Search the Dictionary

A kind of Oriental lyric, and usually erotic, poetry, written in recurring rhymes.

chance; the ghost of an idea. Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Poe.

The zodiac; also, the equator. [Poetic] Bacon. From the world's girdle to the frozen pole. Cowper. That gems the starry girdle of the year. Campbell.

A sword; -- used poetically and loosely. The glaive which he did wield. Spenser.

To look with a sudden, rapid cast of the eye; to snatch a momentary or hasty view. The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. Shak.

Given to viewing one's self in a glass or mirror; finical. [Poetic] Shak.

Twilight; dusk; the fall of the evening. [Scot. & North of Eng., and in poetry.] Hogg.

To make hot; to flush. [Poetic] Fans, whose wind did seem To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool. Shak.

of a spondee, a choriamb, and a pyrrhic; -- applied to a kind of verse in Greek and Latin poetry. -- n. (Pros.)

iking detached thoughts; aphoristic. A city long famous as the seat of elegiac and gnomic poetry. G. R. Lewes. Gnomic Poets, Greek poets, as Theognis and Solon, of the sixth century B. C., whose writings consist of short sententious precepts and reflections.

y, translated and printed by Caxton in 1483, and partially paraphrased by Longfellow in a poem thus entitled. -- Golden marcasite tin. [Obs.] -- Golden mean, the way of wisdom and safety between extremes; sufficiency without excess; moderation. Angels guard him in the golden mean. Pope. -- Golden mole (Zoöl), one of s…

The satirical or ribald poetry of the Goliards. Milman.

An affected elegance or euphuism of style, for which the Spanish poet Gongora y Argote (1561-1627), among others of his time, was noted.

A dictionary of prosody, designed as an aid in writing Greek or Latin poetry. He set to work . . . without gradus or other help. T. Hughes.

; hence, a red color of any tint or hue, as crimson, scarlet, etc.; sometimes used by the poets as equivalent to Tyrian purple. All in a robe of darkest grain. Milton. Doing as the dyers do, who, having first dipped their silks in colors of less value, then give' them the last tincture of crimson in grain. Quoted by Co…

A grotto. [Poetic] Milton.

Dr. Johnson as "much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet." As an adjective, suitable to, or resembling the production of, Grub Street. I 'd sooner ballads write, and grubstreet lays. Gap.

Cautions; wary; watchful. [Obs. or Poetic.] -- Guard"ful*ly, adv.

rounds; an attempt to hit upon the truth by a random judgment; a conjecture; a surmise. A poet must confess His art 's like physic -- but a happy guess. Dryden.

ated in seals and engraved figures of escutcheons by parallel vertical lines. Hence, used poetically for a red color or that which is red. His sev'n-fold targe a field of gules did stain In which two swords he bore; his word, "Divide and reign." P. Fletcher. Follow thy drum; With man's blood paint the ground; gules, gu…