"Poesy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Rotten Herring Staith;" and I have come to the conclusion, that "The Land of Green Ginger" was a very dirty place where horses were kept: a mews, in short, which none of the Muses, not even with Homer as an exponent, could exalt ([Greek: Epea pteroenta en athanatoisi theoisi]) into the regions of poesy. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... finest compositions cost him neither trouble nor thought. Shut him up in a room with plenty of stationery, and in twenty-four hours, he would write himself up to the chin in verse. His muse was singularly prolific and her progeny various. He roamed recklessly through the realm of poesy. Every style seemed his—blank verse and rhyme, ode and epic, lyrical and tragical, satiric and elegiac, sacred and profane, sublime and ridiculous, he was equally good at all. His poetry might not perhaps have stood a very strict classification, ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... circuiting the mount, As we have ever us'd." So custom there Was usher to the road, the which we chose Less doubtful, as that worthy shade complied. They on before me went; I sole pursued, List'ning their speech, that to my thoughts convey'd Mysterious lessons of sweet poesy. But soon they ceas'd; for midway of the road A tree we found, with goodly fruitage hung, And pleasant to the smell: and as a fir Upward from bough to bough less ample spreads, So downward this less ample spread, that none. Methinks, aloft may climb. Upon the side, That clos'd our path, a liquid ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when 70 I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear, To the lives ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... we hear and see and touch, and that nature which the artist feels, imagines, and to which he aspires, Delsarte has placed a ladder whose base is among us, and whose summit is lost in the infinite spaces of fiction and poesy. By this ascent into the realm of liberty, of personality and of genius, the elect of aesthetics shall mount and gain, and, still maintaining their relations with the Real, shall bring down to us the glorious trophies ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... that he hated the whole business and, incidentally, that one of his pupils was Mr. W. E. Henley—destined to gather into his National Observer, many years later, many blooms of Brown's last and not least memorable efflorescence in poesy. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... legends, the popular songs and stories of those days. How greedily did she listen to her nurse! and what marvels did the eloquent old woman unfold, to the young, burning imagination of her foster child! Anastasia, sometimes abandoning herself to poesy, would forget sleep and food; sometimes her dreams concluded the unfinished tale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... you, That whereas in the course of our care and watchings over the order and police of all and sundry the manufacturers, retainers, and vendors of poesy; bards, poets, poetasters, rhymers, jinglers, songsters, ballad-singers, etc., etc., etc., etc., male and female—We have discovered a certain nefarious, abominable, and wicked song or ballad, a copy whereof we have ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... thus a-wing on the winds of poesy, had sipped his tepid coffee and nibbled his burnt toast in fine abstraction until he came upon a selection which his soul recognized. He had found words to the music that was ringing in his heart. It was then that he propped the book open ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... sea, the wind—Bowles had said, the ship's properties are only blue bunting, coarse canvas, and tall poles. "So they are," admits Byron, "and porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and flesh is grass; and yet the two latter at least are the subjects of much poesy. . . . Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical, the Parthenon or the rock on which it stands. . . . Take away Stonehenge from Salisbury plain and it is nothing more than Hounslow Heath or any other unenclosed down. . . . There ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... lace, the partner of his wretchedness, how can he induce her to make shipwreck in the midst of all this luxury on the decks of two beds. What advantage is it that we have made the whole universe subserve our existence, our delusions, the poesy of our life? What good is it to have instituted law, morals and religion, if the invention of an upholsterer [for probably it was an upholsterer who invented the twin beds] robs our love of all its ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... stains away. From their own well they fetcht it, and heapt high The Mound. Then certain goatherds, being by, Poured milk and yellow honey on the grave, Minding the Muses' honey which he gave Living, that old man stored with poesy. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... into a dark and dismal place underground; and there, taking him unawares, they treacherously slew him, and poured his blood into three jars. This they mixed with honey, and thus made a Magic Mead, of such a nature that whoever drinks of it receives the gift of poesy, and his speech is silver and his heart ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... being greater poets than they really were. It was a good sign, and it left its impress on French literature. Following in the footsteps of Francis I and the two Marguerites nobles vied with each other in their efforts to produce some epoch-making work of poesy or prose, and while they did not often publish for profit they were glad enough to see themselves in print. Then there were also the professional men of letters, as distinct from the courtiers with literary ambitions, the churchmen ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... with this same wretched rhyme, That never does he know so blest a time As when he writes away, and fondly deems He rivals Homer's god-enraptured dreams; And wonders in his pride, himself to see, The very pattern-pink of poesy. Alas! Suffenus, while I laugh at thee, The world, for aught I know, may laugh at me. It is the madness of each one to pride Himself on that 'twere better far to hide; Nor know the faults in that peculiar sack Which AEsop says is hanging at ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... give not up fair poesy, sweet lord, To such contempt! That I may speak my heart, It is the sweetest heraldry of art, That sets a difference 'tween the tough sharp holly ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... abstracting from the matters, either religious or civil, which are handled in it. The first part, consisting most in general characters and narration, I have endeavoured to raise, and give it the majestic turn of heroic poesy. The second being matter of dispute, and chiefly concerning Church authority, I was obliged to make as plain and perspicuous as possibly I could; yet not wholly neglecting the numbers, though I had not frequent occasions for the magnificence of ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... successive you declare When worms, for ivies, intertwine my hair, Take but this Poesy that now followeth My clayey best with sullen servile breath, Made then your happy freedman by ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... of one famed city from another, the size and general appearance of each; they see as many as possible of celebrated pictures and works of art, and mark carefully dimensions, age, and all details concerning them. Men, too, whom the world regards as great men, whether because of wisdom, poesy, warlike achievements, or of wealth and station, they seek to take by the hand and in some degree to know; at least to note their appearance, demeanor, and mode of life. Writers belonging to this class of travellers are not to be undervalued; returning home, they can give much useful ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... part of America, superstition has not established its empire as in the old countries of Europe, where the evening mists give to objects fantastic aspects, and tend naturally to reflections upon the supernatural. From this arises the sombre poesy of the north, which has peopled our land with ghosts and phantoms. In the American solitude people fear the living more than the dead, and Cuchillo had too much to fear from men to waste many thoughts upon the ghost of Arellanos, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... poesy is as a gum Which issues whence 'tis nourished, our gentle flame Provokes itself, and like the current flies Each bound ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... the truths it contains so important, that it may well be prized as the expression of a genius which, if not yet mature, is already powerful, and aquiline alike in vision and in sweep of wing. It is not unworthy to stand with Sidney's and with Shelley's "Defence of Poesy," and it is fitted to warm and inspire the poetic heart of the youth of this generation, no less than of that to which it was first addressed. As a close to the lecture Lowell read his beautiful (then unpublished) ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... calling experience whatsoever. It is our jaunty modern fashion, and I follow it so far as I am able. I take for granted, for instance, that every man has at one time or another—in his salad days, you know, before he was embarked in his particular provision business—had foolish yearnings towards poesy. I respect the mythical dreams of his 'young days'; I assume that he has been really in love; but, pray press me not too curiously as to whether I believe it all, as to whether I really imagine that ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... no more than the simple truth. Jasper Dale, under all his shyness and aloofness, possessed a nature full of delicate romance and poesy, which, denied expression in the common ways of life, bloomed out in the realm of fancy and imagination. Left alone, just when the boy's nature was deepening into the man's, he turned to this ideal kingdom for all he believed the real world could ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... opening its mouth to receive them. This is so contrary to the nature of the thing, and so great an absurdity, that no Poetic License can account for it; for tho' Poesie may form Stories, as Idea and Fancy may furnish Materials, yet Poesy must not break in upon Chronology, and make things which in time were to ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... "this poesy is the passion of some perplexed shepherd, that being enamored of some fair and beautiful shepherdess, suffered some sharp repulse, and therefore complained of the cruelty ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... burns with gold Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul A passion burns from basement unto cope. Poesy, poesy, I'd give to thee As passionately my rich laden years, My bubble pleasures, and my awful joys, As Hero gave her trembling sighs to find Delicious death on wet Leander's lip. Bare, bald, and tawdry, as a fingered moth Is my poor life; but with ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... time he settled in London, his mind was more occupied with literary projects than with steady application; nor had poesy, for which Nature peculiarly designed him, sufficient attractions to chain his wavering disposition. It is not certain whether his irresolution arose from the annoyance of importunate debtors, or ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... paragon of Scottish lakes. In island beauty unrivalled, for all that forms romance is here—scenery varying and increasing in loveliness, matchless combinations of grandeur and softness united, forming a magic land from which poesy and painting have caught their happiest inspirations. Islands of different forms and magnitude. Some are covered with the most luxuriant wood of every different tint; but others show a beautiful intermixture ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... of thought; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held 155 His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, And lofty hopes of divine liberty, Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, 160 Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame A permeating fire; wild numbers then She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands 165 Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp Strange ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Whilst Rome of all the conquered world is head. Till Cupid's fires be out, and his bow broken, Thy verses, neat Tibulus, shall be spoken. Our Gallus shall be known from East to West, So shall Lycoris, whom he now loves best. 30 The suffering ploughshare or the flint may wear, But heavenly poesy no death can fear. Kings shall give place to it, and kingly shows, The banks o'er which gold-bearing Tagus flows. Kneel hinds to trash: me let bright Phoebus swell, With cups full flowing from the Muses' ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... Beautiful! Oh, the beautiful, sleek slithery bugs. Oh, to be a water-bug of poesy skipping across the flood of oblivion! Oh, to be ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... marriage was like, and the becoming conscious of the waywardness and ardor of the thought had terrified her. It was unmaidenly. It was not like her. She had never been tormented by womanhood, and she had lived in a dreamland of Tennysonian poesy, dense even to the full significance of that delicate master's delicate allusions to the grossnesses that intrude upon the relations of queens and knights. She had been asleep, always, and now life was thundering imperatively at all her doors. Mentally ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... general, in which he expressed the desire, wherever he might die, to be buried beside the woman whom he loved to his latest hour. His wish was fulfilled, and the love-life of these two distinguished mortals, which belongs to history, has more than once afforded to art and poesy a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Anjou, who became in 1155 Henry II. of England,—was an ardent patroness of the art of poetry, and personally aroused the zeal of poets. The famous troubadour Bernard de Ventadorn—"with whom," says Ten Brink, "the Provencal art-poesy entered upon the period of its florescence"—followed her to England, and addressed to her his impassioned verse. Wace, the Norman-French trouvere, dedicated to her his 'Brut.' The ruling classes of England at this time were truly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... a rarely gifted mortal, to whom the triple portal Of Music, Art, and Poesy had opened years before, With a look of sombre feeling, depths within his soul revealing, Leaving room for no appealing, he decided o'er and o'er The old, old vexing questions of the why and the wherefore, And taught ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... Bonaparte introduced a certain poesy in his taste for the country. He liked to see a woman with a tall flexible figure glide through the dusky shrubberies of the park; only that woman must be dressed in white. He hated gowns of a dark color and had a horror of stout women. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... of English Poesy, published in 1589, when English poetry was starting on a particularly glorious period, says, 'In these days all poets and poesy are despised, they are subject to scorn and derision,' and 'this proceeds through the barbarous ignorance of the time—in other ages it was not so.' Then Jonson, in his 'Discoveries,' lamenting the decline of literature, says, 'It is the disease of the age, and no wonder if the world, growing ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... looked from window to window under the colonnade, and seemed expectant. But Lopez signaled to the buglers, and the trumpet call and the redoubled huzzas of a people thrilled him out of his melancholy. With a sigh he gave over his private loves and poesy. He breathed deep and his eyes flashed. And as the grand monarch and good, he departed with the acclaim of posterity in his ears, conscious that the superb figure he made was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... they imitate, instruct. The feigned hero inflames the true; and the dead virtue animates the living. Since, therefore, the world is governed by precept and example, and both these can only have influence from those persons who are above us; that kind of poesy, which excites to virtue the greatest men, is of the greatest ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... with wretched rule And compass vile: so that ye taught a school Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit, Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit, Their verses tallied. Easy was the task: A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race! That blasphem'd the bright Lyrist to his face, And did not know it,—no, they went about, Holding a poor, decrepid standard out Mark'd with most flimsy mottoes, and in large The ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Pandemonium in the rue Saint-Honore and their Napoleon in Musard, a small man born expressly to lead an orchestra as noisy as the disorderly audience, and to set the time for the galop, that witches' dance, which was one of Auber's triumphs, for it did not really take form or poesy till the grand galop in "Gustave" was given to the world. That tremendous finale might serve as the symbol of an epoch in which for the last fifty years all things have hurried by with the rapidity of ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... the culture, the spontaneity, the suavity, the reticence, the abandon, the heating power, the cooling power, the light, the shade, or any of the other ingredients referred to by the great Small in his noble work on poesy,' ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... grass of the field which bordered the shadow of the trees. There is no part of a forest more beautiful than the line where wood begins and meadow ends; it is as the lip of the forest breathing forth in a fragrant kiss of poesy some mystery of silent dells and fairy's haunts, which it hints of but does not quite betray. Wilhelmine mused on this; she was gifted with a delicate appreciation of each beauty-forming detail, and the accurate observation without ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... music and libretto's his: A work renowned, whose formidable name, Linked with his own, repels the assault of fame From the high vantage of a dusty shelf, Secure from all the world except himself;— Who told the tale of "Culture" in a screed That all might understand if some would read;— Master of poesy and lord of prose, Dowered, like a setter, with a double nose; That one for Erato, for Clio this; He flushes both—not his fault if we miss;— Judge of the painter's art, who'll straight proclaim The hue of any color you can name, And knows a painting with a canvas back Distinguished from ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... to search his deep and treasures heart. The cause was, since they wanted the fit key Of Nature, in their downright strength of art, With Poesy to open Poesy." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... investigation of Nature and of causes, the idea of God is extended and exalted; the farther science advances, the more God seems to grow and broaden. Anthropomorphism and idolatry constituted of necessity the faith of the mind in its youth, the theology of infancy and poesy. A harmless error, if they had not endeavored to make it a rule of conduct, and if they had been wise enough to respect the liberty of thought. But having made God in his own image, man wished to appropriate him ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... his time and mine, when I was in the Fifth Reader stage, in telling how the waters came down at Ladore when it was a petrified cinch that they, being waters, would have to come down, anyhow, I would next direct your attention to two of the foremost idiots in all the realm of poesy; one a young idiot and one an older idiot, probably with whiskers, but both embalmed in verse, and both, mind you, stuck into every orthodox reader to be glorified before the eyes of childhood. I refer to that juvenile champion among idiots, the boy who stood on the burning deck, and to the ship's ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... passed away, though Corinna herself is merely 'a fable, song, a fleeting shade,' he has saved enough of them from the ravin of Time for us to love and be grateful for eternally. Their gracious ghosts abide in a peculiar nook of the Elysium of Poesy. There 'in their habit as they lived' they dance in round, they fill their laps with flowers, they frolic and junket sweetly, they go for ever maying. Soft winds blow round them, and in their clear young voices they sing the verse of the rare ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... sentiment of Loyalist and Rebel has denounced it: the world has remarked it with uplifted hands and words of execration. Therefore, as long as history shall hold good, the murder of the President will be a theme for poesy, romance and tragedy. We who live in this consecrated time keep the sacred souvenirs of Mr. Lincoln's death in our possession; and the best of these are the news letters descriptive of his apotheosis, and the fate of the conspirators who ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... for you, here should my pen have rest, And take a long leave of sweet poesy; Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west, Should hear no more my oaten melody. Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile Unperfect lie, and make no further known The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle, Till I have left some record of mine own. You are the subject now, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the solemn night Steals forward thou shalt sweetly fall asleep For ever and for ever; I shall weep A day and night large tears upon thy face, Laying thee then beneath a rose-red place Where I may muse and dedicate and dream Volumes of poesy of thee; and deem It happiness to know that thou art far From any base desires as that fair star Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. Death takes but little, yea, thy death has given Me that deep peace ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... But at a maturer period of life, after looking at various metrical versions of the Psalms, I am well satisfied that the version used in Scotland is, upon the whole, the best; and that it has in general a simplicity and unction of sacred Poesy; and in many parts its ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... form of some pungent and gratifying revelation of the innermost events of her own life, from which her gushing lines had sprung as an inevitable consequence, and which being once known, would cause such musical poesy to appear no ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... mighty poet, by allusions to passages in Childe Harold, and Manfred, and Don Juan, which have made so large a portion of the music of my life. My words, whether apt or otherwise, were at least warm with the enthusiasm of one worthy to discourse of immortal poesy. It was evident, however, that they did not go precisely to the right spot. I could perceive that there was some mistake or other, and was not a little angry with myself, and ashamed of my abortive attempt to throw back, from my own heart ...
— P.'s Correspondence (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Temptation's siren voice, Throw poesy to the crows, And let my soul's ethereal fire Gush out ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... "Certainly I must confess my own barbarousness; I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet." And again: "Truly I have known men that, even with reading Amadis de Gaule (which, God knoweth, wanteth much of a perfect poesy), have found their hearts moved to the exercise of courtesy, liberality, and especially courage." The man who wrote these words had no starved conception of what ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... wholly silent, but I believe I have a soul, which does not lie in my stomach, and this soul of mine will never be satisfied till your majesty keeps your promise, and relates one of those intellectual, piquant histories, glowing with wisdom and poesy, which so often flows from the ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... learned in the mysteries of the soul. And to him who ventures upon this seemingly lowly path, so far from proving unattractive, it becomes a very Eden of thought. Unlooked-for beauties spring to light on every side; the very essence of music and poesy float around him as he advances; while above, around, and through all, sounds the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... heroical, seems to be raised altogether from a noble foundation, which makes much for the dignity of man's nature. For seeing this sensible world is in dignity inferior to the soul of man, poesy seems to endow human nature with that which history denies; and to give satisfaction to the mind, with at least the shadow of things, where the substance ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... Indians row, is to me no more than when Gottschalk wheels his piano out upon the broad, lone piazza of his house on the crater's edge, and rolls forth music to the mountains and stars. Here too are mystery, poesy, and a perpetual horizon. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Harry, who up to the time of meeting Chris after his return to Waddy, had been even more unromantic and lacking in poetry than the average bush native, had, under the influence of his passion, evolved a strong vein of both romance and poesy; and the sudden development of this unknown side of his nature induced novel sensations. He thought of his previous self almost as a stranger, for whom he felt some sentiment of pity not untouched with contempt, and even when hope was feeblest he hugged his love and brooded ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... by bread alone, and British occupation does not give to the heart all the things for which it craves. Blessings may even become curses when the gigantic power that bestows them on us scares from our midst the shy spirits of Beauty and of Poesy. Nor is it solely because it appeals to the poetic feelings in us that this country endears itself to my heart. It is the perfect republic: the sense of emancipation experienced in it by the wanderer from the Old ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... broods over stately and storied ruin, and to forget for evermore, while within the wondrous precincts, that aught more prosaic exists than the heroes of history, the fairest visions of art and dreams of poesy. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... a proverbial phrase found throughout English literature, the first instance noted being in Sir Philip Sidney's "Defence of Poesy." ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... robes of blue for heaven.— And I could dream That, from his lofty throne beholding, Great Sol, on wings of glowing eve, came down In gracious haste, to bless the nuptials. (She pauses.) And shall this land, That breathes of poesy from every sod, Indignant throb beneath the heavy foot Of jeering renegade? at best a son His mother blushes for—shall he, bold rebel Entwine its glories in defiant wreath Above his boastful brow, and flaunt it in Her face, rejoicing in her woe? No! No! This priceless gem shall ever deck ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum doemonum, because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt; such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... starlight of woman's high ideals continue to gleam on the thorny path of the thinker Israel; may they never depart from Israel, those God-kissed women that draw inspiration at the sacred fount of poesy, and are consecrated by its limpid waters to give praise and thanksgiving to Him that reigns on high; may the poet's words ever remain applicable to the matrons ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... born in 1830 from the reaction to the Holy Alliance which attempted to set Europe back to the period which preceeded '89 and had its years of splendour in 1848, when also Pius IX was a Liberal. Its decadence began immediately afterwards. If 1848 was a year of light and poesy, 1849 was a year of weakness and tragedy. The Roman Republic was killed by another Republic, the French Republic. In the same year Marx issued his famous manifesto of Communism. In 1851 Napoleon III made his anti-Liberal coup d'etat and reigned over France ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... shading his eyes from the burning sky, was calculating the gains of the last week; and the Greek, leaning upon his hand, and shrinking not from that sun—his nation's tutelary deity—with whose fluent light of poesy, and joy, and love, his own veins were filled, gazed upon the broad expanse, and envied, perhaps, every wind that bent its pinions towards the shores ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... temperament. It seems, as is set forth by Miller, in the fourth book of his "Dorians," that, in Lesbos, and some other parts of Greece, female societies were formed, each under the lead of some woman of distinguished genius, for the cultivation of poesy, music, refinement and grace of manners, and the other elegant arts. Girls were sent from distant cities, and even from foreign lands, to be educated in these societies. Sappho was the head of one ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... to pass from the world of actual Welsh history into such a world as this. But side by side with this wayward, fanciful stream of poesy and romance ran a torrent of intenser song. The spirit of the earlier bards, their joy in battle, their love of freedom, broke out anew in ode after ode, in songs extravagant, monotonous, often prosaic, but fused into poetry ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... Museum next year, after praising the devotion of his parents to art, and especially of his mother, "a nature," he said, "about which poesy breathed," he continued:— ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Cambridge), is it certain, or even likely, that the difference between a butcher or a doctor is the difference between Kirke White and Keats. And this talk about "University" poets seems somewhat otiose unless it can be shown that Cambridge and Oxford directly encourage poesy, or aim to do so. I am aware that somebody wins the Newdigate every year at Oxford, and that the same thing happens annually at Cambridge with respect to the Chancellor's Prize. But—to hark back to the butcher and apothecary—verses ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Thetford, in Suffolk. The device which appears upon this ring is an eagle displayed; on the inner side is engraved a bird, with the wings closed, apparently a falcon, with a crown upon its head. The following poesy, or motto, commencing on the outer side, is continued on the interior of the ring:—deus me ouroge de bous senir a gree—com moun couer desire—"God work for me to make suit acceptably to you, as my heart ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... happy, I never have cared a brass farthing who knew it; I Thank my stars I'm as free from mock-modesty, friend, as from vulgar fatuity. I can't say if my spirit retains—for the subject appears to me misty—any tie To such associations as Poesy weaves round the records of Christianity. There are bards—I may be one myself—who delight in their skill to unlock a lip's Rosy secrets by kisses and whispers of texts from the charming Apocalypse. It was thus that I won, by such biblical pills of poetical manna, From two elders—Sir ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... had been advancing with a steady and rapid progress; and it may be interesting to contemplate the state of one of its fairest provinces as exhibited by the pen of an able critic, who in the year 1589 gave to the world an Art of English Poesy. This work, though addressed to the queen, was published with a dedication by the printer to lord Burleigh; for the author thought proper to remain concealed: on its first appearance its merit caused it to be ascribed to Spenser by some, and by others to Sidney; ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... him with figures and fancies, and daintily enough bedecked. I could have wished he had thereunto joined a fair comparison between Dian—no matter—he might perhaps have fared the better for it; but poets' wits—God help them!—when did they ever sit close about them? Read the poesy, not over-rich, and concluding very awkwardly ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... of poesy and dream a practicable compromise may conceivably result, taking the shape of a monotonic delivery of speeches, with dreamy conventional gestures, something in the manner traditionally maintained by the old Christmas mummers, the curiously hypnotizing ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... allowed your own wit to have intrapped yourself, you might have lived in good comfort. It is best for man not to seek to climb too high, lest he fall: nor yet to creep too low, lest he be trodden on. It was the Poesy of the wisest and greatest Counsellor of our time in England, In media spatio mediocria firma locantur. You might have lived well with L3000 a year, for so have I heard your revenues to be. I ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... world is head! Till Cupid's fires be out, and his bow broken, Thy verses, neat Tibullus, shall be spoken. Our Gallus shall be known from east to west; So shall Lycoris, whom he now loves best. The suffering plough-share or the flint may wear; But heavenly Poesy no death can fear. Kings shall give place to it, and kingly shows, The banks o'er which gold-bearing Tagus flows. Kneel hinds to trash: me let bright Phoebus swell With cups full flowing from the Muses' well. Frost-fearing myrtle shall impale ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... When the old alliteration passed on into rhyme, and the crowd or rustic fiddle took the place of the old "gleebeam" for accentuation of the measure and the meaning of the song, we come to the ballad-singer as Philip Sidney knew him. Sidney said, in his "Defence of Poesy," that he never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that he found not his heart moved more than with a trumpet; and yet, he said, "it is sung but by some blind crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style; which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... which connected with the author's study. Herein he wrote of "the witchery of Italy"—the land he loved next to his own. His letters give glorious glimpses of the Arno, their strolls to Bellosguardo's heights, the churches, monasteries, costumes, and songs of the peasants—all attuned to poesy. Frequent were the exchanges of civility between the author's study and the good old curato across the lane. Cooper wrote of him: "The man has some excellent figs, and our cook, having discovered it, lays his trees under contribution." ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... who shall inaugurate a better literature. . . . If ever there was a time when a magnificent field opened to young aspirants for literary renown, that time is the present. Every door is wide open. . . . All the graces of poesy and art and music stand waiting by, ready to welcome a bold new-comer. . . . Who will come forward and inaugurate a new era of bold, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... not fine culture, poesy, art, sweet tones, Build up about my soothed sense a world That is not Thine, and wall me up in dreams. So my sad heart may cease to beat with Thine, The great World-Heart, whose blood, forever shed, Is human life, whose ache is man's ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... flowed on much in the same course till my twenty-third year. The addition of two more authors to my library gave me great pleasure: Sterne and Mackenzie—"Tristram Shandy" and the "Man of Feeling"—were my bosom favourites. Poesy was still a darling walk for my mind, but it was only indulged in according to the humour of the hour. I had usually half a dozen or more pieces on hand; I took up one or other, as it suited the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... olden time. No idle Muse I'll needlessly invoke— No patron's aid, to steer me from the rock Of cold neglect round which oblivion lies; But, loved one, I will look into thine eyes, From which young poesy first touched my soul, And bade the burning words in numbers roll;— They were the light in which I learned to sing; And still to thee will kindling fancy cling— Glow at thy smile, as when, in younger years, I've seen thee smiling through thy maiden tears, Like a fair ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... zest to the feast. There, sparkling like the bright waters of the Castalian fountain, flowed the rich Greek wine—a classic beverage, fit for the gods; there, too, was the delicate wine of Persia, fragrant with the spices of the East; and the diamond-crested champagne, inspiring divinities of poesy and Love. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... and men is sacred song. Self-taught I sing; by Heaven, and Heaven alone, The genuine seeds of poesy are sown. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... which extended along the footway. I thought that those piles must be remnants of meat sold for a trifling price, and that all those wretched people were rushing upon them to feed. I drew near, and discovered my mistake. The heaps were not heaps of meat, but heaps of violets. All the flowery poesy of the streets of Paris lay there, on that muddy pavement, amidst mountains of food. The gardeners of the suburbs had brought their sweet-scented harvests to the markets and were disposing of them to the hawkers. From the rough fingers of their peasant growers the violets were passing ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... I think that in treating this matter, it is important to make known to our readers the ancient superstitions, the vulgar or common opinions, and the prejudices of nations, to be able to refute them, and bring back the figures to truths, by freeing them from what poesy had added for the embellishment of the poem, and the amusement ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... most beautiful thoughts for children that ever found vent in poesy, and beautiful "pictures to match."—Chicago ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... have I invoked thee for my Muse And found such fair assistance in my verse As every alien pen hath got my use And under thee their poesy disperse. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the quickly shifting scenes which unrolled themselves before him, that so he might have given us further reminiscence of the lands over which his Pegasus bore him. Such completeness of view, however, is alien to the poesy ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... Myrtilla Complaining Christmas Cards - To the Grocery Boy To the Janitor To the Waiter To the Apartment House Telephone Girl To the Barber To the Hall and Elevator Boy Ballade of a Hardy Annual A Plea Footlight Motifs—Mrs. Fiske Footlight Motifs—Olga Nethersole Ballade of the Average Reader Poesy's Guerdon Signal Service Sporadic Fiction Popular Ballad; "Never Forget Your Parents" Ballade to a Lady (To Annabelle) To a Thesaurus The Ancient Lays Erring in Company The Limit Chorus for Mixed ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... so much ardour and eagerness for the entertainments of the theatre as the Greeks, and especially the Athenians. The reason is obvious: as no people ever demonstrated such extent of genius, nor carried so far the love of eloquence and poesy, taste for the sciences, justness of sentiments, elegance of ear, and delicacy in all the refinements of language. A poor woman, who sold herbs at Athens, discovered Theophrastus to be a stranger, by a single word which he affectedly made use of in expressing himself.(173) ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... be taken of his thoughts and doings, except in a kind of curious appendix at the end of the general register? What if philosophy, at a certain extreme range, and of a certain kind, tends of necessity to pass into poesy, and can hardly help being passionate and metrical? If so, might not the omission of poets, purely as being such, from a conspectus of the speculative writers of any time, lead to erroneous conclusions, by giving an undue prominence in the estimate of all such philosophizing as ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... of the garden there was an old sun-dial worn by time, and weather, and it chanced that they came, and leaned there, side by side. And, looking down upon the dial, Bellew saw certain characters graven thereon in the form of a poesy. ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... seated by the sapphire sea, Crooning of summers rich from long ago, Dreamer mid dreams, thy peerless face aglow With rare romance and passionate poesy; Hath time's delirium taken even thee, Mother of Petrarch, Raphael, Angelo? And dost thou purblind speed to weltering woe, Dead to the ...
— Iolaeus - The man that was a ghost • James A. Mackereth
... must, in conjunction with Virgil's emphatic repetition of the same sentiment, [47] have effectually turned him from his purpose. For these odes carried great authority. In them the poet appears as the authorised voice of the state, dispensing verba et voces [48] "the charm of poesy" to allay the moral pestilence that is devouring ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the quiet, almost listless woman could concoct dainty feasts for these illustrious people out of her poverty; for they were illustrious in their day. Were the wit and poesy and knowledge the successive desserts, and bright gossip the sparkle of the Barmecide wine? She thought of the little cottage, when she read of Madame Scarron among the ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... most prosaic among us some love of poesy, though unacknowledged? And who, in romantic youth or sober age, has not been touched by the tragic story of the dispersion of ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... Were you not even now in Atlantis, and have you not at least a pretty little copyhold Farm there, as the poetical possession of your inward sense? And is the blessedness of Anselmus aught else but a Living in Poesy? Can aught else but Poesy reveal itself as the sacred Harmony of all Beings, as the deepest ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... graduated, and went with two of my servants—my chamberlain and my valet—to travel in foreign countries. During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the heart. But of all things, that which most ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... beautiful style with barbarities and banalities which make one shudder. He set his fine thoughts like jewels in compost. He ravished the classics to mix them up with sentences that stunk of the stews. The man seemed to indulge in special flights of poesy with no other purpose than to achieve a disgusting anti-climax of muckery and mockery. The person who read Brann intelligently was impressed most by this habit of irony in the Waconian. It was of the essence of his iconoclasm. He ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... synonym of iconoclasm; for an innovation is putting the new in the place of the old. In ancient literature and literatures, prose was an innovation as regards poetry; and later, rhyme was an innovation in the domain of poesy, and an innovation of such a sort that against it the master-poet, Milton, lifted up his voice in solemn protest, and the solitary epic in English literature is a perpetual protestation against the custom. Shakespeare was an innovator of the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... from hence twelve days ago accompanied by a cargo of Poesy directed to Mr. Hobhouse, all spick and span, and in MS.; you will see what it is like. I have given it to Master Southey, and he shall have more before I have ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... for whom Fate had borrowed Ixion's wheel. He gazed until the poet in him sighed with pure pleasure; then came forgetfulness; then, presently, he looked into his heart and began to make a little song, amorous, quaint, and honey-sweet, just such a song as in that full dawn of poesy Englishmen struck from the lyre and thought naught of it. His lips did not move; had he spoken, at the sound of his own voice the charm had cracked, the little lyric had shrunk away before tragedy that was yet as fierce ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... Egyptians have found out also to what god each month and each day belongs, and what fortunes a man will meet with who is born on any particular day, and how he will die, and what kind of a man he will be: and these inventions were taken up by those of the Hellenes who occupied themselves about poesy. Portents too have been found out by them more than by all other men besides; for when a portent has happened, they observe and write down the event which comes of it, and if ever afterwards anything resembling this happens, they believe that the event ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 1(of 2) • Herodotus
... POESY. A nosegay. I shall see you ride backwards up Holborn-hill, with a book in one hand, and a posey in t'other; i.e. I shall see you go to be hanged. Malefactors who piqued themselves on being properly equipped for that occasion, had always a nosegay ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... woe-begone Life's upward road I journeyed many a day, And hymning many a sad yet soothing lay Beguil'd my wandering with the charms of song. Lonely my heart and rugged was my way, Yet often pluck'd I as I past along The wild and simple flowers of Poesy, And as beseem'd the wayward Fancy's child Entwin'd each random weed that pleas'd mine eye. Accept the wreath, BELOVED! it is wild And rudely garlanded; yet scorn not thou The humble offering, where the sad rue weaves 'Mid gayer flowers its intermingled ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... crest and crowning of all good, Life's final star, is Brotherhood; For it will bring again to Earth Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; Will send new light on every face, A kingly power upon the race. And till it comes we men are slaves, And travel downward ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... "Poesy does not prevent one from being practical—at least it doesn't prevent me. Mine is no futility of genius that can't ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... not," continued the disappointed bard, "I sought not this gift of poesy—I despised not the ruder toils of existence—I strove to pursue them, but I strove in vain. I could not walk along this earth with the busy forward tread of other men. The fair wonder detained and withheld me. Flowers on their slender stalks could prove an hindrance in my ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... is seen on the contrary to be a mere goatherd or ditcher-lout, so great and shocking is the change. What can we think of this? he who just now was seen a professed droll, or e'en shrewder than such in gay speech, this same becomes more boorish than a country boor immediately he touches poesy, nor is the dolt e'er as self-content as when he writes in verse,—so greatly is he pleased with himself, so much does he himself admire. Natheless, we all thus go astray, nor is there any man in ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... to his tangled stuff—and Merishall beamed wreathed smiles upon him, and told him he was "catching the spirit of the original." After this patent, distinct leg-up from Merishall, Grim took the bit between his teeth and went careering up and down the plains of poesy until the lights ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... some, my lord, affirm That Julius Caesar, many years before, Took such a stag, and such a poesy writ. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Java at all on their Reading Matter. She liked Henry James and Walter Pater and he preferred Horse Papers and the Comic Supplement. Sometimes when she would wander off into the Realms of Poesy he would follow her as far as he could, and then sit down and wait for her to get through rambling and ...
— People You Know • George Ade
... was fixing the boundaries of his future earthly experience. It was not his ideal; no imaginative man can ever hope to find that; but as soon as we have called a place our Home, it acquires a charm that has nothing to do with material conditions. The best-known song in American poesy has impressed that truth upon Americans—who are the most ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... this by Mr. Baretti, a gentleman particularly intitled to the notice and kindness of the Professor of poesy. He has time but for a short stay, and will be glad to have it filled up with as much as he can hear ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... errors, not to be avoided in that Age) had, undoubtedly, a larger Soul of Poesy than ever any of our nation, was the First, who (to shun the pains of continual rhyming) invented that kind of writing which we call Blank Verse [DRYDEN is here wrong as to fact, Lord SURREY wrote the earliest printed English Blank Verse in his Fourth Book of the AEneid, printed ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... Poesy's own 'summer child.' Hope, love, and happiness, sunny-winged fancies and golden-hued imaginings, have nested in his ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... and singing and happy, bright-visioned, high-hearted, and with the Indian's passionate love of nature thrilling in all she did, even when from the hunting-grounds of poesy she brought back now and then a poor day's capture. She was never without charm in her writing; indeed, mere charm was too often her undoing. She could not be impersonal enough, and therefore could not be great; but she could get very near to human sympathies, to domestic natures, to those who care ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... had taught that species were not immutable, but his words were so veiled in the language of poesy that they naturally went unchallenged. But now the grandson of Doctor Erasmus Darwin came forward with the net result of thirty years' continuous work. "The Origin of Species" did not attack any one's religious belief—in fact, in it the biblical account of Creation is not ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to other topics, Mary puzzled over the fact that the three knightliest-looking men she knew, the three who, she supposed, would make ideal lovers, had laughed at one of the most romantic situations in all poesy, and had agreed that Elaine was silly and sentimental. Maybe, she thought with burning cheeks, maybe they would think she was just as bad if they knew how she had admired Elaine and imagined herself in her place, and actually cried ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... breeze mid blossoms straying, Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee— Both were mine! Life went a-maying With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... temper of modern nations, has been able to blot out. The Spaniard was completely carried away in a transport by his religious practices, his gallantry, loyalty, bravery, exalted notions of honour, and other qualities of the mind, impregnated as they were with that poesy and wild romance which are delineated with so much propriety and skill ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... object to my terminology as exalting too much the common man, as putting sacred things to profane use, as demeaning prophecy and nobility and poesy, I shall answer that it is because of the narrowing definitions of convention that only the makers of verses, and not all of those, are poets, that only men of certain birth or ancestry or favor are dukes, and that prophets have entirely disappeared. And I bring to my support the more liberal ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... herself necessary to Goethe. In her case, however, the gifts that were denied at her cradle seem to have been more than made up to her. Her ardent and aspiring soul, shutting out "all thoughts, all passions, all delights" else, was distilled into longing to share in the unending life of Goethe's poesy.[10] ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various |
