"Poetical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don't know why the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these men will have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances leading to them. This, however, is part of the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... highly poetical and striking manner, the force of Lord Bateman's love, which he would seem to have kept strong as his "wow." We have beheld him patient in confinement, descending to no base murmurings against fortune, even when chained by the middle to a tree, with the prospect of ending ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray
... 1066 Halley's comet appeared to announce to the Saxons the approaching conquest of England by William the Norman. A contemporary poet made a singular remark, which may have some profound poetical meaning, but certainly seems a little indistinct on the surface. He said that 'the comet had been more favourable to William than nature had been to Caesar; the latter had no hair, but William had received some from the comet.' This is the only instance, so far as I know, in which a comet ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... PRIMITIVE AGES has frequently been an object of poetical admiration, and it delights the imagination to picture men living upon such fruits as spring spontaneously from the earth, and desiring no other beverages to slake their thirst, but such as fountains and rivers supply. Thus we are told, that ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... who desires to remain unknown." "Be it as it may," replied a third, "she is a goddess wrapt in a cloud." Oswald looked at the man who spoke thus, and every thing about him indicated that he belonged to the most obscure rank in society; but in the south people so naturally make use of poetical expressions, that one would say they were inhaled with the air and inspired by ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... The first poetical version was probably composed in the eleventh century, and is said to have been twenty-two thousand six hundred lines long. Drawn from many sources,—for the Greek and Latin writers had been all more or less occupied with describing the ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... on this principle will reject as profane inventions, the immortality of the soul, its transmigration to places of pain or pleasure, its resurrection, the final judgment, the good and bad angels, the revolt of the evil Genius, and all the poetical belief of a world to come. And this highly-favored people, whose perfection consists in a slight mutilation of their persons,—this atom of a people, which forms but a small wave in the ocean of mankind, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... she might go on and address him in an ode. He thought he had done nothing to deserve the one, and he would do almost anything to escape the other. She was a nice pleasant quiet girl; but nice pleasant quiet girls were beginning to do such equivocal things in poetical print! ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... that intelligence at the back of his head so long. The Tresilyan, of course? I remember hearing about her in India. Annesley came back from sick leave perfectly insane on the subject. She must be something extraordinary, for the recollection of her made even him poetical—when he was sober. I asked about her when I got to England, but her mother was taken very ill, or did something equally unjustifiable, so she left town before I ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... himself considered as the best of the whole, on account of the dissertation which it contains on the Metaphysical Poets. Dryden, whose critical abilities were equal to his poetical, had mentioned them in his excellent Dedication of his Juvenal, but had barely mentioned them[133]. Johnson has exhibited them at large, with such happy illustration from their writings, and in so luminous a manner, that indeed he may be allowed the full merit ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... he knew in the hymnal to those in a spelling-book. Many people of distinction became interested in his abilities; several legends exist as to his instructors; and Dr. Caldwell, president of the University, was for some years a special patron. George's earliest poetical compositions, however, had to be written down for him by other people. His work was infused with his desire for freedom, and much of it was suggested by the common evangelical hymns, as were ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... "Ah! Very poetical, your dear father, but not very sentimental. I told him so. He said the best poetry was the highest good sense. I do not quite understand him, I confess. Allons! I am afraid I do. He is a philosopher. ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... sustain and direct. If we begin by calling each other by these superhuman epithets, we may awake from the delusion sooner than if we commence with believing ourselves to be no other than what we really are. I love you for your kind, excellent, and generous heart, Jack; and as for these poetical beings, they are rather proverbial, I believe, for ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... character, from women. His utter indifference to them as women was the prime factor in this; next to that his really attractive, even distinguished, personality. He was handsome after the fashion which usually accompanies devotion to women. He was slight, but sinewy, with a gentle, poetical face and great black eyes, into which women were apt to project tenderness merely from their own fancy. It seemed ridiculous and anomalous that a man of Von Rosen's type should not be a lover of ladies, and the fact that he was most certainly not ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... 'None. Poetical days are getting past with me, according to the usual rule. Writing rhymes is a stage people of my sort pass through, as they pass through the stage of shaving for a beard, or thinking they are ill-used, or saying there's nothing in the world worth ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... occasionally touches upon the same problems—problems involving love, freedom of expression, the right to live one's life in one's own way—he is revealed to be no less a master of the prose form than of the poetical. While the book is one for mature minds, the skill with which delicate situations are handled and the reserve everywhere exhibited remove it from possible criticism even by the most exacting. The title, it should be explained, refers to a spirited race horse with the fortunes of which ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... You won't mind my slipping out of it for half a moment to the Nuns' House, and leaving a parcel there? Only gloves for Pussy; as many pairs of gloves as she is years old to-day. Rather poetical, Jack?' ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... nautically poetical, Jacob," replied Sarah. "Such things do happen; but I think that women's affections are, to use your phrase, oftener wrecked than those of men. That, however, does not exculpate either party. A woman must ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that this poetical conception was not carried out; like the author's other writings, it might have abounded with pictures of life and touches of nature drawn from his own observation and experience, and mellowed by his own humane and tolerant spirit; and might have ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... against the church or tower; and they constitute the joy of youth, and the admiration of old age. The convivial amusements are singing and versification. In these favourite exercises the performers are of humble merit; the singing is mere roar and squeak; and the poetical effusions are nonsense, vested in the rags of language; and always slanderous, because the mind of the bard is not fertile in the production of topics. The Welsh character is the echo of natural feeling, and acts from instantaneous motives. The fine arts are strangers ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 274, Saturday, September 22, 1827 • Various
... Scriptures, the first man appears in literature, in the history of human thought on the beginning of our race, in three forms. There is the Mythical Adam, the embodiment of poetical musings, fanciful conceits, and speculative dreams; there is the Theological Adam, the central postulate of a group of dogmas, the support of a fabric of controversial thought, the lay figure to fill out and wear the hypothetical dresses ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... or poetical name (Khayyam) signifies a Tent-maker, and he is said to have at one time exercised that trade, perhaps before Nizam-ul-Mulk's generosity raised him to independence. Many Persian poets similarly derive their names from their occupations; ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam • Omar Khayyam
... (44). These brilliant little creatures, not larger than moths, are famed for their beauty all over the world. The delicacy of their structure, the splendour of the colours in which they are habited, their poetical diet, and the impossibility of keeping them alive in a confined state, are the attributes of delicacy and beauty which have made them objects of interest to all persons who have any insight to the mysterious graces of animal organisation. So brilliant is ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... Wilmington rejoined, indolently. "It would be very poetical, wouldn't it, if he were to seize the opportunity to go ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... inquiry, that it was principally in the interval between the Homeric age and the Persian war that mysticism passed into religion—that superstition assumed the attributes of a science—and that lustrations, auguries, orgies, obtained method and system from the exuberant genius of poetical fanaticism. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Hebrew Theism became involved in symbolism and image-worship, borrowed probably from an older creed and remote regions of Asia,—the worship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its symbolical representations of JEHOVAH Himself were not even confined to poetical or illustrative language. The priests were monotheists: the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... reflecting a moment, 'I mean by nothing in them those who don't care about anything solid. This is an instance: I knew a man who had a young friend in whom he was much interested; in fact, they were going to be married. She was seemingly poetical, and he offered her a choice of two editions of the British poets, which she pretended to want badly. He said, "Which of them would you like best for me to send?" She said, "A pair of the prettiest earrings in Bond Street, if you don't mind, would ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... inserted among several short poems written by Sir Thomas Wyatt; and the epitaph itself has a capital W affixed to it, as if it were also of his composition: but I do not find it inserted in Dr. Nott's edition of his poetical works, in 1816; nor does this MS. appear to have been consulted by Dr. Nott. And here I may take the liberty of remarking, how desirable it is that your correspondents, in sending any extracts from old English MSS. to the "NOTES AND QUERIES," should adhere strictly to the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... its chateau built by the Empress Elizabeth, in which Napoleon sought refuge during the burning of Moscow. It is here the rank and fashion of the city may be seen to the greatest advantage of a fine summer afternoon. In these gardens all that is brilliant, beautiful, and poetical in Russian ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... whom these observations were addressed, who appeared of a taciturn and thoughtful cast, merely echoed the inquiry; Mr. Roker, shaking off the poetical and gloomy train of thought into which he had been betrayed, descended to the common business of ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... you, that was as venerable a sight, as the world, since the days of primitive Christianity, has ever looked upon. He lived, as a master, the term which has been, for above three thousand years, assigned for the life of a man." Mather celebrated his praises in a poetical effusion:— ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Great poetical phrases should have rushed to his lips—phrases meet for a tremendous occasion. But they did not. He sighed. 'I can only say what comes into my head,' he thought ruefully. ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... poet and prose writer, born in co. Limerick, Ireland; educated at Trinity College, Dublin; wrote poetical dramas of "Alexander the Great" and "St. Thomas of Canterbury"; his first poem "The Waldenses"; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... at Mormon curiously. It wasn't often Mormon showed any touch of what Sam characterized as poetical. ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... true. Its life—strong, splendid, and multitudinous—is everywhere flavoured with that unaffected pessimism and constitutional melancholy which strike deepest root under the brightest skies. The Kazi administers poetical justice with exemplary impartiality, and so healthy is the morale that at times we descry through the voluptuous and libertine picture "vistas of a transcendental morality—the morality of Socrates in Plato." In no other ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... spread his handkerchief on the floor to save his pantaloons during supplication. There was fashion and education in large degree among the men, and there was in all a pious attention to the function in poetical keeping with the origin and history of a city which the zeal of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... mass of laurels that kept out the sun, and made it look chill and sad, and the air in it was close. The round library-table was loaded with desks, pocket-books, and papers, the mantelpiece was covered with letters, and book-shelves mounted to the ceiling, filled with the learned and the poetical of ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The poetical quotations are attributed to the authors from whose works they are taken wherever it is possible. When mediaeval passages occur which are not thus attributed they are my own versions from the ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... me the play seemed rather a tragic story.... I have looked up the word in an English dictionary and it gives the definition, "An imaginative story, fiction." How prosaic! To me Romance has always been something poetical ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... an expression of surprise and pleasure at the poetical hermitage which met his eyes. The house stood on the slope of the mountain, at the summit of which is the village of Nerville. The great centennial oaks of the forest which encircled the dwelling made the place an absolute ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... superstition, or the artful inventions of designing hypocrisy. My mother's books were left behind at the different quarters we removed to, and my reading was principally confined to plays, novels, and those poetical descriptions of the beauty of virtue and honour, which the ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie
... of fame. A poetical figure, taken from the wreaths of laurel given as prizes in the ancient games of Greece. "Past history will give fame to a country, but nothing more fruitful than fame, unless its ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... a happy and poetical manner, acquaints us with the high descent of Agamemnon, and traces the origin of his power to the highest source, by saying, that the sceptre had descended to him ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... lovers, she hoped to kindle their zeal in serving their Queen. They who mock at her claims to adoration as the Lady of the land are ungrateful to a policy which preserved the tone of English society for a generation romantic, poetical, and chivalrous. In pursuance of her usual system, and in innocence of any vice but vanity, she was sure to invite the language of passion from the owner of genius and looks like Ralegh's. She played upon his ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... restlessness and fear all seemed alien to her, and to turn from thoughts of her and of their love to Karen herself was like passing from dreams of poignant, starry ecstasy to a clear, white dawn, with dew on the grass and a lark rising and the waking sweetness of a world at once poetical and practical about one. She strengthened and stilled his passion for her. And she ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... sun that shines over the Llano Estacado," was the reply of the lieutenant, whose admiration for the executive qualities of his superior officer, along with the bumpers he had imbibed, had now exalted his fancy to a poetical elevation. "Carrai-i! Esta un golpe magnifico! (It's a splendid stroke!) Worthy of Manuel Armilo himself. Or even the great ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Masefield's new poetical drama is a piece of work such as only the author of 'Nan' and 'The Tragedy of Pompey' could have written, tense in situation and impressive in its poetry.... In addition to this important play, the volume ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... seen a copy belonging to the amiable and ingenious Dr. Beattie, besides the one which I myself possess, printed in the earlier part of last century. It was reprinted by my late friend Dr. Leyden in a small volume entitled "Scottish Descriptive Poems." "Albania" contains the above, and many other poetical passages of the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... incessantly, anything and everything,—seized upon all he drew and painted. In his literary undertakings he was for the most part his own editor and printer and publisher. His career in verse and prose began early. In 1783 came forth the charming collection 'Poetical Sketches,' juvenile as the fancies of his boyish days, but full of a sensitive appreciation of nature worthy of a mature heart, and expressed with a diction often exquisite. The volume was not really public nor published, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... choosing words whose uncouthness finds no extenuation in their expressiveness, and in forging elaborate metaphors which disgust rather than delight. His description of a storm at sea is among the least unfavorable specimens of this perversion of his poetical powers:— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... age, by repressing emulation, tended to a general diminution of the efforts of genius for some time; while the banishment of Ovid, it is probable, and the capital punishment of a subsequent poet, for censuring the character of Agamemnon, operated towards the farther discouragement of poetical exertions. There now existed no circumstance to counterbalance these disadvantages. Genius no longer found a patron either in the emperor or his minister; and the gates of the palace were shut against all who cultivated the elegant pursuits of the Muses. Panders, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... with emblems and mottoes. It was accompanied and escorted by knights and gentlemen on horseback. The noble ladies of the city followed in their carriages, and behind them thronged an infinite people (infinito popolo) scattering broadcast various poetical compositions, and singing with sweet melodies in the previously appointed places, the glories of the victory won, making procession through the city until night." After dark, bonfires were lighted. On high above the triumphal ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... eye loved to dwell on me, gazes with the eye of a gazelle or a young hare, and the baby lips below outlie the hoariest male fox in the Old Jewry. But, to complete the delusion, all my sweethearts and wives are romantic and poetical skin-deep—or they would not attract me—and all turn out vulgar to the core. By their lovers alone can you ever know them. By the men they can't love, and the men they do love, you find these creatures that imitate sentiment so divinely are hard, prosaic, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... of this year Barnum produced at his Museum a dramatization of Dickens's "Great Expectations." On the opening night of the play, before the curtain rose, the great showman himself went upon the stage and made this poetical address ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... ballet-master must especially have regard to both poetical and picturesque invention; his aim being to unite both those arts under one exhibition. The poetical part of the composition being necessary to furnish a well-composed piece that shall begin with a clear exposition, and proceed unfolding itself to the conclusion, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... calmly in her grave; such at least was the story, and Roger believed it. It was in his blood to believe it. The Temples were a superstitious family, and there was nothing in Roger's upbringing to correct the tendency. His was not a sceptical or scientific mind. He was ignorant and poetical and credulous. He had always accepted unquestioningly the tale that Isabel Temple had been seen on earth long after the red clay was heaped over her murdered body. Her bridegroom had seen her, when he went ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... most elegant and poetical compliment ever paid to woman was paid to Mary queen of Scots, by Shakespeare, in Midsummer Night's Dream. Remember, the mermaid is "Queen Mary;" the dolphin means the "dauphin of France," whom ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... when this line has deepened, and differentiation has begun, we are able to trace the formative influence exerted by story upon song and by song upon story, and can observe what appear to be the beginnings of musical and poetical structure. ...
— Indian Story and Song - from North America • Alice C. Fletcher
... cardinal of St. George, in his poetical, or rather metrical history of the election and coronation of Boniface VIII., (Muratori Script. Ital. tom. iii. P. i. p. 641, &c.,) describes the state and families of Rome at the coronation of Boniface VIII., (A.D. 1295.) Interea titulis redimiti sanguine et armis Illustresque viri Romana ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... of the poem, wonderfully correct and conscientious as a translation, is inferior in poetical merit to that of Stephens, who, as we see, instead of choosing modern words, is careful to retain many of the picturesque old rune equivalents. This we perceive at once if we compare Stephens' four lines, beginning "Christ was on Rood tree" ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... attune my mind to the gravity of this marriage, to the deep historico-ethnologico-poetical significance of its smallest detail. Such rites, I said to myself, must be understood to be appreciated, and had I not been reading certain native commentators on the subject that very morning? Nevertheless, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... to Rome and lived there unharmed during the sickly season; thence he went to Florence, surveying with interest the glories of its art; and in fine he crossed the Alps by Mount Cenis to Geneva, composing on his way a poetical epistle to Montague, now Lord Halifax. The Alps do not seem to have much delighted his imagination. There are a few even still who look upon mountains as excrescences and deformities, and give to Glencoe only the homage ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... of this startling unfolding of the poetic gift, of this passage of a soft and dreamy boy into the keenest, boldest, sternest of poets, the free and mighty leader of European song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration—the political life. The boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and ends of man. But it was the factions of Florence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... with humorous originality. Though he had in his possession scarce a dozen volumes, Alexander was really a bookish man and something of a scholar; his quotations, which were frequent, ranged from Homer to Horace, from Chaucer to Tennyson. He recited a few of his own poetical compositions, and they might have been worse; Piers made him glow and sparkle ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... knowledge of art, pushed the humour almost to the verge of caricature. For, as the serious ideal requires a certain exaggeration in the proportions of the natural, so also does the ludicrous. Thus Aristophanes, in painting the humours of his time, resorts to the most poetical extravagance of machinery, and calls the Clouds in aid of his ridicule of philosophy, or summons Frogs and Gods to unite in his satire on Euripides. The Don Quixote of Cervantes never lived, nor, despite ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... nice book which I wanted: 1st. Because I have a great personal liking for Shairp, a simple-minded, affectionate man, with much poetical feeling and good taste-a kindly-natured man. 2nd. Because he writes in an appreciative kind of way, and is the very opposite of .... whom I can't stand with his insufferable self- sufficiency, and incapacity ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heads a dozen times, and used to mix tints on a piece of paper, and carry them down to Stafford House once a week in order to compare them with the colouring of the Titians. While this work was in progress, Sir George and Lady Beaumont called to see the picture, which they declared was very poetical, and 'quite large enough for anything' (the canvas was six feet by four), and invited the artist to dinner. This first dinner-party, in what he regarded as 'high life,' was an alarming ordeal for the country youth, who made prodigious preparations, drove to the house in a state of ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... a good deal about the "Man and the Apes" question, and I hear that somebody, I suspect Monckton-Milnes, has set afloat a poetical squib ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... for instance, were lying on their benches in sweet repose, those little men came swiftly and stealthily along, they took up the tools and chiselled and sawed and hammered with a will, and thus, records the poetical chronicles which I am quoting, before the carpenters woke up, the house stood ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... those traits of his character, and those ways and influences of his domestic life, under the high-toned, yet most genial training of which his son was educated to the great enterprise Providence intended for him. There are even poetical pieces extant which prove that Adam sought intercourse with the Muses by making advances on his own part, though we must confess that he does not appear to have been fairly met half-way by that capricious and fastidious sisterhood. Many of his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... pearly, her eyes full of sweet reasonableness, her nose that of the classic heroines of Greece, and her willowy form such as Sir Joshua Reynolds would have delighted to paint in a portrait, that would have been one more justification of the poetical phrase, "Art is long and life ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... recent times the fate of Lovewell and his companions has inspired several poetical attempts, which need not be dwelt upon. Lovewell's Fight, as Dr. Palfrey observes, was long as famous in New England as Chevy Chase ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... whole life and all their actions were influenced by a belief in the spiritual world.[249] It is now known that the American Indians were pre-eminent among savage nations for the superior purity of their religious faith,[250] and, indeed, over even the boasted elegance of poetical mythology. From the reports of all those worthy of credence, who have lived intimately among these children of the forest, it is certain that they firmly believe in the power and unity of the Most High God, and in an immortality ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... "History of Jaalam, Genealogical, Topographical, and Ecclesiastical," 1849, which has won him an eminent and enduring place in our more solid and useful literature. It is only to be regretted that his intense application to historical studies should have so entirely withdrawn him from the pursuit of poetical composition, for which he was endowed by Nature with a remarkable aptitude. His well-known hymn, beginning "With clouds of care encompassed round," has been attributed in some collections to the late President ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... themselves Have almost succeeded in excluding pure air Just as good as the real Lived himself out of the world Long score of personal flattery to pay off Not half so reasonable as my prejudices Pathos overcomes one's sense of the absurdity of such people Permit the freedom of silence Poetical reputation of the North American Indian Point of breeding never to speak of anything in your house Reformers manage to look out for themselves tolerably well Refuge of mediocrity Rest beyond the grave will not be much change for him Said, or if I have not, I say it again Severe attack ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... putting on a surplice in our honour," Mark laughed to one of his companions, who not feeling quite sure whether Mark was being poetical or profane, decided that he was being flippant, and looked ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... runaway, whose name was Quin,—an abbreviation of Quincy,—listened with astonishment to the story of these elegant fugitives, who ran away in a yacht, and lived in a style worthy of a planter's mansion. No doubt he thought their experience was poetical and pretty, compared with his own, for his flight had been a death struggle with famine and flood, ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... of wend or wind. "O'er hills and dales they wend their way." "The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea." Go and wend convey to our minds nearly the same ideas. The latter is a little more poetical, because less used. But originally their signification was quite different. So with the parts of the verb to be. They were consolidated as a matter of convenience, and now appear in their respective positions to express the idea of ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... christening-, and burial-sermons were masterpieces of oratory; though plainly conceived and plainly delivered and free from all and every unctious pathos, they abounded with thought, true feeling, and poetical beauty. Frommel was destined to speak at the graves of most of the great leaders of the war of 1870-71, including Prince August of Wrttemberg, Moltke, Roon, Alvensleben, Kirchbach, and Kameke; the danger to become, on such occasions, a panegyrist, he has always judiciously ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... of Buddha by Asvaghosha is a poetical romance of nearly ten thousand lines. It relates the miraculous conception of the Indian sage, by the descent of a spirit on his mother, Maya,—a woman of great purity of mind. The child was called Siddartha, or "the perfection of all things." His father ruled a considerable territory, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... feathered tribe in his relations to man; for by almost all nations he is regarded with hatred, and every man's hand is against him. He is protected neither by custom nor superstition; the sentimentalist cares nothing for him as an object of poetical regard, and the utilitarian is blind to his services as a scavenger. The farmer considers him as the very ringleader of mischief, and uses all means he can invent for his destruction; the friend of the singing-birds bears him a grudge as the destroyer of their eggs and young; and even ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... relation of the drama to the stage. The gain is in proportion to the excellence of the acting, and the loss in proportion to the beauty oL the play. It is well then that, as the lyric poem no longer demands the lyre, the poetical drama has become, though more recently, independent of the stage. Each has its own perspective of life, its own idea of Nature, its own brilliancy, its own dulness, and finally its own public; and notwithstanding the objections of some critics, it will soon be admitted that ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... not a very extended or elevated mind; his imagination was not the most lively nor the most poetical, but he possessed a very solid, very logical, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... flowers, overshadowed occasionally by trees of considerable size, rising and falling with the gentle undulations of the billows." One does not like to play the role of an iconoclast, but probably these islands were always pretty much as they are to-day. The "floating" idea is a poetical license, and was born in the imaginative brain of the Spanish writers. Had Prescott ever seen them, he would doubtless have come to the same conclusion. "Hanging" gardens do not necessarily depend from anything, "floating" islands need not ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... hues of coming day they thought that the goddess of the dawn, with rosy fingers, was drawing aside the dark veil of night, to allow her brother, the sun-god, to enter upon his brilliant career. Thus personifying all the powers of nature, this very imaginative and highly poetical nation beheld a divinity in every tree that grew, in every stream that flowed, in the bright beams of the glorious sun, and the clear, cold rays of the silvery moon; for them the whole universe lived and breathed, peopled by a thousand forms ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... out as a secondary circumstance the prudent dexterity of Shakspeare, who could still contrive to flatter a king by a work in every part of whose plan nevertheless the poetical views are evident. James the First drew his lineage from Banquo; he was the first who united the threefold sceptre of England, Scotland, and Ireland: this is foreshown in the magical vision, when a long series of glorious successors is promised to Banquo. Even the gift of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... saying, 'What do you want to know such rubbish for?' But if they know you well, and know you really are interested, then they tell you the stories as they would tell them to one another, giving them a new life and adding considerably to their poetical expression. ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... lightning, a thought ran through her mind that it must be the bearer of Elfonzo's communication. "It is not a dream!" she said, "no, I cannot read dreams. Oh! I would to Heaven I was near that glowing eloquence—that poetical language—it charms the mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest heart." While consoling herself with this strain, her father rushed into her room almost frantic with rage, exclaiming: "Oh, Ambulinia! Ambulinia!! undutiful, ungrateful daughter! What does ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... for literary production, he usually passed at his country seat in the province Pekoff. Here from 1825 to 1829 he published "Pultowa," "Boris Godunoff," "Eugene Onegin," and "Ruslaw and Ludmila," a tale in verse, after the Manner of Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso." This is considered as the first great poetical work in the Russian language, though the critics of the day attacked it, because it was beyond their grasp; but ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... at once, "that is all very fine as sentiment; it is very Eastern and poetical; but I should like to know how, in these overcrowded days, I could support myself and family if I am to trust God to feed me and them like the birds of the air, and only think about religion." But is not this wholly to misunderstand our Lord's teaching? ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... and his lady attended the old man, whose advanced age, his excellence in the use of the French language, which he spoke to admiration,—above all, his skill in applying it to poetical and romantic subjects, which was essential to what was then termed history and belles lettres,—drew from the noble hearers a degree of applause, which, as Agelastes had seldom been vain enough to consider as his ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... occasions. Here the starched domestic left me while she carried my letter of introduction to her mistress. In her absence I had leisure to form some idea of Miss Judson's character on the mute evidence of Miss Judson's surroundings. From the fact that there were books of a sentimental and poetical tenor amongst the religious works ranged at mathematically correct distances upon the dark green table-cover—from the presence of three twittering canaries in a large brass cage—from the evidence of a stuffed Blenheim spaniel, with intensely brown ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... Johnsoniana which seems to have been neglected, perhaps because Birkbeck Hill did not include it in his Johnsonian Miscellanies, is A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the Late Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., with Notes. This poem of three hundred and four lines was written by John Courtenay (1741-1816). First published in the spring of 1786 by Charles Dilly, the poem went through three editions in the same year. Its ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... Miss O'Neil, in Monimia, we are indebted for the revival of this tragedy, which was originally played at the Duke's Theatre, in 1680; and long kept possession of the stage. The language of this play is poetical and tender, and the incidents affecting; but, amidst many beauties, ...
— The Orphan - or, The Unhappy Marriage • Thomas Otway
... you admire that poetical ending? It was borrowed from Robert Burns, whose works I am reading assiduously as a compliment to a ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... destinies would lie apart, though she was once temporarily under a cloud. Her momentary inspiration to write that "Cancelled Words" was the worst possible omen for me. It showed that, thinking me no longer useful as a practical chance, she would make me ornamental as a poetical regret. But I'll send the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... beauty as inevitably, and according to the same laws, as does the frost on the window pane. Art, in one of its aspects, is the weaving of a pattern, the communication of an order and a method to lines, forms, colors, sounds. All very poetical, and possibly true, you may be saying to yourselves, but what has it to do with architecture, which nowadays, at least, is pre-eminently a practical and utilitarian art whose highest mission is to fulfil ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... of the most serious things. The Duchesse du Maine and her clever companion, Mlle. de Launay were often among the guests; also the beautiful and brilliant Mme. de Caylus, a niece of Mme. de Maintenon, whom some poetical critic has styled "the last flower of the seventeenth century." Sainte-Aulaire, tired of the perpetual excitement at Sceaux, characterized this salon ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... soul wrapped in the vain solace of unsubstantial enjoyments during years of after sorrow, when but for this I might have early sought the consolations of the gospel. Parents know not what they do, when from vanity, thoughtlessness, or overindulgence, they foster in a young girl what is called a poetical taste. Those things highly esteemed among men are held in abomination with God; they thrust him from his creatures' thoughts, and enshrine a host of ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... Of Shelley's poetical studies we hear but little at this epoch. His genius by a stretch of fancy might be compared to one of those double stars which dart blue and red rays of light: for it was governed by two luminaries, poetry and metaphysics; and at this time the latter ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... in a moment that the Sargassos, of which there are several species on Tropical shores, are a genus of themselves and by themselves; and a certain awe may, if the beholder be at once scientific and poetical, come over him at the first sight of this famous and unique variety thereof, which has lost ages since the habit of growing on rock or sea-bottom, but propagates itself for ever floating; and feeds among its ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... with serene loftiness. "You do not quite get my point, dear Mr. Grimm. For instance, when the poets,—even good men like the late Mr. Longfellow and Mr. Whittier—speak of 'wine,' they use the word of course in its poetical sense. They use it ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... picture or a volcano. When the eagle is flying and swooping, or soaring and staring impudently at the sun, or reproaching an old feather of his own in the arrow that sticks in his chest, or mewing his mighty youth (a process I never quite understood)—when he is doing noble and poetical things of this class at an elevation of a great many thousand feet above the sea level he is sublime. When you meet him down below, on his feet, much of the sublimity ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... soul's lack by supplying words and music. Tennyson never was at his best in a National Ode, unless one speaks from the elocutionary standpoint, because such tasks lack the poetical essential of spontaneity, and because, too, the themes seem to carry him outside of his nature-mood. Art in our century has gone out of doors. Scenery has never had lovers as now; and participative in this mood is Tennyson. ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... his little bark, the George, of only 40 tons burthen. Phineas Pett was the first of the great ship-builders. His father, Peter Pett, was one of the Queen's master shipwrights. Besides being a ship-builder, he was also a poet, being the author of a poetical piece entitled, "Time's Journey to seek his daughter Truth,"[16] a very respectable performance. Indeed, poetry is by no means incompatible with ship-building—the late Chief Constructor of the Navy being, perhaps, as proud of his poetry as of his ships. Pett's poem was dedicated to the Lord High ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... of what a child's book ought to be—interesting, instructive, and poetical. We cordially recommend it as one of the very best gift-books we have yet ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... his uncle, who, judging that his nephew was even better qualified for a literary than for an artistic career, advised him to follow the former, and procured for him a few Latin lessons. Meanwhile Gustavo continued to enlarge his poetical horizon by reading from the great poets and by the contemplation of the beauties of nature. With his friend Campillo he composed the first three cantos of a poem entitled La Conquista de Sevilla, and with him he wandered about the beautiful city of his birth and dreamed such dreams as the one ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... world; and that "the millions of spiritual beings who walk the earth unseen" would be rendered visible, and become the friends, companions, and instructors of mankind. In the seventeenth century more especially, these poetical and fantastic doctrines excited the notice of Europe; and from Germany, where they had been first disseminated by Rosencreutz, spread into France and England, and ran away with the sound judgment of many clever, but ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... at half-past five. To rise at five of a summer's morning, and see the azure of the sky and the glorious sun, may be, perhaps, no great hardship, although there are few persons who could long remain poetical on bread and cheese. But to rise at five on a dark winter's morning is a very different affair. To put on coarse nailed boots, weighing fully seven pounds, gaiters up above the knee, a short greatcoat of some heavy material, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... or altar; an oblation; also one of the jars in which the dwarfs' poetical beverage ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... all special title to the consideration he expected from Mr. Rich's well-known courtesy; still he begged permission to remind that gentleman that he had, six years ago, painted for him a large scene, illuminated by two great poetical incidents: a red sun, of dimensions never seen out of doors in this or any country; and an ocean of sand, yellower than up to that time had been attained in art or nature; and that once, when the audience, late in the evening, had suddenly demanded a popular ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... him sometimes, and then his Poems seemed to make me know Matt so much better than I had ever done before. Indeed it was almost like a new Introduction to him. I do not think those Poems could be read—quite independently of their poetical power—without leading one to expect a great deal from Matt; without raising I mean the kind of expectation one has from and for those who have, in some way or other, come face to face with life and asked it, in real earnest, what it means. I felt there was so much more ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are," said Jock, exultantly. "Churchill in college is the nicest fellow I know. He read such a paper at the Poetical Society. It was on the Method of Sophocles; but of course you would not ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... transformation of ships into sea-nymphs). The reason why it has been thought so is, that he rendered them more popular by mixing them with satire, and thus brought them more universally into notice. One main secret of the delight they give us is their being poetical comments, as it were, on fancies and metaphors of our own. Thus, we say of a suspicious man, that he is suspicion itself; Ariosto turns him accordingly into an actual being of that name. We speak ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... sur, par M. Victor Cousin Pellico, Silvio, Lettres de Physiology, Animal and Vegetable, by Henry Goadby Poe's Poetical Works ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the ius divinum without troubling himself to attempt to put any new life into the details of the worship it prescribed, content to let much of it sink into oblivion as no longer essential to the good government of the State, the greatest poetical genius of the age was proclaiming in trumpet tones that if a man would make good use of his life he must abandon absolutely and without a scruple the old religious ideas of the Graeco-Roman world. But there was ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... amazement. Though at first he had been struck by the terrible irony of the situation,—this man expressing the feelings of Mahomet's wife without discovering them in Marianna,—the husband's hallucination was as nothing compared with the composer's. There was no hint even of a poetical or musical idea in the hideous cacophony with which he had deluged their ears; the first principles of harmony, the most elementary rules of composition, were absolutely alien to this chaotic structure. ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... person is the cause. Can she be the cause of his resolving to have a residence here, to buy up half the valley—erecting a royal palace—and marking out the site—raving about it in the wildest language, poetical if it had been a little reasonable—and then, after a night, suddenly, unaccountably, hating the place, and being under the necessity of flying from it in hot haste, tearing us all away, as if we were attached to a kite that will neither mount nor fall, but rushes about headlong. Has ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was yet time—resign his fortune, and accept Sophie and a clear conscience, poverty and a country parish. But persons who have wealth absolutely in their power, to take or to leave, sec clearly how much poetical extravagance, hypocrisy, and cant exist in the arguments of those who advocate the beauties and advantages of being poor. Deliberately and voluntarily to forego the opportunities, the influence, the ease, the refinement, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... a brother-in-law a poet. I admire Frank so much; and, though he professes to sneer at poetry, he is so associated in my mind with poetical images that I am prepossessed beforehand in favour of all that brings him, despite himself, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... less, I must needs think, for the sake Of humbling me for my vain opposition. You are ingenious, Loredano, in Your modes of vengeance, nay, poetical, A very Ovid in the art of hating; 'Tis thus (although a secondary object, Yet hate has microscopic eyes), to you I owe, by way of foil to the more zealous, This undesired association in 140 Your ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... I cannot bring myself to think that it much matters which of these dooms awaits it, so long as each bears with it some hope of what is to come; since here, as in other matters, there is no hope save in Revolution. The old art is no longer fertile, no longer yields us anything save elegantly poetical regrets; being barren, it has but to die, and the matter of moment now is, as to how it shall die, whether WITH ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... the mother whom he loved so well; otherwise he could hardly have escaped the posthumous misfortune of a tomb in Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's. In such case the world would have missed one of the most charming of associations, and the great poem the most poetical of its features. For surely it was fit that he who sang so touchingly of the dead here sleeping, should find near them his last resting-place; that when the pleasant toil in libraries was over, the last folio closed by those industrious hands, the last manuscript collated, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey |
