"Versification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mais qu'il etoit au dessus de ses forces de surmonter. D'ailleurs, il a voulu donner un poeme: ce qui l'oblige a prendre le ton poetique, et a faire des descriptions poetiques, ou soi-disant telles. Enfin ce poeme est en vers elegiaques. Or qui ne sait que cette sorte de versification, dont le propre est de couper la pensee de deux en deux vers et d'assujettir ces vers au retour continuel d'une chute uniforme, est peut etre celle de toutes qui convieent le moins en genre descriptif? ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... Watts spent many of the last years of his life. It has always seemed to me that Dr. Watts's rank as a poet has never been properly appreciated. If ever there was a poet born, he was that man; he attained without study a smoothness of versification, which, with Pope, was the result of the intensest analysis and most artistic care. Nor do the most majestic and resounding lines of Dryden equal some of his in majesty of volume. The most harmonious lines of Dryden, that I know of, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... serving in Egypt, had been much affected on hearing a soldier's wife crooning to herself the original words of the air. We have inserted in the text Imlah's second version, as being somewhat smoother in versification. It is the only song which we have transcribed from his volume, published in 1841. But the most popular words which have been attached to the air and chorus were the composition of a student in one of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... at work on some more of the Young Astronomer's lines. I find less occasion for meddling with them as he grows more used to versification. I think I could analyze the processes going on in his mind, and the conflict of instincts which he cannot in the nature of things understand. But it is as well to give the reader a chance to find out for himself what is going on in the young man's ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the highest sense of the word, a great dramatist. Shakspeare is the only one of that age. Marlowe had a rare imagination, a delicacy of sense that made him the teacher of Shakspeare and Milton in versification, and was, perhaps, as purely a poet as any that England has produced; but his mind had no balance-wheel. Chapman abounds in splendid enthusiasms of diction, and now and then dilates our imaginations with suggestions of profound poetic depth. Ben Jonson was a conscientious and intelligent workman, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... sort has offered itself to him, this will be the very thing. Of course, if I succeed wonderfully well in my schemes for story- tellings, readings of my ballads and poems, lectures on the art of versification, and what not, we need have no lodgers; and then we shall all be living a happy family—all taking our share ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... so keenly encouraged Portuguese art and literature, was the widow (and first cousin) of his predecessor, King Jo[a]o II. The theme of the play, the contention of Angel and Devil for the possession of a human soul, was far from new. Its treatment, however, was original and the versification is clear-cut and well sustained throughout, while a deep sincerity and glowing fervour raise the whole play to the loftiest heights. The metre is mostly in verses of seven short (8848484) lines (abcaabc) ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... published till 1603, the year of the piratical publication of the First Quarto of HAMLET, in which the play lacks much of its present matter, and shows in many parts so little trace of Shakspere's spirit and versification that, even if we hold the text to have been imperfectly taken down in shorthand, as it no doubt was, we cannot suppose him to have at this stage completed his refashioning of the older play, which is undoubtedly the substratum of his.[8] We must therefore keep ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... bas-relief on the north and south sides of the basement. On the altar side there are also some verses, by an unknown author, in which human life is compared to "the damask rose and blossom on the tree," with other images of its vanity and shortness. There is a dash of Elizabethan vigour in the versification, mixed with a certain quaintness which points to the decadence, and the lines have been attributed to such different writers as Francis Beaumont and Francis Quarles. The figures in the monument ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... were two: 1. He improved on the versification of Wyatt's sonnets, securing fluency and smoothness. 2. In a translation of two books of Vergil's 'Aneid' he introduced, from the Italian, pentameter blank verse, which was destined thenceforth to be the meter of English poetic drama and of much of the greatest English non-dramatic ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... own husband asked me three times, and three times I said no. And then he took to writing verses—and I saw there was but one way to stop him. So we were married. Ask her; ask her again—and again. You can always resort in the end to versification. And now," the lady concluded, rising, "I have spoken, and I leave you to your fate. I'm obliged to return to the hotel, to hold a bed of justice. It appears that my innocent darlings, beyond there, innocent as they look, have managed among ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... accorded to one who, during the whole time of their composition, has had to apply himself, almost without cessation, to the performance of newspaper press duties; and those who know anything about such things need not be told that a taste for versification is, to a press-man, as a rule, what poverty is to most people—a very inconvenient and by no means a profitable companion. In my own case, however, the inconvenience has been a pleasure, and I have no reason to find fault as to profit. From the fitful excitement of journalistic ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... a tragedy in five acts, which was to be his passport to fame. At this play he laboured for months, shutting himself up completely, and loving his self-imposed slavery—though his want of faculty for versification, and the intense difficulty he experienced in finding words for the ideas which crowded into his imaginative brain were decided drawbacks. While engaged on this work, he may indeed have experienced ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... perfected forge of Catullus, this unvarying versification, lacking imagination, lacking pity, padded with useless words and refuse, with pegs of identical and anticipated assonances, this ceaseless wretchedness of Homeric epithet which designates nothing whatever and permits nothing to be seen, all this impoverished ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... earlier, for the reasons given in my own edition. The question has not in itself much pertinence to our present purpose, as there is no doubt that the tragedy was produced in this period, and its general style, both of thought and versification, is that of Shakespeare in its fullest development and vigor. But with the question of date there is involved another of great interest to the thoughtful reader—that of mixed authorship. In the introductory essay to my edition of this play (published in 1861) attention was directed to ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... the commencement of every term as well as at the end, and at other times, when need was, the grammar masters held a convenite for the purpose of arranging the course of study. Each of them had to obtain a licence, and, as a test of his qualifications, he submitted to an examination in versification, dictation, and so forth, lest, as the statute quaintly expresses it, the language of Isaiah should be ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... Fatimites—and which was then transcendent and even new: the Koran and all its commentaries; the subtleties of syntax and of pronunciation; jurisprudence; calligraphy, which still is dear to the heart of Orientals; versification; and, last of all, mathematics, of which the Arabs were ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... splendid cathedral spire flamed nightly with three hundred burning cresaets, the city was strewn with flowers and decorated with triumphal arches, the Guilds of Rhetoric amazed the world with their gorgeous processions, glittering dresses and bombastic versification, the burghers all, from highest to humblest, were feasted and made merry, wine flowed in the streets and oxen were roasted whole, prizes on poles were climbed for, pigs were hunted blindfold, men and women ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their expression too exuberant, lacking in dignity, sobriety, and reasonableness. There was a growing disposition to exalt the claims of regularity, order, and a recognized standard. A strict censorship was exercised over an author's vocabulary, grammar, and versification. Individual freedom was brought under the curb of rule. The man who voiced especially this growing temper of the times was MALHERBE (1555-1628). No doubt his service was great to French letters as a whole, since the movement ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... studies I had selected the asparagus bed which was like a bit of copse, for the feathery green plants, past their season, grew high and luxuriant; a hazel glen, leafy and impenetrable, and as shady as a verdant grotto, was the spot I had chosen for the more exacting and laborious work of Latin versification. As this time I was scolded by Lucette's mother for my great carelessness, we decided to go immediately and ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... date is not earlier than that of the accession of James I. in 1603. The style and versification would make an earlier date almost impossible. And we have the allusions to 'two-fold balls and treble sceptres' and to the descent of Scottish kings from Banquo; the undramatic description of touching ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... a specimen of the versification of the 137th psalm, in the Bible; one of the sweetest lyrics ever written, beginning 'By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we wept when we remembered Zion; we hanged our harps upon the willows,' etc. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... French literature acquired a deeper and more serious tone. This period was followed by the founding of the French Academy, of which Cardinal Richelieu was the chief patron. The tragic dramatists, Corneille and Racine, now appeared on the literary horizon. Racine's language and versification was said to be far superior to either Milton in English ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... neglected, {199} exercised a great influence on Collins and Gray. Collins's Ode to Simplicity was written in the stanza of Milton's Nativity, and his exquisite unrimed Ode to Evening was a study in versification, after Milton's translation of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha, in the original meters. Shakspere began to to be studied more reverently: numerous critical editions of his plays were issued, and Garrick restored his pure text to the stage. Collins ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... his neglect, he gave in a short copy of verses, entitled Somnium, containing a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:' but the versification was truly Virgilian[183]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... Versification, and Method of Dramatic Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor JACKSON. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... study. There were, perhaps, twenty poems she had thought worth preserving, and her eye traveled over page after page as she weighed the merits and defects of each before making her choice. A sensitive ear had given her admirable imitative powers in versification, and her father, before dissipation had dulled his intellect, had been a man of rare cultivation and literary taste. Deena, among all his children, was the only one whose education he had personally superintended, and she brought to her passion ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... A versification of a story in Mrs. Barbauld's "Evenings at home," by Sneyd Edgeworth, Esq. deserves favourable mention; even the names will ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... Willis has observed that in his opinion "it is the most effective single example of fugitive poetry ever published in this country, and is unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift;" and by that of one of the most extraordinary instances of the naturalness of detail—-the verisimilitude of minute narrative—for which lie was preeminently distinguished, his "Mesmeric Revelation," purporting to be the last conversation of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... the ridicule. The overturn of Mary of Medicis into a river, where she was half-drowned, would never have been remembered if Madame de Vernuel, who saw it, had not said 'la Reine boit'. Pleasure or malignity often gives ridicule a weight which it does not deserve. The versification, I must confess, is too much neglected and too often bad: but, upon the whole, I read ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... unfavourable:—"There is some sweetness of versification and of expression in Miss Melville's poems, but they are unequal, and want force and interest. They never would become popular, so that I feel obliged to decline the publication. Poetry is at all times heavy stock, unless by ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... verses, salted by an irony which is a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously, Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the form by introducing real rustics and turning it into a burlesque. Then, as ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... painted, with BURDETT, late Old Glory, and now Old Corruption. As for the poetry, when we consider the capacities of the learners, that cannot be too simple, too homely. The House, however, may order a Committee of Versification, if it please; all that we protest against is D'ISRAELI being of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... Art of Poesy, and indeed of all true literature! Yet there be some who swear he never lived at all—aye! though his poems have come down to us,—and many are the arguments I have had with so-called wise men like Zabastes, concerning his style and method of versification. Everything he has written bears the impress of the same master-touch,—nevertheless garrulous controversialists hold that his famous work the 'Ruva-Kalama' descended by oral tradition from mouth to mouth till it came to us in its 'improved' present condition. 'Improved!'" and Sah-luma laughed ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... "Scenes from Calderon." The preoccupation of a subject by a great master throws immense difficulties in the way of any one who ventures to follow in the same path: but as Shelley allowed himself great licence in his versification, and either from carelessness or an imperfect knowledge of Spanish is occasionally unfaithful to the meaning of his author, it may be hoped in my own version that strict fidelity both as to the form ...
— The Wonder-Working Magician • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... this kind; so much, indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will even do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's versification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior because he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere; if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing; and he ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... of the French Academy, paid a visit to Agen in 1832. Jasmin was then thirty-four years old. He had been married fourteen years, but his name was quite unknown, save to the people of Agen. It was well known in the town that he had a talent for versification, for he was accustomed to recite and chaunt his verses to ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... feels that he is being robbed of almost all that he cares for in a work of art. "You are asking me," he says, "to look at the Dresden Madonna as if it were a Persian rug. You are telling me that the poetic value of Hamlet lies solely in its style and versification, and that my interest in the man and his fate is only an intellectual or moral interest. You allege that, if I want to enjoy the poetry of Crossing the Bar, I must not mind what Tennyson says there, but must consider solely his way of saying it. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... at Love's Labour's Lost, published in quarto, in 1598, as "corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere." The date of composition is unknown, but the many varieties of versification, with some allusions, mark it as among the earliest of the dramas. Supposing that Shakespeare obtained his knowledge of fine manners and speech, and of the tedious quips and conceits which he satirises, from the contemporary ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... attempt came to a disastrous and premature end. I do not know who suggested to us the witty and clever little play of "Roxelane;" the versification of the piece is extremely easy and graceful, and the preponderance of female characters and convenient Turkish costume, of turbans and caftans, and loose voluminous trousers, had appeared to us to combine various advantages for our purpose. Mademoiselle Descuilles ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... characters of the Hospital Directors were written many years since and, so far as I was capable of judging, are drawn with fidelity. I mention this circumstance that, if any reader should find a difference in the versification or expression, he will be thus enabled to ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... of worship which Athenaeus evidently disapproved has been preserved, and turned into English by the accomplished J.A. Symonds on account of its rare and interesting versification. It belongs to the class of Prosodia, or processional hymns, which the greatest poets delighted to produce, and which were sung at religious festivals by young men and maidens, marching to the shrines in time with the music, their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... with a single fee, but were not so disgusted with the living patient." At parting, the Bishop took the Curate most kindly by the hand, and recommended him by all means to cultivate the amiability of versification. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... and literature of both countries, and studying their poets, particularly Dante, Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier. When he returned, he opened a school in his monastery for teaching the sons of the nobility composition and the art of versification. His acquirements were, for the age, universal. He was a poet, a rhetorician, an astronomer, a mathematician, a public disputant, and a theologian. He was born in 1370, ordained sub-deacon in 1389, deacon in 1393, and priest in 1397. The time ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... Danish poets were, for the most part, extremely rude in their versification. Their stanzas of four or two lines have not the full rhyme of vowel and consonant, but merely what the Spaniards call the "assonante," or vowel rhyme, and attention seldom seems to have been paid to the number of feet on which the lines moved along. But, however defective ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... been made to trace the manner and versification of Hudibras to earlier writers, especially in Cleveland's satires and in the Musarum Deliciae of Sir John Mennis (Pepys's Minnes) and Dr James Smith (1605-1667). But if it had few [v.04 p.0887] ancestors it had an abundant offspring. A list of twenty-seven direct imitations ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... singers were the troubadours, who were traveling minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of whom we have definite account was Count Wilhelm of Poitiers, 1087-1127. Among ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... the decline; next, those who have kept up their classical studies, and are able to read and enjoy the original, will hardly take an interest in a mere translation; while the English reader, unacquainted with Greek, will naturally prefer the harmonious versification and polished brilliancy of Pope's translation; with which, as a happy adaptation of the Homeric story to the spirit of English poetry, I have not the presumption to enter into competition. But, admirable as it is, Pope's Iliad can hardly be said to be Homer's ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... men seemed to dwell upon these peculiarities of versification as being distinctively ecclesiastical and therefore spiritually edifying, and brought up the musical rear of such couplets with long-drawn and profoundly impressive "shy-un's" and "i-tee's;" but these irregularities found ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... because the English are not sufficiently acquainted with the French tongue to feel the beauties of Racine's style, or the harmony of his versification. Corneille ought to please them more because he is more striking; but Racine pleases the French because he has more softness ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... who is to pay him for his work. And that this is the truth may be seen by the countless plays that a most fertile wit of these kingdoms has written, with so much brilliancy, so much grace and gaiety, such polished versification, such choice language, such profound reflections, and in a word, so rich in eloquence and elevation of style, that he has filled the world with his fame; and yet, in consequence of his desire to suit the taste of the actors, they have not all, as some ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of Avitus[27] we have 'a complete poem of the lost Paradise, far removed from a mere paraphrase or versification of the Bible,'[28] which shews artistic leanings and sympathetic feeling here and there. As Catullus[29] pictures the stars looking down upon the quiet love of mortals by night, and Theocritus[30] makes the cypresses their only witnesses, the Christian poet surrounds ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... Chansons de Geste and the romances; though to this there are exceptions, themes not French, and themes not purely heroic, being represented in the epic form. In the early Teutonic poetry there is no distinction of versification, vocabulary, or rhetoric between the original and the secondary narrative poems; the alliterative verse belongs to both kinds equally. Nor is it always the case that subjects derived from books or from abroad are handled with less firmness than the original ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... Maskilim. To him they looked as to their teacher and guide; him they consulted in every emergency. Lebensohn and Gottlober, Mandelstamm and Gordon, equally sought his criticism and advice. For all he had words of comfort and encouragement. The younger Maskilim he warned not to waste their time in idle versification, not to become intoxicated with their little learning; and the older ones he implored to respect the sentiments of their conservative coreligionists. "Take it not amiss," he would say to the latter, "that ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... an inquiry into questions of rhythm, verse-structure, and rhyme. There is, I believe, no good, concise, cheap handbook to English prosody; yet such a manual is greatly needed. The only one with which I am acquainted is Tom Hood the younger's *Rules of Rhyme: A Guide to English Versification*. Again, the introduction to Walker's *Rhyming Dictionary* gives a fairly clear elementary account of the subject. Ruskin also has written an excellent essay on verse-rhythms. With a manual in front of you, you can acquire in a couple of hours a knowledge of the formal principles ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... though this idea will perhaps be thought, a little introspection will countenance it. That we do take advantage of metrical language to adjust our perceptive faculties to the force of the expected articulations, is clear from the fact that we are balked by halting versification. Much as at the bottom of a flight of stairs, a step more or less than we counted upon gives us a shock; so, too, does a misplaced accent or a supernumerary syllable. In the one case, we know that there is an erroneous preadjustment; and we can scarcely doubt that there ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... his versification, we shall be sensible what a share of praise is due to his invention in that also. He was not satisfied with his language as he found it settled in any one part of Greece, but searched through its different dialects with this particular view, to ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Romanticism. He is Spain's "representative man" in that movement. Furthermore, the wealth of meters he uses is such that no other poet provides so good a text for an introduction to the study of Spanish versification. The editor has therefore treated the biography of Espronceda with some degree of completeness, studying his career as one fully representative of the historical and literary movements of the period. A treatment of the main ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... confine his attention to those superior sciences. He treated of music, and of rhetoric, of grammar, and the art of versification, and of arithmetic, both by letters and on the fingers; and his work on this last subject is the only one in which that piece of antique curiosity has been preserved to us. All these are short pieces; some of them ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... has an intellectual essence. Out of simple chords and melodies, which at first catch only the ear, he weaves elaborate compositions that by their form appeal also to the mind. This side of music resembles a richer versification; it may be compared also to mathematics or to arabesques. A moving arabesque that has a vital dimension, an audible mathematics, adding sense to form, and a versification that, since it has no subject-matter, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... second line is expected to return in every alternate verse through the whole poem. The Gael appear to have been early in possession of these coincidences of termination which were unknown to the classical poets, or were regarded by them as defects.[24] All writers on Celtic versification, including the Irish, Welsh, Manx, and Cornish varieties, are united in their testimony as to the early use of rhyme by the Celtic poets, and agree in assigning the primary model to the incantations of the Druids.[25] The lyrical measures of the Gael are various, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... which distinguished his metrical style and the mysterious artifices of the endecasyllabic verse learned from the admirable poets of the fourteenth century, and more especially from Petrarch. Once more the magic spell of versification subjugated his soul, and he felt the full force of the sentiment of ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... literary young men as unfledged as himself, but who possessed the advantages of a regular scholastic education. They taught him the rules of prosody and the exercises proper to overcome the mere mechanical difficulties of versification. This society made Murger more than ever ambitious; a secret instinct told him that the pen was the arm with which he would win fame and fortune. He determined to abandon ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... broad day of the uppermost windows, that the young Duke Carl laid his hand on an old volume of the year 1486, printed in heavy type, with frontispiece, perhaps, by Albert Duerer—Ars Versificandi: The Art of Versification: by Conrad Celtes. Crowned poet of the Emperor Frederick the Third, he had the right to speak on that subject; for while he vindicated as best he might old German literature against the charge of barbarism, he did also a man's ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the Death of the celebrated ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... reader to "note" the phrase "neath cliffs" (apparently for "beneath the cliffs") as "characteristic." Shall the reader indeed "note" such a matter? Truly he has other things to do. This is by the way. Tennyson is always an artist, and the finish of his work is one of the principal notes of his versification. How this finish comports with the excessive ease of his prosody remains his own peculiar secret. Ease, in him, does not mean that he has any unhandsome slovenly ways. On the contrary, he resembles rather the warrior with the pouncet box. It is the man of "neath cliffs" who will not be at the ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... remains of his life in turning the Consolation of Boethius into English. The translation was published after the translator's death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some very unsuccessful attempts to enrich our versification with new metres, and on account of the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under a thin veil of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public compassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. He complained that the tribunal which had sentenced him to death had dealt with ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which can be used in determining, not exact dates, but the period of Shakespeare's activity within which a given work falls. More capable of mechanical calculation than the tests of either matter or style are those derived from changes in versification, though here too there is often a subjective element in the reckoning. The more important metrical tests include the following: the frequency of rhyme, whether in the heroic couplet or, as not uncommonly occurs in early plays, in alternates and even such elaborate arrangements ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... new French literature and a belief in its aesthetic code. That French influence would have spread into England without the aid of these political accidents is doubtless true, as it is also true that a reform of English versification and poetic style would have worked itself out upon native lines independent of foreign example, and even had there been so such thing as French literature. Mr. Gosse has pointed out couplets of Waller, written as early as 1623, which have the formal ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. A third would go on reciting from the RAMAYANA or the MAHABHARATA a long series of poems, which had to be reproduced; a fourth would set problems in versification which required the composition of verses in proper meter on a given subject, each line to end in a specified word, a fifth man would carry on with a sixth a theological disputation, the exact language of which had to be quoted ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... syllables each. A tanka (short song) consisted of thirty-one syllables arranged thus, 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7; and a naga-uta (long song) consisted of an unlimited number of lines, all fulfilling the same conditions as to number of syllables and alternation of phrases. No parallel to this kind of versification has been found yet in the literature of any other nation. The Chronicles and the Records abound with tanka and naga-uta, many of which have been ascribed by skeptics to an age not very remote from the time when those books were compiled. But the Japanese ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... to that of Hamlet, the first Shakespearian draft of which is now generally conceded to date from the first months of 1602. The diction of Julius Caesar, the quality of the blank verse, the style generally (see below, Versification and Diction), all point to 1601 as the probable date of composition. It has been said that a true taste for Shakespeare is like the creation of a special sense; and this saying is nowhere better approved than in reference to his subtile variations of language and ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... had sung this hymn, the meaning of which is far better than the versification, I preached from the words of St. Paul, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect." And this is something like ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... spirit of the Reformation period appears to have spent itself. The following century added nothing to Danish hymnody. Anders Chrestensen Arrebo, Bishop at Tronhjem, and an ardent lover and advocate of a richer cultivation of the Danish language and literature, published a versification of the Psalms of David and a few hymns in 1623. But the Danish church never became a psalm singing church, and his hymns have disappeared. Hans Thomisson's hymnal continued to be printed with occasional additions of new material, most of which possessed no permanent value. But ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... Pindarick madness" is well known. The "first and obvious defect" of Dryden's Threnodia "is the irregularity of its metre." The "lax and lawless versification" of this type of poetry, he wrote in the Life of Cowley, "concealed the deficiencies of the barren, and flattered the laziness of the idle." One cannot but wonder therefore at his praise of Morrison's ode. To be sure, Reynolds quotes Johnson as pronouncing ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... ground with the foot) was a dancing-song; the lyric lai, virtually identical with the descort, consisted of stanzas which varied in structure; the motet, a name originally applied to pieces of church music, was freer in versification, and occasionally dealt with popular themes. Among forms which cannot be included under the general title of chansons, are those in dialogue derived from the Provencal literature; in the tenson or debat the two interlocutors put forth their opinions on what ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... not be surprised to find, that he who could thus confound monotony with music, and commence his greatest poem with it, is too often discordant in the rest of his versification. It has been thought, that Milton might have taken from the Italians the grand musical account to which he turns a list of proper names, as in his enumerations of realms and deities; but I have been surprised to find how little the most ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... founded upon such traditions as we may suppose in the elder times would have employed the harps of the minstrels. This kind of poetry has been supposed capable of uniting the vigorous numbers and wild fiction, which occasionally charm us in the ancient ballad, with a greater equality of versification, and elegance of sentiment, than we can expect to find in the works of a rude age. But, upon my ideas of the nature and difficulty of such imitations, I ought in prudence to be silent; lest I resemble the dwarf, who brought with him a standard to ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... in descriptive poetry, is soft and splendid; and he seldom fails to display, and even to abuse, the advantages of a cultivated understanding, a copious fancy, an easy, and sometimes forcible, expression; and a perpetual flow of harmonious versification. To these commendations, independent of any accidents of time and place, we must add the peculiar merit which Claudian derived from the unfavorable circumstances of his birth. In the decline of arts, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... sensations. But they are so overladen with confusing imagery that they have to be read twice to be understood. In the poem "Solveig" (1855) he makes the heart "in its prison envy the free-born thoughts which fly to the beloved one's breast." His versification is gnarled and twisted, and a perpetual strain upon the ear. As Mr. Nordahl Rolfsen has remarked, one need not be a princess in order to be troubled by the peas in his verse.[13] Browning himself could scarcely have perpetrated more unmelodious lines than Jonas Lie is ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... solemn than usual; yet Marot, who was never grave but in prison, soon recovered from this dedication to the king, for on turning the leaf we find another, "Aux Dames de France!" Warton says of Marot, that "He seems anxious to deprecate the raillery which the new tone of his versification was likely to incur, and is embarrassed to find an apology for turning saint." His embarrassments, however, terminate in a highly poetical fancy. When will the golden age be restored? ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... strains that the genuine lovers of the English tongue have ever since perused with delight, while those who are discouraged by its apparent crabbedness, have yet grown familiar with his thoughts in the smoother and more modern versification of Dryden and Pope. From that time the principles of true taste have been more or less cultivated, while with equal career independence of thought and an ardent spirit of discovery have continually proceeded, and made a rapid advance ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... account of some extremely blasphemous poems he had written. However, I was disappointed; and instead of a man of parts, I found the abbe to be an impudent worthless fellow, whose only merit was a knack of versification. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... manner of presentment, the substance, and also the style and versification have undergone a change. I might point to the profound intellectual depth of certain pieces as its characteristic, or, equally, to the traces here and there of an apparent carelessness of workmanship; or, yet again, to the new ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... in their number of verses or in divisions which are strictly parallel, nevertheless I have divided them in this fashion with a view to convenience or the reader, rather than conformity with the ancient rules of versification. In other respects a poem of this kind should, perhaps, more correctly be called monostrophic. The metres are in part regularly patterned and in part free. There are two Phaleucian verses which admit a spondee in the third foot, a practice often followed ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... selection for literary use of that English dialect which was probably the most suitable for the purpose; and Chaucer as a Southern man (like his "Parson of a Town") belonged to a part of the country where the old alliterative verse had long since been discarded for classical and romance forms of versification. Thus the "Romaunt of the Rose" most suitably opens his literary life—a translation in which there is nothing original except an occasional turn of phrase, but in which the translator finds opportunity for exercising his powers of judgment by virtually re-editing the work before ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... Paradise; inevitable falling off of the later books; minor critical objections mostly groundless; his diction; his indebtedness to other poets for thoughts as well as phrases; this is not plagiarism; his versification; his Satan compared with Calderon's Lucifer; plan of his epic, whether in any way suggested by Andreini, Vondel, or Ochino; his majestic and unique position ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... hereafter in speaking of the works of Thomas Sackville lord Buckhurst. The legends combined in this collection, which came from the pen of Ferrers, are not distinguished by any high flights of poetic fancy, nor by a versification extremely correct or melodious. Their merit is that of narrating after the chronicles, facts in English history, in a style clear, natural, and energetic, with an intermixture of political reflections conceived in a spirit of wisdom ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... English cradle rhyme, evidently written to comfort fathers more than babies, is given by way of contrast, and, as is usual with our own countrymen, the versification is thoroughly British, slurred ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... habit that leads those that have been accustomed to one particular revision of Rous's version—that which has been the Scottish authorized Psalter since 1650—to prefer Psalms LXXX.- LXXXVIII. as there given, rude though the versification is, to the Translations of the same Psalms proposed even by Milton. Something of this impression may have prevailed even in 1648, if, as is likely enough, Milton took the trouble of showing his translations to some who were interested in the question of the new ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... varied by the number of beats of the right hand to one of the left, and by the different degrees of speed with which the tune is played. The general beat may be compared to the dactyl of ancient Greek and Roman versification. The left hand plays the long syllable, if we may so speak, while the right plays the two short ones. The combinations, however, are as intricate as the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Shakespeare's genius can be adequate. In knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judgment, he has no rival. It is true of him, as of no other writer, that his language and versification adapt themselves to every phase of sentiment, and sound every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expressions, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... but you have been sparing of the gall; by which means you have pleased all readers and offended none. Donne alone, of all our countrymen, had your talent, but was not happy enough to arrive at your versification; and were he translated into numbers and English, he would yet be wanting in the dignity of expression. That which is the prime virtue and chief ornament of Virgil, which distinguishes him from the rest of writers, is so conspicuous in your verses that it casts ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... that reads the poetry of Gray, does not feel that it is the refinement of classical taste which gives such inexpressible vividness and transparency to his diction? Who that reads the concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the playful wit of antiquity? Who that meditates over the strains of Milton does not feel that ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... drown the words in a wealth of vocalization, and the meaning is lost, even were the language one known to their hearers, which it usually is not. I have heard a living poet, himself of no mean eminence, maintain that the harmony of versification is a far higher test of true poetic power than the ...
— Aboriginal American Authors • Daniel G. Brinton
... Cambridge. Thus, the drama of Athens naturally was assumed as the model of modern imitation; but on it was ingrafted, not the vehemence and nature of the Greek originals, addressed to all mankind, but the measured march of heroic versification, intended for a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Grumbling," "Digging Stumps," "Biz," to show what is coming, so that one can get ready to cry or laugh, as the case may be—a kind of sign-board, a milestone, to tell where we are going, and how fast we go. The readers then call her attention to the solid columns of the other papers, and the versification of the World. She said she did not like the dead calm. She liked the breaking up into verses, like her songs. That is a good thing; it gives the reporter time to take breath and sharpen his pen, and think ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... A. D. 1900, should overhear my voice amongst the babblings that will then be troubling the atmosphere—in that case it will hear me still reaffirming, with an indignation still gathering strength, and therefore approaching ever nearer and nearer to a Juvenalian power of versification, so that perhaps I shall then speak in rhymed couplets—that all anecdotes pretending to be smart, but to a dead certainty if they pretend to be epigrammatic, are and must be lies. There is, in fact, no security for the truth of an anecdote, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... griddle-cakes of our Puritan ancestors. I am sorry we cannot go deeper into the subject at present. But I have an invitation to dinner where I shall study, experimentally, the influence of French sauces on my versification." ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... princess let fall her veil, and was silent. A shout of applause was followed by wild strummings and tunings of mandolins, and occasional scratching of heads or turbans, to remember all that Hafiz had ever written, or to aid their attempts at improviso versification. Time flew on, and no one of the young rayahs appeared inclined to begin. At last one stepped forward, and named the rose, in a borrowed couplet. He was dismissed with a graceful wave of the hand by the princess, and broke his mandolin in his vexation, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... son of the Muses, and the most successful writer in our language. He is the author of several little national poems. In early life he successfully burlesqued the affected versification of Ambrose Philips, in his baby poems, to which he gave the fortunate appellation of "Namby Pamby, a panegyric on the new versification;" a term descriptive in sound of those chiming follies, and now become a technical term in modern criticism. Carey's "Namby Pamby" was at first considered ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... doggerel poem in the State Poems Marvel's? Several poems which are ascribed to him are as bad in versification, and, I need not ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... that we wanted to make a poet of him, and nothing else, forbid him all quiet, steady, rational labor? Should we force him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the laws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to discover in the works of previous writers? Whatever gifts the boy had, would much be likely to come of them so treated? unless, indeed, they were so great as to break ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... not aware that the following specimen of his versification, which is curious, has ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... Iliad is also often spoken of as characteristic of the style in which that great epic is written. And yet, as has been said, "though its versification is always appropriate, and therefore never mean, it only rises into stateliness, or into a terrible sublimity, when Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. Thus he ushers in with true grandeur ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... of a rising writer, not so much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done before, as by their difference from it; and while we advise him, in his first trials of strength, to set certain models before him with respect to inferior points,—one for versification, another for arrangement, another for treatment,—we yet admit not his greatness until he has broken away from all his models, and struck forth versification, arrangement, and ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be masters of the art of versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are classics ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Milton or Shakspeare, Herbert or Quarles, in his hand. He was one of those who, reading with his own eyes and heart, and not through the spectacles of critics, had not been taught to despise the last old poet, nor to treat his rich and quaint versification, and his many manly and noble thoughts, as the conceits and rhymes of a poetaster. His reverence for the great names of our literature, and his just appreciation of their works, won upon me greatly. I invited him to continue his walk; and—so well was I pleased with him—to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... criticism which applies to many of the other poems. Miss Whitney evidently despises foot-notes as utterly as Tennyson, and leaves much unexplained in her titles and in the poems themselves, which might help us to understand them, if we knew it. Obscurity of thought and a lack of facility in versification cause evident defects in her otherwise fine book; on the other hand, she is never flat and seldom feeble, but writes as one whose thoughts and feelings move on a high level, sustained by a familiarity with the strength and beauty, rather than the grace and tenderness of literature. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... entertained no more than a Platonic or imaginary passion. Surrey was a great experimentalist in metre. Besides the sonnet, he introduced into England blank verse, which he borrowed from the Italian versi sciolti, fixing that decasyllable iambic rhythm for English versification in which our greatest ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... deep reason. A speculator of this class happened to find that Matthew viii. 28-33 and Luke viii. 26-33 contain the same account, that of the demons entering into the swine. Very odd! chapters tallying, and verses so nearly: is the versification rightly managed? Examination is sure to show that there are monstrous inconsistencies in the mode of division, which being corrected, the verses tally as well as the chapters. And then how comes it? I cannot go on, {52} for I have no gift at torturing a coincidence, but I would lay twopence, if ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... period by a hundred years, and without teacher or example displayed the excellences which came to be preferred to all others in the eighteenth century. "These poems of his," says his editor in that age (1718), "having stood the test of above a century, and the language and the versification being still pure and elegant, it is to be hoped they will still shine among his countrymen and preserve his name." At this time, and for long afterwards, Drayton, save for an occasional reprint of his "Nimphidia" among miscellaneous collections, was utterly ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... Chansons de Geste. If the text can be entirely restored, the poem will appear as "the most primitive" of French epics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647, "there are traces of change in the language. The word co, followed by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel i, of li, nominative masculine of the article" (li Reis, "the king"), "never occurs in the text after line 2647. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... judicious intermixture is requisite ... It is without reason, therefore, that some critics have censured these modes of speech, and ridiculed the poet for the use of them; as old Euclid did, objecting that versification would be an easy business, if it were permitted to lengthen words at pleasure, and then giving a burlesque example of that sort of diction... In the employment of all the species of unusual words, moderation is necessary: for metaphors, foreign words, or any of the others improperly ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... of our riddles call for comment. Filipino riddles, in whatever language, are likely to be in poetical form. The commonest type is in two well-balanced, rhyming lines. Filipino versification is less exacting in its demand in rhyme than our own; it is sufficient if the final syllables contain the same vowel; thus Rizal says—ayup and pagud, aval and alam, rhyme. The commonest riddle verse contains five or seven, or six, ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... and even particular words and phrases from other minor epics, into the context of his poem, somewhat as the bards of major epic are supposed to have done. Surprisingly, in view of this technique of composition, the poem is well integrated, and consistently smooth and fluent in its versification.[51] ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... may be read as curiosities of versification, and which arouse the wrath of the critics against the whole metaphysical school, are those like "Easter Wings" and "The Altar," which suggest in the printed form of the poem the thing of which the poet sings. More ingenious ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... be written in letters of gold on the walls of the understanding. He explained it to them as a metaphor, and made them to understand that the field of the sluggard, overgrown with thorns and nettles, was only an image of the neglected and uncultivated mind. He gave them Doctor Watts' versification of it to commit to memory, and repeated it with them in concert. It is not strange that Mittie, who never came to him with a neglected or imperfect lesson, should be a great favorite with him, and that he should make her the star pupil of ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Milton, intended to strengthen Mrs. Renshaw's argument, really weakens it; for while he undoubtedly condemns rhyme, he laments in the course of this very condemnation the lame metre which is sometimes concealed by apt rhyming. "Some Views on Versification," by Clara I. Stalker, is an essay written from a sounder and more conservative point of view. The middle course in poetical composition, which avoids alike wild eccentricities and mechanical precision, has much ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Dukes of Burgundy, Anjou, and Berri several works; amongst others, the Telemachus—a singular book, which partakes at once of the character of a romance and of a poem, and which substitutes a prosaic cadence for versification. But several luscious pictures would not lead us to suspect that this book issued from the pen of a sacred minister for the education of a prince; and what we are told by a famous poet is not improbable, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... entitled "The Power of Solitude." Adopting the criticism of the biographers—its prominent defects were exaggeration of feeling, confusion of imagery, want of simplicity of expression, stilted and artificial style. But though dull as a poem, it shows facility and talent for versification, breathes a warm aspiration for virtue and truth, and is creditable to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... become abstract and conventional, instead of continuing to deal with shepherds, thunderstorms, and personifications, he dealt with the actual circumstances of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid these might be. And, second, in a time when English versification was particularly stiff, lame, and feeble, and words were used with ultra-academical timidity, he wrote verses that were easy, racy, graphic, and forcible, and used language with absolute tact and courage as it seemed ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... forms one of the indispensable properties of these epic poems; irregularity of versification is a sign of decay, and a complete absence of measure, that is to say, the prose form, is the last stage of decay. The airs to which they are sung or chanted are very simple, consisting of but few tones, yet are extremely difficult to note down. The peasant bard modifies the one or ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... were perhaps a little too similar. They addressed poetical epistles to each other, and were, reciprocally, too gentle critics. But Mr. Pye was a most amiable and accomplished man, a fine classical scholar, and a master of correct versification. He paid a visit to Enfield, and by his influence hastened a conclusion at which my grandfather was just arriving, to wit, that he would no longer persist in the fruitless effort of converting a poet into a merchant, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... minor poets. He was a judicious discoverer, and he did not turn all his minor poets into major prophets. If his geese were swans, they were not all Swans of Avon. He had even incurred the deadly suspicion of classicism by differing from his young friends, the Punctuist Poets, when they produced versification consisting exclusively of commas and colons. He had a more humane sympathy with the modern flame kindled from the embers of Celtic mythology, and it was in reality the recent appearance of a Cornish poet, a sort of parallel ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... verbal peculiarity of our excellent representative, Alderman VARIAN, whose v always takes the form of a w, especially in his rendering of a foreign tongue; as witness his being 'just on the qwi-wi-we for the capitol,' on one occasion, and the subjoined versification of another of his Latin ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... over this nation Centuries after myself shall have died; People will point to my versification— I, who was born on the Lower ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... — N. poetry, poetics, poesy, Muse, Calliope, tuneful Nine, Parnassus, Helicon[obs3], Pierides, Pierian spring. versification, rhyming, making verses; prosody, orthometry[obs3]. poem; epic, epic poem; epopee[obs3], epopoea, ode, epode[obs3], idyl, lyric, eclogue, pastoral, bucolic, dithyramb, anacreontic[obs3], sonnet, roundelay, rondeau[Fr], rondo, madrigal, canzonet[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... his career he had written a versification of the Psalms, in 1788 his Conquest of Canaan, and later Triumph of Infidelity. President Dwight taught the seniors rhetoric, logic, ethics, and metaphysics, and the graduate students in theology. In 1805 he was appointed to the professorship ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... and so on—strangely incongruous with what follows. For that is simply a few of the most beautiful poems to be found in the Buddhist scriptures. There is no apparent reason, except their exquisite versification, why these particular pieces should have been here brought together. It is most probable that this tiny volume was simply a sort of first lesson book for young neophytes when they joined the order. In any case that is one of the uses to which it is put at present. The text book ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... and I amused myself with fancying that I loved her. She was to me the summer pilot of an empty heart unto the shores of nothing. It was then that I acquired that facility in versification which has since so often helped to bind a book, or line a box, or served to curl a maiden's locks. She, learned reams of those verses by heart, and still repeats them. Her good looks and my illusions have passed away: but those verses—those thrice accursed verses, remain. How they ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... TALES, and other Poems; with a Life of the Author; Remarks on his Language and Versification: a Glossary and Index; and a concise History of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... ancestors; seldom can we take up a paper or a periodical which does not show us verses worthy of great names; the age is full of highly respectable, if not superlative poetry; and truly may we consider that the very abundance of good versification has lowered the price of poets, and therefore, in this marketing world, has robbed them of proper estimation. Doubtless, there have been mighty men of song higher in rank, as earlier in time, than any now who dare to try a chirrup: but there are also many of our anonymous ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... the mouth of our prophet by the great men that were contemporary with him. I was not satisfied with the knowledge alone of all that had any relation to our religion, but made also a particular search into our histories. I made myself perfect in polite learning, in the works of the poets, and in versification. I applied myself to geography, to chronology, and to speak our Arabian language in its purity; not forgetting, in the mean time, all such exercises as were proper for a prince to understand. But one thing I was mightily in love with, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... contributor to the Edinburgh, and giving general praise to "The Lay," he glances with an unmistakable meaning at the "dignity of the subject," regrets the "imitation and antiquarian researches," and criticises the versification in a way which shows that he had not in the least grasped its scheme. It is hardly necessary to quote his well-known attacks on Wordsworth; but, though I am myself anything but a Wordsworthian, and would willingly give ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... sense of triumph over the difficulties of our language, the satisfaction of approaching in a novel and perceptibly felt manner one of those excellences which, as much as anything, contributes to the permanent charm of Catullus, his dainty versification, will more than compensate for any shortcomings which the difficulty of the task has made inevitable. The same may be said of the elaborately artificial poem to Camerius (c. lv.), and the almost unapproachable Attis (c. lxiii.). Here, at least half the interest lies ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... because the music to which it was set fell so far below it in grace and ease. It must be added, however, that Addison lacked the qualities of a successful libretto writer. He was too serious, and despite the lightness of his touch, there was a certain rigidity in him which made him unapt at versification which required quickness, agility, and variety. When he attempted to give his verse gayety of manner, he did not get beyond awkward simulation of an ease which nature had ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... his text. He was capable of writing excellent poetry, but he seems to have cultivated this talent too little. The English verses prefixed to his book, which possess beautiful imagery, and great sweetness of versification, have been frequently published. His Latin elegiac verses addressed to his book, shew a very agreeable turn ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion. While admitting that the venerable and heavenly forms of chiming versification have in their time play'd great and fitting parts—that the pensive complaint, the ballads, wars, amours, legends of Europe, &c., have, many of them, been inimitably render'd in rhyming verse—that there have been very illustrious ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... society—his paradoxical morality, and his perpetual hankerings after some unattainable state of voluptuous virtue and perfection. (2) The simplicity and energy (horresco referens) of Kotzebue and Schiller. (3) The homeliness and harshness of some of Cowper's language and versification, interchanged occasionally with the innocence of Ambrose Philips, or the quaintness of Quarles and Dr. Donne. From the diligent study of these few originals, we have no doubt that an entire art of poetry may be collected, by the assistance of which, the very gentlest of our readers ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... be inverted into downright Impudence. From a hundred mean and dishonest Artifices employ'd to discredit this Edition, and to cry down its Editor, I have all the Grounds in Nature to be aware of Attacks. But tho' the Malice of Wit join'd to the Smoothness of Versification may furnish some Ridicule; Fact, I hope, will be able to stand its Ground ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... not believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a lumbering proclivity that way, and so forfeits the confidence of grave sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable and unprecedented prescription she had waited for so long, seemed all of a piece to poor mamma: wild, unpractical, and—"oh, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... praised at least equally to its merit. In "The Dispensary" there is a strain of smooth and free versification; but few lines are eminently elegant. No passages fall below mediocrity, and few rise much above it. The plan seems formed without just proportion to the subject; the means and end have no necessary connection. Resnel, in his preface to Pope's Essay, remarks that Garth exhibits no discrimination ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... play "so lewd,/ Ev'n Bullies blush'd, and Beaux astonish'd stood" (Second Edition, p. 11), but in The Wife of Bath and The What D'Ye Call It. Welsted also hits at God's Revenge Against Punning, the First Psalm, praises Tickell, and finds Pope's versification flat. All of these charges (except the one that Pope collaborated in The Wife of Bath) had appeared in print before, but Pope was to remember Palaemon To Caelia and include it in a note to The Dunciad A II.293, where it is neatly described as "meant for a Satire ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... despises, and leaves for the adornment of those who need them. In him imagination predominates over fancy, and the latter is always sacrificed to the former. We do not intend to say that Mr. Taylor is without fancy. Far from it—he has fancy, but it never leads him to be fanciful. His versification is polished, correct and various, but more harmonious than melodious; that is to say, the whole rhythmical flow of his verse is more striking than the sweetness of particular lines. We have not mentioned all the phases of Mr. Taylor's genius. Some of ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... create a mould for Latin poetry went on wrong, or, perhaps it would be truer to say, on premature lines. From this time henceforth the whole serious production of Latin poetry for centuries was a continuous effort to master and adapt Greek structure and versification; the Odyssey of Livius was the first and, with one notable exception, almost the last sustained attempt to use the native forms of Italian rhythm towards any large achievement; this current thereafter sets underground, and only emerges again ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... however, there may be noted, in qualification of much pliancy and vigour, a certain air of experiment in occasional passages, and a license in versification, which more than warrants a warning "to expect every kind of irregularity in these modern hexameters." The following lines defy all efforts at reading in dactyls or spondees, and require an almost complete transposition ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... miscellaneous poems, there are many which, in brilliancy, in keen, good-natured satire, in facility and variety of versification, in ingenious fancy, in joyousness of spirit and pure love of fun, excel the longer poems to which we have just referred. We have found the great majority of them exceedingly exhilarating reading, and, if our ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... ceremonies at marriages and funerals.[386:2] The only liturgical compositions that have come down to us from the first generations are the various attempts, in various degrees of harshness and rudeness, at the versification of psalms and other Scriptures for singing. The emancipation of the church from its bondage to an artificial dogma came, as we have already seen, with the Great Awakening and the introduction of Watts's "Psalms of David, Imitated in the Language ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... verse, with copious notes of the same tenor, on the heads of President Jefferson and his supporters. Much of the satire is unpardonably coarse. The literary merits of the work are inferior to those of "Terrible Tractoration "; but it is no less original and peculiar. Even where the matter is a mere versification of newspaper slander, Dr. Caustic's manner gives it an individuality not to be mistaken. The book passed through three editions in the course of a few months. Its most pungent portions were copied into all the opposition prints; ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 'Its smooth versification, copious diction, and sustained elegance made it a sort of canon of poetical technique. Among much tedious rhetoric and cumbrous mythology there is enough imagination and pathos to make the poem interesting and ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... to criticise. It is impossible to deny to it rapidity, spirit, and a full sound; the lines are never lame, and the sense is carried forward with an uninterrupted, impetuous rush. But it is not equal. After passages of really admirable versification, the author falls back upon a sort of loose, cavalry manner, not unlike the style of some of Mr. Browning's minor pieces, and almost inseparable from wordiness, and an easy acceptation of somewhat cheap finish. There is nothing here ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... said Hyacinthe. "Well, since I renounced versification—a little poem I had begun on the End of Woman—because words seemed to me so gross and cumbersome, mere paving-stones as it were, fit for labourers, I myself have had some idea of trying drawing, and perhaps engraving too. But what drawing can portray the mystery which lies beyond life, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... principles of literary art. These principles pertain to diction, structure, matter, and spirit or purpose. No one will deny that the diction should be well chosen; that the structure of the sentences should be correct and clear; and that, in the case of poetry, the laws of versification should be observed. These elements contribute to excellence of form. In addition to these external elements there should be unity of thought, symmetry of presentation, truth of statement, and sincerity and self-restraint in sentiment. These elements give substantial worth to the matter ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... remark, that from that early time to a later period, many of the great products of English poetry have been watered by silver rills of imaginative genius from a remote Italian source. Chaucer's indebtedness has just been noticed. Spenser borrowed his versification and not a little of his poetic handling in the Faery Queen from Ariosto. Milton owes to Dante some of his conceptions of heaven and hell in his Paradise Lost, while his Lycidas, Arcades, Allegro and Penseroso, may be called Italian ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... these efforts. His poetry, notably his odes on "Tea," and the "Eulogy of Moukden" as the cradle of his race, was translated by Pere Amiot, and attracted the attention of Voltaire, who addressed to the emperor an epistolary poem on the requirements and difficulties of Chinese versification. The French thus rendered a material service in making China better known to Europe and Europe better known in China, which, although it may be hard to gauge precisely, entitles them still to rank among those who have opened up China to Europeans. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... In this, a little piece of two stanzas, the author had got at the heart of a good deal of America. In another cheap magazine, professing to be devoted wholly to stories, he hoped for a breathing-space, and was tasked by nothing less familiar than Swift's versification of a well-known maxim of La Rouchefoucauld. In a ten-cent magazine which is too easily the best of that sort, he found two pieces of uncommon worth, which opened the way so promisingly, indeed, for happier fortunes that he was not as much surprised as he might later have been in ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... boy who made this translation, was just ten years old; he had made but three previous attempts in versification; his reading in poetry had been some of Gay's fables, parts of the Minstrel, three odes of Gray, the Elegy in a Country Church-yard, the Tears of Old May-day, and parts of the second volume of Dr. Darwin's Botannic Garden; Dryden's translations of the fable of Ceyx and ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... pleased MARY, and now POMFRET steps in with his confounded rhymes. Mrs. BELLAMY's father once published a volume of verse, and is still talked of in the household as "your grandfather the poet." She told me that she thought "a faculty for versification was the mark of a truly refined and delicate mind." Bah! POMFRET's one of the most selfish and calculating ruffians outside a convict prison, and always haggles over his luncheon bills at the Club, till the head-waiter and all the rest nearly go off ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various
... little history has presumed to borrow the peculiar style of versification from Longfellow's ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... when once you get into this sort of style, it's impossible to get out of it. Mark my words! If you are in earnest about learning, I've got here Wang Mo-chieh's complete collection; so you'd better take his one hundred stanzas, written in the pentameter rule of versification, and carefully study them, until you apprehend them thoroughly. Afterwards, look over the one hundred and twenty stanzas of Lao T'u, in the heptameter rule; and next read a hundred or two hundred of the heptameter ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... essence of epic poetry. For that age, this form of literature was the most agreeable diversion from archaeological studies, and, indeed, the only possible means of re-establishing an independent class of narrative poetry. For the versification of ancient history could only lead to the false tracks which were trodden by Petrarch in his 'Africa,' written in Latin hexameters, and a hundred and fifty years later by Trissino in his 'Italy delivered from the Goths,' composed in 'versi sciolti'—a never-ending poem of faultless ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... just occurred to me that you could give me a hint or two at versification. I have just commenced, but I find it no easy matter, the rhymes ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... diction, less skill in fastening the reader's interest to his fable, harsher in versification, and generally clumsier in construction, the best plays of Thomas Middleton are still superior to Heywood's in force of imagination, depth of passion, and fulness of matter. It must, however, be admitted that the sentiments ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... a favorite Christmas hymn in Germany, is ancient, and appears to be a versification of a Latin prose "Sequence" variously ascribed to a 9th century author, and to Gregory the Great in the 6th century. Its German form is still credited to Luther in most hymnals. Julian gives an earlier German form (1370) of the "Gelobet," but attributes ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... the right expression of his thought; he rejects superfluous adjectives, and all stop-gap words. He refuses to use words for words' sake: he declines to interrupt conversation with a display of fireworks: and as a result it will be found that his finest effects of versification correspond with his highest achievements in imagination and passion. As a dramatic poet he is obliged to modulate and moderate, sometimes almost to vulgarise, his style and diction for the proper expression of some particular character, in whose mouth exquisite turns ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... dramatic entertainment entered, called "The Historie of the Colyer," acted by the Earl of Leicester's men; but it was doubtless Ulpian Fulwell's "Like will to Like, quod the Devil to the Colier," printed in 1568. The structure, phraseology, versification, and language of "Grim, the Collier of Croydon," are sufficient to show that it was written before 1600: another instance to prove how much the arrangement of the plays made by Mr Reed was calculated to mislead. Some slight separate proofs of the age of this piece ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... himself. There is a splendid Ode to Cromwell—a worthy companion of Milton's glorious sonnet—which is not generally known, and which we transfer entire to our pages. Its simple dignity and the melodious flow of its versification commend themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of war. It is energetic and impassioned, and probably affords a better idea of the author, as an actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the "soft Lydian airs" of the poems ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier |
