"Verse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and is unequalled. The mosaics and marbles, however, are less artistic than in the later mosques. The tomb chamber, entered from the east, has a finely decorated door of brass, and is encircled by a marble dado, twenty-five feet high, above which is a verse from the Koran carved in wood. In the centre of the room is the grave of the founder. The original dome fell in 1660, and was replaced by an inferior one; there were to have been four minarets, but these collapsed also. The court is well proportioned and ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... frightened, Annie, my dear," he said. "I have just been reminded of a verse in the Bible—about vengeance not belonging to mere human beings. Nigel Anstruthers has had a stroke of paralysis, and it is not his first. Apparently, even if he lies on his back for some months thinking of harm, he won't be able to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... are often better expressed in prose. Thus when Warwick in one of the plays of Shakespear, is left wounded on the field after the loss of the battle, and his friend says to him, "Oh, could you but fly!" what can be more sublime than his answer, "Why then, I would not fly." No measure of verse, I imagine, could add dignity to this sentiment. And it would be easy to select examples of the beautiful or new from prose writers, which I suppose no measure of verse ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... autumn of 1750, by selling a laced waistcoat to a pawnbroker in Monmouth-street, who happened to carry it to the very man who had just sold the lace. Maclaine impeached his companion, Plunket, but he was not taken. The former got into verse: Gray, ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... a gypsey at Liverpool, who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one letter for my three? A lazy chit whose fingers tire with penning a page in reply to a quire! There, Miss, you read all the first sentence of my epistle, and never knew that you were reading verse. I have some gossip for you about the Edinburgh Review. Napier is in London, and has called on me several times. He has been with the publishers, who tell him that the sale is falling off; and in many private parties, where he hears sad complaints. The universal cry is that the long dull articles ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... when, like a love-verse printed On the smooth polish of an emerald, I see the marks she stamped, the kisses dinted Large-lettered, by her lips? thy speech withheld Speaks all too plainly; go,—abide thy choice! If thou dost stay, I shall more greatly grieve thee; Not records of her victory?—peace, dear voice! ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... characterised as one who loved to say little oddities, was affecting one day, at a Bishop's table, a sort of slyness and freedom not in character, and repeated, as if part of The Old Mans Wish, a song by Dr. Walter Pope, a verse bordering on licentiousness. Johnson rebuked him in the finest manner, by first shewing him that he did not know the passage he was aiming at, and thus humbling him: "Sir, that is not the song: it ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... primal rib, Once called by Alexander Gibb, "The Sleepy's," in the good old time When he dealt in both prose and rhyme, And made opponents fume and fret With caustic in the old Gazette— Rhyme, too, in which a critic's claw Could scarcely fasten on a flaw, His verse was ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... muse! from Jove derive my song: "All yield to Jove's dominion. Oft my verse "Before the mightiness of Jove has sung. "I sung the giants, in a strain sublime, "And vengeful thunders, o'er Phlegraea's plain "Scatter'd; a tender theme now claims my lyre: "I sing of youths by deities belov'd; "And nymphs who ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... of the train window at those trees of future forests, I thought of the verse in Isaiah, "The mountains and the trees shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands." I can hear the mountains and the hills of the Adirondacks singing because of the growing trees, and I hear the mountains and the hills of earth ...
— The Children's Six Minutes • Bruce S. Wright
... At the closing verse his manly tones were heard as a deep, full echo to the rest, while devout thanksgiving ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... sometimes say, with quivering lips. "How he loved his son Joseph! As much," she once added—"as much, Graham, as I love you: if you were to die" (and she re-opened the book, sought the verse, and read), "I should refuse to be comforted, and go down into the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... of many pages and then a heavy, emotional silence. Olva read the words and found them very sentimental, very bad verse and rather unpleasantly fall of blood and pain. Every one stood; the chairs creaked from one end of the building to the other, an immense volume of sound ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... vision consoled them in the midst of their litanies. The archangel Michael was seen over the tomb of Hadrian, sheathing his flaming sword in token that the pestilence was to cease. Gregory heard the angelic antiphon from heavenly voices—Regina Coeli, laetare, and added himself the concluding verse—Ora pro nobis ...
— 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
... those Ladies help this verse of mine, Who helped Amphion in enclosing Thebes, That from the fact ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the verses quietly to himself until he came to the last but one: "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head." As he finished the verse he cast a troubled look at his stepdaughter, who was quietly sewing on the other side of the fire. "Coals o' fire," he muttered under his breath, and the old look of terror came back into his eyes. Mary had never learnt to read, but she saw that the Bible, which before had brought him peace ...
— More Tales of the Ridings • Frederic Moorman
... again. I never liked Mr. Stillbrook since the walk that Sunday to the "Cow and Hedge," but I must say he sings comic-songs well. His song: "We don't Want the old men now," made us shriek with laughter, especially the verse referring to Mr. Gladstone; but there was one verse I think he might have omitted, and I said so, but Gowing thought it was the best ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... said Geordie with a show of reluctance, as he rose to his feet, making a noise in his throat, like the exhaust pipe of an engine, "seein' that you are all so pressin' on the maitter, I'll gi'e ye a bit verse ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... preserving English valor in immortal verse. Thackeray and Dickens, in prose as immortal, were picturing the social lights and shadows of the ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... much of a poet, but he made out something about their ride to church, and the refrain of every verse told of their meeting in the wood. He whistled and fished and felt very happy; and the German fished away quietly and left him ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... poems, there is one to my mind almost peerless for sweet sonority of verse-music, and simplicity of strength. If it chance that any reader of mine has not admired "The Rhyme of the Duchess May," this page, at least, has not been written in vain. My saddle-bags held no volume other than ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... them all! Dear old Pagan, wonderful in his death as in his life. When, shortly before he died, his house caught fire, and the mild curate of the parish begged him to withdraw from the library of books he loved so well, he flatly refused to listen, and cried roundly, in a line of vehement blank verse, "By the immortal gods, ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... of history as must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, with a sense of the incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. Le Bon Roi Dagobert has been sung over French cradles since the legend was fresh. The nurse knows nothing more sleepy than the tune and the verse that she herself slept to when a child. The gaiety of the thirteenth century, in Le Pont a' Avignon, is put mysteriously to sleep, away in the tete a tete of child and nurse, in a thousand little sequestered rooms at night. Malbrook would be comparatively ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... language. Tasso, indeed, he admired; and, which is singular, more than Ariosto. But we believe that he had read him only in English; and it is certain that he could not take up an Italian author, either in prose or verse, for the unaffected amusement of ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... calm continued, and there they floated in the centre, as it were, of a vast mirror, covered by a blue canopy. Very little was said now by any of the party. Even Bill could scarcely sing a verse of a song, though he made several attempts, to keep up his own spirits and those of his companions. Hour after hour passed by; the night again came. Often, during the period of darkness, those on the raft thought they saw ...
— Sunshine Bill • W H G Kingston
... good conduct, the hero turned homeward, eager to reach again the capital from which he had been so long away. His route was now overland, and to entertain himself on the long journey he invented a form of poetic verse which is still much in use by the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... "'Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying Where Hope clung feeding like a bee, Both were mine! Life went a maying With Nature, Hope and ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... south; Prussia hounded Jahn for five long years, this Jahn whose gymnastic societies had been so helpful in hardening young men to Prussian army services; and the poet Arndt, whose impassioned verse intensified the National spirit of Germany, was shamefully treated, his papers scattered and the man driven ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... last words, his attention was suddenly attracted by the clear and sonorous voice of Rose-Pompon, who, knowing her Beranger by heart, had opened Philemon's window, and, seated on the sill, sang with much grace and prettiness this verse ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Sol, who knew the tongue of the Iroquois, and so it went on, verse after verse, and at the end of each verse came the refrain, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to you I belong, And to you I would dedicate a verse or a song, Rejoicing o’er the victory John Robertson has won Now the Land Bill has passed and the good time has come Now the ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... blue, a yellow for ten red, and a Bible for ten yellow tickets. If you will count up, you will see it makes a Bible for ten thousand verses. Sam came up one day with his ten yellow tickets, and everybody knew he had not said a verse, but had just got them by trading with the boys. But he received his Bible with all the serious air of a ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... means so great as some others which almost invariably accompany this unnatural mode of proceeding with the young. Many who have nominally been taught to read, are still quite unable to understand by reading. Those who have heard chapters read by families in the country, "verse about," will at once understand what we here mean; and even in towns and cities where newspapers and low-priced books are more numerous and more tempting, it often requires long practice before the emancipated child can read these publications so readily ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... this is like Mary's little lamb, only it's different," said Jonny Bushytail, the squirrel boy, as he remembered the verse about the lamb in school. Only this ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... selection, sidenotes are identified by verse lines. They are grouped by text headers (generally in Latin), as shown in ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... song with the full orchestra. It devastated the habitable earth for the next six months. Imagine, then, what its rage and pulse must have been at the incandescent hour of its birth! She only gave the chorus once. At the end of the second verse, 'Are you with me, boys?' she cried, and the house tore it clean away from her—'Earth was flat—Earth was flat. Flat as my hat—Flatter than that'—drowning all but the bassoons and double-basses ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... really sickness that was troubling her child, but that a ghost was coming and hurting him; so when his cries showed that the ghost was in the room, the mother would rise up, shaking all over, I daresay, and would repeat the verse that she had been taught ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... come to her mind was, "And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea; and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof." Every effort at prayer or at calm recall of old thoughts still ended in that desolate verse. The first relief to these miserable dreams was the cool clear morning light, and by-and-by the early cathedral bells, then Grace's kind greeting made her quite herself; no longer feverish, but full of lassitude and depression. She would not listen to Grace's entreaties ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... romance has long embodied in his person the virtues of the typical avenger of the wrongs of the poor and the oppressed against the tyranny of the rich and the powerful; his name has been honored and his manly deeds have been lauded in prose and verse by thousands in many lands for many centuries, exciting doubtless many a noble deed of self-denial, and spurring to the forefront many a popular act of patriotic daring. In Switzerland certainly this picturesque representative of liberty has done much to mould the political life, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the Crave Rue. His breast-plate [Footnote: A poetic spell or incantation. So even the Christian hymn of St. Patrick was called the lorica or breastplate of Patrick.] of power, woven of druidic verse, was upon Ulla [Footnote: Ulla is the Gaelic root of Ulster.] in his time, upon all the children of Rury in their going out and their coming in, in war and in peace. Dethcaen [Footnote: Dethcaen is compounded of two words which mean respectively, colour, and slender.] sang her own songs of protection ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Walter Harte's An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad,[1] it has reappeared more than once: the unsold sheets of the first edition were included in A Collection of Pieces in Verse and Prose, Which Have Been Publish'd on Occasion of the Dunciad (1732), and the Essay is also found in at least three late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century collections of poetry.[2] For several reasons, however, ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... me! I'm as cool as a cucumber all the time; and whilst they tink I'm tinking of nothing in life but making a noise, I make my own snug little remarks in prose and verse, as—now my voice is after coming back to me, you shall ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... tiny ringing of a million silver bells. What fairy-like creature of the insect world gave out this lovely music she was at no pains to discover. It was enough that it was, and she had leaned out of her window many a night and wondered why Byam Warner had never sung its music in his verse. ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... road, could see at once the whole array, and the children from every tier see the queen and her attendants. As her majesty entered the park, the whole host raised their voices and began the national anthem. For a few moments the effect was sublime; it was, however, only during the first verse. The boys of the Irish Roman Catholic schools burst the limitations of their orders, and of their positions, and raised a tumultuous shout, which was caught up in an instant by the other children, and almost as soon by the vast multitudes who filled the park. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... every poetaster can quote them or parody them at will; but very few readers consider that the bitter verse summarises a whole literature. From Homer to Tennyson the ugly tune has been played on all strings; and mankind have such a vivid perception of the truth uttered by the satirists, that they read the whole story with gusto whenever it is ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... sing of her and this fair day to keep The very Loves forsake their Winter sleep; Where'er she goes their circling wings they spread, And shower celestial roses o'er her head. I, too, would chant her worth and dare to raise A hymn to what's beyond immortal praise. Go, little verse, and lay in vesture meet Of poesy, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the verse, the child on whom the last word falls is said to be "out," and steps aside. At each repetition one in like manner steps aside, and the one who survives the ordeal until all the rest have been "chapped" or "titted" out is declared "it" or "takkie," and the ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... Another volume of verse appeared in 1832; and its appearance seems to have been due rather to the urgent persuasion of his friends than to his own eagerness to appear in print. Though J. S. Mill and a few other critics wrote with good judgement and praised the book, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... to see that the game was up. No one saw this any sooner than Carew himself; yet he carried himself like a man, and confessed the indictment without a quiver. They brought him the book, to read a verse and save his neck, perhaps, by pleading benefit of clergy. But he knew the temper of those against him, and that nothing might avail; so he refused the plea quietly, saying, 'I am no clerk, sirs. All I wish to read in this case is what my own hand wrote upon that ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... note and accent, not to scan With Midas' ears, committing short and long; Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan; To after age thou shalt be writ the man, That with smooth air could'st humour best our tongue. Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire, That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn, or story. Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, who he woo'd to sing, Met in the milder shades ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... Larry, who called him "a Western bounder," and grumbled, "He hasn't anything to say for himself." It was true that Falkner developed chronic dumbness in Larry's conversational presence. But Margaret seemed to like the "bounder." She discovered that he carried in his pocket a volume of verse. An engineer who went to his job these days with a poetry book in his coat pocket was not ordinary, as she remarked ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... thought of her as playing "melancholy"—in the contemplative Miltonic sense—to Lydia's "mirth." She was a mystery to him; a mystery he would have liked to unravel. But she was also a mystery to her family. She shut herself up a good deal with her books; she had written two tragedies in blank verse; and she held feminist views, vague yet fierce. She was apparently indifferent to men, much more so than Lydia, who frankly preferred their society to that of her own sex; but Lydia noticed that if the vicar, Mr. Franklin, did not call for a week Susan ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... some beauties of my author, in his former books. There occurred to me the Hunting of the Boar, Cinyras and Myrrha, the good-natur'd story of Baucis and Philemon, with the rest, which I hope I have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this, I may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. He who has arriv'd the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned Sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if I may properly call it by that name, which was the ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... public ear already, and can fix your own royalties with the Sosii. And everybody, from Augustus to the capricious fair, would welcome the published volume. You should think too of my reputation as showman. Messala told me last week that he had persuaded Tibullus to bring out a book of verse immediately, while you and Virgil are dallying between past and future triumphs. I am tempted to drop you both and take up with ambitious youth. Here is Propertius setting the town agog, and yesterday the Sosii told me of another clever boy, the young Ovid, who ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... anvil while the skilled craftsmen strike out the flexible sword-blade. There is no need for me to praise or analyze the character or fame of the great poet whose centennial we celebrate. This will be done presently by abler hands, in eloquent verse and prose. Tom Moore was a poet of all lands, and it is fitting that his centenary should be observed in cosmopolitan fashion. But he was particularly the poet of Ireland, and on this point I may be allowed to say a word, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... Aquilla Rose, an ingenious young man and of excellent character, highly esteemed in the town, Secretary to the Assembly and a very tolerable poet. Keimer also made verses, but they were indifferent ones. He could not be said to write in verse, for his method was to set the lines as they followed from his muse; and as he worked without copy, had but one set of letter cases, and as the elegy would occupy all his types, it was impossible for any one to assist him. I endeavored ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... Grenadiers." She sang a verse of it. She sang in English and with the broken pronunciation ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... And the verse is true, for by the publication in 1600 of the "De Magnete" the science of electricity was founded. William Gilbert was a fine type of the sixteenth-century physician, a Colchester man, educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. Silvanus Thompson says: "He is beyond question rightfully regarded ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... think of nothing but poor Queen Mary! She had drifted into my imagination with the haar, so that I could fancy her homesick gaze across the water as she murmured, "Adieu, ma chere France! Je ne vous verray jamais plus!"—could fancy her saying as in Allan Cunningham's verse:— ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Story of Santa Klaus; St. Nicholas and the Slave Boy, in Walsh, Story of Santa Klaus; Santa Claus on a Lark, Gladden; Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets, Stuart; The Birds' Christmas Carol, Wiggin; The Coming of the Prince, in Field, Christmas Tales and Christmas Verse; The Festival of St. Nicholas, in Dodge, Hans Brinker; The Peace Egg, Ewing; The Symbol and the Saint, in Field, Christmas Tales and ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... read in Shakespeare's matchless verse the plays of "King Henry IV." and "King Henry V.," do not, in your delight over his splendid word-pictures, permit yourself to place too strong a belief in his portrait of young "Prince Hal," and his scrapes and follies ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... preachers—else why are they there, consider? As to the history, tell it. Some people cannot read, some people will not read, many people (this especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented to them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of continuity. Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting forth the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it. You will never preach so well, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... writer, Astrea began to be completely overpowered by the continual strain, the unremittent tax upon both health and time. Overworked and overwrought, in the early months of 1689 she put into English verse the sixth book (of Trees) from Cowley's Sex Libri Plantarum (1668). Nahum Tate undertook Books IV and V and prefaced the translation when printed. As Mrs. Behn knew no Latin no doubt some friend, perhaps Tate himself, must have paraphrased the original for her. She further published The ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the mother's trick. He was himself trembling, too, lest the child should not know his lesson. What a disappointment it would have been to the mother! For a fortnight before she had taken baby every night on her knees and said, 'Now begin your fable.' She had taught it him verse by verse with the patience of an angel, and she had encouraged him to learn it with many a sugarplum. 'He is beginning to know his fable,' she said a hundred times to her husband. 'Really,' he answered, with an air of doubt. The honest ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... help the other, Two heads being better than one; And the phrase and conceit Would in unison meet, And so with glee the verse flow free, In ding-dong chime of sing-song rhyme, Till ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... one, on a rainy day or a lonely evening, wishes to drive away the blue devils by the perusal of some laughter-compelling volume, we can recommend for the purpose no better reading than the tragedy of Hamlet done into French verse by the Chevalier de Chatelain, a gentleman well known as a very successful translator of English poetry. With singular good sense and feeling he has selected, not the play as Shakespeare wrote it, but the stage-version thereof, as the foundation of his work. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... after school, she takes them out to play on the green grass near the city. A little Jewess once much pleased this kind teacher as she was sitting on a stone looking at the children playing. Little Esther repeated the verse— ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... into French verse of several of David's psalms," which are not dangerous in Latin but which, in French, have the defect of a possible application, through coincidence and prophecy, to the Church as suffering, and ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... ground nuts in large calabashes upon their heads. They were preceded by a strong guard of bowmen, and followed by eight musicians or singing men. As soon as they approached the town, the latter began a song, every verse of which was answered by the company, and succeeded by a few strokes on the large drums. In this manner they proceeded amidst the acclamations of the populace, till they reached the house of Tiggity ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... had stowed the corn like that, mother entered, leaning on me, and we both said, "Thank the Lord for all His mercies, and these the first-fruits of His hand!" And then the clerk gave out a psalm verse by verse, done very well; although he sneezed in the midst of it, from a beard of wheat thrust up his nose by the rival cobbler at Brendon. And when the psalm was sung, so strongly that the foxgloves on the bank were shaking, like a chime of bells, at ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... The above verse is certainly banal enough, but the cardinal himself was a drole, so perhaps it is appropriate. At any rate it is contemporary with the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Gypsy, published in 1868, which brought the name of George Eliot before the public as a poet. This work is a novel written in blank verse, with enough of the heroic and tragic in it to make the story worthy of its poetic form. The story is an excellent one, well conceived and worked out, and had it been given the prose form would have made a powerful and original novel. While it would ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... achieves beauty, or nobility, or fitness of phrase such as only a poet is capable of. It is in these last pieces and their like that his fame lies for the future. It was his lot to be strong as the thinker, the moralist, with "the accomplishment of verse," the scholar interested to rebuild the past of experience, the teacher with an explicit dogma in an intellectual form with examples from life, the anatomist of human passions, instincts, and impulses ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... Lives of Saints. Decius himself would have chosen a philosopher of older time, but in the words of his own kinsman, Maximus found an appeal more intimate, a closer sympathy, than in ancient teaching. He loved especially the passages of verse; and when the reader ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... "An old verse speaks about 'Socii dolorum' ('Friends in suffering'), and I must say that this consolation for the different nations of this state has been amply provided for. But nothing helps the union and brotherhood better than the common ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... madrigal was, so they took Noreen's word for it, and allowed her to retire in favor of Edith, who had also been trying to cultivate the muse of poetry. Her effort at verse was entitled: ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... then continued on his way without answering. He set the plates in a pile outside the door, took the stump of pencil from his ear, and put it in his pocket. He had been copying a verse for his sweetheart's birthday card. He returned to finish clearing the table. The officer's eyes were dancing, he had ...
— The Prussian Officer • D. H. Lawrence
... the free souls of poets, The loftiest bards of all ages strode before me Strange large men, long unwaked, undisclosed, were disclosed to me ... O my rapt verse, my call, mock me not! ... I will not be outfaced by irrational things, I will penetrate what is sarcastic upon me, I will make cities and civilizations defer to me This is what I ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to undertake a campaign of municipal house-cleaning, or to devote themselves to the study of the sonnet form in English verse, when an unusual opportunity for distinction opened before them. The daughter of the club's president was married to a professor in the State University of Michigan, and on one of her visits home she suggested that ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... with the German chronicler's estimate of Rudolph. We are expected to accept him as a modest sort of backwoods peer, the kind that wears flannel next its skin and keeps its small estates unencumbered. We have also a pretty picture in verse of this Rudolph. He is described as meeting a priest carrying the Host, on the bank of a foaming mountain torrent somewhere among the Alps where the ruins of the Habsburg still show against the sky like an abandoned hawk's nest; the name probably derives from Habichts Burg, Hawk's Castle. Rudolph ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... verse it is stated that to him who overcometh "I will give the morning star."[172] In the language of theosophy, this means: He who has overcome the animal soul, shall, by mystic Communion, be united to the divine soul, which, in the Apocalypse, is ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... soul in living and in dead matter; yet, like providence, it has remained invisible to my eyes, although present to my heart. A hundred writers since Socrates, Seneca, St. Augustine, and Gall, have made, in verse and prose, the comparison you have made, and yet I can well understand that a father's sufferings may effect great changes in the mind of a son. I will call on you, sir, since you bid me contemplate, for the advantage of my pride, this ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the house. The envious man, who stayed in the garden, continued the search till at last he found a piece of the leaf. It had been torn in such a manner that each half of a line formed a complete sense, and even a verse of a shorter measure; but what was still more surprising, these short verses were found to contain the most injurious reflections on the king. They ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... galley, with his birlinn chant, and stirring on the fight with his prosnuchadh catha, or battle-song. At the noted battle of Harlaw,[12] a piece was sung which has escaped the wreck of that tremendous slaughter, and of contemporary poetry. It is undoubtedly genuine; and the critics of Gaelic verse are unanimous in ascribing to it every excellence which can belong either to alliterative art, or musical excitement. Of the battle-hymn some splendid specimens have been handed down; and these are to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... if you've took it in that when you're in a grave, or 'round one, your talk sort o' veers that way? Ours did. Mis' Banker Mason's baby had just died in March, an' the choir'd made an awful scandal, breakin' down in the fifth verse of 'One poor flower has drooped and faded.' They'd stood 'em in a half circle where they could look right down on the little thing. An' when the ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... beautiful verse. His tender heart had felt the pathos of life, and he knew how to set this pathos to music. He was naturally a humorist, and his humor often caused him to take a right angle turn in the midst of serious thoughts. Parents have for nearly a quarter ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... a verse of it on Saturday night when she ought to have been doing her arithmetic; and on Sunday evening she had coaxed her mother to the piano, and begged her to sing "just this one song, please." Her mother sang very prettily—like Dot—and she had thrown a good ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... she moistened and bit at the tip of her thread, before pointing it through her needle. For the book open before Richard, in which he was making notes as he read, was—the Bible. Bending over him to drop a kiss on the top of his head, Polly had been staggered by what she saw. Opposite the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light," he had written: "Three days before the sun!" Her heart seemed to shrivel, to grow small in her breast, at the thought of her husband ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... given to rhyme, By rhymesters of a knowing time? Ah! for the age when verse was clad, Being godlike, to be bad ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... back over my own life, the precious times were generally seasons of great suffering; so much so, that the idea of discipline has become a hobby. But one can only learn all this by experience. Mrs. —— says she never sings the verse containing "E'en though it be a cross that raiseth me," and that little children never talk in that way to their mothers, and, therefore, we ought not to talk so to God! I did not argue with her about it, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... governors—the "lords presidents" they were called—of the Marches of Wales, and it was in the days of its presidential splendor that Milton's Comus was acted in the great hall. Wandering about in shady corners of the ruin, it is the echo of that enchanting verse that we should try to catch, and not the faint groans of some encaverned malefactor. Other verse was also produced at Ludlow—verse, however, of a less sonorous quality. A portion of Samuel Butler's Hudibras was composed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... were largely borrowed from Addison's essays on the imagination and from Lord Shaftesbury. Professor Dowden complains that "his tone is too high-pitched; his ideas are too much in the air; they do not nourish themselves in the common heart, the common life of man.'' Dr Johnson praised the blank verse of the poems, but found fault with the long and complicated periods. Akenside's verse was better when it was subjected to severer metrical rules. His odes are very few of them lyrical in the strict sense, but they are dignified ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... that a man can do so much to benefit his townsfolk out of the modest income of $2500 a year; and not only Pope, but Coleridge also, has found this a theme for verse. The house in which the "Man of Ross" lived is on the left-hand side of the market-place, and still stands, though much changed. It is now a drug-store and a dwelling. The floors and panelling of several of the chambers are of oak, while a quaint opening leads ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... strange effect, at once so melodious and so inspiring. The words of the hymn had a peculiar fitness, for the occasion, after we had been spared from the vengeance of the savages. Mr. Gracewood read each verse before it was sung, so as to recall the words to the audience. After the singing, he read a sermon appropriate to the circumstances of the family. At the end of it he spoke of Matt Rockwood, and paid a very ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... this, so that Goudar, afraid of having gone rather too fast, took up his violin, and gave him a verse of his song to quiet him. Then accompanying his words still now and then with a few notes, and after having allowed Cocoleu to caress his bottle once more, ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... young colored man in a black velvet coat and a brilliant red tie—came forward, stood before the pulpit, and began a long solo—as a rule, with scores of verses. One was on the creation, another on the flood, each verse paraphrasing the scriptural account; and the refrain, in which the whole ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... life of marvel and achievement, was possible to Lear. Those last thoughts are romantic in their strangeness: Lear's five-times repeated 'Never,' in which the simplest and most unanswerable cry of anguish rises note by note till the heart breaks, is romantic in its naturalism; and to make a verse out of this one word required the boldness as well as the inspiration which came infallibly to Shakespeare at the greatest moments. But the familiarity, boldness and inspiration are surpassed (if that can be) by the next line, which shows the bodily oppression asking for bodily relief. The imagination ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... careless that the same tales and deeds have done duty for other peoples and other heroes. Hence it happens that Hereward the Saxon, a patriot hero as real and actual as Wellington or Nelson, whose deeds were recorded in prose and verse within forty years of his death, was even then surrounded by a cloud of romance and mystery, which hid in vagueness his family, his marriage, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... that he couldn't. While they were singing he stood loosely, with one hand in his trouser-pocket, scratching his beard with his hymn-book, and looking as if he were thinking things over, and only rousing himself to give another verse. He forgot to give it once or twice, but we got through all right. I noticed the wife of one of the men who had asked Peter to preach looking rather black at her husband, and I reckoned that he'd get it hotter than the weather ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... evils is a delicate one. Well, I have never set up for a man of the world, though sometimes when I have heard the Lovelaces of the day hinting mysteriously at their secret sins or boasting of their florid gallantries, I have remembered the last verse of Suckling's "Ballad of a Wedding," which, no doubt, the reader knows as well as I, and if not, it will increase his acquaintance with our brave old ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... used to bandy Latin and Greek with him from the Bar to the Bench; and he has more than once told me of his sending Tenterden Greek verses of John Williams', of which the next day Tenterden gave him a translation in Latin verse. He is supposed to have died very rich. Denman was taken into the King's closet before the Council, when he was sworn in; the King took no particular notice of him, and the appointment is not, probably, very palatable ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... of you and your brother friars, bethinking me of the ill case wherein you will find yourselves over yonder in the next life.' 'And what was it that moved thee to such compassion of us?' asked the inquisitor. 'Sir,' answered the other, 'it was that verse of the Evangel, which saith, "For every one ye shall receive an hundred." 'That is true,' rejoined the inquisitor; 'but why did these words move thee thus?' 'Sir,' replied the good man, 'I will tell you. Since I have been used to resort hither, I have seen give out ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... threw the garland and sang the verse; and, behold, the garland hovered in the sunshine, and descended in soft vibrations on ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... puzzled me like anything; In fact, it puzzled me worse: Isn't schoolman's logic hard enough, Without being in Sibyl's verse? ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... sermon, so gentle, so simple, so tender, held in it no human words and yet it was not a mere repetition of verse ...
— The Girls of St. Olave's • Mabel Mackintosh
... our examination consisted in the answering of certain questions in writing, given to us in the three days immediately previous to the grand and final one; for this last day was reserved the paper of composition (as it was termed) in verse and prose, and the personal examination in a few showy, but generally understood, subjects. When Gerald gave in his paper, and answered the verbal questions, a buzz of admiration and anxiety went round the room. His person was so handsome, his address so graceful, his voice so assured ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... necessary to premise, that the most renowned of the Singhalese books is the Mahawanso, a metrical chronicle, containing a dynastic history of the island for twenty-three centuries from B.C. 543 to A.D. 1758. But being written in Pali verse its existence in modern times was only known to the priests, and owing to the obscurity of its diction it had ceased to be studied by even ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... Fairy Queen," in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Nichols's edition, vol. iii., p. 172, are stanzas similar to the Welsh verse given above, which also partially embody the Welsh opinions of Fairy visits to their houses. Thus chants ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... me. She had been in such a hurry that she forgot to say the little fairy verse and when she opened her eyes, there she was in the ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... spreads her sail, And wealth is wafted in each shifting gale. The sons of Odin tread on Persian looms, And Odin's daughters breathe distilled perfumes; Loud minstrel Bards, in Gothic halls, rehearse The Runic rhyme, and "build the lofty verse:" The Muse, whose liquid notes were wont to swell To the soft breathings of the' olian shell, Submits, reluctant, to the harsher tone, And scarce believes the altered voice her own. And now, where ...
— Eighteen Hundred and Eleven • Anna Laetitia Barbauld
... at work since I came; three chapters of The Wrecker, and since that, eight of the South Sea book, and, along and about and in between, a hatful of verses. Some day I'll send the verse to you, and you'll say if any of it is any good. I have got in a better vein with the South Sea book, as I think you will see; I think these chapters will do for the volume without much change. Those ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sing a song: That thereupon she turned it more to her own supposed case; and believing Mrs. Jewkes had a design against her honour, and looking upon her as her gaoler, she thus gives her version of this psalm. But pray, Mr. Williams, do you read one verse of the common translation, and I will read one of Pamela's. Then Mr. Williams, pulling out his little pocket Common-Prayer-Book, read the ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... mind to talk to the child of Angela and always he pictured her as the poet writes in verse of the passion of his life: as the painter puts on canvas the features that make life ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... this season the empire, the genius of Rome, the customs of the country, demand it, and above all the great goddess Astarte and her genial, jocund month. 'Parturit almus ager;' you know the verse; do not be out of tune with Nature, nor clash and jar with the great ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... thing, and contrary to human nature, for a man to say that he would not care if, after his own death, a general conflagration of the whole world were to happen, which is often uttered in a Greek(47) verse; so it is certainly true that we ought to consult the interests of those who are to come after us, for the sake of the love ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... a play which shall convey to the general public an impression of antiquity is to make the characters speak blank verse and abstain from reference to steam, telegraphy, or any of the material conditions of their existence. The more ignorant men are, the more convinced are they that their little parish and their little chapel is an apex which civilization and philosophy have painfully ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... notice of a seeming contradiction here in the text. God saith to the Prophet in the former verse, "Show the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities;" and, Jer. xxxi. 19, Ephraim is first instructed, then ashamed. And here it is quite turned over in my text; if they be ashamed show ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... for the most part, unprinted literature,— cherished in remote villages, resisting everywhere the invasion of modern namby-pamby verse and jaunty melody, and possessing, in an historical point of view, especial value as a faithful record of the feeling, usages, and modes of life of the rural population,— had been almost wholly passed ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... unus'd to lofty verse Who sweep the earth with lowly wing, Like sand before the blast disperse— A Nose! a mighty Nose I sing! As erst Prometheus stole from heaven the fire 5 To animate the wonder of his hand; Thus with unhallow'd hands, O Muse, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... schlafend." A far greater Hebraist than Luther, who flourished about two hundred years before the great German Reformer came into note, put the same construction on that sacred affirmation. Rabbi Abraham Hacohen of Zante, who paraphrased the whole Hebrew Psalter into modern metrical Hebrew verse (which, according to a P.S., was completed in 1326), interprets the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... further against Socrates, that he was so malicious as to choose out of the famous poets the passages that contained the worst instructions, and that he made use of them in a sly manner, to inculcate the vices of injustice and violence: as this verse of Hesiod, ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... whose voice had called, whose arms had held her, though he was unaware. He needed her, though he did not know it. And she had come to him, without understanding. Somewhere she had read a fugitive bit of verse that had meant nothing then, and had been forgotten until now, when it suddenly sang across the years and the spaces like a ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... went down to tell his father of the resolution he had taken, without making enquiry as to either my birth, parentage, or education. A wild young man he was, and rather changeable; for sometimes he would have made sonnets to my eyebrows, if he had had the gift of verse; sometimes he would have stabbed me to the heart, if he had had a dagger; sometimes I was his adorable Lucy Ashton; then his tantalizing Miss Poggs; then his hated Betsy; whereas, all the time, I was nothing but the selfsame anonymous but fascinating creature, who under ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various |
