... instances are on record of the encounter of this fish with other fishes, or of their attacks upon ships. What can be the inducement for it to attack objects so much larger than itself is hard to surmise. We are all familiar with the couplet from Oppian: ... — Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey Read full book for free!
... responsible for much of this. He has brought this House into nearly the same condition. We do very little, and they do absolutely nothing. All of us in our younger days, I am quite sure, were taught by those who had the care of us a verse which was intended to inculcate the virtue of industry. One couplet... — Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright Read full book for free!
... paper pasted across its back. As he hoped, it gave both the name and address of the merchant from whom it had been bought. But that was not all. Running in diagonal lines across this label, he saw some faded lines in fine handwriting, which proved to be a couplet signed with five initials. The latter were not quite legible, but the couplet he could read without the least difficulty. It was highly sentimental, and might mean much and might mean nothing. If the handwriting should prove to be Mr. Roberts', the probabilities were in favor ... — The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green Read full book for free!
... Sonnet in that they rhime three, instead of four times in the first part. The pause is in them, as in the rest, variously placed through the course of the verses; and thus they bear no more resemblance than their associates, to those minute Elegies of twelve alternate rhimes, closing with a couplet, which assume the name of Sonnet, without any other resemblance to that order of Verse, except their limitation to fourteen lines. I never found the quadruple rhimes injurious to the general expression of the sense, but in the excepted instances. When it is considered ... — Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward Read full book for free!
... this pleasure in the lingering line, in the haunting couplet, in the quatrain that will not let you forget. By sacrificing it, the new poetry has sacrificed something precious, something that a common instinct of mankind demands of the minstrel. It will not suffice for the new ... — Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton Read full book for free!
... insulting jests passed upon them by the despots. Mamercus, who plumed himself on his poems and tragedies, gave himself great airs after conquering the mercenaries, and when he hung up their shields as offerings to the gods, he inscribed this insolent elegiac couplet upon them. ... — Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch Read full book for free!
... granted armorial ensigns (1382) to Dijon, with the motto moult me tarde (I wish for ardently). The merchants of Sinapi copied this on their wares, the middle word of the motto being accidentally effaced. A well-known couplet of lines supposed to occur in Hudibras (but not to be found there), has long baffled the ... — Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie Read full book for free!
... critic can detect the tone of the epoch at once in prose or verse. There is in them an unmistakeable Zeit-Geist in phraseology and form. The Elizabethan drama, essay, or philosophy could not be mistaken for the drama, essay, or philosophy of the Restoration; the heroic couplet reigned from Dryden to Byron; Ciceronian diction reigned from Addison to Burke; and then the Quarterlies, with Southey, Lamb, Scott, De Quincey, Coleridge, Sydney Smith, and Leigh Hunt, introduced a simpler, easier tone of the well-bred causeur, as free from classical mannerism as it was free ... — Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison Read full book for free!
... have more than one light passage. To draw a metrical line in the English where none is drawn in the Latin appears to me objectionable ipso facto where it can reasonably be avoided. That it can be avoided in the present case does not really admit of a doubt. The English heroic couplet, managed as Cowper has managed it, is surely quite equal to representing all the various changes of mood and temper which find their embodiment successively in the Horatian hexameter. Cowper's more serious poems contain more of deep and ... — The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace Read full book for free!
... Buckler in 1602 (if it were the same man), he still called his Muse "young" in 1613. I cannot call to mind any precedent for the form of stanza adopted by him, consisting, as it does, of six ten-syllable lines, rhyming alternately, followed by a twelve-syllable couplet. None of the other stanzas contain personal matter; the grief of the author of Great Britain's Sun's-set seems as artificial as might be expected; and his tears were probably brought to the surface by the ... — Notes & Queries 1850.01.26 • Various Read full book for free!
... They were insecure! The city rested upon three columns, one of them intact, another quite decayed away, the third partially corroded and soon to crumble into ruin. He peered up from, his blue depths, and in a fateful couplet of verses warned the townsmen of their impending doom. In this prophetic utterance ascribed to the fabulous Cola Pesce is echoed a popular apprehension that ... — Old Calabria • Norman Douglas Read full book for free!
... should give to genius, I always have before me that magnificent head. I had a moment of enthusiasm." And further, he adds that one day he saw him listening to Monti while the latter was singing his first couplet in the "Mascheroniana." "I shall never forget," said he, "the divine expression of his look; it was the serene ... — My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli Read full book for free!
... a garret—let him know't who will—- There was my bed—full hard it was and small; My table there—and I decipher still Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall. Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away, Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun: For you I pawned my watch how many a day, In the brave days when ... — Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner Read full book for free!
... still carry weight. In the burlesque couplet, ascribed in the first edition to the younger Colman and afterwards transferred ... — Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt Read full book for free!
... apologise. Eventually he was coaxed home and got upstairs, but then, in a gush of politeness, he insisted on seeing the chairmen out; after which he retired with self-complacency to bed. The next morning, in spite of headache the most racking, Steele sent the tolerant bishop the following exquisite couplet, which covered a multitude of ... — Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury Read full book for free!
... these are fixed and conventional, and others are of his own contrivance. Spanish uses the terms estrofa and copla to designate an arrangement of verses in a stanza. Copla must not be confused with English "couplet." These are general terms; most verse-forms are designated by special names. The following verse-forms are found in the ... — El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup Read full book for free!
... is called Frisian; and the Low German spoken in Great Britain is called English. These three languages are extremely like one another; but the Continental language that is likest the English is the Dutch or Hollandish dialect called Frisian. We even possess a couplet, every word of which is both English and ... — A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn Read full book for free!
... Speech-ending test has been used by Koenig,[284] and I will first give some of his results. But I regret to say that I am unable to discover certainly the rule he has gone by. He omits speeches which are rhymed throughout, or which end with a rhymed couplet. And he counts only speeches which are 'mehrzeilig.' I suppose this means that he counts any speech consisting of two lines or more, but omits not only one-line speeches, but speeches containing more than one line but less than two; but I am ... — Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley Read full book for free!
... Semitic goddess Ishtar and by the Sumerian goddess Nintu or Ninkharsagga. In the passage in the Babylonian Version, "the Lady of the Gods" has always been treated as a synonym of Ishtar, the second half of the couplet being regarded as a restatement of the first, according to a recognized law of Babylonian poetry. We may probably assume that this interpretation is correct, and we may conclude by analogy that "the holy Innanna" in the second ... — Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King Read full book for free!
... outburst to the thistle, and the thistle's reply, instead of a Sir Walter and Queen Elizabeth couplet. Long, lance-shaped, deeply cleft, sharply pointed, and prickly dark green leaves make the ascent almost unendurable; nevertheless, the ant bravely mounts to where the bristle-pointed, overlapping scales of the deep green cup hold the luscious ... — Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al Read full book for free!
... conducted her to Niddry Castle, his own seat. When, in gratitude for his fidelity, Mary would have created him an Earl, Lord Seaton declined the honour, and preferred his existing rank as Premier Baron of Scotland. Mary celebrated his determination in a couplet, written both in ... — Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson Read full book for free!
... handwriting improved and he was often asked to "set copies" for other boys to follow. In the book of a boy named Richardson, he wrote this prophetic couplet: ... — The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple Read full book for free!
... with the quaint humor in the description of the old man who is the subject of the poem. There is a delicious Irish character in this, as in many other pieces of Holmes, reminding us of the familiar couplet... — Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne Read full book for free!
... but you know the couplet, (49) which says, "I do not wish to be a lord - I am by birth a Gypsy - I do not wish to be a gentleman - I am content ... — The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow Read full book for free!
... Kilpeck, Herefordshire, I have seen a wayside public-house, exhibiting the sign of the "Oak," under which is the following couplet: ... — Notes and Queries, Number 215, December 10, 1853 • Various Read full book for free!
... statements are greatly exaggerated, The Traveller is interesting because it contains beautiful descriptions and apt expressions of thought. The verse employed is the heroic couplet, the favorite verse of the eighteenth-century poets. The lines rhyme in pairs, and often a couplet expresses a complete thought. Each line contains five feet, ... — Selections from Five English Poets • Various Read full book for free!
... any ill—such as toothache or moody meditation—so poignant as to prevent him losing himself in the interest of the moment, then he is not happy. Nor must he merely think himself absorbed, but actually be so, as are two lovers sitting under one umbrella, or he who is just making a couplet rhyme." ... — Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy Read full book for free!
... occupations, either as regards pleasantness or usefulness. Nor do I mean to say, that neither parents themselves nor their children, are ever to consult their own natural preferences—their own likes and dislikes. All I aim at is, to convince the young—especially the young woman—that the old couplet, ... — The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott Read full book for free!
... The second couplet was sung by Panshin with special power and expression, the sound of waves was heard in the stormy accompaniment. After the words "and longing vain," he sighed softly, dropped his eyes and let his voice gradually die away, morendo. When he had finished, ... — A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev Read full book for free!
... after school four boys, of whom I was one, while playing on the commons, found a dead sheep. It was suggested that we carry the sheep into the schoolroom and place it on Lord's seat. This was promptly done and I wrote a Latin couplet, purporting that this was a very worthy sacrifice to a very poor Lord, and placed it on the head of the sheep. The next morning Lord found the sheep and made a great outcry against the indignity. Efforts were made at once to ascertain the actors in this farce, and ... — Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman Read full book for free!
... eight long lines that conclude each stanza of this charming love-poem, instead of rhyming alternately as in the translation, chime somewhat to the tune of Byron's Don Juan—six lines rhyming with each other, and the two last forming a separate couplet. In other respects the translation, it is hoped, ... — The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller Read full book for free!
... excellent. The sentiment reminds me of the Earl of Roscommon's well-known couplet in his Essay on Translated Verse, a poem now ... — Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson Read full book for free!
... therefore sentenced to be publicly flogged in the hall of his college, and to receive one lash for each line in his satire. Never, surely, was a poet so sharply taught the merit of brevity. How Edward Anne must have regretted that he had not knocked off an epigram, a biting couplet, or a smart quatrain with the sting of ... — Oxford • Andrew Lang Read full book for free!
... for herself; some pretended that she did not hold out long enough, and that she surrendered at discretion before she was vigorously attacked; and others said, that his majesty complained of certain other facilities still less pleasing. The Duke of Buckingham made a couplet upon this occasion, wherein the king, speaking to Progers, the confidant of his intrigues, puns upon the name of the fair one, to ... — Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre Read full book for free!
... first my courage brave. He shall lose his ears, egad! Who shall howl his love and rave In a couplet good or bad. ... — Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier Read full book for free!
... prank or adorn thyself: I have translated literally, but the couplet strongly suggests ... — Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton Read full book for free!
... Cross was at dinner John wrote in a large hand the fine couplet. The teacher returned and called the school to order. He looked at the blackboard, then, searchingly, at John Briggs. ... — The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine Read full book for free!
... wandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of the elder town at these hours must be ghostly enough on its neighbouring hill. Even by day it has the air of a vignette of Gustave Dore, a couplet of Victor Hugo. It is almost too perfect—as if it were an enormous model placed on a big green table at a museum. A steep, paved way, grass-grown like all roads where vehicles never pass, stretches up to it in the sun. It has a double enceinte, ... — A Little Tour in France • Henry James Read full book for free!
... of landscape and garden owes at least half its glory to the long trance of winter, and wished that dwellers in Creole lands might see New England's First of June? For what says the brave old song-couplet of New ... — The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable Read full book for free!
... solemnly, in order to save the situation: "That last couplet is not at all necessary;" and Daddy Taille, who had got red up to the ears, ... — The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant Read full book for free!
... well expressed by a couplet which was very popular with the eight-hour speakers of that period: "Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay." Steward believed that the amount of wages is determined by no other factor than the worker's standard of ... — A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman Read full book for free!
... "That is the best yet. But we might branch out a little, I think, Willy. This condensed couplet is forcible, but not very graceful. How do ... — The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards Read full book for free!
... principles about which no doubt exists. First, its dominant feature is Parallelism, Parallelism of meaning, which, though found in all human song, is carried through this poetry with a constancy unmatched in any other save the Babylonian. The lines of a couplet or a triplet of Hebrew verse may be Synonymous, that is identical in meaning, or Supplementary and Progressive, or Antithetic. But at least their meanings respond or correspond to each other in a way, for which no better ... — Jeremiah • George Adam Smith Read full book for free!
... anagrammatical, scorns the couplet for the mere sake of the couplet, and has little time for the smiting ... — A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland Read full book for free!
... words strong enough for the denunciation—-of Latin Immorality; and for want of a better he always came back to frivolity, which for him, as for the majority of his compatriots, had a particularly unpleasant meaning. And he would end with the usual couplet in praise of the noble German people,—the moral people ("By that," Herder has said, "it is distinguished from all other nations.")—the faithful people (treues Volk ... Treu meaning everything: sincere, faithful, loyal and upright)—the People par excellence, as Fichte says—German ... — Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland Read full book for free!
... must be true to herself at whatever cost to him. But the next time—if she should happen to fall in love with the gentleman who was breaking into her father's house-safe...." She laughed in sheer mockery and misquoted a couplet from Riley for him: ... — The Price • Francis Lynde Read full book for free!
... perfectly "reflect the common life ... of the day," are full of the license, the tinkle, the German divorce of verb and subject, the twisted grammatical sequence which her soul abhors in verse? Crabbe chose for his vehicle the heroic couplet in which English poetry had jog-trotted ever since the time of Pope, as it often had before; and he made it go as like Pope's couplet as he could, with the same caesura, the same antithetical balance, the same ... — Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells Read full book for free!
... is a couplet of reproach now applied to this once famous city; whose inhabitants seem little worthy of the inspiring call which was addressed to them within these twenty ... — Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore Read full book for free!
... sign?" said the dean. "Oh, the pole and bason; and if your worship would just write me a few lines to put upon it, by way of motto, I have no doubt but it would draw me plenty of customers." The dean took out his pencil, and wrote the following couplet, which ... — The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various Read full book for free!
... poet of my acquaintance, who in the midst of war's obsessions still finds time and taste for the exercise of his art (he is in a Government office), has allowed me to see the opening couplet of what I understand to be a very ambitious ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various Read full book for free!
... tryst-folk: "Yadi Husein" (Memory of Husein) still ringing in their ears. The new party is composed of Bombay Musulman youths, the tallest of whom carries an umbrella made out of pink, green and white paper, under which the rest crowd and sing the following couplet relating to the ... — By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O. Read full book for free!
... who were not willing "to vote for Ireland against the Saxon." Public placards might be seen in town and country, headed, like the address of the Repeal Committee to the electors, with inflammatory poetry: a favourite couplet on ... — The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan Read full book for free!
... Besides this, after each couplet of the Angelus, is recited that short hymn of praise, beginning with the words which the angel of the annunciation addressed to Mary,[1] "Ave Maria." This is why the hour after sunset is so often called the hour of ... — Jean Francois Millet • Estelle M. Hurll Read full book for free!
... Poetry," and has given us a charming volume of her own verses, which no one runs any "Risk" in buying, in spite of the title of the book, has done a good deal in this direction, and is fond of giving an epigrammatic turn to a bright thought, as in the following couplet: ... — The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn Read full book for free!
... the Latin word octo, eight. The second part contains six lines, and is therefore called the sextet, from the Latin word sex, meaning six. The sextet may have either two or three rimes, and these may be arranged in almost any order. But a correct sonnet ought not to end with a couplet, that is two riming lines. However, very many good writers in English do so end ... — English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall Read full book for free!
... shows some advance,—an advance, however, which must be laid chiefly to the credit of Dryden. Apparently there was no tendency towards innovation and experiment in the matter of verse forms. Seventeenth-century translators, satisfied with the couplet and kindred measures, did not consider, as the Elizabethans had done, the possibility of introducing classical metres. Creech says of Horace, "'Tis certain our language is not capable of the numbers of the ... — Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos Read full book for free!
... the couplet with a subdued fervour which characterized the man and explained his worldly lot. Elkanah Madden should never have entered the medical profession; mere humanitarianism had prompted the choice in his dreamy ... — The Odd Women • George Gissing Read full book for free!
... Chateau of Compiegne, in honour of the marriage of my sister Louise and the King of the Belgians. But lo! at the climax of the piece, the principal performer came forward, before the newly married couple, the Royalties, and all the great personages forming the audience, and burst forth with a gag couplet, which nobody expected. ... — Memoirs • Prince De Joinville Read full book for free!
... in the bay, a schooner standing for us to take our pilot. I descended to the cabin to write a note or two, and found myself almost involuntarily scribbling verses. 'Tis an odd freak of my fancy, that although never addicted to poetizing, and ordinarily incapable of manufacturing a couplet that will jingle even, I am rarely agitated by any strong feeling, without having a sort of desire to rhyme; luckily the delusion is exceedingly short-lived, and unfrequent in its visitations. The reader shall, however, have all the benefit of my present attempt, as I feel bound to treat him, who ... — Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power Read full book for free!
... getteth up nor sitteth down without speaking of him. Now when Attaf heard these words from the buffoon he looked up to heaven and said, O Thou whose attributes are inscrutable, bestow thy benefits upon thy servant Attaf. Then he recited this couplet:— ... — Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton Read full book for free!
... edition with as near an approach to completeness as regard for the popular character of the volume permitted. The 17,385 verses, of which the poetical Tales consist, have been given without abridgement or purgation — save in a single couplet; but, the main purpose of the volume being to make the general reader acquainted with the "poems" of Chaucer and Spenser, the Editor has ventured to contract the two prose Tales — Chaucer's Tale of Meliboeus, and the Parson's Sermon or Treatise on ... — The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer Read full book for free!
... he continued, "I don't complain so much, though, personally, I consider 'Extract from Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department' a very poor paraphrase of the resounding couplet in which ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various Read full book for free!
... their country and their king." This concourse of warriors, the majority of them well known and several of them distinguished, redoubled the confidence and ardor of the rank and file in the army. We find under the title of Chanson faite en 1552 par un souldar etant en Metz en garnison this couplet:— ... — A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot Read full book for free!
... by the National Assembly of this spell of healing potency and virtue. The enlightened Dr. Ball, when he wished to rekindle the lights and fires of his audience on this point, chose for the test the following couplet:— ... — The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke Read full book for free!
... rhymes, Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze," In the next line it "whispers through the trees" If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep" The reader's threatened (not in vain) with "sleep" Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song [356] That, like a wounded snake drags ... — An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope Read full book for free!
... your Hole."—In Surrey, and most probably in other counties where {133} shell-snails abound, children amuse themselves by charming them with a chant to put forth their horns, of which I have only heard the following couplet, which is repeated until it has the desired effect, to the ... — Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various Read full book for free!
... abbey of S. Maximin was about 120 paces from the cell of the saint at Treves, and it is therefore most probable that the writer was a monk of the Benedictine order then belonging to that foundation; but he puts his name out of doubt by the following couplet, inscribed at the end of ... — Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various Read full book for free!
... one of the most respectable of the governors, was found, at his death, with a copy of verses in his pocket, which included the following couplet: ... — The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton Read full book for free!
... believed his almost superhuman labors would be all in vain. In these contests a spirit blazed out from his noble soul which electrified the nation with admiration. In his intrepid bearing amid these scenes he fully personified the couplet quoted ... — Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward Read full book for free!
... straightway be offset by that of her sister. And we have our Scribe's word for it, that the Dervish went as far and as deep with the huris, as the doctors eventually would permit him. That is why, we believe, in commenting upon his adventures there, he often quotes the couplet, ... — The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani Read full book for free!
... Kit. "Oh, Uncle Cassius, we girls back home made up a lovely little couplet about that when we were studying Egypt at ... — Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester Read full book for free!
... are some verses to P[u]shan, following which is the most holy couplet of the Rig Veda, to repeat which is essentially to repeat the Veda. It is the famous G[a]yatr[i] ... — The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins Read full book for free!
... songs. Among much that is excellent in this vast production there are also dreary stretches of rambling loquacity, hollow rhetoric and unintelligible jumbles of words and phrases. He could be insupportably dull and again express more in a single stanza, couplet or phrase than many have said in a whole book. A study of his poetry is, therefore, not unlike a journey through a vast country, alternating in fertile valleys, barren plains and lofty heights with entrancing views into far, ... — Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg Read full book for free!
... brother, mountain, fountain, and the like; and so they go on until you think it is time for the wind-up, and the wind-up won't come on any terms. So they lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet upon them, and turning them out of doors. I suspect a good many "impromptus" could tell just such a story as the above.—Here turning to our landlady, I used an illustration which pleased the company much at the time, and has since been highly commended. "Madam," I said, "you can ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various Read full book for free!
... pointed out in his essay on Sir William Temple that these lines are a reminiscence of a couplet under the portrait of Sultan Mustapha the First in Knolles's Historie of the Turkes ... — Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various Read full book for free!
... got tangled up between the "sleigh" in the carriage-house, and the act of pussy in mauling the poor little mouse, unmentioned, but of importance, in the couplet: ... — Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis Read full book for free!
... fate (line 10) answering to desolate and state (lines 4 and 5), instead of to the halfway rhymes aforesaid. As to Antistrophe 2b, that follows Antistrophe 2a, so far as it goes; but after line 9 it breaks off suddenly, and closes with two lines corresponding in length and rhyme to the closing couplet of Antistrophe 1b, the section immediately preceding, which, however, belongs not to this group, but to the other. Mr. Locock speaks of line 124 as 'a rhymeless line.' Rhymeless it is not, for shore, ... — The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley Read full book for free!
... or who is in any degree practically acquainted with those very different kinds of versification. I will venture to assert that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme, is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original. The translator's ingenuity, indeed, in this case becomes itself a snare, and the readier he ... — The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer Read full book for free!
... I shall have lost my wits very finally when I forget the first time that I pleased my father with a couplet of English verse (after many a year of trials); and the radiant joy on his face as he declared, reading it aloud to my mother with emphasis half choked by tears,—that "it was as fine as anything that Pope or ... — On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin Read full book for free!
... my having a knitting class, with the woman, her married daughter, and a woman from the camp, as pupils. Then I have gained ground with the man by being able to catch and saddle a horse. I am often reminded of my favorite couplet,— ... — A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird Read full book for free!
... not in any reached such excellence as to raise much envy, it may commonly be said at least, that "he writes very well for a gentleman." His serious pieces are sometimes elevated; and his trifles are sometimes elegant. In his verses to Addison, the couplet which mentions Clio is written with the most exquisite delicacy of praise; it exhibits one of those happy strokes that are seldom attained. In his Odes to Marlborough there are beautiful lines; but in the second Ode he shows that ... — Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson Read full book for free!
... the advice, and, in his housekeeping experience, afterward, confirmed the good qualities of the terrier, as related to him by the burglar. He also commemorated the conversation by the following not exceedingly poetical couplet: ... — Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen Read full book for free!
...couplet the language is distorted by inversions, clogged with superfluities, and clouded by a harsh metaphor; and in the second there are two words used in an uncommon sense, and two epithets inserted only to lengthen the line; all these practices may in a long work easily ... — The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson Read full book for free!
... with a long straw in its beak flew right across Maxine's garden, a little winged poem, a couplet enclosing ... — The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole Read full book for free!
... (a couplet which the Gifted Hopkins might have penned), should never have permitted himself to sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one of Barry Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When I first read this singularly vapid poem years ago, in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author had ever laid eyes on any ... — Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich Read full book for free!
... grace of this charming last couplet, but the smooth sound strength, the fluency and clarity of the whole passage, may serve to show that the original suggestion of Capell, if (as I think) untenable, was not (we must admit) unpardonable. The very oversight ... — A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne Read full book for free!
... Pope, we believe, coined the contemptuous phrase, "I care not a pin." The pin has never been done justice in the world of poetry. As one might say, the pin has had no Pindar. Of course there is the old saw about see a pin and pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck. This couplet, barbarous as it is in its false rhyme, points (as Mother Goose generally does) to a profound truth. When you see a pin, you must pick it up. In other words, it is on the floor, where pins generally are. Their instinctive affinity for terra firma makes one wonder ... — Pipefuls • Christopher Morley Read full book for free!
... of the "Depositio." The last represents the giving of the salt, which a person is on a plate in his left hand; and, with his right hand, about to put a pinch of it upon the tongue of each Becanus or Freshman. A glass, probably holding wine, is standing near him. Underneath is the following couplet:— ... — Notes & Queries, No. 30. Saturday, May 25, 1850 • Various Read full book for free!
... uniform, steady use of the same signs."—Id. "A traveller remarks most of the objects which he sees."—Jamieson cor. "What is the name of the river on which London stands? Thames."—G. B. "We sometimes find the last line of a couplet or a triplet stretched out to twelve syllables."—Adam cor. "The nouns which follow active verbs, are not in the nominative case."—David Blair cor. "It is a solemn duty to speak plainly of the wrongs which good men perpetrate."—Channing ... — The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown Read full book for free!
... thankful that my little girlie wants to make the old world happier. But after all, dear, the greatest need of this world of ours is love. It is not the money we give away which counts; it is the love we have for other people. I remember well a little couplet your great-grandmother was fond of quoting—and she practiced it every ... — The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown Read full book for free!
... standing in the pew with my paper in his hand the wrong way up. Myself by his side holding a candle to him. Then he began to sing. It was an awful tune—I think he called it sevens—but he made common-sense of my doggerel by one alarming emendation. When he came to the couplet I have given you, what do you think ... — The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine Read full book for free!
... son kept staring at Thorgerda Glum's daughter; his wife Thorhillda saw this, and she got wroth, and made a couplet upon him. ... — The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... was in the Rue des France-Bourgeois, close to La Force. As I expected, my officer was there. I went up to him as he was singing a love ditty and looking tenderly at a lady, and interrupted him exactly in the middle of the second couplet. 'Monsieur,' said I, 'does it still displease you that I should frequent a certain house of La Rue Payenne? And would you still cane me if I took it into my head to disobey you? The officer looked at me with astonishment, ... — The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere Read full book for free!
... are liberal in computing their land and liquor; the Scottish pint corresponds to two English quarts. As for their coin, every one knows the couplet— ... — Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... He who would understand the influence of the Homeric ballads in the heroic ages should witness the effect which similar compositions have upon the wild nomads of the East." Elsewhere he adds, "Poetry and flowers are the wine and spirits of the Arab; a couplet is equal to a bottle, and a rose to a dram, without the evil ... — Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson Read full book for free!
... luxuriant; he is tempted to say many things which might be better omitted, or at least shut up in fewer words. But when the difficulty of artificial rhyming is interposed; where the poet commonly confines his verse to his couplet, and must continue that verse in such words that the rhyme shall naturally follow them, not they the rhyme, the fancy then gives leisure to the judgment to come in; which, seeing so heavy a task imposed, is ready to cut off all unnecessary expenses. ... — Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various Read full book for free!
... of all verse, as distinguished from the music of prose, is inevitableness of cadence. In regular metres we enjoy the pleasure of feeling that the rhymes will inevitably fall under a recognized law of couplet or stanza. But if the passage flows independently of these, it must still flow inevitably—it must, in short, show that it is governed by another and a yet deeper force, the inevitableness ... — A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry Read full book for free!
... yielded these precious things had all been mixed with the milk of these four cows. As regards Surabhi, the milk she yielded becometh Swaha unto those that live on Swaha, Swadha unto those that live on Swadha, and Amrita unto those that live on Amrita. The couplet that was sung by the dwellers of Rasatala in days of old, is still heard to be recited in the world by the persons of learning. That couplet is this,—Neither in the region of the Nagas, nor in Swarga, nor in Vimana, nor in Tripishtapa is residence ... — The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli Read full book for free!
... volume. In yet another respect Crabbe was to work hand in hand with Wordsworth. He does not seem to have held definite opinions as to necessary reforms in what Wordsworth called "poetic diction." Indeed he was hampered, as Wordsworth was not, by a lifelong adherence to a metre—the heroic couplet—with which this same poetic diction was most closely bound up. He did not always escape the effects of this contagion, but in the main he was delivered from it by what I have called a first-hand association with man and nature. He was ever describing what he had seen ... — Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger Read full book for free!
... and Foch had jolly soft roes, a fact which is recorded in a cynical little poem by the precocious Foch, believed to be the only literary work of a whitebait now extant. We have only space here to quote the opening couplet:— ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various Read full book for free!
... Nature's forming- -honest, pure-minded, humble, yet dignified being! Art thou still wandering through the courts of beautiful Safacoro, or on the banks of the Len Baro, thine eyes fixed in vacancy, and thy mind striving to recall some half-forgotten couplet of Luis Lobo; or art thou gone to thy long rest, out beyond the Xeres gate within the wall of the Campo Santo, to which in times of pest and sickness thou wast wont to carry so many, Gypsy and Gentile, in thy ... — The Bible in Spain • George Borrow Read full book for free!
... her poems of action, like that of Salmon Faubel, whose bride became so homesick in Edom that she was in a way to perish, so that Salmon took her to her home and found work there for himself. He even sang one catchy couplet of this ... — The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson Read full book for free!
... beautiful of English lyrics. One listens with delight to the musician working out his intricately beautiful theme; or is it nearer the impression we get to say that we watch the skilful dancer executing his elaborate figure? In either case we await with sure confidence the triumphant close. The final couplet, by the way, and particularly the great Alexandrine, is a curious anticipation of Dryden's finest manner. But the rest is a music Dryden's ear never heard. ... — Milton • John Bailey Read full book for free!
... as they answered were clearly shown. With "I would I had been there" the cloud of unseen witnesses with whom he had before been communing again descended. For a second or two Horatio and the rest did not exist for him.... So onward to the crowning couplet: ... — The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry Read full book for free!
... was said to have written on the slates in the yard a couplet about a classmate of his who often rode home from the college ... — A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce Read full book for free!
... he was. Lies and lives will be written of him; plenty of both. Enough should be said to defeat the malice and stupidity of detractors. Those who want to know what he was in himself should read the poems. The poems are the man speaking. They are so like him that to read them is to hear him. The couplet— ... — John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield Read full book for free!
... when these terms meant something in real life there was a distinction. The talisman was probably at first an astronomical figure, but later the term became more comprehensive. Pope portrays this astrological import in his couplet, ... — Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten Read full book for free!
... what all bibliomaniacs will be disposed to admit the truth, that the collection contained "a very great variety of uncommon books, and scarce ever to be met withal," &c. There is, at bottom, a small wretched portrait of Hearne, with this well known couplet subjoined: ... — Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin Read full book for free!
... half-century. In many respects he was a curious survival of the cumulative humanities of the eighteenth century. He might have been, like good Dr. Arbuthnot, an ornament of the Augustan age. He shared with the English Augustans a liking for the rhymed couplet, an instinctive social sense, a feeling for the presence of an imaginary audience of congenial listeners. One still catches the "Hear! Hear!" between his clever lines. In many of the traits of his mind this "Yankee Frenchman" ... — The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry Read full book for free!
... Barker, in his Parriana has quoted the identical two lines as they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of poor G. are again wrung. His letter is a gem—with his poor blind eyes it has been laboured out at six sittings. The history of the couplet is in page 3 of this irregular production, in which every variety of shape and size that Letters can be twisted into, is to be found. Do shew his part of it to Mr. R. some day. If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition ... — The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb Read full book for free!
... the moon between the legs of the cow! She did not remain there long however, but was soon on the cow's back, as she crept up and up in the face of the sun. He bethought him of a couplet that Grizzie had taught him when he ... — Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald Read full book for free!
... Personae. Couplet headed 'Lectori'. Prologue. Epilogue at the end. The third edition really, two having appeared in 1637. On the verso of the titlepage and of the next leaf are some verses inscribed in an ... — Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg Read full book for free!
... work of this painter that I have yet seen, and give a more favourable impression of him than is likely to be formed elsewhere. Behind the high altar there is an oil picture also by Macrino d'Alba, signed as by the following couplet, which they may ... — Ex Voto • Samuel Butler Read full book for free!
... school-children. However the supper seemed to me to be most niggardly, and the sight of the dishes put before me disgusted me: but had I been offered ortolans, I would not have been tempted, my heart was so full. The meal finished as it had begun, with a patriotic song. We knelt down at the couplet of the Marseillaise which begins "Amour sacr de la patrie"...Then we filed out, as we had come in, to the sound of a drum, and ... — The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot Read full book for free!
... I was reminded of an old custom by an old friend who was staying with me. When some hot cross buns were offered, he took one and told me to hold it with him and, whilst we were holding it together to repeat with him this couplet:— ... — Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack Read full book for free!
... period had occurred just before my story opens. It was a whole month since the town boys had made our lives unhappy by calling, and howling, and yelling, and squeaking on every occasion they met us the following apparently inoffensive couplet:— ... — My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed Read full book for free!
... Forest" that many lines are found by which Pope is perhaps alone remembered by many sportsmen. The references to the well-breathed beagles and the circling hare are happy, and very characteristic of the poet's telling style in the couplet in brackets. ... — Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior Read full book for free!
... presentment there can be as little question as of its splendour and glow. It has the sinew, as well as the wing, of poetry. And neither in poetry nor in prose has the elementary marvel of the simplest musical form been more vividly seized than in the well-known couplet— ... — Robert Browning • C. H. Herford Read full book for free!
... duty and life. Rather than lose these I would have missed all the sermons I have ever heard." Many another can say substantially the same, can trace his best deeds very largely to the influence of some little stanza or couplet early stored away in his memory and coming ever freshly to mind in after years as the embodiment of ... — Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various Read full book for free!
... primitive peoples of the present day do not seem to feel or "hear mentally" the half step. If musicians of early days had this same failing, it was only natural for them to avoid that interval by eliminating from their songs one or the other of each couplet of tones which if sung would form a half step, thus ... — The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole Read full book for free!
... suppose it generally is the woman's fault—he took me in his arms and called me his little girl, and kissed me again and again. He ought not to have kissed me if we were to part, he ought not. You know the old couplet: ... — The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt Read full book for free!
... that Addison exhibits, at least in the first of the two essays on Chevy Chase, a degree of the normal Augustan condescension to the archaic—the vision which informs the earlier couplet poem on the English poets. Both in his quotation from Sidney ("... being so evil apparelled in the Dust and Cobweb of that uncivil Age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous Eloquence of Pindar?") ... — Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe Read full book for free!
... "How emphatically Bertram's couplet stands out in B minor against that diabolical chorus, depicting his paternity, but mingling in fearful despair with these ... — Gambara • Honore de Balzac Read full book for free!
... encouraged, took off a diamond ring, and saying, "We will give this gallant some cause of marvel when he finds his couplet perfected without his own interference," she wrote her own line beneath that ... — Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... (1604-1655). He was born in Silesia and spent the most of his life at Brieg, where he was sometime ducal councillor. In 1654 he published Salomon von Golaws deutscher Sinngetichte drei Tausend, the name Golaw being a disguise of Logau. They vary in length from a couplet to a hundred lines or more, and disclose in the aggregate a virile and interesting personality. The text follows Eitner's edition in Deutsche Dichter ... — An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas Read full book for free!
... caricatures in the same medium, some of them trenchantly like, of the customers as well as of certain artistic celebrities, whose laurels Brodonowski's had not approved, varied here and there by an epigram or a doggerel couplet, ... — A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore Read full book for free!
... remarked, without any great show of emotion, feeling, I suppose, that without worldly goods we might consistently be without elegance. And in the back of my brain I was silently revising our old Kansas pioneer couplet into ... — The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer Read full book for free!
... asserted himself to be the author; in justice it should be ascribed to him who appeared the most calculated to have written it, and who indeed claimed it for his own—the chevalier de Boufflers. I do not know whether you recollect the lines in question. I will transcribe them from memory, adding another couplet, which was only known amongst our own particular circle, but which proves most incontestably the spirit of kindness with which the stanzas were composed. Lise, ta beaute seduit, Et charme tout ... — "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon Read full book for free!
... the music of all verse, as distinguished from the music of prose, is inevitableness of cadence. In regular metres we enjoy the pleasure of feeling that the rhymes will inevitably fall under a recognized law of couplet or stanza. But if the passage flows independently of these, it must still flow inevitably—it must, in short, show that it is governed by another and a yet deeper force, the inevitableness ... — A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry Read full book for free!
... voluntary at the opening of service. Then the old minister said, "Let us continue the worship of God by singing the hymn on page 554." He "lined" the hymn—that is, he read each couplet before it was sung. With the coming in of hymn books and other newfangled things the good old custom of "lining the hymn" has disappeared. But on that Sunday morning the Marquis d'Entremont thought he had never heard anything more delightful than these simple melodies sung ... — Duffels • Edward Eggleston Read full book for free!
... had broken from his contract of marriage before its consummation; her second, the Infante of Spain, died immediately after their union; and her third, the duke of Savoy, left her again a widow after three years of wedded life. She was a woman of talent and courage; both proved by the couplet she composed for her own epitaph, at the very moment of a dangerous accident which happened during her journey into Spain to join her second ... — Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan Read full book for free!
... rhyme arrangements which change in every scene, beginning and ending with couplets, and passing through the sonnet, Petrarchan and Shakespearean, ottava rima, terza rima, the six-line stanza of crossed rhymes and couplet, the seven-line stanza used by Shakespeare in the Rape of Lucrece, a nine-line stanza of two rhymes, and a scene composed of seven stanzas of chained octaves in which a third rhyme comes forward in the last line but one (after the manner of terza rima) ... — Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons Read full book for free!
... people had learned a new way of throwing off injustice. There began to be a new sentiment in the air. Men were asking why the few should dress in velvet and the many in rags. It was the first revolt against the tyranny of wealth, when people were heard on the streets singing the couplet... — The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele Read full book for free!
... sugar, is used. A perfect salad is not necessarily acetic. The presence of vinegar in a dressing, like that of onions and its relatives, on most occasions should be suspected only. Wyvern and other true epicures consider the advice of Sydney Smith, as expressed in the following couplet, "most pernicious":— ... — Salads, Sandwiches and Chafing-Dish Dainties - With Fifty Illustrations of Original Dishes • Janet McKenzie Hill Read full book for free!
... "I can never forgive myself. I've just remembered the very thing. Father told me in his letter that a little couplet he once wrote was being very ... — Once on a Time • A. A. Milne Read full book for free!
... about which no doubt exists. First, its dominant feature is Parallelism, Parallelism of meaning, which, though found in all human song, is carried through this poetry with a constancy unmatched in any other save the Babylonian. The lines of a couplet or a triplet of Hebrew verse may be Synonymous, that is identical in meaning, or Supplementary and Progressive, or Antithetic. But at least their meanings respond or correspond to each other in a way, for which no better name has been found than that given it by Bishop Lowth more than ... — Jeremiah • George Adam Smith Read full book for free!
... opened, disclosed two sea biscuits—the square, thin kind, like a soda cracker—and upon each was painted a tiny marine view in water-colors, while beneath was a couplet done ... — All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry Read full book for free!
... personal emotion through the medium of a literary style that had been developed by long years of study. The Laments, to be sure, are not based on any classic model and they contain few direct imitations of the classical poets, though it may be noted that the concluding couplet of Lament XV is translated from the Greek Anthology. On the other hand they are interspersed with continual references to classic story; and, more important, are filled with the atmosphere of the Stoic philosophy, derived from Cicero ... — Laments • Jan Kochanowski Read full book for free!
... the reason that I could not name, if disposed, all the sources from which I have sought and obtained information. Many of the references thus secured have undergone a process of sifting and, if I may coin the couplet, confirmatory handling which, at the last, rendered some unrecognizable ... — History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head Read full book for free!
... to be supposed that the smaller Procellariae are only visible before a storm is not very apparent. In point of fact, there is no more reason for associating the petrel specially with storms than there is for the belief expressed in the old Scotch couplet... — Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor Read full book for free!
... he was to write during the next half-century. In many respects he was a curious survival of the cumulative humanities of the eighteenth century. He might have been, like good Dr. Arbuthnot, an ornament of the Augustan age. He shared with the English Augustans a liking for the rhymed couplet, an instinctive social sense, a feeling for the presence of an imaginary audience of congenial listeners. One still catches the "Hear! Hear!" between his clever lines. In many of the traits of his mind this "Yankee ... — The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry Read full book for free!
... Doctor, "when she reminds me of it—or rather," (he added, recollecting that his ordinary dilatory answer on such occasions ought not to be returned when the order for exposition emanated from his Sovereign,) "I will repeat a poor couplet from my own translation ... — Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott Read full book for free!
... drama alike, and the encouragement of them must be counted as a certain drawback to the benefits which Surrey, Wyatt, and the other contributors of the Miscellany conferred on English literature by their exercises, here and elsewhere, in the blank verse decasyllable, the couplet, the stanza, and, above ... — A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury Read full book for free!
... has resulted in my having a knitting class, with the woman, her married daughter, and a woman from the camp, as pupils. Then I have gained ground with the man by being able to catch and saddle a horse. I am often reminded of my favorite couplet,— ... — A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird Read full book for free!
... exquisite grace of this charming last couplet, but the smooth sound strength, the fluency and clarity of the whole passage, may serve to show that the original suggestion of Capell, if (as I think) untenable, was not (we must admit) unpardonable. The very oversight perceptible to any eye and painful to any ear ... — A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne Read full book for free!
... the metre by such expedients as the conjunction of end-rhyme with alliteration. Eddie verse is governed solely by the latter, and the strophic arrangement is simple, only two forms occurring: (1) couplets of alliterative short lines; (2) six-line strophes, consisting of a couplet followed by a single short ... — The Edda, Vol. 1 - The Divine Mythology of the North, Popular Studies in Mythology, - Romance, and Folklore, No. 12 • Winifred Faraday Read full book for free!
... the barn-yard became tamer and tamer, the production of crowing hens was discouraged (the wise old hens laid no eggs with a crow in them, according to the well-known principle of heredity), and the man who had in his youth exterminated the hen of progress actually went about quoting that false couplet as an argument against the higher ... — Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner Read full book for free!
... but the full weight of what lay in his path could appear to him only upon reflection. Partly in the light of passages yet to come, I will imagine the further course of his thoughts, which the closing couplet of the first act shows as having already begun to apale 'the ... — The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald Read full book for free!
... as we have already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he follows not the thought excited by this line, but that suggested by the rhyme with which it concludes. There is hardly a complete couplet inclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of ideas, but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by ... — Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson Read full book for free!
... the Ossalois observe them on a fete-day, in some of their villages, when the young people are returning home. They separate in two bands: some holding each other by the waist, some round the neck. The foremost party go about thirty steps in silence, while those behind sing a couplet in chorus; the first then stop, sing the second verse, and wait till those behind have joined them; and the latter sing the third verse as they arrive at home. This chant is called, in the country, Passe-carrere. Every now and then the song is intermingled ... — Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello Read full book for free!
... his age generally is too cleverly artificial to be of much use to a modern, though his mastery of the epigrammatic couplet... — Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow Read full book for free!
... every stopper was certainly out," answered Peter in graver tones. He detested slang and would never understand it. Then again the bearing and air of Jack's friend jarred on him. "You know, of course, the old couplet—'When the ... — Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith Read full book for free!
... her sleep seemed to her the happy life; her waking hours a bad dream. She had just had her only pleasurable waking in three years. The memories of her childhood had sung their melodious ditties in her soul. The first couplet was heard in a dream; the second made her spring out of bed; at the third, she doubted her ears,—the sorrowful are all disciples of Saint Thomas; but when the fourth was sung, standing in her night-gown with bare feet by the window, ... — The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac Read full book for free!
... would have set up this stone to thee, while I, alas! who have been blessed by thy pure heart and love for thee for sixteen years, lo! now I have lost thee." Still greater sticklers for the truth at the expense of convention are two fond husbands who borrowed a pretty couplet composed in memory of some woman "of tender age," and then substituted upon the monuments of their wives the more truthful phrase "of middle age,"[33] and another man warns women, from the fate of his wife, to shun the excessive use ... — The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott Read full book for free!
... know't who will— There was my bed—full hard it was and small; My table there—and I decipher still Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall. Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away, Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun; For you I pawned my watch how many a day, In the brave ... — The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various Read full book for free!
... is now to be taken in; and as the method of performing this evolution has long been a subject of hot controversy at sea, I take the opportunity of saying, that Falconer's couplet,— ... — The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall Read full book for free!
... stressed syllables in each line. In The King's Daughter, page 7, 4a3b4c3b indicates a quatrain, with only the second and fourth lines riming and with four stresses in the first and third lines and three stresses in the second and fourth. In Johnnie Came from Sea, page 14, 6aa denotes a rimed couplet, with six stresses in ... — A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin Read full book for free!
... the very things about which he really would have been a sort of mystical materialist. Here the romantic Irishman is much more right than the very rational one; and there is far more truth to life as it is in Lover's couplet— ... — George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton Read full book for free!
... same, nor always well chosen. This last may be the reason his expression is sometimes not concise enough: for the Tetrastic has obliged him to extend his sense to the length of four lines, which would have been more closely confined in the couplet. ... — The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al Read full book for free!
... to mind how that throughout his lifetime his literary attainments had had an adverse fate and not met with an opportunity (of reaping distinction), went on to rub his brow, and as he raised his eyes to the skies, he heaved a deep sigh and once more intoned a couplet aloud: ... — Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin Read full book for free!
... Louis XI; and from there to Spain, for Philip The Handsome presented it to Joanna on her wedding day. Columbus took it to America, but fortunately brought it back again; Peter The Great threw it at an indifferent musician; on one of its later visits to England Pope wrote a couplet to it. And the most astonishing thing in its whole history was that now for more than a hundred years it had vanished completely. To turn up again in a little Devonshire cottage! Verily truth is ... — Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne Read full book for free!
... England and on the Continent the religious prohibition of theft and the legal punishment of it are joined with a strong social reprobation, so that the offence of a thief is never condoned. In Beloochistan, on the other hand, quite contrary ideas and feelings are current. There "a favorite couplet is to the effect that the Biloch who steals and murders, secures Heaven to seven generations of ancestors." In England and the United States reprobation of untruthfulness is strongly expressed, alike by the ... — Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord Read full book for free!
... save her sheep and dog, would know her grief. Thyrsis, who knows, among the willows slips, And hears the gentle shepherdess's lips Beseech the kind and gentle zephyr To bear these accents to her lover.... 'Stop!' says my censor: 'To laws of rhyme quite irreducible, That couplet needs again the crucible; Poetic men, sir, Must nicely shun the shocks Of rhymes unorthodox.' A curse on critics! hold your tongue! Know I not how to end my song? Of time and strength what greater waste Than my attempt to suit ... — The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine Read full book for free!
... splenetic effusions (Guerra de Granada, p. 13); and Bleda (Coronica, p. 636) cites the following couplet from ... — The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott Read full book for free!
... Where in the books written by tye-bewigged gentlemen, or in the letters written by Swift himself, can you find words to explain that turbulent and potent man? He bursts the capacity of Addison's phrase and Pope's couplet. He was too big for a bishop's chair, and now, if a novelist attempt to clothe him in the garments of his time, he splits ... — Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch Read full book for free!
... pedestal record the destruction and restoration of the city; and down to the year 1831 there was also an inscription untruthfully attributing the fire to "the treachery and malice of the popish faction;" this has been effaced, and to it Pope's couplet alluded: ... — England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook Read full book for free!
... a schooner standing for us to take our pilot. I descended to the cabin to write a note or two, and found myself almost involuntarily scribbling verses. 'Tis an odd freak of my fancy, that although never addicted to poetizing, and ordinarily incapable of manufacturing a couplet that will jingle even, I am rarely agitated by any strong feeling, without having a sort of desire to rhyme; luckily the delusion is exceedingly short-lived, and unfrequent in its visitations. The reader shall, however, have ... — Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power Read full book for free!
... one couplet after another, philosophy after philosophy, creed after creed, Stoic, Epicurean, Hebraic, Persian, Christian, and puts his finger on the flaw in them all. Man comes to life as to "the Feast unbid," and finds "the gorgeous table spread ... — Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann Read full book for free!
... Welsh, by giving birth to a son in one of their castles, was not a much better stroke of policy than that of England in perforating Scotland to the Northern Sea with this unparalleled and splendid road, constructed at first for a military purpose. I heard a man repeat a couplet, probably of unwritten poetry, in popular vogue among the Highlands, and which has quite an Irish collocation of ideas. It is spoken thus, as ... — A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt Read full book for free!
... and the eighth Eclogue, practiced the craft of the miniaturist whenever he found the minutiae aesthetically significant. To realize the precision of his strokes even then one has but to recall the couplet of the Copa which in an instant sets one upon the dusty road ... — Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank Read full book for free!
... look in a pier-glass," I retorted. "And, besides, that is not sufficient. You will want some rhyming couplet out of a mythology before you ... — The Crossing • Winston Churchill Read full book for free!
... borne both by the Semitic goddess Ishtar and by the Sumerian goddess Nintu or Ninkharsagga. In the passage in the Babylonian Version, "the Lady of the Gods" has always been treated as a synonym of Ishtar, the second half of the couplet being regarded as a restatement of the first, according to a recognized law of Babylonian poetry. We may probably assume that this interpretation is correct, and we may conclude by analogy that "the holy Innanna" in the second half of the Sumerian couplet is there merely employed as a ... — Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King Read full book for free!
... princess;] she never looked at me directly, but continued all along to give me furtive side glances. When I became elevated [with the effects of the wine,] I began to repeat some pieces of poetry; among others, I recited the following couplet: ... — Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli Read full book for free!
... luxuriant black hair tastefully arranged, as a Cuban Senora alone knows how. Each lady adopts her most insinuating manner in order to dispose of her twisted tickets, the greater portion of which contain, of course, blanks, or a consolatory couplet, like a motto in a cracker, for the gratification of the unsuccessful purchaser. There is loud cheering when a prize is drawn, especially if it happen to be of importance, like the 'grand prize,' which consists of a prettily worked ... — The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman Read full book for free!
... it has a special literary interest as the most modern thing of the Renaissance. It would be far less surprising to find this written by one of the young republicans under the Second Empire (for instance) than to find a couplet of ... — Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc Read full book for free!
... delay us long; for they are not better than sacred songs in general, which is saying remarkably little. Perhaps the most interesting thing in them is the well-known couplet, ... — Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury Read full book for free!
... am all at sea," returned Hollis. He laughed. "I suppose you've read Ace's poem in the Kicker?" He caught Norton's nod and continued. "Well, Ace succeeded in crowding a whole lot of truth into that effort. Of course you remember the first couplet: ... — The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer Read full book for free!
... Japan. She held out a lacquered salver for money, presumedly for religious purposes, and on receiving the same she commenced a series of gyrations worthy of the whirling dervishes of Cairo. It was impossible not to recall De Foe's couplet as applied to this ... — Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou Read full book for free!
... of the most elaborate specimens of metal work in England. Rather more than a mile west of Longford is the Early English church at Odstock. It has a fine west tower and several points of interest. The pulpit dated 1580 bears the following couplet: ... — Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes Read full book for free!
... appointed plugman of an engine, at seventeen years of age, he began to study its construction. In his leisure hours, he took it to pieces and put it together again several times, in order to understand it. So of William Hutton, whose name is mentioned in another place. Encouraged by a couplet which he ... — The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer Read full book for free!
... language. I remained looking intently in that direction, until the form faded into a mere shadow; and then, as darkness increased, seemed to multiply before my aching eyes, and assume all sorts of fantastical shapes. Every now and then, a couplet, or a stanza, came sweeping up. It was evident the lady, whoever she might be, was not singing merely to amuse the child. The notes were sometimes lively, but, in general, sad and plaintive. I listened long after the last quaver had died away; and was rather sulky when Ali came with the persevering ... — Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various Read full book for free!
... get groggy about the knees after running for seven or eight lines. Mr Pontifex's last couplet gave him a lot of trouble, and nearly every word has been erased and rewritten once at least. In the visitors' book at the Montanvert, however, he must have been obliged to commit himself definitely to one reading or another. ... — The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler Read full book for free!
... bad defeat for me—a kind of Waterloo. It promised to remain so, and I wished I had had better sense than to enter upon such a forlorn enterprise. But just then I had a saving thought—at least a thought that offered a chance. While the storm was still raging, I made up a Scotch couplet, and then spoke up ... — Innocents abroad • Mark Twain Read full book for free!
... eating it. However, you were not very much in the wrong, either of you. It was a sort of a doubtful case. But I hope you see from it, Rollo, what I wanted to teach you, that you are no more inclined to prefer other persons' pleasure to your own, than other children are. Remember Jonas's couplet hereafter. I think it is a very good one. Now go and get a knife, and cut the fruit; and see, it does not rain but little; you can go and get your ... — Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott Read full book for free!
... to laugh in a very hearty jolly way, but a little late, and some time after the joke was over. Pray, why should all gentlemen have a literary turn? And do we like some of our friends the worse because they never turned a couplet in their lives? Ruined, perforce idle, dependent on his brother for supplies, if he read a book falling asleep over it, with no fitting work for his great strong hands to do—how lucky it is that he did not get into more trouble! ... — The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray Read full book for free!
... vilified! It is true that grammarians have ever disputed, and often with more acrimony than discretion. Those who, in elementary treatises, have meddled much with philological controversy, have well illustrated the couplet of Denham: "The tree of knowledge, blasted by disputes, Produces sapless leaves in stead ... — The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown Read full book for free!
... be in most respects their master. Following the example originally set by Surrey and Wyatt, and generally pursued by Shakespeare's contemporaries, his sonnets aim at far greater metrical simplicity than the Italian or the French. They consist of three decasyllabic quatrains with a concluding couplet, and the quatrains rhyme alternately. {95b} A single sonnet does not always form an independent poem. As in the French and Italian sonnets of the period, and in those of Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, and Drayton, the same train of thought is at times pursued continuously through two ... — A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee Read full book for free!
... word-music, suggesting beauty by a running accompaniment of sound, which are the main secret of modern verse. He is not satisfied, ample as it may seem, with his double-rhyme harmony. He confines himself to it, indeed, in the famous overture-couplet— ... — The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury Read full book for free!
... be used as such through the Elizabethan period, and sporadically even later.[44] But on account of its customary pause after the fourth foot, it very early broke into two short lines of four and three stresses each, and thus the septenary couplet became the ballad stanza. ... — The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum Read full book for free!
... Commodus Hercules, and upon it was inscribed the well known couplet, viz.: "Hercules I, Jove's son, Lord of Fair Fame, Not Lucius, howsoe'er ... — Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio Read full book for free!
... verses and gave them to her—compared her to an ice-covered stream, quiet on the surface, but all motion and tumult below. Well, she never even thanked me for them, though she said she liked that simile, it was so new. There was another couplet about her name—Blanche and snow and cold: when she read it she laughed and said, "Though my name means white, it does not mean cold. You know there are some white things that are very warm, Mr. Highrank—my ermine muff, for instance." But I made a clever answer. I said, "The muff looks cold, ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various Read full book for free!
... young men he had, so far, taken as his motto a couplet, which, through over-usage, ... — The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker Read full book for free!
... the last couplet, when the shepherds, coming to see Jesus in His stable, have placed in the manger their offerings of fresh eggs and cheeses, and when, ... — In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various Read full book for free!
... hung and draped with blue velvet, divided by lines of gold, was full of people ranged in a circle, listening eagerly to the recital of poem by the author, an Abbe, who stood in the midst, declaiming each couplet with emphasis, and keeping time with his foot, while he made gestures with his uplifted hand. Indeed, I thought at first he was in a furious passion and was going to knock someone down, till I saw calmly everyone sat; and then again I fancied we had ... — Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge Read full book for free!
... order to save the situation: "That last couplet is not at all necessary"; and Daddy Taille, who had got red up to his ears, looked round the ... — Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant Read full book for free!
... to the style and versification of the Monody, the heroic couplet in which it is written has long been a sort of Ulysses' bow, at which Poetry tries her suitors, and at which they almost all fail. Redundancy of epithet and monotony of cadence are the inseparable companions of this metre in ordinary hands; nor could all the ... — Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore Read full book for free!
... viz., that upon divers, to wit, three thousand papers, the rioters had wickedly and maliciously written and printed, besides, observe, causing to be written and printed, 'No Popery,' as also the following traitorous couplet— ... — The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey Read full book for free!
... complicated rime scheme of its Italian original has become very much simplified, being reduced to the following form: a, b, a, b; c, d, c, d; e, f, e, f; g, g. This is merely three four-line stanzas with alternate rimes, plus a final couplet. Such a simplified form had already been used by other English authors, from whom our poet ... — An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken Read full book for free!
... clean slap of levelled carbines, yet from the prisoners came the continued song in its closing couplet: ... — The Cavalier • George Washington Cable Read full book for free!
... a couplet describing the romantic figure of the last count of Gruyere, is still rhymed by the people and still finds its place among their records. Imposing in height as his great forerunner Francois de Gruyere, his features were of a beautiful regularity ... — The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven Read full book for free!
... dusty, southern look, as if the people sat out-of-doors a great deal, and wandered about in the stillness of summer nights. The figure of the elder town, at these hours, must be ghostly enough on its neighboring hill. Even by day it has the air of a vignette of Gustave Dore, a couplet of Victor Hugo. It is almost too perfect, - as if it were an enormous model, placed on a big green table at a museum. A steep, paved way, grass-grown like all roads where vehicles never pass, stretches up to it in the sun. It has ... — A Little Tour in France • Henry James Read full book for free!
... for the padded redundancy of Addison and the elaborate rhetoric of Trapp, are all part of a campaign waged by a small group of critics to make poetry once again a vehicle of the very highest truth. He insists, too, that great thought cannot be contained within the untroubled cadences of the heroic couplet. His own preference led to the freer, though currently unfashionable, Pindaric, the irregularity of which seemed justified by Biblical example, for despite a century and a half of study and speculation the ... — 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill Read full book for free!
... about that," said Mrs. Yeobright; and they turned towards the inn, known in the neighbourhood as the Quiet Woman, the sign of which represented the figure of a matron carrying her head under her arm, beneath which gruesome design was written the couplet so well known to ... — The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy Read full book for free!
... Thus ran a couplet of the "Roman de Thebes"; and of the hundred or more tales of chivalry in verse, which are recognized as classic, nearly all make mention of ... — Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield Read full book for free!
... by Charles H. Ross, Esq."—twenty-six letters which, when applied to the cryptograph, will give a couplet... — Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous Read full book for free!
... commander of the army of the Shenandoah. He had spent three months of time, and ten millions of money, and had only emulated the acts of that Gallic sovereign whose great deeds are immortalized in the brief couplet, ... — Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various Read full book for free!
... long lines that conclude each stanza of this charming love-poem, instead of rhyming alternately as in the translation, chime somewhat to the tune of Byron's Don Juan—six lines rhyming with each other, and the two last forming a separate couplet. In other respects the translation, it is hoped, is sufficiently ... — The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller Read full book for free!
... important cities in the Empire. The magistrate of this district is the only one, so far as we know, in the Empire who is relieved of the duty of welcoming and escorting transient officers. It was the multiplicity of such duties, so harassing, that persuaded Fang Kuan-ch'eng to write the couplet on one of the city gateways: Jih pien ch'ung yao, wu shuang ti: T'ien hsia fan nan, ti yi Chou. 'In all the world, there is no place so public as this: for multiplied cares and trials, this is the first Chou.' The people of Cho-Chou, of old celebrated for their ... — The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa Read full book for free!
... rather thinks that Horace refers here, as in the words Versibus impariter junctis, "Couplets unequal," to the use of pentameter, or short verse, consisting of five feet, and joined to the hexameter, or long verse, of six. This inequality of the couplet Monsieur Dacier justly prefers to the two long Alexandrines of his own country, which sets almost all the French poetry, Epick, Dramatick, Elegiack, or Satyrick, to the tune of Derry Down. In our language, the measures are more ... — The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace Read full book for free!
... of the Horatian metres (except, of course, those that are written in stanzas), or influence the structure of the Latin, it must be considered as a happy circumstance for those who wish to render Horace into English. In respect of restraint, indeed, the English couplet may sometimes be less inconvenient than the quatrain, as it is, on the whole, easier to run couplet into couplet than to run quatrain into quatrain; but the couplet seems hardly suitable for an English lyrical poem of any length, ... — Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace Read full book for free!
... distant to get there and back in half an hour. He was just thinking of giving it up and turning back, when a sound behind one of the hedges close to him startled him and sent his heart to his mouth. He stood still to listen, and heard a gruff voice say—or rather intone—the following mysterious couplet: ... — Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed Read full book for free!
... Ulster, and it is with the friendly or hostile relations of these two that the Ultonian cycle of tales deals. Ulster, or, more precisely, the eastern portion of the Province, was the scene of all the Cattle-raids, and there is a degree of truth in the couplet,— ... — The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown Read full book for free!
... lines as they stood in some obscure edition anterior to 1801, and the withers of poor G. are again wrung. His letter is a gem—with his poor blind eyes it has been laboured out at six sittings. The history of the couplet is in page 3 of this irregular production, in which every variety of shape and size that Letters can be twisted into, is to be found. Do shew his part of it to Mr. R. some day. If he has bowels, they must melt at the contrition so queerly character'd of a contrite sinner. ... — The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb Read full book for free!
... above all, he had, as Scott recognised, but as has not been always recognised since, a really remarkable and then novel command of flowing but fairly strict lyrical measures, the very things needed to thaw the frost of the eighteenth-century couplet. Erskine offered, and Lewis gladly accepted, contributions from Scott, and though Tales of Wonder were much delayed, and did not appear till 1801, the project directly caused the production of Scott's first original work in ballad, Glenfinlas and ... — Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury Read full book for free!
... Massachusetts and New Hampshire, was the son of a former governor of Massachusetts,—that upright, sturdy, narrow, bigoted old Puritan, Thomas Dudley, in whose pocket was found after his death the notable couplet,— ... — A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman Read full book for free!
... her stall with her head on one side and a big bandage over one of her horns, looking exactly like an old peasant woman with a kerchief tied around her head for a headache; and then she thought she saw, written in the air, a couplet... — Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud Read full book for free!
... many of his friends are of opinion, that our present poets are indebted to him for their happiest thoughts; by his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarossa, and by his persuasion the author of Cleone concluded his play without a couplet; for what can be more absurd, said Minim, than that part of a play should be rhymed, and part written in blank verse? and by what acquisition of faculties is the speaker, who never could find rhymes before, enabled to rhyme at the conclusion of ... — The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson Read full book for free!
... human nature, his keen sympathy with his kind, his fine common-sense and his genial humour. The same qualities, tempered by a certain grace and tenderness, also enter into the best of his poems. Avoiding the epigram of Pope and the austere couplet of Johnson, he yet borrowed something from each, which he combined with a delicacy and an amenity that he had learned from neither. He himself, in all probability, would have rested his fame on his three chief metrical efforts, 'The Traveller', 'The Hermit', and 'The Deserted Village'. But, as ... — The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith Read full book for free!
... ringing in their ears. The new party is composed of Bombay Musulman youths, the tallest of whom carries an umbrella made out of pink, green and white paper, under which the rest crowd and sing the following couplet relating to the wife and daughter ... — By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O. Read full book for free!
... head however soon furnished him with an opportunity to second his arguments by proof.—They soon after undertook an impression of a primer that had been lately published in New-England.—Franklin overlooked the piece; and when his master had set the following couplet— ... — The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks Read full book for free!
... sorceress can straightway be offset by that of her sister. And we have our Scribe's word for it, that the Dervish went as far and as deep with the huris, as the doctors eventually would permit him. That is why, we believe, in commenting upon his adventures there, he often quotes the couplet, ... — The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani Read full book for free!
... silence regarding the writers of the Ciceronian age which, whether under political pressure or not, they all adopted. Even Ovid, never ungenerous though not always discriminating in his praise, dismisses him in a list of Latin poets with a single couplet of vague eulogy. In the reactionary circles of the Empire, Lucretius found recognition; but the critics who, according to Tacitus, ranked him above Virgil may be reasonably suspected of doing so more from ... — Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail Read full book for free!
... not, however, drive to Spello to inspect either Roman antiquities or frescoes, but to see an inscription on the city walls about Orlando. It is a rude Latin elegiac couplet, saying that, "from the sign below, men may conjecture the mighty members of Roland, nephew of Charles; his deeds are written in history." Three agreeable old gentlemen of Spello, who attended us with much politeness, and were greatly interested in my researches, pointed out ... — New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds Read full book for free!
... ant's passionate outburst to the thistle, and the thistle's reply, instead of a Sir Walter and Queen Elizabeth couplet. Long, lance-shaped, deeply cleft, sharply pointed, and prickly dark green leaves make the ascent almost unendurable; nevertheless, the ant bravely mounts to where the bristle-pointed, overlapping scales of the deep green cup hold the luscious flowers. ... — Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al Read full book for free!
... came up the fore-hatch a yell, as if from the throat of a North American savage. It terminated in the couplet, tunefully sung— ... — The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne Read full book for free!
... form of justice, is the duty enjoined by St. Paul of forming just judgments of our fellow-men. If we would avoid petty fault-finding and high-minded contempt, we must dismiss all prejudice and passion. The two qualities requisite for proper judgment are knowledge and sympathy. Goethe has a fine couplet to the effect that 'it is safe in every case to appeal to the man who knows.'[22] But to understanding must be added appreciative consideration. We must endeavour to put ourselves in the position of our ... — Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander Read full book for free!
... reached such excellence as to raise much envy, it may commonly be said at least, that "he writes very well for a gentleman." His serious pieces are sometimes elevated; and his trifles are sometimes elegant. In his verses to Addison, the couplet which mentions Clio is written with the most exquisite delicacy of praise; it exhibits one of those happy strokes that are seldom attained. In his Odes to Marlborough there are beautiful lines; but in the second ... — Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson Read full book for free!
... pelted with stones, and the glasses shivered. The news of this outrage was communicated to parliament in the midst of a furious discussion of the decree for the commercial monopoly. The first president, who had been absent for a short time, re-entered, and communicated the tidings in a whimsical couplet: ... — The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving Read full book for free!
...
