"Ballad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... morning's cheerfulness Mungo was afoot whistling a ballad air of the low country, with a regard for neither time nor tune in his puckered lips as he sat on a firkin-head at an outhouse door and gutted some fish he had caught with his own hands in a trammel net at the river-mouth before Montaiglon was awake and the bird, as the Gaelic goes, had ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... Grimaldi, Bishop of Mans, saying Mass in his red hunting-coat and breeches. But the Protestant Dean of St. Patrick's thought the execution for felony of another Protestant dean a capital theme for a merry ballad; and at the end of the eighteenth century Arthur Young painted the English rural clergy in very dark colours. The curates, the rectors, the monks of France as a body, showed under the old regime the same qualities of devout ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... fact now Duncan Frazier, Of Cheviot, sings in rhyme, Lest Bamboroughshire-men should forget Some part of it in time."—Ancient Ballad.[J] ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... love-ballad in prose must have taxed the translator almost as much as if it had been in rhyme; for although an interpreter of poetry undeniably has the difficulties of form to struggle with, yet there is, on the other hand, an ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... felt the first time I kissed you, when the same moon seemed to be laughing at me. Do you remember one night when we were driving across the plains on our way back from a little party over to Marion, and you sang that 'Meet Me by Moonlight' ballad? That was three years ago, and yet I can almost hear your ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... innumerable fry. One would expect the giants of the deep to keep down their population. Not far off is another small lake, Loch Awe, which has invisible advantages over Loch Borlan, yet there the trout are, or were, "fat and fair of flesh," like Tamlane in the ballad. Wherefore are the trout in Loch Tummell so big and strong, from one to five pounds, and so scarce, while those in Loch Awe are numerous and small? One occasionally sees examples of how quickly trout will increase in weight, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... of little fame, whose inward commotions had generated their own alleviation in the harmonies of ordered words in which they embodied themselves. In it Annie searched for something to learn before the following night, and found a ballad the look of which she liked, and which she very soon remembered as one she had heard her father read. It was very cold work to learn it at midnight, in winter, and in a garret too; but so intent was she, that before she went to bed, she had learned four or five verses so thoroughly that she could ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Strong-i'-th'-lung at once rose full of pitying confidence and craked for two and a half hours the song of the practically accepted suitor. It was a good song, and Thisbe seemed pleased, though I fancy she rather resented the note of assurance which he imparted to his ballad. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... All this must surely be of great consequence for the rise of a mental outlook that cares only for gain; and who will deny that colonial activity generates it? "Our rivulets and streams turn mill wheels and bring rafts into the valleys, as they do in Scotland. But not one ballad, not a single song, reminds us that on their banks men and women live who experience the happiness of love and the pangs of separation; that under each roof in the valleys life's joys and sorrows come and go." This plaint of an ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... eulogy when Marius Reybas of the Bobino lifts a mighty larynx in "Mahi Mahi." Great talent? Well, maybe not. But show me a group of vaudevillians and acrobats who, like this group at the Gaite, can amuse one night with risque ballad and somersault and the next with Moliere—and not be shot ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... well in a humorous ballad, but we do not look for anything of the sort in a serious romance of real life. Nevertheless, a Welsh newspaper of recent date carried the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Madeleine. She took her place on a low seat, her little sewing-chair, and, unbidden, sang some of the wild, old strains to which he had often listened in the ancient chateau. The sigh he heaved was one of pleasure, as though his heart felt too full, but not of care. Madeleine sang on, ballad after ballad, for she could not pause while he appeared to be so calmly happy, and her voice only died away as she felt the hand that clasped hers relax its hold, and, looking up, she found that her ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Sherborne on Dorchester, Wimborne on both; the waggons will be fired on as they follow the highway, the trains wrecked on the lines, the ploughman will go armed into the field of tillage; and if we have not a return of ballad literature, the local press at least will celebrate in a high vein the victory of Cerne Abbas or the reverse of Toller Porcorum. At least this will not be dull; when I was younger, I could have welcomed ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... people had tasted this new joy; and, as we could not hope to suppress newspapers now,—no, not by the strongest party,—neither then could king, prelate, or puritan, alone or united, suppress an organ, which was ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, punch, and library, at the same time. Probably king, prelate and puritan, all found their own account in it. It had become, by all causes, a national interest,—by no means conspicuous, so that some great scholar would have thought of treating ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... amusement in observing the various personages that daily passed and repassed beneath my window. The character which most of all arrested my attention was a poor blind fiddler, whom I first saw chanting a doleful ballad at the door of a small tavern near the gate of the village. He wore a brown coat, out at elbows, the fragment of a velvet waistcoat, and a pair of tight nankeens, so short as hardly to reach below his calves. A little foraging cap, that had long since ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... gloves, marking what was for sale within; or if in words, they might be misspelt, and thus adapted to a rude understanding. Large placards on the walls advertised the theatres. Street musicians performed on their instruments. Ballad-singers howled forth the story of the last great crime. Amid all the hubbub, the nimble citizen who had practiced walking as a fine art, picked his careful way in low shoes and white silk stockings; hoping to avoid the necessity of calling for the services of the men with clothes-brush ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... fancied that we understood each other about the merry-go-round, and many things besides. And then we both walked off different ways, as having seen enough, and more than enough. Was he, after all, an honest man and true? Or had he, like Ah Sin, in Mr. Bret Harte's delectable ballad, with 'the smile that ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... found expression both in the drama and in hymns. Her play, 'Vivia Perpetua' (1841), tells of the author's rapt aspiration after an ideal, symbolized in a pagan's conversion to Christianity. She published also 'The Royal Progress,' a ballad (1845), on the giving tip of the feudal privileges of the Isle of Wight to Edward I.; and poems upon the humanitarian interests which the Anti-Corn-Law League endeavored to further. Her hymns are the happiest expressions of the religious trust, resignation, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... National poetry I ever read was one compiled by Charles Gavan Duffy—"The Ballad Poetry of Ireland." I should say that this has been one of the most popular books ever issued. There are none of his own songs in this volume. The few he did write are in the "Spirit of the Nation" and other collections. These make us regret he did not write more, for, in the ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... of variety, we begin with the poetry. First is a stirring little ballad, the Warrior, by the editor; then, a humorous epistle from Robert Southey, Esq. to Allan Cunningham, in which the laureat deals forth his ire on the "misresemblances and villanous visages" which have been published as his portrait.[1] Next is a gem of another water, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... exerted to the utmost, failed to please. Miss Pillbody's thorough knowledge of French, and the higher branches of an elegant education, as well as her proficiency on the piano, and her sweet, simple style of ballad singing, were worse than useless acquirements ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... oldest inhabitant. Ay de mi! Sheldon did not exaggerate the prosiness of that intolerable man. I thought of the luckless wedding guest in Coleridge's grim ballad as I sat listening to this modern-ancient mariner. I had to remind myself of all the bright things to be bought for three thousand pounds, every now and then, in order to endure with fortitude, if not serenity. And now the day's ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... indeed, it is said he commanded several. His guns have made no great noise in history, but their reverberation has left in the air a general tradition of his bravery. The only actual account of his achievements which I have met with is the following ballad, written by the surgeon of his ship, who was perhaps better able than any one else to gauge the valor of his countryman and commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... the high-road, whistling an old ballad of lugubrious tune when a sharp turn brought him face to face with Jase Mallows. Jerry himself was for passing on with a brief salutation, but the other halted him and fell ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... version of this Ballad was printed in Romantic Ballads, 1826, pp. 28-31, under the title Sir Middel. In this version the name of the heroine is Swanelil, in place of Sidselil; and that of the hero is Sir Middel, in ...
— Child Maidelvold - and other ballads • Anonymous
... the mistress of the inn that I had no friends to apply to in town, I proposed to myself to proceed, the very next morning, to an intelligence office, to which I was furnished with written directions on the back of a ballad, Esther had given me. There I counted on getting information of any place that such a country girl as I might be fit for, and where I could get into any sort of being, before my little stock should be ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... than her bite; that she really loved both him and his daughter; but she had a queer way of showing it. And unfolding the paper, he read aloud, to the great annoyance of the fair writer, the fragment of a ballad, of which, to do him justice, he understood not a single word; and had he called upon her to explain its meaning, she would, in all probability, have found it ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... Arthur. They have been noised about this mighty realm for so great a space that the truth has turned to fable and an idle song. Such rhymes are neither sheer bare lies, nor gospel truths. They should not be considered either an idiot's tale, or given by inspiration. The minstrel has sung his ballad, the storyteller told over his story so frequently, little by little he has decked and painted, till by reason of his embellishment the truth stands hid in the trappings of a tale. Thus to make a delectable tune to your ear, history goes masking as fable. Hear then how, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... You realize how he regarded these men who were rallying to the banners of liberty—the banners woven by the virgins of Taunton, the girls from the seminaries of Miss Blake and Mrs. Musgrove, who—as the ballad runs—had ripped open their silk petticoats to make colours for King Monmouth's army. That Latin line, contemptuously flung after them as they clattered down the cobbled street, reveals his mind. To him they were fools rushing in wicked frenzy ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... this work was decided like that of many more important things, by a trifle, a word, a pun. A ballad, chanted by a fille-de-chambre, undermined the colossal power of Alberoni; a single line of Frederic the Second, reflecting not on the politics but the poetry of a French minister, plunged France into the seven years' war; and a pun condemned Sir John Hawkins's sixteen years' labour to long ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... Brookside," or "When the Moon on the Lake is Beaming." But it has been permitted me to hear the fulfilment of my prophecy even as it was uttered. From the window of number Twelve Hundred and Seven gushes upon the slumberous misty air the maddening ballad, "Ever of Thee," while at Twelve Hundred and Eleven the "Star of the Evening" rises with a chorus. I am inclined to think that there is something in the utter vacuity of the refrain in this song which especially ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... poem. With difficulty Blondel and Cuthbert restrained themselves from an extravagant exhibition of joy. They knew, however, that men on the prison wall were watching them as they sat singing, and Blondel, with a final strain taken from a ballad of a knight who, having discovered the hiding-place of his lady love, prepared to free her from her oppressors, shouldered his lute, and they started ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... Loving Henry Brittle Bones Apples and Water Manticor in Arabia Outlaws Baloo Loo for Jenny Hawk and Buckle The "Alice Jean" The Cupboard The Beacon Pot and Kettle Ghost Raddled Neglectful Edward The Well-dressed Children Thunder at Night To E.M.—A Ballad of Nursery Rhyme Jane Vain and Careless Nine o'Clock The Picture Book ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... her in an excessive surprise. My grandmother had been esteemed a great beauty in her day and had been sung by the ballad-singers. Was it possible that my looks could be like hers? I had not thought about them hitherto any more than my cousin had about his. It was with almost a sense of relief that I ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... tragedy on which this ballad is founded, took place upwards of a century ago. In the retired village of Romanby, near Northallerton, Yorkshire, there resided a desperate band of coiners, whose respectability and cunning concealment ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... the door a short time afterwards, he saw nothing that need have caused such a frown to wrinkle up his manly brow, for Lancy was only playing a simple ballad, and Dexie was seated in a low rocker some distance from the piano, her hands clasped behind her head, singing softly, her whole appearance seeming to suggest rest and contentment. Perhaps that very suggestion goaded him to ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... purposes of poetry or the drama. The stage was a new thing; and those who had to supply its demands laid their hands upon whatever came within their reach: they were not particular as to the means, so that they gained the end. Lear is founded upon an old ballad; Othello on an Italian novel; Hamlet on a Danish, and Macbeth on a Scotch tradition: one of which is to be found in Saxo-Grammaticus, and the last in Hollingshed. The Ghost-scenes and the Witches in each, are authenticated in the old Gothic history. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... opportunity for the warbling of his Muse was not neglected.' On Wednesday, Sept. 6th, about five in the morning, says The Scots Magazine for that month in its leading article, the performers from Drury Lane paraded the streets of Stratford, and serenaded the ladies with a ballad by Garrick, beginning ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... Ballad of Jim Baxter" this same thought is more vividly and strongly set forth. It is the story of one type of German cruelty of which we have heard in the war dispatches several times and that have been confirmed on the spot; ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... style and strain is a ballad, which, thanks to the care of De Bourgueville, the author of the Antiquities of Caen, hath been preserved for the edification of posterity. It enumerates all the members of the court seriatim, and compares ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... imagined that any one would seriously suppose that Saul had actually with his own hand killed two thousand Philistines, and David twenty thousand. But, say they, the later prose chronicler, quoting from the ballad, and accepting a piece of poetic hyperbole as actual fact, reproduced the statement in his own words, and added, "the sun stayed in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... projects; indeed, no period of his whole life was so fruitful in good work. He was going to write some Biblical plays; one entitled "Pharaoh" first, and then one called "Ahab and Jezebel," which he pronounced Isabelle. Deeper problems, too, were much in his mind: he was already at work on "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," but before coming to that let me first show how happy the song-bird was and how divinely he sang when the dreadful cage was opened and he was allowed to use his wings in ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... it," I reminded myself. Followed the voice, a voice from the stable, the cracked, whining tenor of a very aged vassal of the Arrowhead, one Jimmie Time. Jimmie, I gathered, was currying a horse as he sang, for each bar of the ballad was measured by the double thud of a currycomb against the side of a stall. Whistle, guitar, and voice now attacked the thing in differing keys and at varying points. Jimmie might be said to prevail. There was a fatuous tenderness in his attack and the thudding currycomb gave ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... contradicts God's book, cast it away, trample it under foot, believe that it is the devil tempting you by his cunning, alluring words, as he tempted Eve, your mother. Would to God all here would make that rule,—never to look into an evil book, a filthy ballad, a nonsensical, frivolous story! Can a man take a snake into his bosom and not be bitten?—can we play with fire and not be burnt?—can we open our ears and eyes to the devil's message, whether of covetousness, ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... of lads would be footing it and snapping fingers on the landing. And such was the eagerness of the brother to display all the acquirements of his idol, and such the sleepy indifference of the performer, that the tune would as often as not be changed, and the hornpipe expire into a ballad before the dancers had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... more, yet this shall go, I am determined. Only consider how it is a matter of necessity that I should have nothing to say. If you could see this place of Boulge! You who sit and survey marble palaces rising out of cypress and olive. There is a dreadful vulgar ballad, composed by Mr. Balfe, and sung with the most unbounded applause by ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Ballad Poetry of Great Britain, Historical, Traditional and Romantic; with Modern Imitations, Translations, Notes, and Glossary, &c. Edited by J.S. Moore. New and Improved Edition, 8vo. Half-bound, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... a hermit's life differ from those generally held," said Graeme, vexed at the personal turn of the conversation, and more vexed still with Mrs Grove's interference. "What does the ballad say? ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... through the lane I went with lazy feet, This song to myself did I oftentimes repeat; And it seemed, as I retraced the ballad line by line, That but half of it was hers and one ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... success of his poetry seems to be over. His early experiments in verse are queerly suggested and full of hazard. It needs a foreign language—German—to encourage him to rhyme. The fascination of Buerger's Lenore is a reflection from English ballad poetry; the reflected image brought out what had been less remarkable in the original. The German devices of terror and wonder are a temptation to Scott; they hang about his path with their monotonous and mechanical jugglery, their horrors made all the more intolerable through the degraded verse ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... sob of impatience, and retreats to the hoary foot of the tower, where she sits down discouraged and cries a little. Then she settles herself resignedly to wait, and hums a song—not an Irish melody, but a hackneyed English drawing-room ballad of the season before last—until some slight noise suggests a footstep, when she springs up eagerly and runs to the edge of the slope again. Some moments of silence and suspense follow, broken by unmistakable footsteps. She gives ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... and coloured paper, for there is, in some sort, a taste for decoration, even here. And as seamen frequent these haunts, there are maritime pictures by the dozen: of partings between sailors and their lady-loves, portraits of William, of the ballad, and his Black-Eyed Susan; of Will Watch, the Bold Smuggler; of Paul Jones the Pirate, and the like: on which the painted eyes of Queen Victoria, and of Washington to boot, rest in as strange companionship, as on most of the scenes that are ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... The gaiety of the day seemed infectious, and to have seized even him. People stared to see Black Jem, or Surly Jem, as he was indifferently called, so joyous, and wondered what it could mean. He then fell to singing a snatch of a local ballad at that time in vogue ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... ever reason to be jealous," and yet that no single criminal act of the queen's has been recorded, it must be confessed that one or both of the parties were singularly discreet and decent; for the king never complained, and the queen was never accused, if we except this burthen of an old Scottish ballad, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... "The Ballad of a Rose" is lovely and pathetic; and in "Riding to Vote" the poet approaches the excellent naturalness and reality of "The Mower in Ohio," which is so simple and touching, so full of homelike, genuine feeling, unclouded by the poet's unhappy mannerism, that we are tempted to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... of the program was more than successful. Everyone acquitted themselves creditably excepting Alfred. Lin sang the pathetic ballad: ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Study Discord in Childhood Virgin Youth Monologue of a Mother In a Boat Week-night Service Irony Dreams Old Dreams Nascent A Winter's Tale Epilogue A Baby Running Barefoot Discipline Scent of Irises The Prophet Last Words to Miriam Mystery Patience Ballad of Another Ophelia Restlessness A Baby Asleep After Pain Anxiety The Punisher The End The Bride The Virgin Mother At the Window Drunk Sorrow Dolor of Autumn The Inheritance Silence Listening Brooding Grief Lotus Hurt by the Cold Malade ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... morals, generally speaking, irreproachable; so that the topics for the malevolence of his antagonists were both scanty and strained. But they ceased not, with the true pertinacity of angry dulness, to repeat, in prose and verse, in couplet, ballad, and madrigal, the same unvaried accusations, amounting in substance to the following: That Dryden had been bred a puritan and republican; that he had written an elegy on Cromwell (which one wily adversary actually ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... word to be written down by a man of letters! Musa pedestris, says Horace; that is, the Muse goes on foot, and Parnassus itself has but one horse in its stable, Pegasus. Besides, he is a winged steed and by no means quiet in harness, if we may credit what Schiller tells us in his ballad. I am not a sportsman, alas! and deeply do I regret it, for I am as fond of horses as if I had five hundred thousand a year, and I am entirely of the opinion of the Arabs concerning pedestrians. The horse is man's natural ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... Dryden as "a rhymist but no poet," and has recorded his own impatience with the "drawling versifiers," should have undertaken to grind down the noble antistrophic lyrics of the Hebrew bard into ballad rhymes for the use of Puritan worship, would have been impossible. But the idea of being useful to his country had acquired exclusive possession of his mind. Even his faculty of verse should be employed in the good cause. ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... her shoulders. "Now you sing some soft little thing for them, my girl," he commanded—and looking up at him again, Azalea obeyed. She chose an old ballad, one with no chance in it to show the range of her voice. She sang it exquisitely, and the Cashier stood by and turned her music as if he considered it a high privilege. Yet, half-way through, the little Dot woke up. Azalea ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... appears, and with it the fact that he had demanded just what the boatman of the ballad received in gift,—thrice ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... volume on "Lyric Declamation: Recitative, Song and Ballad Singing," will be discussed the practical application of these basic principles of Style to the vocal music of the German, French, Italian and ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... presumption are prodigious. He wanted nothing but independence to let him loose: I propose great entertainment from him; and now, perhaps, the times will admit it. There may be such things again as parties—odd evolutions happen. The ballad I am going to transcribe for you is a very good comment on so commonplace a text. My Lord Bath, who was brought hither by my Lady Hervey's and Billy Bristow's reports of the charms of the place, has made the following stanzas, to the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... to know what were Wordsworth's studies during his winter in Goslar. De Quincey's statement is mere conjecture. It may be guessed fairly enough that he would seek an entrance to the German language by the easy path of the ballad, a course likely to confirm him in his theories as to the language of poetry. The Spinosism with which he has been not unjustly charged was certainly not due to any German influence, for it appears unmistakably in the "Lines composed at Tintern Abbey" in July, 1798. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... is the nearest thing to Burns that we have to show; and his faults, almost insuperable to the ordinary reader, are the faults which Burns seldom failed to display when writing in English. But to Burns there was given an instrument perfected by long centuries of use—the Scotch vernacular song and ballad; Carleton had to make his own, and the genius for form was lacking in him. Some day there may come a man of pure Irish race who will be to Carleton what Burns was to Ferguson, and then Ireland will have what ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Tragedy, and contained an account of the drowning of Captain Worthilake, with his two daughters: the other was a sailor's song, on the taking of Teach (or Blackbeard) the pirate. They were wretched stuff, in the Grub-street-ballad style; and when they were printed he sent me about the town to sell them. The first sold wonderfully, the event being recent, having made a great noise. This flattered my vanity; but my father discouraged me by ridiculing my ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... parallels in Folk-Lore, vol. ii. The wooing of hero by heroine is a characteristic Celtic touch. See "Connla" here, and other examples given by Mr. Nutt in his notes to MacInnes' Tales. The trees growing from the lovers' graves occurs in the English ballad of Lord Lovel and ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... has before him the book in which the boy set down his arithmetical and geometrical exercises while a pupil of Mr. Merrishaw, and in this book are scribbled in pencil a few undecipherable lines commencing, "Good morning to ye, ballad-singing thrush." He was thirteen years old when an incident occurred which gave a powerful impulse to his dawning genius. A companion had shown him Thomson's "Seasons," and he was seized with an irrepressible desire to possess a copy. He ascertained that the book might be bought ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... So sang a ballad-monger of the Revolution; and the opinion which he voiced persisted after him. According to some American historians of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Loyalists were a comparatively insignificant class of vicious criminals, and the people of the American ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... at the table, and eats and drinks with him. He becomes jealous of the Secretary.] You'll get into trouble, if you look at her like that. [Whenever he looks at the Secretary, the Secretary takes his eyes off the woman and gazes at the floor. Jeppe sings an old love-ballad as he sits at the table with her. He orders a polka to be played and dances with her, but he is so drunk that he falls down three times, and finally lies where he ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... anxious to see and to be seen. As to the sturdy peasantry of the Vega, and such of the mountaineers as did not pretend to display, but were content with hearty enjoyment, they swarmed in the center of the square; some in groups listening to the guitar and the traditional ballad; some dancing their favorite bolero; some seated on the ground making a merry though frugal supper; and some stretched out for their ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... of Buell's marching columns, the thunderous roar of the navy guns, the demoniacal scream of the projectile, and mingled with it all is the sweet, plaintive music of that old song. We had an army version of it I have never seen in print, altogether different from the original ballad. The last stanza of this army production was ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... ballad, executed by a great artiste, suddenly reminded all these women of their first love; of their first fall; of a late leave-taking at a dawn in the spring, in the chill of the morning, when the grass is gray from the dew, while the red sky paints the tips of the birches a ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... her." This must have been entirely new reading for Bunyan, and certainly at first not much to his taste. What his favourite reading had been up to this time, his own nervous words tell us, "Give me a ballad, a news- book, George on Horseback, or Bevis of Southampton; give me some book that teaches curious arts, that tells of old fables." But as he and his young wife read these books together at their fireside, a higher taste was gradually awakened in Bunyan's mind; "some things" in them he "found ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... Roman wish to have? I object to Roman, though it is not a bad one for the purpose. The metamorphosed would certainly have a ballad written on him and sung about the streets. Write it, and call him "The Man-mountain, or real and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... was Simon Symonds. The popular ballad absurdly exaggerates his deeds, and gives them untrue amplitude. It is not older than the last century, and is ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... of you, nor them neither; your hang-byes here. You must have your poets and your potlings, your soldados and foolados to follow you up and down the city; and here they must come to domineer and swagger. Sirrah, you ballad-singer, and slops your fellow there, get you out, get you home; or by this steel, I'll cut off your ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... other valuable articles, for the purpose of paying a woman in the town the wages of her prostitution. Others gave themselves up to bacchanalian riots in a neighbouring tavern, and, instead of devoting their nights to "prayer," gave themselves up to the vulgar "company of dancers and ballad singers." ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... German people have followed their preachers, and have been led by them to the abyss, even as in the famous ballad of Burger the German maiden Lenore has fallen under the spell of a corpse and has been driven ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... of the hill and descending into the town I met my fate in the form of a woman who was playing a hurdy-gurdy, and singing to its strains a Provencal ballad. I stopped at once, and asked her to let me investigate the instrument. I have a fancy for ancient musical instruments. A handle is turned that grates on one catgut string, and the fingers of the left hand, passed under ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... did not contradict her, and Beulah sang that exquisite ballad, "Why Do Summer Roses Fade?" It was one of her guardian's favorite airs, and now his image was associated with the strain. Ere the first verse was finished, a deep, rich, manly voice, which had sometimes echoed ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... AND CHRONICLERS.—Norman literature had already made itself a name before William conquered England. Short jingling tales in verse, in ballad style, were popular under the name of fabliaux, and fuller epics, tender, fanciful, and spirited, called Romans, or Romaunts, were sung to the lute, in courts and camps. Of these latter, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, and Roland ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... time as if the whole nation had turned stockjobbers. Exchange Alley was every day blocked up by crowds, and Cornhill was impassable for the number of carriages. Every body came to purchase stock. "Every fool aspired to be a knave." In the words of a ballad published at the time, and sung about ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... epistle is getting wild and wilder; therefore I must conclude. Adieu, my Franciscus, the first and only one who stands before me like the heart of a giant! You indefatigable one, farewell. When they play the ballad tomorrow, think of me. I am sitting alone on the sofa, staring at the lamp and brooding over my good fortune in having gained you from this miserable world. Yes, yes, it is that ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... once again! I fondled it the live-long night; They took it from me but to give me pain, And now, they say that I my child have slain. Gladness I ne'er again shall know. Then they sing songs about me,—'tis wicked of the throng— An ancient ballad endeth so; Who bade ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of a native scholar, is truly remarkable. The spirit of Niebuhr seems to have reached the shores of India, and this ballad theory comes out more successfully in the history of Buddha than in the history of Romulus. The absence of anything like cant in the mouth of a Brahman speaking of Buddhism, the bete noire of all orthodox Brahmans, is highly satisfactory, and our Sanskrit scholars in Europe ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... you will hit him lightly on the shoulder with your sword, and then he can die to his own particular tune. If you have been severely wounded in battle, or in any other sort of row, and have got to sing a long ballad before you finally expire, you don't want to have to think how a man would really behave who knew he had only got a few minutes to live and was feeling bad about it. The chances are that he would not want to sing at all. The woman ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... than did the crew of the Box, although without hope or thought of shelter; but, on the contrary, with every possible chance of a break-down or upset, which would have made the forest our bed, but stripped of the "Leaves so green, O!" about which your ballad-mongers love to sing, with their toes over the fender, and the hail pattering melodiously upon the pantiles. At last, our prayers were heard; and we all, I believe, breathed more freely as the gates of the sky opened, and the falling flood subdued and stilled the hot ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... realize what one ballad of yours has done. I'd almost forgotten the Old Country, but the night I heard you I felt I must go back and see it again. What's more, Carroll and I are going ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... Barto Rizzo. The noise produced by Luigi was like that of a fanatical beater of the tomtom; he knocked and banged and danced against the door, crying out for his passing amusement an adaptation of a popular ballad:—"Oh, Barto, Barto! my boot is sadly worn: The toe is seen that should be veiled from sight. The toe that should be veiled like an Eastern maid: like a sultan's daughter: Shocking! shocking! One of a company of ten that were living a secluded life in chaste privacy! Oh, Barto, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... departure at the unfashionable hour of nine, and in the interval engaged themselves in dancing, in games, in listening to brilliant executions on different musical instruments and the rich melody of well-trained voices, in ballad and song, clever repartees and intellectual conversation, while the supper table, laden with all the delicacies procurable, was a continual feast from the opening to the close of the entertainment. The ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... funeral ballad by Henry S. Washburn, composed in 1846 and entitled "The Burial of Mrs. Judson." It is rare now in sheet-music form but the American Vocalist, to be found in the stores of most great music publishers and dealers, preserves the full poem ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Hills, the haunt of Thomas of Ercildoune, Jedburgh, Yetholm, the Cowdenknowes, the Yarrow, and Ettrick, all lie on different sides within a circle of twenty miles, and most of them much nearer. Smailholme Tower, the scene of some of Scott's youthful days, and of his ballad of "The Eve of St. John," is also one of these. Grose tells us that "The ruins of Dryburgh Monastery are beautifully situated on a peninsula formed by the Tweed, ten-miles above Kelso, and three below Melrose, on the southwestern confine of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... in January, 1821, Scott, referring to his delineation of Elizabeth, admits that he is a "Scottishman," and therefore may be pardoned for looking at his subject with certain prejudices. Another source of inspiration that led him to write the romance was the old ballad of "Cumnor Hall," in which the tale of Amy Robsart is told. Scott's genius for depicting the life and manners and customs of the Middle Ages, of visualising scenes of long-gone chivalry, is exhibited in "Kenilworth" as in none other of his works. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... and turkeys," seems to menace the good town of Chesterfield with destruction. Here an incident occurred, on the opening of a vault, which it is needless to relate, but which supplied me with a hint for the commencement of my romance, as well as for the ballad entitled "The Coffin." Upon this hint I immediately acted; and the earlier chapters of the book, together with the description of the ancestral mansion of the Rookwoods, were completed before ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... own accompaniment, his fingers, stiffened though they were with hard work, ran lightly over the keys. Every person sat still to listen. Even Martha Perkins forgot to twirl her fingers and leaned forward. It was a simple little English ballad ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... of question that a very small child in all probability does really ask itself when it has seen a finger-post day after day at a cross-roads. How the poem continues and where it ends you must find out for yourself. It's all in a book called The Ballad of Lake Laloo. ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... among the seafarers, in the heart of industrial activity; and the anecdotes and glimpses which we enjoy show, just what might have been guessed, that these houses often became scenes of riotous excess and debauch. Lydgate's ballad of "London Lickpenny" helps one to imagine what such resorts must have been in the first part of the fifteenth century. It is almost permissible to infer that the street contained, in addition to the regular inns, an assortment ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... beer placed upon it instead. They had just settled down to villainously strong cigars and the beer when a sound very unexpected to two of them floated out upon the air—the sound of a girl singing. The voice was a rather deep mezzo; it was singing very softly an old ballad, to the accompaniment of a few notes very gently struck now and again on ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... The Vampire To the Unknown Goddess The Rubaiyat of Omar Kal'vin La Nuit Blanche My Rival The Lovers' Litany A Ballad of Burial Divided Destinies The Masque of Plenty The Mare's Nest Possibilities Christmas in India Pagett, M. P. The Song of the Women A Ballad of Jakko Hill The Plea of the Simla Dancers Ballad of Fisher's Boarding-House ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the detrainment of the naval brigades at Vieux Dieu and accompanied them to the trenches north of Lierre. As they tramped down the tree-bordered, cobble-paved high road, we heard, for the first time in Belgium, the lilting refrain of that music-hall ballad which had become ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... Curtain The Stage-Driver's Story Aspiring Miss de Laine California Madrigal St. Thomas Ballad of Mr. Cooke Legends of the Rhine Mrs. Judge Jenkins: Sequel to Maud Muller Avitor A White Pine Ballad Little Red Riding-Hood The Ritualist A Moral Vindicator ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville." He was longer and better known to the world as Stephen C. Massett, composer of the words and music of that once most popular of songs, "When the Moon on the Lake is Beaming," as well as many another charming ballad. ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... which we had often sung in camp, when, as on a pleasant Sunday evening, we were met together in little knots, to mingle our emotions in plaintive song, thinking of dear friends at home. One of these was a simple ballad describing the following incident—one of the most touching of the war. A youthful soldier from the state of Maine died in New Orleans, with none but strangers—as has been the lot of many—to watch over him in his dying hours, or to ...
— Our campaign around Gettysburg • John Lockwood
... a little, round man, who in the days of the Empire had been a charming ballad-singer; it was this accomplishment that had won him the high position of Paymaster-General of the forces. Having mixed himself up in certain important matters in Spain with generals at that time in opposition, he had made the most of these connections to ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... before Mlle. Moriaz returned from her walk. She came humming a ballad; she was joyous, her complexion brilliant, her eyes sparkling, and she carried an armful of heather and ferns. Mlle. Moiseney went to meet her, her face mournful, her head bent down, ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... masked, and even her figure was hidden by a long dark cloak the hood of which was drawn over her head to meet the mask. She sang so beautifully, with such style and such feeling, it seemed incredible to hear her under circumstances like these. She followed the ballad with Handel's 'Lascia ch'io pianga,' which rang out into the quiet street with almost hopeless pathos. When she descended from the cart to undertake the more prosaic occupation of passing the hat beneath ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... manifestation of this prime literary gift in all sort of subjects. It may be shown in a fable of AEsop, in Robinson Crusoe, in a children's story, in Mark Twain's boyish experiences on the Mississippi, in a Barrack-room Ballad of Rudyard Kipling, in Thackeray's Esmond, in Shelley's Ode to a Skylark, in either a comedy of Shakespeare or his Hamlet, in a sonnet of Dante's Vita Nuova or in his Inferno. AEsop's communication ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... a lively Christmas ditty which is a kind of reply to the preceding ballad. It is preserved in the collection formed by Samuel Pepys, some time Secretary to the Admiralty, and author of the famous diary, and by him bequeathed to Magdalene College, Cambridge. The full title and first verse of the old ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... spirit-stirring as a "blast of that dread horn," albeit the words be thin. It is heady as the "Golden Wine" of Libanus, to the tongue water and brandy to the brain—the clean contrary of our nineteenth century effusions. Technically speaking, it can be vehicled only by the verse of the old English ballad or by the prose of the Book of Job. And Badawi poetry is a perfect expositor of Badawi life, especially in the good and gladsome old Pagan days ere Al-Islam, like the creed which it abolished, overcast the minds of men with its dull grey pall of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... her harder. The words were strange and meant nothing. But there was a familiarity to the tune. That at least needed no interpreter. The old ballad of troubadours, the French war song of old, the song of raillery, the song of Revolution, this that had been a folk song of the Crusader, a Basque rhyme of fairy lore, the air known in the desert tents of Happy Arabia, known to the Jews coming out of Egypt, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... interest; but it is by Tweedside that the tourist will find his most pleasant guide in Lauder's book. Just as Cicero said of Athens, that in every stone you tread on a history, so on Tweedside by every nook and valley you find the place of a ballad, a story, or a legend. From Tweed's source, near the grave of the Wizard Merlin, down to Berwick and the sea, the Border "keeps" and towers are as frequent as castles on the Rhine. Each has its tradition, its memory of lawless times, which have become beautiful in the magic of poetry and the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... the sense that the majority of men in the street are poor. The very fact that the writer in the Outlook can talk about such people as poor shows that he does not understand what the modern problem is. His kind of poor man rather reminds me of the Earl in the ballad by that great English satirist, Sir W.S. Gilbert, whose angles (very acute angles) had, I fear, never been rubbed down by an old English University. The reader will remember that when the Periwinkle-girl was adored by two Dukes, ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... resound in every ear, and its fulfilment to be at hand. Nothing was heard throughout the city but sighs and wailings. "Woe is me, Alhama!" was in every mouth; and this ejaculation of deep sorrow and doleful foreboding came to be the burden of a plaintive ballad which remains until ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... taste, though it also requires inventive power. Secondly, "imagination" implies a longer flight; "fancy," rather a succession of short efforts: the one is a steady blaze; the other, a series of sparkles. An epic poem would require an exercise of the first; a ballad, or other lighter production, of the last: hence, we may see that the difference between the two is, in some measure, one of subject-matter; for the same power which we call "fancy" when employed in a melody of Moore, would be called "imagination" in the works of Dante or Milton. In short, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... care much about your arithmetical prowess," father said, smiling. "I shall not ask you to help me with my accounts, but it will be a pleasure to hear you sing, especially if you will indulge me with a ballad now and then which I can really enjoy. You are older than I thought; but keep as young as you can, child. I don't want to lose my little playfellow yet awhile. I've missed her ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... country, and retained it until his death, which, to the general regret, occurred in a few years after he had entered upon political life. Mr. Davis was a poet, although not of a high order; several specimens of good ballad composition are amongst his remains. He cultivated classic literature with success; as an antiquary and an historian acquired reputation; wrote energetically and fluently; spoke in public with earnestness and force, but had none of the graces of the finished orator, and he despised all "rhetorical ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... forth they clashed with sullen sound. The old ballad which tells of their fight says that they thought nothing for to flee, but stiffly for to stand. There they fought sore together, two miles away and more, but neither might the other harm for the space of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... "Of the Gentle Heart" was a nine days' wonder, but which, even in Rossetti's elegant version, seems cold and formal. The most natural and pleasing pieces among much that is artificial and conventional are a ballad and two "catches" by Sacchetti, who died just after 1400, and properly does not belong to Dante's circle. Mr. Rossetti's readers will, however, be grateful to him for his delightful versions of the two catches, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... some of the finest of MacDowell's little known part-songs for male voices, and are both written to his own lines. The first is a stirring ballad of olden times:— ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... morning and stole sugar. This incident led to several pamphlets. In The Presbyterian, Lash or Noctroff's Maid Whipt (1661), a satire on Crofton, we read: "It is not only contrary to Gospel but good manners to take up a wench's petticoats, smock and all"; and in the doggerel ballad of "Bo-Peep," which was also written on the same subject, it is said that Crofton should have left his wife to chastise the maid. Crofton published two pamphlets, one under his own name and one under that of Alethes Noctroff (1657), ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... despair called for a song. The curate had a pleasant little tenor pipe of his own, and could play accompaniments from memory, so that he was ready enough to accede to the request. His selection, however, was not very large, and chiefly of the ballad order, and this afternoon the sound of the opening bars brought a flush of nervousness to Hilary's cheeks—"The Emigrant's Farewell!" What in the world had induced the man to make such a choice? An utter want of tact, or a mistaken idea of singing something appropriate to the occasion? It ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... know what there is in it," said Harry, "I'll leave you to make that out; but I tell you what I did when I heard it, I made a ballad of it, and so if you like I'll try and ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... heart-breaking song; and though his voice was pitched so low it was almost like singing in a whisper, there was a strange, vibrating power in it, as there is in the strings of a violin touched but lightly by the bow. Sir S. transferred his attention from the wall to me as he sang this sad old ballad, and I could not look away, because there was the same compelling power in his eyes as in his voice. No doubt it was only of the song he thought, not of me at all, really; yet I could not shake off the haunting impression of the look, and it made me dream of him all night. I saw ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from the grass, and read, in a chant, or rather in a lilt, the Danish ballad of Chyld Dyring, as translated by Sir Walter Scott. Gibbie's eyes grew wider and wider as he listened; their pupils dilated, and his lips parted: it seemed as if his soul were looking out of door and windows at ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... so many things with such clearness of vision, brought out the charm of the popular ballad for readers of a later day in his remark that the value of these songs of the people is to be found in the fact that their motives are drawn directly from nature; and he added, that in the art of saying things compactly, uneducated men have greater skill than ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... bobbins. When all were filled, the thread was wound off in knots and skeins on a reel. A machine called a clock-reel counted the exact number of strands in a knot, usually forty, and ticked when the requisite number had been wound. Then the spinner would stop and tie the knot. A quaint old ballad has ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... of the Surf The Swimmer The Three Friends Thick-headed Thoughts Thora's Song To a Proud Beauty To My Sister "Two Exhortations" Unshriven Visions in the Smoke Whisperings in Wattle-Boughs Wolf and Hound Wormwood and Nightshade Ye Wearie Wayfarer, hys Ballad Zu der edlen Yagd ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... out, and, sheltered by the ridge of rocks behind which the cottage stood, made her way to the spring which dripped from a crack in the cliffs. While she waited for the pitcher to fill, she sang, in sheer lightness of heart, the old ballad which not only floated on the air of Abersethin and its neighbourhood, but which she had heard her mother sing in the far-off land ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... SHENSTONE'S unhappiness. In early life he had been captivated by a young lady adapted to be both the muse and the wife of the poet, and their mutual sensibility lasted for some years. It lasted until she died. It was in parting from her that he first sketched his "Pastoral Ballad." SHENSTONE had the fortitude to refuse marriage. His spirit could not endure that she should participate in that life of self-privations to which he was doomed; but his heart was not locked up in the ice of celibacy, and his plaintive love songs and elegies flowed ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... really think the waiter meant to be deliberately offensive; for presently, having first served us with beer which for obvious reasons we did not drink, he stationed himself alongside the infirm piano and rendered a little ballad to the effect that all men were spiders and all women were snakes, and all the World was a green poison; so, right off, I knew what his trouble was, for I had seen many persons just as morbidly affected as himself down in the malaria belt of the United States, where everybody has liver for ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... Mr Buller lived to marry Rebecca, daughter of the Bishop Trelawney who was one of the seven Bishops sent to the Tower by James II. His arrest created intense indignation in his own county; and he is the Trelawney referred to in the well-known fragment, all that remains of a ballad written at the time to express ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... containing about four hundred inmates, but all heavily chained "to the ground, until they would confess their crimes, whether they had committed them or not." One wonders if this treatment still prevails in the Hameln of Robert Browning's ballad. At Hanover they waited on the Queen by special command, and during a long interview many interesting and important ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... new ballad ready on the Golden Dog, which I shall sing to-night—that is, if you will care to listen to me." Jean said this with a very demure air of mock modesty, knowing well that the reception of a new ballad from him would equal the ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... say that a book was meant to be read, you mean, for one thing, of course, that it was not meant to be studied. You do not study a good story, or a haunting poem, or a battle song, or a love ballad, or any moving narrative, whether it be out of history or out of fiction—nor any argument, even, that moves vital in the field of action. You do not have to study these things; they reveal themselves, you do not stay to see how. They ...
— On Being Human • Woodrow Wilson
... accompanied with the reading of the ballad, slightly transposed and adapted. As Leslie led Sir Charles before the curtain, in response to the continued demand, he added ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... men in the regiment, quietly refused to take a dollar's pay, at the reduced price. "We'se gib our sogerin' to de Guv'ment, Gunnel," they said, "but we won't 'spise ourselves so much for take de seben dollar." They even made a contemptuous ballad, of which I once caught ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... a moment's doubt she leaped it, into the foaming tide, and swam, and landed according to orders. Also his flight from a public-house (where a trap was set for him, but Winnie came and broke down the door, and put two men under, and trod on them,) is as well known as any ballad. It was reported for awhile that poor Tom had been caught at last, by means of his fondness for liquor, and was hanged before Taunton Jail; but luckily we knew better. With a good wife, and a wonderful horse, and all the country attached to him, he kept ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... Malcom and look upon the splintered slab that tells the old rebel's story,—to kneel by the triple stone that says how the three Worthylakes, father, mother, and young daughter, died on the same day and lie buried there; a mystery; the subject of a moving ballad, by the late BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, as may be seen in his autobiography, which will explain the secret of the triple gravestone; though the old philosopher has made a mistake, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... on Sunday?" said once a little boy to us—and we answered him in a lyrical ballad, which we have lost. But although the birds certainly do sing on Sunday—behaviour that with our small gentle Calvinist, who dearly loved them, caused some doubts of their being so innocent as during the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... future, and conscious of crude faults in Lady Inger, he set himself, as a task, to write in the manner of Hertz. It is difficult to doubt that it was a deliberate exercise, and we see the results in The Feast at Solhoug and in Olaf Liljekrans. These two plays are in ballad-rhyme and prose, like Hertz's romantic dramas; there is the same determination to achieve the chivalric ideal; but the work is that of a disciple, not of a master. Where Hertz, with his singing-robes fluttering about him, dances without an ungraceful gesture through the elaborate ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... The sheriff was Thomas Packer, the same official who, twenty-nine years later, won unenviable notoriety at the hanging of Ruth Blay. The circumstances are set forth by the late Albert Laighton in a spirited ballad, which is too long to quote in full. The following stanzas, however, give ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the word, I will make you a good Sillabub and then you may sit down in a Hay-cock and eat it, and Maudlin shal sit by and sing you the good old Song of the Hunting in Chevy Chase, or some other good Ballad, for she hath good store of them: Maudlin ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... and piano; hummed it first thing in the morning and last thing at night; harped upon it until in despair his companion threw books and music at him, and he, dodging them, laughed, begged pardon, was silent for five minutes, and then the March da Capo set in a halting kind of measure to the ballad. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... pleasure he kept it by his side in bed. I felt no weariness or fatigue, but waited patiently, and on the third day he passed me, running joyously along, with his silken hair streaming in the wind, and he singing - God have mercy upon me! - singing a merry ballad, - who could ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... of loosing the snares which bound him. All that sustained his courage was the sanguine disposition of Joe Hawkridge, whose youthful soul had been so battered and toughened by dangers manifold on land and sea that he expected nothing less. Listening to the pirate's moving ballad, they sat and swung their legs from the ship's taffrail while their gaze idly roved to the green curtain of undergrowth which ran lush to the water's edge to ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... husband nor wife considered money when it was a question of giving pleasure to their child, from whom they had never been willing to separate. Imagine the happiness of the poor parvenu peasant as he listened to his charming Cesarine playing a sonata of Steibelt's on the piano, and singing a ballad; or when he found her writing the French language correctly, or reading Racine, father and son, and explaining their beauties, or sketching a landscape, or painting in sepia! What joy to live again in a flower so pure, so lovely, which had never left the maternal stem; an angel whose ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Haytersbank he sought each time for some little present with which to make his coming welcome. And now he wished even more than ever that Sylvia had cared for learning; if she had he could have taken her many a pretty ballad, or story-book, such as were then in vogue. He did try her with the translation of the Sorrows of Werther, so popular at the time that it had a place in all pedlars' baskets, with Law's Serious Call, the Pilgrim's Progress, Klopstock's Messiah, and ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... but himself to escort the exalted lady into the presence of the king. At the last the maid is forced to deliver the command in the imperious words used by her mistress. This touches the pride of Tristan's squire, Kurwenal, who asks permission to frame an answer, and, receiving it, shouts a ballad of his master's method of paying tribute to Ireland with the head of his enemy; for the battle between Tristan and Morold had grown out of the effort made by the latter to collect tribute-money from England. It is a stiff ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel |
