"Metre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... expressions still more ardent and glowing. What separates and distinguishes poetry is more particularly the ornament of verse; it is this which gives it its character, and is an essential, without which it cannot exist. Custom has appropriated different metre to different kinds of composition, in which the world is not perfectly agreed. In England the dispute is not yet settled which is to be preferred, rhyme or blank verse. But however we disagree about what these metrical ornaments shall be, that some metre is essentially necessary ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... in the octosyllabic metre, chose it also for The Country Walk, a poem in which, notwithstanding an occasional lapse into the conventional diction of the period, the rural pictures are drawn from life. He takes the reader into the farm-yard and ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Geste; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the mediaeval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many cases, by the art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in professional and literary hands. The mediaeval minstrels and jongleurs (who may best be studied in Leon Gautier's ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... laid. The first play was written by a superior, thoughtful man, with a vicious ear. I can mark his lines, and know well their cadence. See Wolsey's Soliloquy, and the following scene with Cromwell, where, instead of the metre of Shakspeare, whose secret is, that the thought constructs the tune, so that reading for the sense will best bring out the rhythm; here the lines are constructed on a given tune, and the verse has even a trace of pulpit eloquence. But the play contains, through all its length, unmistakeable ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... true that, like Browning and almost every other Victorian poet, he was really two poets. But it is just to him to insist that in his case (unlike Browning's) both the poets were good. The first is more or less like Stevenson in metre; it is a magical luck or skill in the mere choice of words. "Wet sands marbled with moon and cloud"—"Flits by the sea-blue bird of March"—"Leafless ribs and iron horns"—"When the long dun wolds are ribbed with snow"—in all ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... all kinds of vegetation; ginger is especially cultivated; there is sufficient to supply all the province of Cathay, and so fertile is the soil that according to a French traveller, M. E. Simon, an acre is now worth 15,000 francs, or three francs the metre. In the thirteenth century this plain was covered with towns and country-houses, and the inhabitants lived upon the fruits of the ground, and the produce of their flocks and herds, while the large quantity of game ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... have lost all sense of exactness," said Mrs. Gradinger, "for the lines you have just read would not pass muster as classic. In the penultimate line there are two syllables in excess of the true Alexandrine metre, and the last line seems too long by one. Neither Racine nor Voltaire would have taken such liberties with prosody. I remember a speech in Phaedre of more than a hundred lines which is an admirable example of what I mean. I dare say some of ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... "all," the organist promptly strikes the chords of "Old Hundred," and, to its accompaniment, the Master calling up the Lodge, all unite in singing the long-metre doxology.) ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... into trenches that might be costly or impossible to hold, and so it would be for the Germans on our side. But there is a kind of etiquette observed; loud vulgar talking on either side of the four-metre gap leads at once to bomb throwing. And meanwhile on both sides guns of various calibre keep up an intermittent fire, the German guns register—I think that is the right term—on the cross of Arras ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... the stronger the feeling for the movement, i.e., the more the pupil concentrates while making that movement, the clearer will be the corresponding mental image, and the more fully will the sense for metre ...
— The Eurhythmics of Jaques-Dalcroze • Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
... fast," interrupted Miss Maxwell. "Though they don't amount to anything as poetry, they show a good deal of promise in certain directions. You almost never make a mistake in rhyme or metre, and this shows you have a natural sense of what is right; a 'sense of form,' poets would call it. When you grow older, have a little more experience,—in fact, when you have something to say, I think you may write very good verses. Poetry needs knowledge and vision, experience ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... is much in Heywood's humorous and satirical style: it is written in the English ballad-metre, and consists of seven seven-line stanzas, each stanza, as was not unusual with Heywood, ending with the same, or nearly the same, line. It ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various
... ballad are perhaps the oldest specimen of English Gypsy at present extant, and perhaps the purest. They are at least as old as the time of Elizabeth, and can pass among the Zigany in the heart of Russia for Ziganskie. The other lines are not so ancient. The piece is composed in a metre something like that of the ancient Sclavonian songs, and contains the questions which two strange Gypsies, who suddenly meet, put to each other, and the ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... 5. —in Nishadha lord of earth. I have accented this word not quite correctly Nishadha, in order to harmonise with the trochaic flow of my metre. It appears to be the same as Nishadha-rashtra and Nishadha-desa. See Wilford's list of mountains, rivers, countries; from the Puranas and other books. Asiatic ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... commend themselves to the thoughtful reader by their clearness and beauty of statement, as well as by their freedom from prejudice. "Deutsche Liebe" is a poem in prose, whose setting is all the more beautiful and tender, in that it is freed from the bondage of metre, and has been the unacknowledged source of many a poet's ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... nodding and swaying their bodies sympathetically. He works himself into a frenzy, in which the fiddlers vainly try to keep up with him. He turns and digs the laggard angrily in the side without losing the metre. The climax comes. The bride bursts into hysterical sobs, while the women wipe their eyes. A plate, heretofore concealed under his coat, is whisked out. He has conquered; the inevitable ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... May songs date from the Middle Ages, but they have suffered much corruption in the course of time. Words and music have been altered, but the version given here is from an old source, and, owing to the irregularity of the metre of the lines, as in all traditional songs, a considerable amount of ingenuity is called for on the part of the singer to fit the words of the second and subsequent verses—particularly of the Day Song—to the tune. But it ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... Definitions and Principles Observations on Verse Section II. Of Accent and Quantity Section III. Of Poetic Feet Critical Observations on Theories Section IV. Of the Kinds of Verse Order I. Iambic Verse; its 8 Measures Order II. Trochaic Verse; its Nature Observations on Trochaic Metre Trochaics shown in their 8 Measures Order III. Anapestic Verse; its 4 Measures Observations on the Short Anapestics Order IV. Dactylic Verse; its 8 Measures Observations on Dactylics Order V. Composite Verse Observations on Composites Section V. Improprieties ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... miles away. The person in the taxi-cab might have been observed searching his pockets curiously, and to be counting what money he found therein as he cast anxious glances toward the dial of the taxi-metre. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... leisure, he might have rendered the whole of Goethe's masterpiece in its original measure, at least as agreeably as the Faust has been presented to us hitherto. Mr Coleridge's felicity, both in the Elegiac metre and a slight variation of the Hendecasyllabic, is ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... acknowledged master-piece of Latin poetry and the most sublime of all uninspired hymns. The secret of its irresistible power lies in the awful grandeur of the theme, the intense earnestness and pathos of the poet, the simple majesty and solemn music of its language, the stately metre, the triple rhyme, and the vocal assonances, chosen in striking adaptation—all combining to produce an overwhelming effect, as if we heard the final crash of the universe, the commotion of the opening graves, the trumpet of the archangel summoning ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... righteousness, shows that Ezekiel had the Deluge in his mind, and increases the significance of the underlying parallel between his argument and that of the Babylonian poet.(1) It may be added that Ezekiel has thrown his prophecy into poetical form, and the metre of the two passages in the Babylonian and Hebrew is, as Dr. Daiches points out, ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... making fresh inventions, taking up the phonograph, filled with theories of graphic representation; reading, writing, publishing, founding sanitary associations, interested in technical education, investigating the laws of metre, drawing, acting, directing private theatricals, going a long way to see an actor—a long way to see a picture; in the very bubble of the tideway of contemporary interests. And all the while he was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interferometer, had previously yielded a remarkable series of results when applied in its various forms to the solution of fundamental problems. To mention only a few of those that have helped to establish Michelson's fame, we may recall that our exact knowledge of the length of the international metre at Sevres, the world's standard of measurement, was obtained by him with an interferometer in terms of the invariable length of light-waves. A different form of interferometer has more recently enabled him to measure the minute tides within the solid body of the earth—not the ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... closer still to the expression of mere personality, by the medium of some sublimated form of reverie, the thought blended and tinged in the subtlest gradations, without the clumsy necessity of sacrificing the sequence of thought to the barbarous devices of metre and rhyme, or to the still more childish devices of incident and drama. Flaubert, it will be remembered, looked forward to a time when a writer would not require a subject at all, but would express emotion and thought directly rather than pictorially. To utter the unuttered ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... effects that were, if anything, a trifle over-impressive. He found for his highest flights of contemplation a handy vehicle in Sanscrit. In hours of mere joy it was Greek poetry that flowed likeliest from his pen; and he had a special fondness for the metre of Alcaeus. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... This is a case in which we have thought it best to make an exception to our usual rule of modernizing the spelling. The metre requires 'Haply' to be pronounced as a trisyllable. Perhaps it would be well to retain the spelling of the first two Folios 'Happely,' and as a general rule it would be convenient if an obsolete spelling ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... not miss either the mind or the art of Milton. The unconquerable will, the high soaring soul, are everywhere audibly present: and so, even to those who have little reading and no knowledge at all of matters of rhythm or metre, are the grave Dorian music, the stately verses rolling in each after the other like great ocean waves in eternal difference, in eternal sameness. The ignorant ear hears and rejoices, with a delight that passes understanding, as the ignorant eye sees a fine drawing or a piece ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... Italicized stanzas will be indented 5 spaces. Italicized stanzas that are ALREADY indented will be indented 10 spaces. Italicized words and phrases have been capitalized. Lines longer than 75 characters have been broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces. Also, some obvious errors, after being confirmed against other sources, have been corrected. This etext was prepared from a ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... was still another pet detestation which Landor nursed with great volubility. In 1860 all Anglo-Saxon Florence was reading with no little interest a poem in this metre, which had recently appeared, and which of course passed under the critical eye of the old Grecian. "Well, Mr. Landor, what do you think of the new poem?" I asked during its nine days' reign. "Think of it? I don't think of it. I don't want to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... schooldays, what had been inclination before was aroused to determination and the child neglected her lessons to write. A volume of crude verse fashioned after the metre of Meredith's "Lucile," a romantic book in rhyme, and two novels were the fruits of this youthful ardour. Through the sickness and death of a sister, the author missed the last three months of school, ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... city. As they approach a curvature that winds round a wooded hill, Bradshaw intimates to "missus" that he sees signs of a camp a short distance ahead. He sees smoke curling upwards among the trees, and very soon the notes of a long-metre tune fall softly on the ear, like the tinkling of distant bells in the desert. Louder and louder, as they approach, the sounds become more and more distinct. Then our good lady recognises the familiar voice of Elder Pemberton Praiseworthy. This ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... subject and space. Theocritus agreed with him, both in principle and practice. The chief characteristics of Alexandrianism are well summarized by Professor Robinson Ellis as follows: "Precision in form and metre, refinement in diction, a learning often degenerating into pedantry and obscurity, a resolute avoidance of everything commonplace in subject, sentiment or allusion." These traits are more prominent in Callimachus than in Apollonius, but they are certainly ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... and The Eve the real Scott first shows, and the better of the two is the second. It is not merely that, though Scott had a great liking for and much proficiency in 'eights,' that metre is never so effective for ballad purposes as eights and sixes; nor that, as Lockhart admits, Glenfinlas exhibits a Germanisation which is at the same time an adulteration; nor even that, well as Scott knew the Perthshire Highlands, they could not appeal to him with the same subtle intimacy of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... is to be the party-hymn of the High Tories (if any). I have written it to the same tune as "The Red Flag," because, when the lion finally does lie down with the lamb, it will be much more convenient if they can bleat and roar in the same metre, and I shall hope to hear Mr. ROBERT WILLIAMS and Lord ROBERT CECIL singing these two songs at once one day. I am not wholly satisfied with "The White Spat," but I think I have caught the true spirit, or, at any rate, the proper inconsequence of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... the Japanese said, it was this "flying telephone" that enabled Oyama to manipulate his forces as handily as though he were playing a game of chess. It was in this war, too, that the Mikado's soldiers strung the costliest of all telephone lines, at 203 Metre Hill. When the wire had been basted up this hill to the summit, the fortress of Port Arthur lay at their mercy. But the climb had ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... who writes rhymes is not necessarily a poet. So, too, there are poets who do not express their inspirations according to the rules of metre and syntax. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... cemetery, and got into the wished-for La Puebla. We tore through the place with the one casualty of a small black porker run over and left squalling in the road, and pulled up before the station in time to see the 7.55 train steam out along the metre-gauge track. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... very tender popular ballad no other writer of the time displayed like Luther. And whilst seeking to compose or re-arrange hymns for congregational use in church, he now busied himself with the Psalter, paraphrasing its contents in an evangelical spirit and in German metre. ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... illuminations precede, as before; one of which represents the sailors throwing the prophet Jonas into the sea, the other depicts the prophet in the attitude of preaching to the people of Nineveh. The poem is in the same metre as the last, and commences at ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... obligations to Professor R. M. Alden, whose Introduction to Poetry and English Verse I have used in my own Harvard courses in poetry. His views of metre have probably influenced mine even more than I am aware. The last decade, which has witnessed such an extraordinary revival of interest in poetry, has produced many valuable contributions to poetic theory. I have ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... requires a number of repetitions in the tune, and has a chorus that is sung at the end of each verse. I have not presumed to arrange it in metre; but the following is the substance: "We are assembled in the habiliments of war, and will go in quest of our enemies. We will march to their land and spoil their possessions. We will take their women and children, and lead them into captivity. The warriors shall fall by our ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual—coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other." "Man is the metre of all ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... these presents witness all She's welcome fifty times, And comes consigned in hope and love— And common-metre rhymes. She has no manifest but this; No flag floats o'er the water; She's too new for the British Lloyds— ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... titlepage is missing, but I know that this is the edition printed, as was Priscilla's, in Amsterdam in 1612 (not "in England in 1600" as a note written in the last blank page states). The full title was "The Book of Psalms. Englished both in Prose and Metre. With annotations opening the words and sentences by conference with other Scriptures. Eph. v: 18,19. Bee yee filled with the Spirit speaking to yourselves in Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual-Songs singing and making melodie ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... described the dangers of Alpine travelling, both from weather and other foes. In those days the difficulties of the road excluded all interest in mountain beauty. There is a tender and expressive poem in Sapphic metre, in which, homesick and cold in winter, he sang his longing for beautiful Reichenau. But even he, like most of his predecessors and all his followers, wielded his pen with labour, expression often failing to keep pace ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... what might be termed pot-bellied, owing to the sort of food he eats and the cold he suffers during the night, but he is much more robust and taller (the average height of an adult is a little past one metre and a half)[7] than the other tribes and races around him who are in close reports with civilization. This fact would almost make one believe that civilization is detrimental to the physical development ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... a year"; in the commune of Murs, in Anjou, there is "a strip of nine hectares, subdivided into no fewer than thirty-one separate parcels." The limit, however, seems to be reached in Laon, where "it is not rare to find fields scarce a metre (3 ft. 3.37 in.) wide; here an apple-tree or a walnut-tree covers with its branches four or five lots, and the proprietor can only take in his crop in the presence of his neighbours, to whom he has also to leave one-half of the fruit fallen on ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... to The International states that he is now printing at Copenhagen three Anglo-Saxon poems of the eleventh century, namely: The Old Testament Story, On the Sixth Day's Work, and The New Testament Story, by Aelfric, Archbishop of York, now just translated into the metre and alliteration of the original. The three poems will make a quarto volume of about thirty sheets, and copies may be ordered (price three dollars), through the Hon. H. W. Ellsworth, late United States Charge d'Affaires ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... 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 metre and style.' The chief point in which Surrey imitated his 'master, Francis Petrarcha,' was in the use of the sonnet. He introduced this elaborate form of poetry into our literature; and how it has thriven with us, the masterpieces ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... poems. By temperament a singer as well as a seer and sayer, Emerson was nevertheless deficient in the singing voice. He composed no one great poem, his verse presents no ideas that are not found in his prose. In metre and rhyme he is harsh and willful. Yet he has marvelous single phrases and cadences. He ejaculates transports and ecstasies, and though he cannot organize and construct in verse, he is capable here and there of ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... order is Cladophora, a coarse-branching alga, growing commonly in running water, where it forms tufts, sometimes a metre or more in length. By floating out a little of it in a saucer, it is easy to see that it is made up ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... Denah, "I have done already almost half a metre of the piece I began at the same time. Is ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... after the stranger had read the entire hymn, and he then repeated the two first lines for them to sing. Brother Wade usually started the tune. He tried it this time, but went off on a long metre tune. Discovering his mistake at the second word, he balked, and tried it again, but now he stumbled on short metre. A musical brother here came to his aid, and let off with an air that suited the measure in which the hymn was written. After the singing, ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... scientific mind, in so far as it is free and purely intellectual, lies in tracing their formal pattern. The mathematician can afford to leave to his clients, the engineers, or perhaps the popular philosophers, the emotion of belief: for himself he keeps the lyrical pleasure of metre and of evolving equations: and it is a pleasant surprise to him, and an added problem, if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them; much as if a composer found that the sailors could heave ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... and sometimes regarded as merely a commentary. To this division of the Pitaka belong the Dhammapada, a justly celebrated anthology of devotional verses, and the Sutta-Nipata, a very ancient collection of suttas chiefly in metre. Other important works included in it are the Thera and Theri-gatha or poems written by monks and nuns respectively, and the Jataka or stories about the Buddha's previous births[607]. Some of the rather miscellaneous ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... under modifications, I accede to. I have received testimonials from men not merely of genius according to my belief, but of the highest accredited reputation, that my translation of "Wallenstein" was in language and in metre superior to the original, and the parts most admired were substitutions of my own, on a principle of compensation. Yet the whole work went for waste-paper. I was abused—nay, my own remarks in the Preface were transferred to a Review, as the Reviewer's ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... new methods now govern the Muses, The modes of expression have changed with the times; That low is the rank of the poet who uses The old-fashioned verse with intentional rhymes. And quite out of date, too, is rhythmical metre; The critics declare it an insult to art. But oh! the sweet swing of it, oh! the clear ring of it, Oh the great pulse of it, right from the ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Vaerdal, towards Stickelstad, and the crisis that awaited, is beautifully depicted by Snorro. It has, all of it, the description (and we see clearly, the fact itself had), a kind of pathetic grandeur, simplicity, and rude nobleness; something Epic or Homeric, without the metre or the singing of Homer, but with all the sincerity, rugged truth to nature, and much more of piety, devoutness, reverence for what is forever High in this Universe, than meets us in those old Greek Ballad-mongers. Singularly ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... least. It is quite free from the usual formal faults of a boy's verse, except some evidences of a deficient ear, especially for rhyme ("full" and "beautiful," "palaces" and "days"). It manages a rather difficult metre (the sixain rhymed ababcc and ending with an Alexandrine) without too much of the monotony which is its special danger. And some of the tricks which the boy-poet has caught are interesting and abode with him, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... moral progress. And to a large extent she succeeded. As a vehicle of her opinions, the scheme and style of the poem proved completely adequate. She moves easily through the story; she handles her metre with freedom and command; she can say her say without exaggeration or unnatural strain. Further, the opinions themselves, as those who have learnt to know her through her letters will feel sure, are lofty and honourable, and full of a genuine enthusiasm for humanity. As a novel, 'Aurora Leigh' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... look at these badgers! with a long leg on one quarter and a short leg on the other. The wench herself might well and truly have said all that matter without the poet, bating the rhymes and metre. Among the girls in the country there are many such SHILLY-SHALLYS, who give themselves sore eyes and sharp eye- water; I would cure them ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... Ha! ha! that is very good. And may my friend here—young Esquire Tufton, of Gablethorpe, in the county of Essex—have the privilege of hearing some of those wonderful lines which are to take the country by storm? Come, Master Addison, you know that I am a lover of good metre and fine sentiment. The words must needs be tingling in your ears, and lying hot upon your tongue. Let us hear the roll of them, and I warrant that all London town shall soon be in a ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... same melodies, while to others might be accorded greater facilities for variety. This only by way of suggestion. The common practice of selecting melodies for verses, hap-hazard, with regard only to the 'metre,' of course destroys all possibility of any especial characterization. If the original 'marriage' have been a congenial one, a divorce, with view to a second union, rarely proves advisable. The same verses may bear another musical rendering, but the music will very rarely ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... beauty fall a sacrifice to doctrine. The 'Divine Comedy' is indeed not less incomparable in its beauty than in its vast compass, the variety of its interest, and in the harmony of its form with its spirit. In his lectures 'On Translating Homer' Mr. Arnold, speaking of the metre of 'Paradise Lost,' says:—"To this metre, as used in the 'Paradise Lost,' our country owes the glory of having produced one of the only two poetical works in the grand style which are to be found in the modern languages; the 'Divine Comedy' of Dante is the other." But Mr. Arnold ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... and some disquietude. Confronted with short stories—and novels also, for that matter—told with a skill which makes the old masters of fiction look like clumsy amateurs; confronted, too, with a thousand poets—the number is scarcely an exaggeration—with accomplishments of metre and style that make some famous singers seem like clodhoppers of the muse, one ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... to the cave, took from his pocket a ball of string and a tape-measure, tied the string to the flint corner, fastened a pebble at the nineteenth metre and flung it toward the land side. The pebble at most reached the end ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... Historically it is worthless; but as a monument of our language it is beyond all price. In more than thirty thousand lines not more than fifty Norman words are to be found. Even the old poetic tradition remains the same. The alliterative metre of the earlier verse is still only slightly affected by riming terminations; the similes are the few natural similes of Caedmon; the battle-scenes are painted with ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... because they are inspired and possessed. And as the Corybantian revellers when they dance are not in their right mind, so the lyric poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains: but when falling under the power of music and metre they are inspired and possessed; like Bacchic maidens who draw milk and honey from the rivers when they are under the influence of Dionysus but not when they are in their right mind. And the soul of the lyric poet does the same, as they themselves ...
— Ion • Plato
... and beauties of landscapes, hills, trees, flowers, and even insects. Then too it is a very real training in the use of words; it teaches one what words are musical, sonorous, effective; while the necessity of having to fit words to metre increases one's stock of words and one's power of applying them. When I came back to writing prose, I found that I had a far larger and more flexible vocabulary than I had previously possessed; and though the language of poetry is by no means the same as that of prose—it ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Thomas," quoth Mr. Richardson, "it is not seemly to jest over the Word of God. The writers of our Book of Psalms in metre held rightly, that God's altar needs no polishing; and truly they have rendered the words of David into ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... its occupants began filing through the door. The little man was left in the centre of the room, his deep eyes smouldering upon the backs of the retreating members, his thumb and finger raised to the turncock of the metre. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... remained conditioned by being in its essence and origin an inscriptional poem, took in the later periods so wide a range of subject and treatment that it can perhaps only be limited by certain abstract conventions of length and metre. Sometimes it becomes in all but metrical form a lyric; sometimes it hardly rises beyond the versified statement of a fact or an idea; sometimes it is barely distinguishable from a snatch of pastoral. The shorter pieces of the elegiac ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... and "Of my Lady in Death," are two poems in a quaint metre, full of true poetry, marred by not a few affectations—the genuine metal, but wanting to be purified from its dross. Nevertheless, it is pleasant to find the precious ore ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Greek phrase was [Greek: elpidos leptes], which Euripides has changed to [Greek: asthenous rhomes], though the other had equally suited the metre. But Euripides is fond of ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... to the consideration of what may be called, by contradistinction to the direct versions of the Indian epics, the native Kavi works. The character of these poems—for all the Kavi literature is alike written in metre—is in the main mythological and romantic; but there are also to be found among them certain ethical and religious works. Although the subjects, the heroes, and even the metre in many cases, are still Indian, these subjects ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... As philosophy, as history, as rhetoric, as metre, as rhythm, as politics, it is positively enormous. The whole poem is a wonderful poem, and I wish I had space for it here. It is patriotic and it is written about as badly as a poem could conceivably be written. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... replied Cicero, "that you were a poet? And you have been discoursing me most eloquent poetry; though not attuned to metre, rythmical withal, and full of fancy. Ay! and you judge aright. He is the greatest, as the first of poets; and surpassed all his followers as much in the knowledge of the human heart with its ten thousands of conflicting ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... grammar, I needed no teacher except my mother. When I had conquered the first difficulties I took up Tennyson's Idyls of the King, and at last succeeded in translating two of these beautiful poems in the metre of the original. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... enough, of course, for me alone to preside; it will be necessary to invite two others to serve as vice-presidents; you might then enlist Ling Chou and Ou Hsieh, both of whom are cultured persons. The one to choose the themes and assign the metre, the other to act as copyist and supervisor. We three cannot, however, definitely say that we won't write verses, for, if we come across any comparatively easy subject and metre, we too will indite a stanza if we feel so disposed. But you four will positively have ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... branches of art, but its productions are not likely to be of value outside the doting domestic circle. Even Pope who "lisped in numbers for the numbers came," did not add to our Anthology from his cradle, though he may therein have acquired his monotonous rocking-metre. Immaturity of mind and experience, so easily disguised on the stage or the music-stool—even by adults—is more obvious in the field of pure intellect. The contribution with which Mary Antin makes her debut in letters is, however, saved from the emptiness of embryonic thinking by being a ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... a beginning. "Oh, never mind—go farther on—any—long meter," uttered his interlocutor, and he forthwith made a sanguine dash into the centre of the book, and gave out a hymn. The company got into a "peculiar metre" tune at once, and the singing was about the most comically wretched we ever heard. The lad who came in with the elderly men tried every range of voice in every verse, and thought that he had a right to do just ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... music again changing with the metre.] Give up the scene, give up, ye sordid rocks, The last of Arnold in his English home, Which in your bosom lives for evermore, A deathless picture; England cast it out Not being English, and it shivered on, Coiling about the world, till it was ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... Drew. I felt ashamed of the lightness of my own thoughts, but I had to tell him of my speculations upon after-the-war developments in aviation: nurses flying Voisins, with the cars filled with babies; old men having after-dinner naps in twenty-three-metre Nieuports, fitted, for safety, with Sperry gyroscopes; family parties taking comfortable outings in gigantic biplanes of the R-6 type; mothers, as of old, gazing apprehensively at speed-dials, cautioning fathers about "driving too fast," and ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... in Adams, "or he would have stopped it short metre; but I guess be saw you pitching into the pump which you did uncommonly strong—and of course be ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... perfumed As the sweet roadside honeysuckle. That's why, Difficult though its metre was to tackle, I'm glad I ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the hexameter upon English soil has been an affair of more than two centuries. The attempt was first systematically made during the reign of Elizabeth, but the metre remained a feeble exotic that scarcely burgeoned under glass. Gabriel Harvey,—a kind of Don Adriano de Armado,—whose chief claim to remembrance is, that he was the friend of Spenser, boasts that he was the first to whom the notion of transplantation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... verses, Sexton's Daughter, Hymns of a Hermit, and I know not what other extensive stock of pieces; concerning which he was now somewhat at a loss as to his true course. He could write verses with astonishing facility, in any given form of metre; and to various readers they seemed excellent, and high judges had freely called them so, but he himself had grave misgivings on that latter essential point. In fact here once more was a parting of the ways, "Write in Poetry; write in Prose?" upon which, before all else, it much concerned ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... banisters, and a well of 1000 feet with the sea at the bottom. Your heart would rejoice over the great heaths. I saw one, the bole of which split into nearly equal trunks; and one of these was just a metre in circumference, and had a head as big as a moderate-sized ash. Gorse in full flower, up to 12 or 15 feet high. On the whole a singular absence of flowering herbs except Cinerarias and, especially in Teneriffe, Echium. I did not chance to see a Euphorbia ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... not move him or interest him, and fixing jealously on all that fed his fancy. Such books as Grimm's Fairy Tales and Masterman Ready were wells of delight, enacted as they were in a strange and exciting world; and he was sensitive, too, to the beauty of metre and sonorous phrases, learning poetry so easily that it was supposed to be a species of wilfulness in him that the Collects and texts, and the very Psalms—that seemed to him so unreal and husk-like then, and that later became to him like fruits full of refreshment and savour and sweet juices—found ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... BEDLAMITE, a half-mad mendicant, both knave and thief. A specimen of the metre will be seen ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... and on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doating over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... greatest kind of drama (though not with all drama). And just as drama, whatever grandeur of purpose it may attempt, must be a good play, so epic must be a good story. It will tell its tale both largely and intensely, and the diction will be carried on the volume of a powerful, flowing metre. To distinguish, however, between merely narrative poetry, and poetry which goes beyond being mere narrative into the being of epic, must often be left to feeling which can scarcely be precisely analysed. A curious instance of the difficulty in exactly ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie
... A Satire./ I had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew!/ Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers./ Shakspeare./ Such shameless Bards we have; and yet 'tis true,/ There are as mad, abandon'd Critics too./ Pope./ London:/ Printed for James Cawthorn, British Library,/ No. 24, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... the north-west rock; when she cleared this rock, which is at this spot thirteen feet below the surface, leaving a large white furrow, she ran a hundred and sixty feet further, and struck on the south-east rock, which is only about four feet (one metre twenty centimetres) below the surface. She again marked the rock very distinctly. The sea, which is often very rough on this spot, has left nothing remaining but the massive part of the engine, where it ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... verse, "Inspiration", "The Larger Life", and "Down in Mexico", are all of smooth construction and musical metre, though not exhibiting their author's powers as well as his essays. "Down in Mexico", a virile poem in Kipling's style, is unquestionably the best ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the metre has been too violently censured. He found the measures reformed in so many passages, by the silent labours of some editors, with the silent acquiescence of the rest, that he thought himself allowed to extend a little further the license, which had already been carried ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... suggested; and in a copy of verses, the production of this time, which, with all their poverty and stiffness, please me as true, and as representative of the convalescent feeling, I find direct reference to the beliefs which he had laboured to instil. My verses are written in a sort of metre which, in the hands of Collins, became flexible and exquisitely poetic, and which in those of Kirke White is at least pleasing, but of which we find poor enough specimens in the "Anthologies" of Southey, and which perhaps no one so limited in his metrical ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... indeed, it had been copied from an older inscription in an English yard, and transplanted through the heart and brain of some settler whose thoughts were ever flitting back. Thus it runs in decorous metre:— ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... best tests in the world of what a poet really means is his metre. He may be a hypocrite in his metaphysics, but he cannot be a hypocrite in his prosody. And all the time that Byron's language is of horror and emptiness, his metre is a bounding pas de quatre. He may arraign existence on the most deadly charges, he may condemn it with the most desolating verdict, ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... comes from chewing tobacco, and I know it's a very bad habit. Nine-and-ninepence is what I have to say to you, for I'm the officer of the gas company, and they have a claim against you for that on the metre." ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... David being freed from wars and dangers, and enjoying for the future a profound peace, [22] composed songs and hymns to God of several sorts of metre; some of those which he made were trimeters, and some were pentameters. He also made instruments of music, and taught the Levites to sing hymns to God, both on that called the sabbath day, and on other festivals. Now the construction of the instruments was thus: The viol was ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... But this demands a briefer line,— A shorter muse, and not the old long Nine; Long metre answers for a common song, Though common metre does not ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of ancient civilised men, and cannot stand ours, it follows that our race is presumably tougher than the ancient; for we have to bear, and do bear, the seeds of greater diseases than those the ancients carried with them. We may use, perhaps, the unvarying savage as a metre to gauge the vigour of the constitutions to whose contact he ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... Zodgi-La is very rough; one must climb up an almost perpendicular rocky wall. In certain places the road winds along upon rock ledges of only a metre in width, below which the sight drops into unfathomable abysses. May the Lord preserve the traveller from a fall! At one place, the way is upon long beams introduced into holes made in the rock, like a bridge, and covered ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... together by the compiler to the best of his ability, with the idea of presenting the song as nearly as possible as it was sung, rather than attempting to soften any roughness or irregularity of metre. Attempts to ascertain the names of the authors have produced contradictory statements, and no doubt some of the songs were begun by one man and finished or improved by another, or several others. Some few fairly recent ballads have been included, but ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... embraced every form and degree of human thought, feeling, and emotion, and clothed them all, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the slightest to the most intense and concentrated, in the dress of exactly appropriate style and language. His metre also is a perfect vehicle of the language. If we think the range of his knowledge limited, yet it was all that his country and his age possessed, and it was very greatly more than has been supposed by readers that ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... 13.] Quamvis in varia figura et vario nomine sint k et q et c, tamen quia unam vim habent tarn in metre quam in sono, pro ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... Scansion and Metre.—A knowledge of this is indispensable in translating verse. To scan the lines will help you to determine the grammatical force of a word, and a knowledge of metre will enable you to grasp the poet's meaning ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... Beeching into 'A Book of Christmas Verse' 1895 and thence, incorrectly, by Orby Shipley in 'Carmina Mariana'. Stated in a letter to R. W. D. June 25, '83, to have been written to 'hang up among the verse com- positions in the tongues. ... I did a piece in the same metre as Blue in the mists all day.' Note Chaucer's account of the physical properties of the air, 'House of ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... superseded by the learned professors and the gentlemanly versifiers of later times! Is there to-day a popular poet, using the English language, who does not, in technical acquirements and in the artificial adjuncts of poetry,—rhyme, metre, melody, and especially sweet, dainty fancies,—surpass Europe's and Asia's loftiest and oldest? Indeed, so marked is the success of the latter-day poets in this respect, that any ordinary reader may well be puzzled, and ask, if the shaggy antique masters ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... translated other articles on ballooning from the French. It is also interesting that she retained in her translation the original units which Verne used (metre, feet, leagues), a practice forgotten until recently. This may be the first appearance of a work by Jules Verne in the ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... concert! I have no longer any feeling for that kind of thing, and could not produce it at any price. I should not know where to take my inspiration. One other thing: my musical position towards verse and metre has undergone an enormous change. I could not at any price write a melody to Schiller's verses, which are entirely intended for reading. These verses must be treated musically in a certain arbitrary manner, and that arbitrary manner, as it does not bring about a real flow of ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... but we yawned in the midst of their tale. At last they came crying that he was coming to the king's house, and fell to their dispute, but we would listen to neither party, for we were busy with a dispute about the merits of the Great and of the Little Metre; nor were we disturbed when they passed our door with sticks of enchantment under their arms, travelling towards the forest to contend against his coming, nor when they returned after nightfall with torn robes and despairing ...
— The Secret Rose • W. B. Yeats
... The end of classical teaching at school should be to make our boys acquainted, not only with the language, but with the literature and history, the ancient thought of the ancient world. Rules of grammar, syntax, or metre, are but means towards that end; they must never be mistaken for the end itself. A young man of eighteen, who has probably spent on an average ten years in learning Greek and Latin, ought to be able to read any of the ordinary Greek ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... Longfellow may stand for any of the large rapacious birds, as the eagle or the condor. True, and yet the picture is a purely fanciful one, as no bird of prey SAILS with his burden; on the contrary, he flaps heavily and laboriously, because he is always obliged to mount. The stress of the rhyme and metre are of course in this case very great, and it is they, doubtless, that drove the poet into this false picture of a bird of prey laden with his quarry. It is an ungracious task, however, to cross- question ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... women, or of freemen and slaves, or of rational beings and brute animals. They do not practise the baser sorts of musical arts, such as the 'matured judgments,' of whom Orpheus speaks, would ridicule. But modern poets separate metre from music, and melody and rhythm from words, and use the instrument alone without the voice. The consequence is, that the meaning of the rhythm and of the time are not understood. I am endeavouring to show how ...
— Laws • Plato
... Iniquitous Legislation Spurzheim and Craniology French Revolution, 1830 Captain B. Hall and the Americans English Reformation Democracy Idea of a State Church Government French Gendarmerie Philosophy of young Men at the present Day Thucydides and Tacitus Poetry Modern Metre Logic Varro Socrates Greek Philosophy Plotinus Tertullian Scotch and English Lakes Love and Friendship opposed Marriage Characterlessness of Women Mental Anarchy Ear and Taste for Music different English Liturgy Belgian Revolution Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon The Reformation House of Commons ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... because "the power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast." The invention of a house, safe against wild animals, frost, and heat, gives play to the finer faculties, and introduces art, manners, and social delights. The discovery of the post office is a fine metre of civilization. The sea-going steamer marks an epoch; the subjection of electricity to take messages and turn wheels marks another. But, after all, the vital stages of human progress are marked by steps toward personal, individual freedom. The ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... I tried the blank metre once, and it would not do, and so I had to begin again in lyrics. Something above an hundred lines is written, and now I am in two panics, just as if one were not enough. First, because it seems to me a very daring subject—a subject ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... he had, whose name was RALPH, That in th' adventure went his half: Though writers, for more stately tone, Do call him RALPHO; 'tis all one; 460 And when we can with metre safe, We'll call him so; if not, plain RALPH: (For rhyme the rudder is of verses, With which like ships they steer their courses.) An equal stock of wit and valour 465 He had laid in; by birth a taylor. The mighty Tyrian ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... revision beyond the bounds of prudence, freely correcting grammatical errors, rectifying small inconsistencies in the sense, and too lightly adopting conjectural emendations on the grounds of rhyme or metre. In the course of an article published in the "Westminster Review" for July, 1870, Miss Mathilde Blind, with the aid of material furnished by Dr. Garnett, 'was enabled,' in the words of Mr. Buxton Forman, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... ages of writing, it has been found difficult or impossible to keep linguistic novelties and novelties of metre out of old epics. We later refer (Archaeology of the Epic) to the Chancun de Willame, of which an unknown benefactor printed two hundred copies in 1903. Mr. Raymond Weeks, in Romania, describes Willame as taking a place beside the Chanson ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... "Your metre is faulty," said his mother, thoughtfully, "but the statement is interesting. My turn; you shall hold the ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... the official clock dropped into its slot somebody called the Naval Observatory. The call was so faint as to be barely audible, in spite of the fact that Hood's instrument was tuned for a three-thousand-metre wave. Supposing quite naturally that the person calling had a shorter wave, he gradually cut out the inductance of his receiver; but the sound faded out entirely, and he returned to his original inductance and shunted in his condenser, upon ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... selection of the language really spoken by men; that this selection, wherever it is made with true taste and feeling, will of itself form a distinction far greater than would at first be imagined, and will entirely separate the composition from the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life; and if metre be superadded thereto, I believe that a dissimilitude will be produced altogether sufficient for the gratification of a rational mind. What other distinction would we hare? Whence is it to come? And where ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... The consumption of coal, however, was reckoned by Captain Palander at twelve cubic feet or 0.3 cubic metre an hour, with a speed of seven ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Surrendering himself to the full possession of the spirit which shall speak through him, he receives, also, a portion of the same creative power. Mr. Lewes reaches this conclusion: "If, therefore, we reflect what a poem Faust is, and that it contains almost every variety of style and metre, it will be tolerably evident that no one unacquainted with the original can form an adequate idea of it from translation,"[E] which is certainly correct of any translation wherein something of the rhythmical variety and beauty of the original is not retained. ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnete homme in the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together either on prose or verse. I must except also from this last a certain late publication of Scots poems, which she has perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in the country, as she has (O the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... in the Hebrew MSS. from which they translated, or added of themselves; the rest is made up of what are probably original phrases but omitted from the Hebrew by the carelessness of copyists; yet none of these differences is of importance save where the Greek corrects an irregularity in the Hebrew metre, or yields sense when the ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... are syllables which all singers of the Samans utter for lengthening short words in order to keep up the metre. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... much violence" (16), why cannot you conform to a form of worship which, though it does not profess to be prescribed in all particulars, contains nothing actually forbidden in the Scriptures? What authority have Dissenters for singing psalms in metre? "Where has our Saviour or his Apostles enjoined a directory for public worship? What Scripture command is there for the three significant ceremonies of the Solemn League and Covenant, viz. that the whole congregation should take it (1) uncovered, (2) standing, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... is fish or flesh, and especially if he be a courtier as well, as I was, and had to change his taste with every mouth. But tell me, are there many of these folk now on earth?" "Yes, plenty," answered I, "if a man can patch together any sort of metre, straightway he becomes a chaired bard. And of the others, there is such a plague of barristers, petty lawyers, and clerks that the locusts of Egypt preyed less heavily on the country than they. In your time, sir, there ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... difficulties in the task I have undertaken has been to try and preserve something of the "musical movement" of the sonorous Sanscrit poetry in the English translation. Much of tile Sanscrit Epic is written in the well-known Sloka metre of sixteen syllables in each line, and I endeavoured to choose some English metre which is familiar to the English ear, and which would reproduce to some extent the rhythm, the majesty, and the long ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... terms are used by our author to denote the head of the State (e.g. Raja, Protector of men, Lord of men, &c.) to suit the metre or fancifully. In translation we have thought it better ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... see for himself by comparing the passage from the manuscript given in the appendix with the corresponding place in the text. Milton's own spelling revels in redundant e's, while the printer of the 1645 book is very sparing of them. But in cases where the spelling affects the metre, we find that the printed text and Milton's manuscript closely correspond; and it is upon its value in determining the metre, quite as much as its antiquarian interest, that I should base a justification of this reprint. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... as you can all your present notions about the nature of verse and poetry. Take a sponge and wipe the slate of your mind. In particular, do not harass yourself by thoughts of metre and verse forms. Second: Read William Hazlitt's essay "On Poetry in General." This essay is the first in the book entitled *Lectures on the English Poets*. It can be bought in various forms. I think ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... of its spiritual as well as of its intellectual outlook. This is the case even where poetry is imitative, for imitation only pertains to the form of poetry, and not to its essence. Vergil copied the metre and borrowed the phraseology of Homer, but is never Homeric. In one sense, all national poetry is original, even though it be shackled by rules of traditional prosody, and has adopted the system of rhyme devised by writers ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... hurt. "Do not, I pray you, pretend to like it unless you really do. Of course it is not at all the kind of thing that will sell, is it—and the metre must be patched up in places, don't you think? And some of the most beautiful passages would never be permitted by the censor—but still—" and Colombo paused hopefully, for it was Colombo's poem and into it he had poured ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... you understand,' she rapped out; 'removed altogether from the tea-table in subject and in metre. What have you got to say, my hero, to me about my rendering of ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... much from his contemporaries, but the standard he has reached is as high as that which has been attained by Lowell and Longfellow. In lofty verse he is strong and unconventional, writing always with a firm grasp on his subject, and emphasizing his perfect knowledge of melody and metre. As a writer of occasional verse he has not had an equal in our time, and his pen for threescore years has been put to frequent use in celebration of all sorts of events, whether military, literary, or scientific. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... The metre of the Chorus indicates marching; so that apparently the procession takes some time to move across the orchestra and get into position. Cassandra would be dressed, as a prophetess, in a robe of white reaching to the feet, covered by an agrenon, or net of wool with ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... one day. Oh, Benny did another thing! Rose was teaching him his letters in the parlor, and he was putting them into metre, as he ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... doom upon the Edomites, iv. 21, 22, who behaved so cruelly after the siege (Ps, cxxxvii. 7). In the last poem the city, after piteously lamenting her manifold sorrows, v. 1-18, beseeches the everlasting God for deliverance therefrom, v. 19-22. [Footnote 1: In the Hebrew elegiac metre, as in the Greek and Latin, the second line is shorter than the first—usually three beats followed by two.] [Footnote 2: An unconvincing attempt has been made to refer the last two chapters to the Maccabean ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... by the bed, and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent. Ella could resist no longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-poet, using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letter on his triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that moved his soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Tom's; as much indeed as his sister's, after they parted. But they were conducted by means of that marvel of marvels, the telegraph,—the chief of whose marvels is that it compels even a long- winded generation like ours to speak in very short metre. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... for a great poet, just as in the dark ages a person who could write his name passed for a great clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, and others whose only title to fame was that they said in tolerable metre what might have been as well said in prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were honored with marks of distinction which ought to be reserved for genius. With these Addison must have ranked, if he had ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... which sustain him. A real poem grows out of all that is deepest in a man's nature; to its making in spiritual conception, structure, form, and style his body, his mind, and his soul contribute; its metre adjusting itself to his breathing, its ideas taking direction and significance from his thought, and its elusive suggestiveness and beauty conveying something of his mysterious personality. A true sermon is never what is sometimes ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... French mathematician, contemporary of Lagrange and Laplace, born at Toulouse; obtained the professorship of Mathematics in the Military School at Paris, and was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1783; he was one of the commissioners to determine the length of the metre, and held many posts under the Republic and the Empire; among many works his best known is the "Elements of Geometry" (1794), translated ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... I will write it as a song and put it in italics, so that even you will know that it is a song; So listen, listen, Camerados! for I am about to spout and my song shall be masculine and virile. A bas your metre, a la lanterne your rhyme, conspuez your ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... of Milton might be told in two pages. It is this which distinguishes an epic poem from a romance in metre. Observe the march of Milton; his severe application; his laborious polish; his deep metaphysical researches; his prayer to God before he began his great work; all that could lift and swell his intellect, became ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... should least expect to find among animals. It is, however, impossible otherwise to describe the conduct of Agricultural Ants. The field which they prepare is found in front of their ant-hill; it is a terrace in extent about a square metre or more; there they will allow no other plant to grow but that from which they propose to gather fruit. This latter (Aristida stricta) is rather like a grain of oats, and in taste resembles rice; in America it is called ant rice. This culture represents ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay |
