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Poetical   Listen
adjective
Poetical, Poetic  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to poetry; suitable for poetry, or for writing poetry; as, poetic talent, theme, work, sentiments.
2.
Expressed in metrical form; exhibiting the imaginative or the rhythmical quality of poetry; as, a poetical composition; poetical prose.
Poetic license. See License, n., 4.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Poetical" Quotes from Famous Books



... his "Poetical Decameron," (Third Conversation,) notices a tract printed in 1595, with the author's initials only, A. B., entitled, "The Nobleness of the Asse: a work rare, learned, and excellent." He has selected the following pretty passage ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... was prepared for an outburst: but not of this kind. His anguish was so unlike a woman's that it staggered her. Her good and bad angels, to use an expressive though somewhat too poetical phrase, battled for her. She had an impulse to earn his gratitude for life, to let him out of the asylum ere Julia should be Mrs. Hurd, and even liberty come too late for true love. She looked again at the statue of grief by her side; and burst ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... abstinence, Subs. 1. To withstand the beginnings, avoid occasions, fair and foul means, change of place, contrary passion, witty inventions, discommend the former, bring in another, Subs. 2. By good counsel, persuasion, from future miseries, inconveniences, &c. S. 3. By philters, magical, and poetical cures, Subs. 4. To let them have their desire disputed pro and con. Impediments removed, reasons ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... are sometimes apt to think that the voices that sounded at the dawn of poetry were simpler, fresher, and more natural than ours, and that the world which the early poets looked at, and through which they walked, had a kind of poetical quality of its own, and almost without changing could pass into song. The snow lies thick now upon Olympus, and its steep scarped sides are bleak and barren, but once, we fancy, the white feet of ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... miraculous.' But he explained these blots on the mythology of Greece, for example, as the result practically of old words and popular sayings surviving in languages after the original, harmless, symbolical meanings of the words and sayings were lost. What had been a poetical remark about an aspect of nature became an obscene, or brutal, or vulgar myth, a stumbling block to Greek piety ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... was, "I can't be seen in this state." His thought (a dim reminiscence of poetical readings): "Ambrosial locks indeed!" A sad irony, which told that much gold-leaf had peeled away from her image ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... from memory, not from sight, even to the verge of the impossible; for even this extravagance is the product of human passion, which by its nature disdains common boundaries; and this, in painting, is especially the province of Colour, which may be said to be the poetical language of art, and admits differences of the same kind as exist between common speech and poetical ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various

... in the time of Solon.(178) That wise legislator, upon seeing his pieces performed, expressed his dislike, by striking his staff against the ground; apprehending that these poetical fictions and idle stories, from mere theatrical representations, would soon become matters of importance, and have too great a share in all ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... take, with Bentley, to mean "plucked on all hands," i. e. exhausted as a topic of poetical treatment. He well compares Lucretius, Book ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... poetical, though the feeling is a fine one. Within the old walls there can scarcely be a room that has a sound floor to it. And as for the roof, when that thunder-storm was, and I took shelter with my pony—well, you know ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... meaning. My feeling towards them was that same eager curiosity with which I regarded the ungerminated sprout within the seed, or the undiscovered mystery under the dust covering of the earth. My enthusiasm was kept up with the hope of bringing to light some unknown poetical gems as I went deeper and deeper into the ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... The squire, it seems, wanted a set of drawings made up, of which Mannering had done the first four, but was interrupted, by his hasty departure, in his purpose of completing them. Dudley says he has seldom seen anything so masterly, though slight; and each had attached to it a short poetical description. Is Saul, you will say, among the prophets?—Colonel Mannering write poetry!—Why surely this man must have taken all the pains to conceal his accomplishments that others do to display theirs. How reserved and unsociable he ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... tell stories and to compose poems. No doubt the Icelanders have thus wasted on poetical fantasies and visionary daydreams much of the energy that they might otherwise have used in life's real battle. But the greyness of commonplace existence became more bearable when they listened to tales of the heroic deeds of the ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... The most poetical chronicler would find it impossible to render the incidents of Montrose's brilliant career more picturesque than the reality. Among the devoted champions who, during the wildest and most stormy period of our history, maintained ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun

... an encounter with the Marquise were it not that I am retained in Normandy by an expected visit of two months from our friend Raymond. This fact certainly ought to make you decide to share our solitude. Our friend is so poetical, so witty, so charming. He has but one fault, that of being a civilized Don Quixote de la Mancha; instead of the helmet of Mambrino he wears a Gibus hat, a Buisson coat instead of a cuirass, a Verdier cane by way of a lance. Happy nature! in which ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... believe that jug was an old form of judge, though a philological convict might fancy that the former word was a derivative of the latter. Had the phrase occurred in Shakspeare, we should have had somebody defending it as tenderly poetical. We cannot but think it a sacrifice in Mr. White that he has given up the whatsomeres of the Folio. He does retain puisny as the old form, but why not spell it puisne and so indicate its meaning? Mr. White informs ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... state, agreeing not ill with the little dripping murmur, and the aquatic idea of the whole place. It wants nothing to complete it but a good statue with an inscription, like that beautiful antique one which you know I am so fond of. You will think I have been very poetical in this description; but it is ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... version, made for them and my conscience, in expiation of a sin of my youth, with the sincerest application of my mature mind." "This latter version," says Mr. Stedman, "of a most sublime tragedy is more poetical than any other of equal correctness, and has the fire and vigor of a master-hand. No one has succeeded better than its author in capturing with rhymed measures the wilful rushing melody of the ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... watching the moon rise over the treetops. None of them had ever experienced that feeling of being so absolutely by themselves. Quiet and unmolested as Camp Winnebago was, it seemed the center of civilization compared to this. Migwan, who was in a poetical mood, made up a new Camp Fire song and taught it ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... susceptible to every change; I was disappointed in love,—for the truth never approached to my ideal. Nursed early in the lap of Romance, enamoured of the wild and the adventurous, the commonplaces of life were to me inexpressibly tame and joyless. And yet indolence, which belongs to the poetical character, was more inviting than that eager and uncontemplative action which can alone wring enterprise from life. Meditation was my natural element. I loved to spend the noon reclined by some shady stream, and in a half sleep ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Mr. Vawdrey is particularly interested in my poetical efforts," Lady Mabel said with assumed carelessness. "He doesn't care for poetry. He ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon

... volume, Johnson took especial pains. "He wrote it," says Boswell, "'con amore,' both from the early possession which that writer had taken of his mind, and from the pleasure which he must have felt in for ever silencing all attempts to lessen his poetical fame. . . . I remember once to have heard Johnson say, 'Sir, a thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... own opinion to himself, and commanding that all these notions should be concealed from me, he ordered the interpreter to ask me what it meant. I answered, that it was an invention of the painter, to shew his art, and that it represented some poetical fable, which was all I could say, having never seen it before. He then called upon Mr Terry to give his opinion, who could not; on which the king asked him, why he brought up with him an invention in which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... was composed in 1848. The next effort of the poet is one of his masterpieces, wherein his inspiration is truest and most poetical. La Fin dou Meissounie (The Reaper's Death) is a noble, genuinely pathetic tale, told in beautifully varied verse, full of the love of field work, and aglow with sympathy for the toilers. The figure of the old man, stricken down suddenly by an accidental blow from the ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... TIMES says; "Mr. Bacheller is admirable alike in his scenes of peace and war. He paints the silent woods in the fall of the year with the rich golden glow of the Indian summer. He is eloquently poetical in the lonely watcher's contemplation of thousands of twinkling stars reflected from the broad bosom of the St. Lawrence, and he is grimly humorous in some of his dramatic episodes. Nor does anything in ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... a passage wherein Homer describes briefly and with accuracy how some mariners came to harbour, took down sail, and stepped ashore. It filled him with wonder that so simple an incident—nor to say ordinary —could be made so poetical; and, having pondered it, he divided the credit between the poet and his fortunate age—a time (said he) in which one could hardly have spoken at all without ideal effect, or the sailors pulled down their boat without ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... DEAR LOVE,—I recollect having come across the ballad incident you mention upwards of fifty years ago, when I was zealous in ballad-lore. If it had been in one of those accepted as genuine and poetical I would have remembered the ballad, but my impression is that it was condemned as a fabrication for this and other neologies. The button is not a conspicuous item of female attire as of the male, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... abstract idea of future, as follows: "The arms are flexed and hands brought together in front of the body as in type-position (W). The hands are made to move in wave-like motions up and down together and from side to side." (Oto I.) The authority gives the poetical conception of "Floating on the ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm (Now am I free to be poetical?) I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows — Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse

... of Washington may want some of the poetical elements which dazzle and delight the multitude, but it possessed fewer inequalities and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of one man. Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgement, an immovable justice, courage that never ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... to be rid of it, her pride, and her high sense of her own destinies, would have protected her. Flattered as she was to find herself surrounded by admirers, she saw no lover among them. No man here realized the poetical ideal which she and Anna Grossetete had been wont to sketch. When, stirred by the involuntary temptations suggested by the homage she received, she asked herself, "If I had to make a choice, who should it be?" she owned to a preference for Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac

... radical and revolutionary heresies of Gib. By another division of the family, the laird, Clem, and Gib, who were men exactly virtuous, swallowed the dose of Dand's irregularities as a kind of clog or drawback in the mysterious providence of God affixed to bards, and distinctly probative of poetical genius. To appreciate the simplicity of their mutual admiration it was necessary to hear Clem, arrived upon one of his visits, and dealing in a spirit of continuous irony with the affairs and personalities of that great city of Glasgow where he lived and ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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

... good-humour or has its source in the passion of contempt, hatred, or revenge, of hope or despair. Mere amusement, said Swift, "is the happiness of those who cannot think," while Humour, to quote Carlyle again, "is properly the exponent of low things; that which first renders them poetical to the mind." Through this truth we may see how Punch has so continually dealt with vulgarity without being vulgar; while many of his so-called rivals, touching the self-same subjects, have so tainted themselves as to render them fitter for the kitchen ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... to the absurd "Christian Legends" which appeared in the middle ages. The Buddhist Canon was adopted by the Council of Patna 242 B.C. The legends which are generally compared with the canonical story of Christ are not included in that Canon, or at most very few of them. They are drawn from certain poetical books written much later, and holding about the same relation to the Buddhist Canon that the "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained" of Milton bear to the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Who would think of quoting "Paradise Lost" in any sober ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... following his wife every where and making her name a familiar word in every garlic-exterminating mouth in Italy with his sonnets to her pre-empted eyebrows? They got fame and sympathy—he got neither. This is a peculiarly felicitous instance of what is called poetical justice. It is all very fine; but it does not chime with my notions of right. It is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... things for itself, and that riches produced for all might not be wanting to any. And this saying of the poet ought so to be taken, not as suggesting the idea that individuals at that time had no private property, but it must be regarded as a poetical figure, that we may understand that men were so liberal, that they did not shut up the fruits of the earth produced for them, nor did they in solitude brood over the things stored up, but admitted the poor to share ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien

... Suzanna," thought Graham. "I like to see her flush up like a rose when she speaks." Which was a poetical observation ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake

... to eat; indeed, there are few things that make a man hungrier than long-continued poetical exercise, so Adrian ate. In the midst of the meal his mother returned, pale and anxious-faced, for the poor woman had been engaged in making arrangements for the safety of the beggared widow of the martyred Jansen, a pathetic and even a dangerous ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... Petronius verses are freely used. Sometimes, as we have observed above, they form an integral part of the narrative, and again they merely illustrate or expand a point touched on in the prose. If it were not aside from our immediate purpose it would be interesting to follow the history of this prose-poetical form from the time of Petronius on. After him it does not seem to have been used very much until the third and fourth centuries of our era. However, Martial in the first century prefixed a prose prologue to five books of his Epigrams, and one of these prologues ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott

... ordinary life. It is this unfailing note of sincerity, eloquent or laconic, that has made poetry the teacher of prose. Phrases which, to all seeming, might have been hit on by the first comer, are often cut away from their poetical context and robbed of their musical value that they may be transferred to the service of prose. They bring with them, down to the valley, a wafted sense of some region of higher thought and purer feeling. They bear, perhaps, no marks of curious diction to know ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... lion at bay—one man against a thousand!" Barbara knew there had not been a hundred, but supposed a poetical imagination ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie

... Brunswickers, these painters, and ought to be 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 ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gives us graphic pictures with pencil as well as pen. A fresher title to the work might have been devised, as the present one bears a striking likeness to Mr. BLACK'S Adventures of a Phaeton,—who, by the way, was the first to render driving tours popular. The volume abounds in poetical quotations. The authority, however, is seldom given, and inverted commas are conspicuous by their absence. It can hardly be imagined that all this poetry is by the writer of the book. In one instance he quotes a well-known verse by ASHBY-STERRY, without acknowledgment, in which, for some inscrutable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various

... course, was with my instructor, guide, and inspirer, Uncle Lauder—he who had done so much to make me romantic, patriotic, and poetical at eight. Now I was twenty-seven, but Uncle Lauder still remained Uncle Lauder. He had not shrunk, no one could fill his place. We had our walks and talks constantly and I was "Naig" again to him. He ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... his hand impulsively. "There is a great gulf I think fixed between us Anglo-Saxons and the Latins. Their minds move far more swiftly than ours. They are more hungry to get everything possible out of life. Doria is a child in many ways; but a delightful, poetical child. I think England rather chills him; yet he vows there are no rich women in Italy. He longs for Italy all the same. I expect he will go home again presently. He will leave Uncle Ben in the spring—so he confides to me; but do not whisper it, for my uncle ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts

... Capernaum he was much more favourably received, and it became "his own city." These good Galileans had never heard preaching so well adapted to their cheerful imaginations. They admired him, they encouraged him, they found that he spoke well, and that his reasons were convincing. The almost poetical harmony of his discourses won their affections. The authority of the young master increased day by day, and naturally the more that people believed in him the more he believed in himself. Four or five large villages, lying at half an ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various

... inference. So I took up a strong strategic position. 'I have an intuition that I saw him in the village this morning,' I said. 'Family likeness, perhaps. I merely jumped at it as you spoke. A tall, languid young man; large, poetical eyes; an artistic moustache—just a ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... Boulton, with his mobility, quick perception, and bold adventure; Watt, with his strong inventive faculty, undeviating steadiness, and bold resources; Darwin, with his imagination, science, and poetical excellence; and Day with his unwearied research after truth, his integrity and eloquence proved altogether such a society as few men have had the good fortune to live with; such an assemblage of ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... once. (It is the sort of thing a man would dream. You cannot very well dream anything else, I know. But the phrase sounds poetical and biblical, and so I use it.) I dreamed that I was in a strange country—indeed, one might say an extraordinary country. It was ruled ...
— Dreams - From a volume entitled "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" • Jerome K. Jerome

... from William Byrds's Psalmes, Sonets, and Songs of Sadnes (no date, but 1588 according to Ames), with some additions and improvements (?) from a B.L. copy in the Pepysian collection. I have met with it in some early poetical miscellany—perhaps Tottel, or England's Helicon—but cannot just now ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various

... Juvenal, and Tibullus; for of the moderns in our own language he makes no great account; but with all his seeming indifference to Spanish poetry, just now his thoughts are absorbed in making a gloss on four lines that have been sent him from Salamanca, which I suspect are for some poetical tournament." ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... describe the ailment of the baroness. The baron would say "my wife's hypertrophy" and Jeanne "mamma's hypertrophy" as they would have spoken of her hat, her dress, or her umbrella. She had been very pretty in her youth and slim as a reed. Now she had grown older, stouter, but she still remained poetical, having always retained the impression of "Corinne," which she had read as a girl. She read all the sentimental love stories it was possible to collect, and her thoughts wandered among tender adventures in ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... masterpieces in the dignified styles of the epic, the drama, the lyric, the history, or the philosophical discussion. Equal to the highest creations, they refused to tolerate anything lower; and they knew not the novel, because their poetical notions were never left in a nebulous, prosaic state, but were always developed ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... from his heart, was excellent. He produced his best things, as women do pretty children, without thinking about it, or knowing how it was done. He is a great talent, a born talent, and I never saw the true poetical power greater in any man than in him. In the apprehension of external objects, and a clear penetration into past situations, he is quite as great as Shakespeare. But as a pure individuality, Shakespeare is his superior" (vol. i. ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... the effects upon human character, produced by the face of different countries, we might expect to find, in the Indian, among other things, a strong tendency toward poetical thought, embodied, not in the mode of expression usually denominated poetry, but in the style of his addresses, the peculiarities of his theories, or the construction of his mythology, language, and laws. This expectation is totally disappointed; ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... "Onlys"), and be only too delighted, what need I say more than that the libretto is written by Mr. BILL-OF-THE-PLAY YARDLEY conjointly with Mr. DRURIOLANUS AUCTOR, and I daresay it was very witty and rhythmical and poetical, though I didn't catch much of it, and the songs were neither particularly well sung, nor remarkably humorous,—one, introduced by Miss VESTA TILLY (and, therefore, for this our joint authors are not responsible, except for permitting it to be done), being ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various

... 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 car was set some allegorical figure, such as Valour, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... one of Red Owen's 'Visions' he is told not to forget James, who is 'persevering, well-tempered, affectionate, stout, sweet, kind, poetical.' ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... types which impart to them a universal validity. The divine is revealed "only objectively different according to the disposition of the vessel into which it falls, to one one way, another to another. To the rich poetical genius it is revealed preeminently in the activity of his imagination; to the philosophical understanding as the scheme of a harmonious system. It sinks into the depths of the soul of the religious, and exalts the strong constructive will like ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... feudal superior and fidelity towards his friends and guests; and, above all, the canto of the death of Siegfried. This last is different, intensely different, from the rugged and dreary monotony of the rest; this most poetical, almost Spenserian or Ariostesque realization of the scene; this beautiful picture (though worked with the needle of the arras-worker rather than with pencil or brush) of the wood, the hunt, the solitary fountain in the Odenwald, where, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee

... blushed as red as the white paper out of which he was manufactured would allow, and hastened to change the subject by calling attention to the beauties of the country through which they were passing. He had just begun a poetical discourse on the wild flowers which an army tramples down on the field of battle, when Tom's switch happened to strike him in the face with such force as caused him to flutter for an instant like a sheet of paper ...
— Harper's Young People, June 15, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... True, this peculiarity isn't entirely confined to the parrots alone, as such. They share the division of the foot into two thumbs and two fingers with a whole large group of allied birds, called, in the charmingly concise and poetical language of technical ornithology, the Scansorial Picarians, and more generally, known to the unlearned herd (meaning you and me) by their several names of woodpeckers, cuckoos, toucans, and plantain-eaters. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... compares this Dantesque tarn and scenery with the poetical accounts of neid, vii. 563; ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... correction of his eccentric views in certain ecclesiastical matters; thus giving us the history of an illustrious convert, and not that of a poet and seer whose conversion, however intimately connected with his poetical and intellectual life, was but an incident thereof. On the other hand, one less intelligently sympathetic with the more spiritual side of Catholicism than Mr. Champneys, would have lacked the principal key to the interpretation of Patmore's highest aims and ideals, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... that the accomplished authoress possessed, not merely a knowledge of the dreamy ideal wants of human beings, but the more pressing and homely ones, which the fastidious and poetical are often the last to appreciate. The sufferings of poverty are not confined to those of the common, squalid, every day inured to hardships, and ready, with open hand, to receive charity, let it come to them as it will. There ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... "Your views are really poetical and your character analyses very clever, Miss Worth, but after all men are men wherever you find them. Human nature is ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... simply exquisite. They are the child's thought in the child's language, and yet altogether, poetical. We do not know anything in the whole range of English literature to equal them in their own peculiar charm. There is a subtle beauty in them which is indescribable ...
— Sara Crewe - or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... is its euphony, and the way in which the sound of the words adapts itself to the meaning to be expressed. Long before we mastered the language, we could frequently make out what was meant by the ring of the sentence. It is on this account that the language lends itself so well to poetical declamation, of which these remarkable people are very fond. The Zu-Vendi alphabet seems, Sir henry says, to be derived, like every other known system of letters, from a Phoenician source, and therefore more remotely still from the ancient ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... and dirty, in the first place, with an average width of from three to five feet. They are paved with long, narrow slabs of stone. Their names are often both devotional and poetical. We saw Peace Street, and the street of Benevolence and Love. Another, by some violent wrench of the imagination, was called the street of Refreshing Breezes. Some contented mind had given a name to the street of Early Bestowed Blessings. The paternal sentiment, so sacred to the Chinaman, ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... science and modern improvements were concerned. There were lifts, or elevators, now in the castle of Skrae, though Blake always went by the old black corkscrew staircases, holding on by the guiding rope, after the poetical manner ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang

... the poetical tribe have said all they can for them, are an infallible sign of a rogue, or room for a rogue, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... reproduce them both from recollection whenever a revival of learning came. In 1813, while waiting in a Cambridge coffee-room for a postchaise which was to take him to his school, he picked up a county newspaper containing two such specimens of provincial poetical talent as in those days might be read in the corner of any weekly journal. One piece was headed "Reflections of an Exile;" while the other was a trumpery parody on the Welsh ballad "Ar hyd y nos," referring to some local anecdote of an ostler whose nose had been bitten off by a filly. He ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... widow of the tinsmith Lange; she had married all her children, and so was ready to come to the service of her friends and acquaintances. She was even to be called upon for poetical effusions for special occasions; under the great Saint Christopher's cloak that she wore winter and summer alike beat a feeling heart, and a noble soul dwelt ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... nature spread out before him: they tell him what has happened, and his heart tells him what has been felt. Only literature can describe experience for the excellent reason that the terms of experience are moral and literary from the beginning. Mind is incorrigibly poetical: not because it is not attentive to material facts and practical exigencies, but because, being intensely attentive to them, it turns them into pleasures and pains, and into many-coloured ideas. ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... who would expect any thing poetical from East Smithfield? Yet there was born the most poetical even of poets, Spenser. Pope was born within the sound of Bowbell, in a street no less anti-poetical than Lombard-street. So was Gray, in Cornhill. So was Milton, in Bread-street, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various

... Love, considered under its poetical aspect, is the union of passion and imagination. I had foolishly believed that this calm, sweet-voiced woman had loved me, but those letters made it plain that I had been utterly fooled. "Le mystere de l'existence," said Madame de Stael to her daughter, "c'est la rapport de nos erreurs ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux

... Esq., of Boston, Mass., U.S.A. I am especially grateful to W.H. Grattan Flood, Esq., Mus.D., who has generously sent me his notes on the sources of the tunes in "The Beggar's Opera," which are printed in the Appendix to this volume. The extracts from Gay's poetical works in this volume have been taken, by permission of the publishers, Messrs. George Routledge and Sons, Ltd., from the "Poems of John Gay," edited by Mr. John Underwood, in "The Muses' Library." Mr. ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville

... is illegitimate; and the ratio has been steadily increasing for the past fifty years. Would that the more intelligent classes would seriously set themselves to work for the good of "Gamle Norge" instead of being content with the poetical ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor

... the third day that I have been attending the recitals of Sentius Augurinus, which I have not only enjoyed immensely, but admired as well. He calls his work "Poetical Pieces." Many are airy trifles; many deal with noble themes, and they abound in wit, tenderness, sweetness, and sting. Unless it is that my affection for him, or the fact that he has lavished praises upon me, warps my judgment, I must say that for some years ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger

... must not pursue this subject on a pagan or poetical basis. We are dealing with two young Christians, Missis Dinnett—a man and a woman of good nurture and high principle. I will never believe—not if he said it himself—that Raymond Ironsyde would commit any such unheard-of outrage. You say that he has promised to marry her. That is ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... Donnithorne to do anything mean, dastardly, or cruel. "No! I'm a devil of a fellow for getting myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on my own shoulders." Unhappily, there is no inherent poetical justice in hobbles, and they will sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their worst consequences on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly expressed wish. It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme of things that Arthur had ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... tall, lithe, white-haired, white-moustached, dignified old gentleman, in scarlet and velvet cap, riding forward on a magnificent gray horse, who realised completely the poetical idea of a nobleman. This was the Marquess of H——, known well forty years ago in fashionable circles, when George IV. was Prince, now popular and much esteemed as a country gentleman and improving landlord. There was also Mr. H——, an M.P., celebrated, ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey

... Emiliani-Giudici, referring to the crusading intent of Crescimbeni, "the Arcadians were a sect of poetical Sanfedista, who, taking for example the zeal and performance of San Domingo de Gruzman, proposed to renew in literature the scenes of the Holy Office among the Albigenses. Happily, the fire of Arcadian verse did not really burn! The ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... for the bath,' said the Greek, who was the creature of every poetical impulse; 'let us wander from the crowded city, and look upon the sea while the noon ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment: if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish, therefore, that candles may be brought." In Whittier's "Tent on the Beach" is given a beautiful poetical version of this anecdote. It is suggested by several authorities that the cause of the dark day in 1780 should be attributed simply to the presence of ordinary clouds of very unusual volume and density. These instances are, of course, grouped with phenomena of which not a great deal is known, ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... has been envied the reputation; and plagiarism has been boldly charged, but never proved. Not long afterwards he published the "Excursion" (1728); a desultory and capricious view of such scenes of nature as his fancy led him, or his knowledge enabled him, to describe. It is not devoid of poetical spirit. Many of his images are striking, and many of the paragraphs are elegant. The cast of diction seems to be copied from Thomson, whose "Seasons" were then in their full blossom of reputation. He has Thomson's beauties and his faults. His poem on ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... of him; but are not of value otherwise. In fact, they promise, if we look well into them, That here is probably a practical faculty and intellect of the highest kind; which again, on the speculative, especially on the poetical side, will never be considerable, nor has even tried to be so. This young soul does not deal in meditation at all, and his tendencies are the reverse of sentimental. Here is no introspection, morbid or other, no pathos ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle

... rebuked the Vandalism that would dishonor all greatness and spoil even its grave. The facts regarding the acts of desecration were legally ascertained and the bones of the good archbishop triumphantly reserved for a nobler than the ancient sepulchre. There was a poetical justice in the preservation of them from violence. It was well that the bloody revolutionists who went to the tombs for metal to furnish their arsenals, were made, in spite of themselves, to respect the ashes of one whose counsels of duty heeded would ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... wish for her fall. And they are merits which spring from this, that she is still a learned Church, not learned in the sense of purely theological or ecclesiastical learning, but a Church which is able to show among its clergy men of renown in every branch of literature, critical, poetical, historical, or scientific. How long this distinction is to continue her own it is hard to say; there are signs indeed in the theological temper which is creeping over the clergy that it is soon to cease. But ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... of course he promised to stay till Monday. Of course he had said nothing in the train of those stern things which he had resolved to say. Of course he was not saying them when Roger Carbury came upon him; but was indulging in some poetical nonsense, some probably very trite raptures as to the expanse of the ocean, and the endless ripples which connected shore with shore. Mrs Hurtle, too, as she leaned with friendly weight upon his arm, indulged also in moonshine and romance. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... an illuminated scroll the elegies of some long-perished, long-forgotten poet, now reading audibly the smooth and honeyed lines, now commenting with playful criticism on the style, or carrying out with all the fervor and romance of young poetical temperament the half obscure allusions of the bard, no one could doubt that they were lovers; especially if he marked the calm and well-pleased smile that stole from time to time across the proud features of that patrician lady; who, sitting but a little way apart, watched—while ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... reflected, puzzled, wept, consumed by fears and suspicions. Then her joyous young soul reassuring itself, she began to plan an adventure, to imagine an abnormal and dramatic situation, founded on the recollections of all the poetical romances she had read. She recalled all the moving catastrophes, or sad and touching stories; she jumbled them together, and concocted a story of her own with which she interpreted the half-understood mystery ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... impossible to understand the allusions in English literature without a knowledge of the Bible. What would "Ruth among the alien corn" mean to a reader who had never known the beauty of the story of Ruth? And the lilies of the field, permeating all poetical literature, would have lost all their perfume if one knew nothing about ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... recoiled from at Haydon's. I think I had an instinct that he was the head of an office. I hate all such people—accountants' deputy accountants. The dear abstract notion of the East India Company, as long as she is unseen, is pretty, rather poetical; but as she makes herself manifest by the persons of such beasts, I loathe and detest her as the scarlet what-do-you-call-her of Babylon. I thought, after abridging us of all our red-letter days, they had done their worst; but I was deceived in the ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... the whole nation nerved itself for the life and death struggle that was to break its chains. The aged poet shrank from the tumult and strife about him and took refuge in the East. The opening lines of the first Divan poem express the motive of this poetical Hegire. ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy

... riche" nor is the technique thoroughly assured; but the thought is poetical. Here is another, "In an Apple-Tree," which reads like a child variation of that haunting "Mimnermus in Church" ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson

... was soon weaned from opinions which I began to consider as the dreams of 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 circulating libraries ...
— The Man of Feeling • Henry Mackenzie

... leave the carriage and walk to the islands over little bridges, and again that feeling of fascination overcame me, and looking round to see that the driver was not following me a second time, I stealthily pulled out my verse and abandoned myself to my poetical inspirations. I had my eyes fixed upon three rocks in front of me, round which the waters, in all sorts of forms and colours, were dashing. "The Three Sisters," I repeated to myself. "Three sisters—some idea to work in here. Let me ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... Dodsley's Collection is dated 1748, and is said (on the half title, preceding the whole title) to be "the second edition," was there a first edition in the same year, or in an earlier year, or was there, in fact, no first edition at all? This question is important, because several poetical productions, of undisputed excellence, originally made ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various

... political state of Naples and in other passages, there is mild suggestion also of the love of liberty, a part of the fine nature of Addison which had been slightly warmed by contact with the generous enthusiasm of Steele. In his poetical letter to Halifax written during his travels Addison gave the sum of his prose volume when he told how ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Lactantius, to whom has been attributed that poem of the Phoenix, which most likely served as pattern to the Anglo-Saxon poet.[4] It consists of 170 lines, hexameters and pentameters; terse, poetical, classical. This old Oriental fable, as told by Ovid, was short and simple: "There is a bird that restores and reproduces itself; the Assyrians call it Phoenix. It feeds on no common food, but on the choicest of gums and spices; and after a life of secular length, it builds in ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... headings may be made to suggest a worthier way of viewing these things. For instance, there may be the indication 'Place and time of conception,' and a specimen entry may be of service to lead commonplace minds into a more reverent and poetical view than is now usual—such as the one I culled from the life-history of an American child: 'Our second child M—— was conceived on Midsummer Day, under the shade of a friendly sycamore, beneath the cloudless blue of Southern California.' Or, instead of restricting the reference ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... here and there, like a picture; and then through the openings in the ground you can see miles off more of just the same, till it gets blue in the distance; and mountains beyond all. And when you put here and there a flock of thousands of sheep spotting the country with their white backs—I ain't poetical, sir, but I tell you! when I saw that country first, I thought maybe I was; but it's likely I was mistaken," said the captain laughing, "for the fit has never come back since. Miss Powle thinks there's as much poetry in the ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... it seems, into the plan, and influenced by the same principles of poetical justice as had governed the king—drove the boat, with its terrified mariner, back again across to the mouth of the Baltic, as they had brought Lothbroc to England. The boat was thrown upon the beach, on ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... opposition, even into the courtyard of the chateau, and abandoned himself to all kinds of folly. At first Mademoiselle Hortense, who was young and gay, was amused by the antics of her admirer, read the verses which he addressed to her, and showed them to the ladies who accompanied her. One such poetical effusion was enough to provoke laughter (and can you blame her?); but after the first burst of laughter, Mademoiselle Hortense, good and charming as her mother, never failed to say, with a sympathetic expression ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... Isabella Beecher Hooker announced that Anna T. Randall would read a poem written for the occasion by Phoebe Gary.[53] She was followed by Mrs. Hooker, who read some delightfully humorous verses from her husband, John Hooker, dedicated to Miss Anthony. There were more poetical tributes, recitations by Sarah Fisher Ames and other well-known elocutionists, and then a call for the recipient of all these honors. Miss Anthony stepped forward, completely overwhelmed and, after stammering ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... we never accept its meaning in its own terms? You know the lesson is given us under the form of a story about money. Money was given to the servants to make use of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid his Lord's money. Well, we in our poetical and spiritual application of this, say that of course money doesn't mean money—it means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers

... God, received him into the monastery, made him a monk, and had him taught sacred history. "All this Caedmon, by remembering, and, like a clean animal, ruminating, turned into sweetest verse." His poetical works consist of a metrical paraphrase of the Old and the New Testament. It was written about the year 670; and he died in 680. It was read and re-read in manuscript for many centuries, but it was not printed in a ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... be delightful to soothe and to console this poor little thing.... You do not like poetry and I have spent the best part of my life in reading or trying to write it. N. P. Willis told me some years ago, that if my husband had a soul, he would love me for the poetical in me, and advised me to save it ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... Mr. SINCLAIR COTTER as Alf, the cynical humourist—"Where were you eddicated, Eton or Harrod's?" is one of his best mots—who spends most of his time in wrestling with an automatic cigar-lighter. I think it would be only poetical justice if in the concluding scene, when Old Bill comes into his own, the authors were for once to allow Alf to succeed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various

... a didactic poem: it is not a mere philosophic treatise written in verse, like the fragments of Xenophanes. Its lessons are conveyed concretely and not abstractly; and its characters are not mere lay figures, but living poetical conceptions. Considered as a poem among classic German poems, it must rank next to, though immeasurably below, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... queenly she looks, nevertheless. I had much rather be refused by such a woman, to my own mortification, than to succeed with almost any other, if only for the pleasure of looking into those eyes, and reading in silent language her poetical and ethereal beauty-I might be happy but for this fellow, this Captain Bezan; he troubles me. Though there's no danger of her loving him, yet he seems to stand in my way, and to divert her fancy. Thank Heaven, she's too proud to love ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... difficult to be exerted, it is not surprising, at a time when almost all kinds of poetry are cultivated with little success, to find that we have done no great matters in this. Many causes may be assigned for our present weakness in that oldest and most excellent branch of philosophy, poetical learning, and particularly in what regards the theatre. I shall here only consider what appears to me to be one of these causes: I mean the wrong notion of the art itself, which begins to grow fashionable, especially among people of an elegant turn of mind with a weak understanding; and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... a foreign point of view which Darwin introduced into ethical thought, even if we take no account of the poetical character of the word "struggle" and of the more direct adaptation, through the use and non-use of power, which Darwin also emphasised. In The Descent of Man he has devoted a special chapter[208] to a discussion ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel

... such as this, and with scarcely any playfellows, that Bjornstjerne Bjornson spent the first six years of his life; and the sturdy independence of his nature may have owed something to the unaccommodating life of his earliest days, just as the poetical impulse that was so strong in his developed character probably had its beginnings in the impressions of beauty he received in the years that immediately followed. For, when he was six, a welcome change came. His father was transferred to the tranquil pastorate of Naes, at the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... are well represented in the House of Commons. The borough has had the good sense to prefer a merchant townsman, Sir Thomas Birch, and the son of a merchant, and friend and co-minister of the late Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Cardwell, to a soldier, and the dreamy poetical son of a Protectionist duke. A place like Liverpool ought to find in its own body better men than young lords or old soldiers. But young Liverpool dearly loves a lord, of any politics; and a little polite attention from a duke will ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... be much better pleased with this play, than a reader; for though it is well written, and interspersed with many poetical passages, an attentive peruser will find inconsistencies in the arrangement of the plot and incidents, which an audience, absorbed in expectation of final events, and hurried away by the charm of ...
— Speed the Plough - A Comedy, In Five Acts; As Performed At The Theatre Royal, Covent Garden • Thomas Morton

... received a pension of 300 Pounds a year from the government in 1835. Mr. Southey was a voluminous writer in both prose and verse. As a poet, he can not be placed in the first rank, although some of his minor poems are very happy in thought and expression. Among his most noted poetical works are "Joan of Arc," "Thalaba the Destroyer," "Madoc," "Roderick," and the "Curse ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... Damascus, consisting of large plates cast in molds and artfully joined, so as to have the appearance of having been laboriously sculptured by the hand into light relievos and fanciful arabesques, intermingled with texts of the Koran, and poetical inscriptions in Arabian and Celtic characters. These decorations of the walls and cupolas are richly gilded, and the interstices paneled with lapis lazuli and other brilliant and enduring colors. Above ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester

... poetry stage, beyond a doubt. But I should think the strain of keeping all this going would be wearing on your sensitive poetical nature. And it ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various

... speak nor did she eat; she was depressed. Wherefore? She had wished to come; she knew that she was coming to a simple home; she had formed no poetical ideas of those peasants, but she had perhaps expected to find them somewhat more polished, refined. She recalled her own mother, of whom she never spoke to anyone—a governess who had been betrayed and who had died of grief and shame when Madeleine ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... English orthoepy, are no less than four."—Ib., p. 69. "Our present code of rules are thought to be generally correct."— Ib., p. 70. "To prevent its running into another."—Humphrey's Prosody, p. 7. "Shakespeare, perhaps, the greatest poetical genius which England has produced."—Ib., p. 93. "This I will illustrate by example; but prior to which a few preliminary remarks may be necessary."—Ib., p. 107. "All such are entitled to two accents each, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... confined to the clientele of Snelling's bar-room. It was known that William Durgin had disappeared, and tdhat the constables were searching for him. The air was thick with flying projectures, but none of them precisely hit the mark. One rumor there was which seemed almost like a piece of poetical justice,—a whisper to the effect that Rowland Slocum was suspected of being in some way mixed up with the murder. The fact that Lawyer Perkins, with his green bag streaming in the wind, so to speak, had been seen darting into Mr. Slocum's private residence at two o'clock that afternoon ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... fortifications, the long days, the bracing country air. Sometimes, in the evening, when the windows were open, they sang duets; and in presence of the stars in heaven, which began to twinkle simultaneously with the lanterns on the railway around the city, Ferdinand would become poetical. But when the rain came and he could not go out, what misery! Madame Chebe, a thorough Parisian, sighed for the narrow streets of the Marais, her expeditions to the market of Blancs-Manteaux, and to the shops ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet

... the fancy of Byron, the actual operation of this influence, whatever it may have been, ceased with his childhood; and the life which he led afterwards during his school-days at Harrow, was,—as naturally the life of so idle and daring a schoolboy must be,—the very reverse of poetical. For a soldier or an adventurer, the course of training through which he then passed would have been perfect;—his athletic sports, his battles, his love of dangerous enterprise, gave every promise of a spirit fit for the most stormy career. But to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... terribly exaggerated. But all strong natures like hers are given to exaggeration. Wendell Phillips never tells the truth, and yet he always tells the truth. He is a man of strong convictions, and always pronounces his conviction strongly. He has a poetical nature, is a word-painter, and, therefore, indulges in the license of the poet and painter. Mrs. Stowe belongs to this school of writers. The lamb and lion are united in the Negro character. Mrs. Stowe's ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... Cynthia, the eldest, was a pretty brunette, of thirteen; the neighbors thought Cynthia could "go out to work;" the next eldest, Martin, a fine, sturdy and intelligent boy, could go to a trade; and the youngest, Rosa, one of the most beautiful, blue-eyed, blonde little girls of seven years, poetical fancy ever realized, "the neighbors thought," ought to be given to somebody, to raise. The mother was but a feeble woman; it would be a task for her to obtain her own living, they thought; and so, kind, generous souls, with that peculiar readiness ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... what a unique poetical gem Wordsworth composed after he heard a Highland girl singing at Inversnaid. I witnessed many fine examples of concentrated joy which might have resulted in metre if I had not had the presence of ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... Dakotas. He has patiently answered my numerous inquiries and given me valuable information. I am also indebted to Gen. H. H. Sibley, one of the earliest American traders among them, and to Rev. S. W. Pond, of Shakopee, one of the first Protestant missionaries to these people, and himself the author of poetical versions of some of their principal legends; to Mrs. Eastman's "Dacotah." and last, but not least, to the Rev. E. D. Neill, whose admirable "History of Minnesota" so fully and faithfully presents almost ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon

... Just as human reason fails to grasp poetical expressions on account of their being lacking in truth, so does it fail to grasp Divine things perfectly, on account of the sublimity of the truth they contain: and therefore in both cases there is need of signs by means of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... of resemblance, and some points of difference, appear in the Laches when compared with the Charmides and Lysis. There is less of poetical and simple beauty, and more of dramatic interest and power. They are richer in the externals of the scene; the Laches has more play and development of character. In the Lysis and Charmides the youths are the central figures, and frequent allusions are made to the place of meeting, which ...
— Laches • Plato

... According to one poetical Greek tradition, Anemos, the wind, employs these exquisitely delicate little star-like namesakes as heralds of his coming in early spring, while woods and hillsides still lack foliage to break his gust's rude ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... I confess pleased me that night better than now. You said that in me you had found the fair haven of your desires, where your bark, long tossing in cross seas, and beating against adverse winds, would cast anchor and be at rest. The phrase sounded poetical if enigmatical, but it pleased me somehow; what did it mean, Bigot? I have puzzled over it many times ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... expressed. This learned Epicurean, become powerful, and the intellectual favourite of the most potent Sovereign in Europe, loved literature for itself with a sincere and disinterested attachment. The truly beautiful touched him as sensibly as in the days of his early youth and poetical inspirations. What was still more extraordinary, this refined courtier of a despot, this official orator, who felt satisfied when he had embellished flattery with noble eloquence, never failed to acknowledge, and render due homage to independence. Soon ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... working with his hands for a pound a week, is the antitype of Mr. Peach, the coast-guardsman, among his Cornish tide-rocks. But more than this, there is about Shield's book a tone as of Izaak Walton himself, which is very delightful; tender, poetical, and religious, yet full of quiet quaintness and humour; showing in every page how the love for Natural History is in him only one expression of a love for all things beautiful, and pure, and right. ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... single example: when it is said in Ezekiel v. S, "This is Jerusalem: I have set it in the midst of the nations... round about her," this was not taken by the mediaeval monks, who were the chief geographers of the period, as a poetical statement, but as an exact mathematical law, which determined the form which all mediaeval maps took. Roughly speaking, of course, there was a certain amount of truth in the statement, since Jerusalem ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs



Words linked to "Poetical" :   poetic, poetry, rhetorical



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