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Festal   Listen
Festal

adjective
1.
Offering fun and gaiety.  Synonyms: festive, gay, merry.  "Gay and exciting night life" , "A merry evening"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Festal" Quotes from Famous Books



... queen and her train of attendants, no rumours passed the carefully guarded bounds of the women's apartments. At length the long season of pleasure came to a harmonious close. No outbreak of the people of Shushan, no rising of distant provinces, no plotting of high-born traitors had marred the festal pomp. Yet the season of pleasure is always a period of trial, and the seeds of remorse and repentance are almost invariably sown in the hours of gayety. Amid all this brightness, a dark cloud hung ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous

... proportions to fit it as a vestibule to the New Houses of Parliament, it is still a noble and spacious building, and one cannot walk through it without in imagination recalling some of the Royal Christmases and other stately scenes which have been witnessed there. The last of these festal glories was the coronation of George the Fourth, which took place in 1821. This grand old hall at Westminster was the theatre of Rufus's feasting and revelry; but, vast as the edifice then was, it did not equal the ideas of the extravagant ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... radiated wildly in every direction. Beneath the foremost locks were two eyeballs, the one sightless, the other black and piercing, and ever on the move, having to do double duty. A rough, stubbly, and anything but cleanly beard, which was submitted to the razor only on festal occasions, gave an additional wildness to a countenance which was furrowed across the forehead and down either cheek with deep lines blotched and freckled. As for the mouth, it was a perfect study in itself. Usually pretty tightly closed, it displayed ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson

... night, to console his guardians and to resume his functions. Great honors are paid to him. He wears jewels which a Colonna might envy, and not a square inch of his body is without a splendid gem. On festal occasions, like Christmas, he wears a coronet as brilliant as the triple crown of the Pope, and, lying in the Madonna's arms in the representation of the Nativity, he is adored by the people until Epiphany. Then, after ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... to secure wages which, together with pickings in the shape of tips and perquisites, enable him to save. The low-caste people of a village often present a brilliant appearance when they turn out in holiday attire on some festal day, and the gold ornaments of the women sufficiently indicate their prosperous condition. That they have their own quarter, outside the village proper, does not cause them any searchings of heart. They come into ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin

... of the Anne all Plymouth put on festal gear and merry faces. Good cheer abounded in place of famine, for the new-comers were well stored with provision, and although this was not turned into the common stock, those who had promising crops—and since the Fast Day there had been no stint of rain, and the corn ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... truth. I dared not, do you know, leave home all day, For fear of chancing on the Paris lords. The best is when they pass and look aside; But they speak sometimes: I must bear it all. Well may they speak! That Francis, that first time, And that long festal year at Fontainebleau! I surely then could sometimes leave the ground, Put on the glory, Rafael's daily wear, In that humane great monarch's golden look,— One finger in his beard or twisted curl Over his mouth's good mark that made the smile, One ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... wood![356-1]—the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still. Each age has deem'd the new-born year The fittest time for festal cheer:[356-2] And well our Christian sires of old Loved when the year its course had roll'd, And brought blithe Christmas back again, With all his hospitable train.[356-3] Domestic and religious rite[356-4] Gave honor to the holy night; On Christmas Eve the bells were rung;[356-5] On ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... Ne'erland's blood feel nobly flow, From foreign tainture free, Whose hearts for king and country glow, Come, raise the song as we: With breasts serene, and spirits gay, In holy union sing The soul-inspiring festal ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... sunless caves, Like bodies struggling in their graves, Carolina! And now it deepens; slow and grand It swells, as, rolling to the land, An ocean broke upon thy strand, Carolina! Shout! Let it reach the startled Huns! And roar with all thy festal guns! It is the ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various

... pass by in procession—men, women, and children—on their way to the flames, to the sound of music, and in festal array, carrying the gold and silver vessels, the roll of the law, the perpetual lamp and the seven branched silver candle-stick of the synagogue. The crowd ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... One who knows my every heart-beat, One whom I can love without fear of wound or disenchantment. The mountain clefts have no unkind words, no fault-finding, no ridicule, no rash judgments for the sons of men. They offer clear springs, fresh fruits, and festal flowers, peace and rest and ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... All at once people's thoughts were interrupted, and their eyes turned from selfish joys or pains by the emerald flash of fields and hill-sides in the morning sun, and the white flutter of flowering boughs past their windows like the festal garments of unexpected guests. ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... seemed to give way, and that his ambition was still to be ahead of Raleigh himself. As Raleigh returned to sleep on board the 'War Sprite,' the town of Cadiz was all ablaze with lamps, tapers, and tar barrels, while there came faintly out to the ears of the English sailors a murmur of wild festal music. ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... Christianity and Islam. Like the Kizil-Bash peasants of to-day, the ancient inhabitants of the peninsula met on the summits of mountains covered with woods no ax had desecrated, and {48} celebrated their festal days.[1] They believed that Cybele resided on the high summits of Ida and Berecyntus, and the perennial pines, in conjunction with the prolific and early maturing almond tree, were the sacred trees of Attis. Besides trees, the country people ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... or a week with our own horse. A few days' rest, and then six or eight hours more took us to New York, where we found the water fountains opened; the Croton had been brought in that summer. Did it not seem all very fit and festal to us? ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... again through the garden-paths, she brushed the dew with her trailing festal garments, and plucked the great blue convolvuli to crown her forehead. Soon, on a plot of Roman violets, screened by tall trees and trellises, we breakfasted. One might have said that the cloth was laid above giant mushroom-stems, the service acorn-cups and calices ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... French landed again, and found their new friends on the same spot, to the number of eighty or more, seated under a shelter of boughs, in festal attire of smoke-tanned deer-skins, painted in many colors. The party then rowed up the river, the Indians following them along the shore. As they advanced, coasting the borders of a great marsh that lay upon their left, the St. John's spread before them ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... directly into the living-room of his rambling house sat Reuben Granger, an old man, bent with laborious seasons, and not untouched by rheumatism. The wrinkles on his face were many and curiously intertwined; his weather-beaten straw hat seemed to supply any festal deficiency indicated by the shirt-sleeves; and his dim eyes blinked with shrewdness upon the dusty road, along which, at intervals, a belated wagon passed, clattering. His days of usefulness were not ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull

... Except six nights ere coming of summer On the kalends of May. To each of those men Be hell's door shut, heaven's unclosed, 1230 Eternally opened the kingdom of angels, Joy without end, and their portion appointed Along with. Mary, who takes into mind That one most dear of festal days Of that rood under heaven, that which the mightiest 1235 Ruler of all ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous

... of King Frederick Augustus by Rietschl was unveiled in the Dresden Zwinger [Footnote: This is the name by which the famous Dresden Art Galleries are known.—Editor.] with all due pomp and ceremony. In honour of this event I, in collaboration with Mendelssohn, was commanded to compose a festal song, and to conduct the gala performance. I had written a simple song for male voices of modest design, whereas to Mendelssohn had been assigned the more complicated task of interweaving the National Anthem (the English 'God Save the King,' which in Saxony is ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... that he would like to," she murmured, faintly, "but it would be a ghastly sight—a poor blind girl sitting at the festal board with the gay guests. Oh! why did God put such a terrible affliction upon me?" throwing out her little white hands and beating the air as she sobbed aloud in her agony. "Why can I not enter into his joys, and share them with him as others ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey

... India, to Egypt, then a comfortable meandering through Europe. A year of joy-living they planned that they might learn to know each other, with all the ministers of happiness in attendance. But the disagreements of two petted children made murky many a day of their prolonged festal journey, and beclouded for them both many days of the elaborate home-making after the home-coming. And the murkiness and cloudiness were not dissipated when parenthood was theirs. Neither had learned the first page in Life's ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... has been wasted in Manila and in the outside presidios in firing salutes to the persons who govern the provinces, and on festal days, as appears by the different accounts of the administration of the royal estate, is considerable; and inasmuch as this cannot be regulated with certainty, it is diminished by eight hundred pesos per year, for according ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various

... more wood! the wind is chill; But let it whistle as it will, We'll keep our Christmas merry still. Each age has deemed the new-born year The fittest time for festal cheer; E'en, heathen yet, the savage Dane At Iol more deep the mead did drain; High on the beach his galleys drew, And feasted all his pirate crew; Then in his low and pine-built hall, Where shields and axes decked the wall, They gorged ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... were to travel in their carriages from other watering-places for twenty or thirty miles. The ballroom had been decorated by a committee of ladies; the costumes, it was anticipated, would be dazzling beyond measure. No disappointment was felt when the festal hour arrived, but the very keen emotion attendant upon the absence of the ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... men Be hell's door shut, heaven's unclosed, Eternally opened the kingdom of angels, Joy without end, and their portion appointed Along with Mary, who takes into mind The one most dear of festal days Of ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... is, than as it sometimes appears. The danger of intemperance is when it assumes this very garb of respectability, and sits in the radiant circle of fashion attended by wit and beauty and social delight. Let us see the Tempter, not as he seems when he throws out his earliest lures, in festal garments and with roses around his brow; but as he looks when fairly engaged in his work, showing his genuine expression. Let us see this vice of intemperance in its results, as they teem and darken here in the midst of our city life. Lay bare its channel—let us see to its very ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... Pester Lloyd (evening paper of 27th September, 1884).—Liszt having sent Podmaniczky a Royal Hymn for the opening of the New Hungarian Opera House instead of a Festal Prelude, which the latter had requested, Podmaniczky wrote to the Master on the 17th September, 1884, that the motive of the hymn having been borrowed from a revolutionary song would prove an "unsurmountable obstacle" ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... chain of rooms in Mrs. Light's apartment, the pride and joy of the hostess on festal evenings, through which the departing visitor passed before reaching the door. In one of the first of these Rowland found himself waylaid and arrested by the distracted ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... the delicate body in the festal dress, which she had herself prepared. A garland of asters was wreathed about her head, which shone sadly there like melancholy stars. To decorate the bier and the church and chapel, the gardens were robbed of their beauty; they lay desolate, as if a premature winter had blighted ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... when the lights of the candles in the chandeliers shone over the furniture, the hangings, and the flowers, the rooms wore the festal air that gives to Parisian luxury the appearance of a dream; and Lucien felt indefinable stirrings of hope and gratified vanity and pleasure at the thought that he was the master of the house. But how and by whom the magic wand had been waved he no longer sought to remember. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... also Ezek. xi. 20: xiv. 11: xxxvi. 28: xxxvii. 27; and Zech. viii. 8: xiii. 9. Lastly, consider Rev. xxi. 3; where "the types of the itinerant Tabernacle in the Wilderness, the figurative ritual and festal joys of the Feast of Tabernacles, celebrated in the literal Jerusalem, are consummated in the Heavenly Jerusalem." (Wordsworth.) See also Rev. vii. 15, with the annotation of the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... the garments of the night and the indulgences of the night; the loose robes of pleasure and flowing garments of repose; the festal pleasures of the hours of darkness are not for the children of the day. Let us cast off the works ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... set the festal board aside, And bear the harp away; The coronach must sound instead ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford

... had never heard of the verb poteein, but that potamos, potema, and potos, were derived from pino, poso, pepoka, in consequence of which, the Greek poets never use any other word for festal drinking. Homer describes Nestor at his cups ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... final details were arranged; and those also would have prospered but for a trifling accident. The season was one of general carnival at Rome; and, by the help of those disguises which the license of this festal time allowed, the murderers were to have penetrated as maskers to the emperor's retirement, when a casual word or two awoke the suspicions of a sentinel. One of the conspirators was arrested; under the terror ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... to the dwelling proper, which consisted of a principal salon and adjoining rooms with bare flagstone floors, and ceilings of beams and painted wooden paneling. The walls of the rooms were whitewashed, and only in the wealthiest houses were they covered with tapestries, and in these only on festal occasions. In the fifteenth century the walls of few houses were adorned with pictures, and these usually consisted of only a few family portraits. If Vannozza decorated her salon with any likenesses, that of Cardinal Rodrigo certainly must have been among the number. There was likewise a ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... although its call be loud. Better than waste long nights in idle show, To help the indigent and raise the low— To train the wicked to forsake his way, And find th' industrious work from day to day! Better to charity those hours afford, Which now are wasted at the festal board! ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... suspense had come. The Sundays of good young ladies little resembled those of a century later, though they were not devoid of a calm peacefulness, worthy of the "sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright." The inhabited rooms of the old house looked bright and festal; there were fresh flowers in the pots, honey as well as butter on the breakfast table. The Major and Palmer were both in full uniform, wonderfully preserved. Eugene, a marvel of prettiness, with his curled hair and little velvet coat, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... that the polished breast, Only, can feel the fire of love, Pure as the flames that brightly rest In bosoms of the realms above. Yes! often in the rudest form, A heart may be, more clear and bright Than ever lent the loveliest charm To goddess of the Festal light. Come, hear a story of the time, When this wide land was one green bower, The roving Red man's Eden-chine, Where bloomed the wildest flower. The great ships brought a wondrous race, One evening o'er the ocean ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley

... thou watchest favoringly, thou watchest truly, O master of the two horizons.... Thou treadest the heavens on high, thine enemies are laid low. The heaven is glad, the earth is joyful, the gods unite in festal cheer to render glory to Ra when they see him rising in his bark after he has overwhelmed his enemies. O Ra, give abounding life to Pharaoh, bestow bread for his hunger (belly), water for his ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... bull, or ram. The yeomen appeared to be more in their element than I have ever seen them anywhere else, except, indeed, at labor;—more so than at musterings and such gatherings of amusement. And yet this was a sort of festal day, as well as a day of business. Most of the people were of a bulky make, with much bone and muscle, and some good store of fat, as if they had lived on flesh-diet;—with mottled faces too, hard and red, like those of persons ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... from care is free, Then, Saviour, would we think on thee; And, seated at the festal board, In ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams

... On gala and festal occasions the Fijians were wonderfully and fantastically dressed up, their huge heads of hair thickly covered with a red or yellow powder, and they themselves wearing large skirts or "sulus" of coloured "tapa" and pandanus ribbons ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... Once on a festal occasion, when the King was present, a reward was offered, as usual, to any person who would ascend and attend to the weather-vane. A sailor agreed to do it, and ascended in the way I have told you, until he came to the copestone, ...
— Harper's Young People, August 3, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the joys to which you have been summoned here To keep the Ides of April, to the sea-born Venus dear,— Ah, festal day more sacred than my own fair day of birth, Since from its dawn my loved Maecenas counts his ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... of his epigrams being an epitaph on Euphorion. He also wrote lyric poetry; Athenaeus mentions a dithyrambic poem of his called the /Centaurs/, and a /Hymn to Love/. The /Garland/ of Meleager, l. 53, speaks of "the fresh-blooming festal ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail

... hall looked its stateliest that morning. The March sunshine came slanting through the tall windows, and lay in bright patches upon the broad floor, or gleamed upon the ancient swords and breastplates, or glowed in the festal hangings. Quite a large number of titled and fashionable persons were collected at the upper end of the room, whispering and rustling, and dressed in what we should now consider very wonderful costumes, though they were all the mode then. A few minutes before eleven the very reverend ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... of the accident to my team that I'm forced to intrude at a time like this," she apologized to Nicola. He was an old man, gaunt and bowed, and his festal trappings seemed rather ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... is no prettier sight possible than the broad campus dotted with buildings, and the knots of daintily-dressed girls moving slowly to and fro along the winding paths. The Meadow City always puts on her most festal array in honor of the occasion; the very heavens seem to watch for that week, and to provide for it the finest moon of ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray

... habitation, high on Cythera's hills or in Idalium, that he may not know nor cross our wiles. Do thou but for one night feign his form, and, boy as thou art, put on the familiar face of a boy; so when in festal cheer, amid royal dainties and Bacchic juice, Dido shall take thee to her lap, shall fold thee in her clasp and kiss thee close and sweet, thou mayest imbreathe a hidden ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil

... relatives and friends of the persons buried under or near them, in the performance of expiatory ceremonies or for commemorative banquets, for which purpose all the necessaries, from the table-service to the festal garments, were kept on the spot, in cabinets entrusted to the care of a watchman. This practice—save the expiatory offerings—was adopted by the Christians. The agapai, or love-feasts, before degenerating ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... of pencils knobbed with quartz or sard Delighted her. And rings of every size Turned smartly round like hoops before her eyes, Amethyst-flamed or ruby-girdled, jarred To spokes and flashing triangles, and starred Like rockets bursting on a festal day. Charlotta ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell

... of Kesh himself, a short, stout, broad-shouldered young man, thick-featured, heavy-faced, and having large, rolling eyes. He was clad in festal garments, and hung about with heavy chains of gold fastened with clasps of glittering stones, while from his crisp, black hair rose a tall plume of nodding ostrich feathers. Fan bearers walked beside him, and the train of his long cloak was borne by two black and hideous dwarfs, ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard

... Did you observe the exquisite interweaving of the voices? the clever entrances by which the composer has grouped them round the main idea given out by the orchestra? the learned progressions that prepare us for the festal allegro? Did you not get a glimpse, as it were, of dancing groups, the dizzy round of a whole nation escaped from danger? And when the clarionet gives the signal for the stretto,—'Voci di giubilo,'—so ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac

... in a rude adaptation of the forest trees, with all their boughs, to a festal or solemn arcade; as the bands about the cleft pillars still indicate the green withes that tied them. No one can walk in a road cut through pine woods, without being struck with the architectural appearance of the grove, especially in winter, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... they approached, reached her, and discharged their complements, until at last a hundred and fifty passengers crowded her deck. In silence—or in such silence as a paddle-boat can achieve—she backed, turned, and bore them away: on what festal errand we never discovered. We never saw them return. For aught I know they may never have returned. They raised no cheer; no band accompanied them; they passed without even the faint hum of conversation. In five minutes ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... "ordinary," or prescribed, books, "two books of Cicero's Letters will be read on festal days"; and "the Greek Grammar of Theodorus Gaza will be explained at the expense of ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton

... journey than some of his friends, one of whom said that he could not see Paris properly because the houses there were too high. To-day Hasse's opera is to be given; as papa, however, is not going, I can't go either. [FOOTNOTE: Hasse had also a festal opera to compose, but Leopold Mozart writes, "I am sorry to say that Wolfgang's Serenata has totally eclipsed Hasse's opera."] Fortunately I know all the airs thoroughly by heart, so I can see and hear them in my own ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

... each other of some of our finest exhibitions. He never wrote to them—that may have been selfish, but it was a part of the flattery of his trust of me; for the way in which a man pays his highest tribute to a woman is apt to be but by the more festal celebration of one of the sacred laws of his comfort; and I held that I carried out the spirit of the pledge given not to appeal to him when I let my charges understand that their own letters were but charming literary exercises. They were too beautiful to be posted; I kept ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... those anthems of our festal days, Whose ravishing division held apart The lips of listening throngs in sweet amaze, Moved in all breasts the self-same ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... the fantasies which she had long dreamed about; and, aided by these, Uncle Venner's casual attempt at encouragement kindled a strange festal glory in the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of her brain, as if that inner world were suddenly lighted up with gas. But either he knew nothing of her castles in the air,—as how should he?—or else her earnest scowl disturbed his recollection, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... One dries the sweat from her, another fans her, and a third looks after her clothing. Down a different street comes the bridegroom to meet the bride, with a like or even greater retinue in competition with that of the relatives of the bride. The men are in gala costume, and armed; the women are in festal array; and the chief women in chairs. The dress of the bridal pair must be white, until, the [bride's] consent having been given, the bridegroom retires, and exchanges it for a red dress. In this ceremony coquetry displays greater affectations: ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... in his recital, one of the guests at the head of the festal board had listened with peculiar eagerness. He was a knight, tall and finely limbed, and attired with pointed elegance and taste. His pourpoint was barred with gold, and deep fringes of the same precious metal adorned its borders. His face was swarthy from exposure, though classical ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... Chinese for this music, and so the old Chinese music became unfashionable and was forgotten. The upper class, the gentry, bought these girls, often in large numbers, and organized them in troupes of singers and dancers, who had to appear on festal occasions and even at the court. For merchants and other people who lacked full social recognition there were brothels, a quite natural feature wherever there were considerable commercial colonies or collections of merchants, including the ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... or Offerings. They may be divided in several ways, among which the most instructive is as follows: (1) National Sacrifices, which include (a) Serial, such as daily, weekly, and monthly offerings, (b) Festal, as the Passover, Cycle of Months, etc., (c) for the service of the Holy Place, as holy oil, precious incense, twelve loaves, etc. (2) Official Sacrifices, which include (a) those for the priests, (b) those ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell

... a funny phrase. I thought the maxim was that second thoughts were best." Alice had never mentioned Farnham's name since the first night, but he was rarely out of her mind, and the thought that his life was saved made every hour bright and festal. "He will be well," she thought. "He will have to come here to thank mamma for her care of him. I shall see him again and he shall not complain of me. If he should never speak to me again, I shall love him and be good to him always." She was yet too ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay

... found in ancient British sites. These primitive appliances preceded the circular rotatory querns in evolution, and as the monuments prove were used in ancient Egypt. I cannot say whether, amongst the Euahlayi, there was a recognised licence as to exchange of wives on these festal occasions, or at boorahs. If the custom existed, I was not told of it by the blacks; but it is quite possible that, unless I made inquiries on the subject, I would ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker

... Yes, what's the use of plying whip and spur When there is not a penny of reward For him who tears him from the festal board, And mounts, and dashes headlong to perdition? Such doing for the deed's sake asks a knight, And knighthood's now an idle superstition. That was your ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen

... nobles, waiting before their palaces, had glided into position as the procession swept down toward the Piazza—each gondola showing the colors of its casa, each fluttering a silken streamer in honor of Cyprus, each bearing its freight of crimson-garbed Senators and ladies in festal array. ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... held cinnamon-coloured kid gloves and a forage-cap, and with his right he kept every moment twisting his frizzled tuft of hair up into tiny curls. Complacency and at the same time a certain diffidence were depicted upon his face. His festal appearance and proud gait would have made me burst out laughing, if such a proceeding had been ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... rosy fillets shed Blushes o'er each fervid head, With many a cup and many a smile The festal moments we beguile." ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... Greenwich Park, with all those festal people wandering through it, resembled that of the Borghese Gardens under the walls of Rome, on a Sunday or Saint's day; but, I am not ashamed to say, it a little disturbed whatever grim ghost of Puritanic strictness might be lingering in the sombre ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... transparency-picture of glorification that was offered to us. There were interests concealed in the game, and much lack of moral fibre, all of which we passed over in silence; it was out of place in our festal oratory. ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... that I retain the spiritual essentials I learned then and there. I never had the young man's period of disbelief. There has never been a time when if the Angel of Death had appeared upon the scene—no matter how festal—I would not have knelt with adoration and welcome; never a time on the battlefield or at sea when if the elements had opened to swallow me I would ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... more terrible to his feelings than the dreariest wilderness of ocean! For, girdling the dusky horizon, could he not see the domes and campaniles of Venice, perhaps the very lamps in his own palace windows, from whose festal saloons he had just been decoyed; just distant enough to be beyond the reach of help? but too, too near for that despairing gaze that recognized and bade adieu for ever at the same glance? There too were not those nestling lovely islands, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... up their quarters in the nest discovered by Mrs. Olsen, and plunged into that half-conscious existence of festal felicity which the English call the "honeymoon," because it is too sweet; the Germans, "Flitterwochen," because its glory departs so quickly; and we "the wheat-bread days" because we know that there is ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland

... young matron, smiled into her father's eyes, which were as brilliant and tender as her own. Ovid and his daughter were singularly alike in a certain blitheness of demeanour, and in Fabia's eyes they made a charming picture now, both of them in festal white against the March green of the slender poplars. Perilla's little boy had climbed into his grandfather's lap and laid carefully upon his hair, still thick and black, a wreath of grape leaves picked from early vines in a sunny corner. Fabia and Perilla's husband, Fidus Cornelius, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson

... The[h] festal Blazes, the triumphal Show, The ravish'd Standard, and the captive Foe, The Senate's Thanks, the Gazette's pompous Tale, With Force resistless o'er the Brave prevail. Such Bribes the rapid Greek o'er Asia whirl'd, For such the steady Romans shook ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson

... will not dwell 'neath a palace dome, With rare exotic flowers, Whose perfumed splendour gaily gleams In radiant festal hours: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers

... For not only did no crowd of women surround the bed of the dying, but many passed from this life unregarded, and few indeed were they to whom were accorded the lamentations and bitter tears of sorrowing relations; nay, for the most part, their place was taken by the laugh, the jest, the festal gathering; observances which the women, domestic piety in large measure set aside, had adopted with very great advantage to their health. Few also there were whose bodies were attended to the church by more than ten or twelve of their neighbours, and those not the honourable and ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... precedes the religious, which, however, is more important to the people than the former: hence the evening after the civil marriage the groom goes about his business as though he were not yet married. The religious marriage, on the contrary, is a festal occasion. The hour differs according to habits and family tastes. In Salaparuta the marriage takes place before night—in Ficarazzi, before daybreak, a favorite time for those contracting a second marriage. In Palermo the wedding formerly took place ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... children) in mistake for his infant son Zeus, for whom it had been substituted by Uranus and Gaea, his wife's parents (Etymologicum Magnum, s.v.). This stone was carefully preserved at Delphi, anointed with oil every day and on festal occasions covered with raw wool (Pausanias x. 24). In Phoenician mythology, one of the sons of Uranus is named Baetylus. Another famous stone was the effigy of Rhea Cybele, the holy stone of Pessinus, black and of irregular form, which was brought to Rome in 204 B.C. and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... the closed curtain of my sight My fancy paints thy portrait far away, I see thee still the same, by night or day; Crossing the crowded street, or moving bright 'Mid festal throngs, or reading by the light Of shaded lamp some friendly poet's lay, Or shepherding the children at their play,— The same sweet ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke

... prospect! Fair it lies Before him, with its plains expanding vast, Peopled with visions, and enrich'd with dreams; Dim cities, ancient forests, winding streams, Places resounding in the famous past, A kingdom ready to his hand! How like a bride Life seems to stand In welcome, and with festal robes array'd! He feels her loveliness pervade And pierce him with inexplicable sweetness; And, in her smiles delighting, and the fires Of his own pulses, passionate soul! Measures his strength by his desires, And the wide future by their fleetness, ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps

... condescended to no flattery and attuned his lyre to no sentiment but what would find an echo in every noble heart; he excelled in every department of lyric poetry, hymns to the gods, the praises of heroes, paeans of victory, choral songs, festal songs and dirges, but of these only a few remain, his Epinikia, a collection of triumphal odes in celebration of the successes achieved at the great national games of Greece; he was not only esteemed ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... his pieces is called by Calderon himself festal dramas (fiestas). They were destined for representation at court on solemn occasions; and though they require the theatrical pomp of frequent change of decoration and visible wonders, and though music also is often introduced into them, still we may call ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... up with festal splendor; in the midst of it, and in the centre of the stage a table richly set out, at which eight generals are sitting, among whom are OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI, TERZKY, and MARADAS. Right and left of this, but further back, two other tables, at each of which ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... have ordered a banquet to be prepared. Fish, fowl, and flesh, roasted, and in luscious stews, and seasoned, I trust, to all your tastes, are ready to be served up. If your appetites tell you it is dinner-time, then come with me to the festal saloon." ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... were waiting for him, and gave him a joyful welcome in honour of the Sabbath. All servile work was forbidden on this day holy to the Lord; and all over the house, and in the face of all the family, I observed a kind of festal air. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... and political discussion. But the Nemi piece was to be specially bound for Eleanor, together with some drawings that she had made of the lake and the temple site earlier in the spring. And on the day the book was finished—somewhere within the next fortnight—there was to be a festal journey to Nemi—divine ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... guests. When the feast had been prolonged three days, the princess came forth to make herself pleasant to the envoys with a most courteous address, and her blithe presence added not a little to the festal delights of the banqueters. And as the drink went faster Westmar revealed his purpose in due course, in a very merry declaration, wishing to sound the mind of the maiden in talk of a friendly sort. And, in order not to inflict on himself a rebuff, he spoke in a ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... steps of his store in French Village in the glory of a stiff white shirt and a festal red vest. The store was closed, of course, in honour of the day. In a few minutes he would put on his black coat, in his official capacity of trustee of the church, and march solemnly over to ring the ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... sun's feet glimmer, The star-unstricken pavements of the night; Do the lights burn inside? the lights wax dimmer On festal ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... this mood was, however, apparent in his manner on alighting. He bore a countenance of amiable insouciance through the portals of this festal institution whose proudest boast and—incidentally—sole claim to uniquity is that it never opens its doors before midnight nor closes ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... he may tell of the fact thereafter. The traveller may take the spirit of Sheridan's excellent advice to his son, and say he has touched it, but as a rule he takes the trouble to go down and do it. I was escorted for this festal ceremony by a resident, and leaning against that southernmost lamp-post was a Scot in an abject state of drunkeness, and as Stevenson says of a similar personage, "radiating dirt and humbug." Nigh at hand was another drunkard, sitting pipe in mouth on an upturned petroleum-tin, and ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... I relinquish my position it will not be easy to secure it again. I am delighted. I am charmed, Gabriella, to see that you have the firmness to resist, as well as the sensibility to feel. I am delighted, too, to see you in the only livery youth and innocence should wear in a festal scene like this. I abhor the gaudy tinselry which loads the devotees of fashion, indicative of false tastes and false principles; but white and pearls remind me of every thing pure and holy in nature. In the Bible we read of the white robes of angels and saints. Who ever dreamed of clothing ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... valley, where the natural solitude was as complete as the most devoted hermit could desire. The only means of getting to it were the narrow hill footpaths along which the worshippers from the great city and the scattered villages wound in and out on festal days, when they came trooping to the temple to make their offerings to the famous ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... view [as ears of young rice ripening in the field] all clad alike in summer festal robes, the company ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... That night around the festal board, 'mid incandescence gay, Sat Pomp and Pride and Wealth and Power, in sumptuous array, That night the happy, careless throng were all on pleasure bent, And Beauty in her jewelled robes to ball and opera went. 'Mid feasting, laughter, ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... gay idlers who were wandering about the balconies or through the hotel grounds; while laughs and little shrieks, uttered by the children as their pursuing nurses caught them up for bed, mingled not unpleasantly with the silvery hum arising from the fashionable crowd and the festal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various

... flame, and brought in some daffodils from the garden without a word from her mistress. Phyllis herself saw that the victrola was in readiness, and cleared a space for the couch near the fire. There was quite a festal feeling. ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... name by which she was henceforth to be known. The city was wild with joy and pride thus to christen her. And she, having crossed by the bridge, as she had said, sat down for a brief while to that festal board which had been spread for her. But fatigue soon over-mastering her, she retired to her room, only pausing to look ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green

... all of us a fancy for experiments in pillage, Yet never have we seized a town, or even sacked a village.” John Gilbert said unto his mates—“Though partners we have been In all rascality, yet we no festal day have seen.” ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson

... the festal board; Heabani takes his seat beside his lord. The choicest viands of the wealthy plain Before them placed and fishes of the main, With wines and cordials, juices rich and rare The chieftains all enjoy—the royal fare. This day, with Izdubar they laugh and joke 'Mid courtesies and mirth, and ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... Institute. A lofty white room lighted by glazed-white chandeliers holding hundreds of ornate electric bulbs, and divided by two rows of massive columns; at one end a dais, flanked with two tall many-branched light standards, and a gold frame behind, from which the Imperial portrait had been cut. Here on festal occasions had been banked brilliant military and ecclesiastical uniforms, ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... of St. Helena and St. Constantine, the parish priest says Mass in the grey of dawn. At sunrise all the village meets in festal array; the youngest Nistinare brings from the church the icones of the two saints, and drums are carried behind them in procession. They reach the sacred well in the wood, which the priest blesses. This is parallel to the priestly benediction ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang

... The House of Shang of course suffered the same fate. An ambitious but kind-hearted prince came forward to succour the people, and was welcomed by them as a deliverer. The tyrant, seeing that all was lost, arrayed himself in festal robes, set fire to his own palace, and, like another Sardanapalus, perished in ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... festal dainties spread, Like my bowl of milk and bread; Pewter spoon and bowl of wood, On the door-stone, gray and rude! O'er me, like a regal tent, Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent, Purple-curtained, fringed with gold, Looped in many a wind-swung fold; While for music came the play Of the pied ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... and pageant share! Smile on the flowing cup, and hail With us the Genius of this natal day! From whose anointed, rose-entwisted hair, Arabian odors waft away. If thou the festal bless, I will not fail To burn sweet incense unto him and thee, And offerings of ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... and stormed—she blinked at them all, for he was of the conquering race, a white man who had slept in white sheets and eaten off white tablecloths, and used a knife and fork, since he was born; and the women of his people had had soft petticoats and fine stockings, and silk gowns for festal days, and feathered hats of velvet, and shoes of polished leather, always and always, back through many generations. She had held her head high, for she was of his women, of the women of his people, with all their rights and all their claims. She had held it high till ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... a delicious table. Thou art no less than thou wast when every thing contributed to thy pleasure. Thou art no less than when at the head of thine army, thou wast the terror of nations, shaking the earth with the stunning noise of thy warlike instruments: for, at thy festal board, within thy palace, among thy pleasures, at the head of thine armies, thou wast nothing before the King of nations. As an immaterial and immortal creature, thou art subject to his immediate power; but, to humble and to confound thee, he must manifest himself to thee in ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox

... marriage-shed, the bride's mother ties a scarf round his neck and takes hold of his nose and drags him into the shed. Sometimes they make the bridegroom kneel down and pay reverence to a shoe as a joke. They do not observe the custom of the pangat or formal festal assembly, which is usual among Hindu castes; according to this, none can begin to eat until all the guests have assembled, when they all sit down at once. Among the Maheshris the guests sit down as they come in, and are served and take their food and go. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell

... was astir before its usual hour; there was a tang of joyousness in the air, and everybody's heart and mind, strangely enough, seemed to be in festal attire, although nobody was outwardly conscious of it. It was all the more inexplicable because Saint Margaret's had gone to bed miserable, and events naturally pointed toward depression: Margaret MacLean's coming departure, the abandoning of Ward C, the House Surgeon's ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... and acquires a duskier hue from the deep shadow into which the Province House is thrown by the brick block that shuts it in from Washington street. A ray of sunshine never visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most venerable and ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with Dutch tiles of blue-figured china, representing scenes from Scripture, and, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... its shutters were closed, also that it was undecorated with garlands, and idly wondered why. Others wondered too, for when they had wearied of discussing her points, she heard one plebeian ask another whose house that was and why it had been shut up upon this festal day. His fellow answered that he could not remember the owner's name, but he was a rich noble who had fallen in the Jewish wars, and that the palace was closed because it was not yet certain who was ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... in his mind, Gwenwyn prolonged his residence at the Castle of Berenger, from Christmas till Twelfthday; and endured the presence of the Norman cavaliers who resorted to Raymond's festal halls, although, regarding themselves, in virtue of their rank of knighthood, equal to the most potent sovereigns, they made small account of the long descent of the Welsh prince, who, in their eyes, was but the chief of a semibarbarous province; while he, on his part, considered ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... kind of god-father. As the procession moved on, an old bald-headed man touched each boy solemnly on the chin and brow with a bull-roarer. In the village preparations for a banquet had meanwhile been made, and the women and girls were waiting in festal attire. The women were much moved at the return of the lads; they sobbed and tears of joy ran down their cheeks. Arrived in the village the newly-initiated lads were drawn up in a row and fresh palm leaves were spread in front of them. Here they stood with closed eyes, motionless ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... but the ideal is there. As a concrete instance: let us have books, not a lot of books, but books that are friends with whom one may spend a comforting hour anywhere; books that have power to charm away the gloom of discontent, books to lend gayety to festal days. ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards

... with dire forebodings of the discomfiture of his dear old nut-cracker of a mother, did the honors of a general introduction with a perfect failure of a smile; and, thenceforth, until dinner was over, Mr. SCHENCK was the Egyptian festal skeleton that continually reminded the banqueters of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various

... Bright, wife of the Superintendent of Police, was specially noted for her hospitality in this respect. The brief intervals spent at home by her husband between his rounds of inspection or inquiry in his District were always celebrated by herself and her daughter as festal occasions; and their friends were gathered together at short notice to eat, not the "fatted calf," as that would have offended the religious susceptibilities of the Hindus who held the animal sacred, but one of the fattened geese kept available for ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... In truth 'tis an old, 'tis an excellent word, With its sound so befitting each bosom is stirr'd, And an echo the festal hall filling ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... nature's gladsome lay; The lights went glancing up and down, Riv'ling the stars—nay, seemed as they Could stoop to claim, in their high home, A sympathy with things of earth, And had from their bright mansions come, To join them in their festal mirth. For the land of the Gaul had arose in its might, And swept by as the wind of a wild, wintry night; And the dreamings of greatness—the phantoms of power, Had passed in its breath like the things of an hour. Like the violet vapors that brilliantly play Round the glass of the chemist, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... imagination—already in the house; the Christmas turkey for the janitor of the children's school subscribed to—sometimes he had wished himself the janitor!—and all the small demands that drain the purse at the festal season carefully counted up and allowed for. There was no lien on this unexpected sum just received. The reel and the line, and the flies and such, would have to wait until another time, to be sure; but no one could realize what it would be to him to come home and find that blessed rod there. ...
— The Blossoming Rod • Mary Stewart Cutting

... invitation of Prof. Stainton-Moses, to a festal reunion of the 'Spiritual Alliance,' of which he is president, and I am bound to say that I met there men and women who seemed to me as sincere and earnest, and intelligent as one finds anywhere. Oh, and I saw Eglinton—the medium who is now what Home was—though he told me last night ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, The new wine's foaming flow, The Master's lips aglow! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... after this collapse of festal hopes, Mrs. Adams and her daughter were concluding a three-days' disturbance, the "Spring house-cleaning"—postponed until now by Adams's long illness—and Alice, on her knees before a chest of drawers, in her mother's room, paused thoughtfully after dusting a packet of letters wrapped ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... the one sitting face to face with him, viz., the king. Rollo had accompanied his master on his last journey, and the moment the ax fell the faithful animal snatched the falling head, and here he was now, our friend Rollo, at the long festal ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... smiling with red lips and brown eyes, a pastel in an oval frame. Another medallion held the portrait of his wife, gay, piquante, in a bodice with ribbons fluttering, and with a bird perched on her finger. It was the old aunt in her youth, and further search discovered her ancient festal-gown, of stiff brocade. Sylvie arrayed herself in this splendour; patches were found in a box of tarnished gold, a fan, a ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang

... the festal board, in camp or by fireside, on train or ship, "trying out" the recipes, his friends will pause, retrospectively, and with kindly feelings think from whence some of the good things emanated, the author will feel amply compensated for the care, the ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes



Words linked to "Festal" :   joyous, gay



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