"Poet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the lady who sat in the curule chair, quietly embroidering, twenty-five years had passed since she had been styled by a poet, "the loveliest lady in all the land." She was hardly less even now, when her fifty years were nearly numbered; when, unseen by any earthly eyes, her days were drawing to their close, and the angel ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... golden age," said the father of Juliana, "great men treated actors like servants, and, if they offended, their ears were cut off. Are we, in brave America, returning to the days when they tossed an actor in a blanket or gave a poet a hiding? Shall we stifle an art which is the purest inspiration of Athenian genius? The law prohibits our performing and charging admission, but it does not debar us from taking a collection, if"—with a bow in which dignity and humility were admirably mingled—"you deem the laborer worthy ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... William Ernest Henley, poet, critic, dramatist, and editor was born at Gloucester in 1849, and educated at the same city. In his early years (says Men of the Time) he suffered much from ill-health, and the first section of his Book of Verses (1888: 4th ed. 1893), In Hospital: ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... Lucretius in an oft-quoted passage describes the satisfaction that naturally fills the mind when from some safe vantage-ground one looks forth on travellers tossed about on the stormy deep. We may perhaps use the poet's not very altruistic words as symbolising many of the feelings with which, at the dawn of the twentieth century, we look back over the stormy waters of the century that has passed away. Some congratulation on this score is justifiable, especially as those wars and revolutions have ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... that this close relation between the ruler and his land, which resulted in the ill of one becoming the calamity of all, is no mere literary invention, proceeding from the fertile imagination of a twelfth century court poet, but a deeply rooted popular belief, of practically immemorial antiquity and inexhaustible vitality; we can trace it back thousands of years before the Christian era, we find it fraught with decisions of life and ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... book called What Men Live By, and there was nothing in it about food. Men lived not by the number of bales of rice they raised, but by the development of their minds and hearts. It might be asked if it was not the business of rural experts to teach agriculture. But a poet of my country had said that it took a soul to move a pig into a cleaner sty. It was necessary for a man who was to teach agriculture well to know something higher than agriculture. The teacher must ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the philosopher ceases to be wise and the song of the poet is silent. At that fatal threshold Dives relinquishes his millions and Lazarus his rags. The poor man is as rich as the richest and the rich man is as poor as the pauper. The creditor loses his usury and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation. The proud man surrenders his dignity, the ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... probably far too good a man of business to pay money that cannot be extracted from him by an appeal to the law or to his commercial credit. Mr. Erskine," added Trefusis, lowering his voice, and turning to the poet, "you are wrong to take part with hucksters and money-hunters against your own nature, even though the attack upon them is led by a man who prefers photography ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... The poet Clough thought the New England man more simple than the man of Old England. Hawthorne, on the other hand, seemed reluctant to admit that the English were a "franker and simpler people, from peer to peasant," than we are; and that they had not yet wandered so far from that ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... the following selection from the original by the German poet, Ludwig Holty. Mr. Brooks was born at Salem, Mass., in 1813. After graduation at Harvard he entered the ministry. He translated much from the German, both of poetry and prose. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lecturer) ventured to call the author of the 'Love Letters' a new poet. His published volume is a work of immense promise. His fancy is splendid.... The 'Love Letters' are twelve poems, separate, and yet intrinsically one. It is a compound lyric, with an epic theme and somewhat of an epic cast. The theme is ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... in a few homely, strong old English words that would be intelligible to all. He excelled in logical statements more than in executive ability. He reasoned clearly, his reflective judgment was good, and his purposes were fixed; but, like the Hamlet of his only poet, his will was tardy in action, and, for this reason, and not from humility or tenderness of feeling, he sometimes deplored that the duty which devolved on him had not fallen ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... think too much, dear. You remember what the great poet tells us. "Do noble things, not dream them all day long." Tennyson, wasn't it? I know I wrote it in your album for you when you were a little girl. ...
— Second Plays • A. A. Milne
... his way through the noonday heat, with two friends, to a harvest feast, meets the goatherd, Lycidas. To humour the poet Lycidas sings a love song of his own, and the other replies with verses about the passion of Aratus, the famous writer of didactic verse. After a courteous parting from Lycidas, the poet and his two friends repair to the orchard, where Demeter is being gratified ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... The poet Cowper was plunged into unutterable gloom by the conviction that he had committed this awful sin; but God tenderly brought him into the light and sweet comforts of the Holy Spirit again, and doubtless it was in the sense of such ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... offended at Hazlitt's review of the "Excursion," peevishly raked up an old scandal and wrote to Haydon that he was "not a proper person to be admitted into respectable society."[30] Perhaps Hazlitt was not as "respectable" as his poet-friends, but he had a better sense of fair play. At any rate, in a complete balancing of the accounts, Hazlitt's frequent displays of ill-temper are offset by the insidious, often unscrupulous baitings which he suffered ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... shops of the dealers in old books, engravings, and antiquated furniture drew my eyes and appealed to my fancy. Rummaging and idling among these, I hastily enjoyed some verses spiritedly thrown off by a poet of the Pleiad. I examined an elegant Masquerade by Watteau. I felt, with my eye, the weight of a two-handed sword, a steel gorgerin, a morion. What a thick helmet! What a ponderous breastplate— Seigneur! ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... himself that it had been so with much self-condemnation. At any rate, he had learned, during those months of solitary wandering, the power of condemning himself. And now he told him that if she would yet come he might still learn to sing that song of the old-fashioned poet "as to the ten commandments." At any rate, he would endeavor to sing it, as ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... was writing verses. Of course! Every one begins by being a poet. Hermione smiled, almost laughed aloud. Poor little Vere with her poor little secret! There was still that bitterness in the mother, that sense of wrong. But she read on and on. And presently she started and ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the memory of man from time to time brooding over nations, as in the early Aryan heart, suffusing life and thought with the sun-sense of pervading Deity, or as in Greece where its myriad rays, each an intuition of loveliness, descended and dwelt not only in poet, sage and sculptor, but in the general being of the people. What has been called the Celtic renaissance in literature is one of the least of the signs. Of far more significance is the number of strange, dreamy children one meets, whose hearts are in the elsewhere, and ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... poet, and politician was born at Guadix, in Spain, near Granada, March 10th, 1833, and received his early training in the seminary of his native city. His family destined him for the Church; but he was averse to that profession, subsequently studied law and modern languages at the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... historical philosophy; that is, no tangible link between the cause and the effect. The fictitious part of my narrative is, as in "Rienzi," and the "Last of the Barons," confined chiefly to the private life, with its domain of incident and passion, which is the legitimate appanage of novelist or poet. The love story of Harold and Edith is told differently from the well-known legend, which implies a less pure connection. But the whole legend respecting the Edeva faira (Edith the fair) whose name meets us in the "Domesday" roll, rests upon very slight authority considering its popular acceptance ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... they are all American. From first to last, they are plainly the work of a man who had no need to go to Europe for characters or scenery or plot,—who valued and understood the peculiar life and the peculiar Nature of this continent, and, like a true artist and poet, chose to represent that life and Nature of which he was a part. His stories smack of the soil; his characters—especially in "John Brent," where his own ride across the continent is dramatized—are as fresh and as true as only a true artist ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the heroism of his warlike sons, the beauty of his ten fair daughters, the doings of his famous militia, the Fenni or Fenians, and especially of his illustrious general Finn, or Fingal, the hero of the legends, and father of the poet Ossian—a warrior whom we shall meet with again in the ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... both, might have inclined one to the latter supposition; while the form of their brows, indicating deep thought and severe mental labor, and their slightly stooping shoulders, would have suggested the former. Wilhelm's milder features were really those of a poet, while Jakob's sterner cast of countenance, and his piercing eyes, indicated more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... eloquence, the philosophy and history of sacred law-givers, of prophets and apostles, of saints, evangelists, and martyrs. In vain you may seek for the pure and simple light of universal truth in the Augustan ages of antiquity. In the Bible only, is the poet's wish fulfilled,— "And like the sun be all one boundless eye." T. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... herself as feeling "so awful foolish" that she refused to undertake it again, much to the secret delight of Rebecca, who found the woodman's role much too tame for her vaulting ambition. She reveled in the impassioned appeal of the poet, and implored the ruthless woodman to be as brutal as possible with the axe, so that she might properly put greater spirit into her lines. One morning, feeling more frisky than usual, she fell upon her knees and wept in the woodman's petticoat. Curiously ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... except Shakespeare, the first literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose, satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben Jonson, and as such his ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... Guido, "we must give her a love name, such as every poet gives to his mistress. I will call her Diotima, in memory of Diotima of Megara, who showed the way to the lovers of Virtue. But her public and avowed name is Philosophy, and 'tis the most excellent bride ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... joys of which the poet rhymes Was not for Bill an' me, I think we had some good old times Out on the wallaby. I took a wife and left off rum, An' camped beneath a roof; But Bill preferred to hump his drum A-paddin' of ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... of style, incoherent and fantastic imagery, sentiment alike exaggerated and a thousand leagues removed from nature. He considered, and still considers, Pierre Corneille to be a blind enthusiast of the ancients, whom we deem great since we do not know them. In his eyes, this declamatory poet was a republican more by virtue of his head than his heart or his intention,—one of those men more capricious than morose, who cannot reconcile themselves to what exists, and prefer to fall back upon bygone generations, not ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... perceived: it consists in the constant confounding of the soft and hard consonants; and the reader must well bear it in mind when translating the language that meets his eye into one to become intelligible to his ear. Thus to the German of our poet, kiss becomes giss; company - gompany; care - gare; count - gount; corner - gorner; till - dill; terrible - derrible; time - dime; mountain - moundain; thing - ding; through - droo; the - de; themselves ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... not tend to advance what ought to be the one end of all religion, peace and love. This is what comes of insisting on orthodoxy; putting the whole world into a fever!" Tantum religio potuit, etc., as the Epicurean poet says. ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... recorded the rapturous emotions of love reciprocated. The pen has written the message of sadness which has covered life's pilgrimage with gloom. The pen has traced the record of noble and useful lives, spent in humanity's cause. The songs of the poet, the beautiful tints of his imagination, the flights of the orator in the realms of fancy, and the facts of history, would all perish as the dew of morning, without this ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... the year 1779 an English poet, writing in the seclusion of his garden at Olney, paid his respects to the American ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... chief triumphs at Erfurt were social and literary. His efforts to dazzle German princes and denationalize two of her leading thinkers were partly successful. Goethe and Wieland bowed before his greatness. To the former Napoleon granted a lengthy interview. He flattered the aged poet at the outset by the words, "You are a man": he then talked about several works in a way that Goethe thought very just; and he criticised one passage of the poet's youthful work, "Werther," as untrue to nature, with which Goethe agreed. On Voltaire's ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... or of men otherwise notorious among the ultra-Protestants; the Duke of Suffolk and his three brothers, Lord Thomas, Lord John, and Lord Leonard Grey; the Marquis of Northampton; Sir Thomas Wyatt, son of the poet; Sir Nicholas Throgmorton; Sir Peter Carew; Sir Edmund Warner; Lord Cobham's brother-in-law; and Sir James Crofts, the late deputy of Ireland.[200] Courtenay, who had affected orthodoxy as long as he had hopes of the queen, was admitted into the confederacy. Cornwall and Devonshire were ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... gentleman and as grown-up as he need ever expect to be. He was a poet; and they are never exactly grown-up. They are people who despise money except what you need for to-day, and he had all that and five pounds over. So, when he was walking in the Kensington Gardens, he made ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... view. So far as poetry attempts to improve on truth in that way, so far it abandons truth, and is false to itself. Even literal facts, exactly as they were, a great poet will prefer whenever he can get them. Shakespeare in the historical plays is studious, wherever possible, to give the very words which he finds to have been used; and it shows how wisely he was guided in this, that those magnificent speeches of Wolsey are taken exactly, with no more change than ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... formation and tints, their power of expression, which is only inferior to that of the eyes, and their elevated position as the media with the palate, tongue, and teeth, by which we communicate our thoughts to others in an audible form, need scarcely be dilated on here. The poet ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... the trumpets, Ha, ha!" (Job xxxix. 25.) It is very odd that the horsemen of Morocco, when they gallop to the charge, always cry "Ha, ha!" So the Arabian poet of The Book of Job puts the wild cry of the rider into the mouth of the horse whom he rides. This I frequently witnessed on the parade of Mogador. The wild cavalry of Morocco is the boldest idea transmitted ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... "Poet!" she smiled. "No, it isn't quite poinsetta. It's nearer the red-orange of a tree I remember one autumn, in the White Mountains, with the setting sun on it. But that wasn't what we were talking ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... lived to see the triumph of the Right, in the Presidential Proclamation of Freedom to the slaves, have gone from their earthly labors to their heavenly rest; which, we may well believe, is that whereof the poet speaks: ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... young man, or did the Muses bring Thee less to taste than to drink up their spring, That none hereafter should be thought, or be A poet, or a poet-like but thee? What was thy birth, thy star that makes thee known, At twice ten years, a prime and public one? Tell us thy nation, kindred, or the whence Thou had'st and hast thy mighty influence, That makes thee lov'd, and of the men desir'd, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... community of monks and nuns. Hild, a member of the Northumbrian princely family, founded such an abbey at Streoneshalch (Whitby), made memorable by numbering amongst its members the first known English poet, Caedmon. St. John of Beverley, Bishop of Hexham, set up a similar monastery at the place with which his name is so closely associated. The Irish monks themselves founded others at Lindisfarne and elsewhere. Even in the south, some Irish abbeys existed. An Irish monk had set up one at Bosham, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... heat of the day, was to the little cemetery where Hafiz, the Persian poet, lies at rest—a quiet, secluded spot, on the side of a hill, in a clump of dark cypress trees a gap cut through which shows the drab-coloured city, with its white minarets and gilt domes shining in the sun half a mile ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... accomplished that their cousins-german the rats were assistant, the whole matter receives a satisfactory explication. The hypothesis, it is submitted, is not without plausible recommendations on its behalf. There is extant a fragment of a comedy, entitled 'The Cities,' written by the Rhodian poet Anaxandrides, in which the Egyptian worship of animals is amusingly enough quizzed. A translation will be found in Dr Prichard's Analysis of Egyptian Mythology. The lines referring to cat-worship ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... of wearied bones and muscles had sat down to look abroad with the mind's eye. Their reason began to concern itself with problems beyond the narrow limits of the house and farm; their imaginations took the wings of the poet and rose above all ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... about our contemporary atmosphere. Society is becoming a secret society. The modern tyrant is evil because of his elusiveness. He is more nameless than his slave. He is not more of a bully than the tyrants of the past; but he is more of a coward. The rich publisher may treat the poor poet better or worse than the old master workman treated the old apprentice. But the apprentice ran away and the master ran after him. Nowadays it is the poet who pursues and tries in vain to fix the fact of responsibility. It is the ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... What about Dante? Haven't you sometimes stumbled over his grave assurances that this and that did really befall him? Putting aside the feeble notion that he was a deluded visionary, how does one reconcile the artist's management of his poem with the Christian's stem faith? In any case, he was more poet than Christian when he wrote. Milton makes no such claims; he merely prays for the enlightenment of ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... render rhythmically the rhythmical Greek (it is an iambic trimeter): emoi men ouk okneron, humin d asphales. It is probable that the words are a quotation from a Greek poet, perhaps a "comic" poet; the "comedies" being full of neatly expressed reflexions. For such a quotation, probably from the "comedian" Menander, see 1 Cor. xv. 33: phtheirousin ethe chresth homiliai kakai: "Ill converse cankers ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... I went to a poet whom I knew, and woke him from huge dreams, and put before him the whole case of the field. He had not been out of London all that year, and he promised to come with me and look at the field, and tell me what was going to happen there. It was ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... may be said generally they are either born in London or remote country places. The large provincial towns know them not. Indeed, nothing is more pathetic than the way in which these dim, destitute places hug the memory of any puny whipster of a poet who may have been born within their statutory boundaries. This has its advantages, for it keeps alive in certain localities fames that would otherwise have utterly perished. Parnassus has forgotten all about poor Henry Kirke White, but the lace manufacturers of Nottingham ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... interrupted the doctor, "if sane people always talked as rationally and sensibly as some of the very maddest of my poor friends sometimes do, there would be fewer foolish things said in the world. What remark is that the great poet puts into the mouth of Polonius, speaking of Hamlet? 'How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.' My dear Mr. Lynde, it was your excellent good ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... was ready to devote the best energies of heart and brain, and if need were, to lay down his life. He might be skilled in every elegant accomplishment, an acute reasoner, an orator, a musician, a poet; and to some extent he was all of these. But before all else he was in the highest sense a practical man, finding in strenuous action his chief glory and pride. And such a man was the last to melt into ecstasies over the high notes ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... of the South Sea Company's bonds, caused the stock to rise to six hundred and seventy; but in the afternoon, as soon as the report was known to be groundless, the stock fell again to five hundred and eighty; the next day to five hundred and seventy, and so gradually to four hundred. [Gay (the poet), in that disastrous year, had a present from young Craggs of some South Sea stock, and once supposed himself to be master of twenty thousand pounds. His friends persuaded him to sell his share, but he dreamed ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Holland—the shores or the water?" The very verdure that should be confined to the land has made a mistake and settled upon the fish ponds. In fact, the entire country is a kind of saturated sponge or, as the English poet, Butler, ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... as nimbly. With his thin and wiry frame, and simple habits, he is likely to live to a greater age than anybody I know. [Mr. Bryant and my father were about of an age. They had known each other almost from boyhood, and their friendship had matured with time. The sudden death of the poet in 1878, from causes that seemed almost accidental, was a great and unexpected blow to the survivor, then himself in ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... made surprising progress, painting a picture after little more than a twelve-month that at once found an eager purchaser. The poet took great pride in his son's success, and lost no opportunity of speaking in the most grateful and appreciative terms of the teacher. Millais and Tadema endorsed his praise, and Heyermans' reputation ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... more terrible scorn of the crime and vice which disgraced the Church inspired the Apocalypse and the Confession of Bishop Goliath, the work of Walter Map, Archdeacon of Oxford, king's chaplain ever since the days when Becket was chancellor, justiciar, ambassador, poet, scholar, theologian, satirist. The greater part of the legends of the Saint Graal that sprang out of the work of Robert de Boron were probably woven together by his genius; and were used in the great strife to prove that the English Church originated independently of Rome. His Courtier's ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... apparent that both Bale and Tanner are in error in ascribing this poem to Seguard. The handwriting is of the early part of the thirteenth century, and consequently full a century and a half before the Norwich poet was born! At the conclusion is this note, by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... and beautiful of face and feature, just tinted with the sun, his curly hair chiefly revealing his kinship to Africa. In nature he was a dreamer,—romantic, indolent, kind, unreliable. He had in him the making of a poet, an adventurer, or a Beloved Vagabond, according to the life that closed round him; and that life gave him all too little. His father, Alexander Du Bois, cloaked under a stern, austere demeanor a passionate revolt against the world. He, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... seized. As soon as he was drawn on board he flapped about more helpless than anything I have ever seen, falling into everything he could fall into, biting several of the crew. You know the sonnet in which Baudelaire compares the bird on the wing to the poet with the Muse beside him, and the albatross on deck to the poet in the drawing-room. You remember the sonnet, how the sailors teased the bird with ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... another romance. She was often visited by Vittorio Alfieri, the great Italian poet and dramatist. Alfieri was a man of wealth. In early years he divided his time into alternate periods during which he either studied hard in civil and canonical law, or was a constant attendant upon the race-course, or rushed aimlessly ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... oldest village in the valley—is an easy walk from Argeles, and should certainly not be excluded from a visit. Having passed the dismantled Chateau de Despourrins and the statue at the roadside erected in the poet's (Despourrins') honour, we had a grand glimpse of the valley below; and, leaving behind the Chapelle de Pietad (16th century), which stands on a point above the road, we entered the village. The street leading to the ancient Roman Church is ancient too, reminding one, in ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... more than one man of the name of Jan Celliers in South Africa I know, but there is only one Jan Celliers who can be honoured by the title "Poet and Patriot," and that is the remarkable personality of our friend in Pretoria, ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Shakspere, with Masters Jonson, Burbage, Hemynge, Condell, and a goodly number more, who had just come up from London town, as well as Alderman Henry Walker of Stratford, good old John Combe of the college, and Michael Drayton, the poet of Warwick. For Master Shakspere had that morning bought the Great House, with its gardens and barns, of Master William Underhill, for sixty pounds sterling, and was making a great feast for all his friends to ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... aspirations, one of her admirations being Voltaire, with whom she corresponded, and on whom she depended to chronicle the glory of her reign. The poet had his dreams, in which the woman shared, and between them they contrived a scheme of a modern Utopia, a Russo-Grecian city of whose civilization the empress was to be the source, and which a decree was to raise from the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... to speak of the manifold Acts and Divisions of Charity; as much, methought, in the Vein of a Poet as a Preacher; and he minded me much of that Scene in the tenth Book of the Fairie Queene, soe lately read to us by Mr. Agnew, wherein the Red Cross Knight and Una were ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... pride in his humble origin rings throughout the following pages. The ploughman poet was wiser in thought than in deed, and his life was not a happy one. But, whatever his faults, he did his best with the one golden talent that Fate bestowed upon him. Each book that he encountered ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... June (1580); note - also called Camoes Day, the day that revered national poet Luis de Camoes ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... time that the idea first obtained of enforcing Sunday obligation by the fourth commandment and calling it the Sabbath. It was argued that any "one day in seven" was what the commandment meant. Of this argument, John Milton, the statesman-poet, wrote: ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... An American poet of the first rank. He sits thoughtfully - his manuscript before him. Laurels ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... his nephews, Nathaniel Montefiore, became a distinguished poet, and the manuscript in question contains a very beautiful composition of his in praise of the book (Kan Tsippor) ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... condition of their blood; If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound, Or any air of music touch their ears, You shall perceive them make a mutual stand, Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones, and floods; Since nought so stockish, hard, and full of rage, But music for the time doth change his nature. The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... Southern and Western Railway have their engineering works. The first station we come to is that of Clondalkin. The old village sits snuggled up at the foot of its round tower, which is one of the best specimens of that early architecture in Ireland, of which the poet says: ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... two opinions possible; but there is another group, of an order of merit perhaps still higher, where we look in vain for any such playful liberties with Nature. Thus we have "Conservation of Force"; where a musician, thinking of a certain picture, improvises in the twilight; a poet, hearing the music, goes home inspired, and writes a poem; and then a painter, under the influence of this poem, paints another picture, thus lineally descended from the first. This is fiction, but not what we have been used to call fable. We miss the incredible ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the affairs of my neighbors. They behaved like a pair of lovers who had run off and got married clandestinely. I willingly acquitted them, however, of having done anything unlawful; for, to change a word in the lines of the poet, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... on this third occasion Sidonius describes the whole city as swimming in a sea of joy. Bridal songs with fescennine licence resounded in the theatres, market-places, courts, and gymnasia. All business was suspended. Even then Rome impressed the Gallic courtier-poet with the appearance of the world's capital. What is important is that we find this testimony of an eye-witness, given incidentally in his correspondence, that Rome in her buildings was still in all her splendour. And again in his long panegyric he makes Rome address the eastern ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... 77. What the poet says here is this: it is better not to wish for or covet wealth as a means for the performance of sacrifices than to covet it for performing sacrifices. A poor man will act better by not performing sacrifices at all than by performing them with wealth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... What the poet calls "the golden exhalations of the dawn" began to warm the gray of the plain. The sun was in the roots of the grass. Four miles away the lights of Larned twinkled. The only blot on a fair landscape was the mule—in the middle distance. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... a higher degree of perfection in the paths of gentleness. No ancient poet has spoken more nobly of the Deity, although his language is altogether polytheistic. He shows the highest reverence to the gods, whose power and laws rule all human life. On them all things depend, both good and evil, nor could any one violate with ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... the yellow trees, The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies; And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses; And through the woods, all waste of many a breeze, Cometh more joy of light for Poet's eyes— Green fields lying yellow underneath the skies, And ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... his way toward the parsonage; but he remembered that he had promised to call at what the local paper termed "the late residence of the deceased," where, on the one hundredth birthday of the centenarian, according to the poet's corner,— ...
— The New Minister's Great Opportunity - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... love story told in exquisite verse. "An ideal poem about as true and lovable a woman as ever poet created." It has repeatedly been compared with Owen Meredith's Lucile. In point of human interest ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... a great poet, critic, and writer, and an eminent professor at Oxford University and well-known to our people. His first address was at Chickering Hall to a crowded house. Beyond the first few rows no one could hear him. Explaining this he said to me: "My trouble is that my lectures at the university are given ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... disapproved of him; for, notwithstanding he was a nobleman, he is frequently very coarse, and very fond of raising emotion. Now emotion is what I dislike;" drawling out the last syllable of the word dislike. "There is only one poet for me—the divine . . ."—and then he mentioned a name which I had only once heard, and afterwards quite forgotten; the name mentioned by the snorer in the field. "Ah! there is no one like him!" murmured some more of the company; "the poet of nature—of nature without its vulgarity." ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... passed, and his mind was fully made up. And now everything he did was in a quiet, decisive fashion, with as much method in his madness as ever the great poet ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... on class day at the end of their sophomore year was about to be fulfilled to the letter, for the four chums had been appointed to the very honors to which she had jestingly assigned them two years before. Anne was chosen as class poet, and Jessica had composed both the words and music of the class song. Grace was to prophesy the futures of her various classmates, while Nora had been detailed to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... since thy day is come; but die despised and cursed; and may I write on thy tomb the epitaph the Arabian poet inscribed upon that ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... common case. You are familiar with the poet's description, "And thus he bore without abuse the grand old name of gentleman." That is a noble thing for any man or boy to have said of him; and there is not one among you who does not desire always to be able to claim that name ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... The queen caused a monastery to be erected on the spot where he fell as a reparation for her husband's fratricide, and as a propitiation for the soul of the departed. This circumstance is alluded to by more than one English poet, as also the monastery which Enfleda, for the same purpose, caused to be erected at ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... of Craigmyle, is known in a sphere where few Scotsmen had entered. He was a courtier of that remarkable little court of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, where he became the friend of the philosopher Leibnitz, correspondent of the poet Dryden, and his letters are full of curious gossip on the most various subjects—theology, philosophy, literature, including poetry and the small talk of the day. He was greatly employed and trusted by the Electress Sophia. His son George was noted as an agriculturist, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... kissed her, calling her "darling," and babbled; who, plain yet seductive, almost ridiculous, yet wholly exquisite, lived at Fiesole like a philosopher, while England celebrated her as her most beloved poet. Like Vernon Lee and like Mary Robinson, she had fallen in love with the life and art of Tuscany; and, without even finishing her Tristan, the first part of which had inspired in Burne-Jones dreamy aquarelles, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... equal measure? Too many vowels sound just as unpleasantly as too many consonants; a suitable number and interchange of both is requisite to produce true harmony. Even harsh syllables belong to the necessary qualities of a language; for nature herself has harsh sounds, which the poet would be unable to paint without harsh sounding tones. The roughness of the Slavic idioms, of which foreigners have complained so frequently, is therefore exclusively to be ascribed to the awkwardness of inexperienced or tasteless writers; or they are ridiculous mistakes ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... the city of Sens, which belonged to Burgundy, and of which he was the governor, took great pleasure in disconcerting the different companies who came to compliment him. The Abbe Boileau, brother of the poet, was commissioned to make a speech to the Prince at the head of the chapter. Conde wishing to disconcert the orator, advanced his head and large nose towards the Abbe, as if with the intention of hearing him ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... in every rank of life, but among men of genius you will generally, if not always, find only victims resigned to the caprices of fortune. The professions which imply the greatest enthusiasm naturally furnish the greater number of gamesters. Thus, perhaps, we may name ten poet-gamesters to one savant or philosopher who deserved the title ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... to Magna Charta. This doctrine soon made converts in the King's Bench. Three of his fellow prisoners enjoy such immortality as is conferred by admission to biographical dictionaries. The best known was the crazy poet, Christopher Smart, famous for having leased himself for ninety-nine years to a bookseller, and for the fine 'Song of David,' which Browning made the text of one of his later poems.[3] Another was William Jackson, an Irish clergyman, afterwards known as a journalist on the popular side, ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... which it bore. Here we have an explanation of the title Eumenides, or the Well-minded, given to the Furies; of Euxine, or the kind to strangers, to the inhospitable Black Sea, 'stepmother of ships,' as the Greek poet called it; the explanation too of other similar transformations, of the Greek Egesta transformed by the Romans into 'Segesta,' that it might not suggest 'egestas' or penury; [Footnote: [But the form Segesta is probably older than Egesta, the Romans here, as in other cases, ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... kitchen she looked at her hat and cloak, carefully hung up on the peg in the hall nearest the street door. It would take but a second to slip them on. She nodded her head towards them, as who should say "Yes, we shall meet again very soon." During the meal she found herself listening to the poet's monologues delivered in his high-pitched ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... glory of the world which we love so well,—as we exult in all the pleasure and exaltation of spirit which goes with these things, so we set ourselves to bear the sorrow which not unseldom goes with them also; remembering those lines of the ancient poet (I quote roughly from memory one of the many translations of the ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... talked of Grainger's Sugar-Cane, I mentioned to him Mr. Langton's having told me, that this poem, when read in manuscript at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, had made all the assembled wits burst into a laugh, when, after much blank-verse pomp, the poet ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... his mind had been very busy. Something of a poet, he was blessed with wits of a certain quickness, and was a man of very ready fancy. Like an inspiration an idea had come to him; out of this had sprung another, and yet another, until a chain of events by which the frustration of the schemes ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... Another poet of this period was Apollon Nikolaevitch Maikoff, born in 1821, the son of a well-known painter. During his first period he gave himself up to classical, bloodless poems, of which one of the most noted is "Two Worlds," which depicts the clash of heathendom and Christianity at the epoch ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... Musician. [Performance of Music.] — N. musician, artiste, performer, player, minstrel; bard &c. (poet) 597; [specific types of musicians] accompanist, accordionist, instrumentalist, organist, pianist, violinist, flautist; harper, fiddler, fifer[obs3], trumpeter, piper, drummer; catgut scraper. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... way. He followed it wherever it went, ever and again kicking it back onto the sidewalk; the simple pastime seemed to afford him infinite relief. And meanwhile, glowing visions arose in his mind, such visions as no one but a poet or a lonely boy on a Saturday morning in the springtime ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Terry, a transcendental poet, who worked in the shop for many years, had quit it some time before he met Marie. The above letter shows, in a general way, the mood which finally brought about his social self-exile, so to speak. The letter which follows gives a specific instance of the kind of experience which disgusted the ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... at once the mellow, contralto tones of the serving woman made the voice of the lovely mistress sound metallic—precious metal, to be sure, nothing less than silver. But in contrast was the melody, entirely human, soft, harmonious, alluring as a poet's dream of the tropics. ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... extinguished—poetry is extinct. To talk of poetry now is eccentricity—to write it is absurdity—to publish it is moonstruck madness." So the changes are rung. Now, it is impossible to deny that what is called poetry has become a drug, a bore, and nuisance, and that the name "Poet," as commonly applied, is at present about the shabbiest in the literary calendar. But we are far from believing that poetry is extinct. We entertain, on the contrary, sanguine hopes of its near and glorious resurrection. Soon do we hope to hear ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... above, note on p. 16. Gutskow and Mundt belonged to the same school. The former a dramatic poet, whose works against religion were about 1835, in the Prefaces to Letters of F. Schlegel, &c.; the latter, librarian at Berlin, was noted for his political connexion with the party of young Germany, ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... his ideas often left him no time to test the validity of his principles. He enunciates one brilliant generalization after another. Sometimes he reveals the mind of a seer or poet, throwing out conclusions which are highly suggestive, on the face of them convincing, but which on examination prove untenable, or at best must be set down as unproven or needing qualification. But these ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... The Conduct of Life gives fairly enough the leading thought of Emerson's life. The unending warfare between the individual and society shows us in each generation a poet or two, a dramatist or a musician who exalts and deifies the individual, and leads us back again to the only object which is really worthy of enthusiasm or which can permanently excite it,—the character of a man. It is surprising to find this identity of content in all great deliverances. ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... as the dauntless lad who held the ford at Killaloe, and preferred the privations of an outlaw's life to a disgraceful peace; and who, dying an old, old man, still kept his love of country undiminished, and sealed with his blood the liberty of his native land, declaring, as the poet Moore puts it ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... footing." The Letters introducing the several Books are, in all Scott's verse, perhaps the poems that most perfectly present to us his own personality. They form no part of "Marmion," in fact there had been a plan for their publication as a distinct book. As they stand they interweave the poet with his poem, making "Marmion," too, a "Lay of the Last Minstrel," in the first days of its publication. George Ellis playfully observed to Scott that "the personal appearance of the Minstrel who, though the Last, is by far the most charming of all minstrels, is by no means compensated by the ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... happiness as before? Ah! yes; she could forgive everything, anything, if he would only return and be contented to sit opposite to her once again. "O mortal Delius, dearest lord and husband!" she exclaimed within her own breast, in language somewhat differing from that of the Roman poet, "why hast thou not remembered to maintain a mind equal in prosperity as it was always equal and well poised in adversity? Oh my Delius, since prosperity has been too much for thee, may the Lord bless thee once more with the adversity which thou canst bear—which thou canst bear, ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... was such a freethinker, that if he were now alive, nothing but his building of churches could have kept our priests from calling him an atheist. He affirms the eternity of the world almost in the same manner with Manilius,[28] the heathen philosophical poet, (which opinion entirely overthrows the history of the creation by Moses, and all the New Testament): He denies the immortality of the soul, assures us that men die like beasts, and that both go ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... should be found really resembling Judaea, whose national greeting was "Peace"; whose prophet Ezekiel proclaimed in words of flame and thunder God's judgment upon the great military empires of antiquity; whose mediaeval poet Kalir has left in our New Year liturgy what might be almost a contemporary picture of a brazen autocracy "that planned in secret, performed in daring." And, as a matter of fact, some of these passages are torn from their context. The pictures of Messianic prosperity, for example, are ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... Jenny quickly, as the lady smiled and bowed bewildered by the queerly pronounced French, but catching the poet's name. ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... asparagus bed. The North Pole itself may be decorated by Annie on Monday afternoon with the week's wash. From whatever house you hear a child's laugh, if it be a real child and therefore a great poet, you may know that from the garret window, even as you pass, Sinbad, adrift on the Indian Ocean, may be looking for a sail, and that the forty thieves huddle, daggers drawn, in the coal hole. Then it is a fine ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... miserable night,' said Mrs. Jenny, in unconscious quotation from her favourite poet. 'I couldn't sleep a-thinkin' ...
— Julia And Her Romeo: A Chronicle Of Castle Barfield - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... in distress, and you refuse relief; you are bankrupt in fortune, and you rave like a poet, when you should be devising and plotting for the attainment of boundless wealth. Revenge and ambition may both be yours; but they are prizes never won but by a cautious foot as ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his pantaloons. It occurs to me, however, that I do not wisely pursue this theme; for the mysteries of Domingo's craft are no fit subject for the gratification of an irreverent curiosity. Those words of the poet, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... theory about Mars, certainly not so absurd as either of those just named, but scarcely supported by evidence at present—the idea, namely, advanced by a French astronomer, that the ruddy color of the lands and seas of Mars is due to red trees and a generally scarlet vegetation. Your poet Holmes refers to this in those lines of his, "Star-clouds and Wind-clouds" (to my mind among the most charming of his many ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... old man. You're highly strung and nervy, and a poet and all that sort of thing. I'm no better than a prize ox, and don't know what nerves mean. I can sleep anywhere, anyhow. If you can sleep in a submarine, you bet you can in a nice, airy Elizabethan room, even if it is haunted. But it's not; that's ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... of happiness," according to their light, in the money-markets of the modern world; but for all their admirable qualities and splendid achievements, their passionate quest of these amenities has not entitled these Gentlemen Adventurers to claim rank as patriots. The poet says: ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... marvel to see the colours still so bright and pure: historical books and documents of the most fascinating description, such as the exercise books used by Edward VI and Elizabeth when children: the collection of relics of Oxford's greatest poet, Shelley,—his watch, some few autograph poems, and more than one portrayal of his ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... the mute inglorious Miltons, who die voiceless and inarticulate for want of that dogged perseverance, that blind courage, which the poet must possess before he can find a publisher; he forgot the Cromwells, who see the noble vessels of the state floundering upon a sea of confusion, and going down in a tempest of noisy bewilderment, and who yet are powerless to get at the helm; ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... healthy-minded, average boy: I reckon I was born for a poet by mistake, and grew up to be a Bushman, and didn't know what was the matter with me—or the world—but that's got ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... "I'll eat my words," he agreed. "Even if you inscribe them in deathless bronze, as the poet says. How about that, Dad? Dr. Miller isn't the excitable type, but he was pretty ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. Then it is as if the Invisible Power that had been the object of lip-worship and lip-resignation became visible, according to the imagery of the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the wings of the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the rolling fiery visitations. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate under the thunder of relenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die, and no angel ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... when he became lord of the land, just three hundred years ago. Edmund Spenser came here in those days to see him, and talk over the events of that senseless rising of the Desmonds, which gave the poet of the "Faerie Queen" his awful pictures of the desolation of Ireland, and made the planter of Virginia master of more than forty thousand acres ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... waning with the day as I turn from the Avenue into Benicia Street. This is the hour when the fly cedes to the mosquito, as the Tuscan poet says, and, as one may add, the frying grasshopper yields to the shrilly cricket in noisiness. The embrowning air rings with the sad music made by these innumerable little violinists, hid in all the gardens round, and the pedestrian feels ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... father's heartless severity he learnt to live without sympathy, to despise mankind, to rely on himself. He was the author of a commonplace treatise against Machiavelli, partly founded on Montesquieu's Grandeur et Decadence. This unamiable youth, with the aspirations and the vanity of a minor poet, was the most consummate practical genius that, in modern times, has inherited ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton |
