrical shape; the other is the more recent construe of Dean Wickham, clear, flowing, readable, stamping with the translator's high authority many a disputed passage. Both set temptingly before English readers the Rome ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... the inflections of moral law in their theme. Law puts a strain upon feeling, and feeling responds with a strain upon law. Furthermore, Aristotle says that the quality of poetic language is a continual slight novelty. In the highest poetry, like that of Milton, these three modes of inflection, metrical, linguistical, and moral, all chime together in praise of the truer order ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... strictly as even not to divide into lines several scenes in The Widow Ranter and The Younger Brother which are palpably blank verse, but yet which are not so set in the quartos of 1690 and 1696. I felt that the metrical difficulties and kindred questions involved were so capable of almost infinite variations, that to attempt a new and decisive text in this matter would not merely be hazardous but also unproductive of any real benefit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... length and his first great popular success. And, as Lockhart has sufficiently shown, it was impossible for Scott to get to it except through the years of exploration and editing, the collection of the Border ballads, the study of the old metrical romance of Sir Tristrem. The story of the Goblin Page was at first reckoned enough simply for one of the additions to the Border Minstrelsy on the scale of a ballad. Scott had tried another sort of imitation in the stanzas composed ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... that these ballads, at least, should be published, and he set to work to prepare them for the press. Allan Cunningham, with whom Borrow was acquainted, contributed, at his request, a metrical dedication. The volume appeared on 10th May, in an edition of five hundred copies at ten shillings and sixpence each. It appears that some two hundred copies were subscribed for, thus ensuring the cost of production. The ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... of the metrical unit in Old English verse, the half-line, Professor Eduard Sievers,[4] of the University of Leipzig, has shown that there are only five types, or varieties, employed. These he classifies as ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... Lycidas than in any other pastoral, is apparently of Roman origin. Milton, employing the noble freedom of a great artist, has here united ancient mythology, with what may be called the modern mythology of Camus and Saint Peter,—to direct Christian images.—The metrical structure of this glorious poem is partly derived from ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... just as a botanist in examining a new flower would divide it in his mind's eye into its different parts. He would never mistake the calyx for a petal, and he would be able to determine at once the peculiarities of each part. In addition to the melodic phrases the pupil should be able to see the metrical divisions which underlie the form of the piece. He should be able to tell whether the composition is one of eight-measure sections or four-measure sections, or whether the sections ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... Helmholtz show that each note may be regarded as a harmonic whole, owing to the complementary sounds which accompany it in its complete development. With reference to our own race, the genesis of the composition of verse and metre are shown by the researches made by Westphal and others into the metrical system of the Vedic Aryans, the Turanians, and the Greeks, since the fact that their metres were the same implies a common origin. The demonstration is complete, if we compare the iambic metre of Archilochus with that of the Vedic hymns. There are in both ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... adopted the custom of appointing godly laymen as readers whose duty it was to assist the minister by leading the congregation in the responses in the Church service, and in raising tunes for the singing of metrical version of the Psalms. Later, when it was found desirable to erect chapels of ease in populous parishes, enough readers were appointed in every parish to permit one of them to hold morning service each Sunday in each place of worship throughout the parish, while the minister went his usual round ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... not in my power to accept the invitation of the committee to be present at the unveiling of the bust of Longfellow on the 27th instant, or to write anything worthy of the occasion in metrical form. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... activity, parliamentary labors, educational addresses, and metrical discourses on memorable occasions filled the years from 1829 to 1840. He felt the demon of insanity lurking behind him, now close at his heels, now farther away; and it was a desperate race, in which life and death, nay, worse than death, was at stake. His indefatigable exertions ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Six and twentiethly, as it trotteth easily with metrical feet, so at the end of the career of each line, hath it dexterity, after the manner of our English and other vernaculary tongues, to stop with the closure of a rhyme; in the framing whereof, the well-versed in that language shall have so little labour, that for every word therein he shall be able ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Austria and Italy, we eventually find him in St. Petersburg, where he undertook the translation of the Bible into the Mandschu-Tartar language, and issued in 1835, through Schulz and Beneze, his "Targum; or Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects." While in Russia, he made many friends amongst the nobility there, who frequently invited him to their country homes. In the same year that saw the publication of "Targum," he ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... worship in the reformed churches. The gradual change in the French language since the date of its composition has rendered necessary