"Lyric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the characters, order the circumstances, and render clear, as, for example, in the Sonnets, the subtleties of his thought. A great artist, by his comprehensive grasp of the main issue of his work, even in a short lyric or a small picture, and by his luminous representation of it, suggests, without direct expression of them, all the strange psychology, and the play of character in the situations. And such an artist does ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... the stress Of yearning notes that gush and stream, The lyric joy, the tenderness, And once again the ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... sacred lyrics, and a lyric to be lyrical and heart appealing, must be inevitable. It must be the spontaneous expression of the heart of the author—an expression which had to come. It is the latent secret of the power of true hymns, for ...
— Hymns from the East - Being Centos and Suggestions from the Office Books of the - Holy Eastern Church • John Brownlie
... Flacci . . . Od in locos communes ad lyric poseos studiosorum utilitatem digest. Studio & oper Josephi Langii. Hanovi, typis Wechelianis, apud Claudium Marnium & heredes Joannis Aubrii, ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges
... of the songs, which were set by that admirable composer, Mr. Henry James.' True it is, that the songs are excellent, as are all Cartwright's; for grace, simplicity, and sweetness, equal to any (save Shakspeare's) which the seventeenth century produced: but curiously enough, his lyric faculty seems to have exhausted itself in these half-dozen songs. His minor poems are utterly worthless, out Cowleying Cowley in frigid and fantastic conceits; and his varied addresses to the king and queen are as bombastic and ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... the poet Gascoigne, and the elder of our fascinating trio, is conspicuous for an unswerving, whole-hearted attachment to nature and rural scenes. It is in the pastoral lyric where, with tenderest devotion, he pursues, untrammelled, a light and free-born fancy. His fertile, varied muse, laden with the passionate exaggerations of love-lorn swain, is yet charged with richest ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... Italian poetry, which now followed at the end of the fifteenth century, as well as the Latin poetry of the same period, is rich in proofs of the powerful effect of nature on the human mind. The first glance at the lyric poets of that time will suffice to convince us. Elaborate descriptions, it is true, of natural scenery are very rare, for the reason that, in this energetic age, the novels and the lyric or epic poetry had something else to deal with. Bojardo and Ariosto paint nature vigorously, but as briefly as ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... beside the falls in morning sunlight, or stationed on the points of vantage that command their successive cataracts, we enjoyed a spectacle which might be compared in its effect upon the mind to the impression left by a symphony or a tumultuous lyric. The turbulence and splendour, the swiftness and resonance, the veiling of the scene in smoke of shattered water-masses, the withdrawal of these veils according as the volume of the river slightly shifted ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... art which in Aristotle's Poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe. This would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our common rhymers and play-writers be; and show them what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... Copenhagen. It contains a list of native American authors and notices of a number of their works composed in their own tongues. That on "aboriginal poetry" vindicates for native American bards a respectable position among lyric and dramatic composers. ...
— A Record of Study in Aboriginal American Languages • Daniel G. Brinton
... pleasure I had in the very elusiveness and mystery of the sign, nor how I wished I might at the next turn come upon the poet himself. I decided that no one but a poet could have contented himself with a lyric in one word, unless it might have been a humourist, to whom sometimes a single small word is more blessed than all the verbal riches of Webster himself. For it is nothing short of genius that uses one word when twenty will ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... himself a creature, made by something he calls "Quiet;" and what is this but the Gnostic notion of aeons and their subordination to the great, hid God? No, this brief dramatic lyric is far from being an imagination. Rather say it is a chapter taken from the history of man's traffic in gods. Setebos is creative; lacks moral qualities in that he may be evil or good; acts from spleen, and by simple caprice; ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... have already so much variety and so much apparent sincerity that it is impossible to tell in what direction his genius will develop. In whatever style he writes,—the mystical, the historical-dramatic, the impassioned description of natural beauty, the ballad, the love lyric,—he has the peculiarity of seeming in each style to have found the truest ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... Athens was crowned with marvellous temples, whose exquisite proportions amaze and charm us to-day—inimitable creations of beauty. Homer came, and then epic poetry was born. AEschylus and tragedy came; Pindar and the lyric song; Theophrastus and pastoral music; Anacreon and the strain which bears his special name. And so Phidias and his companions created sculpture, Herodotus history, Demosthenes oratory, Plato and Aristotle philosophy, Zeuxis painting, and Pericles statesmanship. This was ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... the fat woman, lapsing, as she occasionally did lapse, into the easy Italian of the lyric stage. "She ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the cluster that would have rotted on the tree, and bears it to the wine-press to change it into perfumed wine. Listen! there is, a dozen hours from Alexandria, towards the west, not far from the sea, a nunnery, the rules of which, a masterpiece of wisdom, deserve to be put in lyric verse and sung to the sound of the theorbo and tambourines. It may truly be said that the women who are there, submissive to these rules, have their feet upon earth and their faces in heaven. They desire ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... mentioned next. Originally, all poetry was spoken with musical accompaniment; when this primitive literature began to divide up into specialised forms, Lyric was the literary form which retained most of the spirit of music. It includes Songs and Odes, in which the very structure of the poem is determined by the mode of its performance; Psalms and Lamentations; the Traditional Poetry scattered through ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... (composed in 1903-1905 and published in the latter year), the piano pieces Estampes (1903), and Images, Masques, l'Ile joyeuse (1905), and a few songs. Certain audiences in Paris had heard, nine years before, his setting of Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel" (La Demoiselle Elue), a "lyric poem" for two solo voices, female chorus, and orchestra; in the same year (1893) his string quartet was played by Ysaye and his associates; in 1894 his Prelude a l'Apres-midi d'un Faune was produced at a concert of the National Society of Music; the first two Nocturnes for orchestra, ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... necessary, all of Milton, all of Shakespeare but a song or two, much of Dante and some of Homer, to be secured in them for ever. My friend (of the Ramillies) and I were disputing about a phrase I had applied to lyric poetry as the infallible test of its merit. I asked for "the lyric cry," and he scorned me. I could find a better phrase with time; but the quatrain just quoted makes it unmistakable, as I think. Anyhow, it will be conceded that there was some ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... seventy-nine verses. Seventy-eight were quite unprintable, and rejoiced his brother cowpunchers monstrously. They, knowing him to be a singular man, forebore ever to press him, and awaited his own humor, lest he should weary of the lyric; and when after a day of silence apparently saturnine, he would lift ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... volumes. During his Sea and Land ministry he was brought in contact with seamen and this finds expression in his later works taking character from life on the sea. Many of his verses have found place in Christian hymnology, notably such a lyric as "Jesus, Savior, pilot me over life's tempestuous sea," with that sweet verse "as a mother stills her child Thou canst hush the ocean wild." Another hymn was "Wrecked and struggling in mid ocean, clinging to a ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... Lyric poetry is by its excellence the chief art of England, as music is the art of Germany. A book of poetry is almost sure of fair appreciation in the English press which does not trouble to notice a "Sartor Resartus" or the first essays of an Emerson. The excessive consideration given ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... we are a nation in full literary production, boasting authors who rank with the greatest of other countries, there is hardly one poet or prose-writer to-day, of recognized ability, who works for the stage, nor can we count more than one or two high-class comedies or lyric dramas ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... descriptions are not irrelevant ornaments, but they constitute an organic and integral part of the picture. In both Turgenev and Korolenko the surrounding country reflects the feelings and emotions of the heroes, and takes on a purely lyric character. One might almost say that these country scenes breathe, speak a human language, and whisper ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... careless rhymes, Burley threw off a rude but spirited translation of that divine lyric. "O materialist!" cried the boy, with his bright eyes suffused. "Schiller calls on the gods to take him to their heaven with them; and you would debase the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... out," I began, "why women are so shy about being caught reading poetry. We men—lawyers, mechanics, or what not—may well feel ashamed. If we must read poetry, it should be at dead of night, within closed doors. But you women are so akin to poesy. The Creator Himself is a lyric poet, and Jayadeva [15] must have practised the divine art ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... of Verona, is the greatest lyric poet of Roman literature. One hundred and sixteen of ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... ourselves importunately asking wherein lies the secret of great art? And, in the case of literature, we think it at such times no desecration of our delight to put a passage of Shakespeare or of Milton beside a passage of Homer, of AEschylus, or of Dante, an essay of Lamb beside a chapter of Heine, a lyric of Burns by one of Shelley, and to seek for some common measure of ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... technicalities of Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the mediaeval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many cases, by the art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in professional and literary hands. The mediaeval minstrels and jongleurs (who may best be studied in Leon Gautier's ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... edition of Motherwell's Poems, which has just issued from the Glasgow Press, under the auspices of Mr James M'Conechy. William Motherwell must always stand very high in the list of the minor Scottish poets, and one lyric of his, "Jeanie Morrison," is as pathetic as any in the language. But of him so much has already been said in former numbers of MAGA, that we may dispense with present criticism: and we shall merely draw the attention ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... in the three great departments of poetry,—the epic, the lyric, and the dramatic,—the old Greeks were great masters, and have been the teachers of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... February's few flowers, Ere March came in with Marlowe's rapturous rage: Peele, from whose hand the sweet white locks of age Took the mild chaplet woven of honoured hours: Nash, laughing hard: Lodge, flushed from lyric bowers: And Lilly, a goldfinch in a twisted cage Fed by some gay great lady's pettish page Till short sweet songs gush clear like short spring showers: Kid, whose grim sport still gambolled over graves: And Chettle, in whose fresh funereal verse Weeps ...
— Sonnets, and Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets (1590-1650) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... side of us were swift hills mottled with green and gold, ahead a curdle of snow-capped mountains, above a sky of robin's-egg blue. The morning was lyric and set our hearts piping as we climbed the canyon. We breathed deeply of the heady air, exclaimed at sight of a big bee ranch, shouted as a mule team with jingling bells came swinging down the trail. ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... caveat for the Gracioso. I have not wholly dropt the two Students, but kept them quite under: and brought out the religious character of the Piece into stronger Relief. But as I have thrown much, if not into Lyric, into Rhyme, which strikes a more Lyric Chord, I have found it much harder to satisfy myself than with the good old Blank Verse, which I used to manage easily enough. The 'Vida es Sueno' again, though blank Verse, has been difficult ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... when he was left alone, set to work on a little lyric of joy, with which to welcome the return of his forgiven and ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... 'Frenchman' imported from sunny Champagne, where Thibaut, the mawkish singer was making verses which his people loved to listen to? Did he teach the young novices French as well as writing? Did he touch the lute himself on Feast-days, and charm them with some new lyric of Gasse Brusle, or delight them with one of Rutebeuf's merry ditties? France was all alive with song at this time, and princes were rivals now for poetic fame. It may be that this 'foreigner' brought in a taste for ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... the song of crickets, coming in full choir upon the wind, and fancied that, if moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like that. Finally, he took a draught at the Shaker spring, and, as if it were the true Castalia, was forthwith moved to compose a lyric, a Farewell to his Harp, which he swore should be its closing strain, the last verse that an ungrateful world should have from him. This effusion, with two or three other little pieces, subsequently written, he took ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... evenings during the month of May one of these handsome fellows was busy in my garden, diligently picking the potato bugs from the young vines, stopping now and then, especially in his morning visits, to pour out a happy, ringing lyric and to show his handsome plumage. On one occasion he took a couple of potato bugs in his "gros" beak as he flew to the nearby woodland, probably a tempting morsel for his spouse's breakfast. A bird that can sing better than ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... customs arises is not valid, for customs ratified by Aristophanes, by Rabelais, by Shakespeare, have no right to change. If they have changed, let us try immediately to return from our disgraceful refinements to the nobler and more rarefied heights of lyric laughter, tragic intensity, and wit, for we cannot have the first two without the last. And anyhow, how can a social custom claim precedence over the undying material of the senses and the emotions of man, over the ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... irresistible charm for him; and he once declared that he would almost rather have been Ireland than Shakespeare; and then it was his delight to write Greek versions of a poem that might attach the mark of plagiarism to Tennyson, or show, by a Scandinavian lyric, how the laureate had been poaching from the Northmen. Now it was a mock pastoral in most ecclesiastical Latin that set the whole Church in arms; now a mock despatch of Baron Beust that actually deceived the Revue des Deux Mondes and caused ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... talk of the best poem which the war has produced; and opinions usually vary. My own vote, so far as England is concerned, is still given to Julian Grenfell's lyric of the fighting man; but if France is to be included too, one must consider very seriously the claims of La Passion de Notre Frere le Poilu, by Marc Leclerc, which may be had in a little slender paper-covered book, at a cost, in France, where it ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... skilful repetitions and exquisite versification in his "Ancient Mariner," "Genevieve," "Alice du Clos," but nowhere a systematic burden. Campbell has no burdens in his finest lyric ballads, though the subjects were fitted for them. The burden of the "Exile of Erin" belongs ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... canny for my years, from the professors to the poets, listening—to the lyric tenor of Swinburne and the tenor robusto of Shelley, to Shakespeare with his first bass and his fine range, to Tennyson with his second bass and his occasional falsetto, to Milton and Marlow, bassos profundo. I gave ear to ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... contemporary spiritual aspirations and troubles. That such may be the case with literature, particularly the more ephemeral kinds thereof, is very likely, since literature, save in the great complex structures of epos, tragedy, choral lyric, is but the development of daily speech, and possibly as upstart, as purely passing, as daily speech itself; moreover, in its less artistic forms, requiring ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... creation, Shakspeare is unique. No man can imagine it better. He was the farthest reach of subtlety compatible with an individual self,—the subtilest of authors, and only just within the possibility of authorship. With this wisdom of life, is the equal endowment of imaginative and of lyric power. He clothed the creatures of his legend with form and sentiments, as if they were people who had lived under his roof; and few real men have left such distinct characters as these fictions. And they spoke in language as sweet as it was fit. Yet his talents never ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Michelangelo's style; and, if we are really to believe that he intended to portray the god of love, it offers another instance of his independence of classical tradition. No Greek would have thus represented Eros. The lyric poets, indeed, Ibycus and Anacreon, imaged him as a fierce invasive deity, descending like the whirlwind on an oak, or striking at his victim with an axe. But these romantic ideas did not find expression, so far as I am aware, in antique plastic art. Michelangelo's Cupid is therefore as original ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... poetry contains in all only about thirty thousand lines; but it includes epic, lyric, didactic, elegiac, and allegorical poems, together with war-ballads, paraphrases, riddles, and charms. Of the five elegiac poems (Wanderer, Seafarer, Ruin, Wife's Complaint, and Husband's ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... which was even already growing up in English society, should not be shocked by the too frequent reminder that the King had several children who were not born in wedlock. Beranger, the once popular French lyric poet, satirized a certain royal personage, a contemporary of William the Fourth, as the King of Yvetot. There was a French legend which told of the conditions under which the descendants of a certain lord of the manor in Brittany had been created by Clotaire kings ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... fame. So far from there being any lack of permanent value and power in his verse, any falling from his established rank, the most authoritative critics, more generally today than ever before, acknowledge him to be the greatest lyric poet that ever lived. One can hardly help being awed at the thought of the genius and fascination of the young man whom the gifted ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... (the "Polyolbion" excepted) which he had published in 1620, it is reasonable to conclude that they had been composed between that date and 1627. They prove that his powers were by no means abated. "Nimphidia," in particular, though lacking the exquisite sweetness of some of his lyric pastorals, and the deep emotion of passages in his "Heroicall Epistles," excels all his other productions in airy fancy, and is perhaps the best known of any of his poems. Nor does the "Battaile" itself indicate any decay in poetical power, though we must agree with Mr. Bullen that ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... low music-hall into which I strayed one evening, one of the nigger corner-men sang a song of which the nature may be sufficiently divined from the refrain, "And the tom-cat was the cause of it all." This lyric being loudly encored, the performer came forward, and, to my astonishment, began to recite a long series of doggerel verses upon Mr. Kipling's illness, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Stephen Coleridge has already established his position among the more tuneful writers of true lyric verse, and into all that he writes the poet puts delicacy and true emotion, the former never becomes mere phrase, the latter never degenerates ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... thoughts occupied them we may see from Dante's great poem describing a vision of the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. This was written in the thirteenth century, and in the same period appeared a short Latin lyric, or hymn, called "Dies Irae," or the Day of Wrath, from an expression used by the old Hebrew prophet Zephaniah. The author was a Franciscan monk named Thomas of Celano, and we may see how deeply he felt from ...
— Michelangelo - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Master, With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... is written in the truest Schubertian style. I like to fancy that the melody with its serene, lyric beauty is a picture of the fair Rosamunde herself. The first variation, a plaintive melody over an agitated accompaniment, I should be inclined, still referring to Rosamunde and regarding each variation as expressing an experience in her life, to entitle "Moods." The second variation is more ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... to birch pastures, where we heard the lowing Of one disconsolate cow. All the warm afternoon, Lulled in a reverie by the myriad tune Of insects, and the chirp of songless birds, Forgetful of the spring-time's lyric words, Drowsed round us while we tried to find the lane That to our coming feet had been so plain, And lost ourselves among the sweetfern's growth, And thickets of young pine-trees, nothing loath, Amidst the wilding loveliness to stray, And spend, if need were, looking ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... The Frenchified lyric poets of the school of Hagedorn and Gleim sing forest-songs, as though they longed after the forest from hearsay. Then, with the resurrected folk-song and the resuscitated Shakespeare, who has poetically explored deeper into the glory of the forest than all others, the English art of ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... faces of those who dance with it. It is the Fires of Mora—come, God alone knows how—from Erin—to this place. The Fires of Mora!" He contemplated the hushed folk before him; and then from his lips came that weirdest, most haunting of the lyric legends ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... believe I do recall something, in a hazy sort of way. You had on a rose-colored gown that was distinctly wonderful, and when we tracked the German to the door of your room, you were wearing an evening coat, bright blue. But the main thing was your hair!" Here I became lyric. "An oak-leaf in the sunlight, Miss Falconer! Threads ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... endorse the thing. The heart, praise tickles and entices; Of fair one's smile, it oft the price is. See how the gods sometimes repay it. Simonides—the ancients say it— Once undertook, in poem lyric, To write a wrestler's panegyric; Which, ere he had proceeded far in, He found his subject somewhat barren. No ancestors of great renown; His sire of some unnoted town; Himself as little known to fame, The wrestler's praise was rather tame. The poet, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... breath of morn Still lingers in the valley; but the bee With restless passion hovers on the wing, Waiting the opening flower, of whose embrace The sun shall be the signal. Poised in air, The winged minstrel of the liquid dawn, The lark, pours forth his lyric, and responds To the fresh chorus of the sylvan doves, The stir of branches and the fall of streams, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... his correspondence-office in the Place de la Bourse; and he began to compose for the Troyes newspaper an account of recent events in a lyric style—a veritable tit-bit—to which he attached his signature. Then they dined together at a tavern. Hussonnet was pensive; the eccentricities of the Revolution exceeded ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... soul and lie Blind to the beauty of the earth, Deaf tho' a lyric wind goes by, Dumb in a ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... "he's a daisy," and remarks, appropriately enough, "that this was well enough for 1898; but we would now be more inclined to render it 'he's a peach.'" Again, Peck renders "illud erat vivere" by "that was life," but, in the words of our lyric American jazz, we would be more inclined to render it "that was the life." "But," as Professor Gaselee has said, "no rendering of this part of the Satyricon can be final, it must always be in ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... Esq. a young Irish gentleman, of whom Lord Charlemont had become the friend and patron. He afterwards published "Thoughts on Lyric Poetry, with an Ode to the Moon;" an "essay on Ridicule, Wit, and Humour;" and a translation of the Argonautics of Appollonius Rhodius. He ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... one: "I may boast that Paul Hayne was my friend, though it was never my good fortune to meet him." Many a soul was upheld and strengthened by him, as was that of a man who wrote that he had been saved from suicide by reading the "Lyric of Action." His album held autographed photographs of many writers, among them Charles Kingsley, William Black, and Wilkie Collins. He cherished an ivy vine sent him ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... expected to attach the same importance to the emotions as has been attributed to them by Europeans. Feeling, like Intellect, is not regarded, in the West, as an end in itself. And it is not uninteresting to note that the Americans are the only great nation that have not produced a single lyric of love worth recording. Physically, as well as spiritually, they are a people of cold temperament. Their women, so much and, I do not doubt, so legitimately admired, are as hard as they are brilliant; ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... another most very young men in love have found themselves in that condition, and have tormented themselves to the verge of fever and distraction over imaginary hurts and wrongs. Was there ever a true lyric poet who did not at least once in his early days believe himself the victim of a heartless woman? And though long afterwards fate may have brought him face to face with the tragedy of unhappy love, fierce with passion and terrible with violent ...
— Marietta - A Maid of Venice • F. Marion Crawford
... where Love's iteration Seems to warble and to rave; Letters where the pent sensation Leaps to lyric exultation, Like a song-bird ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... dramatic action. The poetry of primitive races has no distinguishing characteristics except metre or rhythm. It is usually an oft-recurring expression of the same idea. Yet there are many fragmentary examples of lyric poetry, though it is mostly egoistic, the individual reciting his deeds or his desires. From the natives of Greenland we have the following about the hovering of the clouds about ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... here reproduce it. I will only say that anything more acute, delicate, and discriminating, and, I must add, more entirely valueless and pedantic, I do not think I ever heard. It must have required immense and complicated knowledge. He was tracing the development of a certain kind of dramatic lyric, and what surprised me was that he supplied the subtle intellectual connection, the missing links, so to speak, of which there is no earthly record. Let me give a single instance. He was accounting for a rather sudden change ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and sarcastic severity would have been unpleasing, had not he qualified them, by adopting the extravagant humour of Lueian and Rabelais—Prior, lively, familiar, and amusing—Rowe, solemn, florid, and declamatory—Pope, the prince of lyric poetry; unrivalled in satire, ethics, and polished versification—the agreeable Parnel—the wild, the witty, and the whimsical Garth—Gay, whose fables may vie with those of La Fontaine, in native humour, ease, and simplicity, and whose genius for pastoral was truly original. Dr. Bentley stood ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... on the page opposite is a beautiful lyric poem. She might be called "A Hymn to the Night." Every line of her figure is musical, every move suggested, rhythmical. Seen at night, she croons you a slumber song. How subtly Mr. Weinman has told you that she comes to fold the world within her wings - ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... near the river, was the tavern, where the lights burned late, and the music went to the tune of "Wandering Willie" and "John Barleycorn." On the other side of the street, toward the hills, was the Presbyterian church, where the sermons were an hour long, and the favourite lyric was ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... piece as a whole will repay very attentive perusal, while here and there in it there is a particular choice bit of work. Here, for example, is a fine lyric ... and here a love-song of rare and exquisite beauty."—New York Evening Post, ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... primitivism in which the products of the first poets were "extemporary effusions," rudely imitative of pastoral scenes or celebratory of the divine being. Thus the first generic distinction Ogilvie makes is between pastoral poetry and lyric; the function of the former is to produce pleasure, the latter to raise admiration of the powers presiding over nature. As poetry is more natural to the young mind than philosophy, so is the end of pastoral ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... Master of the lyric inn Where the rarer sort so long Drew the rein, to 'scape the din Of the cymbal and the gong, Topers of the classic bin,— Oporto, sherris and tokay, Muscatel, and beaujolais— Conning some old Book of Airs, Lolling in their Queen Anne chairs— Catch or glee or madrigal, Writ for viol or virginal; ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... truth and beauty turn to cant on the second delivery, for it makes poetry, as a profession, impossible. The lyric poets have always spent most of their time in trying to write lyric poetry, and the ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... cutting pigeon-wings, the concertina played "Matamoras," Jones continued his lyric, when two Mexicans leaped at each other, and the concertina stopped ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... better production than either of Wordsworth's, superior to Hogg's, and, though not so intellectual as Shelley's, rivals it in truth. Mackay's is the lark itself, Shelley's is himself listening, with unwearied ears and tightly-stretched imagination, to the lark. Who is surprised that Eric Mackay's lyric, 'The Waking of the Lark,' sent a thrill through the heart of America? This poem, which appeared in the New York Independent, is undoubtedly the lark-poem of the future. From the opening to the closing stanza there is not an imperfect verse, not a commonplace. The sentiment ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... sad little love lyric which Baroni himself had set to music specially for the voice of his favourite pupil, and as Diana's low rich notes took up the plaintive melody, the audience settled itself down with a sigh of satisfaction ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... was asked to sing, He gave the different nations something national; 'T was all the same to him—"God save the King," Or "Ca ira," according to the fashion all: His Muse made increment of anything, From the high lyric down to the low rational;[cx][194] If Pindar sang horse-races, what should hinder Himself from being as pliable ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... breathed a spirit of freshness and vividness: whether it be the romance of Alexander the Great and the exploits of Rustem, or the love scenes of Zal and Rodhale, of Bezhan and Manezhe, of Gushtasp and Kitayim. That he was also an excellent lyric poet, Firdusi shows in the beautiful elegy upon the death of his only son; a curious intermingling of his personal woes with the history of his heroes. A cheerful vigor runs through it all. He praises the delights of wine-drinking, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... are exceedingly trifling. We have no remaining inscription earlier than the fortieth Olympiad, and the early inscriptions are rude and unskilfully executed; nor can we even assure ourselves whether Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgus, Kallinus Tyrtaeus, Xanthus, and the other early elegiac and lyric poets, committed their compositions to writing, or at what time the practice of doing so became familiar. The first positive ground which authorizes us to presume the existence of a manuscript of ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... are lyric. In the usual sense. They are not much different from poetry that praises gardens. The content is the distress of love, death, universal longing. The impulse to formulate them in the "cynical" vein (like cabaret songs) may, for example, might have arisen from the wish to feel superior. ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... is Our purpose to inflame Our soldiers' arteries with lust of fame; To give them something in the lyric line That shall be tantamount to fumes of wine, Yet not too heady, like the champagne (sweet) That lately left them dormant in the street, So that the British, coming up just then, Took them for swine ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... learned to read and write, perhaps an elementary history of the United States, and arithmetic, and occasionally made some little progress in algebra. On Saturdays we used to "speak pieces." Our favorites were some spirited lyric, like "Scots Wha Hae" or Pierpont's "Stand, the ground's your own, my braves," "The boy stood on the burning deck," and "Bernardo del Carpio." Sometimes, though not often, some comic piece was chosen, like Jack Downing's ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... Thackeray described in The Ballad of Bouillabaisse; Maire's, in the boulevard St.-Denis, which dates back beyond 1850; the Cafe Madrid, in the boulevard Montmartre, of which Carjat, the Spanish lyric poet, was an attraction; the Cafe de la Paix, in the boulevard des Capucines, the resort of Second Empire Imperialists and their spies; the Cafe Durand, in the place de la Madeleine, which started on a plane with the high-priced Riche, and ended its career ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the Crescent City not long ago befell The tear-compelling incident I now propose to tell; So come, my sweet collector friends, and listen while I sing Unto your delectation this brief, pathetic thing— No lyric pitched in vaunting key, but just a requiem Of blowing twenty dollars ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... Fair," and "The Devil is an Ass," which was written too late. It included likewise a book of some hundred and thirty odd "Epigrams," in which form of brief and pungent writing Jonson was an acknowledged master; "The Forest," a smaller collection of lyric and occasional verse and some ten "Masques" and "Entertainments." In this same year Jonson was made poet laureate with a pension of one hundred marks a year. This, with his fees and returns from several noblemen, and the small earnings of his plays must have formed the bulk of his income. The ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... so are many poets greater and less. Some who have seen the world-view, exhibit the same particularism in their lyric moods; although, generally speaking, a poet who once has comprehended the world, will see the parts of it in the light of that wisdom. But Walt Whitman is peculiarly representative of the poetry that can be true, without being wise in the manner that we shall ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... in the main, (not a compromise between meaning and melody, though in certain instances he may have fallen into that, but) a combination of the meaning with the melody, which latter is so important, so vital a part of the lyric poem's meaning, in any worthy sense. "No poetic translation," says Hayward's reviewer, already quoted, "can give the rhythm and rhyme of the original; it can only substitute the rhythm and rhyme of the translator." One might just as well say "no prose ...
— Faust • Goethe
... giving each semitone three, four, five, six, or even seven commas, according to its tendency." As we see, the precept is daring, and an inattentive scholar would only have to forget the last words of the definition to make people say that the great master of lyric art taught his ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... HORACE SEDGER announces the engagement at the Lyric of Mlle. DUSE. The Manager must be prosperous; at all events, he is not going to the Duse, but the Duse is coming to him. And as to the Theatre—well, if it isn't a success, the Duse is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... the romantic love of youth; this was the basis of nearly all novels and of most short stories; its presence was demanded for either primary or secondary interest in the drama; and it was the chief source of inspiration for the lyric. But within the last thirty years all sorts of other subjects have been opened up. To-day the writer's difficulty is, not that he is restricted by literary convention in his choice of material, but that he is so absolutely unrestricted that he may be in doubt where to make his choice. He ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... wonderful effect when they spring fresh upon the vision of a youth out of the back country. I sang of the look of them in my letters and soon I began to think about them and imperfectly to understand them. They had their epic, lyric and dramatic stages ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... one long poem. In our youth We rise and sing a noble epic song, A trumpet note of sound both clear and strong, With idyls now and then too sweet for truth. A lyric of lament, it swells along The tide of years, a protest 'gainst the wrong Of life, an unavailing cry for ruth, A wish to know the end—the end forsooth! 'Tis not on earth. The end which makes or mars The song of life, we who sing seldom ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... just like Barty to begin a lyric that will probably last as long as the English language with an innocent jingle worthy of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... to go back to Naples—that thought never even occurred to him. To shake off his old comrade Nina? He certainly would have preferred, for many reasons, that she should have taken to concert-room business; but if she were relying on him for an introduction to the lyric stage, why, he was bound to help her in every possible way. "You know you've got an excellent voice," he continued. "And a very little stage training would fit you for a small part in comedy-opera, if that is what you're thinking of, as a beginning. But I don't ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have. Added to which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of time. But a step in the required direction it was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... improved roads of to-day, for my automobile to penetrate everywhere I wandered afoot. Nor would I wish it to; a few disappointments, a few failures to recapture something of that first fine careless rapture, would instill a lyric melancholy; but too many would make one morbid.... Well, then: at Nant, in those old days, I once had a famous dinner; and naturally, returning, I must try to duplicate it, even though it meant going on to Millau in the ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... us have a lyric recitation; let us be brief and clear. What do you want? Explain yourself. I don't suppose that you have addressed this rebuke to me solely for the purpose of telling me that you are in love ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... phenomenal velocity On vertiginous pinnacle of poetic pomposity! Yet deign to cock thy indulgent eye at the petition Of one consumed by corresponding ambition, And lend the helping hand to lift, pulley-hauley, To Parnassian Peak this poor perspiring Bengali! Whose ars poetica (as per sample lyric) Is fully competent to turn out panegyric. What if some time to come, perhaps not distant, You were in urgent need of Deputy-Assistant! For two Princesses might be confined simultaneously— Then, how to homage the pair extemporaneously? ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... Poetry versus Tour-de-Force; "The Ring and the Book" begun in 1866; analysis of the poem; kinship of "The Ring and the Book" and "Aurora Leigh"; explanation of title; the idea taken from a parchment volume Browning picked up in Florence; the poem planned at Casa Guidi; "O Lyric Love," etc.; description and analysis of "The Ring and the Book," with quotations; compared as a poem with "The Inn Album," "Pauline," "Asolando," "Men and Women," etc.; imaginary volumes, to be entitled "Transcripts from Life" and "Flowers o' the Vine"; Browning's greatest period; Browning's ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Ross I 'll daily sing, With vocal note and lyric string, And duly, when I 've drank the king, He 'll be my second toss. May Heaven its choicest blessings send On such a man, and such a friend; And still may all that 's good attend ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... no space to the specific discussion of epic and drama, as these types are adequately treated in many books. Our own generation is peculiarly attracted by various forms of the lyric, and in Part Two I have devoted especial attention to ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... the capacity for lofty themes, but, especially as he grows older and more philosophic, and perhaps less lyric, half-seriously attributes whatever he does ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... (1826?) George Borrow published a small book of poems which is now extremely rare. I have a copy of it. In it there is a lyric in which, with his usual effrontery, he describes a very clever, tall, handsome, accomplished man, who knows many languages and who can drink a pint of rum, ending with the remark that he himself was this ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... New Era, The Negro's Reaction to the World War, The Negro's Grievances and Demands, Riots, Lynchings, The South and the Negro, The Negro and Labor Unionism and Bolshevism, Negro Progress, and The Lyric Cry,—a remarkable assortment of first-hand information concerning Negro thought ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... With him, as with all others, the great paradox and the great definition of life was this, that the ambition narrows as the mind expands. In Dramatic Lyrics he discovered the one thing that he could really do better than any one else—the dramatic lyric. The form is absolutely original: he had discovered a new field of poetry, and in the centre of that ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... The bold lyric of Burns is but an inspired kind of version of the real address which Bruce is said to have made to his followers; and whoever reads it will see that its power lies not in appeal to brute force, but to the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... that word INTELLECTUAL, one lays himself liable to the accusation of having forsaken democracy. For all that, "fundamental brainwork" is behind every respect-worthy piece of writing, whether it be a lightsome lyric that seems as careless as a redbird's flit or a formal epic, an impressionistic essay or a great novel that measures the depth of human destiny. Nonintellectual literature is as nonexistent as education without mental ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... more necessary to define sharply the line between poetry of the people and poetry for the people.[2] The latter may still be written; the making of the former is a lost art. Poetry of the people is either lyric or narrative. This difference is roughly that between song and ballad. 'With us,' says Ritson, 'songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are properly termed songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative compositions which we now denominate ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... box you can haf all your wishes," asserted the Professor, still in the German lyric strain over his triumph. "It iss the box of enchantments. You haf but to will the change you would haf taig place—it iss done. The substance ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Adur belongs also another lyric. It is printed in Hawthorn and Lavender, to which I have already referred, and is one of Mr. Henley's most characteristic and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... in rhythm with her rocking as she snuggled and soothed him. There was silence for another interval. Then she began to croon a song above him as she rocked, though the lyric was plainly ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... guardians. I was sent to various schools, great and small; and was very early distinguished for my classical attainments, especially for my knowledge of Greek. At thirteen I wrote Greek with ease; and at fifteen my command of that language was so great that I not only composed Greek verses in lyric metres, but could converse in Greek fluently and without embarrassment—an accomplishment which I have not since met with in any scholar of my times, and which in my case was owing to the practice of daily reading off the ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... For the details of the battle of Copenhagen see Southey's Life of Nelson. That conflict has been celebrated, in a noble lyric, by Campbell— ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... you can understand the feelings of an enthusiast. A set of fine China is like a poem—every individual bit is necessary to the perfection of the whole. I allow that this is not the usual way of looking at it; but my pleasure lies in seeing it entire, making the tea-table into a kind of lyric, elevating the family life by the application of the principles of abstract beauty to its homeliest details. Pardon, Miss Beecham, but Mrs. Tozer is right, and you are wrong. The idea of carrying off a few lines of a poem in one's pocket ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... ancient literature, containing various lyric compositions, and certain triads, in which are arranged historical facts or moral aphorisms, has been shown by Sharon Turner, who has established the high antiquity of many of ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... George Sand must be gratified this time! Your article this morning upon her autobiography really did hit the bull's-eye, plumb! What fire! what enthusiasm! what lyric strains!" ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of a slowly moving rhythm restrained by frequent pauses and occasional metrical irregularities, and thus they reflect with faithfulness the paternal agony with which they are filled. They belong to the earlier works of the poet, but they disclose great lyric power and are the first deep notes of the poet's genius. A few ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... the dream-world and the real, We heard the waxing passion of the song Soar as to scale the heavens on pinions strong. Amidst the long-reverberant thunder-peal, Against the rain-blurred square of light, the head Of the pale poet at the lyric keys Stood boldly cut, absorbed in reveries, While over it keen-bladed lightnings played. "Rage on, wild storm!" the music seemed to sing: "Not all the thunders of thy wrath can move The soul that's dedicate to worshipping Eternal Beauty, everlasting ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... in silence through the green and gold lyric of the spring day, an elderly company sadly out of key with the triumphant note of eternal youth which rang through all the visible world. Mrs. Purdon looked at nothing, said nothing, seemed to be aware of nothing but ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... birth, and came a child to Ohio; but William H. Lytle, dear to lovers of poetry as the author of the fine lyric, "Antony and Cleopatra," was born in Cincinnati, of the old Scotch-Irish stock, in 1826. He had everything pleasant in life and he enjoyed his prosperity, but when the war came he met its call halfway. At Chickamauga he fell, pierced ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... could never explain satisfactorily what the "pea-vine" was. His "Ring around and shake a leg, ma lady," was a triumph in the lyric line. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler be compared with the last acts of Little Eyolf and Borkman, it will be seen that in the earlier plays it relaxes towards the close, to make room for pure imagination and lyric beauty. The actual drama is over long before the curtain falls on either play, and in the one case we have Rita and Allmers, in the other Ella and Borkman, looking back over their shattered lives and playing chorus to their own tragedy. For my part, I set the highest value ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen
... of the characters, majestically seated, instead of leaning on the window-ledge, has, in Scheffer's picture, I know not what touch of stiffness, of slightly theatrical. And the general impression is a cold dryness which contrasts with the lyric warmth of the story ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... most striking songs which the war has brought forth, we must class that grim Puritanical lyric, 'The Kansas John Brown,' which appeared originally in the Kansas Herald, and which is, as we are informed, extensively sung in the army. The words are ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... from the final chorus of Elfrida, (says Miss Seward), admirably close this tribute to the memory of him who stands second to Gray, as a lyric poet; whose English Garden is one of the happiest efforts of didactic verse, containing the purest elements of horticultural taste, dignified by freedom and virtue, rendered interesting by episode, and given in those energetic and undulating measures which render blank ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... Queen's Gate!" said Alexander, when Piers began to look at his watch. "No hurry, my boy! The night is young! 'And'"—he broke into lyric quotation—"'haply the Queen Moon is on her throne, clustered around with all her starry fays.'—I shall never forget this dinner; shall you, Biddy? We'll have a song when ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing |
