"Poesy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea, the wind—Bowles had said, the ship's properties are only blue bunting, coarse canvas, and tall poles. "So they are," admits Byron, "and porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and flesh is grass; and yet the two latter at least are the subjects of much poesy. . . . Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical, the Parthenon or the rock on which it stands. . . . Take away Stonehenge from Salisbury plain and it is nothing more than Hounslow Heath or any other unenclosed ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... may I be permitted to subjoin a few stanzas? Old Izaak Walton hath put songs and sylvan poesy in plenty into the mouths of his anglers and rural dramatis personae, and shall I be blamed for following, in all humility, his illustrious example? Perchance—but hold! it is one of the fairest of summer mornings; the sun sheds a pure, a silvery light on the young, fresh, new-waked foliage and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 264, July 14, 1827 • Various
... bravely face the scourge and fire, If they would conquer in the end? Two days! Shall I not hug thee very close? Two days, And then we part upon our ways. Ah me! Who shall possess thee after me? O pray he be no enemy to poesy, To gentle ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... World-wide his native melodies did sing, Flushed with fair hopes and ancient memories? Ah, no! That matchless lyre shall silent lie: None hath the vanished minstrel's wondrous skill To touch that instrument with art and will. With him, winged poesy doth droop and die; While our dull age, left voiceless, must lament The bard high heaven had for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Arts and Sciences our Isle hath shone" (This deep discovery is mine alone). Oh "British poesy, whose powers inspire" My verse—or I'm a fool—and Fame's a liar, "Thee we invoke, your Sister Arts implore" With "smiles," and "lyres," and "pencils," and much more. 30 These, if we win the Graces, too, we gain ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Wordsworth, that arch-priest of poesy, expresses it, I could place the gentle reader "atween the downy wings" of some beneficent and willing angel, in one brief instant of time should he be deposited on the little hill that first discovers the smiling, quiet village of Ellendale. He would imbibe of beauty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Young, who, in this Quarrel of the great contending Powers in Poesy, has been courted by all Sides: But some late Incidents give a Suspicion, that he has privately acceded to the Treaty ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds, and muses on admired themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, Which into words no virtue ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... juvenile condition abundantly contributed: the locality of her birthplace, rich in landscape scenery, and associated with family traditions and legends of curious and chivalric adventure, might have been sufficient to promote, in a mind less fertile than her own, sentiments of poesy. In the application of her talents she was influenced by another incentive. A loose ribaldry tainted the songs and ballads which circulated among the peasantry, and she was convinced that the diffusion of a more wholesome minstrelsy would essentially elevate the moral tone of the community. Thus, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... If shady nooks in Poesy's realm they choose, Or barks to drift the smooth, prosaic stream, There Phillis held communion with the Muse, And Chesnutt woke the "Colonel" from his dream! Max Barber, Thompson, Knox and Fortune beam; Great Braithwaite scales the classic mountain heights, And ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... Poesy! thou sweet'st content That e'er Heaven to mortals lent, Though they as a trifle leave thee Whose dull thoughts cannot conceive thee; Though thou be to them a scorn That to nought but earth are born; Let my life no longer be Than I am in ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... crags, but having been From youth our own adopted, he had passed Into a gentler service. And when first 100 The boyish spirit flagged, and day by day Along my veins I kindled with the stir, The fermentation, and the vernal heat Of poesy, affecting private shades Like a sick Lover, then this dog was used 105 To watch me, an attendant and a friend, Obsequious to my steps early and late, Though often of such dilatory walk Tired, and uneasy at the halts I made. A hundred times when, roving high and low 110 I have been harassed with ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... prejudices,—criminals, no doubt, but certainly remarkable through certain of the qualities that make great men, and recruiting their number only among men of mark. That nothing might be lacking to the sombre and mysterious poesy of their history, these Thirteen men have remained to this day unknown; though all have realized the most chimerical ideas that the fantastic power falsely attributed to the Manfreds, the Fausts, and the Melmoths ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... to pass from the world of actual Welsh history into such a world as this. But side by side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy and romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier bards, their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew in ode after ode, in songs extravagant, monotonous, often prosaic, but fused into poetry by the intense fire of patriotism which glowed within them. Every ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... "Hurry!" And she spurred off at breakneck speed in pursuit, myself following, both of us now forgetting poesy, and quite become creatures of ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. Nor do we merely feel these essences For one short hour; no, even as the trees That whisper round a temple become soon Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, The passion poesy, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast, They alway must be with us, or ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... most persuasive of men. They tell us that nothing could resist the force of his words; that he sometimes enlivened his harangues with verses, which he composed extempore; and that he was not only a great poet, but that it was he who first taught the art of poesy to the Scandinavians. He was also the inventor of the Runic characters.'—Northern Antiquities, p. 83. Mallet asserts that it was to Christianity that the Scandinavians owed the practical use of those Runes which they had possessed ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the Middle Ages was divided into sacred and profane, both were altogether Christian according to their kind; for if sacred poesy sang of the Jewish race and its history, the only race which was regarded as holy, or of the heroes and legends of the Old and New Testaments, and, in brief, the Church—still all the life of the time was reflected in profane poetry ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... star is set that lighted me Thro' Fancy's wide domain, And the fairy paths of poesy, I now may seek ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... to think of dancing as the poetry of motion, can get a liberal education in muscular poesy by making the rounds of the Midway Plaisance. They may see sonnets in double-shuffle metre, doggerels in hop-skip iambics, and ordinary newspaper "ponies" with the rhythm of the St. Vitus dance. Slices of pandemonium will be thrown in by the ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... one of her poems—an admirable apostrophe to the character and works of Dante. This poem, which was published some time since, Mrs. Hopper once recited to us, and both mamma and I were struck with the true ring of poesy so apparent ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... a sound of a slow getting up and going away. The chronicler of passing events sat through it, motionless, with suspended pen; and when the movement was complete Poesy was represented in that place by nothing but a warm spot ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... he sings immortal Fames—your own, My PHILIP, latest and not least—in strains That thrill our nerves and mount into our brains. If he would study less in GOSSON's "School" (That of "Abuse," o'er which you laid the rule In your "Defence of Poesy"), and stay Less in dim Orcus than Arcadia, Then—well, I might have well been spared this task. SPENSER, you penned your own; now may I ask Epithalamion-recipes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... (with some errors, not to be avoided in that Age) had, undoubtedly, a larger Soul of Poesy than ever any of our nation, was the First, who (to shun the pains of continual rhyming) invented that kind of writing which we call Blank Verse [DRYDEN is here wrong as to fact, Lord SURREY wrote the earliest printed English Blank ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... that's just the way we eat at home. Or just simply take the names, the personal names that adorn the people up there, and that we also had in large numbers at home, take a name like Ingeborg,—a harp-chord of the most immaculate poesy. And then the sea—they have the Baltic up there! ... In short, I am going up there, Lisaveta. I wish to see the Baltic again, hear these names again, read those books on the spot; and I wish to stand on the terrace of Kronborg, where the ghost appeared to Hamlet and brought distress and death ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Dryden, again, a contemporary of d'Aubignac and a predecessor of Johnson, had a clearer vision than either of them; and his views are far in advance of theirs. "Delight," he said, "is the chief if not the only end of poesy," and by poesy he meant fiction in all its forms; "instruction can be admitted but in the second place, for poetry only instructs as it delights." And once more, when we pass from the seventeenth century of Corneille and Dryden to the nineteenth ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... sunset burns with gold Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul A passion burns from basement unto cope. Poesy, poesy, I'd give to thee As passionately my rich laden years, My bubble pleasures, and my awful joys, As Hero gave her trembling sighs to find Delicious death on wet Leander's lip. Bare, bald, and ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... vulgar nature. A few yards back a massive labourer with clear untroubled eye and powerful muscles stood out like a superior being to the three who were alongside. Half-way a poet marched. What form his poesy took—whether he expressed beauty in words, or, catching the music of the western wind, wove it into a melody, or whether he just dreamed and never told of what he dreamed—it matters not; he was a poet. His step, his dreamy ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... classic lore,) The daintie Poesie of days of yore— The choice old English rhyme—and over thine, Oh! "glorious John," delightedly I pore— Keen, vigorous, chaste, and full of harmony, Deep in the soil of our humanity It taketh root, until the goodly tree Of Poesy puts forth green branch and bough, With bud and blossom sweet. Through the rich gloom Of one embowered haunt I see thee now, Where 'neath thy hand the "Flower and Leaflet" bloom. That hand to dust hath mouldered long ago, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... base rests on the primaeval earth—its crest is lost in the shadowy splendour of the empyrean; while the great authors, who for traditionary ages have held the chain of science and philosophy, of poesy and erudition, are the angels ascending and descending the sacred scale, and maintaining, as it were, the communication between man and heaven. This feeling is so universal that there is no combination of society in any age in which it has not developed itself. ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... "Dryden," says Dr. Johnson, "may be properly considered as the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught us to determine, upon principles, the merit of composition. . . Dryden's 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy' [1667] was the first regular and valuable treatise on the art of writing."[6] The old theater was dead and Shakspere now emerged from amid its ruins, as the one unquestioned legacy of the Elizabethan age to the world's literature. He was not only ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... aspirations which were our own as well as theirs, these writers of our South are living still and will live through the long procession of the years. In the garden of our lives they planted the flowers of poesy, of fable, and of romance. With the changes of the years those flowers may have passed into the realm of the old-fashioned, like the blossoms in Grandmother's garden, but are there any sweeter or more ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... O God, let gross opinion sink and be damn'd As deep as Barathrum, If it may stand with your most wish'd content, I can refell opinion and approve The state of poesy, such as it is, Blessed, eternal, and most true divine: Indeed, if you will look on Poesy As she appears in many, poor and lame, Patch'd up in remnants and old worn rags, Half starved for want of her peculiar food: Sacred invention, then I must confirm Both your conceit and censure of her merit, ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... regret; but, like all regrets, it is also a prediction. A day will come when the ploughman may be an artist, if not to express,—which will then matter but little, perhaps,—at all events, to feel, the beautiful. Do you believe that this mysterious intuition of poesy does not already exist within him in the state of instinct and vague revery? In those who have a little hoard for their protection to-day, and in whom excess of misery does not stifle all moral and intellectual development, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... country of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy; but had so strong an effect on my imagination, that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp lookout in suspicious places; and though nobody can be more sceptical in these matters than I, yet it often takes ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... discipline of severe criticism; for he is aware that he has often wandered out of the beaten track, and has many times been too regardless of the established rules of rhythm, in his (oftentimes vain) search for the flowers of poesy. ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... sentiment of Loyalist and Rebel has denounced it: the world has remarked it with uplifted hands and words of execration. Therefore, as long as history shall hold good, the murder of the President will be a theme for poesy, romance and tragedy. We who live in this consecrated time keep the sacred souvenirs of Mr. Lincoln's death in our possession; and the best of these are the news letters descriptive of his apotheosis, and the fate of the conspirators ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... court, had been advancing with a steady and rapid progress; and it may be interesting to contemplate the state of one of its fairest provinces as exhibited by the pen of an able critic, who in the year 1589 gave to the world an Art of English Poesy. This work, though addressed to the queen, was published with a dedication by the printer to lord Burleigh; for the author thought proper to remain concealed: on its first appearance its merit caused it to be ascribed to Spenser by some, and by others to Sidney; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... by beautiful eyes and surmounted by a wealth of straight black hair; a form haggard, weazened by deformity, yet evidencing muscular toil; delicate hands and feet that like the features bespoke the poesy of soul within mis-shapen shell,—the hunchback scissors-grinder Pierre Frochard presented a remarkable aspect which, once seen, no ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... late; From the old world's divine and distant date, From the sublimer few, Down to the poet who but yester-eve Sang sweet and made us grieve, All come, assembling here in order due. And here I dwell with Poesy, my mate, With Erato and all her vernal sighs, Great Clio with her victories elate, Or pale Urania's deep and starry eyes. Oh friends, whom chance or change can never harm, Whom Death the tyrant cannot doom ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... whose works I became acquainted—before those of any other author, male or female—when I was learning to spell words of one syllable in her story-books for children.' So says Hazlitt in his lectures on living poets. He goes on to call her a very pretty poetess, strewing flowers of poesy ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... much of poesy and know nothing about it, declaim against the habits of life in the provinces. But put your forehead in your left hand, rest one foot on the fender, and your elbow on your knee; then, if you compass ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... cease to show; * Hand me the morning draught and ne'er foreslow; And prize fair poesy and sweet musick hear * And shun the 'say' and naught of 'said' beknow: The wine of day-dawn drunk with joyous throng * From house of Reason garreth Grief to go: The man of Kays aye loved his wine right well * And from his lips made honey'd verse ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... courtly makers, of whom Sir T. Wyatt the elder, and Henry Earl of Surrey, were the two chieftains, who, having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy, from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of our English ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... weeks' rambling and musing among the mighty relics of past glory, we turn our faces homeward. The thrilling hope I cherished during the whole pilgrimage—to climb Parnassus and drink from Castaly, under the blue heaven of Greece (both far easier than the steep hill and hidden fount of poesy, I worship afar off)—to sigh for fallen art, beneath the broken friezes of the Parthenon, and look with a pilgrim's eye on the isles of Homer and of Sappho—must be given up, unwillingly and sorrowfully though it be. These glorious anticipations—among the brightest ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... may you read (Oh, Phoebus, save Sir John! That these my words prophetic may not err)[Sec.4] All that was said, or sung, and lost, or won, By vaunting Wellesley or by blundering Frere,[Sec.a] He that wrote half the "Needy Knife-Grinder,"[Sec.5] Thus Poesy the way to grandeur paves—[Sec.b] Who would not such diplomatists prefer? But cease, my Muse, thy speed some respite craves, Leave legates to the House, and armies to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... Mondana looked Morning in the eyes and forsook his allegiance to Night, and one by one the lesser hills about Mondana's knees greeted the Morning. And all the while in the plains the shapes of cities came looming out of the dusk. And Kongros stood forth with all her pinnacles, and the winged figure of Poesy carved upon the eastern portal of her gate, and the squat figure of Avarice carved facing it upon the west; and the bat began to tire of going up and down her streets, and already the owl was home. And the ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... to hang denunciatory sonnets, you shallow-pated pretty creatures whom poets—oh, and in youth all men are poets!—whom poets, now and always, are doomed to hanker after to the detriment of their poesy. No, I concede it: you kill without premeditation, and without ever suspecting your hands to be anything but stainless. So in logic I must retract all my harsh words; and I must, without any hint or reproach, endeavour to bid you ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... Hodgson has been publishing more poesy—I wish he would send me his 'Sir Edgar', [5] and Bland's 'Anthology', to Malta, where they will be forwarded. In my last, which I hope you received, I gave an outline of the ground we have covered. If you have not been overtaken by this despatch, Hobhouse's tongue is at your service. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Celestial poesy! whose genial sway Earth's furthest habitable shores obey; Whose inspirations shed their sacred light, Far as the regions of the Arctic night, And to the Laplander his Boreal gleam Endear not less than ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1894. The President of the Society, Robert D. Benedict, presided. In introducing Mr. Eliot, he said: "I am not aware that there were any poets among the Pilgrim Fathers. They had something else to do besides versifying. But poesy has found many a home among the hills of New England. And many a home, not only in New England, but in Old England also, was saddened during the year that is gone to hear that the song of one of the poets of New England was hushed ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... stockings, and pull them over those horrid shanks; put a large gown and bands over beard and hide; and pour a dozen of lavender-water into his lawn handkerchief, and cry, and never make a joke again. It shall all be highly-distilled poesy, and perfumed sentiment, and gushing eloquence; and the foot SHAN'T peep out, and a plague take it. Cover it up with the surplice. Out with your cambric, dear ladies, and let us ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lyric Galaxy, I hear Of faded Genius with supreme disdain; As when we see the Miser bend insane O'er his full coffers, and in accents drear Deplore imagin'd want;—and thus appear To me those moody Censors, who complain, As [1]Shaftsbury plain'd in a now boasted reign, That "POESY had left our darken'd sphere." Whence may the present stupid dream be traced That now she shines not as in days foregone? Perchance neglected, often shine in waste Her LIGHTS, from number into confluence run, More than when thinly in th' horizon placed Each Orb shone ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... us, they have dissolv'd into a Liquid, and kept with wondrous Art, the Vertues of which are Soveraign against Ideotism, Dullness, and all sorts of Lethargick Diseases; but if given in too great a quantity, creates Poesy, Poverty, Lunacy, and the Devil in the Head ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... at a maturer period of life, after looking at various metrical versions of the Psalms, I am well satisfied that the version used in Scotland is, upon the whole, the best; and that it has in general a simplicity and unction of sacred Poesy; and in many parts ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... and romantic elements in the poems, not least in the 'Elegy,' and the precise sources of their appeal and power. In form most of them are regular 'Horatian' odes, but 'The Bard' and 'The Progress of Poesy' are the best English examples ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... mid blossoms straying, Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee— Both were mine! Life went a maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... mine," said he, "and thank not this voiceless dabbler in ink for the mercy, that travelling not a week before I reached London, I chanced into the company of a stranger, who fell captive to my wit, and displayed so lively a tooth for the sweets of Parnassus—to wit, my poesy—that, hearing I was about to issue the same imprint, prayed me enrich him with a copy. The which I condescended to promise him. Being thus established in a brotherhood of poetic kinship, we opened our ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... sullen. Misled by my puny appearance, a woman—taking me for a sleepy child—slid softly into the place beside me, with the motion of a bird as she drops upon her nest. Instantly I breathed the woman-atmosphere, which irradiated my soul as, in after days, oriental poesy has shone there. I looked at my neighbor, and was more dazzled by that vision than I had been by the scene of ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... have I invoked thee for my Muse And found such fair assistance in my verse As every alien pen hath got my use And under thee their poesy disperse. ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... poesy in his taste for the country. He liked to see a woman with a tall flexible figure glide through the dusky shrubberies of the park; only that woman must be dressed in white. He hated gowns of a dark color and had a horror of stout ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... poets do well to write of," he declared. "In writing of it they avoid the necessity of embracing it. In trying for a well- turned line they forget to look at well-turned ankles. He who sings most passionately of love has been in love the least; he woos the goddess of poesy and only gets into trouble when he, like John Keats, turns to the daughter of a villager and tries to live the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... wrought By rhymes with neither sense nor music fraught. So crazed is he with this same wretched rhyme, That never does he know so blest a time As when he writes away, and fondly deems He rivals Homer's god-enraptured dreams; And wonders in his pride, himself to see, The very pattern-pink of poesy. Alas! Suffenus, while I laugh at thee, The world, for aught I know, may laugh at me. It is the madness of each one to pride Himself on that 'twere better far to hide; Nor know the faults in that peculiar sack Which AEsop says is hanging at ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... childhood of the race was past, And in its tame and reasoning manhood, In the daylight broad, and noon-day of all time, This world hath sprung. The poetry of truth, None other, shall her shining lakes, and woods, And ocean-streams, and hoary mountains wear. Perchance that other day of poesy, Unsung of prophets, that upon the lands Shall dawn yet, thence shall spring. The self-same mind That on the night of ages once, for us Those deathless clusters flung, the self-same mind, With all its ancient elements of might, Among us now its ancient glory hides; But, ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon
... partner of his wretchedness, how can he induce her to make shipwreck in the midst of all this luxury on the decks of two beds. What advantage is it that we have made the whole universe subserve our existence, our delusions, the poesy of our life? What good is it to have instituted law, morals and religion, if the invention of an upholsterer [for probably it was an upholsterer who invented the twin beds] robs our love of all its illusions, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... precious part of that aliment, with which the memory of the poet feeds his imagination. But still, it is the newly-awakened power within him that is the source of the charm;—it is the force of fancy alone that, acting upon his recollections, impregnates, as it were, all the past with poesy. In this respect, such impressions of natural scenery as Lord Byron received in his childhood must be classed with the various other remembrances which that period leaves behind—of its innocence, its sports, its first hopes and affections—all of them reminiscences which the poet afterwards ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... bowers where Fancy loves to dwell, And on the crest of some huge mountain-thought Placing the glory of thy fleecy cloud, To make its frowning grandeur greater still, And heighten all its beauteous mystery. Thro' the sweet-coloured plains of Poesy Thou flowest like a sweetly-sounding stream, Here, rushing furious o'er the rocky crags Of wild, original thought, and there, 'neath bowers Of imagery, winding on thy way Peaceful and still towards the fadeless sea Of all enduring immortality. Like lightning flash ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... nowadays who reads Cowper—that charming, domestic poet who wrote 'The Task', and invested even furniture with the glamour of poesy? Alas! to many people Cowper is merely a name, or is known only as the author of the delightfully quaint ballad of John Gilpin. Yet he was undoubtedly the Poet Laureate of domesticity, and every householder should possess ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... never hope to merit, you request my opinion of your translation of a Latin verse that has been applied to me. If I were, which I really am not, sufficiently skilled in your excellent language to be a proper judge of its poesy, the supposition of my being the subject must restrain me from giving any opinion on that line, except that it ascribes too much to me, especially in what relates to the tyrant, the Revolution having been the work ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... to gods and men is sacred song. Self-taught I sing: by Heaven and Heaven alone The genuine seeds of poesy are sown. ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... allies Begged from some distant king to wield the sword: Here were the Roman sons, the sires of Rome, Here the last frenzy and the last despair: Here, Caesar, was thy crime: and here shall stay My Muse repelled: no poesy of mine Shall tell the horrors of the final strife, Nor for the coming ages paint the deeds Which civil war permits. Be all obscured In deepest darkness! Spare the useless tear And vain lament, and let the deeds that fell In that last fight ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... of Finn no one was ever admitted to be one of the Fianna of Erinn unless he could pass through many severe tests of his worthiness. He must be versed in the Twelve Books of Poetry and must himself be skilled to make verse in the rime and metre of the masters of Gaelic poesy. Then he was buried to his middle in the earth, and must, with a shield and a hazel stick, there defend himself against nine warriors casting spears at him, and if he were wounded he was not accepted. Then his hair was woven into braids and he was chased through the forest by the Fians. ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... delivery, and power of extemporizing, surprised even critical listeners into unguarded praise. "My qualities," he says, "were much more oratorical and martial than poetical; no one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy." Unpopular at first, he began to like school when he had fought his way to be a champion, and from his energy in sports more than from the impression produced by his talents had come to be recognized as a leader among his fellows. Unfortunately, towards the close ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... said that the gift of poesy is innate—that is, a poet is born a poet, and, thus endowed by Heaven, apparently without study or art, composes things which verify the saying, Est Deus in nobis, etc. Thus the poet of nature, who improves himself by art, rises far above ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... height Of colour wanted, as the solemn night Steals forward thou shalt sweetly fall asleep For ever and for ever; I shall weep A day and night large tears upon thy face, Laying thee then beneath a rose-red place Where I may muse and dedicate and dream Volumes of poesy of thee; and deem It happiness to know that thou art far From any base desires as that fair star Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. Death takes but little, yea, thy death has given Me that deep peace and immaculate possession Which man may ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... the greatest calamity that ever befell the benighted nations of the ancient world was their having passed away without a knowledge of the actual existence of Duluth; that their fabled Atlantis, never seen save by the hallowed vision of inspired poesy, was in fact but another name for Duluth; that the golden orchard of the Hesperides was but a poetical synonym for the beer-gardens in the vicinity of Duluth. As that name first fell upon my ear, a resplendent scene of ineffable ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... strange bright bird we sometimes find To mingle with the barn-door brood awhile, Then vanish from their homely domicile - Into man's poesy, we wot not whence, Flew thy strange mind, Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... for Harris, whom I invited, and to bring Shadwell the poet with him; but they come not, and so a good dinner lost, through my own folly. And so to dinner alone, having since church heard the boy read over Dryden's Reply to Sir R. Howard's Answer, about his Essay of Poesy, and a letter in answer to that; the last whereof is mighty ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... passages in Childe Harold, and Manfred, and Don Juan, which have made so large a portion of the music of my life. My words, whether apt or otherwise, were at least warm with the enthusiasm of one worthy to discourse of immortal poesy. It was evident, however, that they did not go precisely to the right spot. I could perceive that there was some mistake or other, and was not a little angry with myself, and ashamed of my abortive attempt to throw back, from my ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... siren voice, Throw poesy to the crows, And let my soul's ethereal fire Gush out in ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... half-spoil'd, Thus Music's and Poesy's favourite child Exclaim'd,—"'Tis, by Heaven! a terrible thing Before a he-party to sit and to sing!" "By my shoul! Master Moore, you there may be right," Said a son of green Erin; "tho' dear to my sight Are all the sweet cratures, call'd women, I swear, Yet I think we can ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... the Great Mother chid her sons Not of the giant brood, who did create Those lawless Gods, first offspring of our brain Set moving by an abject blood, that waked To wanton under elements more benign, And planted aliens on Olympian heights; - Imagination's cradle poesy Become a monstrous pressure upon men; - Foes of good Gaea; until dispossessed By light from her, born of the love of her, Their lordship the illumined brain rejects For earth's beneficent, the sons of Law, Her other name. So spake she in their heart, Among the wheat-blades proud of stalk; beneath ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... beautiful times—I was then young and happy; I was then a man, and now—now am old; love has withered, and with it poesy! I am now nothing ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... lost childhood in its pages. We are not saying too much when we say that its versatile editor—Ella Farman, is more fully at home in the child's wonder-land than any other living American writer. She is thoroughly en rapport with her readers, gives them now a sugar plum of poesy, now a dainty jelly-cake of imagination, and cunningly intermixes all the solid bread of thought that the child's mind can digest and assimilate.—York ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... ruin, the hollow cave—the steep bank crested with the olive—the airy temple, the dark pomp of the cypress grove, and the roar of the headlong Anio,—all he touched with the magic of the past—clad with the glories of history and of legend—and decked ever and anon with the flowers of the eternal Poesy that yet walks, mourning for her children, amongst the vines and waterfalls of the ancient Tibur. And Constance, as she listened to him, entranced, until she herself unconsciously grew silent, indulged without reserve in that, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Our poesy is as a gum Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our gentle flame Provokes itself, and like the current flies Each ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... war and deadly bloodshed, Or to gain an angry vengeance For some insult which appeareth To imagination hideous. Now we leave the sterner presence Of the earth and all its changes, And we take the wings of fancy, (Which is sister to poesy), Guided by the light of record Thereon mount, and fly, surveying, Far above the heights of knowledge. And we take a retrospective Of the ancient times and people, When was nature young and blooming, When ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... poem of any importance which Byron lived to write, and the question naturally suggests itself—Is the new song as good as the old? Byron answers the question himself. He tells Leigh Hunt (January 25, 1823) that he hopes the "poem will be a little above the ordinary run of periodical poesy," and that, though portions of the Toobonai (sic) islanders are "pamby," he intends "to scatter some uncommon places here and there nevertheless." On the whole, in point of conception and execution, The Island is weaker and less coherent than the Corsair; but it contains ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... in a disturbed state of mind, smoking cigars in the royal tent. His Majesty's agitation was not appeased by the news that was brought by his ambassador. 'The brutal ruthless ruffian royal wretch!' Giglio exclaimed. 'As England's poesy has well remarked, "The man that lays his hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, is a ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the walls of which, says Stowe, were "artificially and richly painted the Dance of Macabre, or Dance of Death, commonly called the Dance of Paul's, the like whereof was painted about Saint Innocent's, at Paris. The metres, or poesy of this dance," proceeds the same authority, "were translated out of Trench into English by John Lydgate, monk of Bury, and, with the picture of Death leading all estates, painted about the cloister, at the special request and expense of Jenkin Carpenter, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... events I came out somehow reassured, more rich in faith. There was a might of poesy after all. There were words in the little yellow-leaved garland, nestling like a bird in my hand, that would outlast the bank yonder, and outlive us all. I held it up. How tiny it seemed, how frail amid all this stone and iron! A mere flower—a ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... of iconoclasm; for an innovation is putting the new in the place of the old. In ancient literature and literatures, prose was an innovation as regards poetry; and later, rhyme was an innovation in the domain of poesy, and an innovation of such a sort that against it the master-poet, Milton, lifted up his voice in solemn protest, and the solitary epic in English literature is a perpetual protestation against the custom. Shakespeare was an innovator of ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... fall—sometimes, at least, let thy face shine on me from between the clouds. Fresh from the springs of Paradise, shake from thy wings the dew against my forehead. We two were coming up together through the sweet land of poesy and dreams, where the senses believe what the heart hopes; our hands were full of green boughs, and our laps of cowslips and violets, white and purple. We were talking of that more beautiful world into which ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... rumoured, to everybody's astonishment, that she had married a widower in a provincial town—she who belonged to the realms of Poesy! ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... the trouble to follow the history of the human mind, we will discover that theology took care not to extend its limits. It began by repeating fables, which it claimed to be sacred truths; it gave birth to poesy, which filled the people's imagination with puerile fictions; it entertained them but with its Gods and their incredible feats; in a word, religion always treated men like children, whom they put to sleep with tales that their ministers ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... psychical history of the nineteenth century would be incomplete without the name of Frederic Francois Chopin. Wagner externalized its dramatic soul; in Chopin the mad lyricism of the Time-spirit is made eloquent. Into his music modulated the poesy of his age; he is one of its heroes, a hero of whom Swinburne might ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... two of my servants—my chamberlain and my valet—to travel in foreign countries. During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the heart. But of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... task: the illustration of historical facts by a romance constructed in the spirit of the history. This fourth and principal task is the presentation of history in a dramatic form and with animated descriptions; upon the foundation of history to erect the temple of poesy, which must nevertheless be pervaded and illuminated by historic truth. From this it naturally follows that it is of very little consequence whether the personages of the Historical Romance actually ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... even the most prosaic among us some love of poesy, though unacknowledged? And who, in romantic youth or sober age, has not been touched by the tragic story of the dispersion of the ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... Mr. Shepard not to quote poetry as it is for him to fly through the air and his facility in so doing would alone make him a marked man. His whole soul is full of poesy, ever restless and exuberant. I am not aware that he ever molded a rhyme, or sung a measure of song in all his life. And yet so tenacious is his memory, so wonderful his talent in applying the epigrammatic utterances of the leading writers, both old and new, that a person, on being ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... presented itself to his eyes like a delicate network of jewels finely strung on swaying threads of silver, and he gazed upon it as one might gaze on the "fairy lands forlorn" of Keats in his enchanting poesy. Never surely, he thought, had he seen a night so beautiful,—so perfect in its expression of peace. He walked leisurely,—the long shed which sheltered the air-ship was just before him, its black outline silhouetted ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... met that giant of letters, Mr. W. G. Waters, better known to the newspaper public as "Spring Onions," but unfortunately I did not meet him in his gay days, but in his second period, his regeneracy. He was introduced to me as a fearsome rival in the subtle art of Poesy. I stood him a cup of cocoa—for you know, if you read your newspaper, that Spring was a teetotaller. He signed the pledge, at the request of Sir John Dickinson, then magistrate at Thames Police Court, in 1898, and it was his proud boast that he had kept it ever ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... evening ceased, Nigel appealed much to Myra, and endeavoured to draw out her mind and feelings. He lent her books, and books that favoured, indirectly at least, his own peculiar views—volumes of divine poesy that had none of the twang of psalmody, tales of tender and sometimes wild and brilliant fancy, but ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... concert of the good Hiller, who is a pupil of Hummel and a youth of great talent, came off very successfully the day before yesterday. A symphony of his was received with much applause. He has taken Beethoven for his model, and his work is full of poesy and inspiration. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the company of the lovely maiden, Pegeen, and admiring friends. The latent poetry and wild joy of living awake in him, and, under the spur of praise, he performs great feats. He who had never before dared to face girls, makes such love to Pegeen that poesy itself seems to be talking. The Playboy is one of the wildest conceptions of character in modern drama. His very extravagance compels interest. Pegeen is a fitting sweetheart for him. Her father is a stalwart figure, possessing a shrewd philosophy ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... woods and streams, and a joyous heart made him sing in spite of himself, and the song of birds was the one he loved best to imitate. The others were inclined to jeer at these words, but Hans Sachs saw in them a beautiful nature, fine poesy. ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... his "little book" "Subject be unto all poesy, And kiss the steps, where as thou seest space, Of Virgil, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... also, there is nothing new; but in the standards by which he tries such terms there is something amusingly characteristic of his time. In the choice of words, "the first indiscretion is in the use of such words as to the readers of poesy (which are commonly Persons of the best Quality)"—it is only fair to reproduce Hobbes' capitalization—"are not sufficiently known. For the work of an heroic poem is to raise admiration (principally) for three virtues, ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... writing thou envy, But subject be to all true poesy, And kiss the steps, where'er thou seest space Of Virgil, Ovid, Homer, Lucan, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... out into conversation—an indescribable flow of chatter, blending the most profane sentiments with the strangest religious ideas, the quiet of the country with the whirl of society, and all this with a freedom of gesture, a charm of expression, a subtlety of glance, and a species of earthly poesy, by which any other soul than mine ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... story of an enthusiastic Brahmin reformer who tries to break down the prohibition against widows marrying, and there are other interesting tales. Mr. Foskett has apparently forgotten to insert the rhymes in his sonnet to Wordsworth; but, as he tells us elsewhere that 'Poesy is uninspired by Art,' perhaps he is only heralding a new and formless form. He is always sincere in his feelings, and his apostrophe to Canon Farrar is equalled only by ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... without again congratulating the Compiler upon the success which has attended his labour, and strongly recommending the work to those who desire that the female branches of their family should participate in the beauties of this modern Prince of Poesy."—Public Ledger. ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... many parts, Who in his coffer mind Had stored the Classics and the Arts And Sciences combined; The purest gems of poesy Came flashing from his pen— The wholesome truths of History ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... indurate his soul. It is something when a man comes to this mind, and with all his capacity to err, is abreast of life at last. He shall not regret the infrequency of his inspirations, for he will know that the day of his strength has set in. And if, for poesy, some grave Virgilian line should pause on his memory, or some tongue of Hebrew fire leap from the ashes of his godly youth, it will be enough. But if cold duck ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... centuries under the banners of emperor and pope; after having left its trace and borne its fruit in every branch of intellectual development; has reascended to heaven—its mission accomplished—in the twin flames of poesy called Goethe and Byron. Two hitherto distinct formulae of life became incarnate in these two men. Byron is isolated man, representing only the internal aspect of life; Goethe isolated man, representing only ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... that "The Land of Green Ginger" was a very dirty place where horses were kept: a mews, in short, which none of the Muses, not even with Homer as an exponent, could exalt ([Greek: Epea pteroenta en athanatoisi theoisi]) into the regions of poesy. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... to sing the choicest and most affecting poesy to many and various modes, till our senses were bewitched and the very room danced with excess of delight and surprise at her sweet singing; and neither thought nor reason was left in us. When we had sat awhile and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction from that exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... edition of Milton's juvenile poems, 'there is good reason to suppose that Milton threw many additions and corrections into the Theatrum Po{e"}tarum.' Phillips' words therefore have an additional interest for us. 'Edmund Spenser,' he writes, 'the first of our English poets that brought heroic poesy to any perfection, his "Fairy Queen" being for great invention and poetic heighth, judg'd little inferior, if not equal to the chief of the ancient Greeks and Latins, or modern Italians; but the first poem that brought him into esteem was his "Shepherd's Calendar," which so ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales
... Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when 70 I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear, To the lives of ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... characteristic of their national life—faith in Jehovah and in his sovereign and righteous control—are everywhere seen. Hebrew poetry is mainly lyrical. Relics of old songs are scattered through the historical books. In the Psalms, an anthology of sacred lyrics, the spirit of Hebrew poesy attains to its highest flight. Examples of didactic poetry are the Book of Job, and books like the Proverbs, composed mainly of pithy sayings or gnomes. Nowhere, save in the Psalms, does the spirit of the Hebrew religion and the genius of the people find an expression so grand ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... variety of flowers and the birds fly around above them; When the trees saw us seated beneath them they dropped upon us their fruits. We continued to exchange upon the borders of its gardens the flowing bowls of conversation and of poesy, The valley was bountiful and her zephyrs brought to us what the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... I had the book framed up; a few days later it was printed, and before very long Bunch's Westchester society friends were grabbing for what they supposed was his feverish output of poesy. ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... which he then passed would have been perfect;—his athletic sports, his battles, his love of dangerous enterprise, gave every promise of a spirit fit for the most stormy career. But to the meditative pursuits of poesy, these dispositions seemed, of all others, the least friendly; and, however they might promise to render him, at some future time, a subject for bards, gave, assuredly, but little hope of his shining ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... grass of the field which bordered the shadow of the trees. There is no part of a forest more beautiful than the line where wood begins and meadow ends; it is as the lip of the forest breathing forth in a fragrant kiss of poesy some mystery of silent dells and fairy's haunts, which it hints of but does not quite betray. Wilhelmine mused on this; she was gifted with a delicate appreciation of each beauty-forming detail, and the accurate observation without which the enjoyment of beauty is a mere ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... in my heavy sorrow, I got a well-shapen headstone made for her; but a headstone without a epitaph being no better than a body without the breath of life in't, I made a poesy for the monument, not in the Latin tongue, which Mrs. Balwhidder, worthy woman as she was, did not understand, but in sedate language, which was greatly thought of at the time. My servant lassies, having no eye of a mistress over them, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... invoked thee for my Muse, And found such fair assistance in my verse As every alien pen hath got my use And under thee their poesy disperse. Thine eyes, that taught the dumb on high to sing And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, Have added feathers to the learned's wing And given grace a double majesty. Yet be most proud of that which I compile, Whose influence is thine, and ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare
... was in his inspiration. This inspiration, heightened by the deep musical tones of his voice, and an extraordinary power of language, had drunk in deep draughts at the purest sources of antiquity; his sentences had all the images and harmony of poesy, and if he had not been the orator of a democracy he would have been its philosopher and its poet. His genius, devoted to the people, yet forbade him to descend to the language of the people, even to flatter them. All his passions were noble as his words, and he ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Suffolk. The device which appears upon this ring is an eagle displayed; on the inner side is engraved a bird, with the wings closed, apparently a falcon, with a crown upon its head. The following poesy, or motto, commencing on the outer side, is continued on the interior of the ring:—deus me ouroge de bous senir a gree—com moun couer desire—"God work for me to make suit acceptably to you, as my heart desires." The devices appear to be heraldic, and the motto that ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt |
