Orthometry: A Treatise on the Art of Versification and the Technicalities of Poetry, with a New and Complete Rhyming Dictionary |
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Common terms and phrases
accented syllables Alexandrine alliteration Amphibrach anapestic arrangement Ballad beauty bells blank verse Browning Burns Byron composition consonants couplet Dactylic dark delight doth double rhymes dramatic dreams Dryden elisions English poetry English verse examples eyes feet flowers foot harmony hath heart heaven hexameter hiatus honour iambic iambic pentameter instance kind King language licences light liquid consonant Longfellow lyric measure melody metre metrical Milton monosyllables muse night Normal line o'er Obsolete open vowels Paradise Lost pause person singular plurals of nouns poems poetic Pope preterites of verbs prose pyrrhic quantity rhythm rhythmic says sestet Shakspere Shakspere's Shelley short sigh singular of verbs sleep song sonnet soul sound specimens speech Spenser spondee stanza sweet syllables Tennyson tercet thee thou thought tongue trochaic trochee unaccented syllables variety versification voice vowel wind Winter's Tale words writers youth
Popular passages
Page 278 - Hear the sledges with the bells Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight...
Page 209 - When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's •waste...
Page 232 - GOING TO THE WARS Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind That from the nunnery Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind, To war and arms I fly. True, a new mistress now I chase, The first foe in the field; And with a stronger faith embrace A sword, a horse, a shield. Yet this inconstancy is such As you too shall adore; I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.
Page 96 - I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.
Page 209 - Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait On purpose laid to make the taker mad; Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest...
Page 47 - Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore, For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore, Nameless here for evermore.
Page 207 - SINCE there's no help, come let us kiss and part, Nay I have done, you get no more of me ; And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, That thus so cleanly I myself can free ; Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows, And when we meet at any time again, Be it not seen in either of our brows That we one jot of former love retain.
Page 201 - Dis's waggon ! daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath...
Page 38 - Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed — in breeze or gale or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark heaving, boundless, endless, and sublime — The image of eternity — the throne Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone Obeys thee ; thou goest forth, dread fathomless alone.
Page 201 - Be not afeard ; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again : and then, in dreaming, The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.