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More "Melody" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fashion. Its song has a general resemblance to that of our robin, but many of the notes are far more musical, more like those of our wood thrush. Indeed, there were individuals among those we heard certain of whose notes seemed to me almost to equal in point of melody the chimes of the wood thrush; and the highest possible praise for any song-bird is to liken its song to that of the wood thrush or hermit thrush. I certainly do not think that the blackbird has received full justice ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... unkind word, one selfish thought, one cruel deed, the song would have been broken by jarring discords; but all was harmony, not one harsh note disturbed the rippling melody. ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... kneeling, in the attitude of prayer, all the time. Walk about. Go out and look at the stars. Read, if you prefer, some ennobling book. But, in whatever form thought and meditation may take, keep the key held to the divinest melody of life. In that way shall the spiritual life gather its rich strength and infinite energy." The principle is one that every life which has given to the world noble results, has acted upon, consciously or unconsciously, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... through an aperture. Fixing their eyes thereon, they descried an underground cavernous chamber, in the forefront of which there sat a man, plunged in poverty, and clad in rags and tatters. Beside him stood his wife, mixing wine. When the man took the cup in his hands, she sung a clear sweet melody, and delighted him by dancing and cozening him with flatteries. The king's companions observed this for a time, and marvelled that people, pinched by such poverty as not to afford house and raiment, yet passed their lives in such good cheer. The king said to his chief ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... fortress turrets and was answered by some creature Kennon couldn't identify. A murmur of blended sound came from the valley below, punctuated by high-pitched laughter. Someone was singing, or perhaps chanting would be a better description. The melody was strange and the words unrecognizable. The thin whine of an atomotor in the fortress's generating plant slowly built up to a keening undertone that blended into the ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... kinds of music: and so clear His singing was, and such a heaven to hear, Men might not speak during his madrigal. Amphion, king of Thebes, that put a wall About the city with his melody, Certainly sang not half so well as he. And add to this, he was the seemliest man That is, or has been, since the world began. What needs describe his beauty? since there's none With which to make the least comparison. In brief, he was the flower of gentilesse, {21} Of honour, ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... as powerless to detach his work from his past as he is to detach himself from it; and one of the saddest penalties of his misdoings is their survival in his work. The dulness of the poet's ear shows itself in the defective melody of his verse; for both metre and rhythm have a physiological basis; they represent and express the harmony which is in the body when the body is finely attuned to the spirit. Dull senses and a sluggish body are ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... exact tune of this interesting song it has not been in our power to discover—it is, however, undoubtedly a truly national melody. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... time lightly, joyously, and we re ponded to her mood like harp-strings all in accord. The room, awakened to melody after the long years of silence, seemed transformed by Una's splendid gift, a fine, clear soprano, not big nor yet thin or reedy, but rounded, full-bodied and deep with feeling. Jerry was smiling now, the shadow ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... home, the colonel subscribed to the opera, and enjoyed the music. A plantation song of the olden time, as he remembered it, borne upon the evening air, when sung by the tired slaves at the end of their day of toil, would have been pleasing, with its simple melody, its plaintive minor strains, its notes of vague longing; but to the colonel's senses there was to-night no music in this hackneyed popular favourite. In a metropolitan music hall, gaudily bedecked and brilliantly lighted, it would have been tolerable from the lips of a black-face comedian. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... their shares of him; But he was shrewish as a wayward child, And pleased again by toys which childhood please; As-book of fables, graced with print of wood, Or else the jingling of a rusty medal, Or the rare melody of some old ditty, That first was sung ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... is all mechanism to one man, all form and colour to another, so to Anthony Croft the world was all melody. Notwithstanding these many gifts and possibilities, the doctor's wife advised the Widow Croft to make a plumber of him, intimating delicately that these freaks of nature, while playing no apparent part in the divine economy, ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... one of the number which are packed to suit all English tastes and may be taken for a rough sample of the jumble of them, where a danceless quadrille-tune succeeds a suicidal Operatic melody and is followed by the weariful hymn, whose last drawl pert polka kicks aside. Thus does the poor Savoyard compel a rich people to pay for their wealth. Not without pathos in the abstract perhaps do the wretched machines pursue their revolutions of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on his staff, and bringing them from Rome and Gaul new songs in a new language set to a new melody. He comes to unveil for them what lies hidden, unknown to themselves, in the depths of their hearts. He explains, by the power of one Supreme God, why it is that their mountains are so high, their valley so smiling, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... foot) of the first two lines to the a's of the last is simply miraculous, and miraculously assisted by what may be called the internal sub-rhyme of sedisti and redemisti. This latter effect can rarely be attempted without a jingle: there is no jingle here, only an ineffable melody. After the Dies Irae, no poet could say that any effect of poetry was, as far as sound goes, unattainable, though few could have hoped to equal it, and perhaps no one except Dante and Shakespeare has ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... sensitive glances at the horizon. These two men had come and placed themselves near the group on the quarter-deck, when the last music was heard; and Ludlow had ascribed the circumstance to a sensibility to melody, when the child Zephyr stole to their side, in a manner to show that more was meant by the movement than was apparent in the action itself. The appearance of Tiller, who invited the party to re-enter the cabin, explained its meaning, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... they again burst into the melody of their national love-song. I transcribe the original words which for simple, primitive beauty are ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... astonished. The words and the simple melody which carried them were evidently an improvisation. But the voice—did that issue from a human throat? Yes, for in distant Spain and far-off Rome, in great cathedrals and concert halls, he had sometimes listened entranced to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... ghost of sadness that seemed to haunt the earth and sky. Suddenly, as I stood in the midst of it all, a cardinal flashed like a red spark into a tall pine, fluffed out his breast, and swept the forest with a defiant note of melody. It was a challenge to the long winter time, a prophecy of spring and of high green trees, and of a mate cloistered now far away in the wilderness: "You shall not hear a simple song, but you shall remember that music is the voice of love," ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... now approaching? She arises when the lark first pours his melody in air. Her dress is of a darker green, her head is adorned with full-blown flowers, her face is tanned by labour. The bleating and affrighted sheep are plunged, unwillingly, into the pool, and now by the sturdy ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... a gossamer as fine as Arachne's web in a green garden way where the lizards run, or in a crowded corner where the fruit-sellers sit against the wall;—in all its shapes one grows to love the water that fills Rome with an unchanging melody all through ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... thither, and penetrating deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of dark, crooked lanes, but gradually edging nearer to the harbour, while, as I thought, working our way a considerable distance to the westward. Presently my guide, who had been humming some negro melody to himself, lifted up his voice in a louder key and began to chant the praises of a certain "lubly Chloe, whose eyes were like the stars, and whose 'breaf' was like the rose!" The fellow had a wonderfully melodious voice, and in listening to him as he strode easily along at a swinging ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... region, who noticed with delight its rare wild-flowers, its vigorous vegetation, and its verdure, worthy of England, the very word being common to the two languages. A few cattle gave life to the scene, already so dramatic. The birds sang, filling the valley with a sweet, vague melody that quivered in the air. If a quiet imagination will picture to itself these rich fluctuations of light and shade, the vaporous outline of the mountains, the mysterious perspectives which were seen where the trees gave an opening, or the streamlets ran, or some coquettish little glade ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... witness to abide? Then study the word of God, and live by it; sing and make melody in your heart to the Lord; praise the Lord with your first waking breath in the morning, and thank Him with your last waking breath at night; flee from sin; keep on believing; look to Jesus, cleave to Him, follow Him gladly, trust ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... small boy sat on the foremost seat— A mirthful youngster he; He beat the time with his restless feet To each new melody, And he picked me out as the brightest star Of the ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... back through the tunnel, his heart singing and making melody. Oh how lovely—how more than lovely, how divinely beautiful—she was! And so kind and friendly! Yet she seemed just the least bit fitful too. Something troubled her, he said to himself. But he little thought that he, and no one else, had spoiled ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... to sing softly in Creole French, a Louisianian air. The words of this melody were soft and expressive. Although restrained, the noble contralto overpowered the noise of the torrents of rain and violent gusts of wind, which seemed to shake the old ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... himself again that the 'gipsy girl' had not in the least understood the real force of the letter. And that donkey Kupfer shouts: Rachel! Viardot! Then he went to his piano, as it seemed, unconsciously opened it, and tried to pick out by ear the melody of Tchaykovsky's song; but he slammed it to again directly in vexation, and went up to his aunt to her special room, which was for ever baking hot, smelled of mint, sage, and other medicinal herbs, and was littered up with such a multitude of rugs, side-tables, stools, cushions, and padded furniture ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... solemn assurance floated forth to be a warning, or a promise, according to the mental state of those whose ears it filled; and the mind, familiar with the phrase, continued it involuntarily, carrying the running accompaniment, as well as the words and the melody, on to the end. After the last reverberation of the last stroke of every hour had died away, and just when expectation had been succeeded by the sense of silence, they rang it out by day and night—the bells—and the four winds of heaven by day and night spread ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... cigarette, to meet who-knew-what other thoughts—for thoughts, no doubt, had little swift lives of their own; desired, found their mates, and, lightly blending, sent forth offspring. Why not? All things were possible in this wonder-house of a world. Even that waltz tune, floating away, would find some melody to wed, and twine with, and produce a fresh chord that might float in turn to catch the hum of a gnat or fly, and breed again. Queer—how everything sought to entwine with something else! On one of the pinkish blooms of the hydrangea he noted a bee—of all things, in this hidden-away ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... sonatas and bits of carved ivory, not to speak of the men who created those things, and who were of no practical use to the community in which they lived. And the workmen in the factories listened to the drone of their engines until they too had lost all taste for the melody of the flute or fiddle of their peasant ancestry. The arts became the step-children of the new industrial era. Art and Life became entirely separated. Whatever paintings had been left, were dying a slow death in the museums. And music became a monopoly of a few ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... 8. "Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpointists to hack post-horses; therefore be advised, let well alone and remember the old Italian proverb: Chi sa piu, meno sa—'Who ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Black Forest, for the woodcutters and charcoal-women to dance; and yet this boy, with his long yellow curls and big blue eyes, defies all your Italian impostors. His left hand is possessed of inimitable melody, grace, and suppleness, and his right of a power to draw the bow, that the Almighty rarely ...
— The Dean's Watch - 1897 • Erckmann-Chatrian
... in them a pleasing sound rather than a living voice, and find themselves offering to God, when they join in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, rather a mere musical accompaniment than the intelligent melody of a heart ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... waltz came floating down to them. She half closed her eyes. Her head moved slowly with the melody. ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the rose which had dropped from your hair, you have not been seen at court. I never should have told you this, my best beloved, but the anguish of this hour has wrung the confession from me. It will die away from your memory like the tones of a strange melody, and be lost in the jubilant harmony ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... contains, and I will, therefore, state frankly I never derived any profit whatsoever, and very little pleasure from the reading of the great plays. The beauty of the verse! Yes; he who loved Shelley so well as I could not fail to hear the melody of— ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... parts; so that in a company of singers, which one very frequently meets with in Wales, you will hear as many different parts and voices as there are performers, who all at length unite, with organic melody, in one consonance and the soft sweetness of B flat. In the northern district of Britain, beyond the Humber, and on the borders of Yorkshire, the inhabitants make use of the same kind of symphonious harmony, but with less variety; singing only in two parts, one murmuring ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... still obviously quivering, like a harpstring when suddenly struck by a stray finger it throbs in a last, swiftly-dying tremble; the second was followed by a third, and, gradually gaining fire and breadth, the strains swelled into a pathetic melody. 'Not one little path ran into the field,' he sang, and sweet and mournful it was in our ears. I have seldom, I must confess, heard a voice like it; it was slightly hoarse, and not perfectly true; there ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... glimmer on me, my apple-tree, Like living flakes of snow; Let odour and moonlight and melody In the old rich ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... agree with me; A commonplace production; but the joy And unction that he puts into the melody, The ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... big booming in my ears, great heavy iron bells that swung to-and-fro on either side, and sent out deafening reverberations that steeped the senses in a musical melody of sonorous sound; to-and-fro, backward and forward, yet ever receding in a gradually widening circle, monotonous, mournful, weird, suffusing the soul with an unutterable sadness, as images of wailing ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... something so deep and vague that only the sound of some rich music could convey the idea of it. I seemed to hear instruments of celestial sweetness make harmony in my old heart. With the solemn accords of a funeral chant there seemed to mingle the subdued melody of a song of love; for my soul blended into one feeling the grave sadness of the present with the familiar graces of ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... appropriate costumes by priest, deacon, sub-deacon and boys of the choir is in certain ceremonies associated with the use of melody and accent equally suited to the several roles. Each festival is an anniversary, and in the early church was celebrated with rites, chants and ornaments corresponding to its origin. The Noel, for example, was supposed to be the song which the angels sang at the nativity, ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... pursuits, think that music is a mere family pastime—an ear-gratifying enjoyment. Great popularity has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, and there is no doubt that the widespread, instantaneous appreciation and popularity of melody has detracted somewhat from the proper recognition of the higher and graver attributes of music. But that music is a power and has influenced humanity with dynamic force in politics, religion, peace, and war, no one can gainsay. Who can deny the effect in great crises of the world's ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... number of syllables in each line, but he often merely counts them off on his fingers, wrenching the accents all awry, and often violently forcing the rimes as well. In his songs, however, which are much more numerous than the sonnets, he attains delightful fluency and melody. His 'My Lute, Awake,' and 'Forget Not Yet' are still counted among the notable ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... a predicament, as I did not wish the President to believe that the band was not at all times able to respond to his wishes. Fortunately, one of the bandmen remembered the melody and played it over softly to me on his cornet in a corner. I hastily wrote out several parts for the leading instruments, and told the rest of the band to vamp in the key of E flat. Then we played the "Cachuca" to the entire satisfaction of Mr. Arthur, who came again to the door and ...
— The Experiences of a Bandmaster • John Philip Sousa
... designed, and the gardens were especially lush. Presently he heard music ahead—live music. He went on. He came to a place where strolling citizens had paused under the trees of the street to listen to the melody and the sound of voices that accompanied it. And the music and the festivity was in the house in which Nedda dwelt. She was having a party, on the very night of the day in which he'd been framed ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... lacing ferns, had so composing an effect upon his spirits, that he began to take an interest in the flowers that hung here and there, while the song of a finch sounded pleasant and homelike. Then the delicious melody of the bell-bird fell upon his ear; and while he was listening to this, he became interested in a beautiful blackbird, which ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... mind. Let them have faith in Him who feedeth the young lions, and clothes the fields with verdure—who bindeth up the broken heart, and giveth joy to the mourners. There are Words of Cheer in the air! Listen! and their melody will bring peace to the spirit, and their truths ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... a snatch of a love-song under his breath. Esther did not know what it was; she had never heard the melody before, but something in the softly sentimental notes brought the tears to her eyes; before she was aware of it they were tumbling ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... my hearers ever stood, in the calm of a summer evening, in Shelley's native land, listening to the lovely warble of the nightingale, making earth joyful with its unpremeditated strains, and the woods re-echo with its melody? Or gazed upwards with anxious ken towards the skylark careering in the "blue ether," far above this sublunary sphere of gross, sensual earth, there straining after ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley as a Philosopher and Reformer • Charles Sotheran
... now resumed its usual melody and power, and we sat down while he turned the pages of Prof. Bain's little work entitled "Mind and Body." He read (I marked at the time the passage): "The memory rises and falls with the bodily condition; being vigorous in our ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... yes! I am a thing of joy! My tones are passing sweet; I thrill you with my melody So simple, yet complete! "Ah! there he is!" you softly cry, And breathless watch my flight— Unless, indeed, I have you there, By coming in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... varieties of sounds which, having broken away from their original source, are ever wandering and echoing around the rock-bound gorge. Beautiful indeed and altogether indescribable are the elements of melody which are created by the falling waters ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... going through to Plunketts and I'll call you, like this." As we came from the shadows into the moonlight beside the coach, Adam paused and gave three low weird notes, which were so lovely that they seemed the sounds from which the melody of all the world was sprung. "I'll call twice, and then you answer if you are awake. If ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... praise the name of God with a song, and will magnify him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs." Psa. 69:30, 31. "Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream." Amos 5:23, 24. If the Old Testament insists on obedience to all God's commandments as an indispensable condition of salvation, so does the New: "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and offend in ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... (between whom and himself not much love was lost) and walked off, jauntily twirling his mustache, and whistling a few bars of a very ungainly melody, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Character modifies our life more than we think, and it is to a certain extent true that every man is the architect of his own fortune. No doubt it seems as if our lot were assigned to us almost entirely from without, and imparted to us in something of the same way in which a melody outside us reaches the ear. But on looking back over our past, we see at once that our life consists of mere variations on one and the same theme, namely, our character, and that the same fundamental bass sounds through it all. This is an ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... hadst a soul for melody to greet, When thou wert here, among the weary-hearted; And thoughts of thee are like sweet sounds departed, That visit time with echoes,—and repeat Strains that were breath'd beside my pilgrim feet; As if I heard the voice of my past years, And thou wert ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... peaceful scenes that seemed to us like a forgotten melody of love and home and peace, and the train that bore us out of the war zone seemed to carry us into another world, but though the feast to our eyes was pleasant and like "far-off forgotten things and pleasures long ago," we were not ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... O, mournfully, This midnight wind doth sigh! Like some sweet, plaintive melody Of ages long gone by; It speaks a tale of other years, Of hopes that bloomed to die— Of sunny smiles that set in tears, And ...
— Fostina Woodman, the Wonderful Adventurer • Avis A. (Burnham) Stanwood
... affected by the music, still found time to glance continually at his companion, so radiant with life and so fervently intent upon realizing to the full this, the first of its unknown joys. So with crashing of chords and thunder of melody the act went on. And when it was over, Juliet thought no more of the Cornish sea and the lullaby of the waves. A new music was stirring in ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sheds blood of lambs, to expiate thy crimes— Crimes foul as hell—crimes which the blood of Him, Who came from heaven to die for guilty man, Alone could purge,—and innocence impart. Here holy David tuned his harp to strains Sublime as those of angels, when he sung In dulcet melody the praise of Him Who should redeem from guilt the sons of man, And rescue who in Him believed from death— That second death—of which the first is type. Here lived—here died—whom prophets long foretold, Whom angels worship and whom seraphs praise, The Son of God, mysterious God-Man: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... upon to sing, become nervous afterwards, Mr. Mincin leads her tenderly into the next room, and restores her with port wine, which she must take medicinally. If any gentleman be standing by the piano during the progress of the ballad, Mr. Mincin seizes him by the arm at one point of the melody, and softly beating time the while with his head, expresses in dumb show his intense perception of the delicacy of the passage. If anybody's self-love is to be flattered, Mr. Mincin is at hand. If anybody's overweening vanity is to be pampered, Mr. Mincin will surfeit ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... more acceptable to the little circle than this call upon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs the stirring melody, during which performance Mr. Bucket, much enlivened, beats time and never falls to come in sharp with the burden, "British Gra-a-anadeers!" In short, he shows so much musical taste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to express his conviction ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... vicinity to each other, whose spectra are thus reciprocally similar to each colour, is owing to this greater ease that the eye experiences in beholding them distinctly; and it is probable, in the organ of hearing, a similar circumstance may constitute the pleasure of melody. Sir Isaac Newton observes, that gold and indigo were agreeable when viewed together; and thinks there may be some analogy between the sensations of light and sound. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... he passed his time in completing his plans of militia reform. He made in October many stirring and earnest speeches for the Republican candidates. He was very popular among the country people. His voice was magnificent in melody and volume, his command of language wonderful in view of the deficiencies of his early education, his humor inexhaustible and hearty, and his manner deliberate and impressive, reminding his audiences in Central Illinois of the earliest and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... old songs cling tenaciously to the consciousness; and memory, are retained when everything else in heart and mind has been blurred over, and of all the magic mirrors which reflect back our lives for us the most effective is a melody linked to words which moved us in our youth. When an orchestra stops playing its waltzes and mazourkas of the latest fashion and takes up the strains of "Kathleen Mavourneen," "Oft in the Stilly Night," or "Robin Adair," one may readily observe a change come over the older part ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... recommenced his tapping on an adjacent tree: the rattle of a cart in the rocky gulch below the hill came faintly up. No one was to be seen far or near. Miss Milly, re-assured, returned. She again ran her fingers over the keys, stopped, caught at a melody running in her mind, half played it, and then threw away all caution. Before five minutes had elapsed, she had entirely forgotten herself, and with her linen duster thrown aside, her straw hat flung on the piano, her white hands bared, and a black loop of her braided hair hanging upon ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... Poets opened the aspiration valves, ignited the divine spark plugs, and whiz! went their motor-meters in a whirring, buzzing melody. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... of which he had ever sung to an audience that a canoe would not hold, or to other accompaniment than that of a mandolin. Partly in memory of those old canoe-evenings St. George broke into a low, crooning plantation melody. The song, like much of the Southern music, had in it a semi-barbaric chord that the college men had loved, something—or so one might have said who took the canoe-music seriously—of the wildness and fierceness of old tribal ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... about the field in search of stray grains of corn, or early worms. It was a strange and unfamiliar silence, and struck solemnly on Sylvia's mind. Only a thrush in the old orchard down in the hollow, out of sight, whistled and gurgled with continual shrill melody. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... a third, "hearken a stave of Robin Hood; maybe that shall hasten the coming of one I wot of." And he fell to singing in a clear voice, for he was a young man, and to a sweet wild melody, one of those ballads which in an incomplete and degraded form you have read perhaps. My heart rose high as I heard him, for it was concerning the struggle against tyranny for the freedom of life, how that the wildwood and the heath, despite of wind and weather, were better for ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... into the hall the band was sending forth a tremendous volume of brilliant exhilarating sound. A vast melody seemed to ride on waves of brass. The conductor was very excited, and his dark locks shook with the violence of his gestures as he urged onward the fingers and arms of the executants flying madly through the maze of the music ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... her instrument and for mine." I gave her to-day her fourth lesson on the rules of composition and harmony, and am pretty well satisfied with her. She made a very good bass for the first minuet, of which I had given her the melody, and she has already begun to write in three parts; she can do it, but she quickly tires, and I cannot get her on, for it is impossible to proceed further as yet; it is too soon, even if she really had genius, but, alas! there appears to be none; ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... this deep, latent self-respect of the nation we find in Alfieri, whose stern muse revived the terse energy of Dante; and in our own day, this identical inspiration fired the melancholy verse of Leopardi, the letters of Foscolo, the novels of Guerrazzi, and the tender melody of Bellini. Recent literature has exhibited the conditions under which Italian Liberals strive, and the method of expiating their self-devotion. The novels of Ruffini, the letters of the Countess d'Ossoli, the rhetoric of Gavazzi, and the parliamentary reports of Gladstone, the leading reviews, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the Levant; Jew, Turk, and Christian; traveller, adventurer, podesta, valet, avvocato, and gondolier, held their way alike to the common centre of amusement. The hurried air and careless eye; the measured step and jealous glance; the jest and laugh; the song of the cantatrice, and the melody of the flute; the grimace of the buffoon, and the tragic frown of the improvisatore; the pyramid of the grotesque, the compelled and melancholy smile of the harpist, cries of water-sellers, cowls of monks, plumage of warriors, hum of voices, and the universal movement and bustle, added to the more ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Emerson he was surprised to hear the Concord Sage refer to Poe as the "jingle man," but then Emerson himself had been treated rather contemptuously by Poe, and that, together with Emerson's lack of appreciation of melody, may account for ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... March, which we Germans, as Goethe also declares, drummed in Champagne—and I understood him. He once wanted to explain to me the word l'Allemagne (or Germany), and he drummed the all too simple melody which on market-days is played to dancing-dogs, namely, dum-dum-dum! I was vexed, but I understood him for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... a good voice consecrated to the Master's service always is! Rachel's great natural ability would have made her one of the foremost opera singers of the age. Surely this audience had never heard such a melody. How could it? The men who had drifted in from the street sat entranced by a voice which "back in the world," as the Bishop said, never could be heard by the common people because the owner of it would charge two or three dollars ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... the clouds to me, On this sweet day of spring; Methinks it is a melody That angel-lips ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... morning, as James sang, my spirits rose with his soaring melody from the depths into which they had been cast in the passage of the village, and when the last note had died away and he was debating whether to light his pipe or sing another song, I asked him with quite a show ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... carried Hawthorne through the blossoming orchards of Concord," says James T. Fields, "and laid him down under a group of pines, on a hillside, overlooking historic fields. All the way from the village church to the grave the birds kept up a perpetual melody. The sun shone brightly, and the air was sweet and pleasant, as if death had never entered the world. Longfellow and Emerson, Channing and Hoar, Agassiz and Lowell, Greene and Whipple, Alcott and Clarke, Holmes and Hillard, and other friends whom he loved, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow-clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody:— ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... struck up another melody, and by the time it was ended the dinner was over, and speeches began to be made. The evening being calm, and the windows still open, these orations could be distinctly heard. Henchard's voice arose above the rest; he was telling a story of his hay-dealing experiences, in which he had outwitted ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... tender that night and Billy felt a strange constriction in his throat. But you never would have guessed, as Lynn Severn turned at the end of her melody to search the dimness for the presence she felt had entered, that he had been under any stress of emotion, the way he grinned at her and ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... sad air, sung there in the branches of that tree amidst the darkness and night mist, and in spite of a certain beauty in the melody the singer's voice assumed a more and more saddened tone, till he finished with the water seeming to hiss more loudly through the lower branches and the inundated trunks around, and then there was a sharp slapping noise on the surface of ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... put up in good time: then at sun-set, when every thing in nature is hushed, we were charmed with the enchanting warbling of different birds; so that one would be inclined to say, they reserved this favourable moment for the melody and harmony of their song, to celebrate undisturbed and at their ease, the benefits of the Creator. On the other hand, we are disturbed in the night, by the hideous noise of the numberless water-fowls that are to be seen ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... called the old State "Virginy" and mixing it with local dialect, in some parts had got the name so changed that it was called "Ferginey." The circus troops and negro comedians, in their annual trips through the Southern States, had songs already so catchy to our people, on account of their pathos and melody, of Old Virginia, that now it almost appeared as though we were going to our old home. Virginia had been endeared to us and closely connected with the people of South Carolina by many links, not the least being its many sentimental songs of that romantic land, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... laughed. "Hear me!" Her fingers ran up and down the keys, then settled into a soft, sweet little melody. ...
— Four Girls and a Compact • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... this mask proceeds a voice which, for melody and sweetness, I have never heard equaled. In speaking, its tones are of silver, but when she sings one forgets mask and every thing else to give one's-self up to an ecstacy of perfect enjoyment. She knows a vast deal of Italian, French, and Spanish music, languages that she speaks with the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... know what bird thou art. Perhaps That fairy bird, fabled in island tale, Who never sings but once, and then his song Is of such fearful beauty that he dies From sheer exuberance of melody. ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... Like melody long hush'd, and lost in space, Back to its home the breathing spirit came: I look'd, and saw upon that angel face The fair love circled with the modest shame; I heard (and heaven descended on the place) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... voice was the warble of a bird, So soft, so sweet, so delicately clear, That finer, simpler music ne'er was heard; The sort of sound we echo with a tear, Without knowing why—an overpowering tone, Whence Melody descends as from ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... white and exquisitely formed as the purest statuary: an image of more perfect loveliness never glanced through a lady's lattice. She carelessly took up her cithern. A few wild chords flew from her touch. She bent her head towards the instrument, as if wooing its melody—the vibrations that crept to her heart. She hummed a low and plaintive descant, mournful and tender as her own thoughts. The tone and feeling of the ballad we attempt to ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... description, if Christianity be true, is in hell this moment. That is what they call "solace"—"tidings of great joy." LaPlace, who read the heavens like an open book, who enlarged the horizon of human thought, is there too. Beethoven, Master of melody and harmony, who added to the joy of human life, and who has borne upon the wings of harmony and melody millions of spirits to the height of joy, with his heart still filled with melody—he is in hell today. Robert Burns, poet of love and liberty, and from his heart, like ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... went forth to the spruit again, and there all day he labored earnestly. Each time that I looked towards him I saw his back bent and his arms plunging in the mud, while the rows of wet bricks grew longer and multiplied. I heard him whistling at it,—some English melody he had gathered long before at a waapenschauw,—with a light heart, the while he was up to his knees in the dirty water, with the mud plastered all ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... John, bowing. "The next time I saw you was that same afternoon. You were with Annunziata in the avenue. I carried my vision of you, like a melody, all the way to Roccadoro-and all the way ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the skullcaps of the poor fowls, with sharp kitchen knives—a procedure, the necessity of which I have never understood—they sang all sorts of folk-songs, the text of which formed a strange contrast, as well to the murderous act as to the mournful melody. At least one had to suppose this to be the case, for the maids, who sat on the edge of the bed with their guest from the straw-loft between them, followed the folksongs with never-ending merriment, and at the passages that sounded specially mournful they even burst into cheers. Both my parents ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the Alp is at the end of it there, if we only choose to lift our eyes and look. It is possible that not only 'into the sessions of sweet silent thought,' but into the rush and bustle of the workshop or the exchange, there may come, like 'some sweet, beguiling melody, so sweet we know not we are listening to it,' the thought that changes pettiness into greatness, that makes all things go smoothly and easily, that is a test and a charm to discover and to destroy temptation, the thought of a present Christ, the Lover ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... balmy, and laden with the perfume of the flowers. A nightingale was singing plaintively in an adjoining tree, and presently came a response equally tender from another part of the grove. Mistress Nutter could not choose but listen, and the melody so touched her that she was half suffocated by repressed emotion, for, alas! the relief of tears ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... "Philomel, with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby; Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... good effect. I shall also sincerely praise the 3 Preludes (Op. 8) and the two Ballades, but with some reservation. The first Ballade appears to me somewhat cut short; it wants I know not what at the beginning and towards the middle (page 7) of something needed to make the melody stand out; and the pastorale of the 2nd Ballade (page 7) figures like a too-cheap piece of "padding."... And, since I am in the vein for criticising, let me ask why you call your "Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman"—"Caprice grotesque?" Apart from the fact that the grotesque style should ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... THAN EVER MILL-RACE, ETC.: the change in the wording of this sentence in De Quincey's revision is, as Masson remarks, particularly characteristic of his sense of melody; it read in Blackwood, "We ran past them faster than ever ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... an extraordinary combination of sounds. It seemed at first as though two people were singing a duet in different tunes and without any regard to time; there was persistent melody and yet there was utter discord, and it seemed accompanied ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... an instant, she again broke out with, "Oh, how happy I am; it seems as though my heart would break with its ecstasy!" and, springing up, she ran to the piano, and sang a song which filled the room with melody, and caused a linnet that was asleep on her perch to awaken and join her ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... virtue engender'd is the flower; When Zephyrus eke with his swoote breath Inspired hath in every holt* and heath *grove, forest The tender croppes* and the younge sun *twigs, boughs Hath in the Ram his halfe course y-run, And smalle fowles make melody, That sleepen all the night with open eye, (So pricketh them nature in their corages*); *hearts, inclinations Then longe folk to go on pilgrimages, And palmers for to seeke strange strands, To *ferne hallows ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... floating from their sleeves. The figures bent beneath a heavy burden. It was long and black and grim, but the flowers that covered it were snow-white and filled the church with a sweet smell. A white-robed figure led the way up the aisle, repeating, as he walked, some words so solemn and full of melody that they sounded almost like music. The church was dim, and quiet, and nearly empty. The organ began to play—oh, so softly! It was very beautiful, but still the boy shuddered, for he dimly realized that the grim box held the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... steps, and gazed upward, as contemplating something wonderful in the heavens. For he beheld radiant choirs of angels surrounding the place with heavenly brightness; and he heard them with unspeakable melody singing the praises of the Creator. And he, intently contemplating these wonders, was filled with inward joy; yet understood he not what meaned the angelic presence, the glittering light, the celestial psalmody. But after a short season it vanished ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... several inches with the motion of the machinery.] and lark lurking by warm springs in the woods; the familiar snow-bird culling a few seeds in the garden, or a few crumbs in the yard; and occasionally the shrike, with heedless and unfrozen melody bringing back ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... scrub of low bush decorated with a collection of white garments, evidently set out to dry. His horse shied at the unusual sight, and furthermore took exception to the raucous sound of a man's voice chanting a dismal melody, somewhere away down by the river ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... and full of hope. And as they went, the sweetness of song stirred in their souls, and at last Bow-may fell to singing in a loud clear voice, and her cousin Wood-wise answered her, and all the warriors of the Wolf who were in their band fell into the song at the ending, and the sound of their melody went down the water and reached the ears of those that were entering the pass, and of those who were abiding till the way should be clear of them: and this is some of what ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... decorative design that even Raphael ever created—the most perfect piece of design, therefore, in the world. Its subtlety of spacing, its exquisiteness of line, its monumental simplicity, rippled through with a melody of falling curves from end to end, are beyond description—the reader must study them for himself in the illustration. One thing he might miss were not his attention called to it—the ingenious way in which the whole composition is adjusted to a diagonal ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... one sank down with bowed head as if in adoration, and the invisible music, accompanied by the peals of sweet-toned bells, filled the air with melody. ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... she sang, and when she ran downstairs she whistled a plantation melody with such precision and clearness that Loftus exclaimed, "Oh, how shocking!" and Mabel rolled up her eyes, and said sagely, that no one ever could turn Kate ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... mellow, vibrant tones, whose very music would have intoxicated duller fools than I—'tis ever a comfort to know there are greater fools—broke in melody: "To my own dear love from her ever loyal and devoted knight," and she held her opened hand high. 'Twas my birch-bark message which Father Holland had carried north. I suddenly went insane with a great overcharge of joy, that ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... blink behind great foaming tankards and listen to intellectual music. No other nation had such music. It was so intellectual in itself that it relieved the listeners of the necessity of thinking. There was not much of melody in it; little of the dance movement and very little of the lighter and gayer manifestations of life. It has been described as a sort of harmonious discord, typifying mysterious, tragic and awe-inspiring things. The people sat and ate their heavy food and drank their beer, their ears engaged with ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... conceptions and by the new age; philosopher and apostle of an idea, Bruno consecrated his life to the development of it in his writings and to the propagation of his principles in Europe by the fire of enthusiasm. The one surprised the world with the melody of his songs; being, as Dante says, the "dolce sirena che i marinari in mezzo al mare smaga," he lulled the anguish that lacerated Italy, and gilded the chains which bound her; the other tried to shake her; ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... shutters as she spoke, and let a flood of light into the room where Miss Rejoice lay. The window was open, and Melody's voice came in like a wave of sound, filling the room with ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long flaunting weed; and as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes; crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous character. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own music. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... paid to play and again they took their instruments and again tunes full of studied mirth and studied sorrow began to flow and to rise. They unfolded the customary melody but the guests hearkened in dull amazement. Already they knew not wherefore is it necessary, and why is it well, that people should pluck strings, inflate their cheeks, blow in thin pipes, and produce a bizarre, ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... honor of being styled 'the learned member that opened the debate,' or 'the very eloquent gentleman who has just sat down.' All day the coming scene had been flitting before my fancy, and cajoling it. My ear already caught the glorious melody of 'Hear him! hear him!' Already I was practising how to steal a sidelong glance at the tears of generous approbation bubbling in the eyes of my little auditory,—never suspecting, alas! that a modern eye may ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... exceedingly tame and friendly. It was a very sweet and strong singer. It loved to make its nest in or near his shelter. There it would build and rear its young, within reach of his hands, while its throat was always bursting with melody. ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... only one in the fur countries, the shortness of the summer not admitting of their doing more. We have mentioned the number and beauty of the hawks and owls. The white-headed eagle inhabits the fur countries as well as the United States. The melody of the song-birds is described to be exquisite. The verdant lawns and cultivated glades of Europe fail in producing that exhilaration and joyous buoyancy of mind which travellers have experienced in treading the Arctic wilds of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... and smiled at him. She held up to show him some wonderful mauve and blue hyacinths that she carried, and then passed on. Woodville sighed. It was too symbolic. The scent lingered. Like a half-remembered melody, it seemed to have the insidious power of recalling something in the past that was too wonderful ever to have happened, and of suggesting vague hopes of the most improbable joys. Sylvia seemed to the young ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... the immortal words of "Home, Sweet Home," adapting them to the beautiful Sicilian melody, now so familiar to us all, he gave to the world a precious legacy, which has brought sunshine into millions of hearts. "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home." And there is no other place in all the world where the little ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... the time, 12/8 moderato or allegro, like the time, simple four in a bar. But if the movement be adagio, largo assai, or andante maestoso, either all the quavers, or a crotchet followed by a quaver, should be beaten, according to the form of the melody, or the ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... waited outside the tent, and this time she was no longer in doubt. It was the cry of an instrument of music, a stringed instrument of some kind, plucked by demure fingers. The cry was repeated. A whimsical Eastern melody, very delicate and pathetic, crept ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... civilized is barbarian; barbaric indicates rude magnificence, uncultured richness; as, barbaric splendor, a barbaric melody. Barbarous refers to the worst side of barbarian life, and to revolting acts, especially of cruelty, such as a civilized man would not be expected to do; as, a barbarous deed. We may, however, say barbarous ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... road, a village in the southern boundary of St. Leonard's Forest, the key to some very rich country. Before the days of bicycles Bolney was practically unknown, so retired is it. The church, which has a curious pinnacled tower nearly 300 years old, is famous for its bells, concerning whose melody Horsfield gives the following piece of counsel: "Those who are fond of the silvery tones of bells, may enjoy them to perfection, by placing themselves on the margin of a large pond, the property of Mr. W. Marshall; the reverberation of the sound, coming ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... from the roses, only to show me how poor a thing it was compared with Bettina's breath upon my cheek and its sweetness in my nostrils. Now and then a belated bird sang its sleepy song, only to remind me of the melody of her lullabies, and the cooing dove moaned out its plaintive call lest I forget the pain in her breast while selfishly remembering the ache in my own. Then I thought of what the Good Book says about "bright clouds," and I prayed that my pain might make me a better man and might lead me ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... England whose voice I do not account musical save and except always the braying of an ass. The notes of all our birds and fowls please me without one exception. I should not indeed think of keeping a goose in a cage, that I might hang him up in the parlour for the sake of his melody, but a goose upon a common, or in a ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... song for a long time; finally he wanted to cut it short. So he took in both hands his snuffbox, broke up the melody with a sneeze; and, before they got together again, ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... his garden, and simply and reverently tells them of their misfortune, which is to be accepted submissively, as Heaven's will. The deep religious feeling of that scene, the grouping, the use of sunset lights and shadows, the melody of the chimes, the stricken look in the faces of the women and children, the sweet gravity of the Vicar—instinct with the nobleness of a sorrow not yet become corrosive and lachrymose, as is the tendency of settled grief—and, over all, the sense ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... whole face, was more like the well-known engraving from Guido's picture of "Beatrice Cenci" than anything else he could give me an idea of. He added, that her countenance haunted him, like the remembrance of some wild sad melody, heard in childhood; that it would perpetually recur with its ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... soul-stirring songs of Beranger, and reciting them in every tone, in every key and to every tune. One of these songsters was a young soldier, a lancer, with a bright intelligent look: he was standing outside a cabaret with several companions, and trolling in a rich, clear voice a melody which seemed thoroughly to spring from his heart. His eye alternately sparkled or dimmed as his words were animated or affecting, and the expression he breathed into his notes was full of feeling and admirably suited to all he sang. The last stanza of his ballad was especially well ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... mother's arms around her, the child was able to give a more coherent account of the circumstances which had led to this abrupt cessation of the dance; for Archie's melody had trailed off into an unmusical drone and speedily ceased, and the dancers had spontaneously crowded round the child and ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... before her, she suddenly opened her lips and sang. Her voice of exquisite purity, power, and sweetness, filled the old hall and overflowed it, throbbing in scarcely weakened vibrations through court-yard and castle. The melody was a prayer—the cry of a tortured heart for pardon and repose; and she sang it with almost supernatural expression. Every sound in the castle was hushed: the serfs outside ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... little of the actor in him. When telling a story he never mimicked his personages; his drama seldom lay in clash of character, but in thought; it was the sheer beauty of the words, the melody of the cadenced voice, the glowing eyes which fascinated you and always and above all the scintillating, coruscating humour that lifted his monologues into works ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... characteristic to be omitted, and there is so little of what is exquisite in the flavour of Diderot's style, that he perhaps suffers less from the clumsiness of translation than writers of finer colour or more stirring melody. One of ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of roses, violets, dahlias, and marguerites. At times the clumps darkened and looked like splotches of blood, at others they brightened into silvery greys of the softest tones. A lighted candle, standing near one basket, set amidst the general blackness quite a melody of colour—the bright variegations of marguerites, the blood-red crimson of dahlias, the bluey purple of violets, and the warm flesh tints of roses. And nothing could have been sweeter or more suggestive ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... multitude of revues or in our many musical shows, the dance, the pose, the rhythm and the melody that enhance our delight are all parts of the modern art of stage dancing. And it is of this art that the writer seeks to tell the ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... full power of fancy—with a bold lyrical freedom which ascends, as with godlike step, to the topmost height of worldly things; and it effects it in conjunction with the whole sensible influence of melody and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... of pitch, melody, harmony, and rhythm is necessary to the singer, but the orator may, by cultivation, develop a speaking voice of musical quality without being able to distinguish Old Hundred from The Last Rose ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... Tartar. Mirza Shaffy, the name of the Tartar sage and poet, proved himself no contemptible critic of these foreign productions. Not once could he be induced to tolerate a poem whose only merit was the beauty and melody of its language in the original, nor to swallow the mere sentimentalism which plays so great a part in German poetry especially. This sentimentalism, says Bodenstedt, is as unknown as it is unintelligible to the Oriental poet. He aims always at a real and tangible ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... with melody, Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby; lulla, lulla, lullaby; Never harm, nor spell, nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... down. It was growing chilly, perhaps, in the garden; anyway, the party went indoors. But the big windows were thrown wide, and waves of melody from Fru Falkenberg's piano poured out. After a while it changed to dance tunes; jovial Captain Bror, no doubt, ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... admiration and delight, and the martial harmony moved our souls so powerfully that we easily believed what is said of Ismenias's having excited Alexander to rise from table and run to his arms, with such a warlike melody. At last the golden king remained master of the field; and while we were minding those dances, Queen Whims vanished, so that we saw her no more ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... them on the wind, and the river rippled up that it might hear the better, and the trees bowed down their branches that they might not lose a note, and the birds no longer sang lest their music should make discord in the melody, as the wondrous child wandered over the country, and the music of heaven ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... quiet night, as faint and far As melody down-drifted from a star, Trembles strange music where ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... she danced, Native to melody and light, And now and then toward me glanced, Pleased, as I hoped, to ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... followed a path bordered with wild mignonette and apple trees that wound up the side of a hill covered with vineyards. A couple of chattering magpies ran before us, an invisible cuckoo was heard between snatches of Italian melody warbled by the tenor sotto voce and the little company overflowed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... voices rose and swelled, and filled the little room with a perfect melody of sound, Bet ceased to sigh; her hands fell idly into her lap, and her face, which was now turned towards the singers, became filled with a sort of ecstasy. Her parted lips seemed scarcely to breathe, and her eyes reflected the emotions caused by the pathos of the story ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade
... "Mrs. Barry had a presence of elevated dignity; her mien and motion superb, and gracefully majestic; her voice full, clear, and strong; so that no violence of passion could be too much for her; and when distress or tenderness possessed her, she subsided into the most affecting melody and softness. In the art of exciting pity, she had a power beyond all the actresses I have yet seen, or what your imagination can conceive. In scenes of anger, defiance, or resentment, while she was impetuous and terrible, she poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony; and it ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... kitchen knives—a procedure, the necessity of which I have never understood—they sang all sorts of folk-songs, the text of which formed a strange contrast, as well to the murderous act as to the mournful melody. At least one had to suppose this to be the case, for the maids, who sat on the edge of the bed with their guest from the straw-loft between them, followed the folksongs with never-ending merriment, and at the passages that sounded specially mournful they even burst into ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... the sound is heightened or increased, the subjects seem to receive a shock and a feeling of disappointment. The artistic sense developed by hypnotism is disturbed; the faces express astonishment, stupefaction and pain. If the same soft melody be again resumed, the same expression of rapturous bliss reappears in the countenance. The faces become seraphic and celestial when the subjects are by nature handsome, and when the subjects are ordinary looking, even ugly, they are idealized ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... should find it difficult to understand were we to read in a book these conversations which are made to be borne away and dispersed like smoke wreaths by the breeze beneath the leaves. Take from those murmurs of two lovers that melody which proceeds from the soul and which accompanies them like a lyre, and what remains is nothing more than a shade; you say: "What! is that all!" eh! yes, childish prattle, repetitions, laughter at nothing, nonsense, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... number of other slaves to collect cinnamon in a direction I had not before visited, when, as I was passing a cottage on my return homeward, I heard the sounds of a female voice singing a low and soft melody. The notes thrilled through my heart. They were not the sounds of a native woman's voice. I let my load drop at the risk of feeling my master's lash on my back, that I might stop and listen. How eagerly did I drink in these notes! ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... excellent voice for all that, of high range, and with a resonant and finely sympathetic timbre that seemed easily to find its way (according to all accounts) to the feminine heart. And the music of this serenade was really admirable, of subtle and delicate quality, and yet full of the simplest melody, and perhaps none the less to be appreciated that it seemed to suggest a careful study of the best English composers. The words were conventional enough, of course; but then the whole story of "The Squire's Daughter" was as artificial as the wigs and powder and patches of the performers; and even ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... confess to find In all things else Delight indeed, but such As us'd or not, works in the Mind no Change Nor vehement Desire; these Delicacies I mean of Taste, Sight, Smell, Herbs, Fruits, and Flowers, Walks, and the Melody of Birds: but here Far otherwise, transported I behold, Transported touch; here Passion first I felt, Commotion strange! in all Enjoyments else Superiour and unmov'd, here only weak Against the Charms of Beauty's powerful Glance. ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... what I have been saying applies, mutatis mutandis, to the other arts. As we have already noticed, something analogous to a third dimension exists also in music; and even, as I have elsewhere shown,[*] in literature. The harmonies accompanying a melody satisfy our tendency to think of other notes and particularly of other allied tonalities; while as to literature, the whole handling of words, indeed the whole of logical thinking, is but a cubic working backwards and forwards between what and how, a co-ordinating of items and themes, ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... wrote before this school can be said to have been formed in Germany, we may mention Rousseau, who acknowledged the contrast in music, and showed that rhythm and melody were the prevailing principles of ancient, as harmony is that of modern music. In his prejudices against harmony, however, we cannot at all concur. On the subject of the arts of design an ingenious observation was made by Hemsterhuys, that the ancient painters were perhaps ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... on the tide of her high spirits; her laughter ran silver cascades down to the ocean of melody; her sun-flecked eyes held the heart-warming glow, the stimulation of wine. She was a breeze blowing from ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... bells jingled along the avenue. Again the great church organ rolled out a mighty flood of melody, that ebbed and flowed ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... pleasantly upon the ear and brighten the dark and bloody page of war: Scarlet, Glendarule, Sandusky, Mar, Tahema, and Savannah; how sweetly they run! I must except my own (and solitary) contribution to the map, Samuel City, which sounds out of key with these mouthfuls of melody, though none the less an important point. Yallobally I shall always recall with bitterness, for it was there I first felt the thorn of a vindictive press. The reader will see what little cause I had to love the Yallobally Record, a scurrilous sheet that often ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... speak, when there was a perfect tempest and whirlwind of rowdyism in the old Tabernacle on Broadway, then this family would sing, and almost upon the instant that they would raise their voices, so perfect was the music, so sweet the concord, so enchanting the melody, that it came down upon the audience like a summer shower on a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... heard from her grandmother of the magic splendor which Wanda had missed and Iza enjoyed, flashed up before her, and her heart warmed delightedly in the voluptuous intoxication of unspeakable bliss. On the wings of this melody, which, in truth, merely sought to picture the celestial dwelling of the elect, she was carried into one of those bijou palaces of the best part of the Queen City of the Universe, where the bedizened Imperia at the plate-glass window reviews an army of ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... end, appeared in the meadow and began looking among the long grasses which sheltered the nests of some meadow larks. A number of the larks were on the wing, others sat on the rail fence rolling out cadenzas in concert in a gush of melody from their downy throats. The men moved cautiously nearer under cover of the weeds. Raising their long clubs to their shoulders they gazed along their narrow points a moment. Without exactly knowing why, we took alarm, and larks, bobolinks, and cowbirds sped upward like the ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... a reed pipe more than a hautboy; but, to make amends when he reached the presto, his voice, a rather good bass, struck the horse's ears with such force that the latter redoubled his vigor as if this melody had produced upon him the effect of a trumpet sounding the charge on the ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... the stream beyond. The twilight lay heavy over the church, heaviest of all over the distant organ gallery, where Weldon could barely make out a single figure moving towards the bench. There was a rattle of stops, a tentative chord or two and then a few notes of this or that melody, as if the player, albeit a musician, found himself continually thwarted by the darkness and the absence ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... recall, had come home crying heartily both at the dreary disappointment of knocking in vain, and at the grand mournful sounds of funeral marches that had fallen on her ear. Every one who had been at the chapel that day was speaking of the wonderful music, the force and the melody of the voluntary at the dismissal of the congregation; no one had believed that such power resided in the harmonium. Mr. Scudamour had spoken to Miss Ward most kindly both before and after evening service, but his attempt ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nature of his sympathies may be felt in Spontini's music. With all its spirit, this is generally dry—awkward without the excuse of learned pedantry—sometimes grand, very seldom tender—the rhythm more decided than the melody, which is often frivolous, often flat, rarely vocal. He has been accused of shallowness in the orchestral treatment of his operas,—in which noise is often accumulated to conceal want of resource. But allowing all these objections to be generally true to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Concord — N. melody, rhythm, measure; rhyme &c (poetry) 597. pitch, timbre, intonation, tone. scale, gamut; diapason; diatonic chromatic scale^, enharmonic scale^; key, clef, chords. modulation, temperament, syncope, syncopation, preparation, suspension, resolution. staff, stave, line, space, brace; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the benefit of those not learned in Sixteenth-Century Music, it may be interesting to hint that the melody is written here for the Second Soprano, and to add, for their encouragement, that the experiment of performing this Madrigal, unaccompanied, with two ladies, and two male voices in the Alto parts, proved perfectly successful, thanks to the science of Mr Fuller-Maitland ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... and popular ballad, known in the Campine as The Orphan, is sung by all classes to an air which is full of touching melody.] ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... p. 316.).—Twenty-five years ago this inscription was set to music, and was popular in private circles. The melody was moderately good, and the "monitory pulse-like beating" of course was acted, perhaps over-acted, in the accompaniment. I am not sure it was printed, but the fingers of young ladies produced a great many copies. Your correspondent's version is quite accurate, and I ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... clouds, which seemed to intermingle with the tall green branches, as both cast their reflection in the water beneath. Only the soft rustling of the leaves, and the hum of thousands of insects as they sang together a sweet, dreamy forest song was to be heard. The very sunbeams seemed to echo this melody as they followed closely the two wanderers, as if this man and woman had come beneath their ban and would have some penalty to pay for crossing their shining path so carelessly. Suddenly an unexpected barrier stood ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... can not resist the rollicking music back of the paying booth. Three sable musicians form the orchestra, and from a bass viol, fiddle and fife they extract melody that, with all its short-coming, would make a deacon wish to dance. Any one, white or black, can purchase the privilege of keeping step to the music for two cents, or one strawberry ticket. Business was superb, and every shade of color ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... for a while and then began to play so plaintive and wistful a melody that Harry felt the old sorrow wake and stir within his heart and demand a reckoning of the forgetful years. Not realizing that he did so, he arose and began to pace up and down the room, nor remembered where he was until he looked up to see Pearl watching him, surprise ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... from the straying clouds of the hilltops. It came with a message of tryst from the land of the sunrise, and it floated from the verge of sunset with its sigh of sorrow. The stars seemed to be the stops of the instrument that flooded the dreams of the night with melody. The music seemed to burst all at once from all sides, from fields and groves, from the shady lanes and lonely roads, from the melting blue of the sky, from the shimmering green of the grass. They neither knew its meaning nor could ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... gone. The music trailed off into a weird, rippling rhythm, with young hearts beating time to its melody and young feet keeping step to its measure. Then the tired, happy company broke into groups. Good-bys and good wishes were given again and again, ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... standing at the open window looking at the loveliness around her, and listening to the happy chorus of birds—and to the nightingales answering each other, and singing day and night, apparently never weary of trying to gladden the world with their glorious melody. ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... cause the light-heartedness she showed as they sat together at dinner, and smiled to think that he himself shared in the feeling of relief. There were reasons why he could not look forward to the evening with unalloyed happiness, but the unwonted gaiety which shone on Emily's face, and gave a new melody to her voice, moved him to tenderness and gratitude. He felt that it would be well to listen again to the music of that strong heart whose pain had been his bliss. He overcame his ignoble anxieties and went to the concert as ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... of whatsoever is manful and ennobling, of whatsoever is worthy of praise and honour. Music, to that man, speaks of a divine order and a divine proportion; of a divine harmony, through all the discords and confusions of men; of a divine melody, through all the cries and groans of sin and sorrow. What says a wiser and a better man than I shall ever be, and that not of noble music, but of such as we may hear any day in any street? "Even that vulgar music," he says, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a barrel of small-beer and a keg of "braennvin," or white Swedish whiskey, both of them decorated with wreathes woven out of leaves. First they drink. Then they form in ring and sing and dance to the melody heard before: ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... gossamer. From Robin's good looks and musical turn, we might reasonably predict a domicile of him as clean and handsome a nest as the king-bird's, whose harsh jingle, compared with Robin's evening melody, is as the clatter of pots and kettles beside the tone of a flute. I love his note and ways better even than those of the orchard starling or the Baltimore oriole; yet his nest, compared with theirs, is a half-subterranean hut contrasted ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... listened astonished. The words and the simple melody which carried them were evidently an improvisation. But the voice—did that issue from a human throat? Yes, for in distant Spain and far-off Rome, in great cathedrals and concert halls, he had sometimes listened entranced to voices like ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... cottage in the centre of a flower garden, and at one extremity of another garden a building, imitative of an Indian pagoda, stood, appropriated to a fine band breathing, throughout the evening, all the pathos and melody of Italian music. The cottage itself was set apart for refreshment, and one might descend to a cup of coffee, or mount to the limitless command of a dinner. I had dined very early, and, feeling the effects of good digestion, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... exception of Mrs Pansey, everyone approved of her engagement. Behind a floral screen a band of musicians, who called themselves the Yellow Hungarians, and individually possessed the most unpronounceable names, played the last waltz, a smooth, swinging melody which made the younger guests long for a dance. In fact, the callow lieutenant boldly suggested that a waltz should be attempted, with himself and Lucy to set the example; but his companion snubbed him unmercifully for his boldness, and afterwards restored his spirits by ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... music had to do with it. As a child he had only a poor concertina, but by it he drew the traveller and the mountaineer and the worker in the valley to him like a magnet. Some touch of the mysterious, some sweet fantastical melody in all he played, charmed them, even when he gave them old familiar airs. From the concertina he passed to the violin, and his skill and mastery over his followers grew; and then there came a notable day when up over a thousand ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... form, I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, the Dial, The New World, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,—some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... stars or the trees lit up now and then by the flickering flames of the wood fire; till all at once, unasked, as if moved by the rippling stream hard by, Ida began to sing in a low voice the beautiful old melody of "Flow on, thou Shining River," and Hester took up the second part of the duet till about half through, the music sounding wonderfully sweet and solemn out in those primeval groves, when suddenly Hester ceased singing, and sat with lips apart ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... it appeared was brutally slated in the organs controlled by the literary adviser to the Crown, and himself belittled and ridiculed. When, as luck would have it, his wife eloped with a wrestler, a flood of melody poured from his soul which, connoisseurs have assured us, ranks high amongst the lyrical masterpieces of the world. These verses will be found amongst the collection known as "Swan Songs," published posthumously, for, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 18, 1919 • Various
... tissue paper she held it for a moment pressed close to her, and began a song she had heard from the negroes as they sat around their light-wood fire after their day's work was done. It was a weird melody which Homer Smith had caught up and revised and modernized, with a change of words in some places, and made her sing, knowing it would bring thunders of applause. She heard the roar now, and saw the audience and the flowers falling around her, and with an expression of disgust she put Judy ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... a mischievous irony or good-natured sarcasm. The querulous wailings which are the stock in trade of a certain class of writers are unnatural and discordant sounds. We should expect rather a serene and cheerful melody from a young and brave-hearted race, which is in intimate relations with the external world. Instead of this, we have sucked in with the milk of our Puritan mothers a forlorn and sorrowful spirit. We celebrate our festivals with a sad countenance. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... early period of my life I have derived the highest enjoyment from listening to music, especially to melody, which is to me the most pleasing form of composition. When I have the opportunity of listening to such kind of music, it yields me enjoyment that transcends all others. It suggests ideas, and brings vividly before the ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... or in mere metrical diction, which passed current as poetry without being so. Yet Burns belonged wholly to the eighteenth century (1759-96), and no verse-writer is so little literary as Burns, so little prosaic; no writer more truly poetic in melody, diction, thought, feeling, and spontaneous song. It was Burns who showed Wordsworth's own youth "How verse may build a princely throne on humble truth." Nor can we understand how Cowper is to be set down ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... she went back to that same place with that same cry. The last time she went some one was in the church. It was the organist, practising some new Easter music for the next day's services. A burst of triumphant melody greeted her as she noiselessly opened the side door. She met the florist coming out, for he had just completed the decorating, and the place was a mass of bloom. All around the chancel stood the tall, white Easter lilies, waiting, like the angels in the open tomb, ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... never before heard the national anthem. It is not played or sung often by the natives of Connemara, and although the ocean certainly forms part of the British Empire, the Atlantic waves have not yet learned to beat out this particular melody. So it happened that Hyacinth, without meaning to be offensive, omitted the ceremony of removing his hat. A neighbour, joyful at the opportunity, snatched the offending garment, and skimmed it far over the heads of the crowd. ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... doings has been to compose a serenade, with a vulgar melody that would disgust you, and which he has dedicated 'A la bella Italia.' He wrote the Italian words himself, but as he knows no music, he had a pianist come here and write out his serenade. What ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... flew on apace, for Coniston. Fragrant hay was cut on hillsides won from rock and forest, and Coniston Water sang a gentler melody—save when the clouds floated among the spruces on the mountain and the rain beat on the shingles. During the still days before the turn of the year,—days of bending fruit boughs, crab-apples glistening red in the soft sunlight,—rumor came from Brampton to wrinkle the forehead of Moses Hatch ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... eyes. I saw great Doric columns of honey-golden travertine; between them, as I looked one way, a deep strip of sea; when I turned, the purple gorges of the Apennine; and all about the temple, where I sat in solitude, a wilderness dead and still but for that long note of wailing melody. I had not thought it possible that here, in my beloved home, where regret and desire are all but unknown to me, I could have been so deeply troubled by a thought of things far off. I returned with head bent, that voice singing in my memory. All the delight I have ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... of my youth stands in silence and sadness: None that tasted its simple enjoyments are there, No longer its walls ring with glee and with gladness No strain of blithe melody ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... nations, to the Lord, Sing with a joyful noise; With melody of sound record His honours, and ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... soothing calm, its welcoming tenderness, its look of friendship and of wise counsel, wind themselves around you; and the beauty of its grassy shades, of its leafy brakes and color-changing hills, delights and wins you. Its babbling, laughing streams fill the whole air with life and melody; every chink of the old dry walls is choked with maiden-hair; from the damp rocks amid the dripping streams hang strange, fantastic mosses,—orange, grey and russet,—and with them grow wild flowers, white and ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... files. A tunneled, revetted, embrasured and battlemented citadel filled with rusty armor and broken lances. A hock shop, a junkyard, a hall of distorting mirrors. A cemetery by the sea, a peak of glory, a slough of despond. A radiant light, an encroaching dark, the sweetest of melody, the sourest of discord. A library of trivia, museum of curiosa, sideshow of freaks, and shrine of greatness. It was the lowering pendulum, the waiting pit, the closing walls. It was the vaulting spirit, the gallant heart, the just and ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... also before the altar, that by their voices they might make sweet melody, and daily sing praises ...
— Deuteronomical Books of the Bible - Apocrypha • Anonymous
... purposes of mutual salutation and recognition. This wailing note is singularly wild, and not unmusical. It is not properly a screech or a scream, like that of the Hawk or the Peacock, but rather a sort of moaning melody, half music and half bewailment. This wailing song is far from disagreeable, though it has a cadence which is expressive of dreariness and melancholy. It might be performed on a small flute, by commencing with D octave and running down by semitones to a fifth below, and frequently ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... of a song or a strain of music coming to us through the night not only give us pleasure by the melody they bring, but also give us knowledge of the character of the singer or of the instrument from which they proceed. There is something in the music which unerringly tells us of its source. I believe musicians call it the "timbre" of the sound. ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... as thinkers, as scientists, as men of business, as parents, as lovers, or anything else—will be greatened by being subordinated to the conscious aim of pleasing Him. That aim should persist, like a strain of melody, one long, holden-down, diapason note, through all our lives. Perfume can be diffused into the air, and dislodge no atom of that which it makes fragrant. This supreme aim can be pursued through, and by means of, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... comforting touch, each of the other, gradually the first terror of their predicament faded; ere long, Donald reminded her of her promise, and she stole to the old square piano and sang for him while, without, Dirty Dan O'Leary crouched in the darkness and thrilled at the rippling melody. ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... man finished the melody he stood still more upright. Then straightening his old shoulders and pulling his hat firmly on his head, he stooped and kissed the old lady and walked with a firm tread to ...
— Friendly Fairies • Johnny Gruelle
... had subsided, and a delightful calm prevailed. A thousand wild flowers, comprising every hue, filled the air with delicious fragrance, while no sound was heard but the melody ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... the yell of joy that came up from the shivering wretches down below, who knew that their comrade was alive. And there we sat entranced about him, the colonel and his wife, Lilla and I, weeping at the tender music, as the tones of new warmth and color and hope came like liquid melody from ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... hyenas abounded, and the footsteps of the ostrich were perceived. As they went on, the face of the country improved, the valleys became greener, and the colocynth and the kosom, with its red flowers, were in full bloom, "The freshness of the air, with the melody of the songsters that were perched among the creeping plants, whose flowers diffused an aromatic odour, formed a delightful contrast to the desolate region through which they had passed." In the neighbourhood ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... could not hear Katie sing that day, for we had anticipated quite a little musical matinee; but her sister Mary, who is an enthusiastic pianoforte student, made amends by playing with much taste and expression, a dreamy "Melody," by Rubenstein. ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... the sounds died away, when Peter and Caesar struck up a merry negro melody, contrasting curiously with the melancholy notes of the Indian's song; they made Uncle Denis and me, at all events, burst in ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... the nursery, songs for childhood, for girlhood, boyhood, and sacred songs—the whole melody of childhood and youth bound in one cover. Full of lovely pictures; sweet mother and baby faces; charming bits of scenery, and the dear old ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... reached to the ground, and quite covered their bare feet. One of the musicians played upon two small drums, the other two on four-stringed instruments, similar to our violins. They stood close behind the dancers, and played without melody or harmony; the dancers making at the same time very animated motions with their arms, hands, and fingers, more than with their feet, on which they wore silver bells, which they rung at intervals. They made handsome and graceful ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... of Malines, In this dark hour how much you mean! The dreadful night of blood and tears Sweeps down on Belgium, but she hears Deep in her heart the melody Of songs she learned when she was free. She will not falter, faint, nor fail, But fight until her rights prevail And all her ancient belfries ring "The Flemish Lion," "God ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... is almost invariably on love, religion, and duty as defined by chivalry. In the French originals of these romances the lines were a definite length, the meter exact, and rimes and assonances were both used to give melody. In England this metrical system came in contact with the uneven lines, the strong accent and alliteration of the native songs; and it is due to the gradual union of the two systems, French and Saxon, that our English became capable of the ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... collected again by the highest reason. I was entertained like an Angel with the works of God in their splendour and glory, I saw all in the peace of Eden; Heaven and Earth did sing my Creator's praises, and could not make more melody to Adam, than to me. All Time was Eternity, and a perpetual Sabbath. Is it not strange, that an infant should be the heir of the whole world, and see those mysteries which the books of the learned never unfold?' ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... apartments. Walking down the great corridor which led to these, the most beautiful rooms in the palace, he became aware of the silvery sound of stringed instruments mingling with harmonious voices,—though he scarcely heeded the soft rush of melody which came thus wafted to his ears. He was full of thoughts and schemes,—his son's refusal to confide in him had not seriously troubled him, because he knew he should, with patience, find out in good time all that the young Prince had declined to explain,— and ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... which is a spell Unto all on earth who dwell! O rich voice, of rapturous love, Making melody above! Krishna's, Hari's—one in two, Sound these mortal verses through! Sound like that soft flute which made Such a magic in the shade— Calling deer-eyed maidens nigh, Waking wish and stirring sigh, Thrilling blood and ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... Leicester's nephew, Sir Philip Sidney. From Sidney's house at Penshurst came in 1579 his earliest work, the "Shepherd's Calendar"; in form, like Sidney's own "Arcadia," a pastoral where love and loyalty and Puritanism jostled oddly with the fancied shepherd life. The peculiar melody and profuse imagination which the pastoral disclosed at once placed its author in the forefront of living poets, but a far greater work was already in hand; and from some words of Gabriel Harvey's we see Spenser bent on rivalling Ariosto, and even hoping "to overgo" the "Orlando ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... on deck again in five minutes with a face which drove all thoughts of melody from Peter's head. In fact, at sight of it, he came instantly to a sitting position and his guitar slid unheeded ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... knit her hands together and turned away her head. The happiness in her heart rose to her throat like a great melody and choked her. Before her, exposed in the thin spring sunshine, was the square of ugly brown cottages, the bare parade-ground, in its centre Trumpeter Tyler fingering his bugle, and beyond on every side an ocean of blackened prairie. But she saw nothing of this. She saw instead a beautiful ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... something in them that feels,—a glorious intelligence, as much nobler and more swift than mine, as these rays, which are its body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh;—the spirit of all light, and truth, and melody, and ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... idea of RHYTHM (rythmos)—measured movement in time and space, resulting in melody and grace.—"Republic," bk. iii. ch. xi. and xii.; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... descending with terrible force upon devoted heads, which were once pillowed on the bosoms of fond and devoted mothers. Jove's dread counterfeit is heard on every hand; the balls and shells go whistling and screaming by, the most terrible music to ears not properly attuned to the melody of war. Thousands sink upon the ground overpowered, to be trodden under foot of the flying steed, or their bones to be left whitening the incarnadined field. Blows fall thick and heavy on every hand. The cries of the wounded and the orders of the commanders mingle together; ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... rain began to fly. We concluded therefore to wait for better weather. The hunters went out for deer and I to see the forests. The rain brought out the fragrance of the drenched trees, and the wind made wild melody in their tops, while every brown bole was embroidered by a network of rain rills. Perhaps the most delightful part of my ramble was along a stream that flowed through a leafy arch beneath overleaping trees which met at the top. The water was almost ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... and tooth paste and memory methods, rise the incandescent facades of "dancing academies" with their "sixty instructresses," their beat of brass and strings, their whisper of feet, their clink of dimes.—Let a man not work away his strength and his youth. Let him breathe a new melody, let him draw out of imagination a novel step, a more fantastic tilt of the pelvis, a wilder gesticulation of the deltoid. Let him put out his hand to the Touch ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... crescendoes the youthful believers had it all their own way, and shrieked till the windows rattled, the rector beating time the while by lightly tapping the heads of the Faithful with his ruler whenever they departed from the impracticable melody. ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... and endless varieties of sounds which, having broken away from their original source, are ever wandering and echoing around the rock-bound gorge. Beautiful indeed and altogether indescribable are the elements of melody which are created by the falling ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... on the Tennessee; Sabbath—and morning Breaks with a bird note that pulses along; A melody sobs in the heart of its dawning— The pain that foreshadows the birth of a song. Art thou a flecking, brave Bluebird, of sky light, Or the sough of a minor wove into a beam? Oh, Hermit Thrush, Hermit Thrush, thou ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... to your sweet voices." Thereupon a strange unearthly concert of voices burst on their ears from the cave, the nasal squeak of old men and women forming the dominant note. But the hearers outside listened with delight to the melody, praised the sweet voices of the singers, and then got up and danced to the music. The singing swelled louder and louder as the dance grew faster and more furious, till the concert closed in a nocturnal orgy ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... poet nerved and strung Up to the singing pitch you know, And this since melody first was young Has evermore been the pitch of woe: She was a wistful, winsome thing, Guileless as Eve before her fall, And as I drew her 'neath my wing— Wilmur and Mary, that ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... up as they sat down to table with variations on the air Vive le roy, vive la France, a melody which has never found popular favor. It was then five o'clock in the evening; it was eight o'clock before dessert was served. Conspicuous among the sixty-five dishes appeared an Olympus in confectionery, surmounted by a figure of France modeled in chocolate, to give the signal ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the hilltop in the winter moon, was never a melody of laughter. Rather it was the song of life itself, life in the raw, and the sadness and pain and the hopeless war of existence find their echo in the wailing notes. None of the wilderness voices were joyous. When ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... sisters read aloud Dom Gueranger's Liturgical Year, and then a few pages of some other interesting and instructive book. While this was going on I established myself on Papa's knee, and when the reading was done he used to sing soothing snatches of melody in his beautiful voice, as if to lull me to sleep, and I would lay my head on his breast while he rocked me ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... grass where the nest was hidden the male would suddenly rise, as straight as if shot up, to a height of perhaps thirty or forty feet, and, sustaining himself with rapid wing-beats, pour down the most delicious melody, sweet and clear and strong, overflowing all bounds, then suddenly he would soar higher again and again, ever higher and higher, soaring and singing until lost to sight even on perfectly clear days, and oftentimes in cloudy weather "far ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... delight of the spectator were carried almost to frenzy. In this act, played almost solely by Crescentini, this admirable singer communicated to the hearts of his audience all that is touching and, pathetic in a love expressed by means of delicious melody, and by all that grief and despair can find ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... in Burmah, though of gay plumage, have little melody in their song; splendid as they are, we would scarce exchange for them our cheerful robin and ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... himself the prey of some passing dream. "Oh! you are a spirit!—a goddess such as of old presided over the sports of the Colosseum!—perhaps Juno herself! Do not vanish from my sight, do not become a filmy cloud and dissolve in ether! Oh! speak to me, glorious apparition! Let me hear the celestial melody of your voice and die listening to ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... round him, as he began to play "My Old Kentucky Home." They sang one negro melody after another, while the mulatto sat rocking himself, his head thrown back, his yellow face lifted, ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... alone. Without accompaniment he played the little song, "Beware," that Patty had sung, and, improvising, he made a fantasia of the air. He was clever as well as skilled, and he turned the simple little melody into thrilling, rollicking music with trills and roulades until the original theme was almost lost sight of, only to crop up ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... skilful hand over your heart, and make its strings sound. Your heart is a lyre, Robert; but the lot of your life has not been a minstrel to sweep it, and it is often silent. Let glorious William come near and touch it. You will see how he will draw the English power and melody out ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... deep fit of devotion and a profound contemplation of the First Composer; there is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God; such a melody to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. It unties the ligaments of my frame, takes me to pieces, dilates me out of myself, and by degrees, methinks, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... "Elements of Criticism." says, "Many attempts have been made to introduce Hexameter verse into the living languages, but without success. The English language, I am inclined to think, is not susceptible of this melody, and my reasons are these: First, the polysyllables in Latin and Greek are finely diversified by long and short syllables, a circumstance that qualifies them for the melody of Hexameter verse: ours are extremely ill qualified ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... their lives. In every musical career described in this book, from the old masters represented by Bach and Beethoven to the musical prophets of our own day, there is a wealth of inspiration and practical guidance for the artist in any field. Through their struggles, sorrows and triumphs, divine melody and harmony came into being, which will bless the world for all time ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... Adondo is a legendary hero, indefinitely dating back. May not his monody, then, be a spontaneous melody, that has been with us since Mardi began? What bard composed the soft verses that our palm boughs sing at even? Nay, Yoomy, that monody ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... magnet is withdrawn for a moment, does the needle tremble back and settle itself northwards? If we are walking with God, we shall, more times a day than we can count when the evening comes on, have had the thought of Him coming into our hearts 'like some sweet beguiling melody, so sweet we know not we are listening to it.' Thus ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... depend for their melody and rhythm upon the musical quality of time, and not upon long or short, accented or unaccented syllables. I am persuaded that this fact led Mr. Sidney Lanier, who is thoroughly familiar with the ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... at length, that love which was so strange and distant when, in ignorance, she believed it her companion? Verses in her mind, verses that would never be forgotten, however lightly she held them, sang and rang to a new melody. They were not poetry—said he who wrote them. Yet they were truth, sweetly and nobly uttered. The false, the trivial, does not so cling to memory ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... doors, being bankrupt. Through Habeneck he learnt to understand the Ninth Symphony even better than he had understood it before; for the Conservatoire orchestra had rehearsed it until, almost unconsciously, they discovered the real melody, or what Wagner calls the melos. This is a question I shall go into later when dealing with Wagner's own conducting; for the present it suffices to mention the bare fact, as we can trace directly to these performances—or, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... coming on fast. All the east lay grey behind Steering, all the west grey before him as he moved away from the cross-roads. But out of the west rolled the melody of the carolling boy, the voice of one singing in ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... reach the silver river, Soon our pilgrimage will cease; Soon our happy hearts will quiver With the melody of peace. ...
— Indian Methodist Hymn-book • Various
... fragrant stillness of the moon-flooded place, with the odor of the lilacs and the snowy wild-plum blossoms entrancingly sweet, and the melody dropping softly from the harp-strings like a fall of far-off crystal bells, they gave themselves ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Norwegan. It is of a King of the Sea who had married an earthly maiden; and was at last deserted by her from some scruples of conscience. The original features of it are strictly preserved, and it is told indirectly by the old Sea King to his children in a wild, irregular melody, of which the following extract will convey but an imperfect idea. It is Easter time, and the mother has left her sea palace for the church on the hill side, with a ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the illuminated hall of Edward, where the table was spread for the royal repast, and where his old friends, Manning, Bedle, and Allerton, stood weeping for joy; while from the gallery raised aloft, the musicians gave forth the rough and stirring melody which had gradually fallen out of usage, but which was once the Norman's national air, and which the warlike Margaret of Anjou had retaught her ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... means of this divine passion that the world is kept ever fresh and young. It is the perpetual melody of humanity. It sheds an effulgence upon youth, and throws a halo round age. It glorifies the present by the light it casts backward, and it lightens the future by the beams it casts forward. The love which is the outcome of esteem and admiration, has an elevating and purifying effect on the character. ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of this charming poetess must be like an AEolian harp, that every sighing wind awakes to music, but to grave and chastened melody, the full charm of which can only be truly appreciated by those who have sorrowed, and who look beyond this earth for ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... 'member de old songs? Hallelujah, I sho does!" The old darkey began to pat his foot and clap his hands while he sang, "Pickin' out de cotton an' de bolls all rotten", repeating the same line over and over to a sing-song melody as impossible of transcription as a bird-call. Suddenly his smiling face fell serious and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... get above my daily work, and be perpetually thinking of God and His will, and consciously realising communion with Him?' But there is such a thing as having an undercurrent of consciousness running all through a man's life and mind; such a thing as having a melody sounding in our ears perpetually, 'so sweet we know not we are listening to it' until it stops, and then, by the poverty of the naked and silent atmosphere, we know how musical were the sounds that we scarcely ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... orange cat arched its back and rubbed its head against her. She kicked it fiercely, and its snarl of pain seemed to bring her to her senses. She picked the creature up and stroked it. The bird in the cage broke into a mad little melody. How morbid she was growing! She had been depressed by her ridiculous dinner and Lucretius had been most unpleasant. He was such a fool, too, in his idea of love. The brevity of the heated hours was the flame's best fuel. Venus the Plunderer seemed to smile, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... sermones joculares moveat, conciones ridiculas, dicteria falsa, suaves historias, fabulas venustas recenseat, coram ludat, &c., still have a pleasant companion to sing and tell merry tales, songs and facete histories, sweet discourse, &c. And as the melody of music, merriment, singing, dancing, doth augment the passion of some lovers, as [5628] Avicenna notes, so it expelleth it in others, and doth very much good. These things must be warily applied, as the parties' symptoms vary, and as ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... explain," she told him, "since any explanation of it presupposes some knowledge of melody and of music, while your very question indicates that you have ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it takes years to establish this understanding between an inert matter and himself. He did not discover, at the first touch, the resources, the caprices, the deficiencies, the excellencies of his instrument. It did not become a living soul for him, a source of incomparable melody until he had studied for a long time; man and instrument did not come to understand each other like two friends, until both of them had been skillfully questioned and tested by ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... had his face so perfectly under control, that few could say more, in distinct terms, of its expression, than that it smiled or that it pondered. It pondered now, intently. As the lark rose higher, he sank deeper in thought. As the lark poured out her melody clearer and stronger, he fell into a graver and profounder silence. At length, when the lark came headlong down, with an accumulating stream of song, and dropped among the green wheat near him, rippling in the breath of the morning like a river, he sprang up from his reverie, and ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... group of trees further on, to listen to the song of a thrush, which was so full of melody that they approached him quite close without his noticing them, Nell and her aunt were amused by seeing two rooks quarrelling over a worm which they had both got hold of at the same time, one at either end ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... would evermore weigh down my spirits—a dark remembrance would ever stand between me and the sunny skies—a tone, as of the dying and the dead, would ever mingle with the sounds of melody, with the voice of love, with the words of ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... (for so it is called) is not artistic to the eye and loses all its poetry when one sees its owner blowing his nose into it but the notes emanating from it breathe a vague sense of melody ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... at least, is a portion of the service which I can enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir and the massive melody of the organ would fall with a weight upon me. At this distance it thrills through my frame and plays upon my heart-strings with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be praised! I know nothing of music as a science, and the most elaborate harmonies, if they please ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... see everything yet perfectly well aware of the Sirens' magnetic power, had himself tightly bound by cords to the mast. So whilst the deaf rowers stolidly tugged at their oars, oblivious of the weird unearthly melody around them, the clever King of Ithaca gained the honour of becoming the only mortal who had listened to that subtle song without paying the penalty of a hideous and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... suffer pride to stand in the way of the talents with which Providence has blest me; to scorn the little delicacies of art, which I execute so well, would, in my opinion, be as absurd as for an epic poet to disdain the composition of a perfect epigram, or a consummate musician, the melody ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which thou canst not see, Or an eye 'neath its sleeping lid, The tune of a far off melody, The voice of a stream that's hid; Such must I still remain to thee, ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie
... there can be little doubt that Borrow intended The Gold Horns for that volume, and rejected it at last. He was conscious, perhaps, that his hand had lacked the skill needful to reproduce a lyric the melody of which would have taxed the powers of Coleridge or of Shelley. Nevertheless, his attempt seems worthy ...
— The Gold Horns • Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager
... O teeming City, was it meet Thy lover, thy most faithful, should repose, But where the multitudinous life-tide flows Whose ocean-murmur was to him more sweet Than melody of birds at morn, or bleat Of flocks in Spring-time, there should Earth enclose His earth, amid thy thronging joys and woes, There, 'neath the music of thy million feet. In love of thee this lover ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
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