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Sonnet   Listen
verb
Sonnet  v. i.  To compose sonnets. "Strains that come almost to sonneting."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sonnet" Quotes from Famous Books



... Her, exactly as did Dante, Petrarch and Rossetti. A sonnet is a house of life enclosing an ostermoor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... provoke impatience; but Byron was, during the whole of this period, almost preternaturally active. Detained by bad weather at Ouchy for two days (Juno 26, 27), he wrote the Prisoner of Chillon, which, with its noble introductory sonnet on Bonnivard, in some respects surpasses any of his early romances. ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... fount of inspiration; but for his surviving fame, and for the progress of English poetry, the circumstance was eminently propitious; since it is from the return of this noble traveller that we are to date not only the introduction into our language of the Petrarchan sonnet, and with it of a tenderness and refinement of sentiment unknown to the barbarism of our preceding versifiers; but what is much more, that of heroic blank verse; a noble measure, of which the earliest example exists in Surry's spirited and ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... odd memory comes—of a friend who,—volunteering such a service to a sonnet-writing somebody, gave him a taste of his quality in a side-column of short criticisms on sonnet the First, and starting off the beginning three lines with, of course, 'bad, worse, worst'—made by a generous mintage of words to meet the sudden run of his epithets, 'worser, worserer, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... or, A Prospect of Society The Deserted Village Prologue of Laberius On a Beautiful Youth struck Blind with Lightning The Gift. To Iris, in Bow Street The Logicians Refuted A Sonnet Stanzas on the Taking of Quebec An Elegy on Mrs. Mary Blaize Description of an Author's Bedchamber On seeing Mrs. *** perform in the Character of **** On the Death of the Right Hon.*** An Epigram. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... blindfolded, take a London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow Cockney's hand, immediately after it has been washed and scented, and put it to your nose—and you will begin to be apprehensive that some practical wit has substituted in lieu of the sonnet-scribbling bunch of little fetid fives, the body of some chicken-butcher of a weasel, that died of the plague. We have seen as much of what is most ignorantly and malignantly denominated dirt—one week's earth—washed off the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... chosen, permits M. Kangourou to exhibit his wares and expatiate on their merits. There is the daughter of a wealthy China merchant, a young woman of great accomplishments who can write "commercially" and has won a prize in a poetic contest with a sonnet. She is, consequently, very dear—100 yen, say $100—but that is of no consequence; what matters is that she has a disfiguring scar on her cheek. She will not do. Then there is Mlle. Jasmin, a pretty girl of fifteen years, who can be had for $18 or $20 a month (contract cancellable ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... and a franticke head: His chamber hanged about with elegies, With sad complaints of his love's miseries, His windows strow'd with sonnets and the glasse Drawn full of love-knots. I approach'd the asse, And straight he weepes, and sighes some Sonnet out To his fair love! and then he goes about, For to perfume her rare perfection, With some sweet smelling pink epitheton. Then with a melting looke he writhes his head, And straight in passion, riseth in his bed, And having kist his hand, strok'd up his haire, Made a French conge, ...
— English Satires • Various

... "To the crowned sufficient is the prize of the glory," says Lanzi; and while the poets chanted their praises, the lyre of Agostino himself gratefully celebrated the progress of his pupils. A curious sonnet has been transmitted to us, where Agostino, like the ancient legislators, compresses his new laws into a few verses, easily to be remembered. The sonnet is now well known, since Fuseli and Barry have preserved ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... anything more daring than buck the line at a soda fountain. He had on football armor and a baseball mask. Then came Andrews. Andrews specialized in poetry for the Lit magazine and commonly went by the name of Birdie, because of an unfortunate sonnet that he had once written. Andrews wore evening dress, and carried a football in a shawl strap. Then came McMurty and Boggs, sofa-pillow punishers. They roomed together and you could have tied them both up in Ole Skjarsen's belt and had enough of it left for a handle. James, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch

... with some truth, "That she was none of his choosing, nor of Mr. Cary's neither." And so the dor being given, the belligerents parted laughing, but the war remained in statu quo; and not a week passed but, by mysterious hands, some nosegay, or languishing sonnet, was conveyed into The Rose's chamber, all which she stowed away, with the simplicity of a country girl, finding it mighty pleasant; and took all compliments quietly enough, probably because, on the authority of her mirror, she considered them no ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... thought their captain spoony, and the captain's clerk of the Tudor was guilty of a most reprehensible breach of confidence, if he spoke the truth, in whispering that he had one day discovered on the commander's desk a sonnet addressed to Stella's eyebrow. The fact, however, was doubted, as Captain Babbicome had never been suspected of possessing the slightest poetical talent, nor had a book of poetry ever been seen ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... been left as of no value when the house was cleared of furniture. As I wished to see the books he undid the parcel; it contained forty copies of a small quarto-shaped book of sonnets, with the late squire's name as author on the title page. I read a sonnet, and told him I should like to read them all. "You can have a copy, of course," he exclaimed. "Put it in your pocket and keep it." When I asked him if he had any right to give one away he laughed and ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... answer him, and he hung listening intently for their voices, he would sometimes catch the faint sound of far distant waterfalls, or the whole scene around him would imprint itself with new force upon his perceptions.—Read the sonnet, if you please;—it is Wordsworth all over,—trivial in subject, solemn in style, vivid in description, prolix in detail, true metaphysically, but immensely suggestive of "imagination," to use a mild ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Several times when it appeared as if the lady of your dreams were white, I fancied you were drawing a portrait of Isabelle Ray. All the girls, your old friends, to whom I have shown At Sea, send you their compliments, to which I join my own. Each of them will beg you to write her a sonnet; but first of all, in virtue of our ancient ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Browning was sure that Peter's love for his wife, though perhaps that of a primitive man, was of the true Portuguese stamp, and with this view composed the following pleasing Sonnet: ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells

... self-existent, true, original love, the making love. But I have felt all you say. I used to lie in bed and imagine the earth alive and carrying me on her back, till I fell asleep longing to see the face of my nurse. Once, the fancy turned into a dream. I will try to recall a sonnet I made the same night, before the dream came: it will help you to understand it. I was then about nineteen, I believe. I did not care for it enough to repeat it to you, and I fear we ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald

... easily be perceived, that the only part of this Sonnet which is of any value is the lines printed in Italics; it is equally obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in the use of the single word 'fruitless' for fruitlessly, which is so far a defect, the language of these lines does in no respect ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... sonnet, 'In the Pass of Killicranky,' in which the aspiration for 'one hour of that Dundee' is prompted by the fear of ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... fertility of invention: Portuguese literature is completely classic in spirit, avoiding all exaggeration, all offences against taste, and confining itself to classic forms, such as the pastoral, the epic and the sonnet. Many Moorish customs survive in Portugal to this day, but they have not become so closely assimilated there as in Spain to the character of the people. The cruelty which has always marked the Spanish race is no part of the Portuguese national character, which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various

... their work was printed. The pieces in Tottel's Miscellany show very clearly the influence of Italian poetry. We have seen that Chaucer took subjects and something more from Boccaccio and Petrarch. But the sonnet, which Petrarch had brought to great perfection, was first introduced into England by Wiat. There was a great revival of sonneteering in Italy in the 16th century, and a number of Wiat's poems were adaptations of the sonnets and canzoni of Petrarch and later poets. Others were imitations ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Arviragus over Fidele, supposed to be dead 87 Verses written on a Paper which contained a Piece of Bride-cake, given to the Author by a Lady 89 To Miss Aurelia C——R, on her Weeping at her Sister's Wedding 91 Sonnet 91 Song. The Sentiments borrowed from Shakespeare 92 On our ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... Cambridge friends appear to have grown a little anxious, on seeing one who had distinction stamped upon his brow, doing what the world calls nothing; and Milton himself was watchful, and even suspicious. His second sonnet records ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... H.G. Wells, ask Murray Gilchrist, ask George Moore, ask Eden Phillpotts, ask "Q," ask Henry James. Lo! I say to all facile gabblers about the "art of the short story," as the late "C.-B." said to Mr. Balfour: "Enough of this foolery!" It is of a piece with the notion that a fine sonnet is more ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... the post. A very hasty glance through many sheets had shown Katharine that, by some coincidence, her attention had to be directed to many different anxieties simultaneously. In the first place, Rodney had written a very full account of his state of mind, which was illustrated by a sonnet, and he demanded a reconsideration of their position, which agitated Katharine more than she liked. Then there were two letters which had to be laid side by side and compared before she could make out ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... Grave of Dibdin A Sketch from Life On the Portrait of the Son of J.G. Lambton, Esq. Written in the Album of the Lady of Counsellor D. Pollock The Heliotrope Sonnet On seeing a Young Lady I had previously known, confined in a Madhouse Prometheus Rosa's Grave The Sibyl. A Sketch Love On a delightful Drawing in my Album Stanzas Shakspeare Impromptu. To Oriana, on attending with her, as Sponsors, at a Christening To my Spaniel ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent

... an intelligent care of the physical mechanism. A clogged pen would repress the recording of the noblest sonnet or epic; a defective brush, or pigment, would ruin the picture of the greatest artist; a broken wire would prevent the transmission of the most important telegraphic or cable message. And so, however intelligently and completely one holds the faith of supremacy ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... quite right. I'm going to see "The Girl from Bedlam." So long. I must push off now. It's getting late. You take a rest. Don't add another line to that sonnet; fourteen's quite enough. You take a rest. Don't have any dinner to-night, just rest. I was like that once ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... The sonnet may be briefly defined as a rimed poem in iambic pentameter, containing fourteen lines, divided into the octave of eight lines ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... up a sonnet, come, piper, and play us a spring, For now I think upon it, these R's turn'd out their King; But now is come about, that once again they must turn out, And not without justice and reason, that every one home to his prison. Sing hi ho, Harry Martin, (74) a burgess of the ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... conveyances and dealing in forage, but he gave away most of what he made. He opposed the whole force of his popularity to a war of classes. 'Viva chi c'ia e chi non c'ia quattrini!'[4] was his favourite cry. Once when a young poet read him a sonnet in his honour he stopped him at the line 'Thou art greater than all patricians,' saying that he would not have that published: 'I respect the nobility, and never dream of being higher than they. I am a poor man of the people, and such ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... R. Stockton, who made a great specialty of pirates, says of Lafitte: "He never committed an act of piracy in his life; he was [before he went to Barataria] a blacksmith, and knew no more about sailing a ship or even the smallest kind of a boat than he knew about the proper construction of a sonnet.... It is said of him that he was never at sea but twice in his life: once when he came from France, and once when he left this country, and on neither occasion did he sail under the Jolly Roger." According to Stockton, Lafitte, when he gave up his blacksmith shop (in which he is said to have ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... strange but not unpleasing melancholy, followed by an absolute loathing of his usual studies. Music all through life affected him most powerfully, and he states that his tragedies were almost invariably planned by him when under its influence. It was about this time that he composed his first sonnet, which was made up of whole or mutilated verses of Metastasio and Ariosto, the only two Italian poets of whom he knew any thing. It was in praise of a certain lady to whom his uncle was paying his addresses, and whom he himself admired. Several persons, including the lady herself, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... in our supplement to-day a sonnet from the pen of Willie Shakespeare, son of our esteemed townsman, Squire John Shakespeare. Willie is now located in London, and is recognized as one of the brightest constellations in the literary galaxy of the metropolis."—The ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with everything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening, going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to which he prefixed the title of "Rome Revisited." A day or two later he showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Isabel, explaining to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of life by a tribute to ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... answered for the English giant,' said Charles aside to an attendant: then turning eagerly to Sidney, whose transcendent accomplishments had already become renowned, Charles welcomed him to court, and began to discuss Ronsard's last sonnet, showing no small taste and knowledge of poetry. Greatly attracted by Sidney, the King detained the whole English party by an invitation to Walsingham to hear music in the Queen-mother's apartments; and Berenger, following in the wake of his friends, found himself ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and, throwing down a scroll, rushed as precipitately out of the room. The scroll was of vellum; the title to the contents of it was penned in golden letters, and softly-painted bunches of roses graced each corner. It contained a sonnet to love, and another to friendship; but a principal mistake which struck us, on the very threshold of our critical examination, was that he had incorrectly entitled these sonnets. Friendship should have been called love, and love, friendship. We had no sooner made the discovery than Gonzalo returned, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... volume is introduced by a modest preface, and a "Sonnet inscribed to the memory of the Rev. J. Saffery," ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various

... poetry was exclusively lyrical. The average standard of versifying was higher, perhaps, than it has ever been before or since. Every man of education seems to have been able to turn a sonnet or ode. Men of religion, like St. Francis or Brother Jacopone of Todi; statesmen, like Frederick II. and his confidant, Peter de Vineis; professional or official persons, like Jacopo the notary of Lentino, or Guido dalle Colonne the judge of Messina; fighting men, like several of the ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... ballad. But even where Wilde was right, he had a way of being right with this excessive strain on the reader's sympathy (and gravity) which was the mark of all these men with a "point of view." There is a very sound sonnet of his in which he begins by lamenting mere anarchy, as hostile to the art and civilisation that were his only gods; ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... love-locks of Prince Rupert's aid-de-camp, who died at Naseby manfully in his harness—now, contrasting strangely with the elaborately powdered peruke and delicate lace ruffles of Beau Livingstone, the gallant, with the whitest hand, the softest voice, the neatest knack at a sonnet, and the deadliest rapier at the court of good Queen Anne. Nay, you could trace it in the features of many a fair Edith and Alice, half counteracting the magnetic attraction of their ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... I like flowers? I will not write a sonnet, Singing their beauty as a poet might do: I just detest those on Aunt Nipson's bonnet, Because they are like her,—all gray and blue, Dusty and pinched, and fastened on askew! And as for heaven's ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge

... grave lawyer who used to sit on a stone seat on the south side and watch the builders, little thinking how soon he was to be driven from Florence for ever. This seat—the Sasso di Dante—was still to be seen when Wordsworth visited Florence in 1837, for he wrote a sonnet in which he tells us that he in reverence sate there too, "and, for a moment, filled that empty Throne". But one can do so no longer, for the place which it occupied has been built over and only a slab in the wall with an inscription ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... no writing materials for two months the slate and pencil looked very inviting. I composed a few pieces of verse, including a sonnet on Giordano Bruno and some epigrams on Parson Plaford, Judge North, Sir Hardinge Giffard, and other distasteful personages. But as every piece written on the slate had to be rubbed out to make room for the next, I soon sickened ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote

... to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb. We have rhyming dictionaries,—let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded. The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious, rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some kind, is the business of men and women, not the ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... waited for her every afternoon in the sunshine, while the others were at work, and married her with great eclat. The moral of which is that, instead of cracking my head to make a sonnet to Claudine, I shall be wise to put on my hat and go ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... Milton, in his superb sonnet to Sir Henry Vane the Younger, declares that Rome, in the most prosperous age of the Republic, never possessed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... her lines impart, The Queen of Benham lost that gem her heart; Scar'd by the din, her bosom treasure flew, And with it every grace and muse withdrew. But far, or long, the wanderer could not roam, For wit and taste soon brought the truant home! One tuneful sonnet at her feet it sung, Then to her breast, its snowy mansion, sprung; Thither it went, the virtues in its train, To hail the panting blessing back again. On its fair throne it now appears as Queen, And ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens

... Distributor of Stamps for the county of Westmoreland in March, 1813, through Lord Lonsdale's "patronage" (see his letter, March 6, 1813). The Excursion was dedicated to Lord Lonsdale in a sonnet ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... business," said Rivington; "you couldn't have applied to a better shop. What I don't know about little old New York wouldn't make a sonnet to a sunbonnet. I'll put you right in the middle of so much local colour that you won't know whether you are a magazine cover or in the erysipelas ward. When ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... all these sonnets was that which is now as familiar as honey on the lips of every lover of suave songs—I mean that sonnet which begins ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of a day and the approaching night of life. The poem was not to be perplexed by doubt; it ends on a note of "trembling hope"—but on "hope." There are perhaps better evocations of similar moods, but not of this precise mood. Shakespeare's poignant Sonnet LXXIII ("That time of year"), which suggests no hope, may be one. Blake's "Nurse's Song" is, in contrast, subtly tinged with ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray

... is indentation in verse for? Is it not a guide to the eye, to enhance the proper recurrence of the rhyme (and in the ode to show as well rhythm)? If we are to have a mere arbitrary arrangement of the sonnet, why not the same in a poem of regular or inverted quatrains, or of the Persian quatrain, which is now always given ...
— The Writer, Volume VI, April 1892. - A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers • Various

... without hurting him as liquor does, there would be no problem of drink. Bernard Shaw says he has found that substitute in going to church when there's no service. Goethe wrote "The Sorrows of Werther" in order to get rid of his own. Many an unhappy lover has found peace by expressing his misery in sonnet form. The problem is to find something for the common man who is not interested in contemporary churches and ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... floated across his memory, the Master had a mind to employ them in his peroration (giving them a Christian trend, of course) in place of the sonnet he had meant to quote. This would involve reconstructing a longish paragraph; but they had touched his mood, and he spent some time pacing to and fro under the trees before his taste rejected them as facile and even ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... universal taste for music and poetry, had introduced a civilization of manners, which approached to affectation. The shepherd literally marched abroad in the morning, piping his flocks forth to the pasture, with some love sonnet, the composition of an amorous troubadour; and his "fleecy care" seemed actually to be under the influence of his music, instead of being ungraciously insensible to its melody, as is the case in colder climates. Arthur observed, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... cardinal set about concoction of a moving sonnet in praise of Monna Vittoria de' Pazzi. Desperation loaned him extraordinary eloquence (as he complacently reflected) in addressing this obdurate woman, who had held out against his love-making for six ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... After a year he writes, "I have not written any poetry this whole summer. Old Mrs. Themis says that I shall not visit any more at the Miss Muses. I'll see the old catamaran hanged, though, but what I will, and I'll write a sonnet to my old shoe directly, out of mere desperation. Pity and sympathize with me." And on March 28, 1843, we find him writing to ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse

... essential thought in this sonnet? Quote corresponding passages. Give illustrations ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... destroying the effect of the whole; no verse stands out obstinately from its fellows, but all are knit firmly, yet lightly, together: and a line of magnificent strength fitly closes a magnificent passage. Hardly a sonnet of Shakespeare or Mr. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... a quick thrill of admiration: he was still young enough to recognise the hand of the master. And in his admiration there was a trace of a frank envy, a certain unresentful humiliation—the feeling which he could remember to have experienced many times in the old days, when he put aside the sonnet he had just finished for some fashionable magazine, and took down from his limited bookshelf the little time-worn volume which contained the almost forgotten work of a poet whose name would have fallen strangely ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... after that. He wrestled with poetry morning, noon, and night, and he made himself a horrible nuisance to his old cronies. Wilson complained bitterly about their study being "simply fizzing with poetry." Grim sprang a poem or a sonnet, or a tribute or some other forsaken variety of poetry, on pretty well everything about the place. He "did" the dawn and worked round to the sunset. He had a little shy at the church and the tombstones, and wrote about the horse pond's "placid ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... instinct would seem to warn her that silence is more to her interest in the pursuit of her wily mission. In June, when so many an ecstatic love-song among the birds has modulated from accents of ardent love to those of glad fruition, when the sonnet to his "mistress's eyebrow" is shortly to give place to the lullaby, then, like the "worm i' the bud," the cow-bird begins her parasitical career. How many thousands are the bird homes which are ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson

... the literary inheritance of the German people. Buerger attempted a translation of the Iliad in iambic blank verse, and a prose translation of 'Macbeth.' To him belongs also the credit of having restored to German literature the long-disused sonnet. His sonnets are among the best in the language, and elicited warm praise from Schiller as "models of their kind." Schiller had written a severe criticism of Buerger's poems, which had inflamed party strife and embittered the last years of Buerger himself; but even Schiller admits ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... and undignified departures from sane conduct to which a misguided vanity and an ill-controlled curiosity had led him. He sat for a space thinking how very Hellenic and Italian and Neronic, and all those things, he had been. Even now—might one not try a sonnet? A penetrating voice to echo down the ages, sensuous, sinister, and sad. For a space he forgot Elizabeth. In the course of half an hour he spoilt three phonographic coils, got a headache, took a second dose to calm himself, and reverted to ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... Isocrates, the greatest teacher of rhetoric of his time, lived from 436 to 338, when he died by voluntary starvation owing to his grief at the loss of Greek freedom through the battle of Chaeronea. Milton, Sonnet X. 'That dishonest victory At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, Kill'd with report that old man eloquent'. — EUM ... INSCRIBITUR: the periphrasis is common, and the verb inscribere is nearly always in the present tense (in later prose as well as in Cicero) as in ...
— Cato Maior de Senectute • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... story as related by Pliny, a volume of whose letters he had put into his pocket, and Margery recited some lines of a beautiful sonnet on Pompeii which she had once learned, whose author she ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... which united Ireland to Great Britain. I do not know that any one public act, or celebration, or solemnity, in my time, did, or could, so much engage my profoundest sympathies. Wordsworth's fine sonnet on the extinction of the Venetian republic had not then been published, else the last two lines would have expressed my feelings. After admitting that changes had taken place in Venice, which in a manner challenged and presumed this last and mortal change, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... reverence intellectually for Shakspeare; and in his younger days we know that he had spoken more enthusiastically of Shakspeare, than he ever did again of any uninspired author. Not only did he address a sonnet to his memory, in which he declares that kings would wish to die, if by dying they could obtain such a monument in the hearts of men; but he also speaks of him in his Il Penseroso, as the tutelary genius of the English stage. In this transmission of the torch ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... avoided in a second series. I have retained the metres of the originals with but trifling variations, except in those cases where there was nothing specially characteristic to make this desirable (as e.g., in the case of Islwyn, where I have thrown some of my translations into sonnet form) or where—as in the Song of the Fisherman's Wife—the metre, even if it could be reproduced, would not in English harmonise with the meaning. I ought perhaps to ask pardon beforehand for the audacity with which I have treated Ieuan Glan ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones

... the lamentable contrast between sentiments and conduct, which this transfer of the seat of sensibility from the heart to the fancy produces, the annals of literary men afford unluckily too many examples. Alfieri, though he could write a sonnet full of tenderness to his mother, never saw her (says Mr. W. Rose) but once after their early separation, though he frequently passed within a few miles of her residence. The poet Young, with all his parade of domestic ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... the Rose would take a volume, even treated as the poem itself is here. The English version has been referred to: Italian naturalised it early in a sonnet cycle, Il Fiore. Every country welcomed it, but the actual versions are as nothing to the ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury

... about form? Here you will find it in absolute perfection. Edfu is the consecration of form. In proportion it is supreme above all other Egyptian temples. Its beauty of form is like the chiselled loveliness of a perfect sonnet. While the world lasts, no architect can arise to create a building more satisfying, more calm with the calm of faultlessness, more serene with a just serenity. Or so it seems to me. I think of the most lovely buildings I know in Europe—of the Alhambra at Granada, of the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens

... have been made on the self-respect and delicate sensibility of a feminine soul by this other sonnet, which is clumsy and bombastic because it is full ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... is acknowledged to be too low for a poem, nay more, for a paper of verses; but if too low for an ordinary sonnet, how much more for tragedy, which is by Aristotle, in the dispute betwixt the epic poesy and the dramatic, for many reasons he there ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... Friend Creation Red Carnations Life is Too Short A Sculptor Beyond The Saddest Hour Show Me the Way My Heritage Resolve At Eleusis Courage Solitude The Year Outgrows the Spring The Beautiful Land of Nod The Tiger Only a Simple Rhyme I Will Be Worthy of It Sonnet Regret Let Me Lean Hard Penalty Sunset The Wheel of the Breast A Meeting Earnestness A ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... to bring the baronet to a point. He had observed that Miss Keeldar looked pensive and delicate. This new phase in her demeanour smote him on his weak or poetic side. A spontaneous sonnet brewed in his brain; and while it was still working there, one of his sisters persuaded his lady-love to sit down to the piano and sing a ballad—one of Sir Philip's own ballads. It was the least elaborate, the least affected—out of all comparison ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... whose chastisement is thus recorded, had {83} been on terms of strict friendship with our "high-spirited" young lawyer. In 1596, Davies had published his poem on dancing, entitled Orchestra, the title-page of which is followed by a dedicatory sonnet "To his very friend, Ma. Richard Martin." This sonnet is written in extravagant terms of friendship and admiration; and as it is only to be found in the rare first edition, and in the almost equally rare Bibliographical Catalogue of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 66, February 1, 1851 • Various

... flame with something intenser and deeper than a mere scenic meaning—a meaning out of the great deep that is behind and beyond all human and merely personal character. Nor was Shakespeare himself unconscious of his place as a teacher and profound moralist: witness that sonnet in which he bewails his having neglected sometimes the errand that was laid ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell

... in, but there was a moon in the cold grey sky, that I could almost have thanked in a sonnet for a light which I felt was never more welcomely dispensed, when I thought of the cross roads and dreary country I had to pass before I reached the longed for haven of Chester Park. After I had left the direct road, the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... great hunger which is here shown to me, a dish of eight verses seems but little; and I think that I should do well to join to the epigram, or rather to the madrigal, the ragout of a sonnet which, in the eyes of a princess, was thought to have a certain delicacy in it. It is throughout seasoned with Attic salt, and I think you will find the ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... last breath at Birchington it was in that friend's arms. It is necessary to dwell upon such facts as the above to show how fully equipped is the author of Aylwin for understanding and depicting the great poet-painter, to whose memory he addressed the sonnet at ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... to and fro in the confined space of the chamber allotted to him at Whitehall, and this sonnet, one of the most beautiful which he ever wrote, will express better than any other words what effect his sister's counsel had ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... was conducting us across might have said, 'What on earth are you blubbering for? Afraid of these crocodiles, eh?' The little sentimentality which exceeded was forced to take its course down the inside of the nose. We have other work in this world than indulging in sentimentality of the 'Sonnet to ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... had missed his sonnet. She laid it almost tenderly in a conspicuous place on his table, and put a bronze head of Pallas Athene on it to keep it down. Then she wondered again whether he enjoyed the bookshop, whether he enjoyed making catalogues ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... feel a touch on your shoulder. You spin on your heel, feeling at your hip for an imaginary sword. But 'tis not Master Francois Villon, in tattered doublet, with a sonnet. Nor yet is it a jaunty blade, in silken cloak, with a challenge. It is your friend of the obscene photograph collection. He has followed you all the way from 1914 clear back into the Middle Ages, biding his time and hoping you will change your mind about investing ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... Grammont passed for the author of this sonnet: neither the justness of the sentiment, nor turn of it, are surprisingly beautiful; but as it contained some truths that flattered the genius of the nation, and pleased those who interested themselves for the fair sex, the ladies were all desirous of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... task remains of thanking those authors who have so kindly responded to requests for permission to use selections from their works: to President Wilson, for a sonnet from Spring Wild Roses, and for Our Ideal; to Mr. Charles Sangster, for two sonnets from Hesperus; to Mr. John Reade, for two poems from The Prophecy of Merlin; to Mr. Charles Mair, for the scenes ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... so daring, so original, so diverse, which could turn a sonnet or design a battleship (for the Ark Raleigh, built after his plans, was admittedly the best ship of our fleet that met the Armada), which had experienced the favour and disfavour of princes in the fullest degree, which had known triumph and discouragement beyond the ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... Roland. "I have always wanted to see that famous fountain of Vaucluse, the Hippocrene of Petrarch. You know his sonnet? ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas

... myself (loc. cit.), dilates on Artemis as 'sister of Apollo.' 'Her chapels,' I say, 'are in the wild wood; she is the abbess of the forest nymphs,' 'chaste and fair, the maiden of the precise life.' How odd! The classical scholar and I both say the same things; and I add a sonnet to Artemis in this aspect, rendered by me from the Hippolytus of Euripides. Could a classical scholar do more? Our author then says that the Greek sportsman 'surprised the beasts in their lairs' by ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... Italian, and wrote two Sonnets on * * *. I never wrote but one sonnet before, and that was not in earnest, and many years ago, as an exercise—and I will never write another. They are the most puling, petrifying, stupidly platonic compositions. I detest the Petrarch so much[104], that I would ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... one superb tormentor I can show— Prince Fiddlefaddle, Duc de Feefawfum. He the johndonkey is who, when I pen Amorous verses in an idle mood To nobody, or of her, reads them through And, smirking, says he knows the lady; then Calls me sly dog. I wish he understood This tender sonnet's application too. ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... of error. He held the great central Liberal doctrine, a belief in a certain destiny of the human spirit beyond, and perhaps even independent of, our own sincerest convictions. The world was going right he felt, most probably in his way, but certainly in its own way. The sonnet which he wrote in later years, entitled "Why I am a Liberal," expresses admirably this philosophical root of his politics. It asks in effect how he, who had found truth in so many strange forms after so many strange wanderings, can be expected ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... about it. Such research is illuminating for those who do not believe in the teaching of composition; and if it begins at home, so much the better. And finally, the technique of writing has to do with the whole, whether sonnet, or business letter, or report to a board of directors. How to lead one thought into another; how to exclude the irrelevant; how to weigh upon that which is important; how to hold together the whole structure so that the subject, all the subject, and nothing but the subject shall be laid before ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... write her this," he explained to the fire. "Lord, Lord, if the fire of grace were not quite out of me, now should I be moved. For I did write it; and it was sent with a sonnet, all of Hell, and Heaven, and your pagan gods, and other tricks of speech. It ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... she spoke. A sonnet to this suspended heart rose instantly to his lips, but he did not give it utterance, for he was in no mood to continue their conversation in this light vein of false sentiment, which broke the sweet spell she had been weaving about him. He was ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... understood her as he had done; no one in all the world. It would be a sort of melancholy pleasure to talk to him again, and what harm could it do? Why should she deny herself? That night she wrote a sonnet, all but the last two lines of the octave—which would not come, and the next day she composed a graceful little note to tell Fanny she was ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... borrowed from a Greek play by Euripides, called 'Hellene,' as did the author of the sonnets. There is, we need not say, no Greek play of the name of 'Hellene.' As Mr. Holmes may conceivably mean the 'Helena' of Euripides, we compare Sonnet cxxi. with 'Helena,' line 270. The parallel, the imitation ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... really vital factor in the development of his dramatic art, and that this could not be said either of Lord Pembroke or Lord Southampton. Indeed, whoever he was, he could not have been anybody of high birth, as was shown very clearly by the 25th Sonnet, in which Shakespeare contrasting himself with those who are "great princes' favourites," says ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde

... added distinction of being the special friend and munificent patron of the author of the play that they have come to witness. To him had been dedicated the author's first appeal to the reading public—a poem called "Venus and Adonis," published some three years since; also, a certain "sugared sonnet," privately circulated, protesting— ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan

... this sonnet consists entirely of monosyllables, and yet that the style of it shows considerable power and vigour. The words printed in italics are all derived from Latin, with the exception of the word phrase, ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... sonnet in the Second Folio (1632), Milton took the Jonsonian view of Shakespeare, whose "easy numbers" he contrasted with "slow-endeavouring Art," and readers of the poems of 1645 found in L'Allegro an early formulation of what was to become the stock comparison of the two ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe

... a disguise, though he might probably have done so, if the real object had perchance been a Laura or a Leonora. It seems to me that the sonnets could only have come from a man deeply in love, and in love with a woman; and there is one sonnet which, from its incongruity, I take to be a purposed blind. These extraordinary sonnets form, in fact, a poem of so many stanzas of fourteen lines each; and, like the passion which inspired them, the sonnets are always the same, with a variety of expression,—continuous, ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... considerations than the deliberate purpose to use as far as possible any single element of our language. Such a purpose degenerates into affectation, and becomes a mannerism. The following extract from a sonnet by Addison Alexander shows what may be done by short Anglo-Saxon words; but, because of its lack of musical rhythm and fine poetic quality, it is not to be commended as ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... betwixt His terra cotta, plain or mix'd, And thy earth-gender'd sonnet; Small cause has he th' award to dread:— Thy Images are in the head, And his, poor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, Issue 353, January 24, 1829 • Various

... Milton, indeed, had a true English taste for the pleasures of the table, though refined by the lofty and poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. It is delicately implied in the refection in Paradise, and more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed in the sonnet proposing to "Laurence, of virtuous father virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in midwinter; and it blazes fully out in that untasted banquet which, elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in a trice from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... market for every little service, perforce he serves himself. In dealing with college students in California, one is impressed by their boundless ingenuity. If anything needs doing, some student can do it for you. Is it to sketch a waterfall, to engrave a portrait, to write a sonnet, to mend a saddle, to sing a song, to build an engine, or to "bust a bronco," there is someone at hand who can do it, and do it artistically. Varied ingenuity California demands of her pioneers. Their native originality has been intensified by circumstances, ...
— California and the Californians • David Starr Jordan

... claim can contemporary criticism set up to respect — that criticism which crucified Jesus Christ, stoned Stephen, hooted Paul for a madman, tried Luther for a criminal, tortured Galileo, bound Columbus in chains, drove Dante into a hell of exile, made Shakespeare write the sonnet, 'When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes', gave Milton five pounds for 'Paradise Lost', kept Samuel Johnson cooling his heels on Lord Chesterfield's doorstep, reviled Shelley as an unclean dog, killed Keats, cracked jokes on Glueck, Schubert, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... I. "Well, my dear, what of it? Poor old Adrian is capable of anything. Nothing he did would ever surprise me. He might write a sonnet to a Royal Princess's first set of false teeth or steal the tin cup from a blind beggar's dog, and he would be still the same beautiful, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... handsomest of the Ingleside boys. Miss Oliver found pleasure in looking at him for his good looks—he was so exactly like what she would have liked her own son to be. Glossy black hair, brilliant dark grey eyes, faultless features. And a poet to his fingertips! That sonnet sequence was really a remarkable thing for a lad of twenty to write. Miss Oliver was no partial critic and she knew that Walter ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... to-day that you wish Tennyson's sonnet to be read after your health is given on Saturday. I am perfectly certain that it would not do at that time. I am quite convinced that the audience would not receive it, under these exciting circumstances, as it ought to be received. If I had to read it, I would on no account ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... of manuscript which was lying on the table. 'It is in Italian, but I will translate it for you.' 'No,' said I; 'read it as it is written; I understand Italian.' Then he read the opening lines of a sonnet which was written to Laura in the shadow. He read about six lines ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton

... Shakespeare." Wordsworth, on the other hand (without a nickname to show a close connection with the common), held that Shakespeare unlocked his heart with the sonnets for key. Browning jeered at this belief, to be in turn contradicted by Swinburne. Matthew Arnold gave us in a sonnet "the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... spirit seemed to assert itself, and passing from smooth prose to smoother poetry, sonnet, song, or psalm, flowed down the page in cadences stately, sweet, or solemn, filling the reader with delight at the discovery of a gift so genuine, yet so shyly folded up within itself, unconscious ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... time I have felt a very particular desire to evidence to you the estimation due your spirit and your eminent qualities: the superb sonnet augmented my wish. But the inconveniences of childbirth and the cares required by a little girl whom I adore, made me defer this pleasure. During my husband's absence, your last and much honored letter came to my hands. Your amiable compliments to me, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... latest work. Perhaps one of the most remarkable instances is that of Rossetti. In the course of the House of Life, the dark curtain of the exotic mood, with its strange odours and glimpses, its fallen light, its fevered sense, is raised at intervals upon a sonnet of pure transparency and delicate sweetness, as though the weary, voluptuous soul, in its restless passage among perfumed chambers, looked out suddenly from a window upon some forest glade, full of cool winds and winter sunshine, and stood silent awhile. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... others, Mr. Holman Hunt and Mr. Woolner, had at that time more training and technical power than he; but he was, nevertheless, the brain and soul of the enterprise. What these young men proposed was excellently propounded in the sonnet by "W. M. R.," which they prefixed to their little literary venture, the "Germ," in 1850. Plainly to think even a little thought, to express it in natural words which are native to the speaker, to paint even an ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... only the super-earthly, be it ever so obscure, which charms and quiets the human heart. Who has better understood this earthly beauty than Michel Angelo?—but he understood it, because it was to him a reflection of superearthly beauty. You know his sonnet: ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... line to live by, daughter,' and he had me get out his volume of Milton and read the whole sonnet that the line is taken from. The fact that Milton was blind when he wrote it made it ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... sense entered the brain of the flower of chivalry. You might call it the dawn of reason. We had spent part of the morning in High Street, "the noblest old street in England," as our dear Hawthorne calls it. As Wordsworth had written a sonnet about it, aunt Celia was armed for the fray,—a volume of Wordsworth in one hand, and one of Hawthorne in the other. (I wish Baedeker didn't give such full information about what one ought to read before one can approach these places in a proper spirit.) When we ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... was enough for them! They asked no such inconvenient reward as marriage: indeed, one or two of them had already obtained that boon from others. To serve their purpose, and then, if it must be, to be forgotten, or—wild hope—to be embalmed in a sonnet sequence: that ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... homely companionship with gooseberry and currant bushes, with potatoes and pease. The scent of the sunset came in reality from a cheval de frise of wallflower on the coping of the low stone wall behind where she was sitting with her Milton. She read aloud in a low voice that sonnet beginning "Lady that in the prime of earliest youth." As she finished it, a voice, as low, said, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... that time hath flung away, Uncouth words in disarray, Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet, Ode and elegy and sonnet." ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... guide and safeguard of the poet's soul. She is already in glory with Mary the Queen of Angels. She already beholds the face of the Ever-blessed. And the envoye of the Vita Nuova is the promise of the Commedia. "After this sonnet" (in which he describes how beyond the widest sphere of heaven his love had beheld a lady receiving honor and dazzling by her glory the unaccustomed spirit)—"After this sonnet there appeared to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... doth become this Age To talk of bloodshed, fury, rage, And t' drink stout healths in brim-fill'd Nogans. To th' downfall of the Hogan Mogans. With that the Player doffs his Bonnet, And tunes his voice as if a Sonnet Were to be sung; then gently says, O what delight there is in Plays! Sure if we were but all in Peace, This noise of Wars and News would cease; All sorts of people then would club Their pence to see a Play that's good. You'l wonder all this while (perhaps) The Curioso holds his ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... childhood, certain manuscripts containing Scriptural sonnets, besides other verses and enigmas which my grandmother said were written by my great-grandmother. But because my great-grandmother wrote a stray sonnet and an occasional riddle, it was no sign that she inherited a spark from Hannah More, ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy

... principal dishes of which it must be composed. Thus limited straitly, the making of it becomes a struggle of genius against material conditions; and its successful accomplishment is comparable with the perfect presentment by a great poet of some well-worn elemental truth in a sonnet—of which the triumphant beauty comes less from the integral concept than from the exquisite felicity of expression that gives freshness to a hackneyed subject treated in accordance ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... him—when he was young," Lady Brigit Mead continued, her thick-looking white eyelids, eyelids that the hapless Mr. Babington compared in his twenty-second sonnet to magnolia-petals, drooping till her lashes made shadows on ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... as a tourist, one does not complain. The city is rich in spires and there are nice views to be got from the railway carriage windows. We got rather too much of those views that morning. Even Wordsworth, though he did write an early morning sonnet on Westminster Bridge, would not have cared to meditate on "Houses Asleep" for an hour and a quarter before he got a wash ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... of these breakfasts, Sir,' resumed the new acquaintance—'"feasts of reason," sir, "and flows of soul," as somebody who wrote a sonnet to Mrs. Leo Hunter on her breakfasts, feelingly and ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... upon the roots, come forth at last winged, and find their nourishment in the blooms of the very same tree. It comforts me, because we have ourselves to eat many bitter roots here, whose perfect flower shall one day delight us. This, dear Sophia, has been a long ramble. I promised to copy that sonnet of James's for you, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... wonder of it overwhelmed him. He told himself that the only possible explanation of her caring for such as he, was that Narcissus-like, she had seen her own image reflected in his heart, and had fallen in love with it. The fancy attracted him; he rode on, his mind set on a sonnet that should fitly enshrine the thought, and politics and religion, symbols and ideals, faded, as the stars go out when the ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... are unfortunately mislaid, but they have no particular connection with the story. They are both very short, the first contains an adventure on the road, and the last Mr. Papillon's banishment under the Alien Act from a ministerial misconception of a metaphysical sonnet. ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles

... these travellers during the reign of Henry the Eighth were Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey. These courtiers possessed the poetical faculty, and therefore paid special attention to literary form. As a result they introduced the Sonnet of the Petrarchan type into England. The amorous verse of the inhabitants of these sunny climes took hold of the young Englishmen. Many men of rank and education, who did not regard themselves as of the world of letters, penned pleasant verse, ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... made after a good model, because they are like this good model, though each after its kind; even so there is a perfect relation between things made after a bad model. Not that the bad model is unique, for there are many; but each bad sonnet, for example, on whatever false model it is formed, is just like a ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... dark-green gardens,—which is yours?" he questioned. "All day I have been wondering. That is the single thing that really stirs me here, that really gives me a feeling—its association with you. All day I have been hearing a sonnet of Ronsard's—do you remember it?—Voicy le bois. But I wish I knew which villa is your villa, which garden is your garden. Why did n't I find out before I was driven from Paradise? I could easily find out here ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... Devon was mad about the "Rose of Torridge," as she was called. There was not a young gallant for ten miles round who would not have gone to Jerusalem to win her, and not a week passed but some nosegay or languishing sonnet was conveyed into the Rose's chamber, all of which she stowed away with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or the eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities just as an elephant might treat an ant-hill. It is this sense of the immeasurable disproportion in things that a pessimist poet has expressed in the well-known sonnet:— ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer

... considered so if they had been married," replied the gentleman. "Mammas have no mercy on each other in those delicate manoeuvrings. Well, he waltzed with her always; and bent over her—willow-fashion; looked with her at the moon; and wrote a sonnet which she took to herself, for it was addressed 'To mine own dear ——;' and then when, about eight weeks afterwards, we met him at the dejeuner at Sally Lodge, he was as entranced with Lizzie Grey's guitar as he had been with Lelia's harp, sketched her ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... at the floor, littered with all Betty's futile beginnings, and her smile came flashing back again. "I should think," she said, "that you must be writing a love letter—if it isn't a sonnet— judging by the trouble it's making you. They told me downstairs that you were cramming history, but I was sure it would take more than a mere history cram to keep you away from that music. ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde

... are broad and thy lakes fringed with grasses, The glint of the waves of the bright Santa Fe, With her edging of cypress and long-floating mosses, Forever are murmuring a sonnet to thee. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various



Words linked to "Sonnet" :   praise, poem, Shakespearean sonnet, versify, poetize, Petrarchan sonnet, poetise, English sonnet, Elizabethan sonnet, poesy, verse form, sonneteer



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