"Chanting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon its race, The shuttle whirs the woof, The people hum from floor to roof, With Babel tongue. The fountain in the basin plays, The chanting organ echoes clear, An awful chorus 'tis to hear, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... come among us to pass a few days. Even in the presence of strangers he dared to be a father, and used to join us in our sports. I well remember our processions, in which my sisters were the clergy, I the rector, and the author of 'Athaliah,' chanting with us, ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... the mystery was solved; I saw the Unknown! While my eyes were fixed upon a certain bush before me, the singer incautiously ventured too near the top of a twig, and I saw him plainly, standing almost upright, and vehemently chanting his fantasia, opening his mouth very wide with every call. I knew him at once, the rogue! from having read of him; he was the yellow-breasted chat. It was well, indeed, that I happened to be looking at that very spot, and that I was quick in my ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... dugout, driven by half-a-dozen paddles in the hands of lusty natives, came racing down stream. As the canoe drew abreast of us, the paddlers chanting a barbaric chorus, there was a sudden swirl in the water and the object which I had taken for a log abruptly dropped out ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... better at some things than at others,' said Miss Edith, critically. 'In the chanting the boys' voices are good, and the tenor voices are good; but the bass is too musical. You hear that it is the organ. And ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... around camp that there would be a "singing" on the lake shore that night. Bela, who had her own ideas about singing, despised the crude chanting of her relatives and the monotonous accompaniment of the "stick-kettle"; nevertheless, she decided ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... and the present victim. And his request had come, it would seem, to some canon or person in authority whose heart had been touched by the wonderful Maid in her long martyrdom. This nameless sympathiser did all that a man could do. He sent the Host with a train of priests chanting litanies as they went through the streets, with torches burning in the pure early daylight; some of these exhorted the people who knelt as they passed, to pray for her. She must have heard in her prison the sound of the bell, the chant ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... level with his face, and reverently covered by his vestments—he bears a gemmed vessel containing the Host, to be laid by-and-by on the altar of the Holy Countenance. All the church-bells are now ringing furiously. Cannons fire, and military bands drown the low hum of the chanting. Every head is uncovered—many, specially women, are ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... slowly curled in a contemptuous smile. "Then I guess my ancestors on one side of the house were chanting war whoops to ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and little belligerent sounds, such as screaming and kicking, occasionally find their way into church. The building is light and pretty inside, very simple, but in excellent taste; and though there is no organ, the singing and chanting, conducted by the younger portion of the congregation, is on a par with some of the best in our town churches at home. There were no persons poorly clad, and all looked happy, sturdy, and independent. The bright scarlet leaves of the oak and maple pressed against the windows, giving them in ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... below them of the striking of oars in the water, and another sound of one or two men monotonously chanting a ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... effort to frighten their opponents away by chanting the "Land Song" in the Lobby, but it is supposed that the Government supporters had copied Ulysses' method with the Sirens, for enough of them remained faithful to defeat the land-taxers by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... slowly advanced toward the Christian Indians. He laid aside his knife and tomahawk, and then his eagle plumes and war-bonnet. Bareheaded, he seated himself among the converted redmen. They began chanting ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... always provided that they were sung "with great sadness"; and Ferragut would devour her with his eyes while she plucked the guitar, chanting the song of Malek-Adhel and other romances about "Roses, sighs and Moors of Granada," that from childhood the doctor had heard sung by the Berbers of his country. The simple attempt at taking one of her hands always provoked her ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... light was doused. So suddenly and unexpectedly did darkness swallow us from each other's ken that there was a gasp, and then for a moment a hushed silence. Before this was broken by any other sound out from the impenetrable gloom came a deep sepulchral voice, chanting: ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... procession. The body was borne by the chief tenants yet living, and surrounded by chanting monks, whose solemn "Domine refugium nostrum" fell with awful yet consoling effect upon the ears of the multitude. The churls and thralls, sadly thinned by the sword, followed behind their lady and her ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... anguish continued to increase until it became actual physical pain. Soon I seemed to hear the strains of a solemn chorale floating in the air; the sounds continued to grow more distinct; I realized the fact that they were men's voices chanting a church chorale. "What's that? what's that?" I cried, a burning stab darting as it were through my breast. "Don't you see?" replied the coachman, who was driving along beside me, "why don't you see? they're ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... to the Gull's Nest. When there, he turned with a stealthy step towards the chamber which his mother occupied. There was no living being in the room save one, and she was busied in composing the limbs and features of his dead parent, chanting, in a low monotonous tone, fragments of old songs and snatches of ballads appropriate to the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doating over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... white dust of the dead is laid,—with all this delight in the real, Homer is the most romantic of poets. He walks with the surest foot in the darkling realm of dread Persephone, beneath the poplars on the solemn last beach of Ocean. He has heard the Siren's music, and the song of Circe, chanting as she walks to and fro, casting the golden shuttle through the loom of gold. He enters the cave of the Man Eater; he knows the unsunned land of the Cimmerians; in the summer of the North he has looked, from the fiord of the Laestrygons, on the Midnight ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... People had gathered together upon the sward fronting their line of shallow caves and one of them, the story-teller and singer, was chanting aloud of the river-horse and the great spoil which was theirs, when there was a hungry roar and the yell or shriek of all, men or women not too stricken by fear to be unable to utter sound, and then the leap into their midst of the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... were heard alternately, with the regularity of a mill, the piping of an old cracked voice and the brave chanting of a childish chorus. Under the school, where the light was dim and the air was decidedly musty, two small boys were crouched, playing a silent game of 'stag knife.' Besides being dark and evil-smelling under there, it was damp; great clammy masses ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... 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 was rhythmical. The habit may have borne witness to the goodness of his conscience, or it may not (it may merely have been a by-product of an excellent digestion), but that morning it seemed to her that he chanted more loudly and with a finer gusto ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... Tahn-te had sat in meditation before the sacred wall of the stone face, chanting the songs to the clouds and the yellow birds of the sun color, watching the pictured rock until the lines moved when his body swayed to the chant, and a living thing seemed before him—the accumulated faiths of all the devotees in ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... feelings that he had to bestow on this matter; and now he was ready to take hold of almost any temptation that might present itself, so long as it showed a good prospect of success and a plausible chance of impunity. While he was thus musing, he heard a female voice chanting some song, like a bird's among the pleasant foliage of the trees, and soon he saw at the end of a wood-walk Alice, with her basket on her arm, passing on toward the village. She looked towards him as she passed, but made no ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and sweeping courtesy and chanting of the weird words. The final "dosh!" held, in its low, fierce tone, all the significance of abject adoration. With that "dosh" had the child Priscilla wooed the favour and recognition of the god. It was ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... the ceremonies are performed by numerous priests, fine looking men, with long flowing beards, in robes of most costly materials; the genuflexions are numerous and very low, incense is much used, and there are some good pictures, but no statuary and no organ or other instrumental music; but the chanting is peculiar ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... the separation of a verse of poetry into its component feet. Poetry was originally sung or chanted by bards and troubadours. The accompaniment was a simple strumming on a harp of very few strings, and was hardly more than the beating of time. The chanting must have been much like the sing-song that some people fall into when reading verses now. The first thing in scanning a line of poetry is to drop into its rhythm,—to let it sing itself. When the regular accent is felt, the lines can easily be separated into their metrical feet. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... surrounded by a deputation of Lamas from Teshoo Loombo, sent for in this emergency. The principal one was a fat fellow, who sat cross-legged before a block-printed Tibetan book, plates of raw meat, rice, and other offerings, and the bells, dorje, etc. of his profession. Others sat around, reading or chanting services, and filling the room with incense. At one end of the apartment was a good library in ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the meaning of his words, Madelon slid off the bed and prepared to obey. At that moment there came a tremendous knocking at the door of the room, and a voice half chanting, half shouting,— ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... manifests itself in cure-alls. A man finds that his will overcomes some obstacles. Eager to apply this, he announces that will cures all ills. Impatient of evil, men seek to annihilate it by denying its existence or by loudly chanting that good thoughts will destroy it. These are typical impatient solutions in the sphere of religion; in the sphere of economics men urge nationalization, free trade, socialism or laissez faire, or some law or other to change social structure and ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... leisure and luxury led them to pay for amusement; professed musicians and story-tellers were introduced, and were classed with the ministri or servants, whence came the name minstrel, which was soon confined to them alone. We find Talliefer going before William the Conqueror at the battle of Hastings chanting the brave deeds of Charlemagne and making a display of skill in tossing and catching his sword and spear. This union of tricks and music became so common that the words minstrel and jougleur were soon synonymous, though there was originally a distinction between them. ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... it); beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the spires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and lit first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away presently with a leaf in its mouth: then came a sound as of chanting, from the chapel of the sisters hard by; others had long since filled the place, which poor Mary Magdalene once had there, were kneeling at the same stall, and hearing the same hymns and prayers in which ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and chanting these two lines of a Swedish drinking-song, he threw himself back in his chair, and emptied his overflowing glass. The party now began to get extremely merry; and from claret we turned to port, and, by imperceptible degrees, descended to punch. The smoke of our cigars soon accumulated in a ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... presents Christ in glory, thus suggesting the "Te Deum." Jesus sits enthroned with the angels and archangels, prophets, apostles and martyrs of the church in all ages bending in adoration before Him, while the heavenly choir are waving palms and chanting music in honor of Heaven's King. The smaller windows under the roof show the hierarchy of heaven indicating by music and dances the joy of the celestial world at the scenes of the Incarnation depicted below. Upon a bright, sunny day the cathedral is made ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... cycle of necessity, with the door of liberation to the home of the blest, who have reached perfect freedom and go no more out. We may picture in imagination their solemn celebrations; priests robed, perhaps, in the mingled green and purple of their hills, passing within the circle, chanting some archaic hymn of ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... hymn of the first Allegro. Indeed, the combining strains before the close seem sprung all of one parental idea. The motto of the beginning sings in fittest answer to the latest phrases. The very maze of the concert forbids our turning to their first origin. The end is in joyous chanting of the ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... inside was chanting mass. A dozen Breton women in their huge white winged caps and wooden shoes hurried up to the door, through the gray fog. They met Mrs. Waldeaux and saw her face. They huddled to one side, crossing themselves, and when she passed, stood still, forgetting the mass and ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... graves with flowers in their hands, or fading among the cypress trunks into sunlit spaces beyond. Now and then they saw a man praying. Once they came to a tomb where children were sitting in a circle chanting the Koran with a sound like the sound ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... roaring torrent from those mountainous clouds. The setting sun glared wildly from the summit of the hills, and sank like a burning ship at sea, wrecked in the tempest. Thus the evening set in; and winter stood at the gate wagging his white and shaggy beard, like an old harper, chanting an old rhyme:—"How cold it is! how ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... England; the Catholic Church alone is beautiful. You would see what I mean if you went into a foreign cathedral, or even into one of the Catholic churches in our large towns. The celebrant, deacon, and subdeacon, acolytes with lights, the incense, and the chanting—all combine to one end, one act of worship. You feel it is really a worshipping; every sense, eyes, ears, smell, are made to know that worship is going on. The laity on the floor saying their beads, or making their acts; the choir singing out the Kyrie; and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... day's journey from Tehran, as I was walking onward, chanting, with all my throat, a song on the loves of Leilah and Majnoun, I was overtaken by a courier, who entered into conversation with me, and invited me to partake of some victuals which he had brought with him. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... which is peculiar by reason of the self-flagellations inflicted by its members in excess of pietistic zeal. Unlike their ilk of India, they do not practice self-torture for long periods, but only upon a certain day in each year. Then, stripped to the waist, these poor zealots go chanting a dolorous strain, and beating themselves unsparingly upon the back with the sharp-spined cactus, or soap-weed, until they are a revolting sight to look upon. Often they sink from the exhaustion of long-sustained suffering ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... from the top of their heads, the rest was without form, and wrapped round with red cloth. We were here met by a tall young man, with a long beard, who presented Captain Cook to the images, and after chanting a kind of hymn, in which he was joined by Koah, they led us to that end of the morai where the five poles were fixed. At the foot of them were twelve images ranged in a semicircular form, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... easily arranged. A ransom of forty thousand livres was to be exacted from the city. On the thirty-first of August, M. de la Chastre made his solemn entry into Sancerre, accompanied by a band of Roman Catholic priests chanting a Te Deum over his success. As was too frequently the case, the promise of immunity to the inhabitants was but poorly kept. Scarcely had two weeks passed before the "bailli" Johanneau,[1311] summoned from his house by the archers of the prevot, on the plea that M. de la Chastre ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... brooded over all things, for the wind had gone down, and the long, steady roar of the surf was far off and all unlike the ceaseless rush and countless noises of the labouring ship at sea. There came a little drone of chanting from the chapel a hundred yards away, and there was now and again the bleat of a sheep, and the homely crow of the cocks, sounding as if shut up somewhere still. For a time I stayed, enjoying the ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... was an island consecrated to music from the days of Orpheus, and we can imagine the lovers singing together and Achilles solacing his loneliness by chanting to Patroclus the praises ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... lighted by attendant slaves. The stirring, shaken sistra wrought a miracle of sound that set the nerves all tingling as the high priest, followed by his boys with swinging censers and the members of the priestly college, four by four, came chanting down the temple steps. To an accompanying pleading, sobbing note of flutes the high priest laid an offering of fruit, milk, wine and honey in the midst of the heaped-up garlands (for Apollo was the god of all fertility as well as of healing and war and ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... were carrying the banner of the saint round the walls of the town, followed by the citizens chanting hymns, one of the bearers of the holy relics, named Gozbert, was struck by a stone from a catapult. The man who had fired it fell dead, while Gozbert continued his promenade in no way injured by the blow. The Abbe D'Abbon vouches for these ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... the bodies of two great king-cobras could be made out, moving against the woman's spangled dress. The basket lid was resting on their heads, and as the music and the chanting rose to a wild weird shriek the lid rose too, until suddenly the woman snatched the lid away and the snakes were revealed, with hoods raised, hissing the cobra's hate-song that is ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... with the same earth-abstracted gaze as theirs! The Gothic towers of Civita Castellana looked down upon the humble pilgrims as they passed by in pious meditation. The sound of their sweet voices, reciting prayers or chanting hymns, mingled with the murmurs of the stream that bathes the old walls of Nurni; and then through the wild defile of Monte Somma into the lovely Umbrian Vale they went, through that enchanting ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... became still within the coffin, and Sidonia sprang upon it and danced, chanting the 109th psalm; [Footnote: Superstition has found many sinful usages for this psalm. The Jews, for example, took a new vessel, poured a mixture of mustard and water therein, and after repeating ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... vessels tied to the river bank, of which the Blue Cock was directly under the widow's great dwelling. From the town came sounds of revelry and wassail, of singing and quarrel, and from the church on Sand Hook softer chanting, where the women were twining holly and laurel and mistletoe. Nanking lay flat on the roof, with his face turned toward the sky. The moon went down and ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... that M. Fortunat was angry. Such a man, as cold and as smooth as a hundred franc piece, has no useless passions. But he was intensely irritated to hear his client foolishly chanting the paeons of victory, while he was compelled to conceal his grief at the loss of his forty thousand francs, deep in the recesses of his heart. So, far from being touched by the marquis's evident alarm, it pleased him to be able to turn the dagger in the ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... not make a greater noise, and Tom himself declares he studied the instrument in a pigsty, which he maintains gave the first notion of an organ. Well, sir, the youths in the office assist in 'doing the service,' as they call it, that is, making an imitation of the chanting and so forth ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... morning in March, ten years ago, I was sitting alone on one of the crumbling ledges of the Coliseum: larks were singing above my head; wall-flowers were waving at my feet; a procession of chanting monks was walking slowly around the great cross in the arena below. I was on the highest tier, and their voices reached me only as an indistinct wail, like the notes of a distant Aeolian harp; but the joyous sun and sky and ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Delphi, and one in Crete recounting the saving of the new-born Zeus by the Curetes. In the chorus sung in honour of Dionysus the ancient Greek drama had its birth. From that of the winter festival, consisting of the [Greek komos] or band of revellers, chanting the "phallic songs," with ribald dialogue between the leader and his band, sprang "comedy," while from the dithyrambic chorus of the spring festival came "tragedy." For the history of the chorus in Greek drama, with the gradual subordination of the lyrical to the dramatic side ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... announce the mountains which possess pure brightness, which have much brightness, created by Mazda, pure, lords of purity." So sang the Zarathustrian priest, chanting the Vispereds of the Avesta,—deep-hearted child of the world, himself now shining on the far-away ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... passing down to the door of the Baptistery, through the atrium, and into the church again by the door close to the Cappella dei Mascoli. There is something in all Roman Catholic ceremonial which for me impairs its impressiveness—perhaps a thought too much mechanism—and I watched this chanting line of choristers, priests, and prelates without emotion, but perfectly willing to believe that the fault lay with me. Three things abide vividly in the memory: the Jewish cast of so many of the large inscrutable faces of the wearers of the white mitres; a little aged, isolated, ecclesiastic ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... voice had wonderful carrying power, and the forest, and the open space in which the fort stood, rang with the sound. Robert became so much intoxicated with his own chanting that he did not notice its effect, until Willet called ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of the original story. The Carnarvonshire fairies of various tales analogous to that of the Van Pool are recalled by maternal love to the scenes of their wedded life; and the hapless father hears his wife's voice outside the window chanting pathetically: ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... upon herself in the front room, seated by the window, crying in an ecstasy of joy. At first she did not know what this joy was; then it came to her that it was because she had lost her baby. "A blessing, a blessing," she was chanting aloud, wringing her hands, but with joy, she knew it was with joy that she wrung ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... The "friendly Banshee" is a young and beautiful female spirit, with pale face, regular, well-formed features, hair sometimes coal-black, sometimes golden; eyes blue, brown, or black. Her long, white drapery falls below her feet as she floats in the air, chanting her weird warning, lifting her hands as if in pitying tenderness bestowing a benediction on the soul she summons to the invisible world. The "hateful Banshee" is a horrible hag, with angry, distorted features; maledictions are ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... made haste to join it; for many of Nature's finest lessons are to be found in her storms, and if careful to keep in right relations with them, we may go safely abroad with them, rejoicing in the grandeur and beauty of their works and ways, and chanting with the old Norsemen, "The blast of the tempest aids our oars, the hurricane is our servant and drives us whither we wish to go." So, omitting breakfast, I put a piece of bread in my pocket ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... he saw a procession of many thousand persons, bearing palms, and singing hymns, but of very small stature, enter the red circle, from the black cloud, chanting halleluiah. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... ink, wake us to life and beauty. How much longer are we to lie here, dusty in death? We have waited so patiently—have pity on us, raise us up from our silent tomb, and we will fly abroad through the whole earth, chanting your glory; yea, the world shall be filled to eternity with the echoes of our music and ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... which I passed my hours of infancy was so near the great aisle of the minster that the organ, which reechoed its deep tones, accompanied by the chanting of the choristers, was distinctly heard both at morning and evening service. I remember with what pleasure I used to listen, and how much I was delighted whenever I was permitted to sit on the winding steps which led from the aisle to the cloisters. I can at this moment recall to memory ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... beautiful thoughts set forth in a beautiful hand of write; but when I wake they have all vanished. Sometimes on an evening of late summer, when the winds are blowing softly through the roses and filling the air with odors almost unbearably sweet, it seems to me as if the sweet voices of lovers were chanting those lines, and that I have only to listen heedfully to have them for my own again. But it is all in vain that I try to remember them to any profit. A few phrases buzz in my own brains, but they are no ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... I complate my rural ideas—in some gentleman's rookery at all events; the thrush here, the blackbird there, the corn-craik chanting its varied note in another place, and so on. In the meantime we reverend sentimentalists advance, gazing with odoriferous admiration upon the prospect about us, and expatiating in the purest of Latin upon the beauties of unsophisticated nature. When we meet the peasants going out to their work, ...
— Going To Maynooth - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... made love to them first, like one of Knowles's heroines. But the juveniles are crazy about her. Robinson went off more ostentatiously love-sick than a man of his size I ever saw; and Sedley is always chanting her praises—the only man, woman, or child, he was ever known to speak well of. I don't think any of them will catch her. Edwards might dance into her heart, perhaps, if he were a little bigger; but as it is, she will, probably, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... evening of the first day I sat in my rocking-chair on the broad veranda, looking across the Sound towards the glory of the sunset. The thickly grassed hillside sloped down in front of me to a belt of forest from which rose the golden, leisurely chiming of the wood thrushes, chanting their vespers; through the still air came the warble of vireo and tanager; and after nightfall we heard the flight song of an ovenbird from the same belt of timber. Overhead an oriole sang in the weeping elm, now and then breaking his song ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... abstention from all family intercourse, and the purification rites and prayers for three days in the house set apart, while the women, who might not come close to their men in this fateful hour, stood throughout the night till dawn chanting before the door. Another poetic touch the author gives us, from the Cherokee—or Cheerake as he spells it—explaining that the root, chee-ra, means fire. A Cherokee never extinguished fire save on the ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... softly out through the bushes. Once I looked back and saw the Chatterer still chanting and teetering. It was not a pleasant sight. I knew pretty well how to be cautious, and I was exceedingly careful on this my first journey in ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... in his beautiful home where, as a little boy, he had first learned to say, 'Our Father.' Etienne and his family belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. On Sundays they went to the great cathedral of Limoges; but the service there always seemed strange and far away to Etienne.[41] The music, the chanting, the Latin words that were said and sung by bishops and priests in their gorgeous robes, did not seem to him to have anything to do with the quiet Voice that spoke to the boy in the silence ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... no reality, and so forth. 'What a delight,' he cries, 'for the man who is borne down by six days of toil to come on the seventh to rest upon his knees, to contemplate the tall columns, a vault, arches, an altar; to listen to the chanting, to hear moral and consoling words!'[7] The dogmas which criticism attacks are not for these poor people 'the object of an explicit affirmation,' and therefore there is no harm in them; 'it is the privilege of pure sentiment to be invulnerable, and to play with poison without being ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... the Governor of Silesia, had it struck the paving stones in front of the King's horse, could hardly have startled Alec more than the sight of Felix, standing there, bare headed and grinning, and chanting an improvised version of a famous song at ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the fire, apparently as regardless of the presence of the two beings whose happiness she had just crushed for ever as if they had never existed, she began to recite, in solemn, measured, chanting tones, a legend of the darkest and earliest age of Gothic history, keeping time to herself with the knife that she still held in her hand. The malignity in her expression, as she pursued her employment, betrayed the heartless ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... perfume was burning, the six fairies formed in line behind her, and she leading, they walked round the table three times, chanting in chorus: ...
— Welsh Fairy-Tales And Other Stories • Edited by P. H. Emerson
... of Christianity, but as a holy and precious gift, to be enjoyed heartily yet spent in God's service—birth, marriage, death, all holy; good, evil, alike holy. Nothing on God's earth common or purposeless. Everything chanting the great song of God's praise; the morning stars singing together, as we say ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... dogwood, blasting his old sight; And that beholding them amidst his haunts, He called on Hah-wen-ne-yo to bear off His spirit to the happy hunting-grounds. Shrouding his face within his deer-skin robe, And chanting the low death-song of his tribe, He then with trembling footsteps left the hut And sought the hill-top; here he sat him down With his back placed within this hollowed tree, And fixing his dull eye upon the scene Of woods below him, rocked with guttural ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... soul of kindness, and the beautiful buildings with their pleasant grounds gave a peculiar charm to the life. My room was not far from the chapel, and every night at two a.m. I could hear the old monks chanting their offices. Most of the monks had been conscripted and were fighting in the French army; only a few of the older ones remained. But by day and night at stated intervals the volume of their prayer and praise rose up above the ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... bright and clear; She saw the castle gates unclose; And now she saw four monks appear, Loud chanting for a soul's repose. Forbear, O lady! look no more: They pass'd—a livid ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... so eagerly? A procession of priests and laymen, carrying banners and black-draped crosses, and chanting in solemn ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... eleven thousand infantry whose spears were to decide this crisis in the struggle between the European and the Asiatic worlds. The sacrifices, by which the favour of Heaven was sought, and its will consulted, were announced to show propitious omens. The trumpet sounded for action, and, chanting the hymn of battle, the little army bore down upon the host of the foe. Then, too, along the mountain slopes of Marathon must have resounded the mutual exhortation which AEschylus, who fought in both battles, tells ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... such a passionate earnestness that, to this day I must believe, was caused, not by the beauty of the verses, or the corresponding melody, but rather by some superstitious feeling that their chanting would prevent the plague infecting the bread while it was baking, or perhaps the air served as an hour-glass telling them by its termination that now was the time to take the bread out of the oven. As they who are wont to use the ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... being one Peder Galle, a learned canon of Upsala. The main points that were discussed are these: man's justification; free will; forgiveness of sins; invocation and worship of saints; purgatory; celebration of vigils and masses for the dead; chanting of the service; good works, and rewards; papal and monastic indulgences; sacraments; predestination; excommunication; pilgrimages. The battle on these questions was fought, December 27, in the Chapter-house at Upsala; and the chronicle tells us, somewhat unnecessarily, that the fight was ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... about to kill the assassin on the spot, he exclaimed: "Let no one hurt him!" To the surgeons he said: "I wish you to do whatever in your judgment is best." When his last hour came he was heard softly chanting his favorite hymns—"Nearer, my God, to Thee" and "Abide with me," and his last words were, "It is God's way—His will be done. Good-by all—good-by!" Thus passed away this wonderful man, this model American, worthy of a place in history beside ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... sun; a tattered troop Of children circled a little grave, Chanting an anthem rich in its peace As ever ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... to other Europeans. When I started off to Levuka I was greatly surprised to see all the women of Somo-somo sitting on the beach waiting to see me depart, and as I walked down alone they greeted me in much the same way as they often greeted Ratu Lala, in a kind of chanting shout that sounded most effective. It was ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... invigorated by the chanting of this touching ballad, Sam and Pumble returned to the consideration of their day's programme. A great many amusements were proposed, discussed, and rejected in their respective turns. Almost any ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... spurred and harnessed for the lists in a tunic of mail, with an emerald on my shoulder-strap, and I was tilting with my lord of Cleremont before Queen Isabella of France. The birds were singing in Touraine, and the sun was beating on the lists; and the minstrels of Val-es-Dunes were chanting the song of the men who died for the Faith when they stormed Jerusalem. What is the lilt of that song," said the King, "which the singers of Val-es-Dunes sang?" And Eustace pondered, for his memory was weak and ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... they greedily devoured it. Then the one who, judging from a certain deference paid him by the others, might be the chief, or leader, seated himself on a stone and sang in a singular kind of monotonous, chanting tone. The words, as interpreted by the gestures and expressions, seemed to be an improvisation concerning the strangers they had found upon the beach, and were evidently addressed to them. There was something ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Remi. The Archbishop was in grand costume, with his miter on his head and his cross in his hand. At the door of St. Remi they halted and formed, to receive the holy vial. Soon one heard the deep tones of the organ and of chanting men; then one saw a long file of lights approaching through the dim church. And so came the Abbot, in his sacerdotal panoply, bearing the vial, with his people following after. He delivered it, with solemn ceremonies, to the Archbishop; then the march back began, and it was most ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shrine the lady sought, and there In mute appeal for what she lack'd she knelt, Not knowing what she lack'd; but finding peace Steal o'er her soul there as she faintly heard The slow and solemn chanting of the priests, The mild monotony of murmured prayers, And hush of pauses when she seemed to feel The heart she deem'd so hard was melting fast, And listen'd to a voice within her say— "Love is not vain! Love all things and rejoice!" And found ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... Happily, the Feast of Souls was being held, and no tribe dares to kill a captive during the days consecrated to this solemn ceremony. But after the feast I was bound down on the ground before the sacred totem pillars, and all the maidens and warriors of the Creek nation danced around me, chanting songs of triumph. Again I sang my song ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... any one imagine to himself a five-act drama, preceded by a telegraphic intimation of all its incidents—how insupportable would the slow procession of events become after such a revelation! Up to this, Ministers performed a sort of Greek chorus, chanting in ambiguous phrase the woes that invaded those who differed from them, and the heart-corroding sorrows that sat below the "gangway." There has come an end to all this. All the dramatic devices of those days ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... curiosity aroused by the stories that Yamba had taken care to circulate, I attended a great corroboree, which lasted nearly the whole of the night. As I was sitting near a big fire, joining in the chanting and festivities, Yamba noiselessly stole to my side, and whispered in my ear that she had found ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... of music breaks in on the evening stillness, the sound of an organ responding to the touch of skilled fingers and blended with it the tones of women's voices. The nuns in a neighboring convent are chanting the evening office. The sound recalls the chapel at Saint Zita's, the orchard, the nuns, dear kind Reverend Mother. What peaceful, happy hours those were? Has she ever known real happiness since she quitted the quiet convent ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... barren air, Each shatter'd light before a well, Ends its flame in short, spastic gasps. And stars that burn but once a year, (Veined Aureoles to altars where, When sins are told unto each knell As chanting runes are hushed with clasps Of winds provoked by black-set night, Peer at the caravans in prayer; A dirge is sung by magicians; Each Idol squints eyes at the show, Whilst goblins curse the eerie sight. And Betelguese, an evil lair With infernal, warring legions, ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... him. To this the prior and brethren credulously consented and that same evening, coming all whereas Master Ciappelletto lay dead, they held high and solemn vigil over him and on the morrow, clad all in albs and copes, book in hand and crosses before them, they went, chanting the while, for his body and brought it with the utmost pomp and solemnity to their church, followed by well nigh all the people of ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... the three apes, and they went down into the river. Then he took up the cat-fish [FN201] which he washed then laid it in the basket upon some green grass, and covered it with other; and lastly shouldering his load, set out chanting the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... brought additional wilderness gleaners from afar, and additional children, and many additional starving dogs. For these days were the gala days of the Northland; days of high feast and plenty, of boastings, and recountings, and the chanting of ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx
... are some who sing Recitative on the Stage like That of the Church or Chamber; some in a perpetual Chanting, which is insufferable; some over-do it and make it a Barking; some whisper it, and some sing it confusedly; some force out the last Syllable, and some sink it; some sing it blust'ring, and some as if they were thinking ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... or at work in the fields—gloomy, cheerless-looking towns, with narrow, filthy streets—troops of beggars surrounding your carriage whenever you stop, or whenever the nature of the roads obliges the horses to walk, and chanting their requests in the most doleful whine imaginable—such are the sights and sounds that meet you for the greater part of two hundred and fifty miles. There are, however, some exceptions as to the aspect of the country. Autun, one of the most ancient towns of France, and yet ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... livery of a nun, For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd, To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon?' Give me some more sherry. Of course you must come. No use being shy—a pretty creatur' like you! And you said you liked the play," he ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... portals I put off the subfuse vestments of J. Watson, Esq., Barrister-at-Law, and become simply Uncle James. This alone is a tonic. To-day as I ascended the steps of the temple there floated down to me the voices of the priestesses chanting, evidently in a kind of frenzy, and to the air of a famous Scottish reel, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... recall that magic prime, We needs must weep its early death. How pleasant from thy towers the chime Of bells, and sweet the incense breath That rose while we, who kept thy faith, Chanting our creed, and chanting bore Our offerings ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... little pages carry? Yes! one sees them: the poet sees them still in the far-off Cloudland, and hears the ring of their clarions as they hasten to battle or tourney—and the dim echoes of their lutes chanting of love and fair ladies! Gracious privilege of poesy! It is as the Dervish's collyrium to the eyes, and causes them to see treasures that to the sight of donkeys are invisible. Blessed treasures of fancy! I would not change ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... England he was to meet at last, to grapple with, and overthrow, even as the English huscarles in their turn bore down on that gay Minstrel Taillefer, who rode so insolently forth to meet them, with a song in his throat, tossing his sword in English eyes, still chanting the song of Roland as he fell. None of the inn features were in the least informed with this great, impressive picture of its past. Yet does William seem by far the most realizable of all the personages who ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... Their chanting, soon fading, let them, too, upraise For homage unto Sylvia, her sweet, feat ways; Weave with suave float their waved way, And colours take of holiday, For syllabling to Sylvia; And all the birds on branches lave their mouths with May, To bear ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... playing to the chanting of the monks; and standing before the chapel of S. Bernardino, where the Christ in the gold almond and the worshipping and music-making angels of Pinturicchio rise out of the blue darkness behind the grating, I felt oddly that music of the organ. ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... born in Gaul about the middle of the fourth century and raised to his bishopric in A.D. 374. Very early he saw and appreciated the popular effect of musical sounds, and what an evangelical instrument a chorus of chanting voices could be in preaching the Christian faith; and he introduced the responsive singing of psalms and sacred cantos in the worship of the church. "A grand thing is that singing, and nothing can stand before it," he said, when the critics of his time complained that his innovation ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Chanting in Latin the hymn of the Nativity, the visitors were at last admitted to the Imperial tent, hung about with cloth of gold, where they found the Khan. He was seated on a couch—a "little man of moderate height, aged about forty-five, and dressed ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge |
