An Introduction to Poetry |
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Page viii
... seems too great , one should remember that contempo- raneity is second only to absolute value in determining the appeal of a work of art . A poem can to no future generation mean as much as to the sympathetic con- temporaries of its ...
... seems too great , one should remember that contempo- raneity is second only to absolute value in determining the appeal of a work of art . A poem can to no future generation mean as much as to the sympathetic con- temporaries of its ...
Page 2
... seem to be passing away . Although , strangely enough , no one suggests that poetry is something we have outgrown , there are nevertheless many who assert that we have outgrown much of the poetry which preceding generations thought ...
... seem to be passing away . Although , strangely enough , no one suggests that poetry is something we have outgrown , there are nevertheless many who assert that we have outgrown much of the poetry which preceding generations thought ...
Page 6
... seem hardly human . The poet , however , need not always write of the near - at - hand and the contem- porary . He may " show virtue her own feature , scorn her own image " without being an ultra - realist . The characters of the most ...
... seem hardly human . The poet , however , need not always write of the near - at - hand and the contem- porary . He may " show virtue her own feature , scorn her own image " without being an ultra - realist . The characters of the most ...
Page 7
... seem worthy of your love . Every definition of poetry should not only state its positive qualities but should also exclude certain things which are often confused with poetry but do not belong to it . For generations the best foreign ...
... seem worthy of your love . Every definition of poetry should not only state its positive qualities but should also exclude certain things which are often confused with poetry but do not belong to it . For generations the best foreign ...
Page 11
... Edwin Arlington Robinson : " Poetry is a language that tells us , through a more or less emotional reaction , something that cannot be said . All poetry , great or small , does this . And it seems to me THE STUDY OF POETRY 11.
... Edwin Arlington Robinson : " Poetry is a language that tells us , through a more or less emotional reaction , something that cannot be said . All poetry , great or small , does this . And it seems to me THE STUDY OF POETRY 11.
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Common terms and phrases
Alfred Noyes American poets Amy Lowell anapestic beauty blank verse breath Burns contemporary couplet dactylic Danny Deever dark dead death Dobson doth dream earth Edgar Lee Masters Edwin Arlington Robinson Elegy English poetry epitaph eyes fair feet flowers following poem free verse glory Gray hath hear heart heaven heroic couplet hills Hymn iambic iambic pentameter John John Masefield Keats King Kipling lady land light verse lines living Longfellow Lord Lowell lyric Maryland Masefield melody meter metrical Milton never night o'er poet poetic popular ballad prose quatrain quote rhyme rhythm rime Ring Romance rose Shakespeare Shelley sing sleep song sonnet soul sound stanza sweet syllables Tennyson thee thine things thou thought trees trochaic vers de société voice Whitman wild William William Wordsworth wind words Wordsworth write written wrote
Popular passages
Page 279 - God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Page 105 - THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? What men or gods are these ? What maidens loth ? What mad pursuit ? What struggle to escape ? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Page 146 - Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ; But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on In the grave where a Briton has laid him ! But half of our heavy task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring, And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing. Slowly and sadly we laid him down, From the field of his fame fresh and gory; We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, But we left him alone with his glory.
Page 208 - Muse, The place of fame and elegy supply ; And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned; Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind...
Page 418 - The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits; - on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Page 91 - Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
Page 419 - But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. Ah, love, let us be true To one another ! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant...
Page 220 - ST. AGNES' Eve — Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
Page 233 - Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Page 271 - Homer ruled as his demesne ; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken ; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific — and all his men Look'd...