Word Finder - verse

definition

A poetic form with regular meter and a fixed rhyme scheme.

example

Restoration literature is well known for its carefully constructed verse.

synonyms

• poetry

definition

Poetic form in general.

example

The restrictions of verse have been steadily relaxed over time.

definition

One of several similar units of a song, consisting of several lines, generally rhymed.

example

Note the shift in tone between the first verse and the second.

synonyms

• stanza

definition

A small section of the Jewish or Christian Bible.

definition

A portion of an anthem to be performed by a single voice to each part.

definition

To compose verses.

definition

To tell in verse, or poetry.

definition

To educate about, to teach about.

example

He versed us in the finer points of category theory.

Their verse is of a very primitive description, and is chiefly used for purposes of love-making.

In verse he had a touch far less sure than in prose.

The name is often in popular literature written Cambalu, and is by Longfellow accented in verse Cambeilic. But this spelling originates in an accidental error in Ramusio's Italian version, which was the chief channel through which Marco Polo's book was popularly known.

French, as a separate tongue from Latin, already existed as a literary speech, and no people had done more than the Normans to spread it as a literary speech, in both prose and verse.

The whole verse is perhaps the addition of an allegorizing glossator.

He was a copious writer, especially in verse.

The one wrote mainly in verse, the other in prose.

Take off the rose colored glasses—'my sins will continue'—or better yet, wait until you decipher a few more pages and she gives it to you in black and white, chapter and verse and supplies the sinful details.

He compiled a Russian grammar, which long enjoyed popularity, and did much to improve the rhythm of Russian verse.

The Tea-Table Miscellany is "A Collection of Choice Songs Scots and English," containing some of Ramsay's own, some by his friends, several well-known ballads and songs, and some Caroline verse.

A collected edition of his works of fiction, both in prose and verse, has reached twenty-one volumes (Leipzig, 1898), and a new edition was published in 1901.

Other historical works of Bede are the History of the Abbots (of Wearmouth and Jarrow), and the lives of Cuthbert in verse and prose.

It is first mentioned in a very ancient Pali ballad preserved in the Sutta Nipata (verse 583).

Up till his thirtieth year he dabbled in verse, but he had little ear for metrical music, and he lacked the spiritual impulsiveness of the true poet.

While conspicuously lacking in creative genius, the Ottomans have always shown themselves possessed of receptive and assimilative powers to a remarkable degree, the result being that the number of their writers both in prose and verse is enormous.

The nocturnal expedition across the Hellespont by which Suleiman, the son of Orkhan, won Galipoli and therewith a foothold in Europe for his race, was shared in and celebrated in verse by a Turkish noble or chieftain named Ghazi Fazil.

The Persianizing tendency of this school reached its highest point in the productions of Veysi, who left a Life of the Prophet, and of Nergisi, a miscellaneous writer of prose and verse.

The few remaining fragments produce the impression of vivid and rapid narrative, to which the flow of the native Saturnian verse, in contradistinction to the weighty and complex structure of the hexameter, was naturally adapted.

In the autumn of this year he received a visit 'at Vailima from the countess of Jersey, in company with whom and some others he wrote the burlesque extravagance in prose and verse, called An Object of Pity, privately printed in 1893 at Sydney.

The chief authorities for Willibrord's life are Alcuin's Vita Willibrordi, both in prose and in verse, and Bede's Hist.

Some capital snatches of verse are scattered throughout his novels, the best being "Poll put her arms akimbo" in Snarleyyow, and the "Hunter and the Maid" in Poor Jack.

Between 1808 and 181 r he travelled much both in England and the south of Europe, and in 1812 published a blank verse translation of the Inferno.

Jean de Masles, who annotated a portion of his verse, has recorded how the pages and young gentlemen of that epoch were required daily to learn by heart passages of his Breviaire des nobles.

He studied ancient theories of music, and is said to have invented the thirteen-syllable verse known subsequently as versi martelliani.

A portion of his Latin verse is printed in the first volume (pp. 306354) of Delitiae poetarum Scotorum (Amsterdam, 1637).

John Major in his Latin History speaks of "one Henry, blind from his birth, who, in the time of my childhood, fashioned a whole book about William Wallace, and therein wrote down in our popular verse - and this was a kind of composition in which he had much skill - all that passed current among the people in his day.

In this respect it is in marked contrast with all the patriotic verse of preceding and contemporary literature.

Szekely wrote in prose, with verse introduction, a " Chronicle of the World " under the title of Cronica ez vildgnac yeles dolgairol (Cracow, 1559).

Andrew Farkas and the homilist Peter Melius (Juhasz) attempted didactic verse; and Batizi busied himself with sacred song and Biblical history.

The lyrics of Anthony Varady (1875, 1877) are somewhat dull and unequal in tone; both he and Baron Ivor Kaas, author of Az itelet napja (Day of Judgment, 1876), have shown skill rather in the art of dramatic verse.

The Mesek of Augustus Greguss (1878), a collection of verse " Fables," belonging to the school of Gay, partake more of a didactic than lyrical nature.

Amongst rhymed novels-novels in verse formthe best is the Delibdbok h ise (" The Hero of Mirages "), in which Ladislas Arany tells, in brilliantly humorous and captivating fashion, the story of a young Magyar nobleman who, at first full of great ideals and aspirations, finally ends as a commonplace country squire.

In 1555 he published his first work, a translation of Oppian's Cynegeticon into Latin verse, with a commentary.

In this connexion verse 10 is particularly appropriate as addressed to an Egyptian princess whose forefathers, though their rule had not on the whole been tyrannical, had been regarded by the Jews as heathen oppressors.

In the literature as it survives many different branches of writing are represented - homilies in prose and verse, hymns, exposition and commentary, liturgy, apocryphal legends, historical romance, hagiography and martyrology, monastic history and biography, general history, dogmatics, philosophy and science, ecclesiastical law, &c. But the whole is dominated by the theological and ecclesiastical interest.

When we put aside one or two exceptionally fine pieces, like the hymn of the soul in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, the highest degree of excellence in style is perhaps attained in staightforward historical narrative - such as the account of the PersoRoman War at the beginning of the 6th century by the author who passes under the name of Joshua the Stylite, or by romancers like him who wrote the romance of Julian; by biographers like some of those who have written lives of saints, martyrs and eminent divines; and by some early writers of homilies such as Philoxenus (in prose) and Isaac of Antioch (in verse).

Terence was translated into English verse by George Colman (2765).

He would render the verse, "In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of the women who weep for Tammuz-Adon" (A don means lord).

The inscriptions he composed himself, in mediocre verse, full of Virgilian reminiscences.

In 1818-1819 he revisited Switzerland, Savoy and Italy, the death of his beloved affording him new subjects for verse.

Thereafter he spoke constantly, and acquired considerable reputation as an orator, - bringing out, moreover, many books in prose and verse.

The four volumes of the Meditations, the Harmonies and the Recueillements, which contained the prime of his verse, are perhaps the most monotonous reading to be found anywhere in work of equal bulk by a poet of equal talent.

Jocelyn had at one time more popularity in England than most French verse.

In 1511 he accompanied the queen to Aberdeen and commemorated her visit in verse.

The greater part of Dunbar's work is occasional - personal and social satire, complaints (in the style familiar in the minor verse of Chaucer's English successors), orisons and pieces of a humorous character.

If further selection be made from the large body of miscellaneous poems, the comic poem on the physician Andro Kennedy may stand out as one of the best contributions to medieval Goliardic literature; The Two Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, as one of the richest and most effective pastiches in the older alliterative style, then used by the Scottish Chaucerians for burlesque purposes; Done is a battell on the Dragon Blak, for religious feeling expressed in melodious verse; and the well-known Lament for the Makaris.

The peculiarity of the poem of Lucretius, that which makes it unique in literature, is that it is a reasoned system of philosophy, written in verse.

His literary capacity was early shown in the remarkable fiction of his Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton (1886) under the pseudonym of "Christopher Carr," and his Poems (1893) and Lyrics (1895) established his reputation as a writer of verse.

The earthquake at Lisbon, which appalled other people, gave Voltaire an excellent opportunity for ridiculing the beliefs of the orthodox, first in verse (1756) and later in the (from a literary point of view) unsurpassable tale of Candide (1759).

Almost all his more substantive works, whether in verse or prose, are preceded by prefaces of one sort or another, which are models of his own light pungent causerie; and in a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings he shows himself a perfect journalist.