"Droning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Priory in ruins, and itself with hardly a stone loosened for nearly eight centuries. The roof is later than the walls, but there is a fascination in staring up at the old oak timber. It was the same vista of retreating beams of mighty wood on which the eye of the Newark priest droning from the altar must have rested; perhaps for his sleepy congregation there was the same glimpse of ivy tendrils creeping in under the eaves, and on drowsy afternoons in May the same chatter and hiss of nesting starlings. From the scanty scraps ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... good manners, which now seem to me the best part of my education, I learned to draw and to sing; and in which I delighted most, it were hard to say. Never before had I heard any music, except that of the doleful and droning church choir. We sang simple songs about nature, conduct, duties to the Heavenly Father, to parents and teacher. Their notes lingered in my ears for a great many years, and I can still hum some of them. We drew plain figures, blocks, cones, the ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... hand and looked at the north window. Following his gaze she saw the snow whipping against the glass, rattling against the panes like small hailstones hurled with frightful velocity. The incessant droning whine of the wind reached their ears, deep in volume as though it would tell them of its interrupted sweep across the vast plains; as though to convince them of its unlimited power and ferocity. She knew as well as he that the big drifts around the cabin had grown bigger; ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... staring with cold terror at the fly which was scurrying along the floor close to the wall. It was already as large as Alan's hand. It ran into the corner, hit the wall in its confused alarm, and turned back. Its wings were droning with an audible hum. It reared itself on its hairy legs, lifted ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... sat on his mat huddled up in his blanket, droning one of the time-honoured bhajans ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... sunny June afternoon, that the shining city about us has gasped in smoke and ruins, has been pierced with arrows unto death as was its patron saint of old; that this contentful droning of the shore and the street deepened once to the roar of war and rose to the shriek ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... duty. He sat down on the grass to see if they would come to him, but although two dragon-flies passed over they did not stay to speak, but went on their journey. Neither of them was his guide, but they both went towards the copse. Immediately afterwards a humble-bee came along, droning and talking to himself as he flew. "Where is the hare?" said Bevis; "and where is the dragon-fly?" "Buzz," said the humble-bee, "the usual course on occasions like the present—buzz—zz," the sound of his voice died away as he went past without replying. Three swallows swept by next ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... whitewashed cell, most beautifully clean, containing a very small bed, one chair, a gas-jet, a prie-Dieu, a real human skull, and nothing else whatever. We went to dinner in a great arched refectory, where a monk, perched up in a high pulpit, read us Thomas a Kempis in a droning monotone. Complete silence was observed. At La Trappe no meat or butter is ever used, but we were given a most excellent dinner of vegetable soup, fish, omelets, and artichokes dressed with oil, accompanied by the monks' admirable home-grown wine. There were ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... the dream of an afternoon Of a perfect day—though it was not June; The lilt of winds, and the droning tune That a busy city ...
— Poems of Cheer • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... puts on a great many extra coats under his gown, and, as the winter progresses, swells to a prodigious size. We know when spring is coming by the reduction in his figure. The congregation sit at ease while the parson does the praying for them, and while they are droning the long-drawn-out chorales, he retires into a little wooden box just big enough to hold him. He does not come out until he thinks we have sung enough, nor do we stop until his appearance gives us the signal. I have often thought how dreadful it would be if ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... that Mr. Stone was staring fixedly at his sheet of paper, as though the merits of this last sentence were surprising him. The droning instantly began again: "'In social effort, as in the physical processes of Nature, there had ever been a single fertilising agent—the mysterious and wonderful attraction known as Love. To this—that merging of one being in another—had been due all the progressive ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... or two, while Peter nervously pondered, the air was silent. Then another station called him. A loud droning purr filled the receivers. Peter gave the "k" signal. The brisk voice of the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... affected by these lulls. The contrast was so severe when the racking gusts of an abating wind suddenly gave way to intense, eerie silence, that the habitual droning of many weeks would still reverberate in the ears. At night one would involuntarily wake up if the wind died away, and be loth to sleep "for the hunger of a sound." In the open air the stillness conveyed to the brain an ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the glory of Prince Maurice thrills my sluggish blood; again I taste the wild joys of conflict; the clashing steel, the battle shouts, the cries of dying men—-yea, even the death scream of those sorely stricken comes as a balm to soothe my droning age. But the youthful vigor is gone. This arm could scarcely wield a bodkin; the old friend of many campaigns rusts in its scabbard, and God knows France had never more urgent need of ...
— 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
... one, a curly-headed rascal of a boy named Tim, aged eight, was everybody's favourite, and the leader of the rest in most kinds of mischief. Exactly how he managed it was never rightly understood, but when the piercing sound of a childish scream smote upon the Master's ears, through the droning periods of the captain's read sermon, Tim was in mid-air, half-way between the ship's rail and the sea, and the other children were staring, horror-stricken, at the place he had occupied a moment before, with his chubby ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... sofa between the two chairs, he took it up, without putting away the vacant chair, and sat droning on it, and slowly shaking his head at the vacant chair, for a long, long time. The expression he communicated to the instrument at first, though monstrously pathetic and bland, was nothing to the expression he communicated to his own face, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... swinging Chant, but not as the fairies cry; Deeper bass from the car is singing, Deeply droning, its wheels reply. ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... of trees in the spring, when their blossoms are sweet and their leaves are just unfolding—soft, cheerful, happy music, full of tenderness and love. Then there is the low, drowsy music of the summer-time, when bumble-bees and lady-bugs and humming-birds fill the warm air with greedy droning as they plunder ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... me. But even the butterfly has its uses, and maybe I was meant to play a little part in your big life. I like to think it was so. Sometimes a bright day gets a little more interest from the drone of the locust or the glow of a butterfly's wings. I'm not sure that the locust's droning and the bright flutter of the butterfly's wings are not the way Nature has of fastening the soul to the meaning of it all. I wonder if you ever heard the lines—foolish they read, but ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... his two senses of her to the proof of day; and as early in the forenoon as he could hope to see her, he walked out towards her aunt's house. It was a mild, dull morning, with a misted sunshine; in the little crimson tassels of the budded maples overhead the bees were droning. ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... heads behind a portion of a communication trench parapet. He also reported, and he may have been responsible for the dozen or so of shrapnel that were flung tentatively into and over the wood. An airman droning high over the lines, with fleecy white puffs of shrapnel smoke breaking about him, also saw and reported clearly "large force of Germans massing ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... dull discourse acts INDUCTIVELY, as electricians would say, in developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed to think with what accompaniments and variations and fioriture I have sometimes followed the droning of a heavy speaker,—not willingly,—for my habit is reverential,—but as a necessary result of a slight continuous impression on the senses and the mind, which kept both in action without furnishing the food they required to work ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a Sunday, foggy and overcast, but not cold. The vines about the porch were covered with tiny beads of moisture; among the bushes in the garden little scarfs and veils of fog were caught, and from far across the ridge the droning warning of the fog horn penetrated, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... ached, there was a droning in his ears and a feeling of utter weakness all over. He was not ashamed at recalling his weakness the day before. He had been cowardly, had even been afraid of the moon, had openly expressed thoughts and feelings such as he had not expected ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... then. Only by the smooth flat surface of the hollow, once covered with slimy mud, and the traces of the banks, could one guess that it had been a pond. A farm-house had stood near it. It had long ago passed away. Two huge pine-trees preserved its memory; the wind was for ever droning and sullenly murmuring in their high gaunt green tops. There were mysterious tales among the people of a fearful crime supposed to have been committed under them; they used to tell, too, that not one of them would fall without bringing death to some one; that a third had once stood ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... grasses, with flowers, little crosses. In winter, you'd be sitting near a casement; the panes are small, with gratings, there isn't much light, it smells of lamp oil, incense, cypress; you mustn't talk—the mother superior was strict. Some one from weariness would begin droning a pre-Lenten first verse of a hymn ... 'When I consider thy heavens ...' We sang fine, beautifully, and it was such a quiet life, and the smell was so fine; you could see the flaky snow out the windows—well, now, just like in ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... afternoon service. In the idleness of dull pain his thoughts followed their summons, and he marvelled that there were people who could imagine it a duty or find it a solace to go and sit in that twilight church and listen to the droning of prayers. He thought of the wretched millions of mankind to whom life is so barren that they must needs believe in a recompense beyond the grave. For that he neither looked nor longed. The bitterness of his lot was that this world might be a sufficing ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... nor the boy of eighteen, Nomura, of Choshu, whose eagerness betrayed the plot. It is exhilarating to have lived in the same days with these great-hearted gentlemen. Only a few miles from us, to speak by the proportion of the universe, while I was droning over my lessons, Yoshida was goading himself to be wakeful with the stings of the mosquito; and while you were grudging a penny income tax, Kusakabe was stepping to death with a noble ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... decadent too human to moralise on. I had left the chamber of the—shall I say de jure King of England?—a sentimental adherent of the cause. But this business of the bagpipes touched the comic. To harry an old valet out of bed and set him droning on pipes in the small hours smacked of a theatrical taste, or at least of an undignified fancy. Kings in exile, if they wish to keep the tragic air, should not indulge in such ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... hand on either side of his head and rocked himself to and fro, droning to himself like a child whose grief has ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... comprehend it all at once. A moment before while the horrid chorus of war-whoops rang in our ears we had each of us been marked out for death by tomahawk or bullet. Now our red enemies had vanished as swiftly and noiselessly as the deer; there was no sound but the droning chant of the rapids, and the singing of the birds in the ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... she gave a little stamp of impatience, to the extreme confusion of the mother and the great amusement of the assembled company. Humfrey, once started, delivered himself of the rest of his oration in a glum and droning voice, occasioning fits of laughter, such as by no means ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... flowers In my garden Butterflies, golden-spotted tawny, Blue-spangled and sulphur; Glistening dragon-flies, zooming bumble bees, Droning honey-bees. ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... fortnight of bloom is not permitted to be forgotten for a moment. Only a moment ago a whiff of more than usual redolence from the open window at which I am sitting reminded me that the flowers were even now in the heyday of their prime, and the loud droning music betokened that the bees were making the most of ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... tell ye to sing the Hundred-and-Ninth to Wiltshire, and sing it you shall!" roared Henchard. "Not a single one of all the droning crew of ye goes out of this room till that Psalm is sung!" He slipped off the table, seized the poker, and going to the door placed his back against it. "Now then, go ahead, if you don't wish to ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... head two or three times with a dismal expression, and made no answer. She had pushed back the droning wool-wheel which she had been using, and had taken her knitting from the shelf by the clock and seated herself contentedly, while Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin had each produced a blue yarn stocking from a capacious pocket, and the shining steel needles were presently all ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... lance that struck across to the wall. There were ivy and a climbing rose about the window through which he looked to the shimmering poplars and the distant hills. Many birds were singing, and from the direction of the quarters sounded the faint blowing of a horn. A bee came droning in to the pansies in a bowl. Rand's dark eyes made a journey through the room, from the flowered curtains to the mandarin on the screen, from the screen to the willowed china and the easy chair, from the chair to the picture of General Washington on the wall, the vases on the ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... my ardor. In the dim evening light, like sombre ghosts, the company sat in a wide circle about the borders of the room, erect and uncomfortable as one must sit on slippery horse-hair, listening to Miss Spinner at the piano droning through the first bars ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... neither the attitude of her head nor the look in her eyes was changed, nor did she take her hand from her belt to clasp it upon the other. The air was very soft and warm, there was the musical, low sound of many voices speaking in the monotone of prayer, and now and then, on whirring wings, a droning beetle hummed his way from one field to another, just above the heads ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... hummed among the wild thyme and in the flower beds of cottage gardens, where the harvest-mice rustled amid the corn and nettles, and the mill-race flowed cool and silent through water-weeds and dark tunnelled sluices, and made soft droning music with the wooden mill-wheel. And the music carried with it the wording of old undying rhymes, and sang of the jolly, uncaring, uncared-for miller, of the farmer who went riding upon his grey mare, of the mouse who lived beneath the merry mill-pin, of the sweet music on yonder green hill and ...
— When William Came • Saki
... an unexpected visit. He had just finished washing his dinner dishes and he and Babbie were in the outer shop together, when the visitor came. Jed was droning "Old Hundred" with improvisations of his own, the said improvising having the effect of slowing down the already extremely deliberate anthem until the result compared to the original was for speed, as an oyster scow compared to an electric launch. ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the agile Ernestine leapt lightly from the trembling leaf in hot pursuit. Green spears bent to open a way for her; dizzy gnats paused in their droning song, feeling in the ether the tremor of the chase; bees fell from the heart of honey-sweet flowers, and lay murmuring ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... been nearly frozen and starved to death, to be sitting cozily by a warm hearth after a good supper! Father Meadow-Mouse was helping Mother Meadow-Mouse to wash the supper dishes, which rattled in a very homelike way. Long-Tail, Sharp-Eyes, Pink-Ears, and Mouseykins had started droning their lessons for ...
— Grasshopper Green and the Meadow Mice • John Rae
... Mack at his own home. He found him sitting in the moonlight in the open door of the big new barn, with his new-made friend, Duncan Ross, at one door post and old Piper Sutherland at the other, while up and down the floor in the shadow within Cameron marched, droning the wild melody of the "Maccrimmon Lament." Mournful and weird it sounded through the gloom, but upon the hearts of these Highlanders it fell like a soothing balm. With a wave of his hand Mack indicated a seat, which Fatty took without a word. Irrepressible though he was, he had ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... the land of song. There the peasant sings Arabic ditties in the field when he sows and reaps, in the desert when he tends his flock, at the oasis when the caravan rests for the night, and when camels are remounted next morning. The maiden's fresh voice keeps droning rhythm with her hands and feet as she carries water from the well or wood from the scanty forest, when she milks the goats, and when she bakes ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of the world that ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... ceaseless, intense, inconceivably rapid vibration under her; occasionally she felt a long swing, as if she were to be propelled aloft; but no jars disturbed the easy celerity of the car. The buzz, the roar of wheels, of heavy body in flight, increased to a continuous droning hum. The wind became an insupportable body moving toward her, crushing her breast, making the task of breathing most difficult. To Madeline the time seemed to fly with the speed of miles. A moment came ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... and a cousin, and come back with them. John March, with his hat on, sat alone at his desk with Fair's and Leggett's letters pinned under one elbow, his map under the other, and the verbal counsels of Enos, General Halliday, and Proudfit droning in his ears. He sank back with a ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... 'Twas no choice, 'twas forced upon me, vi et armis. I should be chanting prime or matins at this very hour but for this tongue o' mine, God bless it! For, when it should have been droning psalms, it was forever lilting forth some blithesome melody, some merry song of eyes and lips and stolen kisses. In such sort that the good brethren were wont to gather round and, listening,— sigh! Whereof it chanced I was, one night, by order ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... women being in their rooms, gossiping or dressing for the arrival of their husbands, fathers, sweethearts, or possible sweethearts. Birds were embroidering the silence of the hour with a silvery whisper that spoke of rest and good-will. The slender brook to the left of me was droning like a bee. Everything was charged with peace and soothing mystery. A feeling of lassitude descended upon me. I was too lazy even to think, but the landscape was continually forcing images on my mind. A hollow in the slope of one of the mountains in front of me looked for all the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... held gossip as well. Soupcons were served up on loosened tongues, borne in through open window and swinging door—straight from the dining-room and my lady's chamber. Most of it passed her ears, unheeded; it was but a droning accompaniment to her measuring, mixing, rolling, and baking—until news came at last that concerned herself—gossip of the Burgemans, father ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... seek the quiet hill Where towers the cotton tree, And leaps the laughing crystal rill, And works the droning bee. And we will build a lonely nest Beside an open glade, And there forever will we rest, O love—O ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... was droning on to some such tune as this, and I, on my part, was watching with something between sympathy and amazement the undisguised emotion of Captain Trent, when we were all startled by ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to look, as at a cloud charged with remote explosions: and still for the moment she was unsuspecting. But it was a flitting moment. When he went on, and very singularly droning to her ear: 'The more a man loves a woman, the more he should be positive, before asking her, that she will not have to consent to a loss of position, and I would rather lose her than fail to give her all—not be sure, as far as a man can be sure, of giving her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Baba went to the foot of the ladder and listened. "Nesan! Nesan!" No answer came, beyond the curious droning monotone above, varied by an occasional wailing cry of the child. It seemed to be in pain. Resolute, the sturdy old Baba began to climb the steps. At the top she halted, to get breath and look into the room. The sight she witnessed froze the old woman in horror ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... the noise Of million bees in old Lime-avenues, As though hot noon had found a droning voice To ease her soul. Here for those busy crews Green leaves and pale-stemmed clusters of green strong flowers Build heavy-perfumed, cool, green-twilight bowers Whence, load by load, through the long summer days They fill their glassy cells With dark green honey, clear as chrysoprase, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... mended the clothes, and Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to her while she did so. But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a prison, the gates of which were about to close on her. The heap of stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller's droning voice, were maddening to her: every moment she made a tangle in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the attentive face bent over her. Where should she go? What should she do? Had the world nothing in it for her but this? Yesterday ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... people with the white flag at its apex, arrested by these phenomena, a little knot of small vertical black shapes upon the black ground. As the green smoke arose, their faces flashed out pallid green, and faded again as it vanished. Then slowly the hissing passed into a humming, into a long, loud, droning noise. Slowly a humped shape rose out of the pit, and the ghost of a beam of light seemed ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... droning, far-away voice that caused Jack Benson's upper eyelids to sink. Curtis stood watching him, in malicious glee, for some moments. Then, at last, he took hold of the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... our respective offices a supply column rumbled over the pave, each of the seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the aeroplane going home to roost. The thunder of guns was clearly audible from the north-east. The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, "It's Hill 60 again. My old regiment's up there. And to-morrow ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... being "a branch of Writing" which Fielding admits "I very little pretend to") the subject-matter of the magnificent irony of Jonathan Wild is already sketched. Here the spurious "greatness" of inhuman conquerors, of droning pedants, of paltry beaus, of hermits proud of their humility, is mercilessly laid bare; and something is disclosed of the "piercing discernment" of that genius which, Murphy tell us, "saw the latent sources of ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... him I was weak and coarse, My soul went droning through the hours, His goodness stirred a latent force That drew from others kindred powers. Nor they nor I could think me base, When with their prince I had ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... beset me at the thought of the cave I started out at once, skirting the clearing with much circumspection, for it seemed to me that even the sight of my vanishing back must shout of mystery to Cookie droning hymns among his pots and pans. Crusoe, of course, came with me, happily unconscious of his own strange relation ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... in hand, alone in the stillness of the library, with flies droning behind the sunny blinds, I considered in my thoughts what should be the subject of my great Work. Should I complain against the mutability of Fortune, and impugn Fate and the Constellations; or should I reprehend the never-satisfied heart of querulous ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... himself designed to sleep. Should anything fall into the sack the two men were to close it forthwith and then awaken him. With a final caution to his disciples not to fall asleep, the Master withdrew to his chamber. The hours drew on. Naught was heard save the droning of the students and the sough of the wind in the forest. At midnight the flames of the candles wavered violently, though no breath of wind was felt within the hot room. But the watchers shielding ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... dipping a twig of hazel in the fumigation, waved it north, south, east and west crying "Give me authority! Give me Ka-ta-la-derany;" and then kneeling down in front of the brazier, in a droning voice repeated these words: ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... busy making herself a cap as her mistress came into the kitchen, droning some Hampshire ballad by way of accompaniment to her work. Sarah Batts was seated in an attitude of luxurious repose, with her arms folded, and her feet ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... the next nine seconds, then, right on schedule, he heard the muted droning of a plane, high up. Webb joggled him with an elbow. "They'll fall faster than any known enemy weapon can track them," he ...
— Minor Detail • John Michael Sharkey
... closed behind us. The place was weird enough. Its pave was a greenish-blue stone resembling lapis lazuli. On each side were high pedestals holding carved figures of the same material. There were perhaps a score of these, but in the mistiness I could not make out their outlines. A droning, rushing roar beat upon our ears; filled ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... lining it out while they sang,—the scattered men joining, partly to keep themselves awake. In old times David's harp charmed away the demon from a human heart. It roused one now, never to be laid again. A dull, droning chant, telling how the God of Vengeance rode upon the wind, swift to loose the fetters of the chained, to make desert the rebellious land; with a chorus, or refrain, in which Ben's wild, melancholy cry sounded like the wail of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... pleasure versus pain, light versus darkness, comfort versus terror, the flying moment must be loaded with obloquy or excellence if its passage is not to remain a dead fact, and to sink from the sphere of actuality altogether into that droning limbo of potentialities which we call matter. Being which is indifferent to form is only the material of being. To exist is nothing if you have nothing to do, if there is nothing to choose or to distinguish, or if those things ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... reading half-hour that his mind was at ease in school that week, for then he could let his thoughts roam from Ballyards to Belfast, and fill his eyes with visions of Maggie. The droning voices of the children, reading "Jack has got a cart and can draw sand and clay in it," were almost soothing, and it was sufficient for supervision, if now and then, he would call out, "Next!" The child who was reading would instantly stop, and the child next to her would ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... they entered. It was very still otherwise. The morning sun struck through the stained windows and made pretty lights about the altar; besides themselves there were some half dozen other worshippers. The little organ ceased with a long droning sigh, and the minister in his white robes turned about, facing his auditors, and in the midst of a great silence opened the communion service with the words: "Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins and are in love and charity ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... the control tower, leaving young Oliver Muffin alone, droning his monotonous call to Tom Corbett, somewhere between Earth and Mars—a call that was to be the young cadet's first warning of treachery in ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... droning voice has abated to a deep, hoarse snore; London has become a great, broody giant taking rest that is troubled by snatches of wakefulness; London's grimy, lined face shows new wrinkles of shadow; and new and unexpected clumping of colors in monotone ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... been so closely related to her experiences of the night rushed past the house and disappeared along the winding roadway toward the Cedarcrest gate. And she remained there, in a listening attitude, as long as she could hear the droning murmur of its mechanism. When that died away in the distance, she sighed, and turned to reenter the house; but it was only to find that she was no longer alone. Roderick Duncan appeared in the doorway, and came through the ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... horses, bothered by flies, and the group of real estate men, lounging, while they spat tobacco juice, by the red flag at the gate. In the warm air, which was heavy with the scent of a purple catalpa tree on the corner, the drawling voice of the auctioneer could be heard like the loud droning of innumerable bees. A carriage passed down the street in a cloud of dust, and the very dust, as it drifted toward us, was drenched with the heady perfume of ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... white square of cardboard, even the stooped old man in the small back room—in the face of the overwhelming fear that reason could not fight down. Only the peculiarly absolute silence that came with the sudden cessation of his droning monotone checked the panic haste of her first rush. With one hand clutching the knob of the ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... like the song of bees, which floated rhythmically out from the zaouia, the school in the mosque where many boys squatted cross-legged before the aged Taleb who taught the Koran; bowing, swaying towards him, droning out the words of the Prophet, some half asleep, nodding ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... use or of ornament.... When the day has at last come to an end, and the women have gathered together enough wood for the fires during the night, they, too, throw themselves into their hammocks; and all talk together. Till far into the night the men tell endless stories, sometimes droning them out in a sort of monotonous chant, sometimes delivering them with a startling amount of emphasis and gesticulation. The boys and younger men add to the noise by marching round the houses, blowing horns and playing on flutes. There is but ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... The droning voice came up from below, each well-chosen word distinct and clear: tribute beautiful to the irreproachable character of the deceased. Leslie watched the face of the girl, curiously fascinated by the set, emotionless features, and yet without a conscious interest ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the wicket, and stood there a moment ere going on by the terrace to the front of the house. The day was now clear and vivid, soft and bright. The birds sang in a long ecstasy, the flowers bloomed as though all life must be put into June, the droning bees went about with the steadiest preoccupation. Alexander looked ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... Arias, "know, Roque, that I am at this time just in a humor to treat you with a renewal of such like favors, if you do not immediately put a stop to your droning and most impertinent reminiscences. I do not ask your condolence and regret for what is past, for that now cannot be remedied. I want thy shrewdness and invention to aid me in the present emergency. Violence I will not employ, so let your scruples be at rest. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... moorlands, Voice of the glens and hills; The droning of the torrents, The treble of the rills! Not the braes of broom and heather, Nor the mountains dark with rain, Nor maiden bower, nor border tower Have heard your ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... gave him for one long day the Right of Burgess. In autumn, in the early afternoon—the very season for those walls—it was easy for him to be filled with a restrained but united chorus, the under-voices of the city, droning and murmuring perpetually of Peace and of Labour and of the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... trying rather piteously to remind herself that it was Sunday. Far away in a New England village, the bells were ringing for the evening meeting. Lucy, shutting her eyes, could smell the spring scents in the church lane, could hear the droning of the opening hymn. A vague mystical peace stole upon her, as she recalled the service; the great words of 'sin,' 'salvation,' 'righteousness,' as the Evangelical understands them, thrilled through ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were now wrapped in flame, and their low mellow roaring mingled to a monotone with the droning of the cat on ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... Sunday mornings I seem to hear 'em, preachers, droning and shouting all over the land," he told her once. "What's in it? What do they know about God or where you go when you are dead? Nothing, no more than ...
— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole
... hot day at Waddy; the pulsing whirr of invisible locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent droning in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. No one was stirring: to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of unpainted weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage waters ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... was not the meaning in the words that interested them but their breath of life, like the furtive contacts between quivering antennae) their souls pursued another dialogue more solemn and profound. The dreams in the colored windows, the shadows cast by the piers, the droning of the hymns mingled with their dream, evoked the sorrowful facts of life which they desired to forget and the consoling homesickness of the infinite. Although it was nearly eleven o'clock, a yellowish ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... and dying are a grim sight upon a wide-spread battle-field, but when this number is heaped upon a confined space, where from a single high rock the whole litter of broken and shattered bodies can be seen, and the groans of the stricken rise in one long droning chorus to the ear, then it is an iron mind indeed which can resist such evidence of disaster. In a harder age Wellington was able to survey four thousand bodies piled in the narrow compass of the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... world came a man to the wooing of Susanna Crane. From the vague southwest he came, now skirting the chimneyed towns and elm-bordered village streets, now exchanging the road for the bright rails and perhaps the interior of a droning freight-car, now switching anew through the edge of odorous pine woods, yet leaving behind him always a ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... like a wasps' nest. Men poured from the huts in swarms. The streets were filled; the idle sauntering youths were swamped, and sunk from view. Clamour and shouting arose where before had been a droning silence. The mob beat up to where we stood, surrounding us, shouting at us. From somewhere some one brought an old table and two decrepit chairs, battered and rickety in themselves, but symbols of great authority in a community where nobody habitually ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... harbors, become music to him. In one of his early orchestral sketches, he imitates the buzzing of a hive of bees. One of his miniatures for string-quartet bangs with the beat of the wooden shoes of peasants dancing to the snarling tones of a bagpipe. Another reproduces the droning of the priest in a little chapel, recreates the scene almost cruelly. And the score of "Petruchka" is alive marvelously with the rank, garish life of a cheap fair. Its bubbling flutes, seething instrumental caldron, concertina-rhythms and bright, gaudy colors conjure up the movement of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... morning, and every crevice in the rough flanks of Ben Slioch was mirrored in the unwrinkled surface of the noble loch. Ben Eay had a bright covering of Nature's whitest, softest lawn. No sounds were heard except the low droning of a vagrant bee, the whizzing of a sea-mew's pinions, or a bark from this croft answered by a bark from that other a mile away. Suddenly the repose of the morning, in which a pedestrian could hear the echo of his own ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... droning the "Miserere." Children of the tenements, like moths drawn to globes of brilliant light on midsummer nights, hovered about the organ and danced. There was a capricious abandon about their movements which fascinated Simonoff. He had ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy, and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of waking stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... machine swept nearer, so that the clear night air carried the sounds distinctly to where they stood. Starr even caught the humming of the rear gears and knew that only now and then does a machine have that peculiar, droning hum; Starr studied it, tried to impress the ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... venturous hearts. Certainly they would go on. It was no matter about the sun. This was the valley of Ajalon, perhaps, of which one had heard in the class at Sabbath-school. And surely this was a good, droning, yellow-bodied bee—where did the bees go to when they rose up straight into the air? And this little mouse, what became of it in winter? And—ah! What was that—that awful burst of sound? Clutch closer, little brother, though both be pale! How should either of you yet know the thunderous ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough
... a heavy book was not pinching my toes. I've tried to kick it away, but it won't stir, and keeps droning on about reports and tariffs and such dull things," ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... distilled strong aromatic odours from the myriad leaves; languid flowers gave copiously and of the best of their fragrance; ferns and lotus did obeisance to high noon. The birds had ceased to whistle, and the droning of bees gave to the upper air slumbering rhythm ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... profit of L5 an acre from their first wheat crop. Labour-saving machinery from the United States came in to embolden the growers of cereals; the export of wheat rose to millions of bushels; and the droning hum of the steam threshing-machine and the whir of the reaper-and-binder began to be heard in a thousand fields from northern Canterbury to Southland. In the north McLean steadfastly kept the peace, and the Colony bade fair to become rich by leaps and bounds. The modern ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... continents of clouds, dazzling white like cotton-wool. A soft, warm breeze blew from the west, the birds sang merrily in every garden bush, and Cullerne was a town of gardens, where men could sit each under his own vine and fig-tree. The bees issued forth from their hives, and hummed with cheery droning chorus in the ivy-berries that covered the wall-tops with deep purple. The old vanes on the corner pinnacles of Saint Sepulchre's tower shone as if they had been regilt. Great flocks of plovers flew wheeling over Cullerne marsh, and flashed with ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... would be here with you, where the wind that has shaken off its dust in low valleys touches one cleanly, as with a new-washed hand, and pain is as the remote hunger of droning things, and anger but a little silence sinking into ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... consuming fire. He retraced his steps through deepening twilight, and with each mile of his questing return there grew in him that something which had come to him out of death, and which he knew would never leave him. And with this change the droning softness of the night itself seemed to whisper that the sea would not ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... night time the poppy made his journey a little before dawn. Thereafter the wildfowl came as is their wont over Sidono's summit, and the sun rising behind them gleamed upon Sidono, and all the flowers of the lake awoke. And the bee passing up and down the garden went droning to other poppies, and the flowers of the lake, they that had known the poppy, knew him no more. And the sun's rays slanting from Sidono's crest lit still a garden valley where one poppy waved his petals to ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... run-through rehearsals to make sure he had all the business and stage movements down pat, and Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage minute they could spare with Sid yelling, "Witling! Think'st that's a wifely buss?" and Martin would have been droning his lines last time he ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... day in autumn, and there is a droning of mosquitoes where I sit by an open window, glancing alternately out across the Assiniboian prairie and somewhat blankly at the bundle of paper before me, ready to begin this story. Its telling will not be an easy matter, but one finds idle hours pass heavily after a life ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... near the long table before the Throne. Like a quarry that is at last hemmed in, the Jew was quickly surrounded by a half thousand black-robed monks. The silence—sick, profound, and awful—was punctuated by the low, sullen tapping of a drum. Its droning sound reminded the prisoner of life-blood dripping from some single pore; the tone was B, and its insistent, muffled, funereal blow at rhythmic intervals would in time have worn away rock. Mendoza felt a prevision of his fate; being a musician he knew of ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... what he calls a Dramatic Interlude, which gives way to the third movement, a Vocal Scherzo, starting off with a chorus of Cherubim, who sing in fugacious thirds and droning dactyls:— ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the substance of his conversation with the rector, and now curled up on the low wooden seat, his small legs crossed underneath him, he was gazing dreamily out into the sweet-scented garden. The bees were droning, and the gnats humming amongst the tall hollyhocks and crimson and white roses close by; the birds were already twittering their last 'good-nights' to one another, and a soft, peaceful spell seemed to be falling on ...
— Teddy's Button • Amy Le Feuvre
... Elliott brushed away a persistent bluebottle fly, a lonesome survivor which the unseasonably warm day had reawakened. The insect's droning wings as it persisted again and again back to the sandwich plate made the only sound in that big, bare room. "And if I—if I had to guess——" The hand passed across his eyes now. "O'Mara, do you know how deeply Mr. Ainnesley and myself are ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... The droning of the engines came distinctly to them all, a low, steady, powerful note, beautiful in its steady undertones of strength. Behind the little group, a few involuntary exclamations of astonishment and joy became audible, as some of the ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... time with Aunt today, and, as I got the best of it, I'll tell you about it," began Jo, who dearly loved to tell stories. "I was reading that everlasting Belsham, and droning away as I always do, for Aunt soon drops off, and then I take out some nice book, and read like fury till she wakes up. I actually made myself sleepy, and before she began to nod, I gave such a gape that she asked me what I meant by opening my mouth wide enough to take ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... announced, and with that she began a droning sound that was worse than the buzzing, and kept it up till it set their nerves ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... of worship annihilated; a dreariness which could be felt, and which seemed the token of an incipient Socinianism, forcing itself upon the eye, the ear, the nostrils of the worshipper; a smell of dust and damp, not of incense; a sound of ministers preaching Catholic prayers, and parish clerks droning out Catholic canticles; the royal arms for the crucifix; huge ugly boxes of wood, sacred to preachers, frowning on the congregation in the place of the mysterious altar; and long cathedral aisles unused, railed off, like the tombs ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... dusk, reading by the broad blaze of the logs that flamed and crackled on wrought-iron standards. Just as merrily the blaze had spread its ruddy light over the room when it was a monkish refectory, and when the droning of a youthful brother reading aloud to the fraternity as they ate their supper was the only sound, except the clattering of knives and ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... floor where even the tall, gaunt old clothes-press seemed to shiver with discomfort, the cold was extreme. As there was no fireplace in the room they determined to set up a stove, of which the purring, droning murmur assisted to brighten their ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... come to hold in regard, remained unshaken in their statements, an uncomfortable doubt assailed her—a doubt that, despite herself, she fostered. A doubt that caused her to ponder long of nights as she lay in her little room listening to the droning voices of LeFroy and Big Lena as they talked by the stove in ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... necks and shoulders stood out in magnificent contrast against the men's almost invariably sombre costumes. The murmur of voices, the hum of the crowd, could be heard even in the middle of the garden as a sort of droning bass, interspersed with fioriture of shrill laughter or clamor of some rare dispute. You saw gentlemen and celebrities cheek by jowl with gallows-birds. There was something indescribably piquant about the anomalous assemblage; the most insensible of men ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... by his head, droning like a hornet, and glanced sullenly against a flat rock. Immediately afterward, The Kid heard the sharp bark of a .45. He knew by the sound of the bullet and by the elapsed time between it and the sound of the gun that he was within dangerous range. Crouching low in his saddle, ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... too exciting to let the children fall asleep early. Fires were kept briskly burning, and some of the wagoners feeling in a musical humor, shouted songs or hummed melancholy tunes which sounded like a droning accompaniment to the rain. The rain fell with a continuous murmur, and evidently in slender threads, for it scarcely pattered on the tent. It was no beating, boisterous, drenching tempest, but a lullaby ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... yet somewhat stiffly and officially conceived; lines much more cordial to the high-born Aelius Lamia (III, 17), whose statue stands to-day amid the pale immortalities of the Capitoline Museum. We have a note of tonic banter to Tibullus, "jilted by a fickle Glycera," and "droning piteous elegies" (I, xxxiii); a merry riotous impersonation of an imaginary symposium in honour of the newly-made augur Murena (III, 19), with toasts and tipsiness and noisy Bacchanalian songs and rose-wreaths flung about the board; a delicious mockery of ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... the deed," Willock suggested. "It travels slow in my company, and though Bill reads 'er correct, he does considerable droning. I expect if Wilfred reads it with unction, it'll sound like a ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... This wine is liquid gold. I quaff to your good health and ease of mind. This is good wine. It warms my chilly blood With all the dreamy heat of Spain. I hear The clack of th' castinet and th' droning twang Of stringed instruments; while there before Mine eyes brown, yielding beauties dance in time To the pulsing music of a saraband! And yet there is a flavor of the sea, [Sipping wine. The long-drawn heaving of the ocean wave, The gentle ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... There was no doubt about it. There was a droning over us now, like the noise bees make, or many flies in a small room on a hot summer's day. That was the drone of the German shells. There was a little freshening of the artillery activity on both sides, Captain Godfrey said, as if in my honor. When one side increased its ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... service. A sharp spasm convulsed the convalescent share-list. In five minutes the dull noise of the kerbstone market in Broad Street had leapt to a high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear, and men rushed hatless in and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous 'short' interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... listening to the noises of the ship, the thump and bumble of the engines, the distant droning of the screws under water. From time to time stewards moved down the corridor outside, and the footsteps of some late passenger still paced the decks overhead. He heard voices, too, and occasionally the clattering ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... one the dancers, bending down, make a motion with their hands, as though they were sowing the grain, keeping step with their feet all the time. Then comes the reaping of the crop and the binding of the sheaves, all done in perfect time and rhythm, and making, with the continuous droning of the voices, a quaint and picturesque performance. [139] The Karma dance of the Gonds and Oraons is also connected with the crops, and probably was once an enactment of the work of cultivation. [140] The Bhils ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... the poor human being to talk and to think, exiled as he is from reality in his Babylon of abstractions. Life, like the porcupine when not ruffled by practical alarms, can let its fretful quills subside. The mystic can live happy in the droning consciousness of his own heart-beats and ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana |
