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Lute   Listen
verb
Lute  v. t.  To play on a lute, or as on a lute. "Knaves are men That lute and flute fantastic tenderness."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Lute" Quotes from Famous Books



... position of Luther Sylvester when he fell off the dock at Orham. The tide was out, and he went into the soft mud, all under. When the folks who saw him tumble got to the edge and looked over, they saw a round, black thing sticking out of the mire, and, judging 'twas Lute's head, they asked him how he felt. 'I don't know yet,' sputters Lute, 'whether I'm drowned or smothered, but I'm somewheres betwixt and between.' That's me, Abbie, on that guardian business. I'm ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln

... amuse ourselves with looking at them." So the two climbed the tree and, peering in, heard Shaykh Ibrahim say, "O my lady, I have cast away all gravity mine by the drinking of wine, but 'tis not sweet save with the soft sounds of the lute-strings it combine." "By Allah," replied Anis al-Jalis, "O Shaykh Ibrahim, an we had but some instrument of music our joyance were complete." Hearing this he rose to his feet and the Caliph said to Ja'afar, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... were written Spenser had done his work. Color, music, fragrance were stealing back again into English song, and "golden-tongued romance with serene lute" stood at the door of the new age, waiting for ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... wander wide To old Ilissus' distant side, Deserted stream, and mute? 15 Wild Arun[14] too has heard thy strains, And Echo, 'midst my native plains, Been soothed by Pity's lute. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... attend mee. They keepe themselves in satin, velvets, gold, At their owne charges, and are diligent Daies, moneths, and yeeres, to gaine an amorous smile. Looke on my face with an indifferent eye, And thou shalt finde more musicke in my lookes Then in Amphions Lute or Orpheus Harpe; Mine eye consists of numbers like the soule, And if there be a soule tis in mine ey; For, of the harmony these bright starres make, I comprehend the formes of all the world; The story of the Syrens ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... greatly astonished her parents by her musical gifts and by her talent as an improvvisatrice. She composed, when only ten years of age, some really excellent canzone and, more than this, she set them to her own tunes for the lute and pipe, and arranged a very ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley

... rise Before my dazzled eyes! Young zephyrs wave their wanton wings, And melody celestial rings. All blooming on the lawn the nymphs advance, And touch the lute, and range the dance: And the blithe shepherds, on the mountain's side, Arrayed in all their rural pride, Exalt the festive note, Inviting Echo from her inmost grot—— But ah! the landscape glows with fainter light; It darkens, swims, and flies for ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie

... hall, a lute breathed a melody from a neighbouring room, the servants in claret and yellow livery noiselessly ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... murdered man, defaced "with a broad wound," he says, "that makes my hand now shake to write of it." He learned to dance, and was "like to make a dancer." He learned to sing, and walked about Gray's Inn Fields "humming to myself (which is now my constant practice) the trillo." He learned to play the lute, the flute, the flageolet, and the theorbo, and it was not the fault of his intention if he did not learn the harpsichord or the spinet. He learned to compose songs, and burned to give forth "a scheme and theory of music not yet ever made in the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the first crowd was made of a horse-head. 'Tis true, the finding of a dead horse-head Was the first invention of string instruments, Whence rose the gittern, viol, and the lute: Though others think the lute was first devis'd In imitation of a tortoise-back, Whose sinews, parched by Apollo's beams, Echo'd about the concave of the shell: And seeing the shortest and smallest gave shrill'st sound, They found out frets, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... replied Smith. "Every one of my fellows does something or other so exquisitely, that it were sin to make him do anything else—it is your jacks-of-all-trades who are masters of none.—But hark to Chaubert's signal. The coxcomb is twangling it on the lute, to the tune of Eveillez-vous, belle endormie.—Come, Master What d'ye call (addressing Peveril),—get ye some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand, as Betterton says in the play; for Chaubert's ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... in Palma de Mallorca, a young nobleman, a poet, a skilled player on the lute had stood tiptoe for attainment before the high-born and very stately lady he had courted through many moonlight nights, when her eye had chilled his quivering love suddenly and she had pulled open her bodice with both hands and ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... Italy resounded with the noise of drinking and dancing; the spoils of victory were wasted in sensual pleasures; and nothing (says Agathias) remained unless to exchange their shields and helmets for the soft lute and the capacious hogshead. [54] In a manly oration, not unworthy of a Roman censor, the eunuch reproved these disorderly vices, which sullied their fame, and endangered their safety. The soldiers blushed and obeyed; discipline was confirmed; the fortifications were restored; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... like McAdoo, or like Luther Burbank, or like Theodore N. Vail, or like Colonel Goethals, picking up a little isthmus like Panama, a string between two continents, playing on it as if it were a harp; or like Edward Ripley playing with the Santa Fe Railroad for all the world like Homer with a lute, all his seven thousand men, all his workmen, all their wives and their children, all the cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or like Carborundum Acheson, backed up by his little Niagara Falls oiling the wheels of a world, weaving diamonds into steel, hardening the bones ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... a far country. And even Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt begin to be merry on the green that day after Doubting Castle has fallen to Greatheart's arms. Now, Christiana, if need was, could play upon the viol, and her daughter Mercy upon the lute; and, since they were so merry disposed, she played them a lesson, and Mr. Ready-to-halt would dance. So he paid a boy a penny to hold one of his crutches, and, taking Miss Much-afraid by the hand, to dancing they went. And, I promise you he footed it well; the lame man leaped as an hart; also the ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... Ivan fled from the room, jumped on his horse, and galloped away back. Meantime the mouse kept running over the strings of the lute. They twanged, and the sister never guessed that her brother was off. When she had sharpened her teeth she burst into the room. Lo and behold! not a soul was there, nothing but the mouse bolting into its hole! The witch waxed wroth, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... a spirit doth dwell "Whose heart-strings are a lute;" None sing so wildly well As the angel Israel, And the giddy stars (so legends tell) Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell Of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various

... bedsteads, rich coverlets and curtains, and other things of woven stuff in their magnificent furniture, and little Oriental tables with one foot, and decorated sideboards; when people first had singing-girls, and lute-players, and players on the sharp-strung 'triangle,' and actors, to amuse them at their feasts; when the feasts themselves began to be extravagant, and the office of a cook, once mean and despised, rose to be one of high estimation and rich emolument, ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... startled that he put back his horses, while all that saw it were terrified, and, crying out, ran to assist Alcibiades. When he began to study, he obeyed all his other masters fairly well, but refused to learn upon the flute, as a thing unbecoming a free citizen; saying that to play upon the lute or the harp does not in any way disfigure a man's body or face, but one is hardly to be known by his most intimate friends, when playing on the flute. Besides, one who plays on the harp may speak or sing ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch

... flourishing condition. He had come to Greece with only 30,000 men, with no fleet, and little money. He was forced to plunder the shrines of Epidaurus, Olympia, and Delphi. His messenger to Delphi came back saying that he had heard the sound of a lute in the temple, and dared not commit the sacrilege. But Sulla sent him back, saying that he was sure the sound was a note of welcome, and that the god meant him to have the treasure. He promised to pay it back some day, and he kept his word, for he confiscated half the land of Thebes and ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... notes, but they were intended simply to elucidate the text. Though succinct, they are sufficient for the general reader. Here and there, however, we come upon a more elaborate note, such as that upon the tuning of the lute (Vol. viii., 179), where Mr. Payne's musical knowledge enables him to elucidate an obscure technical point. He also identified (giving proper chapter and verse references), collated, and where needful corrected all the Koranic citations with which the text swarms, a ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... domestic dissatisfaction and unhappiness could be obviated if wisdom and experience instructed the husband and wife in the matter I have not the slightest doubt. The first rift in the domestic lute often dates from difficulties in the intimate life of the pair, difficulties that need not exist if there were knowledge. That reason and love may coexist, that the beauty of life is not dependent on a sentimentalized ignorance are ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... delight like the dew-bathed morning, and life is quivering in all my limbs like the sounding strings of the lute. ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore

... that one can teach To sing sweet lute-like songs which all may hear. Or we can silence him and tune the ear To caw of crows, or ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... as I have seen birds flit back into a forest. In Tennyson's poetry two things are clear. They are mediaeval in location; they are modern in temper. Their geography is yesterday, their spirit is to-day; and so we have the questions and thoughts of our era as themes for Tennyson's voice and lute. His treatment is ancient: his theme is recent. He has given diagnosis and alleviation of present sickness, but hides face and ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... Lunatic lunatikulo. Lunch tagmezomangxo. Lung pulmo. Lurch sxanceligxi. Lure trompi, logi. Lurid malhela. Lurk sin kasxi (insideme). Luscious bongusta. Lust avideco. Lustre (lamp) lustro. Lustre brilo. Lusty fortega. Lute liuto. Lutheran luterano. Luxury lukso. Luxurious luksa. Lyceum liceo. Lye lesivo. Lymph limfo. Lynx ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... due time. Ask him which of them he set a-going, and which way he begun to move them? He will not so much as understand what you mean. He is an absolute stranger to what he has done in all the inward springs of his machine. The lute-player, who is perfectly well acquainted with all the strings of his instrument, who sees them with his eyes, and touches them one after another with his fingers, yet mistakes them sometimes. But the soul that governs the machine of man's body moves all its springs in time, without seeing ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

... song that nobody sings, And a part of an infant's prayer, There's a lute unswept, and a harp without strings; There are broken vows and pieces of rings, And the garments that ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... haze, but show a clear line against the clear sky. It is a beautiful country which urges man to take life as a feast, for everything is happy about him. "Walking at night in the gardens, listening to the grasshoppers, playing the lute in the clear of the moon, going to drink at the spring at the mountain, carrying with him some wine that he may drink while he sings, spending the days in dancing—these are Greek pleasures, the joys of a race poor, economical, ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... our ears, silly Yoomy that thou art!—no! no! none of your sentiment now; my soul is martially inclined; I want clarion peals, not lute warblings. So throw out your chest, Yoomy: lift high your voice; and blow me the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville

... praise of lute and pen, Her hair was like a summer night, dark and desired of men, Her feet like birds from far away that linger and light in doubt, And her face was like a window where a man's first ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various

... it fell out that the Lord Giovanni was oftener at the Palace than at the Castle, and during that summer Pesaro was given over to such merrymaking as it had never known before. There was endless lute-thrumming and recitation of verses by a score of parasite poets whom the Lord Giovanni encouraged, posing now as a patron of letters; there were balls and masques and comedies beyond number, and we were as gay as though Italy held no Cesare Borgia, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... Paradise. And after a while in came other ten damsels, bearing in their hands lutes and divers instruments of mirth and music; and these, having saluted the two guests, sat down and fell to tuning their lute-strings. Then they rose and standing before them, played and sang and recited verses: and indeed each one of them was a seduction to the servants of the Lord. Whilst they were thus busied there entered other ten damsels like unto them, high-bosomed maids and of an equal age, with black-eyes and ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... created in us. Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... mention whatever of cinnamon as a production of Ceylon; although cassia, described under the name of kwei, is mentioned as indigenous in China and Cochin-China. In exchange for these commodities the Chinese traders brought with them silk, variegated lute strings, blue porcelain, enamelled dishes and cups, and quantities of copper cash wanted for adjusting the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... at birth; Shinde, a palm-tree; Hagre, one who suffers from diarrhoea; Aglawe, an incendiary; Kalamkar, a writer; Wani (Bania), a caste; Sutar, a carpenter, and so on, A few of the groups of the Baone subcaste are:—Kantode, one with a torn ear; Dokarmare, a killer of pigs; Lute, a plunderer; Titarmare, a pigeon-killer; and of the Khedule: Patre, a leaf-plate; Ghoremare, one who killed a horse; Bagmare, a tiger-slayer; Gadhe, a donkey; Burade, one of the Burud or Basor caste; Naktode, one with a broken nose, and so on. Each subcaste has a number of septs, a total of ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... Austria, the Emperor's natural daughter. Francesco Guicciardini, the first statesman and historian of his age, had undertaken his defence, and was ready to support him by advice and countenance in the conduct of his government. Within the lute of this prosperity, however, there was one little rift. For some months past he had closely attached to his person a certain kinsman, Lorenzo de' Medici, who was descended in the fourth generation from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo Pater Patriae. This Lorenzo, or Lorenzino, or Lorenzaccio, as his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... reward or thanks for their obliging pains. 'Tis well if they become not prey. The whistling winds add their less artful strains, And a grave base the murmuring fountains play. Nature does all this harmony bestow; But to our plants, art's music too, The pipe, theorbo, and guitar we owe; The lute itself, which once was green and mute, When Orpheus struck the inspired lute, The trees danced round, and understood By ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... amusing stories in ancient history, of the successful and happy use of fine music, is told of Arion, who, when about to be thrown overboard by some mutinous sailors, begged leave to sing to his lute one funeral strain before his death. Having obtained leave, he stood upon the prow with his instrument, chanted with a loud voice his sweetest elegy, and then threw himself into the sea. A dolphin, as the story ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various

... We lie and dream of nothingness; For visions come From Poppydom Direct at our command: Or, delicate alternative, In open idleness we live, With lyre and lute And silver flute, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... My lute, be as thou wert when thou did'st grow With thy green mother in some shady grove, When immelodious winds but made thee move, And birds their ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... cake served with sweet wine and snow; the snow most certainly I shall charge to your account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots, gourds, onions, and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard a comedian, or the reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you had liked, all three, such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies and Spanish dancing girls at some other house were more to your taste. I shall have my revenge of you, depend ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various

... of what you have often heard, as you are both well versed in philosophy, arranging my matter in a series of short observations that it may be the more easily remembered, and I pray that the Muses will assist and co-operate with Aphrodite, so that no lyre or lute could be more harmonious or in tune than your married life, as the result of philosophy and concord. And thus the ancients set up near Aphrodite statues of Hermes, to show that conversation was one of the great charms of marriage, and also statues of Peitho[155] and the Graces, to teach married ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... came the long cries to Allah of the Moslem boatmen and the clear music of an 'ood or lute; the deep note of the native drums had been silenced. It had given way to the song of an Arab tenor. The music of the 'ood, whose seven double strings, made of lamb's gut, are played with a slip of a vulture's feather, drifted through the clear air. The tenor song was an outpouring of a lover's ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... had lost consciousness. With closed eyes he sought the form of the heaven-ascended Surja Mukhi; he saw her seated as a queen upon a jewelled throne. The perfumed wind played in her hair, all around flower-like birds sang with the voice of the lute; at her feet bloomed hundreds of red water-lilies; in the canopy of her throne a hundred moons were shining, surrounded by hundreds of stars. He saw himself in a place full of darkness, pain in all his ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

... recreation was Music, in which heavenly art he was a most excellent master, and did himself compose many Divine Hymns and Anthems, which he set and sung to his lute or viol: and though he was a lover of retiredness, yet his love to Music was such, that he went usually twice every week, on certain appointed days, to the Cathedral Church in Salisbury; and at his return would say, "That his time spent ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... you will crack the inner machinery of your skull, as our friend yonder has got the outer-case of his damaged.—Good-night, quotha! I mean not to part with you so easily. I came to get my four hours' nunchion from you, man, besides a tune on the lute from my ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... necromancer of that day sought to impress the vulgar mind. But in place of these a multitude of objects, quaint, curious, or valuable, filled that half of the room which was farther from the fire-hearth. On the wall, flanked by a lute and some odd-looking rubrical calendars, were three or four silver discs, engraved with the signs of the Zodiac; these were hung in such a position as to catch the light which entered through the heavily leaded casement. On the window-seat ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... accomplished. Hand me my lute; I have lost myself since I have been there. My lute, I say—I must nurse up my strength ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... feared they might unduly influence her! He had grown in many ways. She must be careful to reach up to his ideals. That about Flo Hutter's toil-hardened hands! Was that significance somehow connected with the rift in the lute? For Carley admitted to herself that there was something amiss, something incomprehensible, something intangible that obtruded its menace into her dream of future happiness. Still, what had she to fear, so long as she could be ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey

... the granting of favour unto one that solicits it with a pure heart); He that has a face always full of delight; He that is exceedingly subtle; He that utters the most agreeable sounds (in the form of the Veda or as Krishna playing on the lute); He that gives happiness (to all His worshippers); He that does good to others without expecting any return; He that fills all creatures with delight; He that has subdued wrath; He that has mighty ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... to open its unlocked door with his free hand, descended a winding stair and came into the upper hall. It was in darkness, but up the wide staircase streamed the perfumed light of many myrtle candles, and with it laughter, and the sound of a man's voice singing to a lute. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... the lute into this arbour; the walks are empty: I would try the song the princess Amalthea bade me learn. [They ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... all other griefs, when fate First leaves the young heart lone and desolate In the wide world, without that only tie For which it loved to live or feared to die; Lorn as the hung-up lute, that ne'er hath spoken Since the sad day ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson

... Powell' exchanges her lute for a cymbal, clanging with her white fingers upon the sounding brass. The subject is well chosen, and the theme inspiriting. 'Hofer' is the hero ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... Voice, And the Drum's thundering Noise Rouse every dull Mortal from Sorrow profound. And, Proceed, sweet Charmer of the Ear, Proceed, and through the mellow Flute, The moving Lyre, And Solitary Lute, Melting Airs, soft Joys inspire, Airs for drooping Hope to hear. And again, Now, let the sprightly Violin A louder Strain begin: And now, Let the deep mouth'd Organ blow, Swell it high and Sink it low. Hark! how the Treble and the Base In wanton Fuges each ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill

... choice. She is sure that the step-mother would be unkind to the children. She might be a horror and beat them (l. 307). And when Admetus has made a thrilling answer about eternal sorrow, and the silencing of lyre and lute, and the statue who shall be his only bride, Alcestis earnestly calls the attention of witnesses to the fact that he has sworn not to marry again. She is not an artist like Admetus. There is poetry ...
— Alcestis • Euripides

... my love," Mr. Stimpson exclaimed, as his wife came out of her pavilion in her Coronation Robes and chain, attended by the Court Godmother, "I should hardly have known you! You look majestic!—abso-lute-ly majestic!" ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... prince; to return thanks to the Deity, or to celebrate his praises; to lament a general calamity, or a private affliction; and others, again, were peculiar to their festive meetings. On these occasions they introduced the harp, lute, tabret, and various instruments, together with songs and dancing, and the guests were entertained nearly in the same manner as at an Egyptian feast. In the temple, and in the religious ceremonies, the Jews had female as well as male performers, who were generally daughters of the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... past from the domestic side. In the town-house in Hart Street which her father, Sir John Harrison, rented for the winter months from "my Lord Dingwall," where she was born, her education was carried on "with all the advantages the time afforded." She learnt French, singing to the lute, the virginals, and the art of needlework, and confesses that though she was quick at learning she was very wild and loved "riding, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe

... looked, for pictures of them, or at least of similar instruments, are found on Egyptian and Babylonian monuments. The harp was probably like a large guitar, only it was played like a mandolin, with a plectrum. The psaltery or lute was a larger-sized harp. The cornet or trumpet was simply a curved ram's horn blown with the lips like our cornets; there was also another form made out of brass, long and straight. The Hebrews also used a wind instrument like our flute, a pipe with holes on the side for making the different ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting

... alone. No sigh was borne from the leafy hill, No murmur came from the lapsing rill; The boughs of the willow in silence wept, And the aspen leaves in that sabbath slept. The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute. The slender rush o'er the glassy rill, As a marble shaft, was erect and still, And no airy sylph on the mirror wave, A dimpling trace of its footstep gave. The moon shone down, but the shadows deep Of the ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... inferred that the Professor's domestic relations were defective: they were in fact so complete that it was almost impossible to get away from them. It is the happy husbands who are really in bondage; the little rift within the lute is often a passage to freedom. Marriage had given the Professor exactly what he had sought in it; a comfortable lining to life. The impossibility of rising to sentimental crises had made him scrupulously careful not to shirk the practical obligations ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... pared away beard, a beaten down, disordered, gutted beard. May the Italian sickness deliver me from this vile joker with a squashed nose, fiery nose, frozen nose, nose without religion, nose dry as a lute table, pale nose, nose without a soul, nose which is nothing but a shadow; nose which sees not, nose wrinkled like the leaf of a vine; nose that I hate, old nose, nose full of mud—dead nose. Where had my eyes been to attach myself to truffle nose, to this ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... of his own Achilles. His poems are as fresh and consummate to us now, as they were to the Greeks, when the old man of Chios wandered in person through the different cities, rehearsing his rhapsodies to the accompaniment of his lute. The language and the thoughts of the poet are inextricably woven together; and the first is no more exposed to decay and to perish than the last. Presumptuous innovators have attempted to modernise Chaucer, and Spenser, and other authors, whose style was supposed to have grown obsolete. But true ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... organ can speak with its many and wonderful voices!— Play on the soft lute of love, blow the loud trumpet of war, Sing with the high sesquialter, or, drawing its full diapason, Shake all the air with the grand storm of its ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser

... CHIK NUe: the legend of these two stars comes from China and is told in Japan. Readers are referred to that section of Mr. L. Cranmer-Byng's A Lute of Jade which deals delightfully with Po-Chue-i; and to Lafcadio Hearn's ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers

... collected in a large park outside the city. While looking about me to find some one of whom I might inquire what this festival was, I espied a young man, sitting alone in an arbour, amusing himself with playing on a lute. Going up to him, I asked "What is this concourse of people? Why do you sit here alone, ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob

... also be as well to notice here, that Mistress Margery is highly accomplished. Of course she can play the lute, and sing, and work elaborate and delicate embroidery, and compound savoury dishes; and equally of course does she know any nobleman or gentleman by a glance at his shield, and can tell you in ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... call it that? I hear nothing that comes not from the stars. 'Tis Israfel! The angel whose lute ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... a most admirable, con- venient, and secure depository for the savings of the industrial classes and of others. Its value to the thrifty and timid investor is incalculable, for here he may rest satisfied that he has abso- lute security, and the system is so hedged about with safeguards that it is difficult to discover any means by which loss can be sustained. The interest allowed is not high, but reasonable enough when the perfect security and the facili- ties offered are ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.

... ever did any one hear her voice. But a rumour was in circulation to the effect that it was very beautiful, and that, locking herself in her chamber, early in the morning, while everything in the city was still sleeping, she loved to warble ancient ballads to the strains of a lute, upon which she herself played. Despite the pallor of her face, Valeria was in blooming health; and even the old people, as they looked on her, could not refrain from thinking:—"Oh, how happy will be that young man for whom this bud still ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... lead her away. Operatic confidant sympathetic—but a more modern heroine might find one "get on her nerves," perhaps. Manrico a very robust type of Troubadour—but oughtn't a Troubadour to carry about a guitar, or a lute, or something? If Manrico has one, he invariably leaves it outside. Probably doesn't see why, with so many competent musicians in the orchestra, he should take the trouble of playing his own accompaniments. And why does the Curtain invariably come down as soon as swords ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various

... unfinished. Here an arm seemed just reaching out from the rough block of marble; here a sweet face seemed like Pygmalion's statue, coming into life. In the centre of the studio was the "Siren Fountain," executed for Lady Marion Alford. A siren sits in the upper basin and sings to the music of her lute. Three little cupids sit on dolphins, ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... dim and mute, Fall vaguely on the dusky river; Vexed breezes play a phantom lute, Athwart the waves that curl ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... themselves with singing musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme, as it best pleased them. In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play the lute, the spinet, the harp, the German flute, the flute with nine holes, the violin, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, he betook himself to his principal study for three hours together, or more, as well to repeat his matutinal lectures as to proceed in the book wherein he was; as ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... husband, thou wast watch'd Like a tame elephant:—still you are to thank me:— Thou hadst only kisses from him and high feeding; But what delight was that? 'Twas just like one That hath a little fing'ring on the lute, Yet cannot tune it:—still ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster

... From all of which Ba draws this 'conclusion' that these may be worse things than Bartoli's Tuscan to cover a page with!—yet, yet the pity of it! Le Jeune, the Phoenix, and Rossini who directed his letters to his mother as 'mother of the famous composer'—and Henry Lawes, and Dowland's Lute, ah me! ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... desire such an attendant.—Yet I have never loved to nurse such useless menials—a lady's page—it may well suit the proud English dames to have a slender youth to bear their trains from bower to hall, fan them when they slumber, and touch the lute for them when they please to listen; but our Scottish matrons were wont to be above such vanities, and our Scottish youth ought to be bred to the spear and ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... a well-kept garden is your soul, With bergomask and solemn minuet! Playing upon the lute! The dancers seem But sad, beneath their strange habiliments. While, in the minor key, their songs extol The victor Love, and life's sweet blandishments, Their looks belie the burden of their lays, The songs that mingle with ...
— Silverpoints • John Gray

... mortall wit may dare t' areed Heavens counsels in eternall horrour hid? And Cynthius pulls me by my tender ear Such signes I must observe with wary heed: Wherefore my restlesse Muse at length forbear. Thy silver sounded Lute hang ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More

... him, nor was I able to learn anything about the state of things when I first reached the house of my relatives, for my brother-in-law had been sent into the town as special constable. It was only on his return home, lute in the afternoon, that I heard what had taken place in one hotel at Chemnitz while I had been resting in another inn. Heubner, Bakunin, and the man called Martin, whom I have mentioned already, had, it seemed, arrived before me in a hackney-coach at the gates of Chemnitz. On being asked for their ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... have found means to escape being sued. But you say to yourself: 'Old Clergeot is a good fellow.' And that is true. But I am so only when it can do me no harm. Now, to-day, I am absolutely in great need of my money. Ab—so—lute—ly," he added, emphasising ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau

... because it was set to the razor, Not to the lute or harp, Therefore it was that the fancy Should be bright, and ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... made a characteristic Vandyck, in black satin, against a curtained archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs garlanding the altar of Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny textures, pearl-woven heads and marble architecture; and a Watteau group of lute-playing comedians, lounging by a fountain ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton

... torches, in search of Vittoria and her brothers. Marcello escaped, having fled the house under suspicion of the murder of one of his own followers. Flaminio, the innocent and young, was playing on his lute and singing Miserere in the great hall of the palace. The murderers surprised him with a shot from one of their harquebuses. He ran, wounded in the shoulder, to his sister's room. She, it is said, was telling her beads before retiring ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... deeply attached to her lord, grows restless in her luxurious solitude; she pines for the excitement and triumphs of singing and dancing before an assembly. So, in the Nawab's absence, she takes professional disguise, and sings with a lute in the harem before his wife. To those who would like to see a Mohammedan lady of high rank in full dress, the following description of costume ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... confession, for that said, gravity fled away; and Electra fetched out a lute from a low cupboard in the arbour, and while she played Julia sang to a sober little melody I seemed ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... in from catching of harm, He had a dainty lute under his arm, Said, 'Please you to hear any music of me, A song I will ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell

... forced to confess Katherine would ill answer this character, it being soon apparent of what manner of gentleness she was composed, for her music-master rushed into the room to complain that the gentle Katherine, his pupil, had broken his head with her lute, for presuming to find fault with her performance; which, when Petruchio heard, he said, "It is a brave wench; I love her more than ever, and long to have some chat with her;" and hurrying the old gentleman for a positive ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... is curious to relate, though he was a near neighbour, she saw less and less. It has been suggested that the first rift in the lute was her parody of his verses about the lovers struck by lightning; but even he, most sensitive of men, can scarcely have been seriously offended. So far as is known, only two letters passed between them ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... our still dwelling-place wraps night's dusky mantle about her, Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning, Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death's mystery open. If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern, Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the voice ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... themselves, instead of fond and unseemly ballads. 1579." In 1599 there appeared a very ambitious work in folio form, so arranged that four persons might sing from it, and bearing the title: "The Psalms of David in Metre, the Plain song being the common Tune, to be sung and played upon the Lute, Orpharion, Citterne, or Bass-viol, severally or together; the singing Part to be either Tenor or Treble to the instrument, according to the Nature of the Voice, or for Four Voices; with Ten Short Tunes in the end, to which, for the most part, all Psalms may be usually sung; for the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... said Allen, like an Ottoman, bowing over his broad, bovine forehead, and breathing the words out like a lute; "it is he—Ethan Allen, the soldier; now, since ladies' eyes visit him, ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville

... and a knowledge of musical composition. He played the flute and the lute, and in church he introduced congregational singing, in which the people took an active part in worship by means of the chorales. It is related that, as a child, he used to sing with other boys ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... reflected the pretty women and their gowns, the old silver, the rare glass, and the flowers. They were probably refreshed by the exquisite taste of the little banquet that might recall the first reflection of their youth. Morally there was a rift within the lute among the guests, for Molly betrayed that Adela had got on her nerves. Lady Sophia Snaggs poured easy conversation on the troubled waters, but at last the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... his friends in the evening, even when it was perceived that with difficulty he kept his eyes open; and then seemed to go to rest with no other purpose than the refreshing and enabling him with more vigour and chearfulness to sing his morning hymn, as he then used to do to his lute before he put ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... told you often enough that Mr. Lewis hates literary women! I am not goose enough to expect him to sympathize with any intellectual pursuits of mine. No. Fatima in the harem, or Nourmahal thrumming her lute under a palm-tree, is his belle-ideale; failing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... with a clean bed, a chest of drawers, and a quantity of flowers on the window-sill, by no means came up to the ideas which he had entertained of monastic asceticism; and when, over and above all this, he found more than a breviary and a crucifix within reach, namely, a sort of pocket-library and a lute, his ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... his lute to weep, And sighed, "She sings for me." But Colin slept a careless sleep ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale

... mysterious loom always with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit, with retributions called from the other side of the grave, offenses that walk upon this; and once even the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said, "One of whom I know, and the others too surely I shall know." For already in my fervent youth I saw (dimly relieved upon ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... thus the youth rejoined, "Our choicest minstrel's left behind. Ill may we hope to please your ear, Accustomed Constant's strains to hear. The harp full deftly can he strike, And wake the lover's lute alike; To dear Saint Valentine, no thrush Sings livelier from a spring-tide bush, No nightingale her lovelorn tune More sweetly warbles to the moon. Woe to the cause, whate'er it be, Detains from us his melody, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... one's duty does not always make one happy—and she felt the joy of her home-coming was already marred; for, with a person of Audrey's temperament, there is no complete enjoyment if she were not in thorough harmony with everyone. One false note, one 'little rift within the lute,' and the whole melody is spoiled. So Audrey's gaiety seemed all quenched that afternoon, and though her old friend testified the liveliest satisfaction at the sight of her, and Priscilla could not make enough of her, she was conscious ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... by only seeing them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretend to inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that we could learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without the trouble of practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well, without exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation of our studies in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... throne and came impulsively toward the king. Her brown hair fell in rich masses on her bare shoulders; her eyes were large, deep and brown, and her skin was exquisitely fine in texture and color; her dress was artistic and well suited to her lithe figure. She held an instrument resembling a lute in her hands, and stopped suddenly when she noticed that the ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben

... Golden Sun, belonging to a Creek on the Main,—a twopenny-halfpenny little thing, 35 tons; ten Spaniards and Indians, and a Negro that was chained down to the deck to amuse the Ship Company with playing on the Guitar (a kind of Lute). However, we found a few ounces of Gold-dust aboard her, worth some sixty pounds sterling. After examining our Prisoners (who gave us much trouble, for we had no Linguist, and 'twas a Word and a Blow in questioning them: that is, the Blow came from us to get the Word from 'em; but ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala

... setting of the sun, and then pray before it, and fold up his mat again and go home. And the next night, and night after night, until that particular flower faded away, he would return to it, and bring his friends in ever-increasing troops to it, and sit and play the guitar or lute before it, and they would all together pray there, and after prayer still sit before it sipping sherbet, and talking the most hilarious and shocking scandal, late into the moonlight; and so again and again every evening until the flower died. Sometimes, by way of a grand finale, the whole company ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer

... clear Of all she needs Lamira offers here; Nor does she fear a rigid Cato's frown, When she lays by the rich embroidered gown, And modestly compounds for just enough, Perhaps some dozens of mere flighty stuff; With lawns and lute strings, blonde and Mechlin laces, Fringes and jewels, fans and tweezer-cases; Gay cloaks and hat, of every shape and size, Scarfs, cardinals, and ribands, of all dyes, With ruffles stamped and aprons of tambour, Tippets and handkerchiefs, at least threescore; With finest muslins that fair India ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... bank of reindeer moss, at the foot of a great white birch, a mouse-colored donkey sat playing a lute. Over his head, hanging from a bit of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... lost, and lately, these Many dainty mistresses: Stately Julia, prime of all: Sappho next, a principal: Smooth Anthea for a skin White, and heaven-like crystalline: Sweet Electra, and the choice Myrrha for the lute and voice: Next Corinna, for her wit, And the graceful use of it: With Perilla: all are gone; Only Herrick's left alone For to number sorrow by ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... in which the seven Companies worked together, and the success they attained was, I think, something to be proud of. Sir William Goulding was an excellent Chairman. There was just one little rift in the lute. One of the seven Companies showed a disposition, at times, to play off its own bat, but this was, after all, only a small matter, and the general harmony, cohesion and unanimity that prevailed were admirable, and unquestionably productive of ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... hark! what fairy melody comes wafted on the gale— Oh! 'tis "Fenella's" sighing lute, in notes of woe and wail: "Claud Halero" catches at the strain, and mourns the minstrel gone, "His spirit rest in peace where sleeps the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... may taste of the golden fruit Till the golden new time come Many a tree shall spring from shoot, Many a blossom be withered at root, Many a song be dumb; Broken and still shall be many a lute Or ever the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various



Words linked to "Lute" :   lutenist, chordophone, fingerboard



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