"Troubadour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... critical scent, I made a note of. It was by the then quite unknown young Count Snoilsky, and it was far from possessing the rare qualities, both of pith and form, that later distinguished his poetry; but it was a poet's handiwork, a troubadour song to the Danish woman, meltingly sweet, and the writer of it was a youth of aristocratic bearing, regular, handsome features, and smooth brown hair, a regular Adonis. The following year he came again, drawn by strong cords to Christian Winther's home, loving the old poet like ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... That I was following a woman? That I had given her my name, and that I must protect her? It would sound to him like a parrot's laughter. This was no court of love. It was war. A troubadour's lute would tinkle emptily in these woods that had seen massacre and knew the shriek of the death cry. Again I set my ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... cap, with a gold band and plume. His head is thrown back, eyes directed to the Spirit, while the countenance should appear to be inspired. Kneeling at the foot of the pedestal, between the first figure and the Harper, is the Troubadour, playing on a guitar; he faces the audience; his head is thrown back, and his eyes cast upward. Costume consists of a purple coat, trimmed with black binding, blue breeches, white hose, low shoes, knee and shoe buckles, belt containing a small dagger, about the waist. ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... Killogonsawee, "for my two childer that left me last year for foreign parts." Little Francis was Triptolemus, in the Pirate, an excellent figure, and Mrs. Carr his sister Baby. Isabella, an old lady in an old-fashioned dress, and Laura as her daughter in a court dress and powder; Anna, a French troubadour singing beautifully and speaking French perfectly; William, the youngest son, a half-pay officer, king of the coffee house; Tom, a famous London black beggar, Billy Waters, with a wooden leg; Morton, Meg Merillics; ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... laughter to all Asiatics, and the Greeks would have joined in it. In the golden Middle Age the practice developed into a regular and methodical service of women; it imposed deeds of heroism, cours d'amour, bombastic Troubadour songs, etc.; although it is to be observed that these last buffooneries, which had an intellectual side, were chiefly at home in France; whereas amongst the material sluggish Germans, the knights distinguished themselves rather by drinking and stealing; they were good at boozing and filling ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... though limited, anthology, without music and with illuminating comments. A pamphlet collection that Thorp privately printed at Estancia, New Mexico, in 1908, was one of the first to be published. Thorp had the perspective of both range and civilization. He was a kind of troubadour himself. The opening chapter, "Banjo in the Cow Camps," of his posthumous reminiscences, Pardner of the Wind, ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie
... fair ladies riding on horseback with so brave a show of cavaliers, even they too must come at last to be just dust, is it, or like that swollen body, which seems to taint even the summer sunshine, lying there by the wayside, and come upon so unexpectedly? What love-song was that troubadour, fluttering with ribbons, singing to that little company under the orange-trees, cavaliers and ladies returned from the chase, or whiling away a summer afternoon playing with their falcons and their dogs? The servants ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... violinist, and resided at Edinburgh as a teacher of the pianoforte and violin until his compositions attracted the attention of his countrymen and induced his being called to London. The most important compositions of Dr. Mackenzie up to the present time are the operas "Colomba" (1883), "The Troubadour" (1886) and the oratorio "The Rose of Sharon" (1884). There are several cantatas, "Jason," "The Bride," "The Story of Sayid" (1886) and a considerable number of orchestral pieces, of which two Scotch rhapsodies and the overture to "Twelfth Night" are the best known. He ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... Clark, the sweet-souled troubadour of reform, sang for woman's freedom in suffrage ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... sending him sprawling down the slope; indeed, the fugitive seemed inspired with the strength of a wild ape. He cleared at a bound the rampart of flowers, over which Barbara had once leaned to look at her future lover, and tumbled with blinding speed down the steep path up which that troubadour had climbed. Racing with the rushing wind they all streamed across the garden after him, down the path, and finally on to the seashore by the fisher's cot, and the pierced crags and caverns the American had admired when he first landed. The runaway did not, however, make for the house he ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... mariners of Barcelona first introduced its use into Europe. The first mention of it is given in a treatise on Natural History by Alexander Neckam, foster-brother of Richard, Coeur de Lion. Another reference, in a satirical poem of the troubadour, Guyot of Provence (1190), states that mariners can steer to the north star without seeing it, by following the direction of a needle floating in a straw in a basin of water, after it had been touched by a magnet. But little use, however, ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... feudal pride, or have been sung in the bowers of listening beauty. Of the prevalence of this refined taste in poetry among the lower orders of the peasantry, the following fragment of an old ballad, still very commonly sung to the ancient Troubadour air by the peasantry of Provence, may be given as a ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Turning his back upon the mill-wheels of his native town and an assured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil Bias's friend, il s'est jet dans le bel esprit—in other words, he betook himself to the career of a troubadour. Never, surely, did master of song-craft write and sing ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... or honor of maidens whom the enemy endeavored to kidnap. The Arabs, on their part, were in close contact with the European minds, and as they helped to originate the chivalrous spirit in Europe, so they must have been in turn influenced by the developments of the troubadour spirit which culminated in such maxims as Montagnogout's declaration that "a true lover desires a thousand times more the happiness of his beloved than his own." As Saadi lived in the time of the troubadours—the twelfth ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... years after her death, he saw her picture at Washington, is unspeakably affecting. Catlin gives anecdotes of the grief of a chief for the loss of a daughter, and the princely gifts he offers in exchange for her portrait, worthy not merely of European, but of Troubadour sentiment. It is also evident that, as Mrs. Schoolcraft says, the women have great power at home. It can never be otherwise, men being dependent upon them for the comfort of their lives. Just, so among ourselves, wives who are neither esteemed nor loved ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... young troubadour, the boy poet, beloved by all, burning for fame; and, in his innocence, he performs the mean work ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... gratifying, to be sure?" Well, yes, it is gratifying—thank you. It is at least as gratifying to be certified sober as to be certified romantic, though such certificates would not qualify one for the secretaryship of a temperance association or for the post of official troubadour to some lordly democratic institution such as the London County Council, for instance. The above prosaic reflection is put down here only in order to prove the general sobriety of my judgment in mundane affairs. ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... had touched off the spiritual trinitrotoluol which he had been storing up for so long. Up in the air in a million pieces had gone the prudence and self-restraint of a lifetime. And here he was, as desperately in love as any troubadour of the ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and yet 'tis belike but some gentle troubadour that singeth songs to their delectation, and 'tis meet to hark ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... Troubadour order," she said; "but I dare say no woman would deny that it is rather taking. I don't deny it, it is taking—if you don't ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone which must have astonished the beautiful ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... you're the embodiment of undying youth," asserted the troubadour beside me. It was untrue, and it was improper, but for a moment or two at least my hungry heart closed about that speech the same as a child's hand closes about a chocolate-drop. Women are made that way. But I had ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... years and his education Peter Martyr is silent, nor does he anywhere mention under whose direction he began his studies. In the education deemed necessary for young men of his quality, the exercises of chivalry and the recreations of the troubadour found equal place, and such was doubtless the training he received. He spent some years at the ducal court of Milan, but there is no indication that he frequented the schools of such famous Hellenists as Francesco Filelfo ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... try as far as possible to have all your seed sowing and transplanting done before the June rose season begins, that you may give yourself up to this one flower, heart, soul, yes, and body also! It was no haphazard symbolist that, in troubadour days, gave Love the rose for his own flower, for to be its real self the rose demands all and must be all in all ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... songster, songstress, minstrel, chanter, cantatrice, cantor, prima donna, precentor, bard, troubadour, jongleur, musician. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... troubadour!" exclaimed a voice, which he could not mistake; "but, prithee, my tuneful knight, were those concluding lines extempore, or had you really the vanity to anticipate the ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... "It's a sort of troubadour story," said Lady Pentreath, an easy, deep-voiced old lady; "I'm glad to find a little romance left among us. I think our young people now ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial atmosphere in these awful renunciations? Why did he who loved where all men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a monk, and not a troubadour? These questions are far too large to be answered fully here, but in any life of Francis they ought at least to have been asked; we have a suspicion that if they were answered, we should suddenly find that much of the enigma of this sullen time of ours was answered also. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... infancy of modern music the solo existed only in the folk song, in the rhapsodies of religious ecstatics and in the uncertain lyrics of the minnesingers and troubadours. Of these the folk song, and the troubadour lyrics had some musical figure, out of which a clear form might have been developed. But, as all students of musical history know, the study of the art originated among the fathers of the church and in their pursuit of principles of structure they chose a path which ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... customs of their age and country. Partly, perhaps, through the great reverence paid in the Roman Catholic Church to the Virgin Mary and other female saints, a sort of woman worship had, in the thirteenth century, spread through the south of Christendom. It was no unusual thing for a knight or a troubadour to select a certain lady, celebrate her in his songs, call on her name in the hour of danger, and wear her color in battle. The adored or the adorer might be either of them married—that made no difference; and the tender litany would sometimes ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... crusading knight austere, Who bore Saint Louis company, And came home hurt to death, and here Landed to die; Some youthful troubadour, whose tongue Fill'd Europe once with his love-pain, Who here outworn had sunk, and sung His ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... shall remember that music is the voice of love," whispered the letter against my heart. What a brave thing is life when we have love and the hope of spring latent within us! I admit, as I listened to the little red troubadour of the pine, that, had you been as near as the dreams and fancies that wrapped me about, this fight in me for freedom would have been at an end. Do not trust these feeble moods of mine, however; not one of them would last half the length of time you would need to make the journey ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young. In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... "Outbreaks of this spirit come naturally with particular periods: times when . . . men come to art and poetry with a deep thirst for intellectual excitement, after a long ennui." He instances, as periods naturally romantic, the time of the early Provencal troubadour poetry: the years following the Bourbon Restoration in France (say, 1815-30); and "the later Middle Age; so that the medieval poetry, centering in Dante, is often opposed to Greek or Roman poetry, as ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... try and make you believe that they had threshed out the Troubadours between them. But when Mrs. Norman, who was a little curious about Wilkinson, asked the Troubadour man what they had talked about, he smiled and said it was something—some extraordinary adventure—that had happened ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... of the troubadours, who sang their lively lays not only in Provence but in other lands. Richard himself composed lays and sang them to the harp, and Blondel, a troubadour of renown, was his favorite minstrel, accompanying him wherever he went. This faithful singer mourned bitterly the captivity of his king, and at length, bent on finding him, went wandering through foreign lands, singing under ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of the oppressors, that thus all wrongs might be redressed. They had learnt to love, when Sir Roland discovered that the lands in ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... FOR PROPOSING.—In Peru they have a romantic way of popping the question. The suitor appears on the appointed evening, with a gaily dressed troubadour, under the balcony of his beloved. The singer steps before her flower-bedecked window, and sings her beauties in the name of her lover. He compares her size to that of a pear-tree, her lips to two blushing rose-buds, and her womanly form ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... first sheaf of them. From that time onward, every year until his end, a fresh sheaf of from six to a dozen appeared; and, although no name went with them, all of his townsfolk knew that it was their own Troubadour of the Nativity who made them so excellent a gift just as the nougat bells began to ring. The organ of St. Pierre, touched by his master hand, taught the gay airs to which the new noels were cast. And all Avignon presently would be singing them, and soon the chorus ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... creeping from one hut to another did Bakahenzie and his satellites return from the ghoulish offices of the dead. Zalu Zako, the chiefs and magicians arose to the wild beating of the drums and the wailing chant of the hereditary troubadour with the five stringed lyre. With Kingata Mata carrying a brand of the newly lighted sacred fire, was Kawa Kendi led in procession through the deserted village ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... groundwork is that part of the Crnica General de Espaa, the most ancient of the Prose Chronicles of Spain, in which adventures of the Cid are fully told. This old Chronicle was compiled in the reign of Alfonso the Wise, who was learned in the exact science of his time, and also a troubadour. Alfonso reigned between the years 1252 and 1284, and the Chronicle was written by the King himself, or under his immediate direction. It is in four parts. The first part extends from the Creation of the World to the occupation of Spain by ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... one of those stolid, unemotional beings who are never moved, I sha'n't waste my tale upon you. Wait until to-morrow: we will get Monsieur C—— to recount, and you shall hear something worth listening to. He is a regular troubadour—has the same artless vanity they were known to possess, their charming simplicity, their gestures, and their power of investing everything with romance. One is transported to the Middle Ages while he speaks: no book written ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... effeminate, Mr. Wyse this morning looked rather like a modern Troubadour. He had a velveteen coat on, a soft, fluffy, mushy tie which looked as if made of Shirley poppies, very neat knickerbockers, brown stockings with blobs, like the fruit of plane trees, dependent from elaborate "tops," ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... writes Guardastagno, but the troubadour, Cabestaing, or Cabestany, is the hero of ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... quick to resent any obstacles thrown between me and my mule. "One sees them in picture books. All that Lord Lane will have to say is, 'Let there be mules,' and there will be mules—strings of them. He will only have to pick and choose. The thing will be to get a good one, and a nice, handsome, troubadour-sort of man who can cook, and jodel, and sew, and put up tents, and keep off murderers in mountain passes at night. It may take a day or two to find ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... luth du troubadour S'accordait pour chanter les saules de l'Adour; Le vin francais coulait dans la coupe etrangere; Le soldat, en riant, parlait a ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... fleuron; Car le fleuron tranchant, c'est l'homme et le baron. Elle a des tribunaux d'amour qu'elle preside; Aux copistes d'Homere elle paye un subside; Elle a tout recemment accueilli dans sa cour Deux hommes, un luthier avec un troubadour, Dont on ignore tout, le nom, le rang, la race, Mais qui, conteurs charmants, le soir, sur la terrasse, A l'heure ou les vitraux aux brises sont ouverts, Lui font de la musique et lui ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... have finished Belisarius, and he has gone to face the Academicians. There is another little thing I sent—"Blondel" I call it—a troubadour playing under a castle wall. They have not much chance; but there is always the little print-shop in Long Acre. My sketches of mail-coaches continue to please the public; they have raised the ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... been shed between the chiefs on either side, the deadly hatred thus engendered forbade all thoughts of a union. The lover tried various stratagems to obtain his fair one, and at last succeeded in gaining admission attired as a wandering troubadour, and eventually arranged that she should effect her escape, while he awaited her arrival with an armed force. But this plan, as told ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... joined in the fray and thought it great sport, till they got captured and carried off prisoners. It was not sport at all being shut up in stuffy old houses with only a little food and nothing to do. Francis used to cheer them up with troubadour songs and stories. But although he always seemed so cheerful, it was doing great harm to his health, and when, after a year, the prisoners were freed and returned to Assisi, Francis became very ill indeed. So ill was he that he came near ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... of Suleiman; in the portal are two lovely marble columns, rich with age; the lintels are exquisitely carved with flowers, arms, casques, musical instruments, the crossed sword and the torch, and the mandolin, perhaps the emblem of some troubadour knight. Wherever we went we found bits of old carving, remains of columns, sections of battlemented roofs. The town is saturated with the old Knights. Near the mosque is a foundation of charity, a public kitchen, at which the poor were fed or were free to come and cook their ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... Yet Lady of England Oh, This Love Mary The Beam of Devotion The Welcome and Farewell 'Tis Now the Promised Hour The Songs of Home Masonic Hymn The Dismissed Lord of the Castle The Fallen Brave Song of the Troubadour Champions of Liberty The Hunter's Carol Washington's Monument The Sister's Appeal Song of the Reapers Walter Gay Grounds For Divorce Temperance Song Boat-Song Willie The Rock of the Pilgrims Years Ago The Soldier's Welcome Home The Origin of Yankee Doodle Lines on the Burial of Mrs. Mary ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... again disagree; but, by my halidame, I think one troubadour roundel worth all that Petrarch ever wrote. He has but borrowed from our knightly poesy, to disguise ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... The poet-troubadour who composed and recited "Aucassins" could not have been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, and not of ours. What rather interests us is his poetic motive, "courteous love," which gives the tale a place in the direct line between Christian of Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... her the instrument and Dona Eustaquia swept the chords absently for a moment then sang the song of the troubadour. Her rich voice was like the rush of the wind through the pines after the light trilling of a bird, and even Russell sat enraptured. As she sang the colour came into her face, alight with the fire of youth. Her low notes were voluptuous, her high notes rang with piercing ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... "Come, my young troubadour, bring your guitar and sit down upon this cushion at my feet and play an accompaniment to my song, as I sing ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... years. Sometimes they had been written in the French language, but they lived in the minds of the people, and Sir Lancelot, who died "a holy man," was as vivid and real to them as was Richard, the troubadour king. With the story of his sharp penance, his fasting and prayers for the soul of Guinevere, was also handed down incidentally the tradition of Britain's obedience ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... two scarves, one green and one yellow, twisted on his legs like putties, and a red scarf wound round his middle-part, and he stuck a long ostrich feather in his own bicycle cap and said he was a troubadour bard. ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... in danger of developing into a sad cynic, with a taste for the humour of this world. What should have been a lofty high-souled pilgrimage, only less transcendental than that of the Holy Grail itself, has so far failed, no doubt, because I have undertaken it too much in the wanton spirit of a troubadour. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... gathered a nondescript company: mountebanks and buffoons; rogues unclassified, drinking and dicing; a robust vagrant, at whose feet slept a performing boar, with a ring—badge of servitude—through its nose; a black-bearded, shaggy-haired Spanish troubadour, with attire so ragged and worn as to have lost its erstwhile picturesque characteristics. This last far from prepossessing worthy half-started from his seat upon the appearance of fool and jestress; stared ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... "Christmas at Greccio" from "God's Troubadour" by Sophie Jewett is included by special arrangement with T.Y. Crowell Company. "The Little Friend" by Abbie Farwell Brown, "Christmas Hymn" by R.W. Gilder, "The Three Kings" by H.W. Longfellow, and "The Star Bearer" by E.C. Stedman are included by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... the Don Juan story, to wit "Haidee," and opposite that name was the name of Elsie April. He waited for her—he had no other interest in the evening—and he waited in resignation; a young female troubadour (styled in the programme "the messenger") emerged from the unseen depths of the forest in the wings and ejaculated to the hero and his friend, "The Woman appears." But it was not Elsie that appeared. Six times that troubadour-messenger ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... most varied of Chrestien's original poems. No one except the merest pedant of originality would hesitate to put Parzival above Percevale le Gallois, though Wolfram von Eschenbach may be thought to have been less fortunate with Willehalm. And though in the lyric, the debt due to both troubadour and trouvere is unmistakable, it is equally unmistakable what mighty usury the minnesingers have paid for the capital they borrowed. The skill both of Northern and Southern Frenchmen is seldom to seek in lyric: we cannot give them too high praise as fashioners ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the child of some minstrel or troubadour," said the Prince. "We will send in search of him as soon as we ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... daybreak, other grasshoppers and cicadas were ready to take their places in the screechy orchestra. Night and day they shrill their ceaseless music. It is all masculine love music, as much an expression of their tender feelings towards listening maidens, as the old troubadour songs to fair ladies or as the exquisite song of the rose-breasted grosbeak is to his brown-garbed spouse in May and June. Late in July it began with the short rasps and screeches of tiny hoppers flitting in the grass; the katydid began to tune up on the evening of July 29. Then the long-legged ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... line that he was a frantic ascetic, taking a savage pleasure in vilifying all mundane things, and passionately disdainful of study, of philosophical and theological subtleties. No poet, therefore, of the troubadour sort, or of the idealising learned refinement of Guinicelli or Cavalcanti. Nor was his life one of apostolic sweetness. Having taken part in the furious Franciscan schism, and pursued with invectives Boniface VIII., he was cast ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... point of Dante's speculation. A shadow of her old sovereignty was still left her in the primacy of the Church, to which unity of faith was essential. He accordingly has no sympathy with heretics of whatever kind. He puts the ex-troubadour Bishop of Marseilles, chief instigator of the horrors of Provence, in paradise.[227] The Church is infallible in spiritual matters, but this is an affair of outward discipline merely, and means the Church as a form of polity. ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... you villanelles, Madrigals and lyrics; Ballades and rondels, Odes and panegyrics. Poet pinched and poor, Pricked by cold and hunger; Trouble's troubadour, Misery's balladmonger." ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... not contain anything so nice as that, or as its great author's more famous couplet respecting Africa and the men thereof. The longer romances of the same date, "Gog," "Lilian," "The Troubadour," are little more than clever reminiscences sometimes of Scott, Byron, Moore, and other contemporaries, sometimes of Prior and the vers de societe of the eighteenth century. The best passage by far ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... the Queen of Navarre sent to the poor troubadour:—"Let me see the Oracle that can tell nations I am beautiful!" She will admit me. I shall hear her speak—I shall meet her eyes—I shall read upon her cheek the sweet thoughts that translate themselves into blushes. ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... suggestive of infinitude. Standing thus in the happiness of loving and being loved, the soft indefiniteness of the landscape and the incessant hum of the field-crickets and katydids, sounds which came out of the everywhere, soothed Charlton like the song of a troubadour. ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... used to form an item in these pleasant little excursions. He certainly was no use with an oar, but it was the 'bravo' captain's delight to dress as a troubadour and sit twanging the light guitar under the awnings, while Aileen and ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... such a believer in the romantic—stickler for old knight-errantry—instead of regretting it, should be glad! Look there! Lovers coming from all sides—suitors by land and suitors by sea! Knights terrestrial, knights aquatic. No lady of the troubadour times ever had the like; none ever honoured by such a rivalry! Come, Carmen, be proud! Stand firm on your castle-keep! Show yourself worthy to receive this ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... to bed, sleep did not long detain him, for, in his own happy-go-lucky, troubadour sort of life, he was one of the most occupied of men even in this great, hurrying, bustling capital of the world. As soon as he had donned his dressing-gown and come into the sitting-room, he swallowed a cup ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... comfortably corrupted into Provencal "Busac," (whence gradually the French busard, and our buzzard,) you get from it the delightful compound "busacador," "adorer of buzzards"—meaning, generally, a sporting person; and then you have Dante's Bertrand de Born, the first troubadour of war, bearing witness to you how the love of mere hunting and falconry was already, in his day, degrading the military classes, and, so far from being a necessary adjunct of the noble disposition of lover or soldier, was, ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... Tenderness Te whit, te who Texts. See Bible. Thrush Tiger Tiger Moth Tom Tramp Trotwood, Betsy Troubadour Trust Truth ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... ago, reverenced and repeated as is the name of the woman of Spain called Teresa of Jesus who, four hundred years ago, ruled a few nuns within the enclosure of a convent? Are any musicians or artists loved to-day with such rapture as is God's little troubadour, called Francis, who made music for himself and the angels by rubbing one ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... idle or quietly active, even as it is with all of us during the days of weariness and restlessness after some long journey. To such a society the strongly realistic Carolingian epic had ceased to appeal: the tales of the Welsh and Breton bards, repeated by trouvere and jongleur, troubadour and minnesinger, came as a revelation. The fatigued, disappointed, morbid, imaginative society of the later Crusades recognized in this fairyland epic of a long refined, long idle, nay, effete ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... of feudalism that helped to make this common subject and spirit of mediaeval literature was the minstrel, who was attached to every well-appointed castle. This picturesque poet—gleeman, trouvere or troubadour sang heroic stories and romances of love in the halls of castles and in the market places of towns. He borrowed from and copied others and helped to make the common method and traditions of ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... are no modern Scheherezades, and the Sultans nowadays have to be amused in a different fashion. But, for that matter, a hundred poetic pastimes of leisure have fled before the relentless Hurry Demon who governs this prosaic nineteenth century. The Wandering Minstrel is gone, and the Troubadour, and the Court of Love, and the King's Fool, and the Round Table, and with them ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... will outblossom the rest, one rose in a bower. I speak after my fancies, for I am a Troubadour, you know, and won the violet at Toulouse; but my voice is harsh here, not in tune, a nightingale out of season; for marriage, rose or no rose, has killed the ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... kings and great nobles might have poets attached to their courts, the majority depended for their amusement on the professional story-teller. In the long winter evening, no one was more welcome than the wandering minstrel. He might be the knightly troubadour who, accompanied by a jongleur to play his accompaniments, wandered from place to place out of sheer love of his art and of adventure; more often, however, the minstrel made story-telling his trade, and gained his living from the ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... up! You'll be caught napping," Ferrando called to his comrades. "It is time for the Count to come. I suppose he has been under the Lady Leonora's windows. Ah, he is madly in love with her—and so jealous of that troubadour who sings beneath her windows that some day they will meet and kill ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... mantles for her daughter-in-law, costumes for the marionettes, dressing dolls, reading music, but, above all, spending hours with little Aurore, who is a wonderful child. There is not a being on earth more tranquil and happier in his home than this old troubadour retired from business, now and then singing his little song to the moon, singing well or ill he does not particularly care, so long as he gives the motif that is running in his head.... He is happy, for he is at peace, and can ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... watched his subjects. In the growing light flitted gnomes around the huts in and out the sepia caverns of the plantation. As a banana front was etched in sepia against the great moon, the ocean of clamour was cleft by the high treble of the tribal troubadour. At the bottom of the wide street appeared dancing figures. As they approached, Birnier could distinguish Bakahenzie, Marufa and Yabolo in the van, dressed in full panoply, whirling and leaping with untiring energy. Behind them shuffled and pranced ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... race to raise itself a step higher in the scale of being. For see what it resolves itself into! Men respond to what women expect of them. When warriors were the women's ideal, men were warriors. When women preferred knights, priests, or troubadours, a man's ambition was to be a knight, priest, or troubadour. When women thought drunkenness fine, men were drunken. Now women want husbands of a nobler nature, strong in all the attributes, moral and physical, of the perfect man, that their children may be noble too, and thus the ascent of man to higher ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... that changes Etruscan murmur into Terza rima—Horatian Latin into Provencal troubadour's melody; not, because less artful, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... bitterness into the strife of factions at Florence, and one Peter of Medicina, who seems to have devoted himself to keeping party-spirit alive in Romagna, are here. Last of all, carrying his own head like a lantern, is Bertrand of Born, the famous troubadour, who is charged with having promoted the quarrel between Henry II. of England and his son. It is worth noting that at this point we get the first definite indication of the dimensions which Dante assumes for ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... very young. His mother's friend, Brunetto Latini, famous as statesman and scholarly poet, was of great assistance in directing his tastes and studies. As a mere youth he wrote sonnets, such as Sordello the Troubadour would not disdain to own. He delights, as a boy, in those inquiries which gave fame to Bonaventura. He has an intuitive contempt for all quacks and pretenders. At Paris he maintains fourteen different theses, propounded by learned men, on different subjects, and gains universal admiration. He ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... have loved to be a troubadour, or a trouvere, Frank; that was my true metier, to travel from castle to castle singing love songs and telling romantic stories to while away the tedium of the lives of the great. Fancy the reception they would have given me for bringing a new joy into their castled isolation, new ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... their ramparts not two years before. Such public sentiment as they had centred about their dear Duke of Burgundy, and the dear Duke had no more urgent business than to keep out of their neighbourhood.... At least, and whether he liked it or not, our disreputable troubadour was tubbed and swaddled as a subject of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to Toulouse, where I saw the large room in the Museum in which Jasmin first recited his poem of 'Franconnette'; and the hall in the Capitol, where the poet was hailed as The Troubadour, and enrolled member of the Academy of Jeux Floraux—perhaps the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... summed up her life, were these: "I have always been the same, intense and sad. I have loved God, my father, and liberty." The unhappy Letitia Landon found a congenial friend in her father, the early loss of whom was the first in the sad series of her misfortunes. She closes her poem of "The Troubadour" with an ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... a foolish one to me. I can never play the part. But, Uncle, what do you say? Shall I make a good troubadour?" ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... take you, are you blind?" cried Gondremark. "You know me. Am I likely to care for such a preciosa? 'Tis hard that we should have been together for so long, and you should still take me for a troubadour. But if there is one thing that I despise and deprecate, it is all such figures in Berlin wool. Give me a human woman—like yourself. You are my mate; you were made for me; you amuse me like the play. And what have I to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Troubadour forms a pleasing picture in the book of mediaeval history. He was essentially a gentleman by birth, scorning to take pay for his songs, and often distributing the gifts he received among his servants. He had to maintain a large retinue, and give sumptuous entertainments, ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... confess to you my opinion, that for aught we are likely to do for the Holy Sepulchre, we might as well have stayed at home, and hunted, and hawked, and held our neighbours at feud. On my life, I have seen enough of this army to feel sure that Blacas, the troubadour knight, is a wise man, when on being asked whether he will go to the Holy Land, answers, that he loves and is beloved, and that he will remain at ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... sly jest out of the cornet. Passion thumbs its nose at the stars out of the cornet. The melody of jazz, the tin pan ghosts of Chopin, Tchaikowsky, Old Black Joe, Liszt and Mumbo Magumbo, jungle troubadour of the Congo, come whinnying out ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... Who sang full many a day, But when the woods were painted He, too, did fly away. Time brought me other robins, — Their ballads were the same, — Still for my missing troubadour I ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... beside the track, but it's better than four walls. The moon has been wonderful, Sir Gray Eyes—as bright and dark as life; radiant a little while and hidden behind clouds a great deal. And the wind has been whispering like a troubadour to the tree-tops." ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... it belongs to facts; but Nestie, he does not live among facts, he flies in the air, in the atmosphere of poetry. He is a raconteur. A tournament with knights on the North Meadow—good! Our little Nestie, he has been reading Ivanhoe and he is a troubadour." And the Count took off his hat in homage to Nestie's remarkable powers as ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... cousin should I be indeed. What does she think I would go as? A mousquetaire? or a troubadour in blue satin trunks and cloak, white silk tights and shoes and a Grecian helmet, like Mr. Snodgrass at Mrs. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... banjo and guitar," said Katy. "Oh, I do love a guitar. It always makes me think of 'Gaily the troubadour.'" Katy gave a wriggle of delight at this romantic ending to the night's festivities. She was already planning to tell the girls at home ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... I've done others like it. Oh, yes, my muse has been a nouveau riche lady in a Worth gown, my ambition a big red motor-car. I've been a 'scramble a cent, mister' troubadour beckoning from the book-stalls. It was good fun writing those things, and it brought me more money than was good for me. I'm not ashamed of them; they were all right as a beginning in the game. But the other day—I thought an advertisement did the trick—I turned tired of that sort, and I decided ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... flows! And this vivacity, this new beat of the heart of poetry, is common to Chaucer and the humblest ballad-maker; it pulses through any book of lyrics printed yesterday, and it came straight to us out of Provence, the Roman Province. It was the Provencal Troubadour who, like the Prince in the fairy tale, broke through the hedge of briers and ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... assurances that I have a very fine "bass" if I could but manage to humor it. Fortunately for the ears of the audience, that attempt is now abandoned. My mother is hard at work on her tapestry,—the last pattern in fashion, to wit, a rosy-cheeked young troubadour playing the lute under a salmon-colored balcony; the two little girls look gravely on, prematurely in love, I suspect, with the troubadour; and Blanche and I have stolen away into a corner, which, by some strange delusion, we consider ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... valley, the camp fires, the shadowy forms of soldiers; in short, just enough of heaven and earth visible to put one's fancy on the gallop. The boys are in groups about their fires. The voice of the troubadour is heard. It is a pleasant song that he sings, and I catch part ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... was not by any means the first who ever burst into the responsive heart of Ludwig I. She had many predecessors there. One of them was an Italian syren. But that Lola soon ousted her is clear from a poetical effort of which the royal troubadour was delivered. This begins: ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... third time Saval said: "I tell you that you are in love. You speak of her with the magniloquence of a poet and the feeling of a troubadour. Come, ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... might wake St. Francis in you all, Brother of birds and trees, God's Troubadour, Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor; Our wealth undone, all strict Franciscan men, Come, let us chant the canticle again Of mother earth and the enduring sun. God make each soul the lonely leper's slave; God make ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... stage, were transformed into prose novels. Two circumstances contributed to this change,—a change which could not have been anticipated; for the Trouvere fabliaux and romans promised only epics, and the Troubadour chansons and tensons promised only lyrics and dramas. But the mind was now obliged to traverse the unbeaten paths of the Christian universe; it was overwhelmed by the extent of its range, the richness and delicacy of its materials; it could with difficulty poise ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... hand, they are merry, convivial, boon companions, and are never happier than when dancing, singing their war songs and love romances, or listening to the "guslar"—the national troubadour. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... not sing a song, Stephen, like a gallant troubadour from the land of the sunny south, to reward ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... heard one of them. The only person who found fault with the romance was a muleteer, nicknamed Barrabas. As soon as this man saw the singer run off, he bawled after him; "There you go, you Judas of a troubadour! May the fleas eat your eyes out! Who the devil taught you to sing to a scullery-maid about celestial realms, and spheres, and ocean-beds, and to call her stars and suns and all the rest of it? If you had told her she was as straight as ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... minds of at least two generations. Through the reminiscences of college mates, of soldiers and of frequenters of the Peabody concerts, the memory of this genius with the flute would have remained like that of some troubadour of the Middle Ages. It is unfortunate that he left no compositions to indicate a musical power sufficient to give him a place in the history of American music. It cannot be controverted, however, that he ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... patron, Charles Martel, king of Hungary, who shewed him the reason why diversities of natures must occur in families; and Cunizza, sister of the tyrant Ezzelino, who was overcome by this her star when on earth; and Folco the Troubadour, whose place was next Cunizza in Heaven; and Rahab the harlot, who favoured the entrance of the Jews into the Holy Land, and whose place was next Folco.[8] Cunizza said that she did not at all regret ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... a social favourite; a poet, and a real poet, and a troubadour, as well as a Member of Parliament; travelled, sweet-tempered, and good-hearted; amusing and clever. With catholic sympathies and an eclectic turn of mind, Mr. Vavasour saw something good in everybody and everything; which is certainly amiable, and perhaps just, but disqualifies ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... English—who put their paw on most of the treasure. This Chosrew, who had not forgotten the riding-lesson I gave him, recognized me. You understand, my goose was cooked, oh, brown! when it suddenly came into my head to claim protection as a Frenchman and a troubadour from Monsieur de Riviere. The ambassador, enchanted to find something to show him off, demanded that I should be set at liberty. The Turks have one good trait in their nature; they are as willing to let you go as they are to cut your head off; they are indifferent to everything. The French consul, ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... would be arranged, with the Jongleurs in a special minstrels' gallery. Next day there would be music on the ramparts, or in fair weather brocade carpets would be spread in the meadows, and knights and ladies would listen to more songs. Here the Troubadour himself at times deigned to perform, thus affording his hearers an unusual privilege. Here, too, the women had a chance to show their own skill; for, if there were no woman Trouveres, there were ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... completest love. Roger looked to find a grand woman, his equal, and his empress; beautiful in person, serene in wisdom, ready for counsel, as was Egeria. Molly's little wavering maiden fancy dwelt on the unseen Osborne, who was now a troubadour, and now a knight, such as he wrote about in one of his own poems; some one like Osborne, perhaps, rather than Osborne himself, for she shrank from giving a personal form and name to the hero that was to be. The squire was not unwise in wishing her ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... yet, Forst's stately walls Loom grandly from the darkening moor, Where still a dungeon-keep recalls The last Tyrolean Troubadour. ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... Gavaudan, a troubadour of the twelfth century, meets the undiscerning critic more than half-way. Let none judge, he writes, till he be capable of separating the grain from the chaff; 'for the fool makes haste to condemn, and the ignorant only ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... we may imagine, succeeding Mercury, carries a higher type, an emotional life, though of course I am not influenced by her accidental name, in suggesting it. Here in Venus, a period perchance resembling a mixture of the pagan Grecian life and the troubadour life of Provence may prevail and again to it have flown the spirits which in our planet only touch that development, which from Venus flow to us, those adapted for the religious or intellectual phase we present. This Venus life might be ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... the Brave! Long live the good Princess!" The plaudits were echoed far and wide. The achievements of the noble Arthur, and the kind deeds of "The Good Princess," formed the theme of the fireside-tale in the humble cottage, and of the troubadour's lay in castle and banquetting-hall. Arthur, who in Britain was mourned as dead, or as lying in enchanted sleep with his good sword Excalibar at his side, ready to start up to his country's rescue in some hour of future peril—enjoyed, instead, a happier ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... it safe for the grave Rector of Holby to adopt the inflated style of a troubadour in addressing the Lady of Thornton Grange? Neither of them thought of it. They simply improved the shining hour after this fashion, until at length the conversation was interrupted by the opening of folding-doors, and the entrance of a ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the troubadour Touched his guitar When he was hastening Home from the war, Singing, "From Palestine Hither I come, Lady love! Lady love! Welcome ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... those new books and music which served so 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
... shown to them by his majesty to further their own interests, and to injure those who, for one reason or another, have incurred their animosity, is Count Philip Eulenburg, who has been again and again referred to in the Berlin newspapers as "the Troubadour." He is at the present moment German ambassador at Vienna, whence his predecessor, Prince Reuss, was ousted in spite of the eminent services of a personal character which he had rendered to the emperor, in order to make way for the count. The latter's intimacy with his sovereign is largely ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... in the hall, and marched in procession into the recreation room, where Miss Maitland (a stately Marie Antoinette) acted hostess, and received her guests with the assistance of Miss Parkinson (a Spanish gipsy) and Vivian Holmes (hastily attired as a troubadour). ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... anyone had they seen and heard me! There I was, with Johnson at my piano, like some wayside tinker setting up his cart and working at his trade! But I did not care for appearances—not a whit. For the moment I was care free, a wandering minstrel, like some troubadour of old, care free and happy in my song. I forgot the black shadow under which we all lay in that smiling land, the black shadow of war ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... Castruccio, "that the old days of romance are returned, when a queen could turn from princes and warriors to listen to a troubadour." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Middle Ages and in antiquity the man of letters, a sort of encyclopaedic doctor, a successor of the troubadour and the poet, all-knowing, was almighty. Literature lorded it over society with a high hand; kings sought the favor of authors, or revenged themselves for their contempt by burning them,—them and their books. This, too, was a way of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... him, supposing him to be no great master in that art, if he stumble across no stolid peasant at a corner; for on such an occasion, I scarcely know which is the more troubled, or whether it is worse to suffer the confusion of your troubadour, or the unfeigned alarm of your clown. A sedentary population, accustomed, besides, to the strange mechanical bearing of the common tramp, can in no wise explain to itself the gaiety of these passers-by. I knew one man who was arrested as a runaway lunatic, because, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first arrivals? An office; a cabinet; a cash-box - aha! and a cash-box, golden within. A money-box is like a Quaker beauty: demure without, but what a figure of a woman! Outside gallery: an architectural feature I approve; I count it a convenience both for love and war: the troubadour - twang-twang; the craftsmen - (MAKES AS IF TURNING KEY.) The kitchen window: humming with cookery; truffles, before Jove! I was born for truffles. Cock your hat: meat, wine, rest, and occupation; men to gull, women to fool, and still the door ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... there are two strains in the English blood, the one northern and ascetic, the other southern and epicurean. In the modern English poet the austere prophetic character of the Norse scald is wedded to the impressionability of the troubadour. No wonder there is a battle in his breast when he tries to single out one element or the other as his most distinctive quality of soul. Yet, were it not unsafe to generalize when our data apply to only one country, we should venture the assertion that the dualism ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... 1284, when he was fifty-eight years old. At this age, had a private lot been his,—that of a statesman, jurist, man of science, annalist, philosopher, troubadour, mathematician, historian, poet,—he would but have entered his golden prime, rich in promise, fruitful in performance. Yet Alfonso, uniting in himself all these vocations, seemed at his death to have left behind him a wide waste of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... then, it may be granted that Scott's excellence was superior and supreme." Without preferring any claim to epic grandeur, or to a rank among the few great poets of the first class, Scott is entitled to the highest eminence in minstrelic power. He is the great modern troubadour. His descriptions of nature are simple and exquisite. There is nothing in this respect more beautiful than the opening of The Lady of the Lake. His battle-pieces live and resound again: what can be finer than Flodden field in Marmion, and The Battle of Beal and Duine in The ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... somewhere among the princess' ancestors there was a troubadour; for she was something of a poet. Indeed, I have already remarked that she wrote verses. The atmospheric change of the morning turned her mind into sentimental channels. How she envied the peasant woman, ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... him to a hidden recess. There she said to him: "From now on I shall tutoyer you." Kuno Kohn did not answer, but he accepted her sympathetic soul like a gift in his water-blue troubadour's eyes. Trembling, she said that she suddenly loved him so much that it was incomprehensible.., she would never again let his arm go... she had not know that one could be so wildly happy... Kuno Kohn invited her to visit him the next evening. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein |
