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Chant   /tʃænt/   Listen
Chant

noun
1.
A repetitive song in which as many syllables as necessary are assigned to a single tone.



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"Chant" Quotes from Famous Books



... graceful flight, The turtle doves' low chant at night, The pleasant sound of insects gay and bright, The grassy vale where doth belong Their song. . . . . ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)

... objects distinctly visible—I bethought me that the mutineers could not be getting their anchor, or I should by this time hear the sharp clank of the windlass pawls mingling with their song; moreover, I was now near enough to distinguish that the singing was not the wailing, monotonous chant and rousing chorus of a "shanty," but a confused medley of sound, as though all hands were singing at once, and every man a different tune; and I at once came to the conclusion that the fellows had secured some liquor and were indulging ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... much pains and skill to repel the invader and to overawe the lawless, have played their part, and are themselves abandoned to solitude and decay. Within the arches which once echoed to the clang of arms the owls have their home; while the rooks from the tree-tops around seem to chant the requiem ...
— The Hawarden Visitors' Hand-Book - Revised Edition, 1890 • William Henry Gladstone

... husband, to his former love for her. At the same time, she says, she will endeavour by magic to turn him away from his wholesome sense. She directs her attendant to burn vervain and frankincense; and she ascribes the highest efficacy to the solemn chant, which, she says, can call down the moon from its sphere, can make the cold-blooded snake burst in the field, and was the means by which Circe turned the companions of Ulysses into beasts. She orders his image to be thrice bound round with fillets of three colours, and then ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... might carry him. None knew as of certainty that he would ever in this way reach the great Messasebe; or even if he thought that such would be the case, did any one know how far that Messasebe still might be. Yet there came a time in the afternoon of that day, even as the chant of the voyageurs still echoed on the wooded bluffs, and even as the great birch-bark ship still responded swiftly to their gaiety, when, on a sudden turn in the arm of the river, there appeared wide before them a scene ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... plentiful alms to churches, and paid for Masses he never heard; he put candles before the images, and in the privacy of his chamber he puerilely amused himself in asking fate, by the tossing of money, whether he would be eternally damned or whether he would only go to purgatory. When he heard the chant of priests going to a funeral he grew pale, trembled and stopped his ears. At night he would suddenly jump up from sleep in a cold sweat, crying miserably: "There is nothing but death, nothing but death!" For some time he lived thus in almost utter retirement without ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... chant rose from the lips of the people like a dirge. It struck the heart of the priest like a chill wind. "Ora pro nobis! Ora pro nobis!" Tears streamed from his eyes while he gazed upon his stricken people. Slowly, wearily, they wound around ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... and day out. Everything is a poem, from a letter to a scraggly nasturtium. She carries an unfailing supply of her own verses in her head, and of other people's in her pocket. If you ask for the butter at the table, you're never sure she won't strike an attitude, and chant: ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... Church, had been familiar from their childhood. They were at home in both synagogue and temple. They knew by sight the ritual of the altar, and by ear the ritual of the choir. They were accustomed to the spectacle of the priest offering the victim; they were used to hearing the singers chant the psalms. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... croupiers first raked in the players' losses with vast expedition; next, the croupiers in charge of the funds chucked the precise amount of the winnings on to each stake with unerring dexterity and the indifference of machines; and the chant recommenced, "Faites ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... then, the last song When the dead man is praised on his journey—"Bear, bear him along With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets! Are balm seeds not here To console us? The land has none left such as he on the bier. Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!"—And then, the glad chant Of the marriage,—first go the young maidens, next, she whom we vaunt As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling.—And then, the great march Wherein man runs to man to assist him and buttress an arch Naught can break; who shall harm them, our friends?—Then, the chorus intoned {60} As ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... descant Upon MANNIX the martyr archbish, Me rather it pleases to chant The arrival ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 18th, 1920 • Various

... few days the Abbot read the services all alone, but at the end of a week he could no longer bear the lack of singing, so calling the little lad he bade him to help him and to chant the responses. ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... the driver, who, fearless, confident, glowing, was managing her spirited horses skilfully, "at Joplin's gates, you must chant the classic, 'Hey ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... The Norseman's voice was deep, nearly a chant. "All here is of evil: Trolldom and Helvede it is, Ja! And that she djaevelsk of beauty—what is she but harlot of that shining devil they worship. I, Olaf Huldricksson, know what she meant when she held out to you power ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt

... religion; it may utter misleading or nonsensical words and yet intend and convey the truth. The methods of the Salvation Army are older than doctrinal Christianity, and may long survive it. Men and women may still chant of Beulah Land and cry out in the ecstasy of salvation; the tambourine, that modern revival of the thrilling Alexandrine sistrum, may still stir dull nerves to a first apprehension of powers and a call beyond the immediate ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells

... one thing the guards could not do, however, and that was to keep them still. As they went on their way they kept up a kind of a wail that was said to be the saddest chant that human ears ever heard. For miles and miles this mournful wail could be heard by the few people who lived in villages along the way. Sometimes, however, these villages were fifty or a hundred miles apart. ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... chant of Paradise and Hell Rose, when the soul of Milton gave it wings; As wide the sweep of Shakespeare's empire fell, When life had bared for him her secret springs; But not his various soul might range ...
— A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... taken the name of St. Francis' cell, and is only occupied by the prior, or major of Camaldoli. The writers of the country add, that the festival of St. Francis is celebrated solemnly there, and that it is decreed by the statutes that the anthem which the Friars Minor chant shall be sung on that day: ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... pinching and punching him." Stewart of Duntalloch swings his stalwart form into our carriage—a noted breeder of Highland cattle and as fine a specimen of a Highlander as can be seen from Reay to Pitlochrie. "Culloden! Culloden!" chant the porters in that curious sing-song peculiar to the Scotch platform porter. The whistle of the engine and the talk about turnips and cattle contrast harshly with that bleak, lonely, moorland swell yonder— the patches of green among the brown heather telling ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... the head of the household I was visiting, a fine old man of the usual type, courteous but opposed. He asked to look at my books. I had a Bible, a lyric book, and a book of stanzas bearing upon the Truth, copied from the old Tamil classics. He pounced upon this. Then he began to chant the stanzas in their inimitable way, and at the sound several other old men drew round the verandah, till soon a dozen or more were listening with that appreciative expression they seem to reserve for their ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... must ask me many questions, under cover of some chant which the old bard began, and she drew my tale from me easily enough, and maybe learnt more than I thought I told her, for ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... him"; as if God's hour for a good effect were not the earliest hour at which courage and labor can bring it about, not the latest to which indolence and infidelity can postpone it. Then it looked away across oceans to other continents, and began again the chant, "Man is man; natural right is sacred forever; and of politics the sole basis is universal justice." Joyfully it sang for a while, but soon there began to come up the clank of chains mingling with its chant, and the groans of oppressed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... triumphal chant Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth

... yes, I do. I was remembering one of the workers' songs we machines used to chant during ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... effusions, LEGION poured forth Ballades, and Rondeaux, and wrote a Chant Royal on a General Election which occupied a whole column of a newspaper, and needed three men to read, with a boy for the "envoy." But this ditty was not thought to have seriously affected the voting classes in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various

... carry out methods which inevitably had one of two terminations: either his competitor had to buy him off at an exorbitant price, or he was left in undisputed possession. His principal biographer, Croffut, whose effusion is one long chant of praise, treats these methods as evidences of great shrewdness, and goes on: "His foible was 'opposition;' wherever his keen eye detected a line that was making a very large profit on its investment, he swooped down on it and drove it to the wall by offering a better service and lower rates." ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... which weighs heavily upon the novice. The hushed interior was bathed in a dim, religious light; and the congregation, seated on small wooden chairs, gazed in reverent silence at the pulpit, where a gentleman of commanding presence and sparkling pince-nez was delivering a species of chant. Behind a gold curtain at the end of the room mysterious forms flitted to and fro. Archie, who had been expecting something on the lines of the New York Stock Exchange, which he had once been privileged to visit when it was in a more than usually feverish mood, found ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... when a coarse sheet, for which fifty sous were given, was folded about it, and it was buried without any religious ceremony under the organ of the church of St. Germain l'Auxerrois near the Louvre. A priest who attempted to chant a funeral-hymn as it was laid in the earth was compelled to desist, in order that the place of burial might not be known; and the flags which had been raised were so carefully replaced that it was only by secret information ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... meeting of the Charity Children in St Paul's Cathedral, when something like 4000 juveniles took part. "I was more touched," he says in his diary, "by this innocent and reverent music than by any I ever heard in my life!" And then he notes the following chant by John Jones: [Jones was organist of St Paul's Cathedral at this time. His chant, which was really in the key of D, has since been supplanted. Haydn made an error ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... The buildings which they have left behind them have almost all a reference to a future state—they laid out their means in a church, in which the Deity might be propitiated; in a tomb where leaned and pious men might chant their Koran over their remains, and youth be instructed in their duties; in a serai, a bridge, a canal built gratuitously for the public good, that those who enjoyed these advantages from generation to generation might ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... began to make ready. He danced the death dance and sang the death song. His wife and his two sons mourned and wept, and the dog joined in the death chant. ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... the bright noon, and, with his lips curled backward, pipe himself blue in the face, while MESSIEURS LES ARCADIENS would roll out those cloying hexameters that sing themselves in one's mouth to such a curious lifting chant. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... if it be honest, must ever be a profoundly interesting document. Boriskoff, the Pole, did not hold these people spellbound by the vigor of his denunciation or the rhythmic chant of his anger. He had begun in a quiet voice, welcoming the news from Warsaw and the account of the assassination of the Deputy Governor Lebinsky. From that he passed to the old question, why does authority remain in any city at all? ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton

... the shoulders and fell into silence. With a vague look round him he began softly to sing. I could not catch all the words of his slow chant; I heard the following: ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev

... own, but in iambic, sapphic, choriambic, and other metres also, winding up with the fine epithalamium written for the marriage of his friends, Mallius and Vinia. The transition from this group of lyrics to the Marriage of Peleus and Thetis is made with great skill through another wedding-chant, an idyl in form, but approaching to a lyric in tone, without any personal allusions, and not apparently written for any particular occasion. Finally comes a third group of poems, extending to the end of the volume, all written in elegiac verse, but otherwise extremely varied in ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... saw was a large, rude boat, propelled by four colored oarsmen. It looked as if it might have come out of some old picture. Two oarsmen were seated in the bows, pulling, and two stood up in the stern, facing their companions, each working a long oar, bending and recovering and uttering a low, wild chant. The spectacle emerged from the fog on the one hand and plunged into it on ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... Mr. Middleton, for heaven's sake," said Gwendolen, hastily, a quick blush spreading over her face and neck; "that is Anna's chant. I hear the hounds. Let us ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... forward, and began to chant against the voice of the lady. And his power was greater than hers for that time, so that she ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... herself at the piano, Miss Renner looked up at a merry-faced girl, who began singing to her rippling accompaniment a song of miraculous changes which should have ensued upon woman's enfranchisement, and concluded with a long chant, recounting some of the more notable achievements of the voting woman, ranging all the way from joint ownership of children and property, minimum salary laws, juvenile courts, medical inspection of school children, State institutions built and endowed, equality ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens

... hour gazing on a dance you do not understand, and which consists of a wriggle and a stamp, a wriggle and a stamp, in a solemn walk, or prance, round and round, to the accompaniment of a monotonous phrase thumped on a tom- tom and a monotonous, melancholy chant, uttered in a minor key interspersed every few minutes with an emphatic howl, produces a feeling of boredom, therefore the Fans softly stole away and went to bed, which disgusted the Ncomi, and there was a row. In the dance I saw the same thing happened, only when the Ncomi ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... came by the thousands. From Chicago alone there came one group of 3000 seekers. "Move on," came the endless chant. "Move on!" It didn't matter where, so long as they kept moving, making way for new mobs of restless people. ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl

... the choir, came singing up the stairs and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached room F. Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... quite unintelligible to his listener. Then, with gentle touch, Phil began to pass his hand cautiously over his patient's body, searching for possible fractured ribs or some similar injury; but the old man waved him impatiently away, and presently broke forth in a low, crooning sort of chant. ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... yon studious nook, I ope my brass-embossed book, Portray'd with many a holy deed Of martyrs crown'd with heavenly meed; Then, as my taper waxes dim, Chant, ere I sleep, my measured hymn. * * * * * Who but would cast his pomp away, To take my staff and amice grey, And to the world's tumultuous stage, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... that rise one above the other, the coils of the serpent went around the tree—coils covered by hard and gleaming scales. It uncoiled, stretched itself, and lifted its head to strike. Then Medea dropped on her knees before it, and began to chant her ...
— The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who Lived Before Achilles • Padraic Colum

... she could not be in the least uncertain. Above Olive's room was a chamber appropriated to the use of bachelor visitors, and from the window of this room now burst upon the night a wild, unearthly chant. It was a song with words but without music, and the voice in which it was shot out into the darkness was harsh, was shrill, was insolently blatant. And thus ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton

... beautiful Chant, in honor of the good goddess whose favors we are too apt to scorn, and whom we persist in treating with dire ingratitude, cannot fail to prove acceptable to the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the reorganized gold-search syndicate strode along in the blinding glare of the high sun, herding them ahead of him, and as Pike turned for a last look backward at a bend of the trail, the words of the old darkey chant came to him on the ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... enrich themselves at the expense of the people. The terrible ballad with the refrain "S, de l'argent; s, de l'argent" is typical of his work. Deschamps excelled in the use of the ballade and the chant royal. In each of these forms he was the greatest master of his time. In ballade form he expressed his regret for the death of Du Guesclin, who seems to have been the only man except his patron, Charles V., for whom he ever felt any admiration. One of his ballades (No. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... the Emirs and Wazirs and high Officers of State and city-notables were present, amongst them the Wazir al-Mu'in bin Sawi. And as the bier went forth from the house some one in the crowd of mourners began to chant ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... from his Sins, repented in a Fright, Had he view'd Scotland had turn'd Proselyte. A Land where one may pray with curst Intent; Oh, may they never suffer Banishment! Had Cain been Scot, God would have chant'd his Doom, Not forc'd him wander, but confin'd him home. Like Jews they spread, and as Infection fly, As if the Devil had Ubiquity. Hence 'tis they live as Rovers, and defie This or that Place, Rags of Geography. They're Citizens ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid

... dervishes with pointed hats, a big stick in their hands, their hair straggling in the breeze, stopping occasionally to take their part in a dance which would not have disgraced the fanatics of the Elysee Montmartre during a chant, literally vociferated, and accentuated ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne

... panting team. From his window, looking eastward, he sees the advance beams of the sun flung across the savanna: he takes the hint, and hurries out to look after his young plantains. At night the sea keeps up its everlasting chant by the side of his palenca, and the pure stars watch over his humble roof; yet, unconscious of both, he sleeps on the calm deep sleep appointed as the best ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... seemed to have behind it all the rage of the invaded immemorial Arctic struggling with the self-willed intruder, man. Sometimes, when the ship was in special peril, the Eskimos on board would set up their strange barbaric chant—calling on the souls of their ancestors to come from the invisible realm and ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary

... friend and protector, just as in the Highlands "the dog is the friend of the Maclaines". When the Finns, in their epic poem the Kalewala, have killed a bear, they implore the animal to forgive them. "Oh, Ot-so," chant the singers, "be not angry that we come near thee. The bear, the honey-footed bear, was born in lands between sun and moon, and he died, not by men's hands, but of his own will."(1) The Red Men ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... interpret their relationship, making effective in his own case a feudal sentiment which had elsewhere somewhat lapsed. He especially loved to think of himself as the bard of his clan, a modern representative of those rude poets whom the Scottish chiefs once kept as a part of their household to chant the exploits of the clan. Nothing could have pleased his fancy more, therefore, than a request on the part of the lady of his chief to treat a subject of her assigning—namely, the dark mischief-making of ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... melancholy of love. I shut it down. The thing wouldn't do. In the evening—yes. But now! Truly there is something womanly about Night, something loverlike in a vast impersonal way; but too big—she is too terribly big to woo with human sentiment. Only a windlike chant would do—something with an undertone of human despair, outsoared by brave, savage flights of invincible soul-hope—great virile singing man-cries, winged as the starlight, weird as space—Whitman sublimated, David's soul ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... had drawn out old Quamenoka and his Assiniboines, their way lying to the west. They raised a chant as the first canoe circled out and headed down the stream. Behind it fell in five canoe-loads of Bois-Brules, their attachment a mystery, and the river became alive with the ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... Jane Clayton had passed through. The priestesses came, and with them La, the High Priestess. Werper was raised and laid across the altar. Cold sweat exuded from his every pore as La raised the cruel, sacrificial knife above him. The death chant fell upon his tortured ears. His staring eyes wandered to the golden goblets from which the hideous votaries would soon quench their inhuman thirst in his own, ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... laboring in and around their monastic hive. How they pray and chant the divine office; how they study and expound the holy doctrine to their pupils; how they are ever travelling, walking in procession by hundreds and by thousands through the island, the interior spirit not allowing them to stand still. There are so many pilgrimages to perform, so many shrines ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and the Prince,—and now uprose from every tongue, and every heart, a hymn for the longevity of Wuczicz and Petronevich. 'The Solemn Song for Many Days' is the title of this sublime chant, which is so old that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of Christianity in the East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be beyond the ravages of time, and the caprices of convention." The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... were toiling far down underfoot, beating on their anvils, first with strong measured strokes, then with lighter and faster, and with a swing and rhythm as if the little men were beating in time to some rude chant unheard above the surface. How came these isolated colonies of a species so subterranean in habits, and requiring a sandy soil to move in, so far from their proper district—that sterile country from which they are separated by wide, unsuitable ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... But in July all such charms are thrown away. In July Italy is not a land of charms to an Englishman. Poor Stanbury did wander into the cathedral, and finding it the coolest place in the town, went to sleep on a stone step. He was awoke by the voice of the priests as they began to chant the vespers. The good-natured Italians had let him sleep, and would have let him sleep till the doors were closed for the night. At five he dined with Mrs. Trevelyan, and then endeavoured to while away the evening thinking of Nora with a pipe in his mouth. He was standing in this way at the hotel ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... have said, "that this people is invincible upon the ocean. The love of it mixes with their daily thoughts; they celebrate it even in the market-place; their street-minstrels excite charity by it; and high and low, young and old, male and female, chant lo paeans in its praise. Love is not honoured in the national songs of this warlike race—Bacchus is no god to them; they are men of sterner mould, and think only of 'the Sea, the Sea!' and the means of conquering ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... accused him, nevertheless there was a dormant religious enthusiasm in that young breast, which needed but the touch of the right hand on the yielding chords of a full heart, to call forth the melodious strains of an impromptu chant of praise from the creature to his Creator. The soul of our youth of to-day, resembles in many cases a musical instrument, which stands in its grandeur and magnificence, unopened and untouched, the cobwebs of neglect ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... Bavarian troops lacks the middle stanza and has in other ways also been "sung to pieces." But it has also been worked over artistically. The Chemnitz Director of Church Music, Prof. Mayerhoff, has set the "Chant of Hate Against England" to music for male voices. The song was rendered publicly at a great meeting in a concert in the Alberthalle at Leipsic, and was taken up in roaring chorus by the audience. The composer himself accompanied his composition on ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various

... soft music of the spinning purr, When no stiff hair disturbs the glossy fur, The whining wail so piteous and so faint, When through the house Puss moves with long complaint, To that unearthly throttling caterwaul, When feline legions storm the midnight wall, And chant, with short snuff and alternate hiss, The dismal song of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... which they do not wear during the day, but keep stowed away under the cargo that it may be dry to put on at night. Their bronzed, glistening, naked bodies, as they ply their long poles together in unison, and chant some Spanish boat-song, is one of the things that linger in the memory of the traveller up the San Juan. Our boatmen paddled and poled until eleven at night, when we reached Machuca, a settlement consisting of a single house, just below the rapids of the same name, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... poor Legislative Assembly, and Patriot France, is informed: by denunciant friend, by triumphant foe. Sulleau's Pamphlets, of the Rivarol Staff of Genius, circulate; heralding supreme hope. Durosoy's Placards tapestry the walls; Chant du Coq crows day, pecked at by Tallien's Ami des Citoyens. King's-Friend, Royou, Ami du Roi, can name, in exact arithmetical ciphers, the contingents of the various Invading Potentates; in all, Four ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... the return home dwelt afterwards in her mind. The white earth, the headstones sprinkled with snow, the vast grey sky over which darkness was already creeping, the wind and the clergyman's voice joining in woful chant, these alone remained with her to mark the day. Between it and the days which then commenced lay ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... without more adventure, Launcelot entered into the castle; and there he saw how every door stood open, save only one, and that was fast barred, nor, with all his force, might he open it. Presently from the chamber within came the sound of a sweet voice in a holy chant, and then in his heart Launcelot knew that he was come to the Holy Grail. So, kneeling humbly, he prayed that to him might be shown some vision of that he sought. Forthwith the door flew open and from the chamber blazed a light such as he had never known ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... the trouble of teaching them the difference in spiritual association between the wafer in a box and the snake in a hamper. On the whole, the negro loved to thump his sheepskin drum, and work himself up to the frantic climax of a barbarous chant, better than to hear the noises in a church. He admired the pomp, but was continually stealing away to renew the shadowy recollection of some heathen rite. What elevating influence could there be in the Colonial ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... next; and he was in no doubt which to choose among many old lectionaries that had been laid aside. There was an immense one, with great brass knobs and corners, out of which he had himself learned to chant long before he could lift it, and indeed, now that he was come to man's estate, it was as much as he could carry. This book he meant to use; but for the present he contented himself with observing from the window the bear coming to school in procession; and when he was satisfied that his pupil ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various

... risen above the mountains, when Boabdil and his train beheld, from the eminence on which they were, the whole armament of Spain; and at the same moment, louder than the tramp of horse or the clash of arms, was heard distinctly the solemn chant of Te Deum, which preceded the blaze of the unfurled and lofty standards. Boabdil, himself still silent, heard the groans and exclamations of his train; he turned to cheer or chide them, and then saw, from his own watchtower, with the sun shining full upon its pure and dazzling surface, the silver ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... are these?" he mused—"fools or knaves? They must be one or the other,—else they would not thus chant praises to a Deity of whose existence there is, and can be, no proof. It is either sheer ignorance or hypocrisy,—or both combined. I can pardon ignorance, but not hypocrisy; for however dreary the results of Truth, yet Truth alone prevails; its killing bolt destroys the illusive beauty of the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... me tremble. When this happened the impulse came, it seemed to me, from the farther end of the line. There the rougher elements were collected, and there I more than once saw Bezers' troopers in conflict with the mob. In that quarter too a savage chant was presently struck up, the whole gathering joining in and yelling with an ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... Now all things lie Hid by her mantle dark and dim, In pious hope I hither hie, And humbly chant ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... precious stores, while from these niggard natives we will wrest with mighty arm the tribute they so contemptuously deny the weakling curs who snap and snarl at my heels. Grey tower and fortress will guard every inlet, and watch this sheltered coast. In every vale the low chant of holy nuns will breathe their benediction upon a happy people. And hordes of nations yet unknown and races yet unborn, in future legends, in song, in story and in rhyme, will laud the name of Bourbon and the glory of the French. ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson

... Buddha, knocking her head ostentatiously in the dust as she did so. We followed suit instantly. Then Hilda rose and began walking slowly round the big drum in the nave, saying aloud at each step, in a sort of monotonous chant, like a priest intoning, the four mystic words, "Aum, mani, padme, hum," "Aum, mani, padme, hum," many times over. We repeated the sacred formula after her, as if we had always been brought up to it. I noticed that Hilda walked the way of the sun. It is an ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... the festivals, the order of processions, the service of the priests and deacons, the variety and change of sacerdotal garments. Till the last days of his life, he officiated in the canon of the mass, which continued above three hours: the Gregorian chant [70] has preserved the vocal and instrumental music of the theatre, and the rough voices of the Barbarians attempted to imitate the melody of the Roman school. [71] Experience had shown him the efficacy of these solemn and pompous rites, to soothe the distress, to confirm the faith, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... right To speak a word, or chant a lay, And thou, with independent might, Asserted it from ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young

... To chant o'er a bottle or shrive a lass; No matin's bell called them up in the morn, But the yell of the hounds and sound of the horn; No penance the monk in his cell could stay But a broken leg or a rainy day: The pilgrim that came to the abbey-door, With the feet of the fallow-deer found ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... Body, for whom S. Francis thanked God in his hymn, is reconciled to us this day, and takes us by the hand, and leads us to the gate whence floods of heavenly glory issue from the faces of a multitude of saints. Pray, ye poor people; chant and pray. If all be but a dream, to wake from this ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... company marched along, always facing Fuji, they began singing a weird chant. When the motors drew nearer the tourists saw that each man wore a huge mushroom hat made of lightest pith and from his neck hung a piece of matting ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes

... and scream and run at the unexpected sight of a European. In the company of men they are silent, and are generally quiet and obedient. When alone the Malay is taciturn; he neither talks nor sings to himself. When several are paddling in a canoe, they occasionally chant a monotonous and plaintive song. He is cautious of giving offence to his equals. He does not quarrel easily about money matters; dislikes asking too frequently even for payment of his just debts, and will often give them up altogether rather than ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... to supply any direct data as to the relation of love, hunger, sexuality, death of relatives or absent relatives to an attack. On the death of a relative the Yahgans go through incantations in the form of a sort of weird death chant, which they often sing in unison at certain times of the day and night. They paint their faces to show the death to strangers, but they rarely mention the name of the dead, in fact by most it is considered an offence to do so. They say simply 'He is gone,' 'He is no more'; they feel the ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... Paloma was squatting at the girl's feet and rubbing the girl's knees and legs like for rheumatism, which I knew the girl didn't have from the way I'd sized up the walk of her, and keeping time to the rubbing with a funny sort of gibberish chant. And I let loose right there and then. As Sarah knows, I never could a-bear women around the house—young, unmarried women, I mean. But it was no go! Old Paloma sided with the girl, and said if the girl went she went, too. Also, she called me more kinds of a fool than the English language has accommodation ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... impi had climbed the first line of fortifications without opposition, and was advancing in a long line upon the schanses or pits which were scattered about between it and the second line, singing a war chant as it came. Presently puffs of smoke began to start from the schanses, and with my glasses I could see several of our men falling over. Then as they came opposite a schanse that portion of the long line of warriors would thicken up and charge ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... mules Pass on; the body in my palace once Deposited, ye then may weep your fill. 900 He said; they, opening, gave the litter way. Arrived within the royal house, they stretch'd The breathless Hector on a sumptuous bed, And singers placed beside him, who should chant The strain funereal; they with many a groan 905 The dirge began, and still, at every close, The female train with many a groan replied. Then, in the midst, Andromache white-arm'd Between her palms the ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... years he was himself slain by a peasant in a rising of his own people. For a while his body lay unburied, the prey of beast and bird, and when it was interred in the Slesvig cathedral there was no rest for it. "Such turmoil arose in the church by night that the monks could not chant their vigils," and in the end they took him out, and buried him in a swamp, with a stake driven through the heart to lay his ghost. But clear down to our time when people ceased to believe in ghosts, the fratricide was seen at night ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... word-music of sage and prophet, that I might tell you how I love you, my heart's own. I would ask that for one hour I might hold in my hand the baton of heaven's choir. Then would I lead those celestial musicians through such a grand plain chant as time has never dreamt of, nor has eternity yet heard it; so that rank on rank of angels and saints should take up the song, until the arches of the outer firmament rang again, and the stars chimed together; and all the untold hierarchy of archangelic voice ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... went down into the hall. We all followed chanting 'Heroes.' It is a gloomy thing the girls learnt at the High School, and we always use it when we want a priestly chant. ...
— The Story of the Treasure Seekers • E. Nesbit

... bruised and whimpering, I lay where I had fallen. Peering up through the bushes, I could see the Chatterer. He had set up a demoniacal chant of joy and was keeping time to it with his teetering. I quickly hushed my whimpering. I was no longer in the safety of the trees, and I knew the danger I ran of bringing upon myself the hunting animals by too audible an expression of ...
— Before Adam • Jack London

... giving his attendance in the present case had he known whither the kind gossips were conducting him, in time sufficient to frame an apology. But, ere he guessed where he was going, the leech was hurried into the house of the late Oliver Proudfute, from which he heard the chant of the women as they swathed and dressed the corpse of the umquhile bonnet maker for the ceremony of next morning, of which chant the following verses may be ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... train had settled down to the chant of the rails Garrison sent Dave on a tour of the cars. The young man reported all well and returned to the caboose. The train crew was playing poker for small stakes. Garrison had joined them. For a time Dave watched, then ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... fifth morning after her going that the Honourable John Ruffin made the great announcement. It was his habit to chant in his bath what Pollyooly believed to be poetry; and it is improbable that an observant child of twelve, who had passed the seven standards at Muttle Deeping school, could have been mistaken in a matter of that kind. At any rate his chanting ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures of grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details to the main design—clear, rhythmical, and lucid, like a chant of Pergolese or Stradella—will enrapture one who has the sense for unity evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all caprices to the harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere in Italy to find the instinct of the earlier ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... The services of the Church of England are so constructed that the whole congregation may take part in them, that they may answer aloud in the responses, that they may say Amen at the end of each prayer, just as they read or chant aloud the alternate verses of the Psalms. The minister does not say prayers for them, but with them. He is only their leader, their guide. And if they are not to join in with their voices, there ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... and friendly robin, the little melodious wren, the thrush, the lark, the swallow, the marten, and all those pleasant little winged creatures, that flit about our dwellings and grounds, and seem to be sent by Providence, expressly to chant their morning and evening hymns to God in our ears, most frequent the peopled districts. It has been said by Europeans that the American birds are mute, in comparison with those of the Old World. This is true, to a certain extent, as respects those which are properly called ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... child, and were not going to send it to the workhouse. Even Bill Gray knew the organist's ways too well to trouble him with the story, though he was too full of it himself to give his usual attention at the next choir practice, and, at every available pause between chant and hymn, his head and that of the boy next him were ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... as elsewhere, the number seven had a peculiar significance, it being held that that number of spirits might enter into a man together. Talbot has translated(16) a "wild chant" which he names "The Song ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... at the moment a more serviceable friend than Gower Woodseer preaching 'Nature'—an abstraction, not inspiring to the devout poetic or giving us the tongue above our native prosy. He was raised and refreshed by recollected lines of a Gregorian chant he and Feltre had heard together under the roof of that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... has gone by, with the penitents in their black hoods, and the wax torches sputtering in the wet, and the little bell ringing, and the priests droning their monotonous chant. A pleasant sight to meet me at the window! I shall go back ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... spirit calms, My soul is filled with light: The ocean sings his solemn psalms, The wild winds chant: I cross my palms, Happy as if, to-night, Under the cottage-roof, again ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... of the later months as hot, and so refrigerate themselves on some barren sea-coast. God offers us yearly a necklace of twelve pearls; most men choose the fairest, label it June, and cast the rest away. It is time to chant a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... reader will be indebted along with myself. It runs as follows: "From the vale, what music ringing, Fills the bosom of the night; On the sense, entranced, flinging Spells of witchery and delight! O'er magnolia, lime and cedar, From yon locust-top, it swells, Like the chant of serenader, Or the rhymes of silver bells! Listen! dearest, listen to it! Sweeter sounds were never heard! 'Tis the song of that wild poet — Mime and minstrel — Mocking-bird. "See him, swinging in his glory, On yon topmost bending limb! Carolling his amorous story, ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... rings they had reft erewhile, hardy heroes, from hoard in cave, — trusting the ground with treasure of earls, gold in the earth, where ever it lies useless to men as of yore it was. Then about that barrow the battle-keen rode, atheling-born, a band of twelve, lament to make, to mourn their king, chant their dirge, and their chieftain honor. They praised his earlship, his acts of prowess worthily witnessed: and well it is that men their master-friend mightily laud, heartily love, when hence he goes from life in ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... not stop, although it was Christmas Eve, and the only carol I heard in the trenches was the loud, deep chant of the guns on both sides, and the shrill soprano of whistling shells, and the rattle on the keyboards of machine-guns. The enemy was putting more shells into a bit of trench in revenge for a raid. To the left some shrapnel ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... of England, and that William merely purchased the freehold, arguing also that the devise was made in contravention of the statute (7 Ed. I., st. 27), since it was made in mortmain for the beneficiaries to chant for him and his heirs for ever. The Judge ruled that alienation contrary to the statute was no justification for the heir to enter; and he drew attention to the inconsistency of counsel in pleading that Silke could not devise his inheritance, and ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell

... in merry England they sing under the window. But if the English waits sing as badly as the Filipino ones, then the poetry of the wait songs is gone from me forever. These of ours were provided with tambourines, and they sang an old Latin chant with such throaty voices that it sounded as if the tones were being dragged ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... chant or noise made at the windlass and purchase-falls in a merchantman, to cheer and lighten labour, but ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... the night with them. And surrounded by those utterers of Brahma, the king shone resplendent in their midst. And that evening, at once beautiful and terrible, those Brahmanas having lighted their (sacred) fires, began to chant the Vedas and hold mutual converse. And those foremost of Brahmanas, with swan-sweet voices spent the night, comforting that best ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... wore on his head. A bright fire of pine-wood blazed upon the green, throwing its gleams upon the surrounding darkness. The young warrior led his men twice or thrice in a circular manner around this fire, with a measured step and solemn chant. Then, suddenly halting, the war-whoop was raised, and the dance immediately begun. An old man, sitting at the head of the ring, beat time upon the drum, while the grim array of warriors made the woods re-echo with their yells. Each warrior chanted alternately the verse of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones

... (apparently) the power to throw her into trance almost instantly. A few moments of monotonous humming, intoned while my hand rested upon hers, generally sufficed to bring the first stage of her trance. As we had been sitting for half an hour, I now proceeded to chant my potent charm, with intent to liberate the "spirits" to ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland



Words linked to "Chant" :   verbalise, Hallel, plainchant, utter, speak, singsong, mouth, Hare Krishna, sing, religious song, talk, Gregorian chant, verbalize, plainsong



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