"Quatrain" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will see the infamous "Verses, fix'd on the Cathedral Door, the Day of Dean Gulliver's Installment," which begins with the following delectable quatrain: ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... This quatrain, the original of which does not appear to have been traced, was first published in 'The Bee' for Saturday, the 6th of October, 1759, p. 8. It is there succeeded by the following Latin epigram, 'in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... wrote a few lines in the album and departed in haste, while Mademoiselle Jacquemart was reading the following quatrain, improvised in her honour ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Indeed an old rhyme current at the end of the eighteenth century anticipated some of Lamb's humour, for the two principal landlords of Worthing, which was just then beginning to be a fashionable resort, were named Hogsflesh and Bacon, leading to the quatrain:— ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... this pleasure in the lingering line, in the haunting couplet, in the quatrain that will not let you forget. By sacrificing it, the new poetry has sacrificed something precious, something that a common instinct of mankind demands of the minstrel. It will not suffice for the new poets to deny that they are minstrels, to assert that they write for the eye, not speak for ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... and even necessary. Pope's couplet may (or may not) stand for elegiacs, and the In Memoriam stanza for some one of Horace's metres. Where the heroes of Virgil's Eclogues sing alternately four lines each, Gray's quatrain seems to suggest itself: and where a similar case occurs in these Idylls (as for instance in the ninth) I thought it might be met by taking whatever received English stanza was nearest the required length. Pope's ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... crowd, crooning a quatrain, in a low, monotonous voice, his eyelids drooping and his head ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... short account of this is in the story of King Dathi (O'Curry Lectures, p. 286). The tale seems to be alluded to in the quatrain on p. ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... it, but not wear it. You have said truly, the house of Rookwood is a fated house; and it hath been said likewise, that if he wed not one of his own kindred—that if Rook mate not with Rook, his possessions shall pass away from his hands. Listen to this prophetic quatrain: ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... she sweat ink from every pore." But, if we may credit her admirers, who were numerous, she had fine eyes, a pleasing expression, and an agreeable address. She evidently did not overestimate her personal attractions, as will be seen from the following quatrain, which she wrote upon a portrait made by one ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... fascination the subject has for me. So much so that my 'motto' [the original motto—the verses which I have quoted above] spread beyond the music; therefore I am going to make a different work of the former, and for the sonata I adopted the modest quatrain that is printed in it.... Like the third, this fourth sonata is more of a 'bardic' rhapsody on the subject than an attempt at actual presentation of it, although I have made use of all the suggestion of tone-painting in my power,—just as the bard would have reinforced his ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... Blessington (Conversations, p. 176), Byron maintained that the image of the broken mirror had in some mysterious way been suggested by the following quatrain which Curran had once repeated ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... lopsided union either, as times go, for pro is not more unlike con than man is unlike woman— yet men and women marry every day with none to say, "Oh, the pity of it!" but I and fools like me! Now wherewithal shall we please you? We can rhyme you couplet, triolet, quatrain, sonnet,rondolet, ballade, what you will. Or we can dance you saraband, gondolet, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... which he was often tempted and alarmed by Demons. The Khalife Haroun Raschid, making the same pilgrimage, met him upon the way and inquired after his welfare; the Sofi answered him with an Arabian quatrain, of which this is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... would have disapproved of the way my Philosopher takes his poetry. His favorite poem is "A frog he would a-wooing go,"—especially the first quatrain. His analysis is very defective; he takes it as a whole. He likes the mystery of it, the quick action, the ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... to whom the king had appointed her a maid of honor. It is a question whether she did not even then exercise over Charles VII. that influence, serviceable alike to the honor of the king and of France, which was to inspire Francis I., a century later, with this gallant quatrain: ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... that you have been a little misled—as almost everybody has been—by the differing characters of the metres of the 'Angel' and 'Eros.' The meats and wines of the two are, in very great part, almost identical in character; but, in one case, they are served on the deal table of the octo-syllabic quatrain, and, in the other, they are spread on the fine, irregular rock of the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... his wealth and energy to a commercial battle with La Friponne, determined to supply the people with food at low prices. The enmity between Philibert and the Intendant was common talk, and over his doorway the merchant had hung, beneath the figure of a dog in bas-relief, the following whimsical quatrain:— ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... him she had; and such was Walter's delight in that fact that he immediately endowed her with his own ability to enjoy cynicism. He jabbed at the menu with a fork and glowed and shouted, "Say, isn't it great, that quatrain about 'Take the cash and let the ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... aesthetic value of it went, I was monarch of all I surveyed, even though mile on mile of grandeur and glory was spread out before me. The quatrain of ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... is said to have assumed the lay habit on his return to London after his ejection, perhaps as a protection against further persecution. This quatrain may be taken as evidence that he did not throw off his religion with his ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick |
