"Poetry" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Leon, the one you set to music. You know. The words by that young boy in the war who wrote such grand poetry before he was killed. The one that always makes poor Mannie laugh. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... especially rural ones placed in some quaint quiet spot—a dingle, for example, which is a poetical place, or at a meeting of four roads, which is still more so; for how many a superstition—and superstition is the soul of poetry—is connected with these cross roads! I love to light upon such a one, especially after nightfall, as everything about a forge tells to most advantage at night; the hammer sounds more solemnly in the stillness, the glowing ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... his mind, and even when he was not conscious of it gave a sort of color to life, refined his perceptions, and gave him almost sensuous delight in the masterpieces of poetry which had formerly appealed only to his intellectual appreciation ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... weaver, and he said solemnly afterwards, "They didna speak, but they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in their een." No more is remembered of these two, no being now living ever saw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered weaver makes them human ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... poetry, music and art; We may live without conscience, and live without heart; We may live without friends; we may live without books; But civilized man cannot live without cooks. ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... translations of Lenore about, and except by Scott's friends, little notice was taken of the volume. There were some excuses for the neglect, the best perhaps being that English criticism at the time was at nearly as low an ebb as English poetry. A really acute critic could hardly have mistaken the difference between Scott's verse and the fustian or tinsel of the Della Cruscans, the frigid rhetoric of Darwin, or the drivel of Hayley. Only Southey had as yet written ballad ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... sixth canto. In the fifth, which is occupied almost entirely by mortals, and bears a closer relation than the others to the chief works in narrative and dramatic poetry, are related the adventures of Zameia, which, with the story of her death, following the last extract, would make a fine tragedy. Her misfortunes are simply told by an aged attendant who had fled with her in pursuit of Meles, whom she had seen and loved in Babylon. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... with all our ideas of beauty and plenty, is, in general, a disappointing object. The hop plantations of our own country are far more picturesque. In France, the vines are trained upon poles, seldom more than three or four feet in height; and 'the pole-clipt vineyard' of poetry is not the most inviting of real objects. In Spain, poles for supporting vines are not used; but cuttings are planted, which are not permitted to grow very high, but gradually form thick and stout stocks. In Switzerland, and in the German provinces, the vineyards are as formal as those of ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... a solitary way, books are my companions; and poetry which speaks of the love of God and the mercies of Christ is very sweet to my mind. This must be my excuse for troubling you to read verses which others have written. I have intended, if my declining state of health permit, to go to —- for a few ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... Saint Pierre, Helvetius, Saint Lambert, La Harpe, were the church of the new era. One sole thought animated these diverse minds—the renovation of human ideas. Arithmetic, science, history, economy, politics, the stage, morals, poetry, all served as the vehicle of modern philosophy; it ran in all the veins of the times; it had enlisted every genius, it spoke every language. Chance or Providence had decided that this period, which elsewhere was almost barren, should be the age of France. From the end of the reign of Louis XIV. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... in health, and soon after, entered the high school, where he remained four years. A course at the university followed the high school, but Scott never gained distinction as a scholar. He loved romances, old plays, travels, and poetry too well, ever to become distinguished in philosophy, mathematics, or the dry study ...
— The Prose Marmion - A Tale of the Scottish Border • Sara D. Jenkins
... with you, that poetry and music "teach us of the things that are unseen" as nothing else can do. Music especially, which is an unseen thing, not the product of man at all, but found from man as a gift from God's own hand. I don't know what at some periods of my life I should have done without these blessed sympathizers ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... showing any desire to afford her a part in his cares and labors. Matters ought not, should not go on so. Everything that had seemed to her beautiful and pleasant in her parents' home—was being destroyed here. Music and poetry, that had elevated her soul, clever conversation, that had developed her mind, were not to be found here. Barbara's kind feelings could never supply the place of these lost possessions; for her husband's love she would have resigned them all—but what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... discredited, automatic writing has been largely employed as a method of experimentally investigating subconscious mental processes. Knowledge which had lapsed from the primary consciousness is frequently revealed by this means; e.g. forgotten fragments of poetry or foreign languages are occasionally given. An experimental parallel to this reproduction of forgotten knowledge was devised by Edmund Gurney. He showed that information communicated to a subject in the hypnotic trance could ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... New York, produced two vols. of verse (1786-8), the most considerable contribution to poetry made up to that date in America. He fought in the Revolutionary War, was taken prisoner, and confined in a British prison-ship, the arrangements of which he bitterly satirised in The British Prison Ship (1781). ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... swinging in my hammock in the grove reading a book of poetry, I came across those beautiful verses by Cowper, entitled, "Alexander Selkirk," and could not but think how true they were to my own lot in many points; in fact, few persons reading the poem could ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... melancholy of the present and the poetry of the past, my thoughts people with beautiful shapes, and my eyes ever gratified by the pure and harmonious lines of the landscape, I was resting in the tavern at Monte-Allegro, sipping a glass of heavy, fiery wine, when I saw two persons enter the waiting-room, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... noticed those other incomprehensible persons, members of families innocent for generations past of practicing Art or caring for Art, who have notwithstanding displayed from their earliest years the irresistible desire to cultivate poetry, painting, or music; who have surmounted obstacles, and endured disappointments, in the single-hearted resolution to devote their lives to an intellectual pursuit—being absolutely without the capacity which proves the vocation, and justifies the sacrifice. ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... of man, were it not that the shadow of death fell upon his house, and cast its cold blight upon his children. Ere three years had elapsed he saw his eldest daughter fade out of life, and in less than two more his eldest son was laid beside her in the same grave. Decline, the poetry of death, in its deadly beauty came upon them, and whilst it sang its song of life and hope to their hearts, treacherously withdrew them to darkness ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... is doomed inevitably to disappear before steam, perhaps it does not matter much. The economic march of the world's progress will never be stayed by sentimental considerations, nor will all the romance and poetry in the world save the seaman from extinction, if his place can be more profitably filled by the engineer. From all appearances, it soon will be, for even now marine superintendents of big lines are sometimes engineers, ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... never separated. Music, Poetry, and Painting spring from the triune existence of man, represent his life in its triune being, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Lahmann's right hand. Her eyes were wide. Miriam thought she had never seen anyone look so pale. She was speaking very quickly in German. Pastor Lahmann rose and faced her. Miriam had just grasped the fact that she was taking the French master to task for reading poetry to his pupils and heard Pastor Lahmann slowly and politely enquire of her whether she or he were conducting the lesson when the two voices broke out together. Fraulein's fiercely voluble and the Herr Pastor's voluble and mocking and polite. The two voices ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... and my respected father did, years before. So he told me that I was a womanish sentimentalist, and would never do for business life; and advised me to take the bank-stock and the New Orleans family mansion, and go to writing poetry, and let him manage the plantation. So we parted, and I ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... liked writing poetry for them even more than he liked writing a Hebrew Dictionary. He wrote a whole ...
— Twas the Night before Christmas - A Visit from St. Nicholas • Clement C. Moore
... Communism, an equal reward for all, a doctrine which will be attractive only to the lowest rank of workers, the lazy, and the inefficient. Therefore Socialist Communists endeavour to make Communism appear more palatable to the active and the efficient by the lavish use of poetry and hyperbole. For instance, we learn: "He who makes the canvas is as useful as he that paints the picture. He who cleanses the sewer and prevents disease is as useful as the physician who cures the malady after it has been contracted."[1055] To learn painting ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... eighteen months he worked in various mines in various capacities, picking up, in actual experience, much of the mining wisdom which circumstances had denied that he should acquire in college. His Nevada experiences had given him a taste of the desert and he liked it. There was a broad strain of poetry in his make-up, inherited perhaps from his mother, and the desert appealed to that mystical sixth sense in him, arousing his imagination, taunting him with a desire that was almost pre-natal to investigate the formation on the other side of the sky-line. It pandered ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... easy in mind, since Miss Dickinson's canaries would be delivered. The name "County Council" meant nothing to her, but it had affinity with other names and titles of romance—Captain Judgment, for instance, in The Holy War, and County Guy in the poetry book— ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... see here is that of an inn whose fame is as widespread as the love of English poetry, for it is at the Tabard Inn that Chaucer more than five hundred years ago assembled his nine and twenty pilgrims who were preparing to visit the tomb of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. The witchery of the springtime had stirred the blood of these Londoners who, perhaps, were enticed ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... bishops looked down upon kings and emperors and counted them their vassals, when the barbaric peoples which made up the population of Europe had been sufficiently schooled and educated in the new direction, a longing for something new, a yearning for art, for poetry, for beauty, began to stir the hearts of men and women. It found expression in the ideal of chivalry, the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Grail, and suddenly love, bursting out in a brilliant flame, shed its radiance on the sordid relationship which had hitherto ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... pleasing and polished writer of lyric and pastoral poetry, appears to have been a close and attentive observer of nature and manners,—abounding in wit and humour,—and a pious and religious man. He was also a soldier, a good fisherman, and a warm admirer of Queen Elizabeth, of whom he gives a beautiful character in "A Dialogue ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... more! They are the very essence of poetry—poetry at its purest. We'll see the effect of them on Mr. Machin. We'll just see. It's the ideal opportunity to test my theory. ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... liked Miss Ponsonby and we pitied her. She confided to us that she was very lonely and that she wrote poetry. We never asked to see the poetry, although I think she would have liked to show it. But, as Jerry says, there ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... so far, nor enriched myself with such varied knowledge of the relics of ancient history, as I might have purposed or wished, I have at least learned to know the Turk and the Arab, been soothed by the patience inspired by their fatalism, and warmed by the gorgeous gleams of fancy that animate their poetry and religion. These ten months of my life form an episode which seems to belong to a separate existence. Just refined enough to be poetic, and just barbaric enough to be freed from all conventional fetters, it is as grateful to brain and soul, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... roses, a couple of luxurious easy-chairs, some old prints upon the wall. On the sideboard was a basket, as yet unpacked, filled with hothouse fruit, and on a low settee by the side of one of the easy-chairs were a little pile of reviews, several volumes of poetry, and a couple of library books. In the centre of the mantelpiece was a photograph, the photograph of a man a little older, perhaps, than this newly-arrived visitor, with rounder face, dressed in country tweeds, a flower in his buttonhole, the picture ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... traversed by deep red lanes, and enclosing a wide-spreading summer palace and two immense reservoirs walled with masonry, and the vision of these serene sheets of water, in which the olives and palms are motionlessly reflected, is one of the most poetic impressions in that city of inveterate poetry. ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... has in numerable elements to mingle in her combinations, has turned out some marvelous leaders among these poor men. Their hard fortunes have driven out of their minds all illusions, all imagination, all poetry; and in solemn fashion they have bent themselves to the grim and silent struggle with their environment. Without imagination, I say, for this seems to me to be a ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... of Scotland, and the Tales of the Covenanters, and some books of poetry that my aunt has got. But I like Flavel too. ...
— The Orphans of Glen Elder • Margaret Murray Robertson
... of Englishmen, who, though they beat their own wives, are always indignant at a man who dares to lay a little finger on those of anybody else. Then, too, the subject was Oriental: it might even be invested with something of romance and poetry; the zenanah, sacred in the eyes of the oppressed natives, had been ruthlessly insulted, under a glaring Indian sun, amid the luxuriance of Indian foliage, these acts had been committed, &c. &c. It was a fertile theme for a poet; and how little soever Sheridan cared for the Begums and ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... process called "Pleading," which has been the delight and the pride of so many ages; developing gradually century by century, until at last it has perfected itself into the most beautiful system of evasion and duplicity that the world has ever seen. It ranks as one of the fine Arts with Poetry and Painting. A great Pleader is truly a great Artist, and more imaginative than any other. The number of summonses at Chambers is only limited by his capacity to invent them. Ask any respectable solicitor how many honest claims are stifled by proceedings ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... say, I always thought they were pretty good; but I never thought any one would appreciate my poetry like that." ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... strong house saves a failing one, and then the Blends go on successfully? Let "P. and G." give us a first-rate Champagne, call it, say, The "G.B.," or "Golden Blend," at a reasonable price, and, to drop once again into poetry, No matter what their name may be, We'll ever ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... Poetry is always congenial to an Irishman, probably because it has licences almost as great as he likes to take, and has a vague, irresponsible way of putting things, much akin to his ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... some spirit, for the implied slur upon Our Square stung me. "In fact, I was reading one of our local publications when you inter—when you arrived. It contains some very interesting poetry." ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... brain work in mysterious ways. Radmore will never know, to the day of his death, the effect that this curious night drive had on the whole of his future life. He was not a man to quote poetry, even to himself, but to-night there came into his mind some words he had heard muttered by a corporal ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... later years Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson revived this custom for his own daughters; and their friends (being, indeed, with few changes, the same set of young people as had formerly met in Agassiz's library) used to meet in Mr. Emerson's study at Concord for a similar object. He talked to them of poetry and literature and philosophy as Agassiz had talked to them of nature. Those were golden days, not to be forgotten by any who shared their ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... faith, in the usual acceptance of those words. "He never joined a church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature. He first seemed to think about the subject when our boy Willie died, and then more than ever about the time he went to Gettysburg; but it was a kind of poetry in his nature, and he never was a ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the people and in the terms of their speech, to the weal of the people and their youth throughout the centuries, it was here. The explanation of the Second Article is one of the chief creations of the home art of German poetry. And such it is, not for the reason that it rises from desert surroundings, drawing attention to itself alone, but because it sums up and crowns the character of the book ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... time he is about to read). I feel, beforehand, my heart beating for joy. I love poetry to distraction, particularly when the ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... take the place of that phantom mother, herself—a phantom mother. And who knows but that such dream-children, as she called those two little girls, were more satisfactory in the end than real children? They represented, so to say, the poetry of children. Had Margaret been a real mother, there would have been the prose of children as well. But here, as in so much else, Margaret's seclusion from the responsible activities of the outside world enabled her to gather the fine flower of existence ...
— Different Girls • Various
... relative had heatedly imagined to reach us, in a hushed-up manner from behind, was the sounds attendant on the application of blows to some acrobatic infant who had "funked" his little job. Impossible such horrors in the world of pure poetry opened out to us at Niblo's, a temple of illusion, of tragedy and comedy and pathos that, though its abords of stony brown Metropolitan Hotel, on the "wrong side," must have been bleak and vulgar, flung its glamour forth into Broadway. What more pathetic for instance, so that we publicly ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... well," he replied; "he was one of the gentlest souls that ever dwelt in human clay. As ethereal in his music as John Keats in his poetry, he was one of those creatures born of dreams and rapture that rarely visit this planet. Happy fellow! What a death ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... age of poetry. A generation of great Welsh poets found an equal welcome in the courts of Gwynedd, Powys, and Deheubarth; and even the Norman barons of Morgannwg began to feel the charm of Welsh legend and song; Robert of Gloucester was a great patron of learning. One of ...
— A Short History of Wales • Owen M. Edwards
... with pomegranates; and so did he fo' the othah chapiter. And the chapiters that were upon the tip of the pillahs were of lily work in the porch, fo' cubits. Lily work," he lingered over the words, smiling at their musical poetry. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... impression that my character required improvement and discipline;" and so on to the end of the chapter, near which, however, it is right to say that there appears a redeeming touch, in so far as that he thanks the gods that he could not write poetry, and that he had never occupied himself about the appearance of things in ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... Wheat-head Farm I took a fancy to trying my "prentice hand" at writing poetry. I got a little encouragement in this at home. My father held singing classes, and gentlemen from the neighbourhood used to meet at our house to have their "lessons." I remember that the present Mr. Lund, of Malsis Hall, was one of my ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... wonder at nothing more, than how a man can be idle; but, of all other, a Scholar; in so many improvements of reason, in such sweetness of knowledge, in such variety of studies, in such importunity of thoughts. . . . To find wit, in poetry; in philosophy, profoundness; in mathematics, acuteness; in history, wonder of events; in oratory, sweet eloquence; in divinity, supernatural light and holy devotion; as so many rich metals in their proper mines, whom would it not ravish with delight!"—Joseph ...
— Three Centuries of a City Library • George A. Stephen
... treat which ought not to be missed. Carter's style of oratory was of the impassioned order; he thumped on the desk, and went through the "extension motions," with the exception of that awful movement where you bend double and try to touch your toes. It was rumoured that he wrote deep, unintelligible poetry that did not rhyme; and if the school rules had not forbidden the practice, he would have worn long hair and a fly-away necktie. Shepherd, on the other hand, went in for logic, unadorned by any movements suggestive of setting-up drill. His style bore a suspicious resemblance ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Had she not already given the best years of her youth to others? Had she not waited without a thought of rebellion for the coming of the right one? And Love, and Love's mysterious touch, wrought fantastic changes in Stella Beckman's affairs. She and Lee read poetry. She had never known how beautiful poetry was nor how much of it there was to read. He knew the good novels and sent her all that he himself read, and these were plenty! Then, when he was away, he wrote ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... a keen appreciation of natural beauty, and of the art which could represent it, either on canvas or in marble. He was fond of poetry. But of all the poets, Burns stood first in his estimation. He could enter so easily into the spirit of this writer, because, in some respects, they were kindred spirits. Burns' touching pathos, his humor, his love and pity for man and beast, penetrated his ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... with Regard to the Origin of Gavroche's Poetry. The Influence of an Academician on this Poetry II. Gavroche on the March III. Just Indignation of a Hair-dresser IV. The Child is amazed at the Old Man V. The ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... spring new opportunities for growth, a more productive, fulfilled and united people, and a stronger America—an America that will lead the technological revolution, and also open its mind and heart and soul to the treasures of literature, music, and poetry, and the values of ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... effective if it has no story to tell. There must be something, be it fact or fiction, to attach to a place before its beauties can be fully appreciated. The charm of poetry and romance is a very real one, and can add much to one's enjoyment of a particular view. I suppose that something is needed to interest and attract the intelligence, at the same moment that the sense of sight is captivated, so that a double result ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... was filled with the old Greek and Roman learning. Now he saw the ancient symbolism reproduced in the great forests of North America by the nations of the Hodenosaunee, who had never heard of Greece or Rome, nor, to him, were the religion and poetry of the Iroquois inferior in power and beauty, being much closer kin than the gods of Greece and Rome to ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... rich with tributes to the songs of the birds. The thoughts and feelings aroused or suggested by these songs are the topics of much of the world's enduring poetry. Longfellow, in his "Birds of Killing-worth" (Tales of a Wayside Inn) sings exquisitely of the use and beauty and worth of birds. Shelley, in his "Skylark", describes in glowing verse "the unbodied joy" that "singing still dost soar and soaring ever singest". Wordsworth hears the blithe ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... down—a very good kind of prose, but well considered, well thought out. For instance, I know all Mr. Wilcox's faults. He's afraid of emotion. He cares too much about success, too little about the past. His sympathy lacks poetry, and so isn't sympathy really. I'd even say"—she looked at the shining lagoons—"that, spiritually, he's not as honest as I am. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... thinking. "Blister wouldn't be bad," he announced. "Something about the vister causin' a blister. I don't know as you are aware of the fact, Sue, but I wrote consider'ble poetry when I was a young feller. Mrs. Crow's got 'em all tied up in a pink ribbon. It's a mighty funny thing that she won't even show 'em ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... terms "higher" and "lower," when used in a moral sense. We have seen that John Stuart Mill made much of the distinction in his utilitarianism. Bentham appears to sin against the enlightened moral judgment in holding that, quantities of pleasure being the same, "push- pin is as good as poetry." ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... during the century which followed his death, was indeed great, but was almost entirely confined to religious families of the middle and lower classes. Very seldom was he, during that time, mentioned with respect by any writer of great literary eminence. Young coupled his prose with the poetry of the wretched D'Urfey. In the "Spiritual Quixote," the adventures of Christian are ranked with those of Jack the Giant-killer and John Hickathrift. Cowper ventured to praise the great allegorist, but did not venture to name him. It is a significant circumstance that, till a recent ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... table. He patted Dotty's head, and said she looked like "a sweet-pea on tiptoe for a flight." He seemed very fond of quoting poetry; and nothing could have been more pleasing to Dotty, who loved to hear high-sounding words, even if they did ...
— Dotty Dimple Out West • Sophie May
... the rising of the sap incites some to poetry, some to making maple sugar, and some to watching for the first flowers, it is well to look at a few tree-blooms, and to consider the possibilities and the pleasures of a peaceful hunt that can be made with profit in city ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... 'Kerrigan's Quality' (1894), is told with her distinguishing charm, but the book has not the close-knit force of the 'Idyls.' Miss Barlow herself prefers the 'Bogland Studies,' because, she says, they are "a sort of poetry." "I had set my heart too long upon being a poet ever to give up the idea quite contentedly; 'the old hope is hardest to be lost.' A real poet I can never be, as I have, I fear, nothing of the lyrical faculty; and a poet without that is worse ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... express chiefly in terms of fundamental movements, stripped of their accessory finish and detail, every important act, vocation, sentiment, or event in the life of man in language so universal and symbolic that music and poetry themselves seem to have arisen out of it. Before it became specialized much labor was cast in rhythmic form and often accompanied by time-marking and even tone to secure the stimulus of concert on both economic and social principles. In the dark background of history there ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... above us is to say, 'We know nothing.' The world has learned half of a great verse of the Gospel: 'No man hath seen God at any time, nor can see Him.' If the world is not to go mad, if hearts are not to be tortured into despair, if morality and enthusiasm and poetry and everything higher and nobler than the knowledge of material phenomena and their sequences is not to perish from the earth, the world must learn the next half of the verse, and say, 'The only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... formula or incantation; in Zend, manthra is an incantation against disease, and hence we have the Erse manadh, incantation or juggling, and moniti in Lithuanian. The linguistic researches of Pictet, Pott, Benfey, Kuhn, and others show that in primitive times singing, poetry, hymns, the celebration of rites, and the relation of tales, were identical ideas, expressed in identical forms, and even the name for a nightingale had the same derivation. So also the names ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... great that she even condescended to be amusing to her own husband? For a more serious and life-long affection there are few heroines so satisfactory as Sophia Western and Amelia Booth (nee Harris). Never before nor since did a man's ideal put on flesh and blood—out of poetry, that is,—and apart from the ladies of Shakspeare. Fielding's women have a manly honour, tolerance, greatness, in addition to their tenderness and kindness. Literature has not their peers, and life has never had many to compare with them. They are not "superior" like ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... March, 1811. I learned from a well-informed person that the sum of one hundred thousand francs from the private funds of the Emperor was distributed by M. Dequevauvilliers, secretary of the treasury of the chamber, among the authors of the poetry sent to the Tuileries; and finally, fashion, which makes use of the least events, invented stuffs called roi-de-Rome, as in the old regime they had been called dauphin. On the evening of the 20th of March at nine ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... daylight, and going out to the barn to do chores, to get ready to go into the field to work! Working, wasting y'r life on dirt. Waiting and tending on cows seven hundred times a year. Goin' round and round in a circle, and never getting out. You needn't talk to me of the poetry of a farmer's life." ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... moral husband that I took his words deeply to heart, and that ever since my return to Worcester I have been spending one afternoon a week reading poetry with the inmates of the Female Inebriate Asylum. My life is not so ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... in poetry that all the world understands a lover. In real life he is called throaty, and given a level spoonful of that nauseous ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... spirit of Chaucer's poetry; but alongside of it existed yet the ballad poetry of the people, wholly untouched by courtly elegance and classical pedantry; rude in art but never coarse, true to the backbone; instinct with indignation against ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... too; and these are revealed in the rude songs and epics in which they delighted. Monstrous barbarities are committed, but always to accomplish some stern purpose of duty. They are cruel in order to be just. This sluggish, ravenous, drinking brute, with no gleam of poetry, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet chaotic glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He gives little promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a reaching after something ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he was twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was Lord of the Treasury. Elizabeth Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De Quincey at eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean order. Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of poems at fifteen. Luther was but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous thesis to the door of the bishop and defied the pope. Nelson ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... lady. The audience, easy believers in spells, magic, and witchcraft, are in full sympathy with Puck's mission to secure the potion whose magic power will create love or cause infidelity and hatred. Never had poetry been fuller of imagery or sweeter in verification than in the lines spoken by Oberon; nor had Queen Elizabeth ever received a more ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... hills. Almost his earliest memory was having been crowned king of a castle by some of his playfellows. At his first school he was the show-boy of the schoolmaster: at thirteen years old he had written poetry that attracted and justified admiration. In 1797 he was "a man of mark"; at the University,[J] in 1798, at the age of nineteen, he had made "considerable progress" in translating the Odes of Anacreon; and in 1800 he was "patronized" and flattered by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... There they did their work. They made their calling and election sure. Greek architecture—one birth of beauty after another—was born. Athens was crowned with marvellous temples, whose exquisite proportions amaze and charm us to-day—inimitable creations of beauty. Homer came, and then epic poetry was born. AEschylus and tragedy came; Pindar and the lyric song; Theophrastus and pastoral music; Anacreon and the strain which bears his special name. And so Phidias and his companions created sculpture, Herodotus history, Demosthenes oratory, Plato and Aristotle philosophy, Zeuxis ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... said Julia. "I find no difficulty in learning my lesson by once reading, and as I am very fond of poetry, I like to employ the rest of my time in trying ...
— Tempest and Sunshine • Mary J. Holmes
... wholly devoted to reading and to rural occupations. The latter, particularly gardening, served as a counterpoise to the sedentary temptation that would have proved physically injurious; but laying in, as I daily did, a plentiful store of romantic adventure or fascinating poetry for rumination when abroad, my mind was unprofitably occupied at all times, to the exclusion of better things. On Sundays, indeed, I made it a point of conscience to abstain from light reading; and, as far as I could, to banish from my thoughts the week's acquisition of folly. I went ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... are as eager to see things in a true light as they are quick to sympathize with whatever is heroic or beautiful; and all their talk is of truth and justice, the good, the fair, the excellent, of philosophy, religion, poetry, and art, and of whatever else seems favorable to human life and to the development of ideal manhood. Of the merely useful they have the scorn of young and inexperienced minds; and Hippocrates proclaims himself ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... poetical? It was Lucan's misfortune that the ideal side was already occupied; he had no power to choose. Few who have read the Pharsalia would wish it unwritten. Some critics have denied that it is poetry at all. [33] Poetry of the first order it certainly is not, but those who will forgive artistic defects for energy of thought and strength of feeling must always retain a strong admiration for ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... see!" she exclaimed. "And what a beautiful set of changes, like real poetry! The stamen in a flower, and growth, and a ray of sunlight are all one ...
— Every Girl's Book • George F. Butler
... was a verse-maker. Poetry suited my emotions better than prose. The following is one ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... Seigniory of Tilly. Vases of china, filled with freshly-gathered flowers, shed sweet perfumes, while they delighted the eye with their beauty, etherializing the elements of bread and meat by suggestions of the poetry and ideals of life. A grand old buffet, a prodigy of cabinet-maker's art, displayed a mass of family plate, and a silver shield embossed with the arms of Tilly, a gift of Henry of Navarre to their ancient and loyal house, hung upon the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... your cards. It might be well to write some message on the card recalling the events of the preceding evening—nothing intimate, but simply a reminder of your first meeting and a suggestion that you might possibly desire to continue the acquaintanceship. Quotations from poetry of the better sort are always appropriate; thus, on this occasion, it might be nice to write on the card accompanying the flowers—"'This is the forest primeval'—H. W. Longfellow," or "'Take, oh take, those lips away'—W. Shakespeare." You will ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, who in 1776 was created Baron Lucan. Her mother, Lady Lucan, was a remarkably talented woman, trying her hand with success at modelling, painting, and poetry. She was ambitious to be an intellectual leader, and like several other ladies of the time entertained after the fashion of the French salons, inviting people of wit and learning to meet in her drawing-room for discussion. Her ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... satiety; but all lines which do not go in the steady jog-trot of alternate beats as regularly as the piston of a steam engine, are more or less defective. This simple-minded system naturally makes wild work with the poetry of the 'mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies.' Milton's harsh cadences are indeed excused on the odd ground that he who was 'vindicating the ways of God to man' might have been condemned for 'lavishing ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. His novels are a new literature in themselves, and his poetry as good as any—if not better (only on an erroneous system), and only ceased to be popular, because the vulgar learned were tired of hearing 'Aristides called the Just,' and Scott the Best, and ostracized him."—Byron ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... animal of which the quest calls forth the combined characteristics of the ibex, the stag and the tiger-hunter. Some of my own experiences I have described in 'Seonee;' but let those who wish to learn the poetry of the thing read the glowing, yet not less true pages of Colonel Walter Campbell's 'Old Forest Ranger;' and for clear practical information, combined also with graphic description, the works of Captain J. Forsyth and Mr. G. P. Sanderson ('The Highlands of Central India' ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... minute Dorothy was dancing opposite the delighted and capering half-breed, and almost enjoying it. With hands on hips, with head thrown back, and with feet tremulous with motion, she kept time to the music. She was a good dancer, and realised what is meant by the poetry of motion. The fiddler played fairly well, and Pierre La Chene, if somewhat pronounced in his movements, was at least a picturesque figure, whose soul was in the dance. So amusing, were his antics that the girl laughed heartily, despite the danger ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... in the Kentucky Militia in connection with one of those feud cases, I was asked by a private if I were related to Edgar Allan Poe, "De mug what used to write poetry," and when I replied, "Yes, he was my grandmother's first cousin," he, evidently thinking I was too boastful, remarked, "Well, man, you've got ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... too, eh? Who's got to do the poetry, though? Somebody propose somebody"—thereupon every fag proposed his chiefest enemy, and the battles raged along the line. "And you call yourselves gentlemen!" said Grim in disgust—he had been overlooked for ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... with the other sex, who love poetry and romance, as he well knew, for which reason he often used the phrases of both, and in such a way as to answer his purpose with most of those whom he wished to please. He had one great advantage in the sweepstakes of life: he was not handicapped ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... he went on, "to remain a daughter of the crude West. I want to take you back with me to the land where life still moves to poetry, to the land where one can live in a world unknown by these struggling hordes. You shall live in a palace where the perfume of flowers lingers always, with the sound of running water in your ears, a palace from ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... scarcely extends beyond the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Sailors driven by storms into the western sea might have brought to Asia Minor accounts of the existence of a western land and possibly also of its whirlpools and island-mountains vomiting fire: but in the age of the Homeric poetry there was an utter want of trustworthy information respecting Sicily and Italy, even in that Greek land which was the earliest to enter into intercourse with the west; and the story-tellers and poets of the east could without fear ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... seldom forgotten. Things learned later in life, not only are learned with greater difficulty, but more rapidly disappear. I recall instantly and without effort, texts of Scripture, hymns, catechisms, rules of grammar and arithmetic, and scraps of poetry and of classic authors, with which I became familiar when a boy. But it is a labor of Hercules for me to repeat by memory anything acquired since attaining the age of manhood. The Creator seems to have arranged ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... the English poets evidently the great favorite of our guide: the choice does honor to his head and heart. A man must have a very strong bent for poetry, indeed, who carries Southey's works in his portmanteau, and quotes them in proper time and occasion. Of course at Waterloo a spirit like our guide's cannot fail to be deeply moved, and to turn to his favorite poet for sympathy. ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a delightful companion. He was a very good man, she thought, for she had heard him say at Mr. Luff's, one day, that he always wished to do his duty in whatever state of life he might be placed; and he knew a great deal of poetry, for one day he had repeated a verse of a song. She wondered if he had made the words of the valentine!—it ended ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... books read as Jesse Bulrush and Nurse Egan, and even her mother, read them to Crozier after his operation, to help him pass away the time. The only time she ever cared to listen— at school, though quick and clever, she had never cared for the printed page—was when, by chance, poetry or verses were read or recited. Then she would listen eagerly, not attracted by the words, but by the music of the lines, by the rhyme and rhythm, by the underlying feeling; and she got something out of it which had in one sense nothing to do with the verses themselves ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "the story of evolution" will attract workingmen to a lecture when zooelogy or chemistry will drive them away. The "outlines of literature" or "the best in literature" will draw an audience when a lecturer in English poetry will be solitary. This results partly from a wholesome desire to have general knowledge before special knowledge, and is partly a rebound from the specialization of labor to which the workingman is subjected. When he is free from work and can direct his own mind, ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... leg, with one arm outstretched and one eye closed, perhaps to concentrate the force of the spell,[1122] but the power lay mainly in the spoken words, as we have seen in discussing Celtic formulae of prayer. Such spells were also used by the Filid, or poets, since most primitive poetry has a magical aspect. Part of the training of the bard consisted in learning traditional incantations, which, used with due ritual, produced the magic result.[1123] Some of these incantations have already come before ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... into a ropery and succeeded by Parr-street. By the way, Duke-street, which occupies a portion of its site, has been famous for notable persons residing in it. In the third house from Colquitt-street Felicia Hemans was born, and she wrote some of her early poetry there. In the yard of the next house was once a tree, the last remnant of the Ladies Walk, which had two rows of trees down the sides and centre as in the other Ladies Walk previously mentioned. Mrs. Hemans apostrophizes this tree in one of her early poems. I recollect her very well, for she ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... poetry," said Willibald, defending himself. "I never wrote but one poem, and that was on the night when I saw Marietta play. I gave it to Hartmut and asked him to change it a little and make it read more like his. I'll tell you what he said in answer. 'Dear ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... the warmth and loveliness of the infant morn? And what was the magic acting on the enthusiast himself, that all traces of gloom and pensive thought were banished from his brow, that the full tide of poetry within his soul seemed thrilling on his lip, breathing in his simplest word, entrancing his whole being in joy? Scarce could he himself have defined its cause, such a multitude of strong emotions were busy at his heart. He saw not the dangers overhanging the path of the ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... prerogatives and their functions, and indicated their form," would not, of course, be accepted in a literal sense by any modern mythologist. But it is nevertheless true that the clear and vivid personality and individuality given to the gods by the epic poets affects all later poetry and all Greek art. The imagination of the poets could not, as we have already noticed, have had so deep and wide an influence unless it had been based upon popular beliefs and conceptions. But it fills these ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... rustling with trills and fluttering of wings. Quail, thrushes, nightingales are imprisoned in them. The nightingale, the singing-bird beyond all others, so difficult to tame, is the honoured guest, the privileged dweller in these rustic cages. With the rose, he is an essential part of Arab poetry. The woods round about Thagaste were full of nightingales. Not the least doubt that the child Augustin had felt the little musical throats of these singing-birds throb between his hands. His sermons, his heaviest treatises, have a recollection ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... that Mr. Stepfast told her the young Baronet told him (and he verily believed he was head and ears in love with her!) Miss Robbs was the most lovely creature he had seen since he left Belgravia. And then he went into a perfect rhapsody of excitement while praising the poetry of her motion, the grace with which she performed the smallest offices of the drawing-room, her queenly figure, her round, alabaster arms, her smooth, tapering hands, (so chastely set off with two small diamonds, and so unlike the butchers' wives of this day, ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... to a large class of Chinese terms. The significative portion of it is the character for 'speech,' but the other half is merely phonetical, enabling us to approximate to its pronunciation or name. The meaning of the compound has to be learned from its usage. Its most common significations are 'poetry,' a poem, or poems,' and a collection of poems! This last is its meaning when we speak of the ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... those children as they stood before me. I looked at their bright, clear faces, their eyes wonder-wide, their clean brows alert for knowledge, hungry for life and its beauty. Despite their hideous clothes, they were the poetry of the world: all that is young and fresh and lovely. Then I thought of them five years hence, their minds larded with a Sound Commercial Education, tramping the streets of the City from nine o'clock in the morning until six o'clock in the ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... confuse and frighten himself with thoughts of "literature in all its branches." Experts and pedagogues (chiefly pedagogues) have, for the purpose of convenience, split literature up into divisions and sub-divisions—such as prose and poetry; or imaginative, philosophic, historical; or elegiac, heroic, lyric; or religious and profane, etc., ad infinitum. But the greater truth is that literature is all one—and indivisible. The idea of the unity of literature should be well planted and fostered in the head. All literature ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... refuge in times of stress are of the "notebook" and "table-talk" kind. Poetry I have tried, but could not approach it. It is too distant. Romance, which many found good, would never hold my attention. But I had Samuel Butler's Note Books with me for two years in France, and found that the ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... grief that seemed to rise up in my throat and choke me. I could not think of the meaning of the prayers nor join in the singing: and all the time that Mr. Butler, our clergyman, was preaching, a verse of a little piece of poetry which I learnt as a girl was running ...
— The Lost Stradivarius • John Meade Falkner
... still inconsolable, poor youth! He looked so drearily pathetic, and quoted such doleful poetry, that Mrs. Gwynne, who, in her matter-of-fact plainness, had no patience with any of Lyle's "romantic vagaries," as she called them, began to exert the dormant humour by which she always quenched his little ebullitions. Olive at last considerately ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... air, the cloudless sky. Not a bird piped, not a breeze whispered—solitude, you, and I. The motionless leaves did not quiver in the beautiful sunset hues which are both light and shadow. You felt that heavenly poetry—you who experienced so many various emotions, and who so often raised your eyes to heaven to avoid answering me. You who are proud and saucy, humble and masterful, who give yourself to me so completely in spirit and in thought, and evade the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... an imagination you have got! One of these days, Iris, I shall be prouder of you than ever; I shall find you a famous literary character. I don't mean writing a novel; women who can't even hem a handkerchief can write a novel. It's poetry I'm thinking of. Irish melodies by Lady Harry that beat Tom Moore. What a gift! And there are fortunes made, as I have heard, by people who spoil fair white paper to some purpose. I wish I ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins |
