"Versification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these singers were the troubadours, who were traveling minstrels especially gifted in versification and in music. Their compositions appear to have been short, on the whole, and of various kinds, as will presently be seen. The earliest of the troubadours of whom we have definite account was Count ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... diction, language study, poetry, history, and painting! In the first stages there are rules to be learned, just as in any other study. In school we had to learn the rules of grammar and mathematics. Just such rules are applicable to musical performance. I must know the rules of versification in order to scan poetic stanzas; so I must know the laws of rhythm and meter to be able to punctuate musical phrases and periods. Pupils who have long passed the stage of division and fractions do not seem able to determine the time-values of the various notes and groups of notes used in music; ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... Indian frontiers has created an unique school of realistic fiction in which Mr. Kipling is at this moment the chief professor. There is moreover a manifest affinity between these short prose narratives and the strain of racy strenuous versification upon the quaint unvarnished notions and hardy exploits of the bush, the prairie, or the frontier, by which Bret Harte, Lindsay Gordon, and again Kipling have attained celebrity. As these poems echo the far-off ring of the ancient ballad, so we ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... who is to pay him for his work. And that this is the truth may be seen by the countless plays that a most fertile wit of these kingdoms has written, with so much brilliancy, so much grace and gaiety, such polished versification, such choice language, such profound reflections, and in a word, so rich in eloquence and elevation of style, that he has filled the world with his fame; and yet, in consequence of his desire to suit the taste of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... is a tacit apology perhaps for some genuine feeling. The old pastoral had become hopelessly absurd because Thyrsis and Lycidas have become extravagant and 'unnatural.' The form might be adopted for practice in versification; but when Ambrose Phillips took it a little too seriously, Pope, whose own performances were not much better, came down on him for his want of sincerity, and Gay showed what could be still made of the form by introducing real rustics and turning it ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... he cited his judgment seemed perfectly justified, and even if he was wrong, it is interesting to note that this poor sailor and night-watchman was ready to rise up and criticise an eminent dignitary and scholar on rather delicate points of versification and the finer distinctions between old ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... Written in middle life, it stands midway between his earlier poetry with its more lyric note and his later work with its deeper and more prophetic tones. In point of expression the poet's powers had attained their full development; he has perfect command of rime; the versification is free and shows no trace of the stilted style of his first volumes; the language is copious and eloquent, but exhibits few signs of that verbosity and tendency to vain repetition which, as has been already remarked, marred ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... verse-making was very popular and very widely practised; for versification is very easy when people are in the habit of using it freely, and a verse is much more easily remembered than a line of prose. For many generations legends were versified. It must be remembered that verse and poetry ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... Swabian Minnelieder, the connecting link between modern and ancient German poetry. Still, notwithstanding their merit as critics, they were no poets, and merely opened to others the road to improvement. Hagedorn, although frivolous in his ideas, was graceful and easy in his versification; but the most eminent poet of the age was Gellert of Leipzig, A.D. 1769, whose tales, fables, and essays brought him into such note as to attract the attention of Frederick the Great, who, notwithstanding the contempt in which he held the poets of Germany, honored him with ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... may suppose in the elder times would have employed the harps of the minstrels. This kind of poetry has been supposed capable of uniting the vigorous numbers and wild fiction, which occasionally charm us in the ancient ballad, with a greater equality of versification, and elegance of sentiment, than we can expect to find in the works of a rude age. But, upon my ideas of the nature and difficulty of such imitations, I ought in prudence to be silent; lest I resemble the dwarf, who brought with him a standard to measure his own stature. I may, however, hint at ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... has not and cannot have them; it is the poetry of the builders of an age of prose and reason. Though they may write in verse, though they may in a certain sense be masters of the art of versification, Dryden and Pope are not classics of our poetry, they are ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Dean. It would have roused any dean with a particle of spirit in him. After all, a high ecclesiastic cannot sit still and listen to profane condemnation of one of the Psalms of David, even if it has undergone versification at the hands of Dr. Watts. The conduct of McNeice and Malcolmson was offensive and provocative. The noise made by the crowd was maddening. There is every excuse for Babberly's sudden loss of temper. But the Dean's anger was more than excusable. It was justified. He sprang to ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... “The Eumerella Shore” is a smart hit at the cattle-stealers who availed themselves of the chances afforded by the new state of things in the country. Later still comes the time when the selectors became employers of labour, and “The Stringy-bark Cockatoo,” though rough in style and versification, is a splendid hit at the new squireens. A “cockatoo,” it should be explained, is a small settler, and the stringy-bark tree is an unfailing sign of poor land; and the minstrel was much worse treated when working for “The Stringy-bark Cockatoo” ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... work from the same hand. 'Hardly any one who takes a sufficient interest in prosody to induce him to read this book' will fail to find it absorbing, and even entertaining, as only one other book on the subject of versification is: the Petit Traite de poesie francaise of Theodore de Banville.... We await the second and third volumes of this admirable undertaking with impatience. To stop reading it at the end of the first volume leaves one in just such a state of suspense as if it had been ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... minor epics, into the context of his poem, somewhat as the bards of major epic are supposed to have done. Surprisingly, in view of this technique of composition, the poem is well integrated, and consistently smooth and fluent in its versification.[51] ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... the rough and barren rock on which they are kindled. The heroic couplet is not the most popular measure certainly; but as I did not deviate into the other from a wish to flatter what is called public opinion, I shall quit it without further apology, and take my chance once more with that versification, in which I have hitherto published nothing but compositions whose former circulation is part of my present, and will be of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Next he set to work at "Cromwell," a tragedy in five acts, which was to be his passport to fame. At this play he laboured for months, shutting himself up completely, and loving his self-imposed slavery—though his want of faculty for versification, and the intense difficulty he experienced in finding words for the ideas which crowded into his imaginative brain were decided drawbacks. While engaged on this work, he may indeed have experienced some of the feelings he describes in the "Peau de Chagrin," quoted above; for, curiously ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. In our opinion, it is the most effective single example of 'fugitive poetry' ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification, and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and 'pokerishness.' It is one of those 'dainties bred in a book' which we feed on. It will stick to the memory of everybody who ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... a common thought; 'that the Muse had come to him in his sleep, and whispered, that it did not become him to write on such subjects as politicks; he should confine himself to humbler themes:' but the versification was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... wrote." He probably meant by this that it was the first verse he ever wrote "that he cared to preserve," those specimens I have introduced being only given as marking the steps crude and faltering by which he attained a facility and technique in the art of versification seldom surpassed. ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the century, to the effect, that a Scottish officer, serving in Egypt, had been much affected on hearing a soldier's wife crooning to herself the original words of the air. We have inserted in the text Imlah's second version, as being somewhat smoother in versification. It is the only song which we have transcribed from his volume, published in 1841. But the most popular words which have been attached to the air and chorus were the composition of a student in one of the colleges of Aberdeen, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... versification which may properly be called poetry. Of this the Yaravies, or elegies, afford some fair examples. These poems have for their subjects unfortunate love, or sorrow for the dead. They were recited or sung by one or more voices, with an accompaniment ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... Literature, are greatly on the decline; next, those who have kept up their classical studies, and are able to read and enjoy the original, will hardly take an interest in a mere translation; while the English reader, unacquainted with Greek, will naturally prefer the harmonious versification and polished brilliancy of Pope's translation; with which, as a happy adaptation of the Homeric story to the spirit of English poetry, I have not the presumption to enter into competition. But, admirable as it is, Pope's Iliad can hardly be ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... for the most part, extremely rude in their versification. Their stanzas of four or two lines have not the full rhyme of vowel and consonant, but merely what the Spaniards call the "assonante," or vowel rhyme, and attention seldom seems to have been paid to the number of feet on which the lines moved along. But, however defective ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow
... laborious collections which supply his text. He was capable of writing excellent poetry, but he seems to have cultivated this talent too little. The English verses prefixed to his book, which possess beautiful imagery, and great sweetness of versification, have been frequently published. His Latin elegiac verses addressed to his book, shew a very agreeable ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... doubtful. There is nothing in the style or diction of Alphonsus which resembles Chapman's undisputed work, and it is hard to believe that he had a hand in it. The Revenge for Honour is on an Oriental theme, entirely different from those handled by Chapman in his other tragedies, and the versification is marked by a greater frequency of feminine endings than is usual with him; but phrases and thoughts occur which may be paralleled from his plays, and the work may ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... beginning a spy and a trepan. [42] He employed the short and sad remains of his life in turning the Consolation of Boethius into English. The translation was published after the translator's death. It is remarkable chiefly on account of some very unsuccessful attempts to enrich our versification with new metres, and on account of the allusions with which the preface is filled. Under a thin veil of figurative language, Preston exhibited to the public compassion or contempt his own blighted fame and broken heart. He complained ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... volume having been devoted to the Reason or Theory of Art in general, it is our intention in the second, Rhyme and Rhythm, to bring these comprehensive thoughts to a focus, and concentrate their light upon the art of Versification. Indeed, this volume is to be considered as a manual of poetic Rhythm. Practical rules are given for its construction and criticism; simple solutions offered of its apparent irregularities and anomalies; and examples ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... are the main aspects of style which can be used in determining, not exact dates, but the period of Shakespeare's activity within which a given work falls. More capable of mechanical calculation than the tests of either matter or style are those derived from changes in versification, though here too there is often a subjective element in the reckoning. The more important metrical tests include the following: the frequency of rhyme, whether in the heroic couplet or, as not uncommonly occurs in ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... The versification is still juvenile, but there is no fault in the sentiment, and Miss Alcott, in a later note, says, "The dream came true, and for the last ten years of her life, Marmee sat in peace ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... prior to their Christianization. The precious fragment consists of 69 alliterating verses, which are preserved in a Kassel manuscript of the 8th or 9th century. The language shows a mixture of Low and High German, there are gaps in the text, the meaning of several words is doubtful, and the versification is here and there defective. All this, which some account for by supposing that the manuscript was copied from a version which had been written down from memory and not perfectly recalled, makes translation difficult and uncertain. ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... older men seemed to dwell upon these peculiarities of versification as being distinctively ecclesiastical and therefore spiritually edifying, and brought up the musical rear of such couplets with long-drawn and profoundly impressive "shy-un's" and "i-tee's;" but these irregularities found little favor in the eyes of the ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... Classic Latin versification is supposed to have died out with Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers in the sixth century, but an advance was made towards playing with words by the introduction of rhymes in the church hymns. Some trace of them is found in the verses of Hilary in the fourth century, but we find them first regularly ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... abstract and conventional, instead of continuing to deal with shepherds, thunderstorms, and personifications, he dealt with the actual circumstances of his life, however matter-of-fact and sordid these might be. And, second, in a time when English versification was particularly stiff, lame, and feeble, and words were used with ultra-academical timidity, he wrote verses that were easy, racy, graphic, and forcible, and used language with absolute tact and ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... enumerating the words with which Milton has enriched our language, as, perhaps, not to have named one of which Milton was the author; and Bentley has yet more unhappily praised him as the introducer of those elisions into English poetry, which had been used from the first essays of versification among us, and which Milton was, indeed, the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... following little history has presumed to borrow the peculiar style of versification from Longfellow's celebrated ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... better prove to him that she was worthy of so great an honor than by telling him quite frankly just what she thought of his verses. They were very, very pretty. He had talent—great talent. Only, as in attending the classes of M. Regis she had acquired some little knowledge of the laws of versification, she would like to warn him against impairing a thought for the benefit of a rhyme, and she pointed out several such places ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... tastes and pursuits were perhaps a little too similar. They addressed poetical epistles to each other, and were, reciprocally, too gentle critics. But Mr. Pye was a most amiable and accomplished man, a fine classical scholar, and a master of correct versification. He paid a visit to Enfield, and by his influence hastened a conclusion at which my grandfather was just arriving, to wit, that he would no longer persist in the fruitless effort of converting a poet into a merchant, and that content with the independence ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Heliand." The investigation has been admirably started by Mr. Edouard Sievers in a little book containing this portion of the text, and exhibiting in detail the peculiar intimacy of relation between it and the "Heliand," in regard to vocabulary, phraseology, and versification. This part of Mr. Sievers' work is complete. Probably no one who has gone through his proofs will be found to question his conclusion, that there is between the "Heliand" and the Saxon "Paradise Lost" such ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... class happened to find that Matthew viii. 28-33 and Luke viii. 26-33 contain the same account, that of the demons entering into the swine. Very odd! chapters tallying, and verses so nearly: is the versification rightly managed? Examination is sure to show that there are monstrous inconsistencies in the mode of division, which being corrected, the verses tally as well as the chapters. And then how comes it? I cannot go on, {52} for I have no gift at torturing a coincidence, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... interest and to lead him to investigate further the rich mine of Spanish literature. Becquer's poetry is no less pleasing than his prose, and not much more difficult to read. With the aid of the ample treatise on Spanish versification contained in the introduction, the student will be enabled to appreciate the harmony and rhythm of Becquer's verse, and in all subsequent reading of Spanish poetry he will find this treatise a convenient and valuable work ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... can be adequate. In knowledge of human character, in wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judgment, he has no rival. It is true of him, as of no other writer, that his language and versification adapt themselves to every phase of sentiment, and sound every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignificance when measured by the magnitude of his achievement. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... on Prosody, I have designedly omitted all special treatment of the lyric metres of Horace and Catullus, as well as of the measures of the comic poets. Our standard editions of these authors all give such thorough consideration to versification that repetition in a separate ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett
... the absence of fault, and all that fault which arises from the absence of merit—of high poetic merit, we mean, for in music it is equal to any of his poems. Much has been said about the model which he followed in his versification, the majority of critics tracing in it an imitation of Fairfax's Tasso. The fact seems to be that Waller, with a good ear, had a very limited theory of verse. He worshipped smoothness, and sought it at every hazard. He preferred the Jacob of a soft flowing ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... last three lines [Greek: Allo], [Greek: Touto], and [Greek: Panta] stand precisely in the same relation to [Greek: ereo] that [Greek: ek] does in the first, [Greek: All'] merely taking the place of [Greek: de], for the sake of versification. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... kind, should we instantly, supposing that we wanted to make a poet of him, and nothing else, forbid him all quiet, steady, rational labor? Should we force him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the laws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to discover in the works of previous writers? Whatever gifts the boy had, would much be likely to come of them so treated? unless, indeed, they were so great as to break through all such snares of falsehood and vanity, and build ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... rhythm, verse-structure, and rhyme. There is, I believe, no good, concise, cheap handbook to English prosody; yet such a manual is greatly needed. The only one with which I am acquainted is Tom Hood the younger's *Rules of Rhyme: A Guide to English Versification*. Again, the introduction to Walker's *Rhyming Dictionary* gives a fairly clear elementary account of the subject. Ruskin also has written an excellent essay on verse-rhythms. With a manual in front of you, you can acquire in a couple of hours a knowledge of the formal principles ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... had refused him; and, when he was no more, perpetuated his fame, which he felt was a portion of his own celebrity, by publishing his posthumous poem, De Arts Graphica;[A] a poem, which Mason has made readable by his versification, and Reynolds even interesting by his ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... been called, should we not regard his abstinence as a condemnation from which there is no appeal? I do not believe, moreover, that either Nourrit or Dupre authorized by their example a habit so contrary to the rules of French versification, so disagreeable to the well-trained ear and so opposed to good taste. Such young singers as have yielded to it, have only to listen to themselves for one ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... particularly free and unconventional. The Chancellor Pero LOPEZ DE AYALA (1332-1407), wise statesman, brilliant historian and trenchant page xiv satirist, wrote religious songs in the same style and still more intricate in versification. They are included in the didactic poem usually called El ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... his principle of catalexis, we still doubt whether the irregular metre of The Unknown Eros is happily used except for the large sweep of the flight of the Ode more properly so called. Lycidas, the Mrs. Anne Killigrew, the Intimations, and Emerson's Threnody, considered merely for their versification, fulfil their laws so perfectly that they certainly move without checks as without haste. So with the graver Odes—much in the majority—of Mr. Coventry Patmore's series. A more lovely dignity of extension ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versification which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... Versification, and Method of Dramatic Poetry. Text: Cambridge Text of Shakespeare. Professor ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Grumbling," "Digging Stumps," "Biz," to show what is coming, so that one can get ready to cry or laugh, as the case may be—a kind of sign-board, a milestone, to tell where we are going, and how fast we go. The readers then call her attention to the solid columns of the other papers, and the versification of the World. She said she did not like the dead calm. She liked the breaking up into verses, like her songs. That is a good thing; it gives the reporter time to take breath and sharpen his pen, and think of some witty thing ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... fireside before the little girl said her last good-night to it. So far there had been some bright witticisms and sarcasms in rhyme, and the clergy had penned verses for wedding and funeral occasions. The Rev. John Cotton had indulged in flowing versification, and even Governor Bradford had interspersed his severer cares with visions of softer strains. Anne Dudley, the wife of Governor Bradstreet, with her eight children, had found time for study and writing, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... look at Love's Labour's Lost, published in quarto, in 1598, as "corrected and augmented by W. Shakespere." The date of composition is unknown, but the many varieties of versification, with some allusions, mark it as among the earliest of the dramas. Supposing that Shakespeare obtained his knowledge of fine manners and speech, and of the tedious quips and conceits which he satirises, from the contemporary poems, plays, and novels which abounded in them, ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... "Tea," and the "Eulogy of Moukden" as the cradle of his race, was translated by Pere Amiot, and attracted the attention of Voltaire, who addressed to the emperor an epistolary poem on the requirements and difficulties of Chinese versification. The French thus rendered a material service in making China better known to Europe and Europe better known in China, which, although it may be hard to gauge precisely, entitles them still to rank among those who have opened up China to Europeans. ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... can be entirely restored, the poem will appear as "the most primitive" of French epics of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But it has passed from copy to copy in the course of generations. The methods of versification change, and, after line 2647, "there are traces of change in the language. The word co, followed by a vowel, hitherto frequent, never again reappears. The vowel i, of li, nominative masculine of the article" (li Reis, "the king"), "never occurs in the text after line 2647. ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... American poet was busy with the ancient Northern literature at this time. James Russell Lowell wrote one notable poem that is Old Norse in subject and spirit, "The Voyage to Vinland." The third part of the poem, "Gudrida's Prophecy," hints at Icelandic versification, and the short lines are hammer-strokes that warm the reader to enthusiasm. Far more of the spirit of the old literature is in this short poem than is to be found in the whole of Longfellow's "Saga of King Olaf." The character of Bioern is well drawn, ...
— The Influence of Old Norse Literature on English Literature • Conrad Hjalmar Nordby
... popularity was "Maryland, My Maryland." The versification of this was of a much higher Order, being fairly respectable. The air is old, and a familiar one to all college students, and belongs to one of the most common ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... the poet gives to his decasyllables suggest either a total want of ear or such a study in foreign languages that the student had actually forgotten the intonation and cadences of his own tongue. So stumbling and knock-kneed is his verse that any one who remembers the admirable versification of Chaucer may now and then be inclined to think that Wyatt had much better have left his innovations alone. But this petulance is soon rebuked by the appearance of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... that any composition is good, however perfect otherwise, which constantly presents the same form, and continually falls into the same feet. A constant observing of similar measures and cadences, is a kind of versification, and all prose in which this fault is discoverable, can have no allowance made for it, by reason of its manifest affectation (the very suspicion of which ought to be avoided), and its uniformity, which, of course, must fatigue and ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... have casually alluded to the flash song of Jerry Juniper, I may, perhaps, be allowed to make a few observations upon this branch of versification. It is somewhat curious, with a dialect so racy, idiomatic, and plastic as our own cant, that its metrical capabilities should have been so little essayed. The French have numerous chansons d'argot, ranging ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... applies to many of the other poems. Miss Whitney evidently despises foot-notes as utterly as Tennyson, and leaves much unexplained in her titles and in the poems themselves, which might help us to understand them, if we knew it. Obscurity of thought and a lack of facility in versification cause evident defects in her otherwise fine book; on the other hand, she is never flat and seldom feeble, but writes as one whose thoughts and feelings move on a high level, sustained by a familiarity with the strength and beauty, rather than the grace and tenderness of literature. Few ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... opened therein as a preacher, who delighted in the collection of olden tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy, whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the example of those strong poets whom I proposed to him as a pattern, but formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... talent, taking him partly outside the field of literature. He made the most of his powers: nothing which he has written gives the idea that he might have done it better. He was a poet, which Lever was not, and had an easy command of versification and language. His songs, while they show no high poetic qualities, are excellent of their kind, and his facility in turning an impromptu verse is shown in this scrap from the book before us in praise ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... taste of his own period by a hundred years, and without teacher or example displayed the excellences which came to be preferred to all others in the eighteenth century. "These poems of his," says his editor in that age (1718), "having stood the test of above a century, and the language and the versification being still pure and elegant, it is to be hoped they will still shine among his countrymen and preserve his name." At this time, and for long afterwards, Drayton, save for an occasional reprint of his "Nimphidia" among miscellaneous collections, ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... poet, "is a wild rhapsody, miserably deficient in versification, but as the sentiments are the genuine feelings of my heart, for that reason I have a particular pleasure ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... institutions. Hence both good and evil have arisen. Our colleges easily conforming in their youthful and supple energy, have met the demands of the age. They have thrown aside their monastic gowns and quadrangular caps. They have in good degree given up the pedantic follies of Latin versification and Hebrew orations. Their walls have arisen alike in populous city and lonely hamlet, and in poverty and insignificance they have been content could they give depth and breadth to any small portion of the national mind. They have conceded to Science the place which her rapid and brilliant ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... courts of the cardinals in the capacity of companions or secretaries, or as preceptors to their illegitimate children. Lucretia, also, received instruction in classic literature from these masters. Among the poets who lived in Rome she found teachers to instruct her in Italian versification and in writing sonnets, an art which was everywhere cultivated by women as well as men. She doubtless learned to compose verses, although the writers on the history of Italian literature, Quadrio and Crescimbeni, do not place her among the poets of the peninsula. Nowhere ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... that from that early time to a later period, many of the great products of English poetry have been watered by silver rills of imaginative genius from a remote Italian source. Chaucer's indebtedness has just been noticed. Spenser borrowed his versification and not a little of his poetic handling in the Faery Queen from Ariosto. Milton owes to Dante some of his conceptions of heaven and hell in his Paradise Lost, while his Lycidas, Arcades, Allegro and Penseroso, may be called Italian ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Minard, "the versification has taste; there are some really fine lines in it, and I admit to you that I think this sort of literature rather above the anagrams of ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... Merry well, as Sparkle concluded, though he did not like the satire upon his own favourite pursuit; "those delineations are correct, and the versification good, as far as it applies to the worst species of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... satisfied with the knowledge alone of all that had any relation to our religion, but made also a particular search into our histories. I made myself perfect in polite learning, in the works of the poets, and in versification. I applied myself to geography, to chronology, and to speak our Arabian language in its purity; not forgetting, in the mean time, all such exercises as were proper for a prince to understand. But one thing I was mightily in love with, and succeeded in to admiration, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... has been quite of a similar kind in this instance as it was in that of Mr. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD: little corrections, in point of Orthography; and still fewer of Grammar: sometimes of Diction; and sometimes of Versification. For some of the best of these emendations I have been indebted to one, in mentioning of whom I should have had an affectionate Pride: and have more in that Modesty which forbids the mention. They are, as I have said, few of any kind: For of emendations I have been anxiously ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... for the reasons given in my own edition. The question has not in itself much pertinence to our present purpose, as there is no doubt that the tragedy was produced in this period, and its general style, both of thought and versification, is that of Shakespeare in its fullest development and vigor. But with the question of date there is involved another of great interest to the thoughtful reader—that of mixed authorship. In the introductory essay to my edition of this play (published ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... note to "Couplets on M. Laisney, imprimeur a Peronne," he says: "It was in his printing-house that I was put to prentice; not having been able to learn orthography, he imparted to me the taste for poetry, gave me lessons in versification, and corrected ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the versification excellent, and my disinclination to take the parentage is not because of any defect in them; but it is a matter of fact, there is only one word which I inserted, and which I claim as my own composition—that word is 'Erin.' ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... resemblance to the original as an unhewn shaft to the fluted column. Mr. Hayward unconsciously illustrates his lack of a refined appreciation of verse, "in giving," as he says, "a sort of rhythmical arrangement to the lyrical parts," his object being "to convey some notion of the variety of versification which forms one great charm of the poem." A literal translation is always possible in the unrhymed passages; but even here Mr. Hayward's ear did not dictate to him the necessity of preserving the ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... what is called the First Silesian School. Opitz is the true representative of the classical poetry of the seventeenth century. He was a scholar and a gentleman; most correct in his language and versification; never venturing on ground that had not been trodden before by some classical poet, whether of Greece, Rome, France, Holland, or Italy. In him we also see the first traces of that baneful alliance between princes ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... have the hardiness to insert the very words of an imperial poet, armed with despotic power. A burlesque imitation would answer the purpose; and it may be inferred from another passage in the same poem, that Persius was content to ridicule the mode of versification ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... rules. No sentence was to exceed two lines of his manuscript, equivalent to five of print. No paragraph was to consist of more than seven sentences. He further applied to his prose writing the rule of French versification which forbids a hiatus(the concourse of two vowels), not allowing it to himself even at the break between two sentences or two paragraphs; nor did he permit himself ever to use the same word twice, either in the same sentence or in two consecutive ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... mention that the appellation "Childe,"[2] as "Childe Waters," "Childe Childers," etc., is used as more consonant with the old structure of versification which I have adopted. The "Good Night" in the beginning of the first Canto, was suggested by Lord Maxwell's "Good Night"[3] in the Border ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... already, in many passages of her 'Peru,' in her 'Ode on the Peace.' and, above all, in her 'Irregular Fragment,' amply proved to the world, that she possesses not only the talent of elegant and harmonious versification, but the spirit of true poetry. The poem, which I have now the pleasure of giving for the first time to the public, and which was written at my request, will be found in the Appendix. It is some what remarkable, that female poets have hitherto been the chief celebrators of Captain Cook in this ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... affairs of his own consular year. The story is not a happy one, but the lines are harmonious. It is often worth our while to inquire how poetry has become such as it is, and how the altered and improved phases of versification have arisen. To trace our melody from Chaucer to Tennyson is matter of interest to us all. Of Cicero as a poet we may say that he found Latin versification rough, and left it smooth and musical. Now, as we ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... earth, which is above when compared with Tartarus, but not so in relation to the Elysian Fields; versification imposes such strict limits on expression, that it must have the benefit ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... but merely indicate a certain resemblance in spirit between two originals. An original in Fable-writing Gay certainly was. He has copied, neither in story, spirit, nor moral, any previous writer. His "Fables" are always graceful in literary execution, often interesting in story; their versification is ever smooth and flowing; and sometimes, as in the "Court of Death," their moral darkens into sublimity. On the whole, these "Fables," along with the "Beggars' Opera," and the delectable songs of "'Twas when the Seas were Roaring," and "Black-eyed Susan," shall ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the Birth-day of King Philip IV. in 1623, at Aranjuez; they were translated by our author in 1654, during his confinement at Taukerley-park in Yorkshire, which uneasy situation induced him to write the following stanzas on this work, which are here inserted, as a specimen of his versification. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... of friendship, and to repair this slight fault of prosody, the extra syllable disappeared in a hiatus which would have made Boileau's blond wig stand on end. But the Sacred Heart has a system of versification of its own which, rather than allow the dangerous expression to be used, let ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... despair? My own husband asked me three times, and three times I said no. And then he took to writing verses—and I saw there was but one way to stop him. So we were married. Ask her; ask her again—and again. You can always resort in the end to versification. And now," the lady concluded, rising, "I have spoken, and I leave you to your fate. I'm obliged to return to the hotel, to hold a bed of justice. It appears that my innocent darlings, beyond there, innocent as they look, have managed among them to break the electric light in my sitting-room. They're ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... in the case of the death of Captain Blifil, "dismissed the corpse with a single fee, but were not so disgusted with the living patient." At parting, the Bishop took the Curate most kindly by the hand, and recommended him by all means to cultivate the amiability of versification. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... esteemed poetical productions are the "Scenes of Infancy," and the ballads which he composed for the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border." Of the latter, the supernatural machinery is singularly striking; in the former poem, much smooth and elegant versification is combined with powerful and vigorous description. There are, indeed, occasional repetitions and numerous digressions; but amidst these marks of hasty composition, every sentence bears evidence of a masculine intellect and powerful imagination. His lyrical effusions are pervaded ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the prize poems of Oxford or Cambridge. Thus, the drama of Athens naturally was assumed as the model of modern imitation; but on it was ingrafted, not the vehemence and nature of the Greek originals, addressed to all mankind, but the measured march of heroic versification, intended for a narrow and dignified ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... engrave, I see," said Hyacinthe. "Well, since I renounced versification—a little poem I had begun on the End of Woman—because words seemed to me so gross and cumbersome, mere paving-stones as it were, fit for labourers, I myself have had some idea of trying drawing, and perhaps engraving too. But ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... copies, and for the sake of identification I will furnish a few extracts from the various "parts" (no fewer than six) into which the ballad is divided; observing that they fill a closely printed broadside, and that the production is entirely different from Jordan's versification of the Winter's Tale, under the title of The Jealous Duke and the injured Duchess, which came out in his Royal Arbor of Loyal Poesie, 8vo. 1664. It is singular that two ballads, hitherto wholly unknown, should have been written upon the same incidents of the same drama, although we are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... attached to the language and literature of Wales, a proof of which he gave by holding a congress of bards and literati at Carmarthen, at which various pieces of eloquence and poetry were recited, and certain alterations introduced into the canons of Welsh versification. Though holding offices of trust and emolument under the Saxon, he in the depths of his soul detested the race, and would have rejoiced to see it utterly extirpated from Britain. This hatred of his against the English was the cause of his doing that which cannot be justified on any ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... till 1681—three years after Marvell's death—that the small folio appeared with a fine portrait, still dear to the collector, which contains for the first time what may be called the "garden-poetry" of our author, together with some specimens of his political and satirical versification. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... overturn of Mary of Medicis into a river, where she was half-drowned, would never have been remembered if Madame de Vernuel, who saw it, had not said 'la Reine boit'. Pleasure or malignity often gives ridicule a weight which it does not deserve. The versification, I must confess, is too much neglected and too often bad: but, upon the whole, I read the play ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and talked of poetry. He brought down a huge treatise on English versification, translated from some German scholar's life-research—to prove a point ... he discussed what Sidney Lanier—whom he had known—might have done with metrics, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... verdict was unfavourable:—"There is some sweetness of versification and of expression in Miss Melville's poems, but they are unequal, and want force and interest. They never would become popular, so that I feel obliged to decline the publication. Poetry is at all times heavy stock, unless by ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... laxity of versification which deforms the grim and sardonic beauty of these occasionally rough and halting lines is perceptible here and there in "The Duchess of Malfy," but comes to its head in "The Devil's Law-case." It ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sensible people are mostly satisfied to feel, and not to understand. Any blunderer in verse, who will merely look at the rhymes of these three stanzas, will see that simplicity is about as much concerned there as it is with the windows of Chartres; the verses are as perfect as the colours, and the versification as elaborate. These stanzas might have been addressed to Queen Blanche; now see how Thibaut kept the same tone of courteous love in addressing the Queen ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... Locrine, none of 'the life of human character or the life-likeness of dramatic dialogue has suffered from the bondage of rhyme or has been sacrificed to the exigences of metre.' But when all is said, when an unparalleled skill in language, versification, and everything that is verbal in form, has been admitted, and with unqualified admiration; when, in addition, one has admitted, with not less admiration, noble qualities of substance, superb qualities of poetic imagination, there still ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... 'I think that these lines do you no discredit. Your versification is tolerably easy, and your ear seems to be just. The perusal of your little poem upon the whole gave me much pleasure; and if it is not asking too great a favour, I shall be highly obliged to you for ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... language might be so managed as to surpass the French in expression of strong sentiments, in boldness of imagery, in harmony and variety of versification I will not be sufficiently hardy to assert. The universality of the latter must be admitted as a strong presumption of its general excellency. Yet I cannot help wishing, that some pen worthy to be compared with Monsieur ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... his priests he took to reading by himself, for which he had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry. He learned versification from Dryden, he said. In his youthful poem of Alcander, he imitated every poet, Cowley, Milton, Spenser, Statius, Homer, Virgil. In a few years he had dipped into a great number of the English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. "This I did," he says, "without any design, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... favourite model; and although he has written no such condensed masterpieces of satire as the characters of Shaftesbury and Buckingham, yet his works as a whole are not much inferior, and justify the idea that had his life been spared, he might have risen to the level of "Glorious John." His versification, too, is decidedly of the Drydenic type. It is a free, fierce, rushing, sometimes staggering, race across meadow, moor, and mountain, dreading nothing except repose and languor, the lines chasing, and sometimes tumbling over each other in their ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... here importune death] [Theobald had regularized the versification and had added two words] Mr. Theobald's emendation is received by the succeeding editors; but it seems not necessary that a dialogue so distressful should be nicely regular. I have therefore preserved the original reading in the text, and the ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... published, notwithstanding the zeal of Dr. Langhorne, who is in raptures over passages the excellence of which is not very conspicuous. To give a preference to the Verses to Sir Thomas Hanmer, of which all that Langhorne could find to say is, "that the versification is easy and genteel, and the allusions always poetical," and especially to the Ode addressed to Mr. Home, on the superstition of the Highlands, over the Eclogues, may possibly be deemed to betray a corrupt taste, since it is an admission which is, it is believed, made for the first time. In ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... wood in Caithness. I knew Sir Tollemache Sinclair well, but unfortunately he was not at home. He was what is called "a character." He had strong literary tastes, and firmly believed that he understood the art of French versification better than Victor Hugo. The last time I had seen him was at a hotel in Paris. He was on that occasion in a mood of great complacency, having just been spending an hour with Victor Hugo at luncheon. I asked him if, with regard to French versification, Victor Hugo agreed with ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... getting you there; and as nothing of the sort has offered itself to him, this will be the very thing. Of course, if I succeed wonderfully well in my schemes for story- tellings, readings of my ballads and poems, lectures on the art of versification, and what not, we need have no lodgers; and then we shall all be living a happy family—all taking our share in keeping ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... Gouvon, and in the seminary at Annecy, and at Les Charmettes he did his best to teach himself, but without any better result than a very limited power of reading. In learning one rule he forgot the last; he could never master the most elementary laws of versification; he learnt and re-learnt twenty times the Eclogues of Virgil, but not a single word remained with him.[88] He was absolutely without verbal memory, and he pronounces himself wholly incapable of learning anything from masters. Madame de Warens tried to have him taught both dancing and fencing; ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... citation of Milton, intended to strengthen Mrs. Renshaw's argument, really weakens it; for while he undoubtedly condemns rhyme, he laments in the course of this very condemnation the lame metre which is sometimes concealed by apt rhyming. "Some Views on Versification," by Clara I. Stalker, is an essay written from a sounder and more conservative point of view. The middle course in poetical composition, which avoids alike wild eccentricities and mechanical precision, ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... fell so far below it in grace and ease. It must be added, however, that Addison lacked the qualities of a successful libretto writer. He was too serious, and despite the lightness of his touch, there was a certain rigidity in him which made him unapt at versification which required quickness, agility, and variety. When he attempted to give his verse gayety of manner, he did not get beyond awkward simulation of an ease which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... its gratification had twice declined an opportunity to be free, and consenting to their union, resolved that for the future one cage should hold them both. I am glad of such incidents; for at a pinch, and when I need entertainment, the versification of them serves ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Romanticism. He is Spain's "representative man" in that movement. Furthermore, the wealth of meters he uses is such that no other poet provides so good a text for an introduction to the study of Spanish versification. The editor has therefore treated the biography of Espronceda with some degree of completeness, studying his career as one fully representative of the historical and literary movements of the period. A treatment of the main principles of Spanish ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... ears so different that it can be recognized at once. The rhythms are varied by the number of beats of the right hand to one of the left, and by the different degrees of speed with which the tune is played. The general beat may be compared to the dactyl of ancient Greek and Roman versification. The left hand plays the long syllable, if we may so speak, while the right plays the two short ones. The combinations, however, are as intricate as ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... published till 1603, the year of the piratical publication of the First Quarto of HAMLET, in which the play lacks much of its present matter, and shows in many parts so little trace of Shakspere's spirit and versification that, even if we hold the text to have been imperfectly taken down in shorthand, as it no doubt was, we cannot suppose him to have at this stage completed his refashioning of the older play, which is undoubtedly the substratum of his.[8] We must therefore keep closely ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... century, created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in a single document. It is only in a refined and speculative age that a polity is constructed on system. In rude societies the progress of government resembles the progress of language and of versification. Rude societies have language, and often copious and energetic language: but they have no scientific grammar, no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies have versification, and often versification of great ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... passage in Lucan is a versification of the same narrative related by Pliny, lib. viii. ch. 35; and AElian, lib. iii. ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... languages and literature of both countries, and studying their poets, particularly Dante, Boccaccio, and Alain Chartier. When he returned, he opened a school in his monastery for teaching the sons of the nobility composition and the art of versification. His acquirements were, for the age, universal. He was a poet, a rhetorician, an astronomer, a mathematician, a public disputant, and a theologian. He was born in 1370, ordained sub-deacon in 1389, deacon ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... in "Boy Wanted," the fine prose thoughts are selected from the writings of a very large number of the world's foremost teachers and philosophers of all times, while the author, with a due sense of modesty, lays claim to all such examples of versification as are to be ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... Hospital Directors were written many years since and, so far as I was capable of judging, are drawn with fidelity. I mention this circumstance that, if any reader should find a difference in the versification or expression, he will be thus enabled ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... accorded to one who, during the whole time of their composition, has had to apply himself, almost without cessation, to the performance of newspaper press duties; and those who know anything about such things need not be told that a taste for versification is, to a press-man, as a rule, what poverty is to most people—a very inconvenient and by no means a profitable companion. In my own case, however, the inconvenience has been a pleasure, and I have no reason to find fault as to profit. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... contract with the Devil for his soul forms the fourth. Faust, overwhelmed with confusion, has not a word to say; and Satan seizing him by the hair of his head, carries him off in triumph. This piece is written in iambics of ten syllables and the versification appeared to me correct and harmonious, and the sentiments forcible and poetical; this fully compensated for the bizarrerie of the story itself, which, by the bye, with all the reproach thrown by the adherents of the classic taste on those of the romantic, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... admiration by the recital of deeds which, viewed in any other light than as a wild frolic of imagination, would be supremely ridiculous; for these tales had not the merit of a seductive style and melodious versification to relieve them. They were, for the most part, an ill-digested mass of incongruities, in which there was as little keeping and probability in the characters as in the incidents, while the whole was told in that stilted "Hercles' vein" ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Liudmila," and probably even composed the opening of the work. To this period, too, are to be assigned some stanzas of great merit, entitled "Recollections of Tsarskoe Selo," and an "Epistle to Licinius"—both works exhibiting considerable skill and mastery in versification, but by far too much tinged (as might indeed be expected) with the light reflected from the youthful poet's reading to deserve a place among his original productions. For the amusement of his comrades, also, he wrote a number of ludicrous and humorous pieces, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... reign of the Fatimites—and which was then transcendent and even new: the Koran and all its commentaries; the subtleties of syntax and of pronunciation; jurisprudence; calligraphy, which still is dear to the heart of Orientals; versification; and, last of all, mathematics, of which the Arabs were ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... princess let fall her veil, and was silent. A shout of applause was followed by wild strummings and tunings of mandolins, and occasional scratching of heads or turbans, to remember all that Hafiz had ever written, or to aid their attempts at improviso versification. Time flew on, and no one of the young rayahs appeared inclined to begin. At last one stepped forward, and named the rose, in a borrowed couplet. He was dismissed with a graceful wave of the hand by the princess, and broke his ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... memory. An early poem is only remarkable when it displays an effort of reason, and the rudest verses in which we can trace some conception of the ends of poetry, are worth all the miracles of smooth juvenile versification. A school-boy, one would say, might acquire the regular see-saw of Pope merely by an association with the motion ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... was, the grammar masters held a convenite for the purpose of arranging the course of study. Each of them had to obtain a licence, and, as a test of his qualifications, he submitted to an examination in versification, dictation, and so forth, lest, as the statute quaintly expresses it, the language of Isaiah should be verified—Multiplicasti ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... originality nor the deep pathos of Goethe, Klopstock, or Schiller there was something in the playfulness of his imagination, in the tenderness of his sensibility, in the sunny cheerfulness of his philosophy, and in the harmony of his versification, which delighted me." ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... basement. On the altar side there are also some verses, by an unknown author, in which human life is compared to "the damask rose and blossom on the tree," with other images of its vanity and shortness. There is a dash of Elizabethan vigour in the versification, mixed with a certain quaintness which points to the decadence, and the lines have been attributed to such different writers as Francis Beaumont and Francis Quarles. The figures in the monument have ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... himself, in his "Satire against Man," in pretty near the following manner. But I must first desire you always to remember that the versions I give you from the English poets are written with freedom and latitude, and that the restraint of our versification, and the delicacies of the French tongue, will not allow a translator to convey into it the licentious impetuosity and fire of the ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... suitable for the purpose; and Chaucer as a Southern man (like his "Parson of a Town") belonged to a part of the country where the old alliterative verse had long since been discarded for classical and romance forms of versification. Thus the "Romaunt of the Rose" most suitably opens his literary life—a translation in which there is nothing original except an occasional turn of phrase, but in which the translator finds opportunity for exercising his powers of judgment by virtually re-editing the work before him. And ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... in a condensation of this kind, an endeavor has been made to preserve the characteristic epithets, and to retain what Mr. Arnold called "the simple truth about the matter of the poem." It is believed that the sketch prefacing each story, giving briefly the length, versification, and history of the poem, will have its value to those readers who have not access to the epics, and that the selections following the story, each recounting a complete incident, will give a better idea of the epic than could be formed from passages scattered ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... necessity of claiming their charitable forbearance for the strangers of the mountain whom we are to introduce to their acquaintance. The language, and, in some respects, the imagery and versification, are as foreign to the usages of the Anglo-Saxon as so many samples of Orientalism. The transfusion of the Greek and Latin choral metres is a light effort to the difficulty of imitating the rhythm, or representing the peculiar vein of these song-enamoured mountaineers. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... named Lollius. Henryson was the author of the first pastoral poem composed in the English (or Scottish) language—that of Robin and Makyn. "To his power of poetical conception," Dr. Laing justly remarks, "he unites no inconsiderable skill in versification: his lines, if divested of their uncouth orthography, might be mistaken for those of a ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... not believe Poetry can sing the Practical. Verse and useful knowledge pass for incompatibles; and, though Doggrel is not Poetry, yet it has a lumbering proclivity that way, and so forfeits the confidence of grave sensible people. This versification, and this impalpable and unprecedented prescription she had waited for so long, seemed all of a piece to poor mamma: wild, unpractical, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... always blank and never verse) to a perfection of melody, harmony, and variety which has never been surpassed. Shakspeare, then, found a language already to a certain extent established, but not yet fetlocked by dictionary- and grammar-mongers,—a versification harmonized, but which had not yet exhausted all its modulations, or been set in the stocks by critics who deal judgment on refractory feet, that will dance to Orphean measures of which their judges are insensible. That the language was established is ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... in his Majesty's honour, in the form of bases and capitals of columns, inscribed each with the name of one of the Muses. Puttenham's Art of Poetry, published in 1589, book II., ch. ii. contains the fullest account of the mysteries and varieties of this sort of versification.] ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... since, to judge from the practice of the national poets, the French ear seems to be even better pleased with such strict identities of sound, at the close of corresponding lines, than it is with those definite mere resemblances to which, in English versification, rhymes are rigidly limited. Suspense between hope and dread, dread preponderating, is the state of feeling represented in the present chorus. Salomith is the ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... perfected forge of Catullus, this unvarying versification, lacking imagination, lacking pity, padded with useless words and refuse, with pegs of identical and anticipated assonances, this ceaseless wretchedness of Homeric epithet which designates nothing whatever and permits nothing ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... poet, sang in his time of the domestic and social amenities of our age with a most felicitous versification, his object being, in his own words, "to glorify the result of six thousand years' evolution towards the refinement of thought, manners and feelings." Why he fixed the term at six thousand years I don't know. His poems ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... rhymed stanzas; in this it differs from most early proses. The writing of rhymed sequences, however, became common through the example of the Parisian monk, Adam of St. Victor, in the second half of the twelfth century. He adopted an entirely new style of versification and music, derived from popular songs; and he and his successors in |34| the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries wrote various proses for ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... of pleasure, we think the readers of Mr Wordsworth are in a great measure cut off. His diction has no where any pretensions to elegance or dignity; and he has scarcely ever condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his versification. If it were merely slovenly and neglected, however, all this might be endured. Strong sense and powerful feeling will ennoble any expressions; or, at least, no one who is capable of estimating those higher merits, will be disposed to mark these little defects. But, in good truth, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... year he was elected a scholar at Magdalen College, his recommendation being his skill in Latin versification. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... call for comment. Filipino riddles, in whatever language, are likely to be in poetical form. The commonest type is in two well-balanced, rhyming lines. Filipino versification is less exacting in its demand in rhyme than our own; it is sufficient if the final syllables contain the same vowel; thus Rizal says—ayup and pagud, aval and alam, rhyme. The commonest riddle verse contains five or seven, or six, ...
— A Little Book of Filipino Riddles • Various
... Calderon." The preoccupation of a subject by a great master throws immense difficulties in the way of any one who ventures to follow in the same path: but as Shelley allowed himself great licence in his versification, and either from carelessness or an imperfect knowledge of Spanish is occasionally unfaithful to the meaning of his author, it may be hoped in my own version that strict fidelity both as to the form as ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... to a disastrous and premature end. I do not know who suggested to us the witty and clever little play of "Roxelane;" the versification of the piece is extremely easy and graceful, and the preponderance of female characters and convenient Turkish costume, of turbans and caftans, and loose voluminous trousers, had appeared to us to combine various advantages for our purpose. Mademoiselle Descuilles had consented to fill the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... and my ears rang with the cadence of his sentences, and I dreamed of it for a night or two. Then I began to make an analysis of Thucydides in Gibbon's style. In like manner, most Oxford undergraduates, forty years ago, when they would write poetry, adopted the versification of Pope Darwin, and the Pleasures of Hope, which had been made popular by Heber and Milman. The literary schools, indeed, which I am speaking of, as resulting from the attractions of some original, or at least novel ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... This versification, one of the elements of which was the repetition of words or sounds at regular intervals, was transformed about the eighth century into a more learned system. Thenceforward alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and a fixed number of syllables constituted ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... the Iliad is also often spoken of as characteristic of the style in which that great epic is written. And yet, as has been said, "though its versification is always appropriate, and therefore never mean, it only rises into stateliness, or into a terrible sublimity, when Homer has occasion to brace his energies for an effort. Thus he ushers in with ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... enough, of lady-journalists we have legions—but lady-poets we have but few. Possibly, they flourish more on the other side of the Atlantic. At any rate we have a good example of the American Muse in the latest volume by Mrs. LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. This little book is full of grace, its versification is melodious, and has the genuine poetic ring about it, which is as rare as it is acceptable. It can scarcely fail to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... true son of the Muses, and the most successful writer in our language. He is the author of several little national poems. In early life he successfully burlesqued the affected versification of Ambrose Philips, in his baby poems, to which he gave the fortunate appellation of "Namby Pamby, a panegyric on the new versification;" a term descriptive in sound of those chiming follies, and now become a technical ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... asked if he thought that Racine had strength sufficient to make him the equal of Corneille. "Sire," said the comic poet, "Racine has already surpassed Corneille by the harmonious elegance of his versification, and by the natural, true sensibility of his dialogue; his situations are never fictitious; all his words, his phrases, come from the heart. Racine alone is a true poet, for he alone ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... book is given to the various forms of poetry,—the canzone, the ballata, the sonnet,—and to the rules of versification. The work breaks off unfinished, in the middle of a sentence. There were to have been at least two books more; but, fragment as it is, the treatise is an invaluable document in the illustration of Dante's study of his own art, in its exhibition of his breadth of view, and in its ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... convenient and popular, and to be preferred, especially in such composition as includes much action: but every great poet must inevitably innovate upon the example of his predecessors in the exact structure of his peculiar versification. The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error. The distinction between philosophers and poets has been anticipated. Plato was essentially a poet—the truth and splendour of his imagery, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... noblest Beauties, and which constitute the main Difference between Poetry and Versification, between a perfect Poem and a Madrigal, Epigram or Elegy, are entirely lost in those Pieces, and the only Pleasure they can raise, must proceed alone from Sentiment ...
— A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral (1717) • Thomas Purney
... subject. He says, that it is the misfortune of our tragedy to have almost no other verse than what it has in common with epic poetry, elegy, pastoral, satire, and comedy; whereas the learned languages have a great variety of versification. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... pointed out to Tennyson that he had scrupulously conformed, in a certain poem, to a number of rules of versification and to certain principles in the use of different sound values. "Yes," answered the poet in substance, "I carefully observed all those rules and was entirely unconscious of them!" There was no contradiction ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie |
