"Metre" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... completely as you can all your present notions about the nature of verse and poetry. Take a sponge and wipe the slate of your mind. In particular, do not harass yourself by thoughts of metre and verse forms. Second: Read William Hazlitt's essay "On Poetry in General." This essay is the first in the book entitled *Lectures on the English Poets*. It can be bought in various forms. I think the ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... there is only one familiar instance recorded of a nephew who read his uncle. The exception tends rather to support the rule, since it needed a Macaulay to produce, and two volumes to record it. Finally, the metre does not permit it. One may not say: "Who reads me, when I am ashes, is my ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... studied the phenomena in nine of them), and that they follow in all cases the same general laws. Those of the Lake of Geneva have received the most elaborate and prolonged investigation. In March, 1876, Forel established a self-registering tide-gauge (limni-metre enregistreur) on the northern shore of this lake, at Morges; and, with the cooeperation of P. Plantamour, another one was installed in June, 1877, at Secheron, near the city of Geneva, at the southern extremity. ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... equae. A more recent text (the 1898 Teubner) has "hippomanes fetae semina legit equae." Footnote u: Nubilaque iudico... Modern texts such as the 1907 Teubner give VII. 202 as "Nubilaque indico..." The word "iudico" does not fit the metre, and may be typographic error. ouranothen katagontes... The wording was reconstructed with the aid of the Loeb text, which had no ...
— A Treatise of Witchcraft • Alexander Roberts
... and the kindest heart in the county. Mrs. Burns believes, as firmly as her creed, that I am le plus bel esprit, et le plus honnete homme in the universe; although she scarcely ever in her life, except the Scriptures of the old and New Testament, and the Psalms of David in metre, spent five minutes together on either prose or verse. I must except also from this last a certain late publication of Scots poems, which she has perused very devoutly; and all the ballads in the country, as she ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... All the while, he was pursuing the course of his electrical studies, making fresh inventions, taking up the phonograph, filled with theories of graphic representation; reading, writing, publishing, founding sanitary associations, interested in technical education, investigating the laws of metre, drawing, acting, directing private theatricals, going a long way to see an actor - a long way to see a picture; in the very bubble of the tideway of contemporary interests. And all the while he was busied about his father and mother, his wife, and in particular his sons; ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gives "relish to his song," {0f} by adopting "a diversity of structure in the metre;" for the lyric comes in occasionally to relieve the solemnity of the heroic, whilst at the same time the latter is frequently capable of being divided into a shorter verse, a plan which has been observed in one of the MSS. used on the present occasion; e. g. the ...
— Y Gododin - A Poem on the Battle of Cattraeth • Aneurin
... the spirit which shall speak through him, he receives, also, a portion of the same creative power. Mr. Lewes reaches this conclusion: "If, therefore, we reflect what a poem Faust is, and that it contains almost every variety of style and metre, it will be tolerably evident that no one unacquainted with the original can form an adequate idea of it from translation,"[E] which is certainly correct of any translation wherein something of the rhythmical variety and beauty of the original is not retained. That very ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... invariably fixed on the same syllable of the verse, as in French; in the choice and variety of its position, consists the chief art of appropriate harmony. Accentuation of syllables, which seems, to answer the idea of long and short syllables in the dead languages, is the foundation of English, metre.—Tripple rhymes used with judgment have been admitted by the best English poets, and now and then the introduction of an Alexandrine, or verse of ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... original there is a sudden change from prose to verse. "It is generally supposed that these stories were recited by the ancient Irish poets for the amusement of their chieftains at their public feasts, and that the portions given in metre were sung" ("Battle of Magh Rath," p. 12). The prose portions of this tale are represented in the translation by blank verse, and the lyrical portions by ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... catechism is, of course, not at all the same thing as the real religion of those who subscribe to it. The rules of metre are not the same thing as poetry; the rules of cricket, if the analogy may be excused, are not the same thing as good play. Nay, more. A man states in his creed only the articles which he thinks it right to assert positively against those ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... may be sweet, But Hymen's tenderness is sweeter; And though all virile love be meet, You'll find the poet's love is metre. ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field
... interrupted Miss Maxwell. "Though they don't amount to anything as poetry, they show a good deal of promise in certain directions. You almost never make a mistake in rhyme or metre, and this shows you have a natural sense of what is right; a 'sense of form,' poets would call it. When you grow older, have a little more experience,—in fact, when you have something to say, I think you may write very good verses. Poetry needs knowledge and vision, experience ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... years later, when The Vision of Piers the Ploughman was first printed, the printer in his preface explained alliterative verse very well. "Langland wrote altogether in metre," he says, "but not after the manner of our rimers that write nowadays (for his verses end not alike), but the nature of his metre is to have three words, at the least, in every verse which begin with some one letter. As for example the first two verses ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... half a metre wide—wound its way up to a great height above the foaming river. There were beautiful ferns of immense height, some of which had finely ribbed, gigantic leaves. Graceful yellow flowers, or sometimes beautiful red ones, were to be seen on tall trees with ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... substance was not more remarkable than the inequality in the mechanical expression of it. "The Forsaken Merman" is perhaps as beautifully finished as anything of the kind in the English language. The story is exquisitely told, and word and metre so carefully chosen that the harmony of sound and meaning is perfect. The legend itself we believe is Norwegan. It is of a King of the Sea who had married an earthly maiden; and was at last deserted by her from some scruples of conscience. The original ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... and make their characters talk under all the restraints of rhyme and rhythm. But we pronounce this departure from literal truth a merit and not a defect. We consider Goethe's second "Iphigenie," written in verse, far preferable to the first one written in prose; nay, it is the rhythm or metre itself which communicates to the work its incomparable beauty. In a review of Longfellow's "Dante," published last year, we argued this very point in one of its special applications; the artist must copy his original, but he must ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... as he had been on his first day in the cavalry, at hearing behind him the thunder of many hoofs. Having once become used to the noise, he was even thrilled by the swinging metre of it. A kind of wild harmony was in it, something which made one forget everything else. At such times Pasha longed to break into his long, wind-splitting lope, but he learned that he must leave the others no more than a pace or two behind, ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... 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 proceeds to tell us that many complained of these changes, alleging that the primitive simplicity and piety ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... modulation is as perfect as the sentiment itself is weighty. It is uttered wholly in the dactylic measure, the noblest and most magnificent of all measures, and hence forming the chief constituent in the finest metre we know, the heroic. [And it is with great judgment that the words hosper nephos are reserved till the end.[2]] Supposing we transpose them from their proper place and read, say touto to psephisma hosper nephos epoiese ton tote kindunon ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... extreme fineness, and which had also been consecrated with mystic ceremonies. And as this ring touched and bounded off from the different letters which still preserved their distances distinct, he made with these letters, by the order in which he touched them, verses in the heroic metre, corresponding to the questions which we had asked; the verses being also perfect in metre and rhythm; like the answers of the Pythia which are so celebrated, or those given by ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... because "the power which the sea requires in the sailor makes a man of him very fast." The invention of a house, safe against wild animals, frost, and heat, gives play to the finer faculties, and introduces art, manners, and social delights. The discovery of the post office is a fine metre of civilization. The sea-going steamer marks an epoch; the subjection of electricity to take messages and turn wheels marks another. But, after all, the vital stages of human progress are marked by steps toward personal, individual ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... something there which, for good or ill, is unique. You can name—or at least I can name—nothing to compare it with. Goldsmith and Crabbe have written of indoor themes; but their monotonous, if majestic metre, wearies the modern reader. But this is so varied, so flexible, so dramatic. It stands by itself. Confound the weekly journals and all the other lightning conductors which caused such a man to pass away, and to leave a total output of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scientific mind, in so far as it is free and purely intellectual, lies in tracing their formal pattern. The mathematician can afford to leave to his clients, the engineers, or perhaps the popular philosophers, the emotion of belief: for himself he keeps the lyrical pleasure of metre and of evolving equations: and it is a pleasant surprise to him, and an added problem, if he finds that the arts can use his calculations, or that the senses can verify them; much as if a composer found that the sailors ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... In Sheridan's copy of the stanzas written by him in this metre at the time of the Union, (beginning "Zooks, Harry! zooks, Harry!") he entitled them, "An admirable new ballad, which goes excellently well to the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... Historically it is worthless; but as a monument of our language it is beyond all price. In more than thirty thousand lines not more than fifty Norman words are to be found. Even the old poetic tradition remains the same. The alliterative metre of the earlier verse is still only slightly affected by riming terminations; the similes are the few natural similes of Caedmon; the battle-scenes are painted with the ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... can be more unfortunate than the correction of "princely;" Mr. Collier, on the other hand, follows Steevens and Malone, and reads "princely," observing the Tieck's reading ("precise") "sounds ill as regards the metre, the accent falling on the wrong syllable. Mr. Collier's choice is determined by the authority of the second folio, which he considers ought to have considerable weight, whilst Mr. Knight regards the authority of that edition ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... continents are born from the sea. One day land arose out of the sea. The birth was of a revolutionary nature, there were earthquakes, volcanic craters, falling cities and dying men—but new land was there. Or else it moves slowly, invisibly, a metre or two in a century, and returns to the land it used to possess. Thus it restores the soil it stole from it, but cleaner, refined and full of vitality to live and to create. Such is the ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... The music again changing with the metre.] Give up the scene, give up, ye sordid rocks, The last of Arnold in his English home, Which in your bosom lives for evermore, A deathless picture; England cast it out Not being English, and it shivered on, Coiling about the world, till it was caught And locked into your rocky fastnesses ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... carried off from the camp of Attila. The author of this poem is unknown, nor can I, on the vague and rather doubtful allusion to Thule, as Iceland, venture to assign its date. It was, evidently, recited in a monastery, as appears by the first line; and no doubt composed there. The faults of metre would point out a late date; and it may have been formed upon some local tradition, as Walther, the hero, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... delicious parody of Longfellow's "Hiawatha." "In an age of imitation," says Lewis Carroll, in a note at the head, "I can claim no special merit for this slight attempt at doing what is known to be so easy." It is not every one who has read this note who has observed that it is really in the same metre ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... Nature:—that, whilst maintaining on the whole the advances in art made since the Restoration, they renewed the half-forgotten melody and depth of tone which marked the best Elizabethan writers:—that, lastly, to what was thus inherited they added a richness in language and a variety in metre, a force and fire in narrative, a tenderness and bloom in feeling, an insight into the finer passages of the Soul and the inner meanings of the landscape, a larger and wiser Humanity,—hitherto hardly attained, and perhaps unattainable even by predecessors of ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Italicized stanzas are indented 5 spaces. Italicized words or phrases are marked by tildes (). Lines longer than 78 characters are broken according to metre, and the continuation is indented two spaces. Also, some obvious errors ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... nose, gentleness of eyes, sweetness of mouth, cleverness of speech, slenderness of shape and seemliness of all attributes. But the acme of beauty is in the hair and, indeed, al-Shihab the Hijazi hath brought together all these items in his doggrel verse of the metre Rajaz, [FN489] and it ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... in it passed for a great poet, just as in the dark ages a person who could write his name passed for a great clerk. Accordingly, Duke, Stepney, Granville, Walsh, and others whose only title to fame was that they said in tolerable metre what might have been as well said in prose, or what was not worth saying at all, were honored with marks of distinction which ought to be reserved for genius. With these Addison must have ranked, if he had not earned true and lasting glory by performances which very little ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the translation of Schiller's complete Poems that was published by me in 1851, namely, as literal a rendering of the original as is consistent with good English, and also a very strict adherence to the metre of the original. Although translators usually allow themselves great license in both these points, it appears to me that by so doing they of necessity destroy the very soul of the work they profess to translate. In fact, it is not a translation, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... have grown again on the first stripped shrubs at the period when the leaves of the last plant were pulled off. About 12,000 tea shrubs are grown in this garden: they are regularly planted in quincunxes, and stand about one metre distant from each other; the greater number are stunted and shabby looking, probably owing to the aspect of the ground, which lies low, on the level of the sea, and exposed to the full rays of a burning sun; perhaps the quality of the soil may have ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... king of Scythia, feel the attraction of Greek religion and Greek usage, but on their quainter side, and partly relish that extravagance. Subject and audience alike stimulate the romantic temper, and the tragedy of the Bacchanals, with its innovations in metre and diction, expressly noted as foreign or barbarous—all the charm and grace of the clear-pitched singing of the chorus, notwithstanding—with its subtleties and sophistications, its grotesques, mingled with and heightening a real shudder at the horror of the theme, and a peculiarly fine ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... she reported gleefully to Leonora and Patricia. "Nobody'll ever hear that song again! I was sure of it when I saw the word in the dictionary, for Vance Alden is so sensitive about a mistake. It is funny! Ilga—why, she'd never know whether it was good rhyme or metre or anything! But Vance didn't think of that. Now promise, both of you, that you won't ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... than a slight pleasure; but it is possible that I am prejudiced by a dislike of English anapaests (I am aware that the classic terms are not really applicable to our English metres, but the reader will underhand that I mean the metre of the lines just quoted.) I do not find these anapaests in the Elizabethan or in the seventeenth-century poets, or most rarely. They were dear to the eighteenth century, and, much more than the ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... pooh!—Booh!" off he rode for the Tavern, where he and the landlord had a haze, the landlord was notified to leave, short metre; and being fully revenged for the insult paid his millions, old Stephen Girard, the great Philadelphia financier, rode back to where he was better used for his money, and evidently better satisfied than ever, that money is mighty ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... its subject as well as by the wish of friends. A few extracts appeared in a magazine several years ago, and it was afterwards completed without any view to publication. It follows the present Irish text[8] as closely as the laws of metre will allow. Since these pages were in the printer's hands Mr. Aubrey de Vere has given to the world his treatment of the same theme,[9] adorning as usual all that he touches. As he well says: "It is not in the form ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... plural ending with any other letter than s, form the possessive by the addition of the apostrophe and the letter s. The only exceptions to this rule are, that, by poetical license the additional s may be elided in poetry for sake of the metre, and in the scriptural phrases "For goodness' sake." "For conscience' sake," "For Jesus' sake," etc. Custom has done away with the s and these phrases are now idioms of the language. All plural nouns ending in s form the possessive ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... Sexton's Daughter, Hymns of a Hermit, and I know not what other extensive stock of pieces; concerning which he was now somewhat at a loss as to his true course. He could write verses with astonishing facility, in any given form of metre; and to various readers they seemed excellent, and high judges had freely called them so, but he himself had grave misgivings on that latter essential point. In fact here once more was a parting of the ways, "Write in Poetry; write in Prose?" upon which, before all else, it much concerned ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... Ireland, where he grew up; but the village of his imagination is lovelier than any actual spot, and there is no use in hunting for it on the map. See the first note on The Traveller for remarks on metre, etc. ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... and wine. The English word appears to have been first used in 1656 by Abraham Cowley, who called a section of his poems "anacreontiques,'' because they were paraphrased out of the so-called writings of Anacreon into a familiar measure which was supposed to represent the metre of the Greek. Half a century later, when the form had been much cultivated, John Phillips (1631-1706) laid down the arbitrary rule that an anacreontic line "consists of seven syllables, without being tied to any certain law ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... volume, however, contains pieces which can be little gratifying to the public:—some are pretty; and all are besprinkled with "gems," and "roses," and "birds," and "diamonds," and such like cheap poetical adornments, as are always to be obtained at no great expense of thought or of metre.—It is happy for the author that these bijoux are presented to persons of high degree; countesses, foreign and domestic; "Maids of Honour to Louisa Landgravine of Hesse D'Armstadt;" Lady Blank, and Lady Asterisk, besides—-, and—-, and others anonymous; who are exactly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... part of the whole. Its keynote was the keynote of the time and place, its message was their message, the thrill it bore to the listener the thrill of the whole. It was not a musical call, that steadily approaching sound. No human being has ever been able to locate it in pitch or metre; yet to such as the listening man upon the ground, to those who have heard it year by year, it is nevertheless the sweetest, most insistent of music. Beside it there is no other note which will compare, ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... is certainly poetical as it is not prosaick, and elegant as it is not vulgar. He is to be commended as having fewer artifices of disgust than most of his brethren of the blank song. He rarely either recalls old phrases, or twists his metre into harsh inversions. The sense, however, of his words is strained, when "he views the Ganges from Alpine heights;" that is, from mountains like the Alps: and the pedant surely intrudes, (but when was blank verse ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... immediate reference to metre and its various forms in verse, as an element in the general treatment of style or manner (lexis) as opposed to the matter (logoi) in the imaginative literature, with which as in time past the [270] education of ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... the very coolest Poet; and the fullest of this common earth and its affairs, of any sage that has ever showed his head upon it, in prose or metre. The sturdiness with which he makes good his position, as an inhabitant, for the time being, of this terrestrial ball, and, by the ordinance of God, subject to its laws, and liable to its pains and penalties, is a thing which appears, to the careful reviewer of it, on the whole, the most novel ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... 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. It was approved by the late Professor Child nearly thirty years ago, ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... hand of the official clock dropped into its slot somebody called the Naval Observatory. The call was so faint as to be barely audible, in spite of the fact that Hood's instrument was tuned for a three-thousand-metre wave. Supposing quite naturally that the person calling had a shorter wave, he gradually cut out the inductance of his receiver; but the sound faded out entirely, and he returned to his original inductance and ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy, from that it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers of our English metre and style.' The chief point in which Surrey imitated his 'master, Francis Petrarcha,' was in the use of the sonnet. He introduced this elaborate form of poetry into our literature; and how it has thriven with us, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... is marvellous, but I will make one remark: in the fourth line of the third strophe the metre leaves something to ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... strewn through this profound and massive work, are lasting lessons for all womankind. It seems to have been much easier for most of the critics of this great work to feel its artistic faults, its jarring metre, and cumbrous forms, than to appreciate the transcendent nobleness and wisdom wrought into it from the ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... rules which they have learnt by heart is really wanted, it is seldom forthcoming. The end of classical teaching at school should be to make our boys acquainted, not only with the language, but with the literature and history, the ancient thought of the ancient world. Rules of grammar, syntax, or metre, are but means towards that end; they must never be mistaken for the end itself. A young man of eighteen, who has probably spent on an average ten years in learning Greek and Latin, ought to be able ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... trimeter, i.e. the metre of six feet (twelve syllables) used in all the speeches ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... a mirror, spies The shining of a flambeau at his back, Lit sudden ore he deem of its approach, And turneth to resolve him, if the glass Have told him true, and sees the record faithful As note is to its metre; even thus, I well remember, did befall to me, Looking upon the beauteous eyes, whence love Had made the leash to take me. As I turn'd; And that, which, in their circles, none who spies, Can miss of, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... it is alive with the true spirit of poetry. Her skill in mere technique is good, her handling of narrative is notable, and if there is no striking individuality—which might have been expected from her Indian origin—if she was often reminiscent in her manner, metre, form and expression, it only proves her a minor poet and not a Tennyson or a Browning. That she should have done what she did do, devotedly, with an astonishing charm and the delight of inspired labour, makes her life memorable, as it certainly made ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... a number of repetitions in the tune, and has a chorus that is sung at the end of each verse. I have not presumed to arrange it in metre; but the following is the substance: "We are assembled in the habiliments of war, and will go in quest of our enemies. We will march to their land and spoil their possessions. We will take their women and children, and lead them into captivity. The warriors ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... vocation in life was that of a historian. My brother was naturally frequently rallied by his family on his inconstancy of purpose, but he pleaded in extenuation that versatility had very marked charms of its own. He produced one day a copy of verses, written in the Gilbertian metre, to illustrate his mental attitude, and they strike me as so neatly worded, that I ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... but it really has been a difficulty of the poet in translating his own Alexandrines into French prose, not to produce verses; nor has he always avoided them. Here, for instance, is a distich which not only becomes French when translated word for word, but also reproduces exactly metre and rhyme:— ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... requirements of both metre and sense, and the words untalk'd of and unseen make it nearly indisputable. I had at first thought it might be "rumorous eyes;" but the personification would then be wanting. Shakspeare has personified Rumour in the Introduction to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 192, July 2, 1853 • Various
... expression of our authority, and the metre-gauge of our importance. By them the untutored mind of the poor Indian is enabled to estimate the amount of reverence due to each of us. This is the first purpose for which we are provided with Chupprassees. The second is that they may deliver our commands, post our letters, and ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... him with gestures. They stretched out their hands, and alternately struck their feet against the ground with frantic contortions. The last words they repeated in chorus, and we easily distinguished a sort of metre, but I am not sure that there was any rhyme; the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the rest is made up of what are probably original phrases but omitted from the Hebrew by the carelessness of copyists; yet none of these differences is of importance save where the Greek corrects an irregularity in the Hebrew metre, or yields sense when the Hebrew fails to ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... 2439b. Defective metre and sense, owing to the loss of a hemistich, but the sense is complete. Grein's suggestion, feoll on foldan, adds nothing to the ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... peasants through the ranks of Austrian spears. It is written in the Middle-High-German, by Halbsuter, a native of Lucerne, who was in the fight. Here are specimens of it. There is a paraphrase by Sir Walter Scott, but it is done at the expense of the metre and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... point from a hundred and thirty-five to two hundred and fifteen metres, with a depth of five metres on the quays at lowest tide. These tides are felt as far as twenty miles above the town. They vary in height from one metre to as much as three, and a tidal wave is formed that is one of the greatest dangers of the downstream navigation. Coming up from the sea is fairly easy in almost any kind of stout and steady craft, but it is difficult for all but the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... stanzas, and I have changed the order of others. The text has nowhere been translated verbatim; in fact, a familiar European turn has been given to many sentiments which were judged too Oriental. As the metre adopted by Hj Abd was the Bahr Tawl (long verse), I thought it advisable to preserve that peculiarity, and to fringe it with the rough, unobtrusive rhyme of ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... smiths at their forges Worked the red St. George's Cannoneers; And the "villainous saltpetre" Rung a fierce, discordant metre Round their ears; As the swift Storm-drift, With hot sweeping anger, came the horse-guards' clangor On our flanks. Then higher, higher, higher burned the old-fashioned fire Through ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... rare passages does beauty fall a sacrifice to doctrine. The 'Divine Comedy' is indeed not less incomparable in its beauty than in its vast compass, the variety of its interest, and in the harmony of its form with its spirit. In his lectures 'On Translating Homer' Mr. Arnold, speaking of the metre of 'Paradise Lost,' says:—"To this metre, as used in the 'Paradise Lost,' our country owes the glory of having produced one of the only two poetical works in the grand style which are to be found ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... I hear the British tongue? Dear Heaven! what a rhyme! And yet 'tis all as good As some that I have fashioned in my time, Like bud and wood; And on the other hand you couldn't have a more precise or neater Metre. ...
— The Battle of the Bays • Owen Seaman
... favourably of it. [Footnote: Bouterwek's Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit.—Ersten Band, s. 334, &c.] According to his description, it resembles the older pieces of the Spanish stage before it had attained to maturity of form, and in common with them it employs the stanza for its metre. The attempts at romantic drama have always failed in Italy; whereas in Spain, on the contrary, all endeavours to model the theatre according to the rules of the ancients, and latterly of the French, have from the difference ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... rhymes is not necessarily a poet. So, too, there are poets who do not express their inspirations according to the rules of metre and syntax. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... we think, vainly endeavoured to elucidate. But we shall, on a future occasion, meet him on his own favourite ground. No less than 182 pages of the second volume are dedicated to the poetry of Mr. Wordsworth. He has endeavoured to define poetry—to explain the philosophy of metre—to settle the boundaries of poetic diction—and to show, finally, "What it is probable Mr. Wordsworth meant to say in his dissertation prefixed to his Lyrical Ballads." As Mr. Coleridge has not only studied the laws of poetical composition, but is a Poet of considerable ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... verse, and one form of verse or many): this art has no name up to the present (i.e. there is no name to cover mimes and dialogues and any similar imitation made in iambics, elegiacs, &c. Commonly people attach the 'making' to the metre and say 'elegiac-makers', 'hexameter-makers,' giving them a common class-name by their metre, as if it was not their ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle
... Though Bloomfield's metre can be scarce held faultless, yet his power of detailed description has preserved us a living picture of Ranelagh in the height of its glory. Balls and fetes succeeded each other. Lysons tell us that "for some time previously to 1750 a kind of masquerade, ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... fore-shadow his poetry in the very least. It is quite free from the usual formal faults of a boy's verse, except some evidences of a deficient ear, especially for rhyme ("full" and "beautiful," "palaces" and "days"). It manages a rather difficult metre (the sixain rhymed ababcc and ending with an Alexandrine) without too much of the monotony which is its special danger. And some of the tricks which the boy-poet has caught are interesting and abode with him, such ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... follow Paley. Dindorf, in his notes, agrees in reading [Greek: trophas], but the metre seems to require [Greek: epikotos]. Griffiths defends the common reading, but against the ancient authority of the schol. on ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... The British Ambassador, Punch, Has borrowed the lyre of the Opium-eater To praise your unparalleled feat! By his hunch 'Twould tax that great master of magic and metre To do it full justice. To paint such a vision The limner need call on the aid of the Poppy. It is a Big Blend of the Truly Elysian, And (you'll comprehend!) the Colossally Shoppy! Mix HAROUN ALRASCHID with Mr. MCKINLEY, And Yellowstone Park with a Persian Bazaar, And then the ensemble ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 20, 1893 • Various
... went on: 'So I've had to live alone, with no company but my own voice. Maybe you heard me singing as you came. It wasn't much of a song, I admit, for elegance of rhyme and metre don't seem to come easy, but a song like that is more comfort than you'd ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... of Agamemnon. The metre of the Chorus indicates marching; so that apparently the procession takes some time to move across the orchestra and get into position. Cassandra would be dressed, as a prophetess, in a robe of white reaching to the feet, covered by an agrenon, or ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... he has fallen into this confusion: "The mere matter of all poetry—to wit, the appearances of nature and the thoughts and feelings of men—being unalterable, it follows that the difference between poet and poet will depend upon the manner of each in applying language, metre, rhyme, cadence, and what not, to this invariable material." What has become here of the substance of Paradise Lost—the story, scenery, characters, sentiments as they are in the poem? They have vanished clean away. Nothing ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... Deluge in his mind, and increases the significance of the underlying parallel between his argument and that of the Babylonian poet.(1) It may be added that Ezekiel has thrown his prophecy into poetical form, and the metre of the two passages in the Babylonian and Hebrew is, as Dr. ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... and directness of this lyric, its immense emotional undercurrent, and its abrupt, almost gasping metre, admirably suited to the impassioned mood of the speaker,—these are a few of the qualities that combine to make "A Woman's Thought" one of the most remarkable ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... in Metre known, With Strains has grac'd thee, humble as thy own; Who (b) G—l—n's Dullness did for thine discard, A better Critick, for as bad a Bard! Not unregarded let this Tribute be, Tho' humble, just; ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... is throughout symbolical. The sacrificial straw represents the world; the metre used represents all living creatures, etc.,—a symbolism frequently suggested by a mere pun, but often as ridiculously expounded without such aid. The altar's measure is the measure of metres. The cord of regeneration ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... death of Edward the Confessor will be found to correspond, both in metre and expression, with the poetical paraphrase ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... suppose that King Cormac designated his noble work by this name; and third, even could this be proven, the much maligned Keating removes any difficulty by the simple and obvious remark, that "it is because of its having been written in poetic metre, the chief book which was in the custody of the Ollamh of the King of Erinn, was called the Saltair of Temair; and the Chronicle of holy Cormac Mac Cullinan, Saltair of Cashel; and the Chronicle of Aengus Ceile De ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the base of the Pic de Bergons, with the Pic du Lac Grand rivalling it on the other side of the defile, we soon sighted the chasm and cascade of Rioumaou on our left, and reached the Pas de l'Echelle. At 1 metre 50 centimetres, or 43/4 feet, from the extremity of the ornamental facing which marks the place, we pulled up, to try the magnificent echo, and were in no way disappointed. Our voices came back particularly clearly, but from the coach-box ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... advantages of music; order of different kinds of exercises according to; on intercourse between men and their wives; calls salt divine; epithets applied to liquids by; a moot point in third book of Iliad; essay on life and poetry of; biographical sketch of; the two works of; metre and dialects used by; epithets used by; tropes found in; figures of speech in; various styles used by; on constitution of the universe; natural philosophy of; on God and the gods; on the human soul; places emotions about the heart; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... metre, he thought of rhyme. 'Twas a race between weary brains and time. He tried to write as he used to when His heart was as young as ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... present, and the exercise made more impression upon me than it did upon either of the principal agents. My Father read the verse admirably, with a full,—some people (but not I) might say with a too full—perception of the metre as well as of the rhythm, rolling out the rhymes, and glorying in the proper names. He began, and it was a happy choice, with 'The Lady of the Lake'. It gave me singular pleasure to hear his large voice do ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... 'cause she would, to part the sweeter, A portion have of Hopkins' metre, As people use at execution, For the decorum of conclusion, Being too ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... he is the ruthless denouncer of abuses, and is thoroughly filled with the spirit which, four years after the second recension of his book, found expression in the Peasants Revolt of 1381. With all the archaism of his diction and metre, Langland, even more than Chaucer, reflects the modernity of ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... He consecrated his muse to the service of religion, but, in so doing, imitated the Homeric hexameters of Milton; he sought to arouse the national pride of his countrymen by recalling the deeds of Hermann (Armin) and termed himself a bard, but, in the Horatian metre of his songs, imitated Ossian, the old Scottish bard, and was consequently labored and affected in his style. Others took the lesser English poets for their model, as, for instance, Kleist, who fell at Kunersdorf, copied Thomson in his "Spring"; ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... eye," this was a test put to her accidentally. About the beginning of June, 1917, for lack of any better idea at the moment, I determined to teach her the use of the yard measure (the metre), and without having any definite object in view. So I fetched the yard-stick and told her the names and the meaning of the divisions three times; but she seemed unable to work up any enthusiasm for the subject, and I therefore did not attempt to question her. Many ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... McMillan has told me the following story of one of his hunting experiences. While I can only tell it in simple prose, the deed described deserves perpetuity in the stately metre ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... tale!—but delicately perfumed As the sweet roadside honeysuckle. That's why, Difficult though its metre was to tackle, ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... that it recalled (in single passages at least) Oehlenschlaeger's "The Golden Horns," does not seem to have weighed in the verdict. It is not in any sense an imitation; but there is an audible reminiscence which is unmistakable in the metre and cadence of the short-lined verses, descriptive of the vision. Never, I fancy, had the Swedish language been made to soar with so strong a wing-beat, never before had it been made to sing so bold a melody. To me, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Al-Aghlab al-Ajibi temp. Mohammed: the Alfiyah-grammar of Ibn Malik is in Rajaz Muzdawij, the hemistichs rhyming and the assonance being confined to the couplet. Al-Hariri also affects Rajaz in the third and fifth Assemblies. So far Arabic metre is true to Nature: in impassioned speech the movement of language is iambic: we say "I will, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... to Port Said, however, was a metre gauge one, laid down on the beach which runs as a narrow strip between the sea and the lagoons. The aforesaid R.T.O., sitting equably among a cloud of flies, would inform you on arrival (1) that the train which should have been the 8.30 from Mahamdiya had only just left Port Said, ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... Attention to metre and euphony will generally enable us to assign, amongst the forms in which we pick up and note any particular proverb, the original and legitimate one; especially when combined with brevity and "pith." As a case in point, our friend Ludlum will serve our purpose for comparison. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 33, June 15, 1850 • Various
... representation of life; it is a symbol of life. In it life is entirely fermented into rhythm, by which we mean not only rhythm of words, but rhythm of outline also; the beauty and impressiveness of the play do not depend only on the subject, the diction, and the metre, but on the fact that it has distinct and most evident form, in the musician's sense of the word. It is one of those plays that reach the artist's ideal condition of ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... native land, and to free her from continual warlike alarms, Determined that he would popularize the conception (and a very good one too) of a Nation in Arms! Now this is the way he proceeded to fan the flame of patriot ardour— (This metre looks at first as easy to write as blank verse, or Walt Whitman, but is in reality considerably harder),— He assured his crowded audience that, while everyone must deprecate a horrid, militant, Jingoist attitude, Not to serve one's country—at least on Saturday afternoons—was the very blackest ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... case, and even in the disasters of war, would be working out advantages which, after the war was done, would give England many friends and fewer enemies, give her treaties and new territory, and set her higher than she was now by a political metre. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... returned along the lurid circle On either hand unto the opposite point, Shouting their shameful metre evermore. ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... And/ Scotch Reviewers./ A Satire./ I had rather be a kitten, and cry, mew!/ Than one of these same metre ballad-mongers./ Shakspeare./ Such shameless Bards we have; and yet 'tis true,/ There are as mad, abandon'd Critics too./ Pope./ London:/ Printed for James Cawthorn, British Library,/ No. 24, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... Round Table, and Iseult of Brittany was a new figure of romance to him. In Tennyson, he had got no further than "Locksley Hall," which, he said, had a right tune and wrong words; and "Maud," which "was big in pathos." The story and the metre of "Tristram and Iseult" beat in his veins. He got to his feet, and, standing before the window, repeated a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... acknowledged master-piece of Latin poetry and the most sublime of all uninspired hymns. The secret of its irresistible power lies in the awful grandeur of the theme, the intense earnestness and pathos of the poet, the simple majesty and solemn music of its language, the stately metre, the triple rhyme, and the vocal assonances, chosen in striking adaptation—all combining to produce an overwhelming effect, as if we heard the final crash of the universe, the commotion of the opening graves, the trumpet of the archangel summoning the quick ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... will certainly be struck by the command of language and metre they display. It was shown both in rhyme and in blank verse. Many fine odes are scattered through them, and in the octo-syllabic verse Milman always appears to us peculiarly happy. But his poetry, like most of the poetry that ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... a peaceful spectator of others?[105] The Bacchic and Corybantic dances one can also modulate and quell, by changing the metre from the trochaic and the measure from the Phrygian. Similarly, too, the Pythian priestess, when she descends from her tripod, possesses her soul in peace. Whereas the love-fury, when once it has really seized on a man and inflamed him, can be laid by no Muse, no charm or incantation, no ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... permeates his poems. By temperament a singer as well as a seer and sayer, Emerson was nevertheless deficient in the singing voice. He composed no one great poem, his verse presents no ideas that are not found in his prose. In metre and rhyme he is harsh and willful. Yet he has marvelous single phrases and cadences. He ejaculates transports and ecstasies, and though he cannot organize and construct in verse, he is capable here and there of the true miracle of transforming ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... as history, as rhetoric, as metre, as rhythm, as politics, it is positively enormous. The whole poem is a wonderful poem, and I wish I had space for it here. It is patriotic and it is written about as badly as a poem could conceivably be written. It is a mournful pleasure to think that my dear friend had his last ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... reflect. When one is full one is not very clear-headed, and he replied: 'I will sell her by the cubic metre.' ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... that our race is presumably tougher than the ancient; for we have to bear, and do bear, the seeds of greater diseases than those the ancients carried with them. We may use, perhaps, the unvarying savage as a metre to gauge the vigour of the constitutions to whose ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... a grave error had been committed in selecting the narrow metre gauge; it was all very well for phosphate transport, but once the line over Feriana and the branch to Tozeur are completed, they would have to deal with other material, such as ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... that in the Japanese investiture of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese war, thousands of lives were expended upon the retention and assault of 203 Metre Hill. It was the most blood-stained spot upon the whole of the Eastern Asiatic battlefield. General Nogi threw thousands after thousands of his warriors against this rampart while the Russians defended it no less resolutely. It was captured and re-captured; in fact, the fighting round this eminence ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot |
