You think they are crusaders sent From some infernal clime, To pluck the eyes of sentiment And dock the tail of Rhyme, To crack the voice of Melody And break the legs of Time.
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the epic's stately rhyme, But spare his "Highland Mary!"
Though man a thinking being is defined, Few use the grand prerogative of mind. How few think justly of the thinking few! How many never think, who think they do!
I jouk= (duck aside) =beneath misfortune's blows / As well's I may; / Sworn foe to sorrow, care, or prose, / I rhyme away.
For the world was built in order, / And the atoms march in tune; / Rhyme the pipe, and the Time the warder, / The sun obeys them and the moon.
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
Learn that nonsense is none the less nonsense because it is in rhyme; and that rhyme without a purpose or a thought that has not been better expressed before is a public nuisance, only to be tolerated because it is good for trade.
The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung To their first fault, and withered in their pride.
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
Neither rhyme nor reason.
Tel excelle a rimer qui juge sottement=--Some excel in rhyme who reason foolishly.
Remember, remember, the 5th of November The Gunpowder Treason and plot; I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason Should ever be forgot.
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
He knew Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme.
For rhyme the rudder is of verses, With which, like ships, they steer their courses.
For rhyme the rudder is of verses, / With which, like ships, they steer their courses.
Prologues like compliments are loss of time; 'T is penning bows and making legs in rhyme.
Tribe of Ben._ Still may syllabes jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never!
History says don't hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-change on the far side of revenge. Believe that a further shore is reachable from here. Believe in miracles and cures and healing wells.
Next to theology I give to music the highest place and honour; and we see how David and all the saints have wrought their godly thoughts into verse, rhyme, and song.
Some force whole regions, in despite O' geography, to change their site; Make former times shake hands with latter, And that which was before come after. But those that write in rhyme still make The one verse for the other's sake; For one for sense, and one for rhyme, I think 's sufficient at one time.
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
So I told them in rhyme, For of rhymes I had store.
You can decide what you want to eat for dinner, you can decide to go away for the weekend, and you can decide what clothes you’re going to wear in the morning, but when it comes to artistic things, there’s never a rhyme or reason. It’s, like, they just happen. And they happen when they happen.
Prayer and practice is good rhyme.
But touch me, and no minister so sore; Whoe'er offends at some unlucky time Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme, Sacred to ridicule his whole life long, And the sad burden of some merry song.
Not all that heralds rake from coffin'd clay, / Nor florid prose, nor honeyed lines of rhyme, / Can blazon evil deeds or consecrate a crime.
It is a shallow criticism that would define poetry as confined to literary productions in rhyme and metre. The written poem is only poetry _talking_, and the statue, the picture, and the musical composition are poetry _acting_. Milton and Goethe, at their desks, were not more truly poets than Phidias with his chisel, Raphael at his easel, or deaf Beethoven bending over his piano, inventing and producing strains which he himself could never hope to hear.--_Ruskin._
And beauty, making beautiful old rhyme.
When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to find any rhyme for sorrow besides "borrow" or "to-morrow," his woes are nearer at an end than he thinks.
I was promised on a time To have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received nor rhyme nor reason.
Neither rhyme nor reason.
Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme</p> Your friends to death before their time. Moping, melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad. -- A. E. Housman
And now your toner's toney, Disk blocks aplenty And your paper near pure white, Await your laser drawn lines, The smudges on your soul are gone Your intricate fonts, And your output's clean as light.. Your pictures and signs. We've labored with your father, Your amputative absence The venerable XGP, Has made the Ten dumb, But his slow artistic hand, Without you, Dover, Lacks your clean velocity. We're system untounged- Theses and papers DRAW Plots and TEXage And code in a queue Have been biding their time, Dover, oh Dover, With LISP code and programs, We've been waiting for you. And this crufty rhyme. Dover, oh Dover, Dover, oh Dover, arisen from dead. We welcome you back, Dover, oh Dover, awoken from bed. Though still you may jam, Dover, oh Dover, welcome back to the Lab. You're on the right track. Dover, oh Dover, we've missed your clean hand...
Q: Why haven't you graduated yet? A: Well, Dad, I could have finished years ago, but I wanted my dissertation to rhyme.
Ladybug, ladybug, Look to your stern! Your house is on fire, Your children will burn! So jump ye and sing, for The very first time The four lines above Have been put into rhyme. -- Walt Kelly
Carmina nil prosunt; nocuerunt carmina quondam=--My rhymes are of no use; they once wrought me harm.
"So far as it's poetry, it's essential rubbish. Consider yourself, who ever talks in rhyme? And if we were all to talk in rhyme, even though it were decreed by government, we shouldn't say much, should we? Poetry is no good, Marya Kondratyevna."
*I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king's ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney! never had heard that name before; is it conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman's name for albatross. So that by no possibility could Coleridge's wild Rhyme have had aught to do with those mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon our deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to be an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a little brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.
Inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonality to good thoughts, and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woeful and culpable manner.
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in!
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid; Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms, The anointed sovereign of sighs and groans, Liege of all loiterers and malcontents.
The inspector cast on Marius such a glance as Voltaire might have bestowed on a provincial academician who had suggested a rhyme to him; with one movement he plunged his hands, which were enormous, into the two immense pockets of his top-coat, and pulled out two small steel pistols, of the sort called "knock-me-downs." Then he presented them to Marius, saying rapidly, in a curt tone:--
Keinen Reimer wird man finden, / Der sich nicht den besten hielte, / Keinen Fiedler, der nicht lieber / Eigne Melodien spielte=--You will meet with no rhymer who does not think himself the best, no fiddler who does not prefer to play his own tunes.
If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain't no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn't ever have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn't find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. She warn't particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful. Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes. The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertakerthe undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old scrap-book and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn't going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn't seem right that there warn't nobody to make some about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn't seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline's room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and nobody ever slept there. The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of niggers, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly.
There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
Auf Teufel reimt der Zweifel nur; / Da bin ich recht am Platze=--Only Zweifel (doubt) rhymes to Teufel (devil); here am I quite at home.
How long did they remain thus? One month, two months, six months sometimes; one stayed a year. It was the antechamber of the galleys. Men were put there for stealing a hare from the king. In this sepulchre-hell, what did they do? What man can do in a sepulchre, they went through the agonies of death, and what can man do in hell, they sang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope. In the waters of Malta, when a galley was approaching, the song could be heard before the sound of the oars. Poor Survincent, the poacher, who had gone through the prison-cellar of the Chatelet, said: "It was the rhymes that kept me up." Uselessness of poetry. What is the good of rhyme?
And when you stick on conversation's burrs, Don't strew your pathway with those dreadful _urs_.
There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; and there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
"'A man I knew who had been to Siberia and returned, told me that he himself had been a witness of how the very most hardened criminals remembered the old general, though, in point of fact, he could never, of course, have distributed more than a few pence to each member of a party. Their recollection of him was not sentimental or particularly devoted. Some wretch, for instance, who had been a murderer--cutting the throat of a dozen fellow-creatures, for instance; or stabbing six little children for his own amusement (there have been such men!)--would perhaps, without rhyme or reason, suddenly give a sigh and say, "I wonder whether that old general is alive still!" Although perhaps he had not thought of mentioning him for a dozen years before! How can one say what seed of good may have been dropped into his soul, never to die?'
"I am awfully fond of verses of all kinds, if they rhyme," the woman's voice continued. "Why don't you go on?"
Now, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is for the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along, horizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little to one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down in a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether this gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout of the Sperm Whale is the mere vapour of the exhaled breath, or whether that exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth, and discharged through the spiracle. It is certain that the mouth indirectly communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be proved that this is for the purpose of discharging water through the spiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be, when in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale's food is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout even if he would. Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time him with your watch, you will find that when unmolested, there is an undeviating rhyme between the periods of his jets and the ordinary periods of respiration.
"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"
Yes, child of suffering, thou mayst well be sure He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor!
It is not to be inferred that the writers of Japan, enamoured as they were of Chinese ideographs and Chinese style, deliberately excluded everything Chinese from the realm of poetry. On the contrary, many of them took pleasure in composing versicles to which Chinese words were admitted and which showed something of the "parallelism" peculiar to Chinese poetry, since the first ideograph of the last line was required to be identical with the final ideograph. But rhyme was not attempted, and the syllabic metre of Japan was preserved, the alternation of 5 and 7 being, however, dispensed with. Such couplets were called _shi_ to distinguish them from the pure Japanese _uta_ or _tanka_. The two greatest masters of Japanese poetry were Hitomaro and Akahito, both of the early 8th century, and next to them stands Tsurayuki, who flourished at the beginning of the 10th century, and is not supposed to have transmitted his mantle to any successor. The choicest productions of the former two with those of many other poets were brought together in 756 and embodied in a book called the _Manyoshu (Collection of a Myriad Leaves)_. The volume remained unique until the beginning of the 10th century, when (A.D. 905) Tsurayuki and three coadjutors compiled the _Kokinshu (Collection of Odes Ancient and Modern)_, the first of twenty-one similar anthologies between the 11th and the 15th centuries, which constitute the _Niju-ichi Dai-shu (Anthologies of the One-and-Twenty Reigns)_. If to these we add the _Hyaku-ninshu (Hundred Odes by a Hundred Poets)_ brought together by Teika Kyo in the 13th century, we have all the classics of Japanese poetry. For the composition of the _uta_ gradually deteriorated from the end of the 9th century, when a game called _uta-awase_ became a fashionable pastime, and aristocratic men and women tried to string together versicles of 31 syllables, careful of the form and careless of the thought. The _uta-awase_, in its later developments, may not unjustly be compared to the Occidental game of _bouts-rimés_. The poetry of the nation remained immovable in the ancient groove until very modern times, when, either by direct access to the originals or through the medium of very defective translations, the nation became acquainted with the masters of Occidental song. A small coterie of authors, headed by Professor Toyama, then attempted to revolutionize Japanese poetry by recasting it on European lines. But the project failed signally, and indeed it may well be doubted whether the Japanese language can be adapted to such uses. Entry: JAPANESE
DUTT, MICHAEL MADHU SUDAN (1824-1873), the greatest native poet of India in the 19th century, was born at Sagandari, in the district of Jessore in Bengal, on the 25th of January 1824. His father was a pleader in Calcutta, and young Madhu Sudan received his education in the Hindu college of Calcutta, and was the foremost among the distinguished young students of his day, many of whom lived to make their mark in the literature and social progress of their country. Madhu Sudan left the college in 1842, and in the following year ran away to avoid a marriage into which his father wished to force him, and embraced the Christian religion. Continuing his studies now in the Bishop's college, Madhu Sudan learnt Greek and Latin and some modern European languages, and in 1848 went to Madras. There he wrote English verses, and married the daughter of a European indigo-planter, but was soon separated from her. He then united himself with an English lady, the daughter of an educational officer; and she remained true to him through life amidst all his misfortunes, and was the mother of the children he left. With her Madhu Sudan returned to Calcutta in 1856, and soon discovered that the true way for winning literary distinction was by writing in his own language, not by composing verses in English. His three classical dramas--_Sarmishtha_, _Padmavati_, and _Krishna Kumari_--appeared between 1858 and 1861, and were recognized as works of merit. But his great ambition was to introduce blank verse into Bengali. His knowledge of Sanskrit poetry, his appreciation of the Greek and Latin epics, and his admiration of Dante and of Milton, impelled him to break through the fetters of the Bengali rhyme, and to attempt a spirited and elevated style in blank verse. His first poem in blank verse, the _Tilottama_, was only a partial success; but his great epic which followed in 1861, the _Meghanad-Badha_, took the Indian world by surprise, and at once established his reputation as the greatest poet of his age and country. He took his story from the old Sanskrit epic, the _Ramayana_, but the beauty of the poem is all his own, and he imparted to it the pathos and sweetness of Eastern ideas combined with the vigour and loftiness of Western thought. In 1862 Madhu Sudan left for Europe. He lived in England for some years, and was called to the bar; and in 1867 returned to his country to practise as a barrister in Calcutta. But the poet was unfitted for a lawyer's vocation; his liabilities increased, his health failed, his powers declined. He still wrote much, but nothing of enduring merit. His brilliant but erratic life ended in a Calcutta hospital on the 29th of June 1873. Entry: DUTT
There can scarcely be a better guide in the examination of the _notes_ or marks of popular poetry than the instructions which M. Ampère gave to the committee appointed in 1852-1853 to search for the remains of ballads in France. M. Ampère bade the collectors look for the following characteristics:--"The use of assonance in place of rhyme, the brusque character of the recital, the textual repetition, as in Homer, of the speeches of the persons, the constant use of certain numbers,--as three and seven,--and the representation of the commonest objects of every-day life as being made of gold and silver." M. Ampère might have added that French ballads would probably employ a "bird chorus," the use of talking-birds as messengers; that they would repeat the plots current in other countries, and display the same non-Christian idea of death and of the future world (see "The Lyke-wake Dirge"), the same ghostly superstitions and stories of metamorphosis, and the same belief in elves and fairies, as are found in the ballads of Greece, of Provence, of Brittany, Denmark and Scotland. We shall now examine these supposed common notes of all genuine popular song, supplying a few out of the many instances of curious identity. As to brusqueness of recital, and the use of assonance instead of rhyme, as well as the aid to memory given by reproducing speeches verbally, these are almost unavoidable in all simple poetry preserved by oral tradition. In the matter of recurring numbers, we have the eternal-- Entry: BALLADS
45. _In Medieval Europe: Spain._--This dispersion of the Jews had begun in the Hellenistic period, but it was after the Barcochebas war that it assumed great dimensions in Europe. There were Jews in the Byzantine empire, in Rome, in France and Spain at very early periods, but it is with the Arab conquest of Spain that the Jews of Europe began to rival in culture and importance their brethren of the Persian gaonate. Before this date the Jews had been learning the rôle they afterwards filled, that of the chief promoters of international commerce. Already under Charlemagne this development is noticeable; in his generous treatment of the Jews this Christian emperor stood in marked contrast to his contemporary the caliph Harun al-Rashid, who persecuted Jews and Christians with equal vigour. But by the 10th century Judaism had received from Islam something more than persecution. It caught the contagion of poetry, philosophy and science.[64] The schismatic Qaraites initiated or rather necessitated a new Hebrew philology, which later on produced Qimhi, the gaon Saadiah founded a Jewish philosophy, the statesman Hasdai introduced a new Jewish culture--and all this under Mahommedan rule. It is in Spain that above all the new spirit manifested itself. The distinctive feature of the Spanish-Jewish culture was its comprehensiveness. Literature and affairs, science and statecraft, poetry and medicine, these various expressions of human nature and activity were so harmoniously balanced that they might be found in the possession of one and the same individual. The Jews of Spain attained to high places in the service of the state from the time of the Moorish conquest in 711. From Hasdai ibn Shaprut in the 10th century and Samuel the nagid in the 11th the line of Jewish scholar-statesmen continued till we reach Isaac Abrabanel in 1492, the date of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. This last-named event synchronized with the discovery of America; Columbus being accompanied by at least one Jewish navigator. While the Spanish period of Jewish history was thus brilliant from the point of view of public service, it was equally notable on the literary side. Hebrew religious poetry was revived for synagogue hymnology, and, partly in imitation of Arabian models, a secular Hebrew poetry was developed in metre and rhyme. The new Hebrew _Piyut_ found its first important exponent in Kalir, who was not a Spaniard. But it is to Spain that we must look for the best of the medieval poets of the synagogue, greatest among them being Ibn Gabirol and Halevi. So, too, the greatest Jew of the middle ages, Maimonides, was a Spaniard. In him culminates the Jewish expression of the Spanish-Moorish culture; his writings had an influence on European scholasticism and contributed significant elements to the philosophy of Spinoza. But the reconquest of Andalusia by the Christians associated towards the end of the 15th century with the establishment of the Inquisition, introduced a spirit of intolerance which led to the expulsion of the Jews and Moors. The consequences of this blow were momentous; it may be said to inaugurate the ghetto period. In Spain Jewish life had participated in the general life, but the expulsion--while it dispersed the Spanish Jews in Poland, Turkey, Italy and France, and thus in the end contributed to the Jewish emancipation at the French Revolution--for the time drove the Jews within their own confines and barred them from the outside world.[65] Entry: 45