"Couplet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Surrey and Wyatt, and generally pursued by Shakespeare's contemporaries, his sonnets aim at far greater metrical simplicity than the Italian or the French. They consist of three decasyllabic quatrains with a concluding couplet, and the quatrains rhyme alternately. {95b} A single sonnet does not always form an independent poem. As in the French and Italian sonnets of the period, and in those of Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, and Drayton, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Bossuet, with his rhetorical graces; La Bruyre, with his gallery of characters, not one of which was moulded among the people; De la Rochefoucauld's maxims, drawn from the arcana of fashionable life; Racine, whose heroes die with an immaculate couplet and speak the faint echoes of Grecian or Roman sentiment! When politics became common property, and the walls of a prescriptive and conventional system fell, how wild ran speculation and sentiment ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... acquaintance with each of these tongues. Their earliest playthings were French alphabet-blocks, and the set which served as toys and tasks for each of the elder brothers came at last to him as his legacy. The letters were formed by the human figure in different attitudes, and each block had a little couplet below the picture, beginning with the letter on the block. The Y represented a gymnast hanging by his hands to a trapeze, and being a letter which does not occur in the Hungarian language except in combinations, excited most the interest and imagination of the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... thing is not allowed in comic poetry. When I opened my well-known military epic, "Riddles of the King," with the couplet, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 9, 1920 • Various
... of his acquisition. Yet even the worthy Corporation of his native city will, we doubt not, be willing to allow that the Blue-Coat Charity boy might be entitled to the praise he gives Canning in the next couplet: that he— ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... rehearsals; and many of his friends are of opinion, that our present poets are indebted to him for their happiest thoughts; by his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarossa, and by his persuasion the author of Cleone concluded his play without a couplet; for what can be more absurd, said Minim, than that part of a play should be rhymed, and part written in blank verse? and by what acquisition of faculties is the speaker, who never could find rhymes before, enabled to rhyme at the conclusion ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... pen-combat was really lamentable; they displayed such an equality of excellence that the umpires refused to decide, till one of them espied that Mr. German had omitted the tittle of an i! But Mr. More was evidently a man of genius, not only by his couplet, but in his "Essay on the Invention of Writing," where occurs this noble passage: "Art with me is of no party. A noble emulation I would cherish, while it proceeded neither from, nor to malevolence. Bales had his Johnson, Norman his Mason, Ayres his Matlock and his Shelley; yet Art the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... that," spoke Mr. Lagg, being now too interested to quote a couplet. "Matters were going on well, and I expected to close the deal, and make a pretty penny, when the doctors said they couldn't take the property, as it was haunted, and of course a haunted house, with queer noises in the night, would never do as a home for nervous ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... orthography." His orthography is indeed deplorable. In one of his letters wright is put for write, woed for would. He challenged Tenison to dispute with him in Latin, that they might be on equal terms. In a contemporary satire, entitled The Advice, is the following couplet ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... may not be accused of plagiarism, we acknowledge ourselves indebted for the hyperbole contained in the last two lines of these introductory stanzas, to an original recommendation for a proper display of rapture, as contained in the following couplet by one Peter Ker, wherein he very humanely invites all the vessels belonging to Great Britain to strand themselves out of joy for the accession ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... rubbish-heap of old-world verses, now decayed beyond the industry of the most persevering of Dryasdusts. Nay, he even succeeded by some mysterious means in getting one of his poems published separately. It was called 'Inebriety,' and was an unblushing imitation of Pope. Here is a couplet by way ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... Ferrier's favourite of the whole. Here I shall think it's you who are wrong. You see, I did not try to make good verse, but to say what I wanted as well as verse would let me. I don't like the rhyme "ear" and "hear." But the couplet, "My undissuaded heart I hear Whisper courage in my ear," is exactly what I want for the thought, and to me seems very energetic as speech, if not as verse. Would "daring" be better than "courage"? Je me le ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the only couplet in which beasts as well as birds are subjected to this searching analysis. I think you will admit that it is the most sagacious and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... of the poetical, or rhyming ability, is found in the following couplet, written by him for his ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... bees; and butterflies were there, thick as motes in the midday sun. Roberta's observant, nature-loving eyes roved delightedly from one point to another of the sunny landscape, while she repeated gaily to Mam' Sarah a little couplet. The child's memory was ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... not wash out; in the Saxon Garden at Warsaw there broods the memory of long-dead things, coeval with the stately trees that shade its walks, and with the carp that swim to-day in its ponds as they doubtless swam there when "Lieber Augustin" was a living person and not as yet an immortal couplet. And St. James's Park, with its lawns and walks and waterfowl, harbours still its associations with a bygone order of men and women, whose happiness and sadness are woven into its history, dim and grey as they were once bright ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... but broad meadows, arable land, and woodlands, and his only warfare is with the lower strata of storm-clouds, which is a convenient thing for the people who live in these parts; for long ago they used the peak as a sign of approaching storms, having reduced the warning to the easily-remembered couplet: ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... crams into one couplet after another, philosophy after philosophy, creed after creed, Stoic, Epicurean, Hebraic, Persian, Christian, and puts his finger on the flaw in them all. Man comes to life as to "the Feast unbid," and finds "the gorgeous table spread with fair-seeming ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... happy confusion of that great occasion I recall two toasts. One was offered by John Fox. "Japan for the Japanese, and the Japanese for Japan." Even the Japanese wardroom boy did not catch its significance. The other was a paraphrase of a couplet in reference to our brown brothers of the Philippines first spoken in Manila. "To the Japanese: 'They may be brothers to Commodore Perry, but they ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... devoted Whig, at a time when Whiggism meant friendship for the American Colonists; and the open expression of this friendship cost him his place as a Royal Chaplain. I will remember this longer than I remember his "English Garden,"—longer than I remember his best couplet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... not predictions or the result of calculations. It does not appear, indeed, that the Chinese were, at any time, able to predict an eclipse, notwithstanding all that has been said in their favour on this subject. The reputed Chinese tables, published by Father Couplet, have been detected to be those of Tycho Brahe; and Cassini found the chronology of their eclipses, published by Martinus, to be erroneous, and their returns impossible. It could not indeed be otherwise; the defectiveness of the calendar must necessarily falsify all their ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... grew older his handwriting improved and he was often asked to "set copies" for other boys to follow. In the book of a boy named Richardson, he wrote this prophetic couplet: ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... misfortune, mischance. contribucion f. tax. convencer to convince. conveniente useful, fitting, proper. convenir to agree, fit, suit. convento convent. convertir to convert. convicto convicted. convidar to invite. convoy m. convoy, escort, train. copa cup. copla couplet, ballad, song. corazon m. heart. cordillera chain of mountains. corneta cornet; —— de llaves cornet-a-pistons. corona crown. coronar to crown. coronel colonel. coronilla crown of the head. corral m. yard. correo mail, post-office. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... upon a stanza or two, which have floated to us with their precious freight, over the sea of centuries, and will float on unsubmergible by all the waves of Time. The soul of Simonides lives to us in a single couplet; but that is the very stuff of Eternity, which neither fire will assoil, nor tempest peril, nor the wrath of years impair. The Infinite has no degrees; wherever the world sees in any human being the fire of the Everlasting, it bows with equal awe, whether that ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... pretty couplet, 'Every leaf of the foliage of a green tree is, in the eye of a wise man, a library to teach him the wisdom of his Creator.'[6] I may remark that, where an Englishman would write his own name, a Hindoo would write that of his god, his parent, or ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... acquainted with those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme, is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes itself a snare, and the readier ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... is, by our school rules, a forbidden author, I sometimes contrive to indulge myself in reading his works by stealth. Among the passages that have struck my (boyish) fancy is the couplet in "The Bride of Abydos" ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... deriving the word Devonshire from Dane-shire, the shire of the Danes, though it is known to have had its name before ever the first Dane landed in England, and there seems to be little likelihood, therefore, but only "a sympathie in letters." He concludes his discussion by the couplet: ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... hear, Sire, what Campan says to us?"—"Yes, I hear," said the King, and continued his game. Monsieur, who was in the habit of introducing passages from plays into his conversation, said to my father-in-law, "M. Campan, that pretty little couplet again, if you please;" and pressed the King to reply. At length the Queen said, "But something must be said to Campan." The King then spoke to my father-in-law in these words: "Tell M. d'Inisdal that I cannot consent to be carried off!" The Queen enjoined M. Campan to take ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... a couplet so apropos, and so well delivered, as to have the immediate effect of restoring order and making the farmer look foolish. Encouraged by the voice of his great patron, Green once more essayed to finish his speech, which he did by a fresh assurance of the surprise by which he had been taken by ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... of the whole presentment there can be as little question as of its splendour and glow. It has the sinew, as well as the wing, of poetry. And neither in poetry nor in prose has the elementary marvel of the simplest musical form been more vividly seized than in the well-known couplet— ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... white) of Auvergne, the rouveau, and the paradis of Provence, are of oldest repute. This reminds us of the couplet by the author of the "Street ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... among them was one long quiver-shaped basket of birch bark, with something heavy under the green leaves that lay at the top. Lifting these, a slender bas-relief of a calla lily in plaster appeared, with this couplet slipped into the blue cord by which ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... and songs. The last incident which I recollect, was my LEARNED AND WORTHY patron falling from his chair, just as he concluded a long lecture upon temperance, by reciting, from the "Gentle Shepherd," a couplet, which he RIGHT HAPPILY transferred from the vice of avarice ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... construct a spacious hut (muro) and invite the eighty doubtful characters to a banquet. An equal number of Jimmu's soldiers acted as hosts, and, at a given signal, when the guests were all drunk, they were slaughtered. Jimmu composed a couplet expressing his troops' delight at having disposed of a formidable foe so easily, and in this verselet he spoke of one Yemishi being reputed to be a match ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... or a New and Complete Treatise of Analogy between the French and English Languages," compiled by Charles Turrell, Professor of Languages, and published in 1828, contains the words which are the same in each language (alphabet, banquet, couplet, &c.), and those almost the same—"Letters necessary in English, and superfluous in French, are included in a parenthesis, thus Bag(g)age. Letters necessary in French, and superfluous in English are printed in Italics, thus Hommage." At first sight it seems as ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... forest. I heard him indulging in memories and anecdotes of date sittings after long hunts; but I was myself always on a hunt for my beginning, and none of his words clearly reached my intelligence until I was aware of his reciting an excellently pertinent couplet:— ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... great social as well as a great artistic success. He loved the society of men of birth and fashion; he seems to have had a more passionate desire to please in private even than in public, and almost to have justified the often quoted couplet in Goldsmith's "Retaliation." ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... of any flesh-and-blood maiden, though, by the way, it would read extremely similar; for Fortune is, indeed, as the ancients painted her, very like a woman—not quite so unreasonable and inconsistent, but nearly so—and the pursuit is much the same in one case as in the other. Ben Jonson's couplet— ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... terms meant something in real life there was a distinction. The talisman was probably at first an astronomical figure, but later the term became more comprehensive. Pope portrays this astrological import in his couplet, ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... merely for the entertainment of a private circle." He regarded Swift, however, as a pattern of correctness both in style and sentiment, and he read to his young friend some of the short poetical addresses to Stella. Amicus says Smith expressed particular pleasure with one couplet— ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... during the next half-century. In many respects he was a curious survival of the cumulative humanities of the eighteenth century. He might have been, like good Dr. Arbuthnot, an ornament of the Augustan age. He shared with the English Augustans a liking for the rhymed couplet, an instinctive social sense, a feeling for the presence of an imaginary audience of congenial listeners. One still catches the "Hear! Hear!" between his clever lines. In many of the traits of his mind this "Yankee Frenchman" resembled such a typical eighteenth century figure as Voltaire. ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Blake. Now because of his immense powers we are accustomed to think of Shakespeare as almost superhuman: we pay that tribute to his genius, his strength, and the enormous impression they produce on us. But a single couplet of Blake's will carry more of this uncanny superhuman imagination than the whole five acts of Hamlet. So great is Shakespeare, that he tempts us to think him capable of any flight of wing; but set down a ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... will be good fun for you to find out what it means. He adds that there is but one letter of the alphabet wanting, to make sense; this is used over and over, and, if you put it into the right places, the text will turn into a rhymed couplet. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... lecturing. He made desperate work now and then with rhyme and rhythm, showing that though a born poet he was not a born singer. Think of making "feeble" rhyme with "people," "abroad" with "Lord," and contemplate the following couplet which one cannot ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... 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 of a doubt. The English heroic couplet, managed as Cowper has managed it, is surely quite equal to representing all the various changes of mood and temper which find their embodiment successively in the Horatian hexameter. Cowper's more serious poems contain more of deep and sustained gravity than is ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... then repose ourselves on the dazzling white mats, and listen to the singular duet sung by those two mousmes: a strange musical medley, slow and mournful, beginning with two or three high notes, and descending at each couplet, in an almost imperceptible manner, into actual solemnity. The song keeps its dragging slowness; but the accompaniment, becoming more and more accentuated, is like the impetuous sound of a far-off hurricane. At the end, when these ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... long straw in its beak flew right across Maxine's garden, a little winged poem, a couplet enclosing the whole ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... much nettled by the insulting jests passed upon them by the despots. Mamercus, who plumed himself on his poems and tragedies, gave himself great airs after conquering the mercenaries, and when he hung up their shields as offerings to the gods, he inscribed this insolent elegiac couplet upon them. ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... iron gratings of the upper Claverias, giving on the roofs, there was generally a voice singing the ancient couplet, no doubt inspired ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... arms and legs, the latter somewhat bowed, making him appear even shorter than he was. It was these legs of his, together with his big round head and shock of reddish hair, that inspired some genius of the school with a couplet which was often chanted by the boys when they caught sight of Joe ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... original Hebrew, each clause consists of three words. In such an antithetic parallelism the words of one couplet, at least, must correspond in meaning, as here memory and name; while the others are in contrast—just and wicked, is blessed and shall rot. Sometimes the two clauses are to be mutually ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... the Gods", is attested as a title borne both by the Semitic goddess Ishtar and by the Sumerian goddess Nintu or Ninkharsagga. In the passage in the Babylonian Version, "the Lady of the Gods" has always been treated as a synonym of Ishtar, the second half of the couplet being regarded as a restatement of the first, according to a recognized law of Babylonian poetry. We may probably assume that this interpretation is correct, and we may conclude by analogy that "the holy Innanna" in the second half of the Sumerian couplet is there merely employed as a synonym ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... Ronald's awkward couplet gave him employment for the rest of the morning, and lunch-time found him still dissatisfied. An adjective avoided his quest—the right adjective; the one and only word which expressed the precise shade of meaning desired. From ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was acknowledged by us all, and we never thought of a rivalry with him. No man ever cantered a hack through the Champs Elysees with such elegant assurance; no man ever made such a massacre of dolls at the shooting-gallery; or won you a rubber at billiards with more easy grace; or thundered out a couplet out of Beranger with such a roaring melodious bass. He was the monarch of the Prado in winter: in summer of the Chaumiere and Mont Parnasse. Not a frequenter of those fashionable places of entertainment showed a more ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... incomprehensibility and power. She has some pretty descriptions of Nature here and there, and one or two of her ballads are very good, especially that called "A Story of Tours;" but her sonnets are none of them constructed after the genuine Italian model, and generally end with a couplet. Her blank verse is the worst of all. The most ambitious poem in the book is that called "A Day in the Life of Mary Stuart," a dramatic poem in three scenes, dated the last of January, 1567. It contains a scene between the queen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... cents. Burke, on taking his seat beside Pitt in the great Paine Parliament (December, 1792), had protested that he had not abandoned his party through expectation of a pension, but the general belief of those with whom he had formerly acted was that he had been promised a pension. A couplet of the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... kept staring at Thorgerda Glum's daughter; his wife Thorhillda saw this, and she got wroth, and made a couplet upon him. ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... and live; animals grow, live, and feel;" this is the well-worn, not to say out-worn, diagnosis of the three kingdoms by Linnaeus. It must be said of it that the agreement indicated in the first couplet is unreal, and that the distinction declared in the second is evanescent. Crystals do not grow at all in the sense that plants and animals grow. On the other hand, if a response to external impressions by special movements is evidence of feeling, vegetables share this endowment ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... of the castle, which they found undefended. As they entered they beheld a shield suspended from a pilaster of gold. The device was a white eagle on an azure field, in memory of the bird of Jove, which bore away Ganymede, the flower of the Phrygian race. Beneath was engraved the following couplet: ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... thirty-seven stanzas; the second of seventy-two; the third of forty-eight; each stanza of eight ten-syllable verses, of which the first six rhyme alternately; the last two are a couplet. There is a short argument, in verse, prefixed to each poem. That of the first ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... arrangements which change in every scene, beginning and ending with couplets, and passing through the sonnet, Petrarchan and Shakespearean, ottava rima, terza rima, the six-line stanza of crossed rhymes and couplet, the seven-line stanza used by Shakespeare in the Rape of Lucrece, a nine-line stanza of two rhymes, and a scene composed of seven stanzas of chained octaves in which a third rhyme comes forward in the ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... in order to save the situation: "That last couplet is not at all necessary;" and Daddy Taille, who had got red up to the ears, looked round ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... with a note of tenderness in his voice, and took her hand to lead her away, humming in an undertone the last couplet ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... met with a very wide and warm acceptance. I remember one extremely happy, the refrain of which still runs in my head. It is written on the newly-adopted Italian tricolour flag. After characterising each colour separately in a couplet, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... admirably upon her lute, being informed beforehand upon what subject she was to sing. The words were so agreeable to the prince of Persia's sentiments, that he could not forbear applauding her at the end of the couplet. "Is it possible," cried he, "that you have the gift of knowing people's hearts, and that the knowledge of what is passing in my mind has occasioned you to give us a taste of your charming voice by those words? I should ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... to have written it, and who indeed claimed it for his own—the chevalier de Boufflers. I do not know whether you recollect the lines in question. I will transcribe them from memory, adding another couplet, which was only known amongst our own particular circle, but which proves most incontestably the spirit of kindness with which the stanzas were composed. Lise, ta beaute seduit, Et charme tout le monde. En vain la duchesse ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... without family cares, he could give himself unreservedly to authorship. In 1660 he published a satire upon the vices of Paris, which inaugurated his great success. Seven satires appeared in 1666, and he afterward added five others. Their malicious wit, their novel form, the harmonious swing of the couplet rhyme, forced immediate attention. They held up contemporary literary weaknesses to scorn, and indulged in the most merciless personalities, sparing not even his own brother, the poet Gilles Boileau. All retorts upon himself the author bore with complacent superiority which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Gascoigne, to prove that such a stanza was known to our old English poets. "The greatest part of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (says the latter gentleman, p.30), and his Legend of Good Women, are in the decasyllabick couplet; but in general Lidgate's, Occleve's, Rowley's, Spenser's, and a great part of Chaucer's poetry, is written in stanzas of seven, eight, or nine decasyllabick lines; to which Rowley generally adds a tenth, and closes it with an Alexandrine. All these may be ranked under ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... it—still, his sympathies are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking, antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised work appeals, primarily, to the taste and the ear: always, perhaps, to the head rather than to the heart. There is something of "hard brilliance" in Praed: he writes for effect, he is epideictic. Of course, ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... walls too, when I was a boy—and in refuge at Canonbury Tower, near the village of Islington, these are the places where Goldsmith wrote for children. Sir Joshua Reynolds tells how, when he called on the poet at Green Arbour Court, he found the couplet:— ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... a couplet describing the romantic figure of the last count of Gruyere, is still rhymed by the people and still finds its place among their records. Imposing in height as his great forerunner Francois de Gruyere, his features were of a beautiful regularity ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... expected rhymes, Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze," In the next line it "whispers through the trees" If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep" The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep" Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song [356] That, like a wounded snake ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... Pope crippled meaning and weakened force to procure a rhyme—nay, since he actually planned the rhymes to make his couplets before he penned his poetry, to him not infrequently it was far more to rhyme than realise. In Goldsmith's couplet, ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... perhaps he has not in any reached such excellence as to raise much envy, it may commonly be said at least, that "he writes very well for a gentleman." His serious pieces are sometimes elevated; and his trifles are sometimes elegant. In his verses to Addison, the couplet which mentions Clio is written with the most exquisite delicacy of praise; it exhibits one of those happy strokes that are seldom attained. In his Odes to Marlborough there are beautiful lines; but in the second Ode he shows that he knew little of his hero, when he talks of his private virtues. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... young Priest, who was about to say his first Mass that day in the Chapel of the Carmel, bore the Blessed Sacrament to the dying Sister; and at her desire, Sister Mary of the Eucharist—whose voice was exceptionally sweet—sang the following couplet: ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... time when Croesus sent his present to the inhabitants of Delphi, he took the opportunity to address another inquiry to the oracle, which was, whether his power would ever decline. The oracle replied in a couplet of Greek verse, similar in its style to the one recorded on the ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... giving more time to the word "great" in the first line, and to the word "world" in the last line. The idea may be indicated by supposing that the word "O" has been omitted from the beginning of the first and last line. The first line of the last couplet is peculiar in that every one of the four feet contains three syllables with the accent on the last. All the other lines consist each of four feet of either two or three syllables. Technically the poem is anapestic tetrameter much varied by the introduction of iambic ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Oglethorpe, says, "I had the pleasure of knowing him well;" and, in a note upon the couplet quoted from Pope, says, "Here are lines that will justly confer immortality on a man who well deserved so magnificent an eulogium. He was, at once, a great hero, and a great legislator. The vigor of his mind and body have ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... think of the expression which a great painter should give to genius, I always have before me that magnificent head. I had a moment of enthusiasm." And further, he adds that one day he saw him listening to Monti while the latter was singing his first couplet in the "Mascheroniana." "I shall never forget," said he, "the divine expression of his look; it was the serene look ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... couplet of reproach now applied to this once famous city; whose inhabitants seem little worthy of the inspiring call which was addressed to them within these twenty ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the first act opens with a vivacious chorus of the guests at Violetta's supper, leading to a drinking-song ("Libiamo, libiamo") in waltz time, sung first by Alfred and then by Violetta, the chorus echoing each couplet with very pretty effect. After a long dialogue between the two, closing with chorus, Violetta has a grand scena which is always a favorite show-piece with concert artists. It begins with an andante movement ("Ah! ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... succeeded. Stephanie just missed. Walter and Rupert and Foch had jolly soft roes, a fact which is recorded in a cynical little poem by the precocious Foch, believed to be the only literary work of a whitebait now extant. We have only space here to quote the opening couplet:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... the first words which come to hand, rhymed richly and not at all, as destitute of sense as the gesture of the tree and the sound of the wind, which have their birth in the vapor of pipes, and are dissipated and take their flight with them. This is the couplet by which the group replied to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... which had been expected of the venerable commander of the army of the Shenandoah. He had spent three months of time, and ten millions of money, and had only emulated the acts of that Gallic sovereign whose great deeds are immortalized in the brief couplet, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... hearty jolly way, but a little late, and some time after the joke was over. Pray, why should all gentlemen have a literary turn? And do we like some of our friends the worse because they never turned a couplet in their lives? Ruined, perforce idle, dependent on his brother for supplies, if he read a book falling asleep over it, with no fitting work for his great strong hands to do—how lucky it is that he did not get into more trouble! Why, in the case of Achilles himself, when he was sent by his mamma ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... which so much was inspired by personal regret. On this account it has a special literary interest as the most modern thing of the Renaissance. It would be far less surprising to find this written by one of the young republicans under the Second Empire (for instance) than to find a couplet of Malherbe's straying ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... were practically unassailable by reason of their ramparts of wealth, that they lived in comfort, if not in luxury, while those whom they dominated were struggling hard for a bare subsistence. I can imagine the youth reciting the couplet which ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... day it has the air of a vignette of Gustave Dore, a couplet of Victor Hugo. It is almost too perfect—as if it were an enormous model, placed on a big green table at a museum. A steep, paved way, grass-grown like all roads where vehicles never pass, stretches up to it in the sun. It has a double enceinte, complete outer ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... well expressed by a couplet which was very popular with the eight-hour speakers of that period: "Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay." Steward believed that the amount of wages is determined by no other factor ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... enough for the denunciation—-of Latin Immorality; and for want of a better he always came back to frivolity, which for him, as for the majority of his compatriots, had a particularly unpleasant meaning. And he would end with the usual couplet in praise of the noble German people,—the moral people ("By that," Herder has said, "it is distinguished from all other nations.")—the faithful people (treues Volk ... Treu meaning everything: sincere, faithful, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... couplet with a subdued fervour which characterized the man and explained his worldly lot. Elkanah Madden should never have entered the medical profession; mere humanitarianism had prompted the choice in his dreamy youth; he became ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... While Mr. Cross was at dinner John wrote in a large hand the fine couplet. The teacher returned and called the school to order. He looked at the blackboard, then, searchingly, at John Briggs. ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... curry and harness the horses before breakfast. We then kept "humping" until sunset, except during the hour we took for dinner. On rainy days we were supposed to work in the barn, greasing harness, shelling seed-corn and "sifting" grass-seed. That old farmer seemed to realize the verity of the old couplet:— ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... the so called copy of great antiquity alluded to by Alpha before it came to the Museum. Well, in all of these, with, I believe, only one exception, the account of the moves does occur exactly (!) as I have given them, always excepting or rather excluding a couplet about two camels (die namliche nicht in die Bude des Tachenspielers passten es weiter unten) Und nun geht es echt fesuitisch weiter, Alpha denies the existence (!) (A hat in Gegentheil Hyde I, p. 63 Citirt) of the account of the moves in every copy of the Shahnama. I, on the other hand pledge ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... of the rope from before and behind stopped him short in the middle of his couplet. "Hush... Hush..." said Inebnit, pointing with his ice-axe to the threatening line of gigantic seracs on their tottering foundations which the slightest jar might send thundering down the steep. But Tartarin knew what that meant; he ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... looked at him and said, "I did according to my mother's milk, do thou according to thine."[FN78] Upon this Nur al-Din cast the sword from his hand and said to the Caliph, "O Commander of the Faithful, he hath beguiled me with his words;" and he repeated this couplet, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... general use domestically so late as in 1687; for in the diary of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, he registers that "Pere Couplet supped with me, and after supper we had tea, which he said was really as good as any he had drank in China." Had his lordship been in the general habit of drinking tea, he had not probably made it a subject for ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... instead of universal peace and good-will towards men,—that the Rights of Man included murder, confiscation, and atheism,—that the Sovereignty of the People meant the rule of King Mob, who seemed determined to carry out to the letter Diderot's famous couplet,— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... the usual voluntary at the opening of service. Then the old minister said, "Let us continue the worship of God by singing the hymn on page 554." He "lined" the hymn—that is, he read each couplet before it was sung. With the coming in of hymn books and other newfangled things the good old custom of "lining the hymn" has disappeared. But on that Sunday morning the Marquis d'Entremont thought he had never heard anything more delightful ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... 'respite,' it was not that he was scared at the approach of death. His mind was never brighter and happier. To this moment may well be attributed, as it has been by popular tradition, his composition of the couplet: ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Dudley, one of the most respectable of the governors, was found, at his death, with a copy of verses in his pocket, which included the following couplet: ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... pieces, is withheld from the present volume. To draw the attention of the public to insignificance would be deservedly reprobated; and another reason, though not of equal consequence, may be given in the following couplet:— ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... This couplet is not in the ballad, which is the complaint, not of a woman forsaken, but of a man rejected. These lines were probably added when it was ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... as the pulpit. The popular press rivalled the priests in anathemas against all who were not willing "to vote for Ireland against the Saxon." Public placards might be seen in town and country, headed, like the address of the Repeal Committee to the electors, with inflammatory poetry: a favourite couplet on these occasions was— ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the selections contained in this volume. Some of these are fixed and conventional, and others are of his own contrivance. Spanish uses the terms estrofa and copla to designate an arrangement of verses in a stanza. Copla must not be confused with English "couplet." These are general terms; most verse-forms are designated by special names. The following verse-forms are found in the ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... feminine characters, not less than of masculine. When Heine says, "I will not affirm that women have no character; rather they have a new one every day," he means precisely what Pope meant by the famous couplet in his poem on ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of the various visual experiments of this and the following chapters, the first word of the couplet which describes the condition of the experiment, for example, white-black, always designates the visual condition which the animal was to choose, the second that which it was to avoid on penalty of ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... is a remarkable specimen of the affected style of compliment prevalent in the time of Elizabeth. The third couplet, at first sight, appears to have a signification exactly opposed to that which the context requires. We should expect, instead of "the tongue all impatient to speak," to find "the ...
— Notes and Queries, 1850.12.21 - A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, - Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc. • Various
... compared to his! It was like looking into a camera obscura—you saw faces shining and speaking—the smoke curled, the lights dazzled, the oak wainscotting took a higher polish—there was old Sarratt, tall and gaunt, with his couplet from Pope and case at Nisi Prius, Mounsey eyeing the ventilator and lying perdu for a moral, and Hume and Ayrton taking another friendly finishing glass!—These and many more windfalls of character he gave us in ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... seventeenth century shows some advance,—an advance, however, which must be laid chiefly to the credit of Dryden. Apparently there was no tendency towards innovation and experiment in the matter of verse forms. Seventeenth-century translators, satisfied with the couplet and kindred measures, did not consider, as the Elizabethans had done, the possibility of introducing classical metres. Creech says of Horace, "'Tis certain our language is not capable of the numbers of the poet,"[418] and leaves the matter there. ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... is pronounced Hie; doire, is trees or woods; luchd, people; and leigh, healing; and also a physician, whence the old English word for a doctor, a leech, so that the couplet means ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... realise his agony. The captain looked up into the hot sky, but no blessed cloud appeared there to raise the shadow of a hope. He looked down at the sea, and it seemed to mock him with its clear blue depths, which looked so sweet and pleasant. He realised the full significance of that couplet in ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... spellbound, awe-struck, as the first notes of that matchless voice smote upon their hearing. She sang of the sadness of the ending of comedies, of the regret which lingers in the remembrance of past laughter. In a couplet of passionate melancholy she asked, where are the roses of yesterday? whither vanish the ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... shudder not! I should bestow it So brimming full she couldn't blow it. Wishes aren't horses: true, but still There are worse roadsters than goodwill. And so I wish my darling health, And just to round my couplet, wealth, With faith enough to bridge the chasm 'Twixt Genesis and Protoplasm, And bear her o'er life's current vext From this world to a better next, Where the full glow of God puts out Poor reason's farthing candle, Doubt. I've wished her healthy, wealthy, wise, What more can ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... translations into modern English, that of Dryden may still be said to stand first, in spite of its lack of fidelity. It owes its place to its sustained vigour, and the fact that the heroic couplet is in the hands of a master. In its way nothing could ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Noyes family all seemed to be exceedingly and properly proud of this rhyming couplet; it formed a sort of patent of nobility. They wrote the pious injunction to their descendants in their Psalm-Books and their Bibles, in their wills, their letters; and they, with the greatest unanimity of feeling, had it cut upon their several tombstones. ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of Dryden were largely influential in establishing the heroic couplet, [Footnote: The heroic couplet consists of two iambic pentameter lines that rime. By "pentameter" is meant that the line has five feet or measures; by "iambic," that each foot contains two syllables, the first short ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... about which no doubt exists. First, its dominant feature is Parallelism, Parallelism of meaning, which, though found in all human song, is carried through this poetry with a constancy unmatched in any other save the Babylonian. The lines of a couplet or a triplet of Hebrew verse may be Synonymous, that is identical in meaning, or Supplementary and Progressive, or Antithetic. But at least their meanings respond or correspond to each other in a way, for which no better name ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... the family of Meek on several boards at the head of the graves. Jonathan Meek died at the age of ninety-five. A female Meek had eighty-nine years in this life. Ezra Meek gave up the ghost prematurely, with a couplet, at eighty-one. A healthy spot, Croridge, or there were virtues in the Meek family, he reflected, and had a shudder that he did not trace to its cause, beyond an acknowledgement of a desire for the warm ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Now, to theorise about men is seldom very satisfactory; but to theorise about women is to weigh gossamer and measure moonbeams. The very wisest thing ever said about them is said in the old English couplet: ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... motley assemblage of most respectable men. Bishops were there, from Gawain Douglas downwards; Judges, in their ermine; professors, clergymen, civil servants, writhing in all the tortures that the blank verse, the anapaestic measure, the metre of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' the heroic couplet and similar devices can inflict. For all these men had loved Virgil, though not wisely: and now their penance was to hear each other read ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... is on a plate in his left hand; and, with his right hand, about to put a pinch of it upon the tongue of each Becanus or Freshman. A glass, probably holding wine, is standing near him. Underneath is the following couplet:— ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various
... Copa, the Dirae, and the eighth Eclogue, practiced the craft of the miniaturist whenever he found the minutiae aesthetically significant. To realize the precision of his strokes even then one has but to recall the couplet of the Copa which in an instant sets one upon the dusty road ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... is somewhat different. Three beautiful damsels appear from the pool, and are repeatedly pursued by the young farmer, but in vain. They always reached the water before him and taunted him with the couplet: ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... hopped down upon his shoulder. A low guttural sound appeared to come from this ill-omened bird. The augur bent his ear. Sounds shaped themselves into something like articulation, and the following couplet ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... a many-pointed symbol and the words, "See our combination symbol? It's a starfish!" Underneath was a couplet ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... I, and I translated into English the two lines which were a couplet by Edmund Price, an old archdeacon of Merion, celebrated in his day for ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... few simple words of deep meaning sprang to his lips they seemed like a gift deserving of thanks. It was the same with the little songs which he sang ever and anon: they were ended almost as soon as begun; but in each short couplet there dwelt a deep and winning spirit, whether it called forth a kindly sigh or a peaceful smile. It seemed to the noble Froda as if a younger brother rode beside him, or even a tender, blooming son. They travelled thus many days together; and it appeared as if ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... poetry," said the King, who had himself written a rhymed couplet which could be said either forwards or backwards, and in the latter position was useful for removing enchantments. According to the eminent historian, Roger Scurvilegs, it had some vogue in Euralia and ...
— Once on a Time • A. A. Milne
... wish, and, as you must see, wishes in one form or another, disguised or distorted, lie at the basis of dreams. Take the coal fire. That, too, is susceptible of interpretation. I think you must have heard the couplet: ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve |
