"Metrical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... furnish us with direct or indirect evidence concerning them hardly enable us to form an opinion. But we know that (the cavilling spirit of Chaucer's burlesque "Rhyme of Sir Thopas" notwithstanding) the efforts of English metrical romance in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were neither few nor feeble, although these romances were chiefly translations, sometimes abridgments to boot—even the Arthurian cycle having been only imported across the Channel, though it may have ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... influence of tradition; and men accustomed to the ordered routine of ancient foundations found it occasionally insubordinate. The four long form-rooms, in which all below the rank of study-boys worked, received him with thunders of applause. Ere he had coughed twice they favored him with a metrical summary of the marriage laws of Great Britain, as recorded by the High Priest of the Israelites and commented on by the leader of the host. The lower forms reminded him that it was the last day, and that therefore he must "take it all in play." When he dashed off to rebuke ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... to thee, thou holy herb, That sprung on holy ground! All in the Mount Olivet First wert thou found: Thou art boot for many a bruise, And healest many a wound; In our Lady's blessed name, I take thee from the ground.' [This metrical spell, or something very like it, is preserved by Reginald Scott, in his work ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... English literature worthy of the name. Had we not already spoken of Layamon out of true order in following the story of Arthur, it is here that we should speak of him and of his book, The Brut. So, perhaps, it would be well to go back and read chapter vii., and then we must go on to the Metrical Romances. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... historical books and their character The Mahawanso Scriptural coincidences in Pali books (note) Sanskrit works: Principally on science and medicine Elu and Singhalese works: Low tone of the popular literature Chiefly ballads and metrical essays Exempt from licentiousness Sacred poems in honour of Hindu gods General ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... great high-swung barouche, in the sweet April weather, Lady Blanchemain gave the interval that followed to a consideration of the landscape: first, sleeping in shadowy stillness, the formal Italian garden, its terraced lawns and metrical parterres, its straight dark avenues of ilex, its cypresses, fountains, statues, balustrades; and then, laughing in the breeze and the sun, the wild Italian valley, a forest of blossoming fruit-trees, with the river winding and glinting in its midst, with olive-clad ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... need no explanation for Cambridge readers, and little for others. But it may be fairly objected that this is not, in strictness, a parody. That is true, and indeed as a parodist Sir George Trevelyan belongs to the metrical miocene. His Horace, when serving as a volunteer in the Republican Army, bursts into a pretty snatch of song which has a flavour ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... back to mediaeval romance for the origins of English fiction. In all countries the metrical tale is many generations older than the prose story; for prose writing is a refinement of the literary art which flourishes only when reading has become popular; while verse, being at first a kind of memoria technica used for the correct transmission of sacred texts and the heroic ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... with his German. "Lawine" (see Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, act iii. sc. 3) signifies an avalanche, not avalanches. In stanza xii. line 7 a similar mistake occurs. It may seem strange that, for the sake of local colouring, or for metrical purposes, he should substitute a foreign equivalent which required a note, for a fine word already in vogue. But in 1817 "avalanche" itself had not long been naturalized. Fifty years before, the Italian valanca and valanche had found their way into books of travel, but "avalanche" appears ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... of Cuchulain told with great sympathy in dignified, often metrical prose. Contains: Cuchulain's youth, Strife for the dun cow, Cuchulain and Ferdia, Cuchulain's death, Fate of ...
— Lists of Stories and Programs for Story Hours • Various
... retaining the reasonable confidence of the people of England.” In 1801 she wrote of “Pitt’s low and perfidious manœuvres,” and she never changed her opinion of him. She seemed unable to write what is called plain English. Archdeacon Vyse is described by her as “a man of prioric talents in a metrical impromptu.” Another person “evinced an elevated mind,” while a third exhibited an “attic spirit” in her writings. An evening is described as being “attic”; but even Pope, we may remark, calls a nightingale an “attic ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... may be given to a marble image (Fig. 77) found in 1878 on the island of Delos, that ancient center of Apolline worship for the Ionians. On the left side of the figure is engraved in early Greek characters a metrical inscription, recording that the statue was dedicated to Artemis by one Nicandra of Naxos. Whether it was intended to represent the goddess Artemis or the woman Nicandra, we cannot tell; nor is the question of much importance ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... Mr. Kinosling. "No tobacco for me. No cigar, no pipe, no cigarette, no cheroot. For me, a book—a volume of poems, perhaps. Verses, rhymes, lines metrical and cadenced—those are my dissipation. Tennyson by preference: 'Maud,' or 'Idylls of the King'—poetry of the sound Victorian days; there is none later. Or Longfellow will rest me in a tired hour. Yes; for me, a book, a volume in the hand, held ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... sacred and in secular letters, they gathered a crowd of disciples, and rivers of wholesome knowledge daily flowed from them to water the hearts of their hearers; and, together with the books of Holy Scripture, they also taught them the metrical art, astronomy, and ecclesiastical arithmetic. A testimony whereof is, that there are still living at this day some of their scholars, who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as in their own, in which they were born."[1] Elsewhere he mentions ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... the other sonnets in the collection, with the exception of the one from the Portuguese, is framed according to the legitimate Italian model, which, in the author's opinion, possesses no peculiar beauty for an ear accustomed only to the metrical forms of our own language. The sonnets in this collection are rather poems ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... Style, the Musical accent must be carefully distinguished from the Metrical accent which is determined by Time, or Measure, as well as from the Verbal accent whereby the import of a word is rendered clear to the listener. Here is an example of Musical accent, from Act III of ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... was this tendency to elaborate her feelings in a metrical manner, and deliver them to the cold world through the medium of the newspapers, that first attracted the attention of Tretherick. Several poems descriptive of the effects of California scenery upon a too sensitive soul, and of the vague ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... four Erse books, without any direction, and suspect that they are intended for the Oxford library. If that is the intention, I think it will be proper to add the metrical psalms, and whatever else is printed in Erse, that the present may be complete. The ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... could have conceived them. I give but one specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H. T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should bear in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering what had been ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... have been composed in times of great national excitement. The misery of the present, the prospect still more gloomy beyond, impelled its authors to anxious inquiries into the future. The books were written, like the genuine Sibylline books, in the metrical form, which the old Greek tradition had consecrated to religious use; and their style so closely resembled that of the Apocalypse and the Old Testament prophecies, that some pagan writers who accepted them ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... suffering. But Mr. Crabbe does neither. He gives us discoloured paintings of life; helpless, repining, unprofitable, unedifying distress. He is not a philosopher, but a sophist, a misanthrope in verse; a namby-pamby Mandeville, a Malthus turned metrical romancer. He professes historical fidelity; but his vein is not dramatic; nor does he give us the pros and cons of that versatile gipsey, Nature. He does not indulge his fancy, or sympathise with us, or tell us how ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... advantage of this opportunity to say that my translation of BEOWULF, of which the last reprint was issued in 1910, is not in prose, as some have misconceived it, but it is in the same metrical form as the translations in the present volume,—an accentual metre in rough imitation of the original. I agree with Professor Gummere and others that this is a better form for the translation of Old English poetry than plain prose. ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... Late discovery of the chansons. Their age and history. Their distinguishing character. Mistakes about them. Their isolation and origin. Their metrical form. Their scheme of matter. The character of Charlemagne. Other characters and characteristics. Realist quality. Volume and age of the chansons. Twelfth century. Thirteenth century. Fourteenth, and later. Chansons in print. Language: oc and oil. Italian. Diffusion of the chansons. ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... this was possible, I have adhered to the rhyming structure of my originals, feeling that this is a point of no small moment in translation. Yet when the choice lay between a sacrifice of metrical exactitude and a sacrifice of sense, I have not hesitated to prefer the former, especially in dealing with ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... edition) chose to plant his foot within this arena of controversy; and to address a letter to me; to which his model, M. Crapelet, was too happy to give circulation through the medium of his press.[3] To that letter the following metrical lines are prefixed; which the Reader would scarcely forgive me if I failed to amuse him by their introduction in this place. "Lesne, Relieur Francais, a Mons. T.F. Dibdin, Ministre de ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... made up of our Restoration hymns, by Jeremy Clark, Croft, and others who added to the succeeding editions of the metrical Psalms. If there are not many in this class, yet the few are good; and Clark must be regarded as the inventor of the modern English hymn-tune, regarded, that is, as a pure melody in the scale with harmonic interpretation of instrumental rather than true ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... five years before the death of Geoffrey, an Anglo-Norman, Geoffrey Gaimar, wrote the first French metrical chronicle. It consisted of two parts, the Estorie des Bretons and the Estorie des Engles, of which only the latter is extant, but the former is known to have been a rhymed translation of the Historia of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Gaimar's work ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... era as still were numbered with the living. On the other hand, Tennyson, though already the most remarkable among the younger poets, was still but exercising himself in the studies in language and metrical music by which his consummate art was developed; Browning had published only 'Pauline,' 'Paracelsus,' and 'Strafford;' the other poets who have given distinction to the Victorian age had not begun to write. And between the veterans of the one generation and the young recruits of the next ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... connections appear in the metrical romances of the twelfth or thirteenth century, as well as in those early Anglo-Norman chroniclers or fabulists, who have been at the pains to inform us of the pre-historic events of their country. The author of the romance-poem of the well-known ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... are like so many litanies of alternating chants and recitations. His thoughts slip on and off their light rhythmic robes just as the mood takes him, as was shown in the passage I have quoted in prose and in verse. Many of the metrical preludes to his lectures are a versified and condensed abstract of the leading doctrine of the discourse. They are a curious instance of survival; the lecturer, once a preacher, still wants his text; and finds his scriptural motto in his ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... time, and Chaucer is but one of the poets. He did not write for specialists in his own age, and his main value for succeeding ages resides, not in his vocabulary, nor in his inflections, nor in his indebtedness to foreign originals, nor in the metrical uniformities or anomalies that may be discovered in his poems; but in his poetry. Other things are accidental; his poetry is essential. Other interests—historical, philological, antiquarian—must be recognized; but the poetical, or (let us say) the ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... expressions, gentle reader, which occur in the notes to the life of Robin Hood, prefixed to the ballads which go under his name: 1795. 2 vols. 8vo.—also a Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy in the first vol. of Ancient Metrical Romances, 1802, 3 vols. 8vo. A very common degree of shrewdness and of acquaintance with English literature will shew that, in Menander and Sycorax, are described honest TOM WARTON and snarling ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... of twelve syllables, with the stress on the second, fifth, eighth, and eleventh syllables, makes a dodecasyllable of amphibrachs. This dodecasyllable has a short metrical pause after the sixth syllable, and a longer one ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... Book hardly pretend to understand. As far as I can give the Reader any satisfaction, he is to. know that Island was first inhabited (in the year 874) by a Colony of Norwegians; who brought hither the Traditions of their Forefathers, in certain metrical Composures, which (as is usual with Men transplanted into a Foreign Land) were here more zealously and carefully preserv'd and kept in memory than by the Men of Norway themselves. About 240 years after this (A. ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... conditions are laid down which the relation of congruence between segments is to satisfy. It is supposed that we have a complete theory of points, straight lines, planes, and the order of points on planes—in fact, a complete theory of non-metrical geometry. We then enquire about congruence and lay down the set of conditions—or axioms as they are called—which this relation satisfies. It has then been proved that there are alternative relations which satisfy these conditions equally well and that ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... scholarship and philology of the time could furnish. There is a story that Eliot wrote the whole with a single pen. It went through a good many editions, but is now very rare, and with Eliot's Catechism, and translations of Baxter's chief works, and a metrical version of the Psalms, remains the only vestige of the language of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... foot from the length of the organ so named; his cubit is the distance from the tip of his middle finger to his elbow, and his fathom is the space he can measure with his outstretched arms. [Footnote: The French metrical system seems destined to be adopted throughout the civilized world. It is indeed recommended by great advantages, but it is very doubtful whether they are not more than counterbalanced by the selection of too large a unit of measure, and by the inherent intractability of all decimal ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... alluded to the flash song of Jerry Juniper, I may, perhaps, be allowed to make a few observations upon this branch of versification. It is somewhat curious, with a dialect so racy, idiomatic, and plastic as our own cant, that its metrical capabilities should have been so little essayed. The French have numerous chansons d'argot, ranging from the time of Charles Bourdigne and Villon down to that of Vidocq and Victor Hugo, the last of whom has enlivened the horrors of his "Dernier Jour d'un Condamne" ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... actual work and the theory of it. One of these, the doing of the work, is proper to men trained in the individual subject, while the other, the theory, is common to all scholars: for example, to physicians and musicians the rhythmical beat of the pulse and its metrical movement. But if there is a wound to be healed or a sick man to be saved from danger, the musician will not call, for the business will be appropriate to the physician. So in the case of a musical instrument, not the physician but the musician will be the man to tune it so that the ears may ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... tribrachys or an anapaest, and sets it right at once by applying to one language the rules of another. If we may be allowed to change feet, like the old comic writers, it will not be easy to write a line not metrical. To hint this once, is sufficient. (see 1765, VI, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... by his poems, his letters, his literary criticism, his comedy, The Beggars, and his metrical translation of the Aeneid, acquired high rank in the judgment both of ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... reads his hobbling verse" Inscription by the Rev. W. L. Bowles, in Nether Stowey Church Translation Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie Epilogue to the Rash Conjuror Psyche Complaint Reproof An Ode to the Rain Translation of a Passage in Ottfried's Metrical Paraphrase of the Gospel Israel's Lament on the Death of the Princess Charlotte of Wales Sentimental The Alternative The Exchange What is Life? Inscription for ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... With Explanatory Notes, Metrical Index, Remarks on Classical Versification, Index of Proper Names, &c. By Prof. Thomas Chase. Price by mail, postpaid, $1.50. ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... but titled authors. Rheinhart Kleiner contributes the single piece of verse, a smooth and pleasing lyric entitled "Love Again", which is not unlike his previous poem, "Love, Come Again". As an amatory poet, Mr. Kleiner shows much delicacy of sentiment, refinement of language, and appreciation of metrical values; his efforts in this direction entitle him to a high place ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... have furnished the model for Baltazar's Florante, with the pupil surpassing the master, for while it has the subject and characters of a medieval European romance, the spirit and settings are entirely Malay. It is written in the peculiar Tagalog verse, in the form of a corrido or metrical romance, and has been declared by Fray Toribio Menguella, Rizal himself, and others familiar with Tagalog, to be a work of no mean order, by far the finest and most characteristic composition in that, the richest ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... ground, he is arrived at the very moment when modern history takes new proportions. He can look back for the legends and mythology to the "Younger Edda" and the "Heimrskringla" of Snorro Sturleson, to Mallet's "Northern Antiquities," to Ellis's "Metrical Romances," to Asser's "Life of Alfred," and Venerable Bede, and to the researches of Sharon Turner and Palgrave. Hume will serve him for an intelligent guide, and in the Elizabethan era he is at the richest period of the English mind, with the chief men of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... SINGER's accurate reprint, 1817), has his in both lines. 2. MR. RYE, in understanding me to refer to any translation proper; unless Sternhold and Hopkins are to be considered as having produced one. 3. Myself, in supposing the old metrical version in the Book of Common Prayer originally had the word its. I copied from the Oxford edition in fol. of 1770; but a 4to. edition, "printed by Iohn Daye, dwelling over Aldersgate, anno 1574," does not exhibit the word in the places specified; we have ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... Mecca, I see the rapt religious dances of the Persians and the Arabs, Again, at Eleusis, home of Ceres, I see the modern Greeks dancing, I hear them clapping their hands as they bend their bodies, I hear the metrical shuffling of their feet. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... Psalms say in the metrical version. No that I would preen my faith to that clink neither; but it's bonny, and easier to mind. "Who go to sea in ships," they ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... metrical arrangement of this poem are not only peculiar but are in full accord with the weird and fantastic conception of the piece as a whole. The versification is based upon a principle not commonly practised—that of counting the number of accentuated words in a line instead of the number of syllables. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... the custom of appointing godly laymen as readers whose duty it was to assist the minister by leading the congregation in the responses in the Church service, and in raising tunes for the singing of metrical version of the Psalms. Later, when it was found desirable to erect chapels of ease in populous parishes, enough readers were appointed in every parish to permit one of them to hold morning service each Sunday in ...
— Religious Life of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - The Faith of Our Fathers • George MacLaren Brydon
... produce a freer effect in The Eve. The eighteenth century is farther off; the genuine mediaeval inspiration is nearer. And it is especially noticeable that, as in most of the early performances of the great poetical periods, an alteration of metrical etiquette (as we may call it) plays a great part. Scott had not yet heard that recitation of Christabel which had so great an effect on his work, and through it on the work of others. But he had mastered for himself, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... first English translation was published in the same year as the first French version, that is, in 1825; both were exceedingly imperfect. Since then several other translations in prose and verse have appeared in both languages, especially in English,—though the "twenty or thirty metrical ones" of which Mr. C.T. Brooks speaks in his preface are probably to be taken as a mere mode of speech,—and lately one by this gentleman himself, in our very midst. This latter comes, perhaps, as near to perfection as it is possible for the reproduction ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... Eric Mackay are the handiwork of a brilliant metrical artist and poet born.... A beautiful and passionate work; its beauty that of construction, language, imagery,—its passion, characteristic of the artistic nature, and, while intensely human, free from any taint of vulgar coarseness.... The poem is quite original, its manner Elizabethan.... ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... seemingly more for the strength than the sweetness of their voices, occupied a large box right under the pulpit, and thence led the congregation by a whole bar at least, in the rendering of Tate and Brady's metrical version of the Psalms. Very weird and sorrowful were many of the tunes. None were bright and inspiring like those Bert was wont to hear at home, and as choir and congregation vied with one another in the vigour of their singing, the little fellow was sometimes half-frightened ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe that our readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication. The metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be added that the effect is greatly increased ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... dikes and lodes, the squares of rich corn and verdure,—will confess that the lowland, as well as the highland, can at times breed gallant men. [Footnote: The story of Hereward (often sung by minstrels and old-wives in succeeding generations) may be found in the "Metrical Chronicle of Geoffrey Gaimar," and in the prose "Life of Hereward" (paraphrased from that written by Leofric, his house- priest), and in the valuable fragment "Of the family of Hereward." These have all three been edited by Mr. T. Wright. The account of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the Circles," that is, Dauphiness and Company,—called HOOPERS or "Coopers" (TONNELIERS), with a desperate attempt at wit by pun,—get their Adieu in words withal. This is the famed CONGE DE L'ARMEE DES CERCLES ET DES TONNELIERS; a short metrical Piece; called by Editors the most profane, most indecent, most &c.; and printed with asterisk veils thrown over the worst passages. Who shall dare, searching and rummaging for insight into Friedrich, and complaining that there is none, to lift any portion of the veil; and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... in verse, it has seemed to me that a uniform translation of the Tain Bo Cualnge in prose would destroy one of its special characteristics, which is that in it both prose and verse are mingled. It was not in my power, however, to reproduce at once closely and clearly the metrical schemes and the rich musical quality of the Irish and at the same time compress within the compass of the Irish measure such an analytic language as English, which has to express by means of auxiliaries what is accomplished ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... was as childish (to use the word in no contemptuous sense) as in others he was precocious. And it is a thousand pities that the difficulties of Chatterton's language and the peculiar charm and invention of his metrical technique cannot be appreciated till the boyish love of adventure, delight in imagined bloodshed, and ignorance of sentimental love, have generally been left behind. Nothing—to give an example—could be more frigid ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... f. deutsches Altertum, Bd. xxxiii. 262-4). Dr. Joyce has a somewhat florid version in, his Old Celtic Romances, from which I have borrowed a touch or two. I have neither extenuated nor added aught but the last sentence of the Fairy Maiden's last speech. Part of the original is in metrical form, so that the whole is of the cante-fable species which I believe to be the original form of the folk-tale (Cf. Eng. Fairy Tales, notes, p. 240, and ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... Ballads and Metrical Tales, illustrating the Fairy Mythology of Europe (anonymous, London, 1857) for a metrical version of ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... of consequence, mainly, as one of the first and greatest improvers of dramatic poetry in so far as relates to diction and metrical style; which is my reason for emphasizing his work so much in that regard. But, as this is a virtue much easier felt than described, I can best show what it is, by giving a taste of it; which however must ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... charm of epithet here, and a rhythmic suggestion of metrical beat to follow. That, no doubt, is why the line has stuck in my memory. But the metrical beat did not follow, and the rest of the stanza has gone from me. I am sure even a gilded Pavlova would be at some difficulty to dance to ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... and that translated indifferently, we will see what we can do. "We agreed," says Burton, "to collaborate and produce a full, complete, unvarnished, uncastrated, copy of the great original, my friend taking the prose and I the metrical part; and we corresponded upon the subject for years." [149] They told each other that, having completed their task, they would look out for a retreat as a preparation for senility, some country cottage, perhaps, in the South of France, where, remote from ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... English version. It has since appeared in various languages; and English, German and French writers are all agreed in pronouncing it one of the most perfect expressions of the religion and philosophy of the Vedas. Sir Edwin Arnold popularized it by his metrical rendering under the name of "The Secret of Death," and Ralph Waldo Emerson gives its story in brief at the close of his ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... Cf. "On the Prose Style of Poets" in the "Plain Speaker": "What is a little extraordinary, there is a want of rhythmus and cadence in what they write without the help of metrical rules. Like persons who have been accustomed to sing to music, they are at a loss in the absence of the habitual accompaniment and guide to their judgment. Their style halts, totters, is loose, disjointed, and without expressive pauses or rapid ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... at all translations. Like the Divan-poems they are original creations, inspired by the reading of Hafid, and, to use the poet's own words "dem Hafis nachgefuehlt und nachgedichtet."[137] They follow as closely as possible the Persian metrical rules, and make use throughout of Persian images and metaphors, so much so that we can adduce direct parallels from the poems of Hafid. Thus in 13[138] we read: "Schenke! Tulpen sind wie Kelche Weines," evidently a parallel to some such line as ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... he seemed to care less for their work than for anything else in literature. The thought of this inconsistency has perplexed me whenever I have thought of it through all these years. As I have intimated, he was charmed by the beautiful, and by every known expression of beauty; but for the strictly metrical in language-expression, he evinced almost a distaste. I have often thought that he had, through some peculiar circumstance in his earlier life, acquired a suggestive dislike to the very form of verse. To this peculiarity there was, however, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... millimetres, which is sometimes called "a double cubit." On these suppositions the SAR would be a square, each side measuring about twenty-two yards, about one-tenth of an acre, or four ares on the metrical system. But it is certain that both in early times and during the First Dynasty of Babylon the GAR was only 12 U, and the U, if a cubit, would not be much over eighteen inches. This would make the SAR a square of about eighteen feet ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... Gregory-by-St. Paul's (having been brought up from Bury for safety during an incursion of the Danes), and an attempt by the Bishop and Canons to secure so precious a relic for the cathedral. Here is Lydgate's metrical version of the story, telling how the attempt was frustrated by the ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... to others. In point of fact, however, it does not seem that any such distinction can be made. Horace's lightest Satires or Epistles have generally something grave about them: his gravest have more than one light passage. To draw a metrical line in the English where none is drawn in the Latin appears to me objectionable ipso facto where it can reasonably be avoided. That it can be avoided in the present case does not really admit ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... metrical account of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, is contained in some uncouth rhymes, written about the year 1562, by Thomas Stanley, Bishop of Sodor and Man,[12] and son of that Sir Edward Stanley, who, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Browning's "Pied Piper" and "How They Brought the Good News," Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." Let him read mainly for the senses rather than for the mind, getting the reward in the quickening of life through the throbbing rhythms; then the metrical system of poetry will become as real to him as the rhythmic movements of the planets are to an astronomer. There is no other way to get a feeling for the pulsations of poetry than through this intimate ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... power. How different, for instance, are the first lines of the "Tale of Troy Divine," and the more familiar adventures of Ulysses. The ad libitum alternation of dactyl and spondee make the lively or the grave; and the whole metrical glow is all life and action, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... in 1853, to compile and publish an edition of the text of the '[S']akoontala' from various original MSS., with English translations of the metrical passages, and explanatory notes. A second edition of this work has since been published by the Delegates of the Oxford University Press. To the notes of that edition I must refer all students of Sanskrit literature who desire a close and literal translation of the present drama, and in ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... of this volume are set forth in the beginning of Lecture I. Lecture II. explains the various metrical forms in which I understand Jeremiah to have delivered the most of his prophecies, and which I have endeavoured, however imperfectly, to reproduce in English. Here it is necessary only to emphasise ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... perfect craft in recording wild natural emotions. The verse in this first book has occasional faults, but as a rule the lines move, driven by that inner energy of emotion which will sometimes work more metrical wonders than the most conscious art. The words hiss at you sometimes, as in "The Dancer," and again will melt away with the delicacy of fairy bells as in "The Watcher," or will run like deep river water, as in "The Whisperer," which in some ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... Teacher.—Since the expression of ideas in metrical form is seldom the one best suited to the conditions of modern life, it has not seemed desirable to continue the themes throughout this chapter. The study of this chapter, with suitable illustrations from the poems to which the pupils have access, may serve to aid them ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... Luther, about the year 1517, first introduced metrical psalmody into the service of the church, which not only kept alive the enthusiasm of the reformers, but formed a rallying point for his followers. This practice spread in all directions; and it was not long ere six thousand persons were heard singing together at ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... four State Services are enumerated in the Table of Contents. After the State Services follow, "At the Healing;" the Thirty-nine Articles, and a Table of Kindred and Affinity. This edition neither contains the Ordinal nor a metrical version of the Psalms. Notwithstanding the date on the title-page, King George is prayed for throughout the book, except in the service "For the Eighth Day of March," when Queen ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... "regardless of observation" as the processes of nature, etc., will not be apt to take kindly to any arbitrary and artificial form of expression. The essentially prose form which Whitman chose is far more in keeping with the spirit and aim of his work than any conventional metrical system could have been. Had he wrought solely as a conscious artist, aiming at the effect of finely chiseled forms, he would doubtless have ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... chant, the clapping of hands, the striking of rude instruments: there are measured movements, measured words, and measured tones. The early records of historic races similarly show these three forms of metrical action united in religious festivals. In the Hebrew writings we read that the triumphal ode composed by Moses on the defeat of the Egyptians, was sung to an accompaniment of dancing and timbrels. The Israelites danced and sung "at the inauguration of the golden calf. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... tragical, but "happy"; and admiration gave it the epithet "divine." It is in three parts—Inferno (hell), Purgatorio (purgatory), and Paradiso (paradise). It has been made accessible to English readers in the metrical translations of Carey, Longfellow, Norton, and others, and in the excellent prose version (Inferno) of John Aitken Carlyle, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... possibility of a new development of this form. Mr. Richard Aldington (whose own accomplishments as a writer of vers libre qualify him to speak) called the poem "unsurpassed and unsurpassable," and a writer in the New Age (a literary organ which has always been strongly opposed to metrical innovations) called it "one of the finest literary works of art produced in England during the last ten years." And the rough, stern beauty of the Anglo-Saxon, we may remark, is at the opposite pole from that of the Provencal and Italian poets to whom Pound had previously ...
— Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry • T.S. Eliot
... far the greater part will be found recoverable to measure by that restitution of the Mute E which we since, too exclusively perhaps, connect with the name of Tyrwhitt. The confidence felt in his text, however—the only one upon which a metrical scholar dares work—in some sort justifies the honour. Meanwhile, this metrical theory, from his time, has been generally received; and the renown of the founder of our poetry settled on all the wider and firmer basis, when he appears as the earliest skilled artificer of the verse itself—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... Both Walsh and Pope forgot ever once to ask themselves what it was that they meant by 'correctness;' an idea that, in its application to France, Akenside afterwards sternly ridiculed. Neither of the two literati stopped to consider whether it was correctness in thought, or metrical correctness, or correctness in syntax and idiom; as to all of which, by comparison with other poets, Pope is conspicuously deficient. But no matter what they meant, or if they meant nothing at all. Unmeaning, or in any case ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the two ends was filled by younger creatures. It was spring with them; their leaflets were yet green and unfallen; all that fell from them was poetry, pathetic in its sadness, bitter in its irony, free of metrical or indeed of any other restraints, and mainly either about how unpleasant had been the trenches in which they had spent the years of the great war and those persons over military age who had not been called upon to enter them, or about freedom; free love, free thought and ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... college walls. His choice of models—the artificial pastorals in which the Renaissance had modelled itself on Virgil and Theocritus, rather than Virgil and Theocritus themselves—was not altogether happy. He showed, indeed, already his extraordinary metrical skill, experimenting with rhyme-royal and other stanzas, fourteeners or eights and sixes, anapaests more or less irregular, and an exceedingly important variety of octosyllable which, whatever may have been his own idea in practising ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... countries there is unhappily no record. In St. Petersburg he must have made a long stay, for there he superintended the translation of the Bible into Mandschu- Tartar, and published in 1835 his Targum; or Metrical Translations from Thirty Languages and Dialects. In 1835 Borrow returned to London, and being already known to the Bible Society for his biblical labours in Russia, was offered, and accepted, the task of circulating the Scriptures in the Spanish Peninsula. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... as a whole, to any one time. The Rig Veda was composed by successive generations; the Atharvan represents different ages; each Br[a]hmana appears to belong in part to one era, in part to another; the earliest S[u]tras (manuals of law, etc.) have been interpolated; the earliest metrical code is a composite; the great epic is the work of centuries; and not only do the Upanishads and Pur[a]nas represent collectively many different periods, but exactly to which period each individually is to be assigned remains always doubtful. Only in the case of the Buddhistic ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... as a curious point in Browning's technique, that in the stanza (ababcc) in which this and some of his other poems are written, he almost always omits the pause customary at the end of the fourth line, running it into the fifth, and thus producing a novel metrical effect, such as we find used with success in more than ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... interests me personally because Campion was the protagonist of unrhymed lyrical verse—my special metrical hobby. I like to think that William Strachey may have supported Campion in his controversy with Gabriel Harvey, who, by the way, lived at Saffron Walden, from which town came also William Strachey. There is danger, however, in such speculation. Before long someone may prove ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... derived through Old French from the Latin gesta, 'deeds' or 'exploits.' But as the word was particularly applied to 'exploits as narrated or recited,' there came into use a secondary meaning—that of 'a story or romantic tale in verse,' or 'a metrical chronicle.' The latter meaning is doubtless intended in the title of the Gest of Robyn Hode. A further corruption may be noticed even in the titles of the later texts as given above; Copland adds the word 'mery,' ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... from the frontispiece of the metrical romance: "The Knight of the Swanne. Here beginneth the history of ye noble Helyas knyght of the swanne, newly translated out of frensshe," London, Copland, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... reached him just as he was about to embark in the lighthouse yacht. He took it with him on his voyage, and, on returning home again, wrote to Mr. Train, expressing the gratification he had received from several of his metrical pieces, but still more from his notes, and requesting him, as he seemed to be enthusiastic about traditions and legends, to communicate any matters of that order connected with Galloway which he might not himself think of turning to account; "for," said Scott, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... formerly attempted to ascertain the value of the improvements which this new school has effected in poetry: but shall lay the grounds of our opposition, for this time, a little more broadly. The end of poetry, we take it, is to please—and the same, we think, is strictly applicable to every metrical composition from which we receive pleasure, without any laborious exercise of the understanding. Their pleasure may, in general, be analysed into three parts—that which we receive from the excitement of Passion or emotion—that which is derived from the play of Imagination, or the easy ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... admit—the best love songs were written by the best hymn writers. Even Ibn Gabirol, who, so far as we know, wrote no love songs, composed other kinds of secular poetry. One of the favorite poetical forms of the Middle Ages consisted of metrical letters to friends—one may almost assert that the best Hebrew love poetry is of this type—epistles of affection between man and man, expressing a love passing the love of woman. Ibn Gabirol wrote such epistles, but the ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... version of her courtship, and this a metrical one. This old ballad was not much known beyond the district round Slains, and the old servants and farmers on the estate were the chief depositaries of the tradition. I have failed to secure more than a very small fragment of it, which is itself only written ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... educational addresses, and metrical discourses on memorable occasions filled the years from 1829 to 1840. He felt the demon of insanity lurking behind him, now close at his heels, now farther away; and it was a desperate race, in which life and death, nay, worse ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... 'the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge,' according to Wordsworth, the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science'—that poetry irrespective of rhyme and metrical arrangement which is as immortal as the heart of man, is distinctive in Mr. Allen's work from the first written page. Like Minerva issuing full-formed from the head of Jove, Mr. Allen issues from his long years of silence and seclusion a ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... might form a curious history of the progress of despotism. These effusions of zeal were not, however, all in the "sublime" style: the legislative dignity sometimes condescended to unbend itself, and listen to metrical compositions, enlivened by the accompaniment of fiddles; but the manly and ferocious Danton, to whom such sprightly interruptions were not congenial, proposed a decree, that the citizens should, in future, express ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... prose translation of Homer, by Mr. T. A. Buckley, has just appeared in London. No prose version will cause any just notion of the spirit of Homer. Of the half dozen metrical translations published recently, we think that of our countryman Munford the best. Henry W. Herbert has given us parts of the Iliad in admirable style. No one, however, has yet equalled old Chapman—certainly not Pope nor Cowper. The most successful translation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... selections from the Amyntas quoted in this article have been selected from the admirable metrical translation of Mr. ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... appointed by Alfonso XV, king of Castile and Leon, physician to the royal household. His work, above referred to, is written in Latin, and has been translated into French, but not as yet into English. An outline of the tales, by Douce, will be found prefixed to Ellis' Early English Metrical Romances. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... Rhythm alone is a tether, and not a very long one. But rhymes are iron fetters; it is dragging a chain and ball to march under their incumbrance; it is a clog-dance you are figuring in, when you execute your metrical pas seul. Consider under what a disadvantage your thinking powers are laboring when you are handicapped by the inexorable demands of our scanty English rhyming vocabulary! You want to say something about the heavenly bodies, and you have a beautiful line ending with the word stars. Were you writing ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... hands in 1435, planned, as he says, by Nicolo de Lazina, a Cremonese noble, who was chancellor at the time. It is interesting both from the point of view of the carving and costume, and as showing the apparatus of an alchemist's laboratory. Close by it on the wall is the "metrical epitaph," which De Diversis says the chancellor composed. The columns, which are of Curzola marble, belong to the earlier building, though the entasis shows that classical feeling was beginning to affect even architects who worked in ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... are not even remotely concerned with metrical analysis. For that phase, with a discussion as to the effect of the various metrical systems, see Klotz, Grundzuge der altromischen Metrik, esp. p. 370 ff. Cf. Duff, A Lit. Hist. of Rome, p. 196. Note Donat, de Com. VIII. 9 and Diom. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... somewhat unlettered Indian we catch faint glimpses of the poetic beauty with which the tradition glowed when actually related at the wigwam door. An attempt has been made to retain and crystallize this poetic beauty in the preceding metrical version ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... before the Union of the Crowns in 1603. Now that tradition was in full force on the Border before 1688. We know that (see chapter on Kinmont Willie, infra), for, in 1688, a man born in 1613, Captain Walter Scott of Satchells, in his Metrical History of the Honourable Families of the Names of Scott and Elliot, represents Gilbert Elliot of Stobs as riding with Buccleuch in the rescue of Kinmont Willie, in 1596. {95a} Now Satchells's own father rode in that ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... well-nigh screamed with pain. He suppressed the natural expression of anguish, however, and only intimated the agony which he felt by a contortion and a muttered groan. The White Lady passed her cold hand over his arm, and, ere she had finished the following metrical chant, his pain had entirely gone, and no mark of the ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the dialogue itself, one of which, by far the most usual, the iambic trimeter, denoted the regular progress of the action, and the other, the trochaic tetrameter, was expressive of the impetuousness of passion. It would lead us too far into the depths of metrical science, were we to venture at present on a more minute account of the structure and significance of these measures. I merely wished to make this remark, as so much has been said of the simplicity of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... filled the papal throne from 1623 to 1644, a man well versed in literature, especially in Latin poetry, and himself one of the distinguished poets of his time, took measures for the emendation of the hymns in the Roman Breviary. He was offended by the many defects in their metrical composition, and it is said that upwards of nine hundred and fifty faults in metre were corrected, which gave to Urban occasion to say that the Fathers had begun rather than completed the hymns. These, as corrected, he caused to be inserted in the Breviary. Grancolas ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... it in his mind's eye into its different parts. He would never mistake the calyx for a petal, and he would be able to determine at once the peculiarities of each part. In addition to the melodic phrases the pupil should be able to see the metrical divisions which underlie the form of the piece. He should be able to tell whether the composition is one of eight-measure sections or four-measure sections, or ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... spirit seems to soar above the regions of words, but leaves its body, the verse, to be entombed, without hope of resurrection, in a mass of them. Cowley is generally instanced as a wonder of precocity. But his early insipidities show only a capacity for rhyming and for the metrical arrangement of certain conventional combinations of words, a capacity wholly dependent on a delicate physical organization, and an unhappy memory. An early poem is only remarkable when it displays an effort of reason, and the rudest verses in which we can trace some conception of the ends of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... whom the metrical review had been apportioned, "is couched in sonorous lines, of haunting melody and charm; and yet so closely inter-related as to be scarcely quotable with justice to the author. To be appreciated the poem should be read as a whole,—I shall say ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... even the capability of becoming a poet. He who cannot write in a style which he does know, will certainly not be able to invent a new style for himself. The first and simplest form in which any metrical ear, or fancy, or imagination, can show itself, must needs be in imitating existing models. Innate good taste—that is, true poetic genius—will of course choose the best models in the long run. But not necessarily at first. What shall be the student's earliest ideal must ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... a passage in his metrical chronicle regarding a cannibal who lived shortly before his own time, and he may easily have heard about him from surviving contemporaries. It was about the year 1340, when a large portion of Scotland had been devastated by the arms ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould |
