"Lute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Smith. "Every one of my fellows does something or other so exquisitely, that it were sin to make him do anything else—it is your jacks-of-all-trades who are masters of none.—But hark to Chaubert's signal. The coxcomb is twangling it on the lute, to the tune of Eveillez-vous, belle endormie.—Come, Master What d'ye call (addressing Peveril),—get ye some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand, as Betterton says in the play; for Chaubert's cookery is like Friar Bacon's Head—time ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... sharing the soot oneself. What will you do, supposing the talk turns on gladiators, or horses, or prize-fighters, or (what is worse) on persons, condemning this and that, approving the other? Or suppose a man sneers and jeers or shows a malignant temper? Has any among us the skill of the lute-player, who knows at the first touch which strings are out of tune and sets the instrument right: has any of you such power as Socrates had, in all his intercourse with men, of winning them over to his own convictions? Nay, but you must needs be swayed hither ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... Peopled the world with imaged grace and light. The lyre was his, and his the breathing might Of the immortal marble, his the play Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue. Go seek the sun-shine race, ye find to-day A broken column and a lute unstrung. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... introspective and learn life. Old chronicles, tournaments, jewelry, precious stones, Maryism, nature from every conceivable point of view, dreams and premonitions, visions and hallucinations, religion of the renunciatory type, the pain that clarifies, the friendship that weeps, Catholic painting and lute music, and love—human and divine—these are the main themes in this tale. Lyrics and episodic stories are interpolated, obsolete words and stylistic archaisms occur. In short, the novelette reads like an amalgamation of Novalis without his philosophy, ...
— Graf von Loeben and the Legend of Lorelei • Allen Wilson Porterfield
... the future, they abused the present hour of prosperity and peace. The cities of Italy resounded with the noise of drinking and dancing; the spoils of victory were wasted in sensual pleasures; and nothing (says Agathias) remained unless to exchange their shields and helmets for the soft lute and the capacious hogshead. [54] In a manly oration, not unworthy of a Roman censor, the eunuch reproved these disorderly vices, which sullied their fame, and endangered their safety. The soldiers blushed and obeyed; discipline was confirmed; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... plain crimped ruff. His visage is pulled into so solemn a length that were we at home in Edinburgh, I should expect to see him ascend a pulpit, and deliver a screed to us all on the iniquities of dancing and playing on the lute!" ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... city of Anton and sailed out to sea, to the Armenian kingdom of King Sensibri Andronovich. There they cast anchor, and went into the city to follow their business; whilst Bova went on shore, and wandered about, playing on the lute. Meantime the port officers came on board the ship, whom King Sensibri sent to enquire whence the ship had come, who the merchants were, and what was their business. But when they heard Bova Korolevich playing, and saw the beauty of his features, they forgot what they had ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... robe, which covered her beautiful limbs like a cloud. In her hair sparkled two diamonds, like two stars fallen from heaven, and more glowing still were her eyes, which tenderly rested upon Rizzio. Leaning upon her elbow, she inclined toward Rizzio, who, lute in hand, was looking up to her with a countenance expressive of the deepest love. It was a glorious picture, this young and charming couple, in their bliss of love; and never, in the course of this century, have I forgotten this exquisite ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... hopeful. No. 1, who had been a mechanic, proposed to increase his earnings by mending bicycles. No. 2 was an agriculturist pure and simple, and showed me his fowls and pigs with pride. Here, however, I found a little rift within the rural lute, for on asking him how his wife liked the life he replied after a little hesitation, 'Not very well, sir: you see, she has ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... is, (says Cranmer) that when the people be gathered together, the minister should use such language as the people may understand, and take profit thereby; or else hold their peace. For as an harp or lute, if it give no certain sound that men may know what is stricken, who can dance after it—for all the sound is vain; so is it vain and profiteth nothing, sayeth Almighty God, by the mouth of St. Paul, if the priest ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... done his best to teach her how wildly well a born New-Yorker can play the lute of emotion. To proclaim now that he was the anonymous husband of this glitterer on the billboard would ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... these words were written Spenser had done his work. Color, music, fragrance were stealing back again into English song, and "golden-tongued romance with serene lute" stood at the door of the new age, waiting ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... verses—and sung them withal, And the Giant's dark visions they sometimes could charm, Like the voice of the lute which had pow'r over Saul, And the song which could Hell and its ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... Lute Small!" declared Hartwell, a freckle-faced youngster, who was the next step downward in the family stair of children. "Set on it yourself. Make him, ma, now! You said he'd ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... verging on fifty, tall, well-built, an athlete in his younger days, a good shot and an enthusiastic angler. He was a frequent visitor at Trent Park, and to all outward appearances he and Alan were the best of friends; there was a rift in the lute which they concealed. ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... with business cares, leave her hurriedly and without the customary morning kiss? Woman, on her way to market, rapidly reviews similar instances in fiction, in which this first forgetting proved to be "the little rift within the lute." ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... me the peristyle of a magnificent garden-house, which seemed to have similar prospects and entrances on the other sides! The heavenly music which streamed from the building transported me still more than this model of architecture. I fancied that I heard now a lute, now a harp, now a guitar, and now something tinkling which did not belong to any of these instruments. The door for which we made opened soon on being lightly touched by the old man. But how was I ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... began to be perceptible the very slightest rift within the lute of her romance. Was her love for Sandeau really love, or was it only passion? In his absence, at any rate, the old obsession still continued. Here we see, first of all, intense pleasure shading off into a sort of maternal fondness. She sends Sandeau adoring letters. She is afraid that his delicate ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... road, gipsy-heart, thou and I! 'Tis the mad piper, Spring, who is leading; 'Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through the brain, irresistibly pleading; Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman, light-footed, lute-throated and fleet, We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer's song; let us follow ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... sweet lute that lingers In silence alone; Unswept by light fingers. Scarce murmurs a tone; My own heart resembles, This lute, light and free, 'Til o'er its chord trembles ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... Complexion—- Cloe, Cloe, Cloe, here I have her, Cloe, the Daughter of a Country Gentleman; Here Age upon Fifteen. Now her Complexion, A lovely brown; here tis; Eyes black and rolling, The Body neatly built; she strikes a Lute well, Sings most enticingly: These Helps consider'd, Her Maidenhead will amount to some three hundred, Or three hundred and fifty Crowns, twill bear it handsomly. Her Fathers poor, some little Share deducted, To buy him ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... August, as a new race of winged creatures awake into life, the birds, who sing of the seed-time, the flowers, and of the early summer harvests, give place to the inferior band of insect-musicians. The reed and the pipe are laid aside, and myriads of little performers have taken up the harp and the lute, and make the air resound with the clash and din of their various instruments. An anthem of rejoicing swells up from myriads of unseen harpists, who heed not the fate that awaits them, but make themselves merry in every place ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... Her attire suggested a continual conflict between elegance and economy—between real poverty and feigned prodigality. She wore a corsage and overskirt of black satin; but the upper part of the underskirt, which was not visible, was made of lute-string costing thirty sous a yard, and her laces were Chantilly only in appearance. Still, her love of finery had never carried her so far as shop-lifting, or induced her to part with her honor for gewgaws—irregularities which are so common nowadays, even among ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... lusty, dancing and singing as the night before; and when the high glasses and goblets were caroused one to another, Dr. Faustus began to play them some pretty feats, insomuch that round about the hall was heard most pleasant music, and that in sundry places: in this corner a lute, in another a cornet, in another a cittern, clarigols, harp, hornpipe, in fine, all manner of music was heard there in that instant; whereat all the glasses and goblets, cups, and pots, dishes, and all that stood upon the board began to dance. Then Dr. Faustus took ten stone pots and ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... words." That this famous description of the effects of music which I have borrowed from Mr. Dyer Ball's "Things Chinese" is not exaggerated, anyone who knows China may confirm by personal observation of the keen enjoyment an unlearned, common day laborer will find in playing a single lute all by himself for hours beneath the moon on a warm summer evening, with no one listening but the trees and the flitting insects; but it requires a practised ear to appreciate singing and a good voice. On one occasion I went to an opera house ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... loom, and leave the lute, And leave the volume on the shelf, To follow him, unquestioning, mute, If ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... constitution was broken up. Gout and rheumatism assailed him alternately or in leash. He began to feel the annoyance of the constraint they occasioned; he regretted those legs which had figured so well in a ronde or a minuet, and those hands which had played the lute to dames more fair than modest; and to add to this, the pain he suffered was not slight. He sought relief in gay society, and was cheerful in spite of his sufferings. At length came the Shrove Tuesday and the feathers; and the consequences were terrible. He was soon a prey to doctors, whom he ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... skulls and corpse-lights, dead hands, and waxen masks with which the necromancer of that day sought to impress the vulgar mind. But in place of these a multitude of objects, quaint, curious, or valuable, filled that half of the room which was farther from the fire-hearth. On the wall, flanked by a lute and some odd-looking rubrical calendars, were three or four silver discs, engraved with the signs of the Zodiac; these were hung in such a position as to catch the light which entered through the heavily leaded ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... from the domestic side. In the town-house in Hart Street which her father, Sir John Harrison, rented for the winter months from "my Lord Dingwall," where she was born, her education was carried on "with all the advantages the time afforded." She learnt French, singing to the lute, the virginals, and the art of needlework, and confesses that though she was quick at learning she was very wild and loved "riding, running and ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... portraits; but most of them seem christened by chance, like children at a foundling hospital. There is a portrait of Languet,(343) the friend of Sir Philip Sydney; and divers of himself and all his great kindred; particularly his sister-in-law, with a vast lute, and Sacharissa, charmingly handsome, But there are really four very great curiosities, I believe as old portraits as any extant in England: they are, Fitzallen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Humphry Stafford, the first Duke ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... thou wast with thy husband, thou wast watch'd Like a tame elephant:—still you are to thank me:— Thou hadst only kisses from him and high feeding; But what delight was that? 'Twas just like one That hath a little fing'ring on the lute, Yet cannot tune it:—still ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... the tones of a concertina, as a rule; but, oh! how beautiful the music seemed to us both then - far, far more beautiful than the voice of Orpheus or the lute of Apollo, or anything of that sort could have sounded. Heavenly melody, in our then state of mind, would only have still further harrowed us. A soul-moving harmony, correctly performed, we should have taken as a spirit-warning, and have given up ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... stairs come a fluting dwarf and an effeminate-looking slave playing a lute, preceded by others with lights; then SHALNASSAR, leaning on GUeLISTANE; finally a eunuch with a whip stuck in his belt. GUeLISTANE frees herself and comes forward, seeming to search the floor for something; the others come forward ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... tryst which cost his head, and thirty-five others as noble. There, at the top of that shaded flight of stone steps, whose balustrades were jewelled with running water, Prince Ahmed had sat to play his lute. From that arcaded balcony Zorayda had looked when love was young, and Boabdil still the lover. In the mirrors of the water-patio Galiana had bent to her own image and asked, "Am I worthy to ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... loved so well, lay upon the damp floor of the cell to sleep, Komel lounged on a couch of downy softness, and was lulled to sleep by the playing of sweet fountains, and the gentle notes of the lute played by a slave, close by her couch, that her dreams might be sweet and her senses beguiled to rest by sweet harmony. But the lovely girl forgot him not, and her dreams were of him as her waking thoughts were ever full ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray
... his "Troilus and Cressida," you ever and anon fear you have lost your senses. Bits of veritable Shakspearean gold, burnished star-bright, embossed in pewter! Diamonds set in dirt! Sentences illuminated with words of power, suddenly rising and sinking, through a flare of fustian! Here Apollo's lute—there hurdy-gurdy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... skilled in the Malay language, in which he explained to me what was said by the king, in Japanese. The women were at first somewhat bashful, but the king desired them to be frolicsome. They sung several songs, and played on certain instruments, one of which resembled our lute, being bellied like it, but longer in the neck, and fretted like ours, but had only four gut strings. They fingered with their left hands, as is done with us, and very nimbly; but they struck the strings with a piece of ivory held in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... a masque in ancient revelries, With mingling sound of thousand harmonies, Soft lute and viol, trumpet-blast and gong, They came along, and still they came along! Thousands, and tens of thousands, all that e'er Peopled the earth, or ploughed th' unfathomed deep, All that now breathe the universal air, And all that in the womb of ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... lyre, Silence, ye vocal choir, And thou, mellifluous lute, For man soon breathes his last, And all his hope is past, And all ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... poikilia]," which observe, both in that place and again in the third book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but the idea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and sound—the "ravishing division to the lute," as in Pindar's "[Greek: poikiloi hymnoi]"—runs through the compass of all Greek art-description; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles, you were to look at it only on vases of a fine ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... never speak as we pass by. Rift in the lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more than ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... under the amenities of a Grecian sky, too fierce a memento could whisper itself of torrid zones, under the stern discipline of the Doric Spartan it was that you looked for it; or, on the other hand, if the lute might, at intervals, be heard or fancied warbling too effeminately for the martial European key of the Grecian muses, amidst the sweet blandishments it was of Ionian groves that you arrested the initial elements of such a relaxing modulation. ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... go back to his world and pick up the threads again, but not with a wife at his side. Oh, yes; they would be happy at first. Then Elsa would begin to miss the things she had so gloriously thrown away. The rift in the lute; the canker in the rose. They were equally well-born, well-bred; politeness would usurp affection's hold. Could he save her from the day when she would learn Romance had come from within? No. All he could do was to ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... hell, O'er the victim sounding,— Chant of frenzy, chant of ill, Sense and will confounding! Round the soul entwining Without lute or lyre— Soul in madness pining, Wasting ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... sing unto this glittering glorious King, And praise His name let every living thing; Let heart and voice, let bells of silver, ring, The comfort that this day to us did bring; Let lute, let shawm, with sound of sweet delight, The joy of Christ his ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... button, buckle; clasp, hasp, hinge, hank, catch, latch, bolt, latchet^, tag; tooth; hook, hook and eye; lock, holdfast^, padlock, rivet; anchor, grappling iron, trennel^, stake, post. cement, glue, gum, paste, size, wafer, solder, lute, putty, birdlime, mortar, stucco, plaster, grout; viscum^. shackle, rein &c (means of restraint) 752; prop &c (support) 215. V. bridge over, span; connect ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The while her sisters sing; From voice and lute there floats around A golden confluence of sound, Spreading in fairy ring; And with a beautiful grace and glow Her head sways to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... begged the young mistress of the feast to sing. She seemed pleased with the request, and taking her lute in her hands, she began to play softly, while her clear voice filled ...
— Undine • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... thus the one replied, "And now let all our tuneful skill be tried. "Whilst the gay courtiers quaff the smiling bowl, "And wine's strong fumes inspire the madden'd soul, "Where all around is merriment, be mine "To strike the lute, and praise the power ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... graves so in antiquity [1].' 'Confucius mourned for his mother the regular period of three years,— three years nominally, but in fact only twenty-seven months. Five days after the mourning was expired, he played on his lute, but could not sing. It required other five days before he could accompany an instrument with his voice [2]. Some writers have represented Confucius as teaching his disciples important lessons from the manner in which he buried his mother, and having a design to correct irregularities in ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... trees rise in different places, one over the other, each leaf perfect in its shape and colour and decorative value, while in simple raiment of beautiful design knights and ladies wandered in rich flower gardens, and rode with hawk on wrist through long green arcades, and sat listening to lute and viol in blossom- starred bowers or by cool gracious water springs. Upon the other hand, when the Gothic feeling died away, and Boucher and others began to design, they gave us wide expanses of waste sky, elaborate perspective, posing nymphs and shallow artificial treatment. ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... Listening to her, I could well believe in the far-famed Orpheus lute. It was enough to bewilder any man. She had a sweet, rich voice, a contralto of no ordinary merit, and the way in which she used it was something never ...
— Coralie • Charlotte M. Braeme
... friend most accurate descriptions of the buildings and grounds, it is safe to conclude that the chateau has been entirely remodelled since the days when the young Scottish archer listened to the voice of the Countess Isabelle, as she sang to the accompaniment of her lute while he acted as sentinel in the "spacious latticed gallery" of the chateau. It is needless to say that we failed to discover the spacious gallery or the maze of stairs, vaults, and galleries above and under ground which ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... snow; the snow most certainly I shall charge to your account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots, gourds, onions, and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard a comedian, or the reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you had liked, all three, such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies and Spanish dancing girls at some other house were more to your taste. I shall have my revenge of you, depend upon it, but I won't say how. Indeed, it was not kind ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... occasions. We have likewise made acquaintance with some other individuals, particularly with Mr. St. Pierre, junior, who is a considerable merchant, and consul for Naples. He is a well-bred, sensible young man, speaks English, is an excellent performer on the lute and mandolin, and has a pretty collection of books. In a word, I hope we shall pass the winter agreeably enough, especially if Mr. M—e should hold out; but I am afraid he is too far gone in a consumption to recover. He spent the last winter at Nismes, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... works of Horace, all of whose verses he knew by heart; for, inasmuch as it had once been very wisely observed in his presence by some distinguished scholar that no other human lute-strummer had ever sung so beautifully and so grandly as Horace, it thenceforth became a point of honour with Mr. Bodza to read nothing else; so he never troubled his head about any other poet or poets, whatever language they wrote in. He made an exception in favour of himself indeed, for he ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... them without the curtain; and I enquired concerning them and behold they were his brethren.[FN43] he set before them what they needed of wine and dessert, and they ceased not to press the damsel to sing, till she called for the lute and tuning it, intoned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Ivan fled from the room, jumped on his horse, and galloped away back. Meantime the mouse kept running over the strings of the lute. They twanged, and the sister never guessed that her brother was off. When she had sharpened her teeth she burst into the room. Lo and behold! not a soul was there, nothing but the mouse bolting into its hole! The witch waxed wroth, ground her ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Vinci and Lorenzo dei Medici. That last Name brought up the Recollection of my Morning's Debate with my Husband, which made me feel sad; and then, Mrs. Mildred, seeminge anxious to make me forget her Unmannerliness, commenced, "Can you paint?"—"Can you sing?"—"Can you play the Lute?"—and, at the last, "What can you do?" I mighte have sayd I coulde comb out my Curls smoother than she coulde hers, but did not. Other Guests came in, and talked so much agaynst Prelacy and the Right divine of Kings that I woulde fain we had remained at Astronomie and Poetry. For ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... determined to effect by deceit and treachery what he could not carry out openly without manifest peril to himself, pretended to be very much the friend of Domenico, who, being a good and affectionate fellow, fond of singing and devoted to playing on the lute, received him as a friend very willingly, thinking Andrea to be a clever and amusing person. And so, continuing this friendship, so true on one side and so false on the other, they would come together every night to make merry and to serenade their ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... he a dashing lad for a Puritan?" she gasped, patting her ample chest with both hands as if to fondle her newly recovered breath. Tiffany, who was bearing her mistress's lute, shrugged and pouted. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of death. He is twice a child and half a man, a living picture, and a dying creature. He is a blown bladder that is only stuffed with wind, and a withered tree that hath lost the sap of the root, or an old lute with strings all broken, or a ruined castle that is ready to fall. He is the eyesore of youth and the jest of love, and in the fulness of infirmity the mirror of misery. Yet in the honour of wisdom he may be gracious ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... the Furies are three, who visit with retributions called on the other side of the grave offences that walk upon this; and once even the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said—"one of whom I know, and the others too surely I shall know." For already, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... empty joys At ball or concert, rout or play; Whilst, far from fashion's idle noise, Her gilded domes, and trappings gay, I while the wintry eve away,— 'Twixt book and lute the hours divide And marvel how I e'er could ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... thine hour was not yet come." When the rejoicings were at an end, the people returned to their places and the King and his son to the palace, where they sat down and fell to eating and drinking and making merry. Now the King had a handsome handmaiden who was skilled in playing the lute; so she took it and began to sweep the strings and sing thereto before the King and his son of separation of lovers, and she chanted ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... her intimacy with Mrs. Thorne—and with Mr. Thorne. When clouds began to gather along the matrimonial horizon, and "rifts within the lute" to make discord of life's music, she beheld the one, and hearkened to the other with savage thrills of satisfaction. She did nothing to widen the breach—Norma was too proud to be a mischief-maker, but she did nothing to lessen it. She watched ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... is much more common. There are those, to be sure, who find no music in the sounds poured forth oftenest by a gramophone, often by a pair of gypsies with a flaring pipe and two small gourd drums, and sometimes by an orchestra so-called of the fine lute—a company of musicians on a railed dais who sing long songs while they play on stringed instruments of strange curves. For myself I know too little of music to tell what relation the recurrent cadences of those songs and their ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... tuned by the guru as the strings of a lute (vina) each different from the others, yet each emitting sounds in harmony with all. Collectively they must form a key-board answering in all its parts to thy lightest touch (the touch of the Master). Thus their minds shall open for the harmonies of Wisdom, to vibrate ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... looked the least bit in the world like the lovely ordered picture he had been accustomed to delight in from the shilling gallery—after the first few days he began to focus this strange world and to suffer its fascination. And he was proud of the silent part allotted to him, a lazy lute-player in attendance on the great lady, who lounged about on terrace steps in picturesque attitudes. He was glad that he was not an unimportant member of the crowd of courtiers who came on in a bunch and bowed and nodded and pretended ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... the light On flower-soft fields, ye blest immortal Spirits. Radiant godlike zephyrs Touch you as gently As the hand of a master might Touch the awed lute-string. Free of fate as the slumbering Infant, breathe the divine ones. Guarded well In the firm-sheathed bud Blooms eternal Each happy soul; And their rapture-lit eyes Shine with a tranquil Unchanging lustre. But we, 'tis our portion, We never may be at rest. They stumble, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... let us dance and sing, While Barbadoes bells do ring; Quashi scrapes the fiddle-string, And Venus plays the lute. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... makes my hand now shake to write of it." He learned to dance, and was "like to make a dancer." He learned to sing, and walked about Gray's Inn Fields "humming to myself (which is now my constant practice) the trillo." He learned to play the lute, the flute, the flageolet, and the theorbo, and it was not the fault of his intention if he did not learn the harpsichord or the spinet. He learned to compose songs, and burned to give forth "a scheme and theory of music not ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Mr. Stimpson exclaimed, as his wife came out of her pavilion in her Coronation Robes and chain, attended by the Court Godmother, "I should hardly have known you! You look majestic!—abso-lute-ly majestic!" ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... pavement told their story, in whose mind 'the effect of night, of any flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean,' called up 'an army of anonymous desires and pleasures'? To have the 'golden-tongued Romance with serene lute' for a mistress and familiar is to be fortified against ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... or three artists engaged in copying some of the pictures. The collection not being vastly large, and the pictures being in more presentable condition than usual, I enjoyed them more than I generally do; particularly a Virgin and Child by Vandyke, where two angels are singing and playing, one on a lute and the other on a violin, to remind the holy infant of the strains he used to hear in heaven. It is one of the few pictures that there is really any pleasure in looking at. There were several paintings by Titian, mostly of a voluptuous character, but not very charming; also ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "to rest awhile, And sip the fragrant wine of life, My lute to pleasure's halls I'll bring And while the sun ascends I'll sing, And all my world without shall ring Like merry chiming bells that peal Not half the rapture that they feel." Alas! he found but tangled moss, Above ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... resigned to the semi-official nature of the ball, rose and drank the health of the distinguished guest in long and flowery praises. Rezanov responded in briefer but no less felicitous vein, and concluded by remarking that the only rift in the lute of his present enchanting experience was the fear that whereas he had nearly died of starvation several times during the past three years, he was now threatened with a far more ignominious end, so delicious and irresistible were the temptations that beset the wayfarer in this most ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... 'm not precisely an aeolian lute Hung in the wandering winds of sentiment, But drown me if the ugliest, meanest brute Grunting and fretting in that sultry tent Did n't just floor me ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... I) lie scenes of pleasure, Where the free and blessed dwell, And each moment bears a treasure, Freighted with the lotus-spell, And there floats a liquid measure From the lute of Israfel. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... were lit at night with thirty chandeliers and a great silver lamp. On entering the lowest room the visitor saw a row of book-cases low enough to be used as desks or tables. A few musical instruments lay about; one of the old lists tells us of a lute, and guitars inlaid with ivory and enamel, and 'an old rebec' much out of repair. There were 269 volumes in the book-cases. We will only mention a few of the most remarkable. There was Queen Blanche's Bible in red morocco, and another in white boards, Thomas Waley's ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... taste of the golden fruit Till the golden new time come Many a tree shall spring from shoot, Many a blossom be withered at root, Many a song be dumb; Broken and still shall be many a lute Or ever ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... My lute, be as thou wert when thou did'st grow With thy green mother in some shady grove, When immelodious winds but made thee move, And birds their ramage ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... of lute and pen, Her hair was like a summer night, dark and desired of men, Her feet like birds from far away that linger and light in doubt, And her face was like a window where a man's first love ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... and there. Lamps were hung to cords stretched above it, while others were arranged among the flowers. In the centre a large carpet was spread, and on this some eight or ten persons were seated on cushions. A girl was playing a lute, and another singing to her accompaniment. She stopped abruptly when her eye fell upon the figures of the ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... often as the excuse for a visit to the Lawn. He wanted pounds for very trivial purposes; but he wanted them desperately. A lover without pounds is the most helpless and contemptible of mankind; he is a knight-errant without his armour, a troubadour without his lute. ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... stop, occlude; conclude, finish, end, terminate; inclose, encompass, confine, environ; grapple, clinch; lute, calk. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... of Li, who had been an old friend of his honour old Mr. Wang, and he kept Mr. Wang junior to put up in his library. This Mr. Li had no son, but only a daughter. This young daughter's worthy name was Ch'u Luan. She could perform on the lute; she could play chess; and she had a knowledge of books and of painting. There was nothing ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and for everything that related to the fortunes of Armine, all pointed him out as a friend alike to be cherished and to be valued. Under his auspices the garden of the fair Constance soon flourished: his taste guided her pencil, and his voice accompanied her lute. Sir Ratcliffe, too, thoroughly enjoyed his society: Glastonbury was with him the only link, in life, between the present and the past. They talked over old times together; and sorrowful recollections lost half their bitterness, from the tenderness of ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... boiling brain? He sinks to S * *'s level in a trice, Whose epic mountains never fail in mice! Not so of yore awoke your mighty sire The tempered warblings of his master lyre; Soft as the gentler breathing of the lute, 'Of man's first disobedience and the fruit' He speaks; but, as his subject swells along, Earth, Heaven, and Hades, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... she wandered about the large mansion like a restless spirit whose duties in life are fulfilled, and who longs to take its flight. Sometimes she took her lute, and in wild and plaintive voice she would sing those romances which Gomez Arias had loved to hear. Then she would ramble through the garden, and visit those spots endeared by the recollection of her love. Sometimes, too, in the stillness of night, a most piercing scream would issue from her chamber, ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... the sun shone then as now, people wassailed or wailed—oh, 'twas pretty much the same in all ages. But when we come to the most unmistakable facts, all this sheen of gilded armor and egret-plumes, of gemmed goblet and altar-lace, lute, mandolin, and lay, is cloth of gold over the ghastly, shrunken limbs of a leper. Pass over the glory of knight and dame and see how it was then with the multitude—with the millions. Almost at the first glance, in fact, your knight and dame turn out unwashed, scantily linened, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... took me by the hand, and led me down a long court to a palace, past which there ran a fair fountain of water, and sitting down in a chair, he commanded me to sit upon another, and sent for such simple musicians as he had to entertain me. I then presented him with a great bass lute, which he thankfully accepted, and expressed a desire to hear when he might expect the musicians: I told him great care had been taken to provide them, and I did not doubt that they would come out in the first ship after my return. He is willing to give them good ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, and again a pause. Then he is silent for six or eight minutes, and then another toll, and so on. Acteon would stop in mid-chase, Maria would defer her evening song, and Orpheus himself would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel and romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white campanero. He is never seen to feed with the other cotingas, nor is it known in what part of ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... obstinate toothache: "Drawers of teeth who run about the country and pretend they cause worms to come forth from the teeth by burning the seed in a chafing dish of coals, the party holding his mouth over the fume thereof, do have some crafty companions who convey small lute strings into the water, persuading the patient that those little creepers came out of his mouth, or other parts which it was intended to ease." Forestus says: "These pretended worms are no more than an appearance of worms which is always seen ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... Memoirs appear to have been composed in this retreat. Marguerite amused herself likewise, in this solitude, in composing verses, and there are specimens still remaining of her poetry. These compositions she often set to music, and sang them herself, accompanying her voice with the lute, on which she played to perfection. Great part of her time was spent in the perusal of the Bible and books of piety, together with the works of the best authors she could procure. Brantome assures us that Marguerite spoke the Latin tongue with purity ...
— Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, Complete • Marguerite de Valois, Queen of Navarre
... with his acceptance, the lady left the room in search of her daughters, whom the knight knew well, for they had solaced many of the weary hours of his illness with pleasant chat, and music from their voices and from the lute and spinet, on which they played agreeably. While awaiting them he bade the servant to empty the box and count the ducats into three lots, two of a thousand each and one of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... let me hang this faithful friend of mine Upon the trunk of some old, sacred pine, And sit beneath the green protecting boughs To hear the viewless wind, that sings and soughs Above me, play its wild, aerial lute, And draw a ghost of ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... Miss Rasmith might have told you. Well, it is simply this, and you will see that I'm not quite the universal favorite she's been making you fancy me. There is a rift in my lute, a schism in my little society, which is so little that I could not have supposed there was enough of it to break in two. There are some who think their lecturer—for that's what I amount to—ought to be an older, if not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... were happy,—men whose tender pain Was fraught with fervor, as the night with stars. And then I spoke of heroes' battle-scars And lordly souls who rode from land to land To win the love-touch of a lady's hand; And on the strings of thy low-murmuring lute I struck the chords ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... so, But wisdom comes with winters. My hair grows grey, And youth has left my body. Enough of that. To-night is ripe for pleasure, and indeed, I would be merry as beseems a host Who finds a gracious and unlooked-for guest Waiting to greet him. [Takes up a lute.] But what is this, my lord? Why, you have brought a lute to play to us. Oh! play, sweet Prince. And, if I am too bold, Pardon, ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... tone in the voice of Helen Cumberly—a tone different from that compound of good-fellowship and raillery, which he knew—a tone which had entered into it when she had exclaimed upon the state of the room—set his poor, anxious heart thrumming like a lute. He felt a hot flush creeping upon him; his forehead grew damp. He feared to raise ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... builders may have had, they cannot be considered to have been progressive. Their instruments of the mid-16th century hardly can be distinguished from those made around 1700. During this 150 years the pioneering Flemish makers added the four-foot register, a second keyboard, and lute and buff stops to their instruments. However, the very fact that the Italian builders were unwilling to change their models suggests that their instruments were good enough to demand no further improvements. Anyone who ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... of men can tell That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail, The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale, The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones, The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones, Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet If human souls did never ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... you examine the furniture of your apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... to each other belong, Come graceful elf, And around my lute in sympathy strong Now wind thyself; And quake as if mov’d by zephyr’s wing, ’Neath the clang of the chord, And a morning song with glee we’ll sing To our ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... the balcony, and let down her bright hair, and leaned over the railing, a la Juliet, having first decked Hosey out in a sketchy but effective Romeo costume consisting of a hastily snatched up scarf over one shoulder, Pinky's little turban, and a frying pan for a lute. Mother Brewster did the Nurse, and by the time Hosea began his limping climb up the balcony, the turban over one eye and the scarf winding itself about his stocky legs, they ended by tumbling in ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... with the place of black horror whence I had come, I fell to a very ecstasy. And now, even as I sat thus lost in pleasing wonderment, from the quarter-deck hard by came the sweet, throbbing melody of a lute touched by skilled fingers and therewith a voice richly soft and plaintive, yet thrilling with that strange, vital ring had first arrested me and which I should have known the world over. So she ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... is a place where lute and lyre are broken. Where scrolls are torn and on a wild wind go, Where tablets stand wiped naked for a token, Where laurels ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... mottled horse, once evidently a beauty, was between the shafts. As Andy lifted himself to the seat beside Ripley, the latter made a peculiar, purring: "Z-rr-rp, Lute!" ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... sweet-scented shrubs, and marble vases filled with gathered flowers; and, in the midst, a fountain, whose spars and coral seemed the spoil of some sea-nymph's grotto, fell down in a sparkling shower, and echoed the music of Giulietta's lute. Pleasant, too, was it in an evening to walk the broad terrace which overlooked the ocean, and watch the silver moonlight reflected on the sea, till air and water were but as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... it is so necessary for him, I do not only cause him to read it over, but also to practise the precepts of the same. After this he exerciseth his hand in writing one or two hours, and readeth upon Fabyan's Chronicle as long. The residue of the day he doth spend upon the lute and virginals. When he rideth, as he doth very oft, I tell him by the way some history of the Romans or the Greeks, which I cause him to rehearse again in a tale. For his recreation he useth to hawk and hunt and shoot in his long bow, which frameth and succeedeth ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... who was sitting next to Ishak, having dictated some lines, and Ishak having written them down, the latter sang them to a favourite air of Haroun's, being accompanied on the lute by Isaac, the most famous of all the players ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... do to get even? " asked Lute Hubbard, anxiously. "We shall have to get up something that'll be ...
— A District Messenger Boy and a Necktie Party • James Otis
... of Emperor Aldabrod, He sold it to Sultan Saladin: Till, caught by Pope Clement, a-buzzing there, Hornet-prince of the mad wasps' hive, And clipt of his wings in Paris square, They bring him now to be burned alive. [And wanteth there grace of lute or clavicithern, ye shall say to confirm him who singeth— We bring John ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... call it that? I hear nothing that comes not from the stars. 'Tis Israfel! The angel whose lute ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan
... the heaven's own color,—when I see light clouds floating together half gray, half tinted by the sun, they seem to me to resemble the soft and noiseless garb she wore,—the birds sing, only to recall to me the lute-like sweetness of her voice,—and at night, when I behold the millions upon millions of stars that are worlds, peopled as they must be with thousands of wonderful living creatures, perhaps as spiritually ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Too long art silent! Seize now the lute! Why dost thou tarry? Let sword the Universe inherit, Noblest as prize of war be glory. Let thousand mouths sing hero-actions: E'en so, the glory is not uttered. Earth-gods—an endless life, ambrosial, Find ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... ma'am. Nex' thing I'd look for him to sew. No, ma'am. But I started a-tellin' you huccome I come to know dat Pompey an' Sis' Sophy-Sophia was legally married wid a broom. One day he come over to my cabin, jes like I commenced tellin' you, an' he s'lute me wid, 'Good-mornin', Sis' Tamar; I come over to see ef you won't please, ma'am, loand Sister Sophy-Sophia Sanders dat straw broom wha' you sweeps out de chu'ch-house wid, please, ma'am?' An' I ricollec's de answer I made him. I laughed, an' I say, 'Well, ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... This lover has strewn the roses of a month's gathering on his lady's path, only for the chance of her seeing them: as he has conquered the difficulties of the lute, only for the chance of her liking its sound; thrown his whole life into a love, which is hers to accept or reject. She cares for none of these things. So the roses may lie, the lute-string break. The lover can still say, "Blest ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... sparkling in the sun. The introduction, a bold, exhorting strain, in grandiose style, full of large intervals, was given with a glorious fervor, and no lark ever carolled more blithely or more at ease than her voice as it soared to F in alt! Benedict's English ballad, 'Take this Lute,' she sang with a simplicity and pathos that won the audience completely; and no part seemed more genuine or more expressive than the difficult ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... and a knowledge of musical composition. He played the flute and the lute, and in church he introduced congregational singing, in which the people took an active part in worship by means of the chorales. It is related that, as a child, he used to sing with other boys in the street in winter, for ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... number of them can be put into a row. They are six feet wide and 12 feet long inside. The air is introduced and the ashes removed at the two small sides of the producer which taper toward the middle and are closed at the bottom by a water lute of sufficient depth for the pressure under which the air is forced in, equal to about 4 inches of water. The ashes are taken out from underneath the water, the producers having no grate or fire bars at all. The air enters just above the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... of all that Temptress who dances for him now With subtle feet which part and meet in the Ras-measure slow, To the chime of silver bangles and the beat of rose-leaf hands, And pipe and lute and cymbal played by the woodland bands; So that wholly passion-laden—eye, ear, sense, soul o'ercome— Krishna is theirs in the forest; his heart forgets ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... except to the nobility of nature. But, though poor, he was well educated, and was a master of the scholastic philosophy and of all the learning of his age. Like Luther, he was passionately fond of music, and played the lute, the harp, the violin, the flute and the dulcimer. There was no more joyous spirit in all Switzerland than his. Every one loved his society, and honored his attainments, and admired his genius. Like Luther and Erasmus, he was disgusted with scholasticism, and regretted the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... fine young man, beautiful as a Saint Sebastian, a rare musician, who sang his own songs to the lute in a way that used to make my grandmother's heart melt and run through her body like mulled wine. He had a good word for everybody, too, and was always dressed in the French fashion, and smelt as sweet as a bean-field; and every ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... species of rebus, where each of the signs, divorced from its original sense, served to represent several words, similar in sound, but differing in meaning in the spoken language. The same group of articulations, Naufir, Nofir, conveyed in Egyptian the concrete idea of a lute and the abstract idea of beauty; the sign expressed at once the lute ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... that there are many such natural orchestras in India. The Brahmans know well their wonderful properties, and calling this kind of reed vina-devi, the lute of the gods, keep up the popular superstition and say the sounds are divine oracles. The sirka grass and the bamboos always shelter a number of tiny beetles, which make considerable holes in the hollow ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... a rock, beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole Tunnelling its mine—like some ungainly Troll— Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps, And trees ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... forest. In Tennyson's poetry two things are clear. They are mediaeval in location; they are modern in temper. Their geography is yesterday, their spirit is to-day; and so we have the questions and thoughts of our era as themes for Tennyson's voice and lute. His treatment is ancient: his theme is recent. He has given diagnosis and alleviation of present sickness, but hides face and voice behind morion ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... succeed, But mother Chloris what she touches mars. Young men's homes your daughter storms, Like Thyiad, madden'd by the cymbals' beat: Nothus' love her bosom warms: She gambols like a fawn with silver feet. Yours should be the wool that grows By fair Luceria, not the merry lute: Flowers beseem not wither'd brows, Nor wither'd lips ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... that old rascal, Beckmesser," she returned, distracted with fright and anger, as she saw the old fool come in sight with his lute strung over his shoulder, while ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... senses," he said. "Up in the state cabin are bright lights, and wine and laughter. There are gentlewomen aboard, and I have been singing to the lute, to them—and to her. She is saved from the peril into which you plunged her; she knows that the King's Court of High Commission, to say nothing of the hangman, will soon snap the fetters which she now shudders to think of; that ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... with singing musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme or ground at random, as it best pleased them. In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play upon the lute, the virginals, the harp, the Almain flute with nine holes, the viol, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, and digestion finished, he did purge his body of natural excrements, then betook himself to his principal study for three hours ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... lute than Orpheus given To thee, did trees thy voice obey; The blood revisits not the clay Which He, with lifted ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... sweats in palling pleasures, dulls his soul,[a] And saps his goodly strength, in toils which yield not Health like the chase, nor glory like the war— He must be roused. Alas! there is no sound [Sound of soft music heard from within. To rouse him short of thunder. Hark! the lute— The lyre—the timbrel; the lascivious tinklings Of lulling instruments, the softening voices 30 Of women, and of beings less than women, Must chime in to the echo of his revel, While the great King of all we know of earth Lolls crowned with roses, and his diadem ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... the peg the Dorian lute, if in any wise the glory of Pherenikos[2] at Pisa hath swayed thy soul unto glad thoughts, when by the banks of Alpheos he ran, and gave his body ungoaded in the course, and brought victory to his master, the Syracusans' ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... because he had feared they might unduly influence her! He had grown in many ways. She must be careful to reach up to his ideals. That about Flo Hutter's toil-hardened hands! Was that significance somehow connected with the rift in the lute? For Carley admitted to herself that there was something amiss, something incomprehensible, something intangible that obtruded its menace into her dream of future happiness. Still, what had she to fear, so long as she could ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... transcend the limits in aspiration), he falls away from humanity into his own self again; and perfectly happy for the moment, but lost as an artist and a man, lies lazy, filleted and robed on the turf, with a lute beside him, looking over the landscape below the castle and fancying himself Apollo. This is to have the capacity to be an artist, but it is not to be an artist. And we leave Sordello lying on the grass enjoying himself, but not destined on that account to give ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... of weariness, if he, When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch'd Even from the blazing chariot of the sun A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, And filled ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... for his enemy will not deny that gunpowder has aptitudes of mischief; and from the point of view of a nigger ordered upon the safety-valve of a racing steamboat, the vapor of water is a thing accurst. Shall we condemn music because the lute makes "lascivious pleasing?" Or poetry because some amorous bard tells in warm rhyme the story of the passions, and Swinburne has had the goodness to make vice offensive with his hymns in its praise? Or sculpture because from the guiltless ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... "improvvisatori" has never died out in central and southern Italy. One of the most celebrated in the sixteenth century, named Silvio Antoniano, at the age of eleven could sing to the accompaniment of his lute on any argument proposed to him, the poetry being as graceful and pleasing as the music. One day, while sitting at a state banquet in the Palazzo di Venezia, Giovanni Angelo de' Medici, one of the cardinals present, asked him if he could improvise "on ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... no more; he had lost consciousness. With closed eyes he sought the form of the heaven-ascended Surja Mukhi; he saw her seated as a queen upon a jewelled throne. The perfumed wind played in her hair, all around flower-like birds sang with the voice of the lute; at her feet bloomed hundreds of red water-lilies; in the canopy of her throne a hundred moons were shining, surrounded by hundreds of stars. He saw himself in a place full of darkness, pain in all his limbs, demons inflicting blows upon him, ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... you; but sing and play my truth; This tree my lute, these sighs my note of ruth: The laurel leaf for ever shall be green, And chastity shall be Apollo's queen. If gods may die, here shall my tomb be placed, And this ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... in the tarven. Arvilly wuz dressed in black throughout; I hinted to her she ort to wear some badge in honor of the day, and she retired to her room and appeared with a bow made of black lute string ribbin and crape. I felt dretful. I sez, "Arvilly, can't you wear sunthin' ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... of Domnei, move vividly through their stone galleries and closes, in procession, and—a far more difficult accomplishment—alone. The lute of the Bishop of Montors, playing as he rides in scarlet, sounds its Provencal refrain; the old man Theodoret, a king, sits shabbily between a prie-dieu and the tarnished hangings of his bed; Melusine, with the pale frosty hair of a child, spins the melancholy of departed passion; Ahasuerus the ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... was effectually assistant, first to plough and break up that barbarous Nation by Conquest, and then to sow it with seeds of civility when by King James made Lord Deputy of Ireland.' The 'good laws and Provisions' made by former Governors were 'like good lessons set for a Lute out of tune, useless untill the Instrument was fitted for them.' Sir Arthur established new and wider circuits for Justices of Assize, with the most excellent results, for, 'like good Planets in their several spheres, they carried the influence of ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... cosmography. Instruction in arithmetic, analytical algebra, geometry, fortification, and architecture, was to be given by the Professor of Geometry. A Professor of Music was to impart skill in singing, and music to play upon organ, lute, viol, etc. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, and High Dutch were to be taught by the Professor of Languages. In addition, a Professor of Defence inculcated skill at all weapons and wrestling (but not pugilism apparently), and ample instruction was to be afforded ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... suppliant to the old player of that part. And there are emotions of which the body may be yet more eloquent than the face; there was the figure of Watts's "Hope" drooping over as she drooped, not more lissom and speaking than her own; just then it caught my eye, and on the spot it was as though the lute's last string of that sweet masterpiece had vibrated ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... fiddlin' out thar'," George Olver explained to me. "I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days. Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'—I suppose it's true—there was some fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to Sandwich te-own, and they offered him a hundred and fifty a month—I Reckon ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... the joy of her home-coming was already marred; for, with a person of Audrey's temperament, there is no complete enjoyment if she were not in thorough harmony with everyone. One false note, one 'little rift within the lute,' and the whole melody is spoiled. So Audrey's gaiety seemed all quenched that afternoon, and though her old friend testified the liveliest satisfaction at the sight of her, and Priscilla could not make enough of her, she ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... flute, The melancholy lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo - Were I ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... and when he was king his minstrels formed an indispensable part of his retinue, whether he went on progress through his kingdom, or crossed the seas on errands of peace or war.[54] He became an expert performer on the lute, the organ and the harpsichord, and all the cares of State could not divert him from practising on those instruments both day (p. 025) and night. He sent all over England in search of singing men and boys for the chapel royal, and sometimes appropriated ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... without seeing the fair causes of his companion's displeasure. The sun, then setting, shone full on his countenance as he looked round; and that countenance was one that might have haunted the nymphs of Delos; the face of Apollo, not as the hero, but the shepherd—not of the bow, but of the lute—not the Python-slayer, but the young dreamer by shady places—he whom the sculptor has portrayed leaning idly against the tree—the boy-god whose home is yet on earth, and to whom the Oracle and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of the thirteenth century mentions that in his time the bagpipe was quite a fashionable instrument. Chaucer and Spenser both allude to it, and the former says, in Henry IV., that Falstaff was 'as melancholy as a lover's lute, or drone ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... But let me go on. I was also told that your information would be in our hands within twenty-four hours, and then, I learned that Ydo was conducting the negotiations. That was the rift within the lute. I immediately became frightened. I did not know what it meant. What I did know was that Ydo stops at nothing to gain her ends. And of course, she, being ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... as the day grew late, Passed Kafur homeward through St. Thomas' gate Betwixt the pleasure-gardens where he heard Vie with the lute the twilight-wakened bird. But song touched not his heavy heart, nor yet The lovely lines of gold and violet, A guerdon left by the departing sun To grace the brow of Anti-Lebanon. Upon his soul a crushing burden weighed, And to his eyes the swiftly-gathering shade Seemed but the presage ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... been invented by the lute-playing nobles of Provence. But quickly it had begun to spread from court to court, from one land to another. So now, in Italy, as in southern France, sometimes in wild hill castles as well as in the city palaces, a hymn of adoration ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... us? Thou livest in thy pavilion, beautiful Alida, remote from towns and envy, like some favored damsel, over whose happy and charmed life presides a benignant genius. See, here are all the pretty materials, with which thy sex seeks innocent and happy amusement. Thou touchest this lute, when melancholy renders thought pleasing; here are colors to mock, or to eclipse, the beauties of the fields and the mountain, the flower, and the tree; and from these pages are culled thoughts, pure and rich in imagery, ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... bought him yesterday at quite a low price. The well-grown Samian was scarcely thirty years old; he could read and write and was in a position therefore to instruct the children in these arts; nay, he could even play the lute. His past, to be sure, was not a spotless record, and it was for that reason that he had been sold so cheaply. He had stolen things on several occasions; but the brands and scars which he bore upon his person were hidden by his new chiton and Keraunus felt in himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
