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Pageant   /pˈædʒənt/   Listen
Pageant

noun
1.
An elaborate representation of scenes from history etc; usually involves a parade with rich costumes.  Synonym: pageantry.
2.
A rich and spectacular ceremony.  Synonym: pageantry.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pageant" Quotes from Famous Books



... Cass was saying you got up a dramatic club and gave a dandy play. I've always wished I had a chance to belong to a Little Theater, and give some European plays, or whimsical like Barrie, or a pageant." ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... under the alchemic hand of Autumn, she found herself thrilling to the town as never before had she thought possible. Only two days had elapsed since her departure from Boston, but it seemed to her now that she was a participant in some slow-moving pageant, not a hostile critic in the audience, but a minor actor in an unfamiliar yet strangely familiar play. Even the hurrying throng of people who confronted her, when at length she sought again the street on her way homeward, seemed less hostile and alien, less inimical to her and ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... entire population of the city and surrounding country was present at the imposing religious rites. These were directed by the mortuary priesthood in full canonicals. There was propitiatory sacrifice in the Temples of the Once, followed by a processional pageant of great splendor, ending at the cemetery. The Great Mayor in his robe of state led the procession. He was armed with a golden spade and followed by one hundred male and female singers, clad all in white and chanting the Hymn ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... necklaces too, and bracelets; nails and buttons, styles for writing, pins, needles, combs, and pottery. By such pitiful trifles that have survived the pride and strength of all their owners, you may be fitly introduced to the next chapter in the pageant of historic Rouen, the tale of Fredegond ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... aloft upon the shoulders of her adorers, followed by the guilds, the military associations, the rhetoricians, the religious sodalities, all in glittering costume, bearing blazoned banners, and marching triumphantly through the streets with sound of trumpet and beat of drum. The pageant, solemn but noisy, was exactly such a show as was most fitted at that moment to irritate Protestant minds and to lead to mischief. No violent explosion of ill-feeling, however, took place. The procession was followed by a rabble rout of scoffers, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Back Bay, lay the wooded villa-crowned slopes of Malabar Hill, flung like a garland on the bosom of a sea deeply blue and smiling, smooth as a lake, while below her lay the pageant of the street, with its ever-changing panorama of vivid life. The whole so brilliant, so various, so wholly unlike any beautiful place she had ever seen before that, artist's daughter she was, she cried eagerly to Fay, "Oh, come and look! Did you ever ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... your Royal state, Captains, and chiefs, and councillors, Before the lofty palace doors Are open set,— Hush ere you pass the shining gate: Hush! ere the heaving curtain draws, And let the Royal pageant pause A moment yet. ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray

... him Sentronell? s'hart heele nod[119] presently: and he do not sleepe sitting upon the poynt of a Spanish needle, Dicke Bowyer's a very shittle-cocke. Nod! zounds, he is one of the nine sleepers, a very Dormouse: & I had a pageant to present of the seven deadly Sinnes[120], he should play Slouth; and he did not sleepe when he should speake his ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

... the happy morn appears; And nature, clothed in beauty, wears Her wonted colours; and the rose In all its pride of lustre glows; Emblem of frail mortality! It buds and blossoms but to die: Too soon its glory fades away, The passing pageant of a day. In this fair flower, your image trace; While youth sits smiling on your face, Secure those virtues, which perfume The life, when beauty fails to bloom— The rich adorning first designed, The vesture of a humble mind. Be yours, ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth

... Mingled with the strains of the funeral march, as it died along the empty streets, came the tolling of the bell on South Church steeple, striking the hour of midnight. The festivities were at an end and, oppressed by a nameless fear, the spectators of this strange pageant made ready for departure; but before they left the booming of cannon at the southward announced that Washington had advanced. The glories of Province House were over. When the last of the royal governors left it he paused on the threshold, beat his foot on ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... was an imposing pageant enough, though the boy at the window did not appear to find it so, regarding it with approving but grave eyes, and returning Mr. Nash's flourishing salute unsmilingly—a brave pageant of gay and flimsy gowns, of youth returning to the town, and movement ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... and design. Each ring was adorned with a jewelled letter, and as the hands reached toward the zenith the colour of the rings changed rapidly twice. It was impossible to remove the eyes from this sign until the gesture pageant had completed itself. To the lost dryad New York seemed ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson

... few wild speeches, an occasional licence of dialogue? I think not altogether. The business of their dramatic characters will not stand the moral test. We screw everything up to that. Idle gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming indications of profligacy in a son or ward in real life should startle a parent or guardian. We have no such middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... mist of that October morning. They were so close I could have jumped into their carts or dropped a pebble on their heads. Infinitely more impressive than the retreat of the allied armies or the victorious entry of the Germans a little later, was the pageant of this pitiful army ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green

... picture, or to eat ices in the Piazza with the lovely facade of St. Mark's before them. Dining or sleeping seemed a sheer waste of time! The evenings were spent on the water too; for every night, immediately after sunset, a beautiful drifting pageant started from the front of the Doge's Palace to make the tour of the Grand Canal, and our friends always took a part in it. In its centre went a barge hung with embroideries and filled with orange trees and musicians. This was surrounded by a great convoy of skiffs and ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... now on the windows of the church. She realised the pageant that was marching up the west, the passion of the world as well as the purity which lay beyond the world. Her mind was disturbed. She glanced from the red radiance on the glass to the dull brown wood of the cross. Blood and agony had made it the mystical symbol ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... horse in the procession, he had always come home in a glow of enthusiasm. But she had often felt vaguely, even then, that the citizen's pride was largely made up of the courtier's devotion to a ruler, the artist's delight in a pageant and the favourite's pleasure in applause in which he had a personal share. That he loved Rome she had never doubted. He loved the external city because it was fair to the eye. He loved Roman life because it was free from all that was rustic, because it gave the prizes ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... door opened and a dejected apparition in a ruff and petticoats, like a rumpled remnant of a pre-war pageant, drifted in and sat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, June 7, 1916 • Various

... the more thwarting to untrained desire, the greater is its achievement in inducing the reluctant rock to yield up its hidden treasures, the prouder its victory in compelling the opposing forces to swell the pageant of its triumph. Of all the arts, Tragedy is the proudest, the most triumphant; for it builds its shining citadel in the very centre of the enemy's country, on the very summit of his highest mountain; from its impregnable watchtowers, his camps and arsenals, his columns and forts, are all revealed; ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell

... Aeneid. He caught but a fragment of meaning here and there, but the sumptuous imagery, the stirring names, the glimpses into a past where Roman senators were mingled with the gods of a gold-pillared Olympus, filled his mind with a misty pageant of immortals. These moments of high emotion were interspersed with hours of plodding over the Latin grammar and the textbooks of philosophy and logic. Books were unknown ground to Cantapresto, and ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... answered with a universal labbayaki, signifying, "Thou hast called us— here we are, here we are!" Then breaking into a rabble, they rushed multitudinously forward. To give the reader an idea of the pageant advancing to possess itself of the Valley, it will be well to refresh his memory with a few details. He should remember, in the first place, that it was not merely the caravan which left El Katif over on the ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... with the provost, and meetings with various other old friends, he walked down to the station, under a sky clear from rain, and through a town gay with festal preparations. Not a sign now, in these crowded, bustling streets, of that melancholy pageant of the afternoon. The heroic memory had flashed for a moment like something vivid and gleaming in the sight of all, understanding and ignorant. Now it lay committed to a few faithful hearts, there to become one seed among many ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... were five in all. These shrines were large and ornamental, with a great deal of gilt about them, and they were placed on poles borne upon the shoulders of men. Four other small shrines followed, and before the pageant was over, the afternoon was nearly consumed. This procession was on its way to the great Temple ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... the heart! The Power, incens'd, the pageant will desert, The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; But haply, in some cottage far apart, May hear, well-pleas'd, the language of the soul; And in His Book of Life the inmates ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... personages, a certain logical growth of emotion,—these are the only means at the disposal of the playwright. It is true that, with the assistance of the scene-painter, the costumier and the conductor of the orchestra, he may add to this something of pageant, something of sound and fury; but these are, for the dramatic writer, beside the mark, and do not come under the vivifying touch of his genius. When we turn to romance, we find this no longer. Here nothing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Germans might as well have marched through the streets of ruined Babylon. Thompson and I, standing in the windows of the American Consulate, were the only spectators in the entire length of the mile- long Place de Meir—which is the Piccadilly of Antwerp—of the great military pageant. The streets were absolutely deserted; every building was dark, every window shuttered; in a thoroughfare which had blossomed with bunting a few days before, not a flag was to be seen. I think that even the Germans were a little awed by the deathly silence that greeted them. As Thompson drily ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... has passed by, and is now at its glancing splendor and heyday, perchance in the neighboring fields, or, if you stand in the field, then in the adjacent woods. The present object shall give you this sense of stillness that follows a pageant which has just gone by. What splendid distance, what recesses of ineffable pomp and loveliness in the sunset! But who can go where they are, or lay his hand or plant his foot thereon? Off they fall ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... have a real account of those times and heroes—no good-humoured pageant, like those of the Scott romances—but a real authentic story to instruct and frighten honest people of the present day, and make them thankful that the grocer governs the world now in place of the baron? ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... The pageant of the French consul-general going to pay his respects to the Viceroy, exhibited one of the shows of the place. First came a number of officers of state, in embroidered jackets of black cachmere, ornamented gaiters, and red morocco shoes. Each ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... see our duchesses were green-grocers' wives the day before yesterday, and our green-grocers' wives subscribe to the magazines. It's all mixed up, and there are no high lights anywhere. You move before us in a sort of panoramic pageant," Elfrida went on, determined to redeem her point, "with your Queen and Empress of India—she ought to be riding on an elephant, oughtn't she?—in front, and all your princes and nobles with their swords drawn to protect her. Then ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

... pure thy soul! Then shalt thou take the whole Of delight; Then, without a pang, Thine shall be all of beauty whereof the poet sang— The perfume and the pageant, the melody, the mirth, Of the golden day and the starry night; Of heaven and of earth. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... armed at all points, but within they are stuffed full of browne paper and tow, which the shrewd boyes, underpeering, do guilefully discover, and turne to a greate derision." At Chester the annual pageant on Midsummer Eve included the effigies of four giants, with animals, hobby-horses, and other figures. At Coventry it appears that the giant's wife figured beside the giant. At Burford, in Oxfordshire, Midsummer Eve used ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... opposite the sacred islands, a great annual pageant is still staged every August. Although at present connected with a pious pilgrimage to the shrine of the miraculous image of the "Virgin of Copacabana," this vivid spectacle, the most celebrated fair in all South America, has its origin in the dim past. It comes after the maize is harvested ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham

... Are, then, the sculptured urn and storied monument nothing more than symbols of family pride? Is all I see around me a memorial of the living more than of the dead, an empty show of sorrow, which thus vaunts itself in mournful pageant and funeral parade? Is it indeed true, as some have said, that the simple wild flower which springs spontaneously upon the grave, and the rose which the hand of affection plants there, are fitter objects wherewith to adorn the narrow house? No! I feel that it is not so! Let the good and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various

... tempted her, and all her easy arrangement of her future power over her husband to make him do better than he might be inclined to do, were now as futile as the burned-out lights which set off a child's pageant. Her sense of being blameworthy was exaggerated by a dread both definite and vague. The definite dread was lest the veil of secrecy should fall between her and Grandcourt, and give him the right to taunt her. With the reading of ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... mayor, on approaching her, handed to her the civic sword, which was given to the Earl of Arundel to carry before her. The mayor himself bore the mace. By express permission of the Court of Aldermen a number of Florentine and other merchant strangers were allowed to attend on horseback, and to erect a pageant at Leadenhall.(1370) The whole length of the streets through which the queen had to pass on her way to the Tower had been lavishly decorated, and was lined with members of the various civic companies in their livery gowns. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe

... between: but all hues weakened, mingled, chastened into loneliness, tenderness, regretfulness, through which still shines, in endless vistas of clear western light, the hope of the returning day. More and more faint, the pageant fades below towards the white haze of the horizon, where, in sharpest contrast, leaps and welters against it the black jagged sea; and richer and richer it glows upwards, till it cuts the azure overhead: until, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... of pageant armies led To fame and death their followers forth, Ere Helen sinned and Hector bled, Or Odin ruled the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... describing the Expedition of Henry the Fifth into France, the Battle of Agincourt, and the magnificent Pageant prepared by the City of London, in honour of his return to the Metropolis. ...
— A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 • Anonymous

... darkness, his life seemed to him to be marching, pageant-wise, a series of separated scenes. They started, according to his idea, in the faint shaft of light that crept in to him through Ramsdell's keyhole—for, despite all orders, the faithful fellow had flatly refused to put himself into bed until Opdyke himself should be snoring. They ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... splendidly here the second figure crowns the pageant. At the passionate height, over long ringing chord, the latter sings a sonorous line in lengthened notes of the wood and horns. The first climax is here, in big coursing strains, then it slowly lulls, with a new verse of the idyll, to ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp

... tantalizingly in front of him. Yes, he had said that he would never leave again. He dully repeated the words now to himself: "never again." It was so fitting; quite in accordance with the rest of the black pageant. His dream of life, his new-felt ambitions—all were dead, dead, like his father before him, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... sense of illusion troubled the little man. The glamour of the night was gone and with it all that had lent semblance of plausibility to his incredible career; daylight forced all back into confused and distorted perspective, like the pageant of some fantastic and disordered dream uncertainly recalled ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... that moved across to Doyers street—dainty slippers on blackened cobblestones, light laughter tinkling under the thunder of the "L," human brightness brushing past the human shadows from the midnight dens —made contrasts picturesque as a pageant ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... springing up again, like a sea-bird on the crest of a wave! Nothing could be more accurate and polished than his descriptions and his presentation of the actual facts; but his fancy rises resilient from these to some dreamy, far-seeing perception or gentle moral inference. The visible human pageant is only of value to him as it suggests the viewless host of heavenly shapes that hang above it like an idealizing mirage. His attitude at this time recalls a suggestion of his own in "Sights from a Steeple": ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... Little Village'll go crazy! I'll knock up a series of old-world plays for 'em. Their voices will make you laugh and cry. My God, dear men, where do you suppose they picked up all their misery from, on this sweet earth? I'll have a pageant of the world's beginnings, and Mosenthal shall ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... that the departed Emperor William I. lay in state for the great funeral pageant when his ninety-one years of life were over. Here in the vaults many members of Prussia's royal family repose, and here many stately ceremonies have taken place. At the door of this cathedral Emperor William I., then Prince Regent, stood with uncovered head to receive the remains of Alexander ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton

... will be formed, and wind through the streets of the city to the theatre, where the sermon will be preached before those who are relaxed proceed to the Quemadero. About eight o'clock it turns on to the quay for a little way only, and here will be but few spectators, since the view of the pageant is bad, nor is the road guarded there. Now, if a dozen determined men were waiting disguised as peasants with a boat at hand, perhaps they might——" ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... him stare wildly about him as he came near, gazing at the splendid sun-lit pageant like a man in a dream, or one just awakened into another world, as I had been after my long death-sleep. But when he came near, and saw me sitting in my royal state with Joyful Star on my right and ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith

... case each play might remain all day at a particular station and be continuously repeated as the crowd moved slowly by; but more often it was the, spectators who remained, and the plays, mounted on movable stages, the 'pageant'-wagons, were drawn in turn by the guild-apprentices from one station to another. When the audience was stationary, the common people stood in the square on all sides of the stage, while persons of higher rank or greater means were seated on temporary wooden scaffolds or looked down from the windows ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... best part of a summer day! Buried in swinish slumber, with window-curtains heedfully drawn, and shutters closely fastened, between us and it, we know nothing of the stately pageant spread outside our doors. ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... which should begin with the leaders in social conformity, who keep hard and clean the code, and should sweep through the great middle classes that may escape its rigors themselves, but exact them of others, might present the pageant, the social history, the epic ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... Staunton Lacey Church, containing Romanesque work, and supposed to be older than the Conquest, is also near Ludlow. But the grand old castle and its quaint and venerated Feathers Inn are the great attractions before which all others pale. What an amazing tale of revelry, pageant, and intrigue they could tell were only the old ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... were deeply involved. The proposal of a Covenant was made public in August, though the actual signing of it was deferred to "Ulster Day," September 28th. Sir Edward Carson was provided with a guard carrying swords and wooden rifles, and in one instance dummy cannon made a feature of the pageant. These things excited a good deal of derision, and the language of the Covenant was held to be only "hypothetical treason." The main ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... because Emily read a religious novel by Marie Corelli, and didn't worry to talk. So I could sit in peace, seeing with my mind's eye the pageant of William the Conqueror reviewing his troops in the plain over which Old Sarum gloomily towers. Such a lurid plain it is, this month of poppies, red as if its arid slopes were stained with the blood of ghostly armies slain ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... moon before the sun; and as the long courtly train of knights errant and ladies-in-waiting passed the populace, they presented a regal spectacle, never equalled since the proud Cleopatra sailed down the perfumed lotus-bearing Nile in her gilded pageant to meet Marc Antony, while all the world stood agape at the ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White

... not say all this without a motive. She knew that a local Historical Pageant was being arranged for the coming Summer, and that Lady Harriet was on the Committee. Also she had heard that, after rehearsals had begun, some of the principal performers had resigned their parts, and the Committee had some difficulty ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... spears, keen blades, Struggling, and blood, and shrieks—all dimly fades 10 Into some backward corner of the brain; Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet. Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat! Swart planet in the universe of deeds! Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds Along the pebbled shore of memory! Many old rotten-timber'd boats there be Upon thy vaporous bosom, magnified To goodly ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... at Malta for a short time; thence he proceeded to Naples, where he was received with almost pageant honours. In the spring he visited Rome; but "the world's chief ornament" had few charms for one bereft of all hope of healthful recovery. His strength was waning fast, and he set out to return with more than prudent speed to his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various

... there, she hears in the wild low murmur of the sea, his little story told again, his very words repeated; and finds that all her life and hopes, and griefs, since—in the solitary house, and in the pageant it has changed to—have a portion in the burden of ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... pretensions; showing off; fuss. magnificence, splendor; coup d'oeil[Fr]; grand doings. coup de theatre; stage effect, stage trick; claptrap; mise en scene[Fr]; tour de force; chic. demonstration, flying colors; tomfoolery; flourish of trumpets &c. (celebration) 883; pageant, pageantry; spectacle, exhibition, exposition, procession; turn out, set out; grand function; fte, gala, field day, review, march past, promenade, insubstantial pageant. dress; court dress, full dress, evening dress, ball dress, fancy dress; tailoring, millinery, man ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... beckoning hands. We eat the grain, the grain is death, all goes back to the earth's dark mass, All but a song which moves across the plain like the wind's deep-muttering breath. Bowed down upon the earth, man sets his plants and watches for the seed, Though he be part of the tragic pageant of the sky, no heaven will aid his mortal need. I find flame in the dust, a word once uttered that will stir again, And a wine-cup reflecting Sirius in the ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay

... at a dramatic moment. Napoleon had fallen, and the mail coaches were rushing through England with the news of Waterloo. It was the sort of pageant which always roused Irving's fancy. He ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton

... stirred the sky, And rustling banners waved on high; The shouts of victory went up, And wreaths of laurel crowned the cup That flowed amid the festal halls, Within the crowded city's walls; Stern warriors came in long array To grace the conqueror's pageant day: Triumphant peeled the clarion's tone And spears and glancing armor shone, Mid the dust of thousands sweeping by, Like meteors in a midnight sky. They'd left behind their hosts of slain Upon the far-off battle plain, And brought the marks of conquest back; Proud ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... process began to extend beyond Joe now. A fortnight before, she had been much gratified by allusions to the future and felt herself an important individual enough. Then, she must have shared her stepmother's pity at the poverty of the pageant which had just passed by. But now the world had changed. Matrimony with Joe Noy was not a subject which brought present delight to her, but the little bride who had just gone to her wedding filled Joan's thoughts. What was in that girl's ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... troops of archers and Turkish horsemen, the palace guards with long lances and glittering shields, the twelve riderless white horses with golden bridles, which were led along, and all the other pomp and parade!" Weeks would be required for arranging a pageant like this at the present time; but the Pope could improvise it in the twinkling of an eye, for the actors and their costumes were always ready. He set it in motion for the sole purpose of showing himself to the Romans, and in order that his majesty might lend additional ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... from the most distant as well as the nearer provinces to grace the occasion, each in his robes of state, the magnificent white elephant, caparisoned with silk and velvet, and blazing with jewels, the king and queen, in simple majesty, alone unadorned amid the gaudy throng, surpassed any pageant ever exhibited in the western world. Alas! this pomp and pride were soon to ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... country, with a picked body of cavalry. The cavalcade was magnificent—treasure had been heaped on treasure—present upon present; twenty women of my own country, and numerous slaves had been permitted to attend upon me, and the procession wore the appearance of a pageant. I ascended my litter with an aching heart; and, journeying by easy stages, arrived at the land of my nativity. The borders were passed, and Abdallah requested me to write an acknowledgment that he had done his duty, which the sultan would require ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... than fifty years, to have wholly withdrawn himself from the only field of his permanent distinction. The world heard enough of his gorgeous palace at Cintra (described in Childe Harold), afterwards of the unsubstantial pageant of his splendour at Fonthill, and latterly of his architectural caprices at Bath. But his literary name seemed to have belonged to another age; and, perhaps, in this point of view, it may not have been unnatural for Lord Byron, when comparing Vathek with other Eastern tales, to think rather ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... was hardly more than an interlude in the great struggle, yet it served for the moment to assuage the animosities of party warfare. The king himself, who disliked solemn ceremonials, and the ministers, deeply pledged to economy, were inclined to dispense with the pageant altogether. It was found, however, that not only peers and court officials but the public would be grievously disappointed by the omission of what, after all, is a solemn public celebration of the compact between the sovereign and the nation. The coronation was, therefore, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... who, from a cobbler, rose by degrees to be a colonel, and though a person of no parts either in body or mind, yet made by Cromwell one of his pageant lords. He was a fellow fit for any mischief, and capable of nothing else; a sordid lump of ignorance and impiety, and therefore the more fit to share in Cromwell's designs, and to act in that horrid murther of his Majesty. Upon the turn of the times, he ran away for fear ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various

... imagined, she even admitted now the reality of those things no longer a mere pageant marshalled for her vision with barbarous splendour and savage emphasis. She questioned it no longer—but she did not feel it in her soul any more than one feels the depth of the sea under its peaceful glitter or the turmoil ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... youths, throwing their rifles in the air as they sang and danced. But of these things Evanitalina was scarcely heedful, for with breathless body and quivering heart her whole attention was on Cloud-of-Butterflies in the center of the pageant, who, girded in a priceless mat, and wearing at his throat a whale-tooth necklace, and surrounded with deference and honor, was not to her Cloud-of-Butterflies at all, but O'olo, arisen from the grave, and hastening to claim her ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... in the rooms of entertainment, she was glad when at last she could feel herself lost among the crowd of guests. Her only pleasure in such scenes was to withdraw to some hidden corner and look on as at a pageant or a play. To-night she placed herself in the shadow of a screen, from which retreat she could see Clorinda and Dunstanwolde as they received their guests. Thus she found enjoyment enough; for, in truth, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... labour which it exacts. It is worthy of remark that, though the Dholpur chief is peculiarly the creature of the British Government, and indebted to it for all he has or ever will have, and though he has never had anything, and never can have, or can hope to have, anything from the poor pageant of the house of Timur, who now sits upon the throne of Delhi;[12] yet, on his seal of office he declares himself to be the slave and creature of that imperial 'warrior for the faith of Islam'. As he abstains from eating the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... H. V. gives a sketch of the wedding. "And when the ceremonies ended at the palace with pomp and parade and pageant, and the night was far spent, the eunuchs led the Wazir's son into the bridal chamber. He was the first to seek his couch; then the Queen his mother-in-law, came into him leading the bride, and followed by her suite. She did with her virgin daughter as parents are wont to do, removed her ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... climate here, but hanging like balls of white fire in that purple southern night, through which one seems to look beyond the stars into the infinite abyss, and towards the throne of God himself. Day after day, night after night, that gorgeous pageant passed over the poor hermit's head without a sound; and though sun and moon and planet might change their places as the year rolled round, the earth beneath his feet seemed not to change. Every morning he saw the same peaks in the distance, the same rocks, the same sand-heaps ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley

... of Buckingham could not effect a coronation to her will, she indulged her pompous mind with such puppet-shows as were appropriate to her rank. She had made a funeral for her husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough: she renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age; and for herself; and prepared and decorated -waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey. It was for the procession at her son's burial that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... with a vengeful smile Survey the sanguinary Despot's might, And haply hurl the Pageant from his height Unwept to wander in some ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... noticed that Lana's hand was resting an his arm. In sharp contrast to the excited, cheering soldiery thronging the platform, the attitude of these two seemed dull and spiritless; and Boyd looked more frequently at her than on the stirring pageant below; and once, under cover of the movement and tumult, I saw her pale cheek press for a moment against his green fringed shoulder cape—lightly—only for one brief moment. Yonder was no coquetry, no caprice of audacity. There ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers

... and flourished, taking its part in the pageant of the seasons, unaware that its existence was to be interwoven with that of men; or that creatures of another order of being were to owe some changes in their fortunes to its silent obedience to the ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... out. He got up, walked downstairs, asked for beer, drank it to the dregs, and fell dead with the glass in his hand—the first to die, the first freed from his agony. Of the nine, but two survived. Seven lay with their hut, a charred heap upon the ground, before the laughing crowd realized what a pageant of horror ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... fountains and parterres. A small garden also projected into the river in front of the buildings; and here Charles used to view the civic processions of the Lord Mayor, who on the day of his taking the oaths at Westminster, generally gratified the sovereign and other sight-seers with a pageant on the Thames, in some degree adulatory of the monarch. The king resided here so constantly, that the most striking pictures of his private manners are recorded to have happened at Whitehall, and for which the graphic pages of Pepys, Evelyn, and De Grammont may be consulted. Whitehall, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... lying to anchor in three lines of four miles or so each in length, with a respectful margin of clear water all about, is, viewed merely as a marine pageant, magnificent; as a display of potential fighting power, most convincing. No man might look on it and his sensibilities—admiration, patriotism, respect, whatever they might be—remain unstirred. To witness it is to pass in mental review the ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... ever given by the Templars was one which cost L21,000, and was presented, in 1633, to Charles I. and his French queen. Bulstrode Whitelocke, then in his youth, gives a vivid picture of this pageant, which was meant to refute Prynne's angry "Histro-Mastix." Noy and Selden were members of the committee, and many grave heads met together to discuss the dances, dresses, and music. The music was ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... Love to reinforce War and Religion and to do its proper office of uniting, inspiring, and producing Humanity. He effected, by the union of the three motives, the transformation of a mere dull record of confused fighting into a brilliant pageant of knightly adventure. He made the long-winded homilies and genealogies of the earlier Graal-legend at once take colour from the amorous and war-like adventures, raise these to a higher and more spiritual plane, and provide the due punishment for the sins of his erring characters. ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... from other countries; but yet in many places. Yes, you may still see those rags of the Renaissance as plainly as you see the tattered linen fluttering from the twisted iron hooks (made for the display of precious brocades and carpets on pageant days) which still remain in the stained whitewash, the seams of battered bricks of the solid old escutcheoned palaces; see them sometimes displayed like the worm-eaten squares of discoloured embroidery which ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee

... this, how poor Religion's pride, In all the pomp of method and of art, When men display to congregations wide Devotion's every grace, except the heart! The Power, incensed, the pageant will desert, The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; But haply in some cottage far apart, May hear, well pleased, the language of the soul; And in his Book of Life the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various

... sometimes, and well-tailored; but come you from Oxford or Bow, You're a flaring offence when you lounge, and a blundering pest when you row; Your 'monkeyings' mar every pageant, your shindyings spoil every sport, And there isn't an Eden on earth but's destroyed when it's ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... cadence thus covering almost the whole period up to the customary volleys over the graves. As saluting was the first lieutenant's business, I had remained on board to attend to it; and consequently, from our closeness to the land, had a more comprehensive view of the pageant than was possible to a participant. Our ships were nearly stripped of their crews; the rank of the admiral and the number of the sufferers, as well as the tragic character of the incident, demanding the utmost marks of reverent observance. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... commencing with "The Fall of Lucifer," and ending with "Doomsday." In 1834, the Abbotsford Club published some others from the Digby MS., in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In 1825, Mr. Sharp, of Coventry, published a dissertation on the Mysteries once performed there, and printed the Pageant of the Sheremen and Taylor's Company; and in 1836 the Abbotsford Club printed the Pageant played by the Weavers of that city. In 1836, the Surtees Society published the series known as The Towneley Mysteries, consisting ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... a chapel. It must have been a pleasant place of residence: the air fresh and clear: the supply of water unlimited—one drew it up in a bucket: always something going on: the entrance of a foreign ambassador, a religious procession, a riding of the Lord Mayor, a pageant, a nobleman with his livery, a Bishop or a Prior with his servants, a pilgrimage, a string of pack horses out of Kent bringing fruit for the City: always something to see. Then there were the stories and traditions of the ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... the living meet, And the moving pageant file Warm and breathing through the street Where I ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman

... What was this grand, eternal pageant to which he had yearned from his childhood up, and in which he could never take part? Every morning the same magnificent sun; every morning the same rainbow in the waterfall; every evening the same ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... pestilence inward, when they take the aire; And kill out right: one cannot both fates beare. But, as a Poet thats no scholler, makes Vulgarity his whiffler, and so takes with ease, & state through both sides prease Of Pageant seers: or as schollers please That are no Poets; more then Poets learnd; Since their art solely, is by soules discerned; The others fals [fall, D, E, F] within the common sence And sheds (like common light) her influence: So, were your play no Poeme, but a thing That every Cobler to his patch ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher

... have been absent for ten minutes, which seemed half an hour. Then, when Lady Turnour had begun muttering to herself that she was freezing, Sir Samuel bustled back, in a cheerfulness put on awkwardly, like an ill-fitting suit of armour in a pageant. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... disappearing, Like a day-dream, passed the pageant by, And I saw but those lone hills, uprearing Dull dark shapes against ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.

... trumpet-notes as it draws near, till the whole sad array, in its affecting beauty, is presented to the eye. The life in death that pervades the melancholy ceremonial!—"Our brother is not dead, but sleepeth," seems written on the impressive pageant; and we almost expect, while we gaze, to see the deep slumber chased from the closed eyelids, and the recumbent form start up again to claim the warlike weapons with which it was wont to be girt, and that now lie, as if awaiting their master's grasp, in unavailing display ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... the old, old men, Once fierce and high-hearted in frolics, But now we are three score and ten Or upwards—mere relics Of the fine strong pageant of youth, Which time in his spite and unruth Has taken. We are dim and palsied and shaken, ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson

... and magnificence of the church, and the glorious sunshine—all these enchanted the eye; but I could have fancied myself in a theatre. I saw no devotion, and I felt none. The whole appeared more like a triumphal pageant acted in honour of a heathen deity, than an act of worship and thanksgiving to ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... then in Venice, and came to view the pageant from our windows in Palazzo Corner. When my mother saw this old friend appear with the tricolor upon his breast, she said, "Fort bien, Milord! nos couleurs italiennes sur votre coeur!" He shook her by the hand, and answered, "Pour moi je les ai toujours portees, Comtesse. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... fundamentally and thoroughly different from the Republics of '93 and '48, as well as from that of the United States) seems to be his ideal government. In a century, he says, there won't be a king in Europe, except perhaps in England, and there he will be nothing but a pageant—a political mummy shown to the populace ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... guests, the elderly gentleman whirls out of the room in the same transport of emotion with which he entered it; the panic- struck visitors are requested by a slave to consider themselves as dismissed: they retire; resume their couches:—the nocturnal pageant has "dislimned" and vanished; and on the following morning, were it not for their concurring testimonies, all would be disposed to take this interruption of their sleep for one of its most fantastic dreams. The ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... a great green commonwealth of Thought Which ranks the yearly pageant, and decides How Summer's royal progress shall be wrought, By secret stir which in each plant abides? Does rocking daffodil consent that she, The snowdrop of wet winters, shall be first? Does spotted cowslip with the grass ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various

... be that the very vagueness of the allusion is of more haunting tragic power than precise knowledge. It is also interesting to notice the effective use which is made in "A Dree Neet" of all the superstitions which gather about the great pageant of death. The flight of the Gabriel ratchets, or Gabriel hounds, through the sky, the fluttering of bats at the casement and of moths at the candle flame, and the shroud of soot which falls from the chimney of the room where the dying man lies, are introduced with ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman

... "Why, you go down there like a whole parade and a gorgeous pageant rolled into one, in feathers and paint and diamond boulders in your ears—and you come out of it in a gingham apron and coy sunbonnet ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard

... affected the whole of French literature, but its most important results were in the domain of Prose. Nowhere were the defects of the Romantics more obvious than in their treatment of history. With a very few exceptions they conceived of the past as a picturesque pageant—a thing of contrasts and costumes, an excuse for rhetorical descriptions, without inner significance or a real life of its own. One historian of genius they did indeed produce—MICHELET; and the contrast between his work and that of his successors, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... trip down into Jersey the reporter had plenty of time to consider his unsavory task. Some one had to do this kind of thing, so long as the public snooped and peeped and eavesdropped through the keyhole of print at the pageant of the socially great: this he appreciated and accepted. But he felt that it ought to be some one other than himself—and, at the same time, was sufficiently just to smile at ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... the peculiar spirit of the age; but they should take good care not to bind themselves in the same manner to the latter at a time when everything is in transition, and when the mind, accustomed to the moving pageant of human affairs, reluctantly endures the attempt to fix it to any given point. The fixity of external and secondary things can only afford a chance of duration when civil society is itself fixed; under any other circumstances I hold it to ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... this compliment was paid to the Almighty—a remnant of ancient custom which the squire refused to alter or amend. When Bessie had assisted at this ceremony she had gone through the whole duty of the day, and her reflection on her experience since she came to Abbotsmead was that life as a pageant must be dull—duller than life ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr

... the house we ran, and over on to the common, which latterly had been a pageant-ground for phantom warring. The light did not appear again; and as Smith plunged off toward the trees, I wondered if he knew what uncanny thing was hidden there. I more than suspected that he had solved ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... forgotten nothing; would that I had! I will not look grave. I will be gay; and yet, when I remember how soon other mockery besides this splendid pageant must be terminated, why should I look gay? Why ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... last, was over. Gulnare and I were in at the death with Sheridan at the Five Forks. Together we had shared the pageant at Richmond and Washington, and never had I seen her in better spirits than on that day at the capital. It was a sight indeed to see her as she came down Pennsylvania Avenue. If the triumphant procession had been all in her honor and mine, she could not have moved with greater ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray

... The same picture also forms the closing scene of Shakespeare's Henry VIII. As we look upon the gay and splendid train, marching in their robes of state, beneath silken canopies, and then glance our eye along the map of history till we trace almost every actor in the pageant to a bloody grave, we can scarcely believe that it is a scene of joy and festivity that we are witnessing. The angel of death seems to hover over them; there is something dreadful in their rejoicing; their gaudy robes, their mantles, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various

... the motion picture illustrate many truths concerning creation. The Cosmic Director has written His own plays, and assembled the tremendous casts for the pageant of the centuries. From the dark booth of eternity, He pours His creative beam through the films of successive ages, and the pictures are thrown on the screen of space. Just as the motion-picture images appear to be real, but are only combinations of light ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... was a beautiful and brilliant pageant, and the splendid military music of the cavalry-bands, the clash and clang of the silver cymbals, the ringing roll of the kettle-drums, and the symphonious cadences of the cornets, horns, and trumpets at the same time, delighted and excited me ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... Palmendos" "from my house in Cripplegate." That he carried on the business of a draper, or had some connection with the trade as late as 1613, may be gathered from the following passage at the close of "The Triumphs of Truth," the city pageant for that year, by Thomas Middleton: "The fire-work being made by Maister Humphrey Nichols, a man excellent in his art; and the whole work and body of the Triumph, with all the proper beauties of the workmanship, most artfully and faithfully performed ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... Edith, who dropped her garland to gaze on the approaching pageant; the last was strange to her. She had been accustomed to see the banner of the great Earl Godwin by the side of the Saxon king; and she said, ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... how strangely, how strenuously, colour can at moments appeal to the imagination. In this pageant of the East she saw arise the naked soul of Africa; no faded, gentle thing, fearful of being seen, fearful of being known and understood; but a phenomenon vital, bold and gorgeous, like the sound of a trumpet pealing a great reveille. As she looked on this flaming ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... and society, drawn hither by the novelty of the pastime and comfortably installed in chairs brought by their servants, with chaufferettes and furs to keep them protected from the intense cold, looked on at the shifting, swiftly moving pageant before them. For the time being the Parisian world was mad about skating, both because of its popularity as an English sport and because of the rarity with which it could be enjoyed ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe

... the threshold, his whole being wrought up to he knew not what solemn pageant of death and parting, and the reality within startled him. The room was flooded with morning light, a frosty December sun was struggling through the fog, the curtains had just been drawn back, and the wintry radiance rested on the polished brass ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Lord Prince, the King that now is [Edward the Third]. So my father, being then at top of the tree, begged the marriage for one of his daughters, and it was settled that should be me. I liked it well enough, to feel myself the most important person in the pageant, and to be beautifully donned, and all that; and as I was not to leave home for some years to come, it was but a show, and cost me nothing. I dare say it cost somebody a pretty penny. Beatrice was higher mated, with my Lord of Norfolk's son, who was ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... the children of the underworld live and die, for death reaps here his richest harvest. Never mind! the funeral of one child is only a pageant for others. Here women work and starve, and here childhood, glorious childhood, is withered and stricken; but here, too, the wicked, the vile, the outcast and the ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes

... Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do with our victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to see it grow, with the tax gatherer but to hear him knock, with the maid but to hear her scolded. Scot and lot, butcher, baker, are things unknown to us save as spectators of the pageant. We are fed we know not how, quietists, confiding ravens. We have the otium pro dignitate, a respectable insignificance. Yet in the self condemned obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearnings of life, not quite kill'd, rise, prompting me that there was a London, and that I was of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... at headquarters at Devonport in the morning after arriving to take up an appointment a good many years ago, I learnt that there was to be no end of a pageant that afternoon. The British Association, or some such body, had descended upon Plymouth for a palaver. There was to be a review in Saltram Park on the farther side of the Three Towns so as to make sport for the visitors. The general ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... Sidney was too much the world's darling, too elegant a figure in the Elizabethan pageant, too ethereal a poet, to be burdened with the brunt of so serious an accusation, and he was passed by for one who, with all his brilliant gifts and attainments, had ever been the ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... pageant I never saw on the waves, since the day I first blew. You were not there, Notus? S. Pageant, Zephyr? what ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... arena in which the great struggle was ever going on, but the champions were so few in number that their individual shapes become familiar to us like the figures of an oft-repeated pageant. And now the withdrawal of certain companies of infantry and squadrons of cavalry from the Spanish armies into France, had left obedient Netherland too weak to resist rebellious Netherland, while, on the other hand, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... little group, attracted by the solemn pageant, thus exercised the privilege of independent thought and free discussion, carriage after carriage was filled and moved off, and soon the whole passed out ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur

... No sublimer pageant of blood and flame and smoke and shrouded Death ever moved across the earth than that which Lee now witnessed from the hilltop on which he stood. For five miles across the Manassas plains the gray waves rolled, their polished bayonets gleaming in the blazing sun. They ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon



Words linked to "Pageant" :   observance, ceremonial occasion, ceremony, representation, ceremonial



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