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More "Melody" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... myself leaned against the parapet, and talked of innumerable things. When the clocks struck the hour, or the bells rang from the steeples, as they are continually doing, I spoke of the sweetness of the Florence bells, the tones of some of them being as if the bell were full of liquid melody, and shed it through the air on being upturned. I had supposed, in my lack of musical ear, that the bells of the Campanile were the sweetest; but Mr. Powers says that there is a defect in their tone, and that the bell of the Palazzo Vecchio is the most melodious ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... river brink, very green, dappled with shade and sun, and the river passes there through some little clumps of reeds. Well, as I sat there, doing nothing, but just looking and listening, I heard the sound quite distinctly of some flute-like instrument playing a strange unending melody. I thought at first it was some musical yokel on the highway and did not pay much attention. But before long the strangeness and indescribable beauty of the tune struck me. It never repeated itself, but it never came to an end, phrase after ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the diabolic screech of a loon somewhere down the river, while closer by rose the pathetic song of the whippoorwill. Strange contrasts and each very welcome in my ears. I was awake with the first rays of the sun mottling the bark and mold before the low entrance to my retreat. The rippling melody of a mocking-bird deluged the thicket. Honey-bees hovered and buzzed about my tree, perhaps investigating it with the idea of moving in and using it for a storehouse. The Indians called them the "white man's flies," and believed they ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... saw—if not with surprise, at least with pain—that his wife did not love him. A young and handsome Spaniard, belonging to the Spanish Legation, danced one day with Clorinde; to her he seemed as radiant as the god of melody and song. She lost her heart, and without further delay confessed ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... time, simple four in a bar. But if the movement be adagio, largo assai, or andante maestoso, either all the quavers, or a crotchet followed by a quaver, should be beaten, according to the form of the melody, or the predominant design. ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... that a beautiful day was a thing which nothing except death, sickness, or imprisonment could take from him—not even the ban of Canaan! Unforewarned, music sounded in his ears again; but he did not shrink from it now; this was not the circus band he had heard as he left the Square, but a melody like a far-away serenade at night, as of "the horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and he closed his eyes with ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... out cheerily and soon broke into a melody they sang at school. They had good voices and sang with spirit. So interested were they that they did not hear the sound of wheels although a carriage was coming slowly behind them, and a gentleman who was in it was listening with pleasure. At length the song was finished and the boys heard the ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... with his most comforting discourses. Have you listened to him, ever? He does this:—he plays to you your music (it is he who first teaches thousands that they have any music at all, so guess what a dear devil he is!); and when he has played this ravishing melody, he falls to upon a burlesque contrast of hurdy-gurdy and bag-pipe squeal and bellow and drone, which is meant for the music of the world. How far sweeter was yours! This charming devil Sir ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the lawn around the Sagamore Club that dewy June morning, chirping, chirking, trilling, repeating their endless arias from tree and gate-post. And through the outcry of the robins, the dry cackle of the purple grackles, and the cat-bird's whine floated earthward the melody of the golden orioles. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... comfortably, and, crossing the room, so far as I could see, merely touched one or two screws, and at once the room was filled with the music of a grand organ anthem; filled, not flooded, for, by some means, the volume of melody had been perfectly graduated to the size of the apartment. I listened, scarcely breathing, to the close. Such music, so perfectly rendered, I had ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... at the dawn of day From the green steeples of the piny wood; The oriole in the elm; the noisy jay, Jargoning like a foreigner at his food; The bluebird balanced on some topmost spray, Flooding with melody the neighborhood; Linnet and meadow-lark, and all the throng That dwell in nests, and have ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... telephoned to half a dozen of her son's girl friends and invited them to come to a sewing-bee and help with the curtains for her cottage. She said that Miss Melody was visiting her and that she would like them to know her. So they all came, wild with curiosity to see the girl that their own Ben had kidnapped and who was going to make him forget them; and Geraldine won them all by her modesty and naturalness. The fact that Ben's mother ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... simple, innocent girl upon the high rock, eating that wonderful dinner. Again the evening light faded, stars and moon came out, and she felt the first sweet stirring of love for him. She could hear his voice, the light, clear, entrancing melody of the Duke's song— ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... bedchamber at last. Why was I still not at my ease? Why was I rude enough, when I thought of the widow, to say to myself, "Damn her!" Why did I find Gluck's magnificent music grow wearisome from want of melody as it went on? Let the learned in such things realize my position, and honor me by ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... a noted collector of songs, who set himself to gather in one work every existing Scotch melody; his untiring zeal resulted in the publication of 6 vols. of Scotch songs, the words of which had been adapted and supplied by a host of writers, including Scott, Campbell, Joanna Baillie, and above all, Robert ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... every tone is music's own, Like those of morning birds; And something more than melody Dwells ever in her words; The coinage of her heart are they, And from her lips each flows As one may see the burden'd bee Forth issue ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... Keleusma was generally given by a flute-player, the Trieraules. AEschylus, Persians 403. Laert. Diog. IV. 22. In the Frogs of Aristophanes the inhabitants of the marshes are made to sing the Keleusma, v. 205. The melody, to the measure of which the Greek ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... any fame, and yet mountainous countries abound in local legends, which would seem to be at variance with this opinion, were it not certain, though I cannot explain the cause, that local poetry, like local language or local melody, is in proportion to the interest it awakens among the local inhabitants, weak and ineffectual in its influence on the sentiments of the general world. The "Rans de Vaches," the most celebrated of all local airs, is tame and commonplace,—unmelodious, to all ears but those of the ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... hot kiss on her lips. It was the sheer flesh and blood womanliness of her that made his heart beat faster, the sweet curve of her lips, the willowy grace of her body, the odd little gestures of her hands, the melody of her voice and the gray pools of her eyes, eyes full of queer gleams and curious twinkles—all these things were indescribably beautiful to him. He loved her—just the girl herself. He wanted her, craved her presence; not the pleasant memory ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... village in the southern boundary of St. Leonard's Forest, the key to some very rich country. Before the days of bicycles Bolney was practically unknown, so retired is it. The church, which has a curious pinnacled tower nearly 300 years old, is famous for its bells, concerning whose melody Horsfield gives the following piece of counsel: "Those who are fond of the silvery tones of bells, may enjoy them to perfection, by placing themselves on the margin of a large pond, the property of Mr. W. Marshall; the reverberation of the sound, coming off the water, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... that morning he did not pick up his brushes until he had sat for long minutes before the sketch of a red-cheeked, curly-headed young girl whose eyes held a peculiarly wistful appeal; and Cyril, at his piano up-stairs, sat with idle fingers until they finally drifted into a simple little melody—the last ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter
... Trastevere, or throws up into the air a gossamer as fine as Arachne's web in a green garden way where the lizards run, or in a crowded corner where the fruit-sellers sit against the wall;—in all its shapes one grows to love the water that fills Rome with an unchanging melody all ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... cause of this prodigy. One supposition only could be adopted, which was, that the strain was uttered by human organs. That the songster was stationed on the roof of the arbour, and having finished his melody had risen into the viewless fields ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... lying buried in a large flower it is sucking out the juice. Its nest is very curious, and discovers amazing art and contrivance. These are some of the feathered inhabitants of this forest, among which there is little melody, and, were it otherways, the music would all be lost, by the continual croaking of frogs, which swarm in millions over the ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... began to whistle an air—a doleful minor melody, that sounded so strange and weird there in the darkness ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... obstructions, and destroying all enemies, natural and preternatural. And when his work was completed by the establishment of the League, the hero, in his human form of Hiawatha, seated himself in this canoe, and ascended in it to heaven, amid "the sweetest melody ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... Occident, used to translate English and German songs into Tartar. Mirza Shaffy, the name of the Tartar sage and poet, proved himself no contemptible critic of these foreign productions. Not once could he be induced to tolerate a poem whose only merit was the beauty and melody of its language in the original, nor to swallow the mere sentimentalism which plays so great a part in German poetry especially. This sentimentalism, says Bodenstedt, is as unknown as it is unintelligible to the Oriental poet. He aims always at a ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... being disturbed by the announcement of his first hymn, "Rock of Ages." Even the organ blundered as it played so common a tune as Rousseau's Dream, and I, who learning counterpoint, feared to be seen singing so ordinary a melody, lest it should set me down as unmusical for ever. But soon my concern was with the unfortunate young man, for he was, I felt sure, quite ignorant of the habits of such congregations as ours, and would certainly offend our best people. For after that we read the ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... and beautiful, with tones of varying richness as the ripples varied over it. The pale light of the morning breathed a dewy lustre down the banks; the sun (although unrisen yet) drew furrows through the mountain gaps; the birds from every hanging tree addressed the day with melody; the crystal water, purer than religion's brightest dream, went by; and here among them lay, unmoved, unthought of, and inanimate, the thing which to a human being is worth all ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... my tears into my song, and wept them into the melody. But other tears, I knew, were not so contained; in intervals I heard low sobbing in more than one part of the room. I had no time to sing another hymn before Dr. Sandford came in. I was very glad he had ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... great Ariosto is no more. The voice that filled those halls with melody Has long been ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... For, just as the child put on his best clothes for Festivals, so did his prayers seem to clothe themselves in more beautiful words, and to be said out of more beautiful books, and with more beautiful tunes to them. Melody played a large part in the synagogue services, so that, although he did not think of the meaning of the prayers, they lived in his mind as music, and, sorrowful or joyous, they often sang themselves in his brain in after years. There ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... geniuses of time. We have nothing more native at our disposal than the beautiful creations of this people. It is singular enough that the as yet remote black man contributes the only native representation of rhythm and melody we possess. As an intelligent race, we are not even sure we want to welcome him as completely as we might, if his color were just a shade warmer, a shade nearer our own. We have no qualms about yellow and ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... flame flooded upwards: all the while the tremulous fingers made curious shadows. The shadow seemed to run to Rodriguez and beckon him thence: even Morano felt them calling. Rodriguez closed his eyes. The voice and the Moorish spells made now a more haunting melody: they were now like a golden organ on undiscoverable mountains. Fear came on Morano at the thought: who had power to speak like this? He grasped Rodriguez by the wrist. "Master!" he said, but at that moment on one of those golden spells the spirit of ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... traveller, adventurer, podesta, valet, avvocato, and gondolier, held their way alike to the common centre of amusement. The hurried air and careless eye; the measured step and jealous glance; the jest and laugh; the song of the cantatrice, and the melody of the flute; the grimace of the buffoon, and the tragic frown of the improvisatore; the pyramid of the grotesque, the compelled and melancholy smile of the harpist, cries of water-sellers, cowls of monks, plumage of warriors, hum ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... for ever reigns In mystic union of the Three in One, Unbounded, bounding all, each spirit thrice Sang, with such melody, as but to hear For highest merit were an ample meed. And from the lesser orb the goodliest light, With gentle voice and mild, such as perhaps The angel's once to Mary, thus replied: "Long as the joy of Paradise shall last, Our love shall ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... went out for a meditative stroll in the wooded land. About a mile and a half distant was a creek, with great bluffs on one side, and with a romantic tumble of land on the other. Of late he had gone often to this stream, not to listen to the melody of water pouring over the rocks, not to hear the birds that held a joy-riot in the trees, but to lie in the grass on a slope, beneath an elm, and gaze across at a limestone tower called "Lover's Leap." And on these journeys he always went ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... a crude little village in the Mexican wilderness. The people were more Indian than Mexican. There was not much melody in their music, and not much rhythm in their dance, but they were human beings, enjoying themselves after labor and without fear. Both Ned and Obed, sitting outside the circle of light with their rifles across their knees, felt ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that valley Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid, ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever And ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... and mysterious. The wind was playing an eerie fleshless melody in the reeds of the brook hollow. The sky was dark and starry, and across it the Milky Way flung its ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see, As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... noon with melody; in the moonbeam Where the coy Dryads trip it unmolested All the night long, to ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... forth with an air that was at that time as familiar to every Devon man as his own name, though it is nearly if not quite forgotten now. Ten seconds later, every man on the galleon's decks, from George downward, was shouting the fine old song at the top of his voice, the melody going far out over the water and causing the haughty Dons on the galley's poop to ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... when the dip of the oars ceased, and the holy strain arose singly on the breathing silence of the wilderness. As if she gathered courage with the theme, her powers appeared to increase as she proceeded; and though nothing vulgar or noisy mingled in her melody, its strength and melancholy tenderness grew on the ear, until the air was filled with this simple homage of a soul that seemed almost spotless. That the men forward were not indifferent to this touching interruption, was proved by their inaction; nor did ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... utterly unfamiliar. The rondo was no wonderful piece of intricacy, such as a professional might choose. On the contrary, it was simple, and quite within the capabilities of a young and well-taught girl. But it was full of rich melody which even he, in his ignorance, could understand and appreciate, and yet, for aught that he knew it was ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... thy heart a fountain be, To rise in sparkling joy, and fall In dimpled melody—and all For love ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... sedge-warblers, clinging so light To willow twigs, sang longer than the lark, Quick, shrill, or grating, a song to match the heat Of the strong sun, nor less the water's cool, Gushing through narrows, swirling in the pool. Their song that lacks all words, all melody, All sweetness almost, was dearer then to me Than sweetest voice that sings in tune sweet words. This was the best of May—the small brown birds Wisely reiterating endlessly What no man learnt yet, in or out ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... Confucius, held biennially during the whole of the Ching dynasty at 3 A.M. The "stone chimes", consisting of sonorous stones varying in tone and hanging in frames, which were played on those solemn occasions, have a haunting melody such as can be heard nowhere else. China, I believe, is the only country that has produced music from stones. It is naturally gratifying to me to hear that Chinese airs are now having a vogue in London, and ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... Their marvelous reliability and intricacy are almost as awesome as the human anatomy. When both engines are going well, and synchronized to the same speed, the roar of the exhausts develops into one long-sustained and not inharmonious boom-m-m-m-m! It is a song of pleasant melody to the pilot, whose ear is ever pricked to catch the first semblance of a "sharp" or "flat" note telling him that one or more of the twelve cylinders of each busy engine is missing fire ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... the present shall melt away. They nerved the humble artisan to patience and to the cheerful endurance of obloquy and reproach. They attracted to the gathering of persecuted reformers in the by-street, in the retired barn, or on the open heath or mountain side, the youth who preferred their melody and intelligible words to the jargon of a service conducted in a tongue understood only by the learned. In the royal court, or rising in loud chorus from a thousand voices on the crowded Pre-aux-Clercs, they were winged messengers of the truth, where no other messengers ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... one and sometimes another read poetry, and sometimes they read the Psalms, especially the Twenty-third, and sometimes Martha played the Melody in F, or the Shower of Stars or ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... vr Poco:—Monsir, Acoutez in de Corner; me come for offer to your Bon gace mi trez humble service. By gar no John fidleco shall put into your neare braver Melody dan dis vn petite pipe shall play upon ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... was between the heartless face of that man, and the meek, truthful look of the child! How cold and harsh seemed his voice after the troubled melody of hers! ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... black ducks, cranes, belated wild geese, and, in fact, all sorts of northern birds make up this long and strange procession, and the air is frequently so densely packed with them as to be actually darkened, while the keen, whistling music of their whizzing wings makes a melody that comparatively few landsmen ever hear. Millions of the birds never hesitate at this point in their flight, although thousands of them do. These latter make the neighboring waters their home for the rest of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... feathers for wings to enable him to pursue caterpillars and grasshoppers as raw material for the production of more song. He sang at the prospect of a home; then he sang to attract and win a mate; more song at the joy of finding wonderful grass and feathers; again melody to beguile his mate, patiently giving the hours and days of her body-warmth in instinct-compelled belief in the future. He sang while he took his turn at sitting; then he nearly choked to death trying to sing while stuffing a bug down a nestling's throat; finally, he sang at the end of a perfect ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... succession of rapid and animated touches, like the lights and shadows of a landscape. The light trochaic structure of the redondilla [13], as the Spanish ballad measure is called, rolling on its graceful, negligent asonante, [14] whose continued repetition seems by its monotonous melody to prolong the note of feeling originally struck, is admirably suited by its flexibility to the most varied and opposite expression; a circumstance which has recommended it as the ordinary measure ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... not think he ever wrote anything more beautiful than his setting of the phrase "Over the hills and far away," which appealed to his memory much as the three words "Far-far-away" affected Tennyson. No one can read this little masterpiece without that wonderful sense of melody lingering in the mind after the voice ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... has fled to another retreat, Where the hazel affords him a screen from the heat; And the scene where his melody charmed me before Resounds with ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... Melody was born in him, so to speak, full-fledged, ready to sing. Musical training would have done him no good, and it might have done him harm. He could not have sung a false note if he had tried; ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... and pearl nuances. A hundred tantalizing perfumes filled the air; field-spiders' webs sparkled in the dew like silver gossamer; meadow larks rose at her feet, and wove delicate patterns in the air with threads of melody. Who could think amid such diverting beauty? She lifted her head, and went singing through the meadows, knee-deep in the wet and clinging grass, and laughing when the parted branches of the willows splashed her face and drenched her. And then, at the first cast ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... house, mixing with the scent of the rose water, did completely perfume the air. Besides, he heard from within a concert of several sorts of instrumental music, accompanied with the harmonies of nightingales, and other birds peculiar to that climate. This charming melody, and the smell of several sorts of victuals, made the porter think there was a feast, with great rejoicings within. His occasions leading him seldom that way, he knew not who dwelt in the house; but, to satisfy his curiosity, he went to some of the servants, whom he saw standing at the gate ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... blessed grace and understanding of; do not catch and feel the perfect and abounding harmony of. Since why? No lip can sound more than its own few syllables of music; no life show more than its own few accidents and incidents and groupings; the vast melody, the rich, eternal satisfying, are behind; and the signs ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... this country; but still the legitimate drama exhibits no such appearances of decrepitude in its Capitals. The masterpieces of Corneille and Racine are still constantly performed to crowded houses at Paris; the theatres of Italy resound with the melody of Metastasio, the dignity of Alfieri; and singing and the melodrama have nowhere banished Schiller's tragedies from the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... melodies gorgeously attired—nothing more. Wagner, declared the indignant critic, was not original. He popularized the noble ideas of the masters, vulgarized and debased their dreams. He never conceived a single new melody, but substituted instead, sadly mauled and pinched thematic fragments of Liszt, Berlioz, and Beethoven, combined with exaggerated fairy-tales, clothed in showy tinsel and theatrical gauds, the illusion ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... voice sustained the simple melody perfectly, and it was evident when the little girl began the second verse that she was singing wholly to please herself and some one in a proscenium box. Before the close of the first stanza the gallery experienced a turn, the audience ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... melody was one who was only coming to the front at the close of this period, Alfred Tennyson, born in 1809, contributed with two of his brothers to a collection of verses, misleadingly entitled Poems by Two Brothers, which appeared in 1826. At Cambridge his Timbuctoo won the chancellor's ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Dick. Well, I have enough from my ancestors of Plymouth to forswear and forswear again, and yet have some to spare. I—I will go to my Lady Culpeper with the tale and save thy soul thy scruples, and thy ears the melody of her tongue. I will acquaint her with the miscarriage of the goods, and whisper of the sick sailor, and all thou hast to do is to loiter about Jamestown, keeping thy Bridget well in mind the while, and load thy ship with the produce ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... who from habit had her own feet stowed comfortably away against the warm stomach of her lord and master, declined to make the investigation demanded, and resumed the nocturnal melody. Mr. Zacharias was angered; for the first time since she had sworn to love, honour, and obey, this female was in open rebellion. He decided upon prompt and vigorous action. He quietly moved over to the back side of the bed and braced his shoulders against ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... and an abid, who bore us company, kept disparaging the morals of the dervishes, and was callous to their sufferings, till we reached the palm plantation of the tribe of Hulal, when a boy of a tawny complexion issued from the Arab horde and sung such a plaintive melody as would arrest the bird in its flight through the air. I remarked the abid's camel that it kicked up and pranced, and, throwing the abid, danced into the wilderness. I said: "O reverend Shaikh! that spiritual strain threw a brute into an ecstasy, and it is not in like manner working ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... hateful catcalls and squawks as have given the bird his common name, is a wonder when in the next moment his throat swells and beginning phut-phut-coquillicot, he gives forth a long glorious song, only second to that of the wood thrush in melody. He is a ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... rectangular baskets full of bunches of roses, violets, dahlias, and marguerites. At times the clumps darkened and looked like splotches of blood, at others they brightened into silvery greys of the softest tones. A lighted candle, standing near one basket, set amidst the general blackness quite a melody of colour—the bright variegations of marguerites, the blood-red crimson of dahlias, the bluey purple of violets, and the warm flesh tints of roses. And nothing could have been sweeter or more suggestive of springtide than this soft ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... convenient stations were occupied by the bands of the blue and green factions of the circus; and their furious conflicts, which had shaken the capital, were insensibly sunk to an emulation of servitude. From either side they echoed in responsive melody the praises of the emperor; their poets and musicians directed the choir, and long life [53] and victory were the burden of every song. The same acclamations were performed at the audience, the banquet, and the church; and as an evidence of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... silent as aforetime, but you cannot forget that a Voice once resounded there. A Presence filled the valleys and gilded the mountain-tops, —breathed upon the plains, and they sprang up in lilies and roses,—flashed upon the waters, and they flowed to spheral melody,—swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled into song. And though now the warmth has faded out, though the ruddy tints and amber clearness have paled to ashen hues, though the murmuring melodies are dead, and forest, vale, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... passions by the same sounds." If one obtains music from the clang and clamour of full-throated frogs, may it not be because his ears are more attuned to natural than to artificial harmonies, not because, of any defect in, or aberration of, hearing, or any lack of melody on the part of ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... Like a spell does the evening bind me! And a deep languid charm I feel without alarm With its melody enwind me And ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... describe battle as if it were an enjoyable game. They mention the "Play of the spear" and speak of "putting to sleep with the sword," as if the din of war were in their ears a slumber melody. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... the harp and guitar with equal cleverness. Many a pure Spanish melody was poured into the delighted ears of my friend and myself. The thoughts that arose in our minds were doubtless of a similar kind; and yet how strange that our hearts should have been warmed to love by beings so different in character! The gay, free spirit ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... tears, among the wheat, Not doubting this to be the first of lands; And, while in foreign words this murmuring, meet Some little village school-girls (with their hands Full of forget-me-nots), who, greeting me, I count their English talk delightsome melody; ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... only half decent, will keep up the attention of a rustic group to whom you might read from "In Memoriam" in vain. A waistcoat of glaring scarlet will be esteemed by a country bumpkin a garment every way preferable to one of aspect more subdued. A nigger melody will charm many a one who would yawn at Beethoven. You must have rough means to move rough people. The outrageous revival-orator may do good to people to whom Bishop Wilberforce or Dr. Caird might preach to no purpose; and if real good be done, by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... in her, as I have said, a quick response to all sights and sounds of beauty. Then, as the organ rolled its waves of melody above her head, as the last Amen of the choir rose to the vaulted roof, her whole soul was wrapt in that feeling which has no other name but devotion. The unseen Presence of what was holy and pure seemed to encompass her, and as she leaned against ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... increased the impression of an all-pervading, though imperceptible ring of fire, that seemed to surround the place. No birds sung save in the late evening, when the nightingales in my gardens broke out in a bubbling torrent of melody, half joyous, half melancholy. Up on that wooded height where I dwelt it was comparatively cool. I took all precautions necessary to prevent the contagion from attacking our household; In fact, I would have left the neighborhood altogether, had I not known that hasty flight ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... The songs of Stesichorus, a minstrel of the early period, and the little rural 'mimes' or interludes of Sophron are lost, and we have only fragments of Epicharmus. But it seems certain that these poets, predecessors of Theocritus, liked to mingle with their own composition strains of rustic melody, volks-lieder, ballads, love-songs, ditties, and dirges, such as are still chanted by the peasants of Greece and Italy. Thus in Syracuse and the other towns of the coast, Theocritus would have always before his eyes ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... to describe the music of their language, while thus engaged in laughter and endearments, in such a way as to render it intelligible to those whose ears have never listened to its melody. The compass of their voices, particularly that of the youth, was wonderful—extending from the deepest bass to tones that were even feminine in softness. The eyes of the father followed the plastic and ingenious movements of the son with open delight, and he never failed to smile in reply to ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... we joined the promenaders. The band was playing, and, for a ship-band, playing very well, the ballet music of Delibes' 'Sylvia'. The musicians had caught that unaccentuated and sensuous swing of the melody which the soft, tropical atmosphere rendered still more languorous. With Mrs. Falchion's hand upon my arm, I felt a sense of capitulation to the music and to her, uncanny in its suddenness. At this distance of time it seems to me absurd. I had once experienced something of the same feeling with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... mine, and they were real for me As lips and darling eyes and a warm breast: For I could love a phrase, a melody, Like a fair woman, ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... just alighted on a slender spray a few yards distant, and while yet swinging on the elastic bough, poured forth a gush of melody. ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... of the same thought is given by Spangenberg in a poem written during the voyage, and sent home to David Nitschmann to be set to the music of some "Danish Melody" known to them both. There is a beauty of rhythm in the original which the English cannot reproduce, as though the writer had caught the cadence of the waves, on some bright day when the ship "went softly" after a season ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... lover of the picturesque, the scene while we sat resting by the hedge-side, was one of the most beautiful that can be imagined. Spread over the field in every direction were the gleaners, busily engaged in their cheerful task; while the hum of their conversation, mingling with the melody of the insect world, the music of the feathery tribes, and the ripple of the adjoining burn, combined to form a strain which I still hear in the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but, oh! how beautiful the music seemed to us both then - far, far more beautiful than the voice of Orpheus or the lute of Apollo, or anything of that sort could have sounded. Heavenly melody, in our then state of mind, would only have still further harrowed us. A soul-moving harmony, correctly performed, we should have taken as a spirit-warning, and have given up all hope. But about the strains of "He's got 'em on," jerked spasmodically, and with involuntary variations, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... seen, the latter sporting with their young ones on the plains, the former preferring to browse on the slopes and uplands; and innumerable birds of all shapes and sizes enlivened the scene with their varied gyrations, and filled the air with melody. ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... (food)—constantly. The third word I should add is Steuern (taxes). It is all very well to sit by some neutral fireside reading Goethe or Schopenhauer, while listening to the Meistersinger von Nurnberg, or the "Melody in F," and lull yourself into the belief that the Germans are a race of idealists. This touch is used to a considerable extent in German propaganda. Any one familiar, however, with conditions in modern Germany knows that Germans ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... gale snatches thee for his lyre, With mad hand crashing melody frantic, While he pours forth his mighty desire To leap down on the eager Atlantic, Whose arms ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... lullaby. It had in it a familiar strain which carried little Mrs. Moira back to Beryl's baby days. Then the lullaby swung into the deeper tones of a Christmas anthem and again into a tempestuous outburst of melody, as though Beryl had let loose all at once the riotous feelings that ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... effluvia cling, Hang on the grass, impregnate earth and skies. With nostrils opening wide, o'er hill, o'er dale, The vigorous hounds pursue, with every breath Inhale the grateful steam, quick pleasures sting 360 Their tingling nerves, while they their thanks repay, And in triumphant melody confess The titillating joy. Thus on the air Depend the hunter's hopes. When ruddy streaks At eve forebode a blustering stormy day, Or lowering clouds blacken the mountain's brow, When nipping frosts, and the keen biting blasts Of the dry parching east, menace the trees With tender blossoms ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... in silence, and a strange golden light that had shone on the great stove faded away; so also the light died down in the silver candelabra. A soft, pathetic melody stole gently through the room. It came from the old, old spinnet that was ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... under Marcia's direction. There were piano solos that were not tedious,—full of melody and feeling, and with few of the pyrotechnical displays which are too common in modern virtuoso-playing; vocal duets and quartets from the Italian operas, and from Orfeo and other German masterpieces; and solos, if not equal to the efforts ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... executed with a great deale of mirth. I ffor feare of being inuied I will obmitt onely that there weare playes, mirths, and bataills for sport, goeing and coming with cryes; each plaid his part. In the publick place the women danced with melody. The yong men that indeavoured to gett a pryse, indeavoured to clime up a great post, very smooth, and greased with oyle of beare & oriniack grease. The stake was att least of 15 foot high. The price was a knife or other thing. We layd the stake there, ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... proud of their number, and came hither through so many cities of Haemonia, {and} through so many of Achaia,[35] and engaged in a contest in words such as these: "Cease imposing upon the vulgar with your empty melody. If you have any confidence {in your skill}, ye Thespian Goddesses, contend with us; we will not be outdone in voice or skill; and we are as many in number. Either, if vanquished, withdraw from the spring formed by the steed of Medusa, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... music and its worthy exponents gives, it is believed, full showing of propriety to the course hereinafter pursued,—that of mingling the praises of both. But, in truth, there was little need to speak in praise of music. Its tones of melody and harmony require only to be heard in order to awaken in the breast emotions the most delightful. And yet who can speak at all of an agency so charming in other than words of warmest praise? Again: if music be a thing of such consummate beauty, what else can be done but to tender an ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... face with the first great sorrow of his life—felt as if his heart must break under it, he loved to hear the gipsy musician softly caressing the strings of his violin as he played close to his ear the sweetest, saddest melody among all the sweet, sad melodies in the Magyar tongue. It ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... one of the prettiest and most delightful and loneliest spots that nestle on the bosom of the earth. An almost oppressive silence reigns in the woods, and nothing seems to stir visibly. You can hear the wind playing its softest melody through the tops of the great trees, but the leaves farther down only sway noiselessly in a graceful silence. It might be too lonely, only for the variety and perfection that Nature displays at every step and ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... of gold richly inwrought, Each bearing in a howdah gaily decked A fair competitor for beauty's prize, With merry comrades and some sober friend; The vina, bansuli, sitar and harp Filling the air with sweetest melody, While rippling laughter from each howdah rang, And sweetest odors, as from op'ning flowers, Breathed from their ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... feel, but there may be something in them that feels,—a glorious intelligence, as much nobler and more swift than mine, as these rays, which are its body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh;—the spirit of all light, and truth, and melody, and revolving hours." ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... political abilities: he was withal a lyric poet, who under colour of exercising his art, performed as great things as the most excellent lawgivers. For his odes were so many persuasives to obedience and unanimity, as by means of melody and numbers they had great grace and power, they softened insensibly the manners of the audience, drew them off from the animosities which then prevailed, and united them in zeal for excellence ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... vehicle of devotional feeling, Hebrew reigned supreme. The earliest additions to the fixed liturgy of the Synagogue were prose-poems. They were "Occasional Prayers" composed by the precentor for a special occasion. An appropriate melody or chant accompanied the new hymn, and if the poem and melody met the popular taste, both won a permanent place in the local liturgy. The hymns were unrhymed and unmetrical, but they may have been written in the form of alphabetical acrostics, such as appear ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... officers of justice alarmed them. Many were drawn to the spot by mere curiosity to hear what kind of new and unheard-of doctrines these foreign teachers, whose arrival had caused so much talk, would set forth. Others were attracted by the melody of the psalms, which were sung in a French version, after the custom in Geneva. A great number came to hear these sermons as so many amusing comedies such was the buffoonery with which the pope, the fathers of the ecclesiastical council of Trent, purgatory, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... old and young, and sire and son, To meet them crowd the way, With shouts, and mirth, and melody, The debt of love ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... laughed a hearty, wholesome laugh, pleasant to hear. There was nothing of self-consciousness in it, and no protest could have more clearly proved that the mental comment of Commines' shrewdness had read the broken melody aright. ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... into words. To follow, even anticipate composer. Bach's absolute knowledge. Fire of Prometheus. Inner sanctuary of art. Science of acoustics. Prime elements. Dr. Marx and Helmholtz. Motive. Beethoven's fifth symphony. Phrase. Period. Simple melody. "God Save the King." Our "America." Masters of counterpoint. Bach's fugues. Monophony and polyphony. Classical and romantic. Heretic and hero. Hadow on musical laws. Form the manifestation of these. Good music versus ragtime. Dr. ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore
... she stood, And through the singing strings Wound those wan hands of folded prayer In murmurous preludings. Then, like a voice, the harp rang high Its melody, as climb the sky, Melting against the melting ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... accompanying of a song so as to set off a tolerable voice, or aid a weak one, and the attracting a circle of beaus round a young lady, while she exhibits the nimbleness of her fingers in the execution of a darling waltz, or touches the hearts of the fond youths with a plaintive melody accompanied with false notes. Thus far, or but little further, does music extend, save in a few scattered instances. Like a plover-call, it is used to allure the fluttering tribe into the meshes; but when it has done its office in that kind, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... at last entered their accustomed dwelling. When they asked him who he was, he answered, a lutanist, nor did the trial belie his profession. For when the lyre was offered him, he tuned its strings, ordered and governed the chords with his quill, and with ready modulation poured forth a melody pleasant to the ear. Now they had three snakes, of whose venom they were wont to mix a strengthening compound for the food of Balder, and even now a flood of slaver was dripping on the food from the open mouths of the serpents. And some of the maidens would, for ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and is at such a comfortable height, that if we meet by accident, we run away from each other by design. We have already made two breakfast-tables: yet I am meek; he is sullen: I make courtesies; he returns not bows.—Sullen creature, and a rustic!—I go to my harpsichord; melody enrages him. He is worse than Saul; for Saul could be gloomily pleased with the music even of the man ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... the same tune could be played on both these vocal instruments, the difference in their timbre would make the value of the melody ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... all about gleam vast cohorts and constellations of living stars, pouring crystalline melody from ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... compositions, "La Vestale," "Le Due Illustre Rivale," the "Elena da Feltre," and others, obtained a very considerable temporary popularity in Italy, but were, I think, little known elsewhere. They were not first-rate musical productions, but had a good deal of agreeable, though not very original, melody, and were favorable to a declamatory, passionate style of singing, having a great deal of dramatic power and pathos. My sister was fond of them, and gave them with great effect, and the celebrated prima donna, Madame ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... travellers now within that valley Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid, ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever And ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... him, while picking up the pieces of the mirror, that the pretty little song of Queen Hortense had become a national air, and even an official one, since the regimental bands had substituted that gentle melody for the fierce Marsellaise, and that our soldiers, strange to say, had not fought any the worse for it. But the Colonel had already opened the window, and was ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... where she had parted from Heimbert, Dona Clara was sitting one evening in deep thought. The guitar on her knees gave forth a few solitary chords, dreamily drawn from it, as it were, by her delicate hands, and at length forming themselves into a melody, while the following words dropped softly from her partly ...
— The Two Captains • Friedrich de La Motte-Fouque
... line of Lotze's thinking, as expressed in this sentence from his Micro-cosmos: "The series of Cosmic Periods, ... each link of which is bound together with every other; ... the successive order of these sections shall compose the unity of an onward-advancing melody." And, so through the pages of Heraclitus, the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, Empedocles, Virgil, down to the present time, in Nietzsche, and his followers, we find this thought of Universal Rhythm—that fundamental conception of ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... spurned the lessening realms of earthly night. What heavenly notes burst on my ravished ears, What beauteous spirits met my dazzled eye! Hark! louder swells the music of the spheres, 30 More clear the forms of speechless bliss float by, And heavenly gestures suit aethereal melody. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... image of whose dying hours I had so recently called up before him? Or was it the recollection of a still brighter and more recently extinguished "star," which thus troubled his wandering fancy?—There was another pause, and again the fitful breeze of association awakened the sad and plaintive melody of the AEolian lyre; but I could ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... seldom rises above the expression of a cheerful gratitude and contentment. He had not the subtlety and elevation of Herbert, but he surpassed him in the grace, melody, sensuous beauty, and fresh lyrical impulse of his verse. The conceits of the metaphysical school appear in Herrick only in the form of an occasional pretty quaintness. He is the poet of English parish festivals and of English flowers, the primrose, the whitethorn, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... his spouse. To see these two figures, the General, a long haggard man, with limbs like a skeleton, and Madame la Generale, a short fat dumpling, bobbing opposite each other like half-drunken Indians, to the wild melody of Possum up de Gum Tree, and endeavoring to make a spring into the air, was very remarkable, and far more edifying a spectacle than any European ballet could possibly have furnished." But Jackson was only less proud of his accomplishments as ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... to the Fair," and played that sparkling melody three times through, accenting the notes in the third round in a most artistic and lively manner by bending his body in small jerks and tapping with his foot ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... so gratifying to Castilian pride, have made the name of Gonsalvo as familiar to his countrymen as that of the Cid, which, floating down the stream of popular melody, has been treasured up as a part of the national history. His shining qualities, even more than his exploits, have been often made the theme of fiction; and fiction, as usual, has dealt with them in a fashion to leave ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... insisted, her fingers breaking suddenly into a livelier melody. "Tell it me at once? You were there all the time. I could see you watching. Tell me ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and bee, The chorus of the breezes, streams, and groves, All the grand music to which Nature moves, Are wasted melody To her; the world of sound a tuneless void; While even ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... canto occurs the famous song Magali, so popular in Provence. The melody is printed at the end of the volume. Mireio's prayer in the tenth canto is in five-syllable ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... of writing at the top expressed that it was the composer's original copy, presented by him, Christopher Julian, to the author of the song. Seeing that he noticed the sheet somewhat lengthily, Ethelberta remarked that it had been an offering made to her a long time ago—a melody written to one of her ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... thoroughly aroused. And his devotion to a girl in England whom no one in his regiment had ever seen, and of whom he did not even possess a likeness, was next door to being pitiable. His voice was like a raven's, with something rather less than a raven's sense of melody; he was very prone to sing, and his songs were mournful ones. He was not a social acquisition in any generally accepted sense, although his language was completely free from blasphemy or coarseness. His ideas were too cut and dried to make conversation ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... the Fijian gathered a pile of rotten wood, but before he could set fire to the heap I was on my feet clawing my way into the darkness in front. From somewhere out of the inky night came the voice of Edith Herndon lifted up in a little Italian melody that I had heard her singing the night we left Levuka. It seemed to me that she suspected my near presence, and that she was singing to guide me to the spot where ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... said the jumping about destroyed the ground-floor—wore it away and made the room like a well. And whenever it rained hard and the water rushed in he had to bail it out. Dad always looked on the dark side of things. He had no ear for music either. His want of appreciation of melody often made the home miserable when it might have been the merriest on earth. Sometimes it happened that he had to throw down the plough-reins for half-an-hour or so to run round the wheat-paddock after a horse or an old cow; then, if he found Dave, or Sal, or any of us, sitting inside ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... waltz time, so bassoon and horn to those dulcet measures; and then, with one accord, a hundred voices joined them in the old, sweet melody: ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... Stesichorus, a minstrel of the early period, and the little rural 'mimes' or interludes of Sophron are lost, and we have only fragments of Epicharmus. But it seems certain that these poets, predecessors of Theocritus, liked to mingle with their own composition strains of rustic melody, volks-lieder, ballads, love-songs, ditties, and dirges, such as are still chanted by the peasants of Greece and Italy. Thus in Syracuse and the other towns of the coast, Theocritus would have always before his eyes the spectacle of refined and luxurious ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... saxophone has its friends and its foes. Its detractors agree that the late Emperor Nero was a maligned man; cruel, perhaps, in some of his aspects, but not so cruel as has been made out in the case against him. It was a fiddle he played while Rome burned—it might have been a saxophone. But to the melody-loving heart of the black race in our land the mooing tones of this long-waisted, dark-complected horn carry messages as of great joy. It had remained, though, for the resourceful Rev. Wickliffe to prove that it might be made to fill a nobler ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... supper, was more for the sake of good cheer than for needed warmth, and at last it was dispensed with. Thrushes and other birds of richer and fuller song had come, and morning and evening we left the door open that we might enjoy the varied melody. ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... and which, in some degree, have made him with them what Racine is with the French, are generally the perfect purity, clearness, elegance, and sweetness of his language, and, in particular, the soft melody and the extreme loveliness of his songs. Perhaps no poet ever possessed in a greater degree the talent of briefly bringing together all the essential features of a pathetic situation; the songs with which the characters make their exit, are almost always the purest concentrated musical extract of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... singing of Thompson, whose voice was tolerably good and ear very correct, had not only the effect of preventing their working being heard, but amused the sentinel, who remained with his back to the wall listening to the melody. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... songs for childhood, for girlhood, boyhood, and sacred songs—the whole melody of childhood and youth bound in one cover. Full of lovely pictures; sweet mother and baby faces; charming bits of scenery, and the dear old Bible story-telling ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... broidery-frame, and took up the mandoline, whose only title to be considered a musical instrument is that Mozart uses it for the pizzicato accompaniment which Don Giovanni plays while he sings "Deh Vieni." Filomena, knowing nothing about Mozart, used her mandoline for the delivery of a melody which she performed with great skill, though it was but a silly tune and sounded sillier than it was because of the irritating tremolo. It was like her embroidery—very well done but not worth doing. She had been taught the mandoline by the nuns, who had also taught her needlework. ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... an attempt to sketch the origin of poetry—an attempt which attracted the attention of Bishop Percy in his remarks introductory to the Reliques—proposed more than one hundred years ago to discover the source of the combined dance, song, melody, and mimetic action of primitive compositions in the common festivals of clan life. The student of comparative literature will probably regard Dr. Brown's theory as a curious anticipation of the historical method in a study which, in spite of M. Taine's efforts, has made so ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... excitement and delight. Such opportunities are rarely given to a man. Even that other most beautiful adventure—yes, he could think this already!—might have been tame beside this one. He looked long at Joan, long into the fire, and she lay still, with the brooding beauty of that first-heard melody upon her face. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... and heard unconsciously the nightingales, she grew conscious of another song that mingled with theirs. It was a human voice, clear and sweet as an angel's, and it sang a melody she knew in little snatches that seemed to begin and end in a sigh. The voice came nearer and paused beneath a fig tree, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... I believe you!" shouted O'Shaughnessy, with an energy of voice and manner that created a hearty laugh on all sides. "It's few people ever mistook it for a Venetian melody. Hand over the punch,—the sherry, I mean. When I was in the Clare militia, we always went in to dinner to 'Tatter Jack Walsh,' a sweet air, and had 'Garryowen' for a quick-step. Ould M'Manus, when he got the regiment, wanted to change: he said, they were damned vulgar tunes, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... landscape, mountain, hill, and tree has secrets of charm and beauty waiting for us. In every patch of meadow or wheat, in every leaf and flower, the trained eye will see beauty which would ravish an angel. The cultured ear will find harmony in forest and field, melody in the babbling brook, and untold pleasure in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the strings upon the harp of God, because without it no real lasting joy could be had by mankind. In due time its benefits shall result to the entire human race; and all who appreciate it will sing aloud and rejoice with exceeding joy. They will have melody in their hearts and upon their lips because of this wonderful provision made by Jehovah for man's benefit. For thousands of years divine wisdom has been working out his plan concerning man; and the ransom sacrifice is the very pivotal part of that plan. Its importance ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... and meadows, the birds seemed animated into joyous activity or incessant battle, by the business of nest-building or love. Whilst all around, from earth and air, streamed the ceaseless voice of universal melody and song. ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... iniquity? I answer, there are many reasons for it. 1. The preaching of the gospel, and so the publication of the name of Christ, is musical and very taking to the children of men. A Saviour! a Redeemer! a loving, sin-pardoning Jesus! what better words can come from man? what better melody can be heard? 'Son of man,' said God to the prophet, 'Lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song'; or, as a song of loves, 'of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument.' (Ezek. 33:32) The gospel is a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... speaks of other times— A sorrowful delight! The melody of distant chimes; The sound of waves by night; The wind that with so many a tone Some cord within can thrill; These may have language all thine own, To him a ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... eye of Dr. Silence, and stopped. He put his pipe back into his pocket and began to hum softly—that underbreath humming of a nondescript melody I knew so well and ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... great oak, convinced that no foe was near. His own five splendid senses had told him so, and the fact had been confirmed by an unrivaled sentinel hidden among the leaves over his head, a small bird that poured forth a wonderful volume of song. Were any other coming the bird would cease his melody and fly away, but Tayoga felt that this tiny feathered being was his ally and would not leave because of him. The song had wonderful power, too, soothing his senses and casting a pleasing spell. His imaginative ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... mean you? Marry, I know not. She is a Sanford and has a Sanford's wealth, but 'twas not for me. She adores a horse and worships a horseman. This I gathered from our too brief converse. I strove to win her ear with poesie, but she bade me cease. Her soul is not attuned to melody,—she'd none of mine. She preferred my ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... musical. And to recur to a more familiar instance, we shall find the Welsh tongue, on examination, to be in fact very poetic, and peculiarly capable of giving force and expression—whether of grandeur, of terror, or of melody—to the idea the words are intended to convey. Let the reader who understands the Welsh pronunciation, judge whether the following distich is not an echo to, and as it were a picture of, the sense of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... boatmen, who invariably, when the rowing is not too hard, moving up or down with the tide, accompany the stroke of their oars with the sound of their voices. I told you formerly that I thought I could trace distinctly some popular national melody with which I was familiar in almost all their songs; but I have been quite at a loss to discover any such foundation for many that I have heard lately, and which have appeared to me extraordinarily wild and unaccountable. The way in which the chorus strikes in with the burthen, between each phrase ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... seeking eloquent preachers. "Ah," he said, "the Church in England, which is my Church,—the Church which I love,—is beautiful. She is as a maiden, all glorious with fine raiment. But alas! she is mute. She does not sing. She has no melody. But the time cometh in which she shall sing. I, myself,—I am a poor singer in the great choir." In saying which Mr. Emilius no doubt intended to allude to his eloquence ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... left it, and for some four years was supported, as a hermit, by the Dalton Family. By the end of that time, through prayer, contemplation and self-denial, he had attained the three stages of mystical life which he describes as calor, dulcor, canor; (heat, sweetness, melody.) The next period of his life was less easy. Having left the protection of the Daltons, and being without those means of subsistence which are within the reach of priest or monk, this hermit depended for his daily bread on other men's kindness. Not that ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... extended form, I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, the Dial, The New World, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,—some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... the Essay we have just been looking at, I find that "his books have no melody, no emotion, no humor, no relief to the dead prosaic level. We wander forlorn in a lack-lustre landscape. No bird ever sang in these gardens of the dead. The entire want of poetry in so transcendent a mind betokens the disease, and like a hoarse voice ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... to catch a faint melodious sound that seemed to fill the air. No music on Earth could equal it! Before me arose a vision of beautiful flowers—flowers that had thoughts as beautiful as themselves, and that through the genius of a man poured forth their souls in a volume of melody, so beautiful ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... and only as a pure proclamation of law attain to the ear of Heaven. Nay, whoso among men is able to plant his ear high enough above this rude clangor may, in like manner, so hear it, that it shall be to him melody, solace, fruition, a perpetual harvest of the heart's dearest wishes, a perpetual corroboration of that which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... band wound up with a series of chords, leaving the principal flute-player sustaining one long note and then dropping to the octave below, from which he started upon a series of runs, paused, and commenced a solo full of florid passages introductory to a delicious melody—one of those plaintive airs which, once heard, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... Rams, &c.] The Sirens according to the poets, were three sea-monsters, half women and half fish: their names were Parthenope, Lignea and Leucosia. Their usual residence was about the island of Sicily, where, by the charming melody of their voices, they used to detain those that heard them, and then transform them into some ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... and study, roaming over the wide fields of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Italian, and English literatures, and studying hard at mathematics, science, theology, and music,—a curious combination. To his love of music we owe the melody of all his poetry, and we note it in the rhythm and balance which make even his mighty prose arguments harmonious. In "Lycidas," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso," "Arcades," "Comus," and a few "Sonnets," we have the poetic results of this retirement at Horton,—few, indeed, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... and awoke in the darkened room. As she was in the act of falling the faint sound of distant music, mingled with the noise of far away rushing waters, seemed to fall upon her ears, increasing in strength and melody ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... such a passionate earnestness that, to this day I must believe, was caused, not by the beauty of the verses, or the corresponding melody, but rather by some superstitious feeling that their chanting would prevent the plague infecting the bread while it was baking, or perhaps the air served as an hour-glass telling them by its termination that now was the time to take the bread out of the oven. As they who are wont to use the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... (for so it is called) is not artistic to the eye and loses all its poetry when one sees its owner blowing his nose into it but the notes emanating from it breathe a vague sense of melody ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... just in proportion as it approaches that unity of lyrical effect, as if a song or ballad were still lying at the root of it, all the various expression of the conflict of character and circumstance falling at last into the compass of a single melody, or musical theme. As, historically, the earliest classic drama arose out of the chorus, from which this or that person, this or that episode, detached itself, so, into the unity of a choric song the perfect drama ever tends to return, its intellectual scope deepened, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... mountain," which was hung with red and white roses; a gold ring was placed on the summit, on which, as the queen appeared, a white falcon was made to "descend as out of the sky"—"and then incontinent came down an angel with great melody, and set a close crown of gold upon the falcon's head; and in the same pageant sat Saint Anne with all her issue beneath her; and Mary Cleophas with her four children, of the which children one made a goodly oration to the queen, of the fruitfulness of St. Anne, ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... too often that the Finn is musical and poetical to the core, indeed, he has a strong and romantic love for tales and stories, songs and melody, while riddles are to be met with at every turn, and the funny thing is that these riddles or mental puzzles often most mercilessly ridicule ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... of their own music, and wild, strange melody it is. It seems to inspire one with a wish to dance. The Puerto Ricans are very fond of this amusement, and when they hear the music of the band, they gather around ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... be sentimental and give me all your attention.' It was a strange, wild howl that he gave forth; but such as, he declared, was an exact imitation of the savage Albanian mode,—laughing, the while, at our disappointment, who had expected a wild Eastern melody." ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... enter. But love and loyalty heed nothing but the object sought, and I was hunting about for the dark doorway which opened upon the staircase leading to her room when—and this was the great moment of my life—a sudden stream of melody floated down into that noisome court, which from its clearness, its accuracy, its richness, and its feeling startled me as I had never before been startled even by the first notes of the world's greatest singers. What a voice for a place like this! What ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... feeling, a stronger sense of being nearer some perfect truth than a Gothic cathedral or an Etruscan villa. All around you, under the Concord sky, there still floats the influence of that human faith melody, transcendent and sentimental enough for the enthusiast or the cynic respectively, reflecting an innate hope—a common interest in common things and common men—a tune the Concord bards are ever playing, while they pound away at ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... shoe, it, being something worn, yet preserved the mould of the little foot that had trodden it, a slender, coquettish little foot, a shapely, active little foot: a foot, perchance, to trip it gay and lightly to a melody, or hurry, swift, untiring, upon ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... counterpoint or basses to tunes or songs." Music became, broadly speaking, tunes with an accompaniment. The fugue was no contradiction of this. Even in its heyday, though the parts were ever so independent of one another, the mass of tone forms a great melody, or melos, moving on a firm harmonic foundation in the lowest part. The great choral fugues of Bach and Handel have often in the accompaniment a bass moving independently of the bass voice part, and this instrumental ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... Salvation Army soldiers; "sing with us! It is good to sing." They started a well-known melody. They struck their guitars and repeated the same verse over and over. They got one or two of those sitting nearest to join in, but now sounded down by the door a light street song. Notes struggled against notes, words against words, guitar against whistle. The women's strong, ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... by, and as they passed, the hum of voices and laughter and the cheery lilt of island melody died away, and the paddlers looked shoreward to the motionless figure of Prout, who, with the child by his side, seemed to heed naught but the wide sweep of ocean ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... below. Meanwhile, for lack of other possible conversation, Zaidie began to sing the last verse of "Never Again." The melody almost exactly described the upward motion of the Astronef, and she could see that it was instantly understood, for when she had finished their two voices joined in an almost exact imitation ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... are only so much of the nature, effects and manifestation of hell, for hell and evil are only two words for one and the same thing. . . . On the other hand, all that is sweet, delightful and amiable in the world, in the serenity of air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colours, the fragrance of smells, the splendour of precious stones, is nothing else but heaven breaking through the veil of this world, manifesting itself in such a degree and darting forth in such variety so ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... evening, in a bower of jasmine, with their boy playing at their feet. There had been music in the garden; but now the singers and lute-players had withdrawn, leaving the master and mistress alone in the lingering twilight, tremulous with inarticulate melody of unseen birds. There was a secret voice in the hour seeking vainly for utterance—a word waiting to be spoken at the centre of ...
— The Lost Word - A Christmas Legend of Long Ago • Henry Van Dyke
... Adonis had stood before her now, rolling his eyes, and his phrases hot from the annuals, the flourishing matron might have sent him to the servants' hall with a wave of her white and jeweled hand. But the melody disarms this sort of brutal criticism—a woman's voice relating love's young dream; and then the picture—a matron still handsome pouring into a lovely virgin's ear the last thing she ought; the young beauty's eyes mimicking ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... and the time, 12/8 moderato or allegro, like the time, simple four in a bar. But if the movement be adagio, largo assai, or andante maestoso, either all the quavers, or a crotchet followed by a quaver, should be beaten, according to the form of the melody, or the predominant design. ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... itself was a tree of gold and silver[28] spreading into innumerable branches, covered with every variety of curious birds, their plumage appropriately imitated by the corresponding tints of precious stones, which warbled in beautiful melody as they poured forth from their bills the musical ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... practiced bowing. If he saw the hunter motionless on the brink of the crag, the fiddler gave no intimation. His every faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging iteration of the sweet melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of effect, an inspiration, it might almost have seemed, incongruous with the infirmities of the crazy old fiddle. He was like a creature under the sway of a spell, and apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the enchantment of sound was the odd procession ...
— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... shout "Boo!" three times during the round at moments selected by himself. There had been many more of these degrading travesties on the sacred game, and I had writhed to see them. Playing freak golf-matches is to my mind like ragging a great classical melody. But of the whole collection this one, considering the sentimental interest and the magnitude of the stakes, seemed to me the most terrible. My face, I imagine, betrayed my ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... Dungeness towered above the live-oak forest of the southern end of Cumberland Island. It was with regret I turned my back upon that sea, the sounds of which had so long struck upon my ear with their sweet melody. It seemed almost a moan that was borne to me now as the soft waves laved the sides of my graceful craft, as though to give her ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... long, vibrating twang quavered through the room. Swithin turned and saw Rozsi sitting at the czymbal; the notes rang under the little hammers in her hands, incessant, metallic, rising and falling with that strange melody. Kasteliz had fixed his glowing eyes on her; Boleskey, nodding his head, was staring at the floor; Margit, with a pale face, stood like ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Japanese example of Incident and the Unique. Music had attained the noblest form of symmetry in the eighteenth century, but in music, too, symmetry had since grown dull; and momentary music, the music of phase and of fragment, succeeded. The sense of symmetry is strong in a complete melody—of symmetry in its most delicate and lively and least stationary form—balance; whereas the leit-motif is isolated. In domestic architecture Symmetry and Incident make a familiar antithesis—the very commonplace of rival methods of art. But the same antithesis exists in less ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... infinite space in all the grandeur of littleness! Perched on a speck of the Universe, every wind of Heaven strikes into his blood the coldness of death; his soul floats away from his body like the melody from the string. Day and night, like dust on the wheel, he is rolled along the heavens, through a labyrinth of worlds, and all the creations of God are flaming on every side, further than even his imagination can reach. Is this a creature to make for himself a crown of glory, ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... hearing of that chime, all the angels who had been working turned to play, and all who had been playing gave themselves joyfully to work. Those who had been singing, and making melody on different instruments, fell silent and began to listen. Those who had been walking alone in meditation met together in companies to talk. And those who had been far away on errands to the Earth and other planets came homeward like a flight of swallows ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... trifle more or less of humidity in the atmosphere, the absence or the intervention of a few clouds, a different hour or a different frame of mind, may have diminished our pleasure, for these are enjoyments which, like the flavour of delicate wines, or the melody of sweet music, are deranged by the condition of the nerves, or a want of harmony, ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... without harmony.[1996] In some parts of Greece boys were trained to render hymns musically in the daily service and on special occasions. The general character of old Greek music is indicated in the Delphian hymn to Apollo discovered in 1893;[1997] the melody is simple ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... shining cities, the sparkling villages of thy winding shores, thy antique convents, thy grey and silent castles, the purple glories of thy radiant grape, the vivid tints of thy teeming flowers, the fragrance of thy sky, the melody of thy birds, whose carols tell the pleasures of their sunny woods; are they less lovely now, less ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Reichstag building, whose construction was begun at the time of the Prussian victories: "May this building remind them (the deputies) that it is their duty to watch over that which their fathers have conquered." But this is a pure and simple melody compared to ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... get above my daily work, and be perpetually thinking of God and His will, and consciously realising communion with Him?' But there is such a thing as having an undercurrent of consciousness running all through a man's life and mind; such a thing as having a melody sounding in our ears perpetually, 'so sweet we know not we are listening to it' until it stops, and then, by the poverty of the naked and silent atmosphere, we know how musical were the sounds that we scarcely knew that we heard, and yet did hear so well high above ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... moments before, in the hope that that worthy Knight might be either leaning over the fence or seated on the broken-down porch. He was anxious McGaw should hear a few improvised stanzas of a new ballad he had composed to that delightful old negro melody, "Massa's in de cold, cold ground," in which the much-beloved Southern planter and the thoroughly hated McGaw ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the day of redemption" (Eph. 4:30). "Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. 5:17-20). "Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand" ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... first to be fascinated by this marvelous melody. "Dull indeed must be the ear that thrills not on hearing it," says Audubon, and its effect upon him is worth telling. He was traveling through a swamp, where he had reason to suspect the presence of venomous snakes and other reptiles. While moving with great ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... stopped screaming, or if the folds of the leaf prevented his hearing her. By and by he thought he heard a whistle, as of some one whistling a tune. Yes; it really must be some one whistling, he decided, for he could follow the strains of a pretty Munchkin melody that Unc Nunkie used to sing to him. The sounds were low and sweet and, although they reached Ojo's ears very faintly, ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... mountain. At three o'clock in the afternoon we passed through the line of snow, shortly after through the precipitous canon of San Felipe, and towards evening went into camp, the grass being more than knee high, the air redolent with the perfume of flowers and the sweet melody ...
— Frontier service during the rebellion - or, A history of Company K, First Infantry, California Volunteers • George H. Pettis
... to bed to listen tremblingly while the dare-devil dance of the flute tripped ghostlike through the corridors. And falling asleep with the laughing demon of wind and melody cascading wildly through the mad scene from Lucia, she dreamt that Carl had captured an Esquimau with his flute and weaving a suit of basket armor for him, had dispatched him by aeroplane to lead Diane's gypsy cart into the Everglades of Florida, the home-state of Norman Westfall until ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the richness and music of English language, and who in temper and moral standard are quick to respond to English manliness and tenderness? The spell is to be found mainly in three things—(1) in the quaint stateliness of Spenser's imaginary world and its representatives; (2) in the beauty and melody of his numbers, the abundance and grace of his poetic ornaments, in the recurring and haunting rhythm of numberless passages, in which thought and imagery and language and melody are interwoven in one perfect and satisfying ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... Harry Gill and the Idiot Boy; but the deep and tremulous tenderness of sentiment, the strong-winged flight of fancy, the excelling and unvarying purity, which pervade all the writings of Wordsworth, and the exquisite melody of his lyrical poems, must ever continue to attract and purify the mind. The very excesses into which his one-sided theory betrayed him, acted as a useful counter-agent to the prevailing bad ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... sitting on the foot of his bunk reading. Mike had gone up the creek on a prospecting expedition. Presently a magpie in a dead tree at a little distance burst into full-throated melody. Done dropped his book to listen. That clarion of jubilation always delighted him. It seemed to him that if the young Australian republic men were talking of ever came into being its anthem must ring with the wild, free ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... scathless those that sing such song! Grief, their instructress, of the Muses chief To hearts by grief unvanquished, to their hearts Had taught a melody that neither spared Singer nor listener. Pale when they began, Paler it left them. He not less was pale Who, out of trance awaking, thanked them thus: "Now know I of that sorrow in you fixed; What, and how great it is, and bless that Power Who called me forth from nothing for your sakes, ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... of his day! There was no opera now! That fellow Wagner had ruined everything; no melody left, nor any voices to sing it. Ah! the wonderful singers! Gone! He sat watching the old scenes acted, a numb ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Stefano," replied the young gondolier. "When floating beneath her window in my gondola, I have addressed her in such rude strains of melody as I best knew how to frame. She has replied in tones so liquid and pure that the angels might ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... the Queen was delivered of a male child, so beautiful that it filled all beholders with delight. His eyes were as sunshine, his forehead like the glow of the full moon, his lips like clustered roses, and his cry like the melody of many instruments; and the Queen loved him, and ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... misanthropizing under the pangs of grief or unrequited love—pent up in its own solitude, unpitied and uncared for—and filled with dark thoughts, and sad sounds, and tones of plaintive winds, sighing through the cypress and doleful yew with mournful melody around the resting-place of the loved and lost, to submissive lamentings, and slow stealing tears that assuage its aching anguish and tranquillize the spirit, leading it to the hope of a brighter future, in whose dawning beams ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... mournfully, This midnight wind doth sigh! Like some sweet, plaintive melody Of ages long gone by; It speaks a tale of other years, Of hopes that bloomed to die— Of sunny smiles that set in tears, ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... engaged, becomes sweet and harmonious in his rhythm. If we turn to a prose-writer of the very first place, we are instantly conscious of a still greater difference. How flashy and shallow Macaulay's periods seem, as we listen to the fine ground-base that rolls in the melody of the following passage of Burke's, and it is taken from one of the least ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... music of your speech, In quavers of delicious breath; The conscious melody may teach A lover ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... entranced by the whiling witchery that presides over it consequent upon the almost divine productions of Mozart, Haydn, and Handel, whether these are executed by magician concert parts in deep and highly matured melody from artistic modulated intonations of the finely cultured human voice, or played by some fairy-fingered musician upon the trembling strings of the harp or piano, comes the charming delight we experience from the mastery of English prose, and the ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... of association, all the influence to which we are unconsciously subjected by melody, by harmony, or even by the mere sound of words, we may say that style is distinguished from manner by the author's power of projecting his own emotion into what he writes. The stylist is occupied with the impression which certain things ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... very top of its progress; all the youths and maidens were bright and smiling; the musicians scraped and plucked like mad, and the strings quivered with happy melody. All about against the wall the elders ranged at gaze, recalling wistfully or cheerfully, according to their temperaments, the days when they, too, tripped lightly to music and made love in a measure, ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of music in literature we have George Sand's phrase, more lyrical and musical than picturesque. We have, too, the gentle, soothing strophes of Sully Prudhomme and the vague melody of the Verlaine songs: "De la musique avant toute chose." It would be absurd to exaggerate the influence exercised by George Sand, and to attribute to her an importance which does not belong to her, ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... Kumara-Sambhava. But the tune of these voluptuous outbreaks is set to the varied harmony of Nature's symphony. The moonbeams of the summer evening, resonant with the flow of fountains, acknowledge it as a part of its own melody. In its rhythm sways the Kadamba forest, glistening in the first cool rain of the season; and the south breezes, carrying the scent of the mango blossoms, temper it with ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... behind her, and the mountain-top was lonely for a time. Only for a time. Up the hill came a fantastical fellow, alternately singing and sighing, for it seemed that the fierce heat vexed him despite of his melody. He was a strange ape, tall and lean and withered, with a wry shoulder like a gibbous moon and a wry leg like a stricken tree, and his face was as the face of a goblin, with a long, peaked nose, and loose, protruding lips, traitors to the few and evil teeth that interwalled his livid ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of the Bororos—purely vocal—had three different rhythms: one not unlike a slow waltz, most plaintive and melancholy; the second was rather of a loud warlike character, vivacious, with ululations and modulations. The third and most common was a sad melody, not too quick nor too slow, with temporary accelerations to suit words of a more slippery character in their pronunciation, or when sung ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... roe of those experiences in the Greek class. Every bluebird I see does that for me. The good old doctor, one morning in early spring, rhapsodized for five minutes on the singing of a bluebird he had heard on his way to class, telling how the little fellow was pouring forth a melody that made the world and all life seem more beautiful and blessed. We loved him for that, because it proved that he was a big-souled human being; and pupils like to discover human qualities in their ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
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