some modernizing of the style both of the prayers and of the accompanying psalms. These modifications, much more radical in the case of the metrical psalms, took place in the eighteenth century, and commended themselves so fully to the good sense of all French-speaking Protestants as soon to be everywhere adopted. The MS. records of the French church in New York (folio 45) contain, under date of ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... poem in leonine hexameters, composed about 1030 at Tegernsee, Bavaria. It is imperfectly preserved, but more than 2000 verses are extant, and these give interesting pictures of contemporary German life. It is a metrical novel with a knight for hero. The selection is from M. Heyne's Rudlieb, 1897,—a translation in ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... and universities to educate the working classes to appreciate what is best in standard English poetry. I do not deny that much maybe done in this way, but let us not forget that something more will be needed than a course of instruction in poetic diction and metrical rhythm. Our great poets depict a world which is only to a very small extent that of the working man. It is a world of courts and drawingrooms and General Headquarters, a world of clubs and academies. The working man or ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... down which the relation of congruence between segments is to satisfy. It is supposed that we have a complete theory of points, straight lines, planes, and the order of points on planes—in fact, a complete theory of non-metrical geometry. We then enquire about congruence and lay down the set of conditions—or axioms as they are called—which this relation satisfies. It has then been proved that there are alternative relations which satisfy these conditions equally well ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... addresses, presented to the Convention at various periods, might form a curious history of the progress of despotism. These effusions of zeal were not, however, all in the "sublime" style: the legislative dignity sometimes condescended to unbend itself, and listen to metrical compositions, enlivened by the accompaniment of fiddles; but the manly and ferocious Danton, to whom such sprightly interruptions were not congenial, proposed a decree, that the citizens should, in future, express their adorations in plain prose, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... version of a poem which he himself regarded as his best work, and which still retains something of its former popularity. This was the ballad of 'Edwin and Angelina', otherwise known as 'The Hermit'. It originated in certain metrical discussions with Percy, then engaged upon his famous 'Reliques of English Poetry'; and in 1765, Goldsmith, who through his friend Nugent (afterwards Lord Clare) had made the acquaintance of the Earl of Northumberland, printed it privately for ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... of 1835 included two poems, signed "J. R.," and entitled "Saltzburg" and "Fragments from a Metrical Journal; Andernacht ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of "Sir Isumbras," from Ellis's "Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances" (Bohr's ed. p. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... in lyrical form—if the word form may be applied to her utter disregard of all metrical conventions. Her lines are rugged and her expressions wayward to an extraordinary degree, but "her verses all show a strange cadence of inner rhythmical music," and the "thought-rhymes" which she often substitutes ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... whence things are seen in their immediate relation to the individual soul. This kind of research is the work of letters; here are facts of human life to be noted that are never like to be numerically tabulated, changes and developments that defy all metrical standards to be traced and described. The greater men of science have been cast in so generous a mould that they have recognised the partial nature of their task; they have known how to play with science as a pastime, and to win and wear her decorations for a holiday favour. They have ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... place may be given to a marble image (Fig. 77) found in 1878 on the island of Delos, that ancient center of Apolline worship for the Ionians. On the left side of the figure is engraved in early Greek characters a metrical inscription, recording that the statue was dedicated to Artemis by one Nicandra of Naxos. Whether it was intended to represent the goddess Artemis or the woman Nicandra, we cannot tell; nor is the question of much importance to us. We have here an extremely rude attempt ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... knowledge of early British history, secular as well as religious, and has been praised by historical writers of all ages, who turned to it for help with confidence. He wrote a number of other historical works. Besides, he wrote books on grammar, orthography, the metrical art, on rhetoric, on the nature of things, the seasons, and on the calculation of the seasons. These latter books are distinctly scientific. His contributions to Gregorian Music are ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... the region of letters I only can dimly foresee, But guess that from metrical fetters The verse you'll affect must be free; And I shan't be surprised or astounded If your generation rebels Against adulation unbounded Of MASEFIELD ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 28, 1917 • Various
... Pomegranates" were the only English poems which can be supposed to have given it birth, even indirectly. In its interpretation of mystical thoughts by concrete images, in its mediaeval fervor and consistence of fancy, in its peculiar metrical facility, it was distinctly new—original as few poems except those by the acknowledged masters of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... progress of the work, and many valuable suggestions; to Prof. Feuling, the eminent philologist, of the University of Wisconsin, for his literal version of the extracts from the "Deutsche Theologie," which preserve the quaintness of the original, and to Mrs. F. M. Brown, for her metrical version of Goethe's almost untranslatable lines, "Ueber allen Gipfeln, ist Ruh," which form the keynote of the beautiful harmony in the character ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... Greek vases. But the most curious fact connected with their use in this country seems to be the knowledge our Saxon ancestors had of them; though the use, in accordance with the earliest custom, appears to have been as a shelter or mark of distinction for royalty. In Caedmon's "Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of Scripture," now in the British Museum (Harleian MS. No. 603), an Anglo-Saxon manuscript of the tenth century, is the drawing of a king, who has an umbrella held over his head by an attendant, in the same way as it is borne over modern eastern kings. ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... introduced by Wundt. Wundt, being a physiologist, applied the methods of study proper to physiological functions to psychical study. He did not make the exact metrical instrument his aim; but he measured nervous reactions exactly in time. Fechner's primitive researches made it possible to produce instruments so exact that they can measure the sound made by a drop of water falling from the height of ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... yet it is not on account of want of metrical harmony in respect to the lyre, to borrow the words of Plato, that cities quarrel with cities and friends with friends, and do and suffer the worst woes, but on account of deviations[670] from law and justice. And yet some, who themselves ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... too, collected for many years past by Mr. William Archer, I have received important help. Indeed, of Mr. Archer it is difficult for an English student of Ibsen to speak with moderation. It is true that thirty-six years ago some of Ibsen's early metrical writings fell into the hands of the writer of this little volume, and that I had the privilege, in consequence, of being the first person to introduce Ibsen's name to the British public. Nor will I pretend for a moment that ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... sow; A foot he had between each brow; His lips were great, and hung aside; His eyen were hollow, his mouth was wide; Lothly he was to look on than, And liker a devil than a man. His staff was a young oak, Hard and heavy was his stroke." Specimens of Metrical ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... when lashed by her sparkling humor, were either unable or unwilling to respond. She was accompanied by "Ike," Mrs. Partington's son, impersonated by a clever youth of ten years, son of John M. Sandidge of Louisiana. Mr. John Von Sonntag Haviland, formerly of the U.S. Army, wrote a metrical description of this ball, and in referring to Mrs. Clay, thus ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... we find them still united. The dances of savages are accompanied by some kind of monotonous chant, the clapping of hands, the striking of rude instruments: there are measured movements, measured words, and measured tones. The early records of historic races similarly show these three forms of metrical action united in religious festivals. In the Hebrew writings we read that the triumphal ode composed by Moses on the defeat of the Egyptians, was sung to an accompaniment of dancing and timbrels. The Israelites danced and sung "at the inauguration of ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... has the following note here: "The ancient and powerful family of Graham (which, for metrical reasons, is here smelled after the Scottish pronunciation) held extensive possessions in the counties of Dumbarton and Stirling. Few families can boast of more historical renown, having claim to three of the most remarkable characters in the Scottish annals. Sir ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... essential, without which it cannot exist. Custom has appropriated different metre to different kinds of composition, in which the world is not perfectly agreed. In England the dispute is not yet settled which is to be preferred, rhyme or blank verse. But however we disagree about what these metrical ornaments shall be, that some metre is ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... to be dethroned, to whom should the sceptre and the crown be given? Lord Bacon had a kingly soul, capacious great thoughts, and high designs, but no one who has read his metrical translation of the Psalms of David will be troubled again with doubts whether he was the writer also of "Macbeth," "Othello," and "Lear." Compared with these sterile, bald, and mechanical quatrains, the sacred hymns of Isaac Watts are howling and bacchanalian ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... with a metrical fluency, he scraped a little jig on the violin, while Dummer led off a procession which solemnly capered round the room in sundry stages of conscious awkwardness. Mr. Bultitude shuffled along somehow after the rest, with rebellion at his heart and a deep sense of degradation. "If my ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... were less successful. There were few elaborate attempts in this field, indeed, by men of decided genius. But the great obstacle may be found in the imperfection of the language and the deficiency of the more exact and finished metrical forms, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... quality, while these other emotions are but material upon which, in common with many other things, it may work. And being a relatively fixed condition, it is, for its part, in no need of changing metrical devices for its expression, and to maintain that the "emotions," subjects of its activity, should have in their alternation a corresponding alternation of metrical device is no more reasonable than to maintain that other ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... selections from the Amyntas quoted in this article have been selected from the admirable metrical translation of Mr. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... musical devotion have always wished for a more happy metrical version than they have yet obtained of the Book of Psalms. This wish the piety of Blackmore led him to gratify, and he produced (1721) "A New Version of the Psalms of David fitted to the Tunes used in Churches," ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... brief picture of the land, and the fuller one of the sea, and that (more elaborate still) of the occupations of the fugitive, all have their own charm. But the triumph of the piece is in one of those metrical coups which give the triumph of all the greatest poetry, in the sudden change from the slower movements of the earlier stanzas or strophes to the quicker sweep ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... distinct, so palpable, that a whole prose encyclopaedia of disconnected facts could give us nothing like them. It is the marvellous property of verse—one, if we rightly consider it, which would excuse any superstition on the origin of language—that the metrical and rhythmic arrangement of syllable and sound is able to catch and express back to us, not the stories of actions, but the actions themselves, with all the feelings which inspire them; to call up human action, and all other outward things in which human hearts take ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Rossi succeeded in finding and putting together the inscriptions of four of these early popes, and, with Cuvier-like sagacity, he reconstructed, out of a hundred and twelve separate, minute, and scattered pieces, the metrical inscription in which Damasus expressed his desire to be buried with them, but his fear ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... parks, cars which ran without horses or steam, and millions of inhabitants produced no impression whatsoever, my most improbable tale being received with a diffident condescension, equalled only by the metrical repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. Given a few months in New York or Paris, and Mindanao's future Sultana would bloom like a rose in manners and millinery, for, despite her reserve, she is adaptable and what the ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... was almost always love—generally love of a sweetheart; sometimes of the simpler aspects of nature, sometimes the love of the Virgin. Besides this they wrote also many didactic, religious, and patriotic songs. The rhythmical and metrical structure of their verse was very complicated and generally very skillful, sometimes, however, running into eccentricities and barren technicalities. The Minnesinger generally composed the music of his song at the same time with ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... twelve words—"Well hath he spoken for one who giveth heed not to fall"—to express a sentiment which Sophocles (OEd. Tyr. 616) is able to compress into four—[Greek: kalos elexen eulaboumeno pesein]. Moreover, albeit under the stress of metrical and linguistic necessity the translator must generally indulge in paraphrase, let him beware lest in doing so he sacrifices that quality in which the Greeks excelled, to wit, simplicity. Nietzsche said, with great truth, "Die ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... should be placed side by side with Comus and Alexander's Feast. Other eminent statesmen and orators, Walpole, Pulteney, Chatham, Fox, wrote poetry not better than his. But fortunately for them, their metrical compositions were never thought worthy to be admitted into any collection of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Watts-Dunton, in his famous article on Poetry in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has been at pains to examine. He starts by admitting a little more than I should grant. "There is one great point of superiority," says he, "that musical art exhibits over metrical art. This consists, not in the capacity for melody, but in the capacity for harmony in the musician's sense...." "Why, of course," is my comment upon this: "every art can easily claim excellence, if it take that ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... devoted some time to preparing a free metrical translation of "Ishtar's Descent." Unfortunately, owing to his many occupations, only the first part of the poem is as yet finished. This he most kindly has placed at our disposal, authorizing us to present it ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... of requiem for her death. It was not published during his life, but after his death it appeared in the New York Tribune. Immediately it took rank as one of the three greatest poems Poe ever wrote. It is long enough to be complete, it has none of those metrical imperfections found in his earlier poems, and it possesses in a wonderful degree that haunting thrill so characteristic of all the best things Poe wrote. Moreover, it has a musical flow surpassing any other of Poe's poems except "The Bells," and in some respects ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... the choicest of English satires, to wit, all Dryden's finest pieces, the Medal, MacFlecknoe, and Absalom and Achitophel, Swift's Tale of a Tub, and his Miscellanies—among which his best metrical satires appeared; all Defoe's work, too, as well as Steele's in the Tatler, and Addison's in the Spectator, Arbuthnot's History of John Bull, Churchill's Rosciad, and finally all Pope's poems, ...
— English Satires • Various
... current from earliest times, refers, perhaps, to the adventures of a knight, the contemporary of Arthur or of Cassivellaunus. The tale seems to have already been known in the sixth century, and was soon seized upon by the bards, who found it a rich theme for their metrical romances. It is quite unknown whether it was first turned into Latin, French, or Welsh verse; but an established fact is that it has been translated into every European language, and was listened to with as much interest by the inhabitants ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... Mr. Kinosling. "No tobacco for me. No cigar, no pipe, no cigarette, no cheroot. For me, a book—a volume of poems, perhaps. Verses, rhymes, lines metrical and cadenced—those are my dissipation. Tennyson by preference: 'Maud,' or 'Idylls of the King'—poetry of the sound Victorian days; there is none later. Or Longfellow will rest me in a tired hour. Yes; for me, a book, a volume in the hand, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... traces of versification, and was able to extract a number of verses which he assigned to Babrius. Tyrwhitt (De Babrio, 1776) followed up the researches of Bentley, and for some time the efforts of scholars were directed towards reconstructing the metrical original of the prose fables. In 1842 M. Minas, a Greek, the discoverer of the Philosophoumena of Hippolytus, came upon a MS. of Babrius in the convent of St Laura on Mount Athos, now in the British Museum. This MS. contained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... only particularize a few of the most striking papers. Among the metrical gems is Conradin, a fine battle-piece, by Mr. Charles Swain; an Every-day Tale, by Montgomery—one of "the short and simple annals of the poor," written in behalf of a Society for relieving distressed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... form of the story of the Holy Grail is the French metrical romance of "Perceval" or "Le Conte du Graal" of Chretien de Troies, written about 1175. Chretien died leaving the poem unfinished, and it was continued by three other authors till it reached the vast size of 63,000 lines. The religious signification of the Grail ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... STUART, a man of versatile gifts and warm human sympathies, born in Glasgow; bred to the bar, but devoted to literary pursuits; studied German; executed a metrical translation of Goethe's "Faust," Part I.; filled the chair of Humanity in Aberdeen, and afterwards that of Greek in Edinburgh; was a zealous educational reformer; took an active interest in everything affecting the welfare and honour of Scotland; founded a Celtic Chair ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Browning sweep the soul upward to spiritual heights, and answer some of the deepest questionings of the soul of man. And hence literature is no longer merely a thing of vocabulary, of phrase, of rhythm, of assonance, of alliteration, or of metrical and philosophical form. It is a revelation of the progress of the soul, of its standards, of its triumphs, its defeats, and its desires. It is the unfolding of one's intellectual helplessness before the unmoved, calm passing of years; of one's emotional inadequacy ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... languages; and English, German and French writers are all agreed in pronouncing it one of the most perfect expressions of the religion and philosophy of the Vedas. Sir Edwin Arnold popularized it by his metrical rendering under the name of "The Secret of Death," and Ralph Waldo Emerson gives its story in brief at the close of his essay ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... an examination of the rimes will show (a b b a a b b a: c d d e c e), there is a natural metrical division at the end of the eighth line. The first eight lines in technical language are called the "octave," the last six lines are called the "sestet." The octave is sometimes said to consist of two quatrains, and the ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... in conduct. Persons acquainted with the histories of olden times, conversant with duties, devoted to the scriptures and firm in maintaining the restraints therein laid down, recite in this connection some metrical lines sung in days of yore by Yama. Even this is what Yama had sung. That man who acquires wealth by selling his own son, or who bestows his daughter after accepting a dower for his own livelihood, has to sink in seven terrible hells one after another, known ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... for the production of a metrical essay, composed chiefly of imperfect and immature pieces:—the ambition to contribute towards the fund of Christmas entertainment, in which agreeable labour I see many popular names engaged,—and among them, one, the most ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... taken down all the books from a hitherto undisturbed corner, and had seated myself on a heap of them, no doubt a very impersonation of the genius of the place; for while I waited for the housekeeper, I was consuming a morsel of an ancient metrical romance. After waiting for some time, I glanced towards the door, for I had begun to get impatient for the entrance of my helper. To my surprise, there stood Lady Alice, her eyes fixed upon me with an expression I could not comprehend. Her face instantly altered to its usual look ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... coinciding with these always;—as giving to verse "a part of its musical character," yet diminishing that character, by their usual coincidence with "the prose accents;"—as being kept distinct in Latin and Greek, "the metrical" from "the prosaic" and their "coincidence avoided," to make poetry more poetical,—though the old prosodists, in all they say of accents, acute, grave, and circumflex, give no hint of this primary distinction! In all this elementary ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... to be presentable in print. It was his usual practice, when he undertook any subject in verse, to write down his thoughts first in a sort of poetical prose,—with, here and there, a rhyme or a metrical line, as they might occur—and then, afterwards to reduce with much labor, this anomalous compound to regular poetry. The birth of his prose being, as we have already seen, so difficult, it may be imagined how painful was the travail of ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... composed by successive generations; the Atharvan represents different ages; each Br[a]hmana appears to belong in part to one era, in part to another; the earliest S[u]tras (manuals of law, etc.) have been interpolated; the earliest metrical code is a composite; the great epic is the work of centuries; and not only do the Upanishads and Pur[a]nas represent collectively many different periods, but exactly to which period each individually is to be assigned remains always doubtful. Only in the case of the Buddhistic writings is there ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... early, and that thus the horrors of the Sabbath were in my case abbreviated. The older members of the family sat in a silent semicircle round the smouldering fire, each holding, and some possibly reading, a book, the suitableness of which for use at such a time was beyond question. The Bible, the metrical version of the Psalms, and one or two volumes of discourses by divines of undoubted orthodoxy, formed the only literature recognised on these occasions. For myself, I had brought with me from home a copy of the delightful, though now forgotten, book called "Evenings at Home." and my Sabbatical ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... verse of twelve syllables, with the stress on the second, fifth, eighth, and eleventh syllables, makes a dodecasyllable of amphibrachs. This dodecasyllable has a short metrical pause after the sixth syllable, and a longer one after ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... Mirabilis, and others; but in no instance so happily as here by Gray. In the Elegy the quatrain has not the somewhat disjunctive and isolating effect that it has in some other works where there is continuous argument or narrative that should run on with as few metrical hindrances as possible. It is well adapted to convey a series of solemn reflections, and that is its ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... interesting of these early heraldic Rolls records, in a metrical form, and in Norman-French, the siege and capture of the fortress of Carlaverock, on the Scottish border, by EDWARDI., in the year 1300. In addition to very curious descriptions of the muster of the Royal troops at Carlisle, their march northwards, and the incidents ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... continuation of the poems of 1855; except in one instance, where Tennyson's method in Maud, that of a sequence of lyrics, is adopted, the methods are the same; the predominating themes of Men and Women, love, art, religion, are the predominating themes of Dramatis Personae. A slight metrical complication—the internal rhyme in the second line of each stanza of Dis aliter visum and in the third line of the quatrains of May and Death—may be noted as indicating Browning's love of new metrical experiments. In the former of these poems ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... these poems is often too obsolete for the era to which they are allotted[G], appears clearly from hence; many of them are much more difficult to a reader of this day, without a glossary, than any one of the metrical compositions of the age of Edward IV. Let any person, who is not very profoundly skilled in the language of our elder poets, read a few pages of any of the poems of the age of that king, from whence I have already ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... was very great; and it is hardly too much to say that the result of their efforts was the creation of something hitherto lacking in French literature—a poetical instrument which, in its strength, its freedom, its variety of metrical resources, and its artistic finish, was really adequate to fulfil the highest demands of genius. In this direction their most important single achievement was their elevation of the 'Alexandrine' verse—the great ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... to thee, thou holy herb, That sprung on holy ground! All in the Mount Olivet First wert thou found: Thou art boot for many a bruise, And healest many a wound; In our Lady's blessed name, I take thee from the ground.' [This metrical spell, or something very like it, is preserved by Reginald Scott, in ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... which was the language of the Brahmans, resumed its pre-eminence and took possession of the whole field of literature and art and science as well as of theology. Oral traditions were reduced to writing and poetry was adapted to both sacred and profane uses in the Puranas, in the metrical code of Manu, in treatises on sacrificial ritual, in Kalidasa's plays, and in many other works of which only fragments have survived. Astronomy, logic, philosophy were all cultivated with equal fervour and to the greater glory of Brahmanism. Local ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... p. 119.).—ARUN may find all the information he seeks by consulting a treatise of Heylin's on the subject of the metrical version of the Psalms, published by Dr. Rich. Watson, under the title of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... European affairs bring him to British ground, he is arrived at the very moment when modern history takes new proportions. He can look back for the legends and mythology to the "Younger Edda" and the "Heimrskringla" of Snorro Sturleson, to Mallet's "Northern Antiquities," to Ellis's "Metrical Romances," to Asser's "Life of Alfred," and Venerable Bede, and to the researches of Sharon Turner and Palgrave. Hume will serve him for an intelligent guide, and in the Elizabethan era he is at the richest period of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... play on various instruments; so in order to improve the services, and make them more attractive, I urged him to invite these musical people to his house to practise; and in due course we had a clarionet, two fiddles, and his bass viol, with a few singers to form a choir. We tried over some metrical psalms (for there were no hymn-books in those days), and soon succeeded in learning them. This musical performance drew many people to church. The singers were undeniably the great attraction, and they knew it; consequently I was somewhat in their power, and had to submit ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... composed of two things, the actual work and the theory of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in the individual subject, while the other, the theory, is common to all scholars: for example, to physicians and musicians the rhythmical beat of the pulse and its metrical movement. But if there is a wound to be healed or a sick man to be saved from danger, the musician will not call, for the business will be appropriate to the physician. So in the case of a musical instrument, not the physician but the musician will be the ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... these Poems has already been submitted to general perusal. It was published as an experiment, which, I hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a Poet may rationally endeavour ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... from the Latin, is certainly noticeable. That Byron could have seen the piece before he wrote his own lines in question is almost impossible, for this portion of the Carmina Burana had not, so far as I am aware, been edited before the year 1847. The coincidence of metrical form, so far as it extends, only establishes the spontaneity of emotion which, in the case of the medieval and the modern poet, found a similar rhythm for the utterance ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... mantle of the Minnesingers fell upon the guilds of musical amateurs in the growing commercial cities. Less poetic than their predecessors, these Mastersingers, as they named themselves, often took refuge in arbitrary rules and set metrical forms that made a poor substitute for real inspiration. That there was some genuine poetic feeling and humour among them is shown by the work of Hans Sachs, the greatest of their number. He wrote ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... go on in an environment closely analogous to earth; I could not, for instance, write in another world the epics which the necessity of earning my living may have stifled here, did that other world contain no time, no heroic struggles, or no metrical language. Nor is it clear that my epics, to be perfect, would need to be quite endless. If what is foiled in me is really poetic genius and not simply a tendency toward perpetual motion, it would not help me if in ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... 1645 text and Milton's manuscript read self-consum'd; after which word there is to be understood a metrical pause to mark the violent transition ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... taken from a well known manuscript in the Cottonian collection, marked Nero A. x, which also contains, in the same handwriting and dialect, a metrical romance,[1] wherein the adventures of Sir Gawayne with the "Knight in Green," are most ably ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... of the vellums, and must have been composed at least a century before Hauk's Book was written; they may well be much older than the beginning of the thirteenth century (Reeves). The antiquity of the verses of the saga is also attested by a certain metrical irregularity, as in poetry of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... and the scope of this volume are set forth in the beginning of Lecture I. Lecture II. explains the various metrical forms in which I understand Jeremiah to have delivered the most of his prophecies, and which I have endeavoured, however imperfectly, to reproduce in English. Here it is necessary only to emphasise the variety of these ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... and half in English, a short elegiac poem on the same subject, &c.; besides a large work, entitled 'Speculum Meditantis,' a poem in French of a moral cast; and 'Vox Clamantis,' consisting of seven books of Latin elegiacs, and chiefly filled with a metrical account of the insurrections of the Commons in the reign of Richard II. In the dedication of this latter work to Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, Gower speaks of his blindness and his age. He says, 'Hanc epistolam subscriptam ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Ideals of the Normans. Geoffrey of Monmouth. Work of the French Writers. Layamon's "Brut." Metrical Romances. The Pearl. Miscellaneous Literature of the Norman ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Perhaps, in thus weaving the alphabet into his numbers, it was the purpose of the poet to give promise of the ultimate attainment of the Alpha and Omega of knowledge. Perhaps the stanza, on the other hand, was merely intended as a pretty poetical conceit, an exercise in metrical ingenuity. If the latter theory holds good, what a pity it would seem that these rubaiyat were not originally written in Chinese, the infinite alphabet of which language would have furnished material for the present work and ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... a mind suddenly disgusted with mechanic toil to seek relief from its opposite, it can easily be imagined that my next resource was Poetry. Every one rhymes now-a-days, and so can I. Shall I write an Epic, or a Tragedy, or a Metrical Romance? Epics are out of fashion; even Homer and Virgil would hardly be read in our time, but that people are unwilling to admit their schooling to have been thrown away. As to Tragedy, I am a modern, and it is a settled thing that no modern can write a tragedy; so I ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... POETRY.—Borrowed, within the last few months, from the Town Residence of a Gentleman, a large 4to. MS., in modern binding, of Early English Poetry, by Richard Rolle, of Hampole; containing, among other matters, Religious Pieces couched in the form of Legal Instruments, and a Metrical Chronicle of the Kings of England, in the style of Lydgate's. As the owner does not recollect to whom it was lent, and is very anxious to refer to it, he will be obliged by its immediate return, either to ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... around asking for subscriptions to a volume of Pekinese Folklore, published by Baron Vitali, Interpreter at the Italian legation, which, on examination, proved to be exactly what I wanted. He had collected about two hundred and fifty rhymes, had made a literal—not metrical—translation and had issued them ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... what were Alfieri's innate likings and dislikings in the domain of the drama. Before all other things, Alfieri was not a poet: he lacked all, or very nearly all, the faculties which are really poetical. To begin with the more gross and external ones, he had no instinct for, no pleasure in, metrical arrangements for their own sake; he did not think nor invent in verse, ideas did not come to him on the wave of metre; he thought out, he elaborately finished, every sentence in prose, and then translated ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... copious and energetic language: but they have no scientific grammar, no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification, and often versification of great power and sweetness: but they have no metrical canons; and the minstrel whose numbers, regulated solely by his ear, are the delight of his audience, would himself be unable to say of how many dactyls and trochees each of his lines consists. As eloquence exists before syntax, and song before ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... out. As an imitation it would fail disastrously. What is imitated in a lyric poem? Through more than two thousand years we have appreciated the works of the great dramatists who had their personages speak in the rhythms of metrical language. Every iambic verse is a deviation from reality. If they had tried to imitate nature Antigone and Hamlet would have spoken the prose of daily life. Does a beautiful arch or dome or tower of a building imitate any part of reality? Is its architectural value dependent upon ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... A famous Italian author of the sixteenth century, who wrote comedies, satires, and a metrical romance, Orlando Furioso.] ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... performances of sacred music, together with the psalter, the timbrel, the sackbut, and the cymbal." The wrath of the polemical Deborah of the Relief-Kirk was somewhat appeased by this explanation, and she inquired in a more diffident tone, whether a Mozart was not a metrical paraphrase of the song of Moses after the overthrow of the Egyptians in the Red Sea; "in which case, I must own," she observed, "that the sin and guilt of the thing is less grievous in the sight of HIM before whom all the actions of men ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... whom the metrical review had been apportioned, "is couched in sonorous lines, of haunting melody and charm; and yet so closely inter-related as to be scarcely quotable with justice to the author. To be appreciated the poem should be read as a whole,—I shall say as much in my ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... Aunt Rhoda and Aunt Cinthia, matrons of portly frame and perilous foothold, engaged in a metrical dialogue concerning the robbing of a bird's nest, in which lively diversion they assumed to have participated. And Bachelor Lot rendered "My beautiful Annabel Lee" with unique effect; and Grandma Keeler ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Crowns in 1603. Now that tradition was in full force on the Border before 1688. We know that (see chapter on Kinmont Willie, infra), for, in 1688, a man born in 1613, Captain Walter Scott of Satchells, in his Metrical History of the Honourable Families of the Names of Scott and Elliot, represents Gilbert Elliot of Stobs as riding with Buccleuch in the rescue of Kinmont Willie, in 1596. {95a} Now Satchells's own father rode in that fray, he says, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... what you must." I was thinking more especially of rhymed verse. Rhythm alone is a tether, and not a very long one. But rhymes are iron fetters; it is dragging a chain and ball to march under their incumbrance; it is a clog-dance you are figuring in, when you execute your metrical pas seul. Consider under what a disadvantage your thinking powers are laboring when you are handicapped by the inexorable demands of our scanty English rhyming vocabulary! You want to say something ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... is by John Barbour (sometimes written Barber, Barbere, and Barbare), an eminent Scottish metrical historian. It has been said that he received his education at the Abbey of Aberbrothock, where he took orders, and obtained a living near Aberdeen. Dr. Henry supposes Barbour to have become Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1356. It is probable he died towards ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 237, May 13, 1854 • Various
... more may be noticed here:—the rigmarole, snatches of which probably most of us have heard, which contains an immense number of mere truisms having no connexion with each others, and no bond of union but the metrical form in which their juxtaposition is effected, and the rhyme, which is kept up very well throughout, though sometimes by the introduction of a nonsense line. Who ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... introduction of a supplementary choriambus. This was much employed by Sappho and by Alcaeus, as well as in Alexandrian times by Callimachus and Theocritus. Among the Latins, Horace, in imitation of Alcaeus, made constant use of choriambic verse. Metrical experts distinguish six varieties of it in his Odes. This is an example of his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... published his "True-born Englishman," a satire upon the English people for their stupid opposition to the continental policy of the King. This is the only metrical composition of prolific Daniel that has any pretensions to be called a poem. It contains some lines not unworthy to rank with those of Dryden at his second-best. For ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... of consequence, mainly, as one of the first and greatest improvers of dramatic poetry in so far as relates to diction and metrical style; which is my reason for emphasizing his work so much in that regard. But, as this is a virtue much easier felt than described, I can best show what it is, by giving a taste of it; ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... the most part derived. The same violent Lancastrian sympathy runs through Walsingham and the fifth book of Knyghton's Chronicle. The French authorities on the other hand are vehemently on Richard's side. Froissart, who ends at this time, is supplemented by the metrical history of Creton ("Archaeologia," vol. xx.), and by the "Chronique de la Traison et Mort de Richart" (English Historical Society), both works of French authors and published in France in the time of Henry ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green |
