"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of war-won verse, And some is bad, and some is worse. And if at times I curse a bit, You needn't read that part of it; For through it all like horror runs The red resentment of the guns. And you yourself would mutter when You took the things that once were ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... work once more: "I will weave a fragment of verse among the flowers of his robe, and perhaps its words will tell ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... saw around him. I issued forth from that house indignant as well as affected, deploring the lot of that fair land where nature had lavished all her gifts only to become the spoil of barbarous tax-farmers (publicans)." And Voltaire, that implacable avenger of injustice, in verse that rends the heart, has in les Finances, (1775), pictured a peaceful home ruined; its inmates evicted to misery, to the galleys and to death, by the cruel exactions of the royal director of the ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... when after paying off the Urania, as Rayner was passing along a street in Exeter, he heard a stentorian voice singing a verse of a sea ditty. The singer, dressed as a seaman, carried on his head the model of a full-rigged ship, which he rocked to and fro, keeping time to the tune. He had two wooden legs in the shape of mopsticks, and was supporting himself with a crutch, while with the hand at liberty he ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... one William Rutter to M. Anthony Hickman his master touching a voyage set out to Guinea in the yeere 1562, by Sir William Gerard, Sir William Chester, M. Thomas Lodge, the sayd Anthony Hickman, and Edward Castelin, which voyage is also written in verse by Robert Baker. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... peruerse Raison, chartier tout esperdu, Du corps le char, & cheuaux verse, Le vin ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... really be weighed in scales by a blind Justice. No man can judge what is good evidence on any particular subject, unless he knows that subject well. A lawyer is no better than an old woman at a post-mortem examination. How is he to know the action of a poison? You might as well say that scanning verse will teach you to scan ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... operas; and as there was no great danger of hurting the sense of those extraordinary pieces, our authors would often make words of their own which were entirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go to the same tune. Thus ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... the most rapid dexterity, while, from the continued clatter of their weapons, a person at a distance might have supposed that there were at least six persons engaged on each side. Less obstinate, and even less dangerous combats, have been described in good heroic verse; but that of Gurth and the Miller must remain unsung, for want of a sacred poet to do justice to its eventful progress. Yet, though quarter-staff play be out of date, what we can in prose we will do ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... back, then half-glanced towards her stepmother in the other room. She was only twenty-two, and though her emancipation had been accomplished in its way somewhat in advance of her generation, it had its origin in a very early period of her life, when she had been allowed to read books of verse—Shelley, Byron, Shakespeare, Verlaine, Rossetti, Swinburne, and many others—unchallenged and unguided. The understanding of things, reserved for "the wise and prudent," had been at first vaguely and then definitely conveyed to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of constant speculation. When orders to leave Beled reached the 19th Brigade, there came a wire from Divisional Head Quarters, 'Tell the padre to preach from Matthew twenty, verse eighteen.' But the 28th Brigade knew nothing of this hint to Lee. Some thought we were going to Ahwaz, and thence up to Persia; others held this Persian theory with a modification, that we should arrive up-country ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... all over after each verse of the hymn was ended; it went clear to the ship's bows; but Eleanor sat quite still in her old position, clasping her hands fast on the rail and not moving her head. During the singing the captain came back and stood ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... just now," said her father, addressing me after listening for awhile to her retreating footsteps, "may be the plainer when I tell you that I am translating the works of the Roman poet Virgil, line for line, into English verse, and have just reached the beginning of the Fourth Georgic. He is, I may tell you, a poet, and the most marvellous that ever lived; so marvellous, that the middle ages mistook him for a magician. That any age is likely to mistake me—his translator—for ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that's the truth, 'twas a marvellous feat, and the woman accounted for it afterwards by declaring that all the way she scarcely thought for one second of the other boat, but set her stroke to a kind of tune in her head, saying the same verse over and over: ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... respect of the argument, reminded of Bacon's multifarious knowledge, and the exuberance of his learned fancy; whilst the many?lettered diction recalls to mind the first of English poets, and his immortal verse, rich with the spoils of all sciences ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... song of four verses, in which the doctor invokes in succession the spirits of the air, of the mountain, of the forest, and of the water. Gal[^u][n]lat[)i], the word used in the first verse, signifies, as has been already explained, "on high" or "above everything," and has been used by translators to mean heaven. [^U][n]wad[^a][']h[)i] in the second verse is the name of a bald mountain east of Webster, North Carolina, and is used figuratively to denote ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... because he resided within the precincts. For nearly a hundred and fifty years the only record of his grave was a leaden plate, with a Latin inscription by an Italian poet, which hung upon the pillar near. At last one Brigham, himself with a turn for verse-making, procured an ancient marble {52} tomb, and got permission to put it up against this wall. It has been called by Chaucer's name ever since; but whether the poet's bones still lie in the original grave, where Dryden's coffin was afterwards placed, or were transferred here, is still ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... a good plan occasionally during the story hour to introduce really good poetry, which delivered in a dramatic manner (far removed, of course, from the melodramatic), might give children their first love of beautiful form in verse. And I do not think it necessary to wait for this. Even the normal child of seven, though there is nothing arbitrary in the suggestion of this age, will appreciate the effect, if only on the ear, of beautiful lines well spoken. ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... longer to be seen in the lounge. Having successfully impressed Mrs. Hallett with her sorrowful mien, that lady had placed her sitting-room, the only private one in the hotel, at Marice's disposal, and it was there, surrounded by flowers and books of verse, that she received the few friends she allowed to see her and wrote a daily letter of great charm and veiled tenderness to Druro. He nearly always responded with about three lines, making one note answer three letters, sometimes more. ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... windows rattled and shivered in the sunshine. Horses along the line of march crouched, ducked sideways, and snorted in panic. Women put their fingers in their ears as the drums passed. And when at the end of each verse the Ancients swelled their red-shirted bosoms and screamed, Uncle Trufant hissed in the ear of his nearest neighbor on the post-office steps: "The only thing we need is the old Vienny company here to give ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... any rate, not the state of society; society, if it could be said to exist, was rather a spectacle on which to call down Biblical imprecations—and in fact, every one knew what the Reverend Dr. Ashmore meant when he chose a text from Jeremiah (chap. ii., verse 25) for his Thanksgiving sermon. Dr. Ashmore, the new Rector of St. Matthew's, had been chosen because he was very "advanced": his sermons were considered bold in thought and novel in language. When he fulminated against fashionable society he always ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... of social connexions or domestic ties. This, I am aware, is a trial sometimes borne with exemplary fortitude; and I was lately edified by the magnanimous unconcern with which a married friend of mine sang the last verse of "Home! sweet home!" as the chaise which was to convey him from the burthen of his song drove up to the door. It does not become a bachelor to speculate on the mysteries of matrimonial philosophy; but the feeling ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... consul-general of France in Morocco. The family, of which Andre was the third son, and Marie-Joseph (see below) the fourth, remained in France; and after a few years, during which Andre ran wild with "la tante de Carcasonne," he distinguished himself as a verse-translator from the classics at the College de Navarre (the school in former days of Gerson and Bossuet) in Paris. In 1783 he obtained a cadetship in a French regiment at Strassburg. But the glamour of the military life was as soon exhausted by Chenier as it was by Coleridge. He returned to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... at her feet half the rank and gallantry of Avignon. Her female attendants were beset with bribes and billets; and nightly, beneath her lattice, was heard the plaintive serenade. She entered largely into the gay dissipation of the town, and her charms shared the celebrity of the hour with the verse of Petrarch. But though she frowned on none, none could claim the monopoly of her smiles. Her fair fame was as yet unblemished; but if any might presume beyond the rest, she seemed to have selected rather from ambition than love, and Giles, the warlike Cardinal d'Albornoz, all powerful ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... forgotten all about it. I could not suffer my care for Elspeth to prevent a work whose issue might mean the salvation of Virginia. We had still to learn the truth about the massing of Indians in the mountains, of which the Cherokee raids were but scouting ventures. The verse of Grey's song came ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... waistcoat, which was pleasant. Wasn't there a song that went like that? Though this was fair, and that was something else, and a third was so-and-so, yet none of them was Mary Something-or-other. He was aware that the verse was not very correctly quoted, but that was the gist of it; and a very sensible fellow, too, was the man who wrote it, whoever ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long; Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan; To after age thou shalt be writ the man, That with smooth air could'st humour best our tongue. Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire, That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn, or story. Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, who he woo'd to sing, Met in ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... After that he took the boy's training seriously in hand, and his artless pride concealed itself in a severity that knew no bounds of words. When Sam confessed his wish to write a drama in blank verse, his grandfather swore at him eagerly and demanded every detail of what he called the "fool ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... treat more particularly of the text. Verse 1. "The heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, tho he be lord of all." We see that the children unto whom their parents have left some substance are brought up no otherwise than if they were servants. They are fed and clothed ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... change in this respect was inevitably sure to come. The strong propensity of the national mind toward historical studies is illustrated by the large proportion of historical works among the masterpieces of our literature, whether in prose or in verse. It would seem as if our conscious poverty in historical monuments and traditions had engendered an eager hunger for history. No travelers in ancient lands are such enthusiasts in seeking the monuments of remote ages ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... in the days when cunning masters were depicting at Santa-Croce in Florence and the Campo Santo of Pisa the mysteries of Divine Justice. These works were drawn according to the account in verse which Dante Alighieri, a man very learned in Theology and in Canon Law, wrote in days gone by of his journey to Hell and Purgatory and Paradise, whither by the singular great merits of his lady, ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... sweet song of other days, Serenely placid, safely true, And o'er the present's parching ways Thy verse distils ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... devolved upon Captain William Hope. It must have been a distressing moment for Flinders, despite the intense excitement of action, when his friend and commander fell; it was indeed, as will be seen, a crucial moment in his career. A doggerel bard of the time enshrined the event in a verse as badly in need of surgical aid as were the heroes ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... remember? you said it was like what you ought to be, and what you should be, if you ever reached heaven; and you repeated that verse in the Revelation about 'those that have not defiled their garments.' I always think of it. It seems ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the entire work is a translation, and a very faithful translation, of a French original. It is quite clear that the Dutch compiler understood his text well, and though possibly somewhat hampered by the necessity of turning prose into verse (this version, contrary to the otherwise invariable rule of the later Lancelot romances, being rhymed), he renders it with remarkable fidelity. The natural inference, and that drawn by M. Gaston Paris, who, so far, appears to be the only scholar who has ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... To vex the shy and sacred grief With harsh obtrusions of relief; Yet, Verse, with noiseless feet, Go whisper, "This death hath far choicer ends Than slowly to impearl in hearts of friends; These obsequies 'tis meet Not to seclude in closets of the heart, But, church-like, with wide door-ways, to impart Even to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... adored by the Renaissance, most of all. So, in English, Spenser and Milton, in French, Marot and others niched it solidly in the nation's poetry; and the certainly charming Daphnis and Chloe, when vernacularised, transferred its influence from verse to prose in almost all the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... detective. In one instance "he ordered it so that a proper courtier made love to one of these bewitched maids"[33] and soon got her over her troubles. In another case a woman "strangely affected" by the first verse of John's Gospel failed to recognize it when read in Greek,[34] proof positive that the omniscient ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... writing {22} poetry. But though he had the poet's heart, he had not the concentration of the great poet. All through his life he loved to string together verses, grave and gay. Some of his pasquinades are very clever; some of his serious verse is mellifluous enough; but as a poet he is not even a minor bard. Yet one of his early effusions, named Melville Island, written when he was twenty, was not without influence on his future. Such was its merit that Sir Brenton Halliburton, a very grand ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... life. And so the joy is not unmixed with just a touch of awe. Amidst the whole tintinnabulation is a soft resonant echo of horns below, like an image in a lake. The air hangs heavy with dim romance until the sudden return to first fairy verse in sounds almost human. Once more come the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... half my time to read the 'poems' sent me by young people of both sexes. They would be more shy of doing it if they knew that I recognize a tendency to rhyming as a common form of mental weakness, and the publication of a thin volume of verse as prima facie evidence of ambitious mediocrity, if not inferiority. Of course there are exceptions to this rule of judgment, but I maintain that the presumption is always against the rhymester as compared with the less ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Time of Tattooing, will be long remembered. An enthusiastic sitter celebrated the event in verse. Several lines were repeated to us by Hardy, some of which, in a sort of colloquial chant he ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... myself deemed, if not absolutely vicious, yet of very inferior worth. Gradually, however, my practice conformed to my better judgment; and the compositions of my twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth years—(for example, the shorter blank verse poems, the lines, which now form the middle and conclusion of the poem entitled the Destiny of Nations, and the tragedy of Remorse)—are not more below my present ideal in respect of the general tissue of the style than those of the latest date. ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... honoured still to live in my memory. Know, my son of Neptune, fledgeling of the Nymphs, and half- brother to the Tritons, that he whom thou knewest once in Parnassus' grove (whither he himself led thy halting feet), respireth still in sighs for beauty and exhalations of sweet verse. Know, too, that he hath of late composed a notable and admirable epic in praise of the Sun, which, if it please Heaven to bring him, ere the year fall, to London, thou mayest have the high honour of setting ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Murder, the English Mail-Coach, The Spanish Nun, The Csars, and half a score other things at the age of about fifteen or sixteen is, or ought to be, to fall in love with them."—Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860, p.307.] Few boys read poetry, whether in verse or prose, and fewer still criticism or philosophy; to every normal boy the gate of good literature is the good story. It is the narrative skill of De Quincey that has secured for him, in preference to other writers of his class, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... first licentiate at Paris, told me that it is not everything to run a pace, but to set forth well betimes: so doth not the total welfare of our humanity depend upon perpetual drinking atas, atas, like ducks, but on drinking well in the morning; whence the verse—— ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... pause in Snoilsky's productive activity; he was depressed. It was generally said, although it sounded improbable, that he had had to promise his wife's relations to give up publishing verse, they regarding it as unfitting the dignity of a noble. In any case, he was at that time suffering under a marriage that meant to him the deprivation of the freedom without which it was impossible to write. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... irony of existence, is a fascination that the "Kasidah" has in common with every great poem of the world. The materialism of the book is peculiar in that it is Oriental, and Orientalism is peculiarly mystical. The verse is blunt, and almost coarse in places, but here and there are gentler touches, softer tones, that search out the sorrow at the heart of things. It is worthy, in its power, of the praise of Browning, Swinburne, Theodore Watts, Gerald Massey. It is Edward Fitz Gerald minus ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... of the Lake, etc. Also of course Scott's novels and poems and Burns's poems contain much material that can be drawn upon.) Particularly to be recommended are the selections published in the Riverside Literature Series and in Webster and Coe's "Tales and Verse from Sir Walter Scott." ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... adoring women; Fielding had died (1754), worn out by labour and dissipation; Smollett was active in the literary trade, but not in such a way as to increase his own dignity or that of his employment; Gray was slowly writing a few lines of exquisite verse in his retirement at Cambridge; two young Irish adventurers, Burke and Goldsmith, were just coming to London to try their fortune; Adam Smith made his first experiment as an author by reviewing the Dictionary in the Edinburgh ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... for murder; there is none for nonsense rhymes. They seem to be a necessary evil to be classed with smallpox, chicken-pox, yellow fever and other irruptive diseases. They are also on the order of the boomerang and eventually rebound and inflict much suffering on the unlucky verse-slinger. So you see nonsense, like a little learning is a dangerous thing and should be handled with as much care as the shotgun which is never ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... she returned with some lines written on a scrap of brown wrapping paper. Standing soberly by Emma Jane, she said, preparing to read them aloud: "They're not good; I was afraid your father'd come back before I finished, and the first verse sounds exactly like the funeral hymns in the church book. I couldn't call her Sally Winslow; it didn't seem nice when I didn't know her and she is dead, so I thought if I said friend' it would show she had ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Day. They are long performances, but never tedious to the audiences, because the scenes appeal to them with the force of absolute realism. On Christmas morning the postmen, telegraph boys, and employees of various vocations, present to their employers and others little leaflets containing a verse appropriate to the day, or the single sentence "A Happy Christmas," expecting to receive in return a Christmas box filled with ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... child herself is in such deadly earnest. The two long narrative poems, "Bertha" and "Elfrida," are tragic in the extreme. Both are dashed off apparently at white heat: "Elfrida," over fifteen hundred lines of blank verse, in two weeks; "Bertha," in three and a half. We have said that Emma Lazarus was a born singer, but she did not sing, like a bird, for joy of being alive; and of being young, alas! there is no hint in these youthful effusions, except inasmuch as this unrelieved gloom, this ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... main subjects of study for his monks were the Holy Scriptures, and the chief object the edification of the individual by meditation and of the people by preaching; but the monks learnt to write verse correctly and prose in what had claims to be considered a style. Yet what he himself did in that direction was little indeed. Perhaps the most that can be said is that he left the way open to his successors. And of these the greatest ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... excitement too much for his strength? Joan's eyes turned from the stage to the first row of seats, where her husband had his place. Geoffrey looked worried; his brows contracted as he watched his son. Unconsciously Joan quickened the pace of the last verse of her song. She was anxious to get to the second tableau, to see Jack sitting ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... my heart once, it's not a verse, but a tear.... I made it myself ... not while I was pulling ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... inseparable. Amanda thought frequently of the verse, "God above is great to grant as mighty to make, and creates the love to reward the love." It was not always so, she knew, but she hoped it would be so for her. Martin Landis, unselfish, devoted to his people, honest as a dollar, true as steel—dear Martin, how she wanted to walk ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... to the imagination. In respect of its words it is but a character of style, but in respect of its matter it is nothing else but feigned history, which may as well be in prose as in verse. The use of this feigned history is to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of things denies it; poetry serves magnanimity, morality, and delectation. It is divided into ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Society in London, at a recent sitting, received as a present a translation of Shakspeare, in twelve volumes, into Swedish verse. This laborious work has been accomplished by Professor HAGBERG, of the University of Lund, and it was transmitted through the Swedish ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... deep, blood curdling voice, Captain Benson started in on the first verse of "Down among ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... first white man in sixteen days, an intelligent man of meagre education, with a great bent for versifying. A courteous approval of one set of verse brought upon us the accumulated output of years in the wilderness without much opportunity of audience, as one supposes, and most of the afternoon and evening was thus spent. Amidst the overwrought sentimentality and faulty scansion which marked most of the pieces was one simple little poem ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... listen to the stags roaring. With this intention they went to call upon the priest, and borrowed the guests' apartments[100] of the monastery; and as they were waiting to hear the deer roar, some of the party began to compose poetry. One would write a verse of Chinese poetry, and another would write a verse of seventeen syllables; and as they were passing the wine-cup the hour of sunset came, but not a deer had uttered a call; eight o'clock came, and ten o'clock came; still not a sound ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... means something the very opposite of complimentary. A surly person is said to have "a dogged disposition." Any one very much fatigued is said to be "dog weary." A wretched room or house is often called "a dog hole," or said to be only fit for "a dog." Very poor verse is "doggerel." It is told of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, that when a young nobleman refused to translate some inscription over an alcove, because it was in "dog-latin," she observed, "How strange a puppy ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... represent only the supreme summits of achievement since the beginning of the world. Pascal shall be entitled to but one thought, Newton to but one star, Darwin to but one insect, Galileo to but one grain of dust, Tolstoi to but one charity, Heinrich Heine to but one verse, Shakespeare to but one cry, Wagner to ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... "One Word More," but two days later in a magazine article I came across a quotation from that poem in which occurs the phrase "older lovers," the magazine having been brought to the house that day, and two days after the verse was written. A day or two later at the close of a communication from an entirely different source, and one in no way suggestive of Browning, the words, "One Word More" were rapidly ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... on that height before the eyes of all the people, he thought of his own reputation, and of the great audience, and Winchester the more than king, the great English Prince, the wealthiest and most influential of men. The preacher took his text from a verse in St. John's Gospel: "A branch cannot bear fruit except it remain in the vine." The centre circle containing the two platforms was surrounded by a close ring of English soldiers, understanding none of it, and anxious only that ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... and no more recognition or thanks from anybody than the apprentice who sets the types for the paper that prints her ever-ending and ever-beginning stories. And yet she has a pretty talent, sensibility, a natural way of writing, an ear for the music of verse, in which she sometimes indulges to vary the dead monotony of everlasting narrative, and a sufficient amount of invention to make her stories readable. I have found my eyes dimmed over them oftener than once, more with thinking about her, perhaps, than about her heroes and heroines. Poor little ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... gain may be claimed—a greater visual purity; yet, as we shall see, from the point of view of expression, the gain was negligible compared with the loss. So likewise, unless the vers-libristes can show some positive gain in expression,—a power to do something that normal verse cannot do, their work must rank lower than normal verse, which makes fuller use of the rhythmic ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... quiet, as a scientific fact), nor of that weird woman who saw King James the Poet three times with his shroud wrapped ever higher; nor the tale of the finger of the bronze Venus closing over the wedding-ring, whether told by Morris in verse patterned like some tapestry, or by Merimee in terror of cynical reality, or droned by the original mediaeval professional story-teller, none of these are genuine ghost-stories. They exist, these ghosts, only in our minds, in the minds ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... toward the left shoulder, and allow the weight of the body to rest on the left leg, the right foot being carried slightly outward. Allow the body to bang down as far as possible on the left side, without straining too much. Then verse the movement. ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... my still unwritten verse, 'Soleil si pale,' etc., it relates to the 11th, 12th, and 13th of October, and, generally, to the time of the battle in the woods, which lasted for our regiment from September 22nd to October 13th. What struck me so much was to see the ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... turned to the king, as he finished the verse, And threw on the table a heavy purse With a pair of dice; another, I trow, Still lurked incog. for a lucky throw:— "'Tis mine; 'twas thine. If the king would play, Perchance he'd find his revenge to-day. Gambling, I own, is a fault, a sin; I always repent—unless ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... explanation that this gift was not the ordinary faculty of speech, but a capacity to recite verse, he was politely pressed by ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... C. McCook's very successful novel, "The Latimers," is an engaging study of the whisky insurrection of early Pittsburgh days. Thomas B. Plimpton is remembered by some as a writer of verse. Judge J. E. Parke and Judge Joseph Mellon have written historical essays. Josiah Copley wrote "Gathering Beulah." Logan Conway is the author of "Money and Banking." He has also written a series of essays on "Evolution." Miss Cara Reese has published a little ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... goings-on, and their seeming success in this mucky lump of a planet, he just reached down t' owd book" (pointing to a great Bible in the bookcase), "opened it like at a chance, and he was sure to light of a verse blazing wi' a blue brimstone low that set all straight. He knew," he said, "where some folk war bound for, just as weel as if an angel wi' great white wings had come in ower ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... which signify a battle."[204] But the word under the form Cat is Welsh or British, as well as Gaelic. Thus, in the Annales Cambriae, under the year 722, the battle of Pencon is entered as "Cat-Pencon."[205] In his edition of the old Welsh poem of the Gododin, Williams (verse 38) prints the battle of Vannau (Manau) ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... describes in verse his voyage from Rome to Gaul: one book of the poem is extant; he falls in with Christianity on two of the islands which lie in his course. He thus describes them as found on one of these: "The island is in a squalid state, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... documents. But in one place (VIII. 168) it speaks of the valuelessness of written agreements obtained by force, thus recognizing the practical employment of writing for commercial transactions. Professor Jolly,(A3) it is true, suggests that this verse may be a later addition, particularly as it occurs totidem verbis in Narada (IV. 55); but the final composition of Manu's Samhita, such as we possess it, can hardly be referred to a period when writing ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... destined to reach the heights, Shakespeare seems to have grown slowly, and even at twenty-eight or thirty years of age his grasp of character was so uncertain, his style so little formed, so apt to waver from blank verse to rhyme, that it is difficult to determine exactly what he did write. We may take it, I think, as certain that he wrote more than we who have his mature work in mind are inclined ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Thinking of you, uncramped, uncranky; Our hearts, ere we're aware of it, "Run helter-skelter into Yankee." "For puttin' in a downright lick 'Twixt Humbug's eyes, there's few to metch it." Faith, how you used it; ever quick Where'er Truth dwelt, to dive and fetch it. Vernacular or cultured verse, The scholar's speech, the ploughman's patter You'd use, but still in each were terse, As clear in point as full in matter. You'd not disdain "the trivial flute," The rustic Pan-pipe you would finger, Yet could you touch ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... friend—then twenty-six years old—the manuscript of "Paradise Lost" to read, his desire could only have been to learn what comprehension of his purpose there would be in a young man sincerely religious, as intelligent as most, and with a taste for verse, though not much of a poet. The observation Ellwood made, of which he is proud because of its consequence, might well cause Milton to be silent for a little while, and then change the conversation. It showed that the whole aim of the poem had been missed. Its crown is in the story of redemption, ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... learn the fact betimes That flattery is the nurse of crimes. Friendship, which seldom nears a throne, Is by her voice of censure known. To one in your exalted station A courtier is a dedication; But I dare not to dedicate My verse e'en unto royal state. My muse is sacred, and must teach Truths which they slur in courtly speech. But I need not to hide the praise, Or veil the thoughts, a nation pays; We in your youth and virtues trace The dawnings of your royal race; Discern ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... to give back to Ireland her language and civilization, and translating from the Gaelic "The Love Songs of Connacht" (1894) into an English of so new and masterful a rhythm, that it was to dominate the style of many of the writers of the movement, as the burden of the verse was to confirm them in the feelings and attitudes of mind, centuries old and of to-day, that are basic to the Irish Gael. Even in 1894, when Mrs. Katherine Tynan Hinkson wrote the article that for the first time brought before America so many of the younger English poets, all that she ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... precipices; a thunderstorm coming on at the time, the headman invited us to take shelter in a hut until it had passed. Our guide having informed him of what he knew and conceived to be our object, was favoured in return with a long reply in well-sounding blank verse; at the end of every line the guide, who listened with deep attention, responded with a grunt, which soon became so ludicrous that our men burst into a loud laugh. Neither the poet nor the responsive guide took the slightest notice of their rudeness, ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... General has written. Old men and old women scan these wrinkled pages with eyes that have lost their lustre, and on the rusty clippings pasted there fall many tears. In this book many a woman reads the little verse below the name of a child whom only she and God remember. In some other scrapbook a man, long since out of the current of life, reads the story of his little triumph in the world; in the family Bible is a clipping from the Statesman—yellow ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Alfakins or chief judge, "and at once without any farther appeals or pitiful delays, the cause is heard and ended." Our forefathers, as [520]a worthy chorographer of ours observes, had wont pauculis cruculis aureis, with a few golden crosses, and lines in verse, make all conveyances, assurances. And such was the candour and integrity of succeeding ages, that a deed (as I have oft seen) to convey a whole manor, was implicite contained in some twenty lines or ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... by those who have followed his contributions to magazines and the press of the day, 'Mr Boswell took care to keep the newspapers and other publications incessantly warm with various writings, both in prose and in verse, all tending to touch the heart and rouse the parental and ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... anxiety, a tormenting uneasiness, came over him; he had hardly strength and recollection sufficient to enable him to accompany Corilla, who was discussing in verse the question, "Which Rome was the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the louse in the locks of the hangman, the mote in the eye of the bat, Than to live and believe in a woman, who must one day grow aged and fat? You must see it's preposterous, Bill, sir. And yet, how the thought of it clings! I have lived out my time—I have prigged lots of verse—I have kissed (ah, that stings!) Lips that swore I had cribbed every line that I wrote on them—cribbed— honour bright! Then I loathed her; but now I forgive her; perhaps after all she was right. Yet I swear it was shameful—unwomanly, Bill, sir—to ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... 1799 and died in 1838, is the founder of Russian literature, and it is difficult to overestimate his influence. He is the first, and still the most generally beloved, of all their national poets. The wild enthusiasm that greeted his verse has never passed away, and he has generally been regarded in Russia as one of the great poets of the world. Yet Matthew Arnold announced in his Olympian manner, "The Russians have not yet had a great poet."* It is always difficult fully ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... I inquired, "of the passage on Social Systems?" I have forgotten to say that the poem was in blank verse, and divided into parts, each ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... received too little of the consecration of antiquity, and according to 2Samuel vii. was too insignificant and provisional to be thought worthy of preservation in the temple. But if the Ohel Moed is here (what it everywhere else is) the tabernacle, as is indicated also by the sacred vessels, then the verse is, as has been said, an interpolation. The motive for such a thing is easily understood; the same difficulty as that with which we set out must have made it natural for any Jew who started from the ideas of the Pentateuch to look for the tabernacle here, and, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... accidental assonances of rhyme which in an unrhymed poem are never pleasing; and the unfinished short line of five or six syllables, however legitimate on the stage where the actor himself can make the requisite musical pause, is not a beauty in a blank verse poem, and is employed by Mr. Wills far too frequently. Still, taken as a whole, the style has the ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... and want for nothing. No hurry for a signal at all. Well, Miss Elliot," (lowering his voice,) "as I was saying we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point. No man and woman, would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you—all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... their rhymes exceedingly varied. His masterly use of what was often considered an inconsequential appendage to poetry is extraordinarily skillful. Thus he frequently chooses a harsh or a soft rhyme to emphasize the predominating sentiment of his verse. ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... cold of that desolate region. Even here he forgot himself, and his mind wandered back to the last night scene which he surveyed on the bloody shores of the River Raisin. He gave up the heroic part and became the schoolboy again, and commemorated his sorrows for his lost friends in verse, like some passionate, heart-broken lover. These elegiac strains were never intended for any but the eye of mutual friends, whose sympathies, like his own, poured out tears with their plaints over the dead. We give some of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... flat of soulless, bodiless, non-existent books, appeared to beckon me, went down on my knees, and opened it as far as its position would permit, but could see nothing. I got up again, lighted a taper, and peeping as into a pair of reluctant jaws, perceived that the manuscript was verse. Further I could not carry discovery. Beginnings of lines were visible on the left-hand page, and ends of lines on the other; but I could not, of course, get at the beginning and end of a single line, ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... would not be suspected of Flattery, I could tell the World what an Acquaintance with Scripture, what a Knowledge of Religion, what a Memory of Divine things both in Verse and Prose is found among you; and what a just and regular account is given of Sermons at your Age; to awaken all the Children that shall read these Songs, to furnish their memories and beautify their Souls like yours. The Honour you have done me in learning ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts
... "Bible games" tend to develop a natural appreciation of the book. There is no new light but rather a confusing shadow thrown on the character of Joseph by the foolish conundrum concerning Pharaoh making a ruler out of him. Sending a child to the Bible to discover the shortest verse, the longest, the middle one, etc., trains him to regard it as an odd kind of book, to think of it as a dictionary, and to use ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... no bard in all the choir, ....... Not one of all can put in verse, Or to this presence could rehearse The sights and voices ravishing The boy knew on the hills in spring, When pacing through the oaks he heard Sharp queries of the sentry-bird, The heavy grouse's sudden whir, The rattle of ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... scene. The English moralist gave the Scotch one the lie direct, and the Scotch moralist applied to the English one a phrase which would have done discredit to the lips of a costermonger; but this notwithstanding, when Boswell reported that Adam Smith preferred rhyme to blank verse, Johnson hailed the news as enthusiastically as did Cedric the Saxon the English origin of the bravest knights in the retinue of the Norman king. "Did Adam say that?" he shouted: "I love him for it. I could hug him!" Johnson no doubt honestly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Eulogiums on murder, robbery, and theft were read with delight in the histories of Freney the Robber, and the Irish Rogues and Rapparees; ridicule of the Word of God, and hatred to the Protestant religion, in a book called Ward's Cantos, written in Hudi-brastic verse; the downfall of the Protestant Establishment, and the exaltation of the Romish Church, in Columbkill's Prophecy, and latterly in that of Pastorini. Gross superstitions, political and religious ballads of the vilest doggerel, miraculous legends ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... whose footsteps we might now be treading, and on King Arthur and the Giant Tregeagle, when our friend, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped and told us we were now on the spot where Charles Wesley stood when he composed a memorable verse which still appeared ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... public manners and morals. It should think not so much of defending by force the national "honor," as of maintaining standards of honor that shall be worth defending. There may, indeed, still be occasions when we can learn the truth of the old Roman verse, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori; but the newer patriotism consists not so much in willingness to die as in willingness to live, for one's country-to take the trouble to study conditions, to vote, and to work for the improvement ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... ago I turned back to the sixth verse of the ninth chapter of Isaiah to refresh my memory on the titles bestowed on the Messiah whose coming the prophet foretold. After reading verse six, my eyes fell on verse seven and it impressed me as it had not on former readings. This was probably ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... St. Alphege in prose (which survives) and in verse were written by command of Lanfranc by the Canterbury monk Osborn (d. c. 1090), who says that his account of the solemn translation to Canterbury in 1023 was received from the dean, (Godric, one of Alphege's ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... what you think of it. I'm going to put some literary flavor into the Gas-bag even if it does explode it. Look—see. I've taken a boost for the Kells Karburetor—rotten lying boost it is, too—and turned it into this running verse, read it like prose, pleasant and easy to digest, especially beneficial to children and S. Herbert Souse, Sherbert Souse, I mean." He rapidly read an amazing lyric beginning, "Motorists, you hadn't better monkey with the carburetor, all the racers, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... Popish Kingdome or reigne of Antichrist, written in Latin verse by Thomas Naogeorgus and Englyshed by Barnabe Googe, 1570, edited by R.C. Hope (London, 1880), p. 52, recto. The title of the original poem was Regnum Papisticum. The author, Thomas Kirchmeyer (Naogeorgus, as he called ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... superseded! and Mr. Carysbroke—oh! humiliation—engaged.' So I smiled on, very much vexed; and being afraid lest I had listened with too apparent an interest to this impostor, I sang a verse of a gay little chanson, and tried to think of Captain Oakley, who ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... old comic pictures who have kind of balloon things coming out of their mouths, with a verse thoroughly explaining who they are, isn't it?" remarked Miss Beechy in a little soft, childish voice, and at least a dozen imps looking out of her eyes all at once. "Mamma's ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the experiments are going on, and every man who brings a new prescription is welcome as a brother. But this alchemy is, you know, only the material counterpart of a poet's craving for Beauty, the eternal Beauty. 'The makers of gold and the makers of verse,' they are the twin creators that sway the world's secret desire for mystery; and what in my father is the genius of curiosity—the very essence of all scientific genius—in me is the desire for beauty. Do you ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... had hitherto remained silent, his mind apparently absorbed in thought, exclaimed, 'Whatever the king hath ordained is only an additional proof of his beneficence and condescension'; and then in very good verse ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... endeavour to show what Mr. Ashford meant by suggesting some improvements which they were regarding with dislike and suspicion, till they found Sir Guy was of the same mind. In fact, when he had sung a verse or two to illustrate his meaning, the opinion of the choir was, that, with equal advantages, Sir Guy might sing quite as well ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... feast is described in Leonine verse in the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo, (Script. Ital. tom. vii. p. 436, 437,) who flourished towards the end of the xiith century, (Fabricius Bibliot. Latin. Med. et Infimi Aevi, tom. iii. p. 69, edit. Mansi;) ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... be inferred from the foregoing summary that all Luis de Leon's original and graver compositions were written during his maturity, but there is some reason to think that his earlier efforts in verse took the form of translations. Though it is undoubtedly true that his poems as a whole were not published till 1631, four isolated pieces of his strayed into print as early as 1574 when they were included by Francisco Sanchez, el Brocense, in the notes to his edition ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly |
