"Psalm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... critics may tell you that the late poet, who wrote that long-drawn sigh of desire for the Law which is bodied in the One hundred and nineteenth Psalm, was thinking of the "Thorah"—the ritual law of the temple and the counsels of the priests. They are doubtless right, if so be that they do not lead you to infer that this devout soul was thinking only of the ecclesiastical law. Through it, there was rising upon his spirit the vision ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... an' turn King David owre, [open the Psalms] An' lilt wi' holy clangor; [sing] O' double verse come gie us four [give] An' skirl up the Bangor: [shriek, a Psalm-tune] This day the Kirk kicks up a stoure, [dust] Nae mair the knaves shall wrang her, [No more] For Heresy is in her pow'r, And gloriously she'll whang her [thrash] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... found inside on the fly-leaf, sketched in pencil,"—what is rather notable to History,—"the figure of a man on his knees, with two swords hanging crosswise over his head; and at the bottom these words of Psalm Seventy-third (verses 25, 26), Whom have I in Heaven but thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee. My flesh and my heart fainteth and faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... with great coldness, owing to the usual prices of admission to the concerts having been raised, Mendelssohn set everything straight by having a soiree in his honor at the Gewandhaus, where there were three hundred and fifty people, orchestra, chorus, punch, pastry, Meeresstille Psalm, Bach's Triple Concerto, choruses from St. Paul, Fantasia on Lucia, the Erl King, the Devil and his Grandmother, the latter probably a mild satirical reference to Liszt's stormy and often incoherent playing. It is also pleasant to find how cordially Mendelssohn received Berlioz ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... and gave the courage to fix on a day for its execution. An immense assemblage simultaneously quitted the three cities at a pre-concerted time; and when they united their forces at the appointed rendezvous, the preachings, exhortations, and psalm-singing commenced, under the auspices of several Huguenot and German ministers, and continued for several days in all the zealous extravagance which may be well imagined to characterize such ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... sinned," saying, "I feel that I have nothing to build upon, and that I want every thing; I am not prepared to die, I want all my sins to be forgiven; I hope I shall not be taken till the work be fully accomplished." The whole of the 51st Psalm, she said, seemed to suit her case, and with solemnity repeated, "'Create in me a clean heart, oh God! and renew a right spirit within me.' If I am saved, it will indeed be at the eleventh hour, I have been ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... of may in time produce: But this I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lorrain [3]—has resolv'd upon a very sudden Reformation in his tragical Dramas; and that at the next monthly Performance, he designs, instead of a Penitential Psalm, to dismiss his Audience with an excellent new Ballad of his own composing. Pray, Sir, do what you can to put a stop to those growing Evils, and you will very ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... overhead A psalm uncheering. It's O, to have been for ages dead And hard of hearing! Restore, ye Pow'rs, the last bright hours The dial reckoned; 'Twas in the time of Egypt's prime— ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... The Lord Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Whatever man does on earth, however great the hatred may be against Him, even if the nations unite to cast off His cords and bands, in the language of the second Psalm, "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh at them and hold them in derision." But there is a comforting truth in connection with this, the comfort of which has been the blessed portion of all God's people as the age progressed, and its true character became ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... setting a special imposition to each class. Having made this clear, he hoped that the slight token of his displeasure might assure us of his intention to do his duty by us faithfully, and then, with the verse of a chanted psalm ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... your meek walls and windows shuddered then! Though Doubleday stemmed the flood, McPherson's Wood and Willoughby's Run Saw ere the set of sun The light of the gospel of blood. And, on the morrow again, Loud the unholy psalm of battle Burst from the tortured Devil's Den, In cries of men and musketry rattle Mixed with the helpless bellow of cattle Torn by artillery, down in the glen; While, hurtling through the branches Of the orchard by the road, Where Sickles and Birney ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... welcome. What is like the note of the wood-thrush?—so full of royalty and psalm and sabbath! Regal in reserve, however, no less than utterance, the sovereign songster gave a welcome only, and then was silent; while a fine piping warbler caught up the theme, and discoursed upon it with liberal eloquence. The place to hear the song of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth."—Psalm ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... at Vespers, from the same tribune, he heard the peal of the new great organs in the dome, and the psalm-melodies rocking from side to side between the massed choirs; he glanced now and again at the royal tribune opposite, where, each beneath a canopy, the rulers of the earth sat together to do honour to the Lord and His Anointed. And, above all, he watched, still with that steady set face that made ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... June he entered the pulpit in a Sinai mood, determined to read the Church Rules and to apply them severely. He began by selecting a condemnatory Psalm, took his text simply as a threat from Jeremiah in one of his bad moods, and after a severe hymn and a mournful Rachel prayer he arose, folded his spectacles and fixed his eyes burningly upon the innocent faces of his congregation, which ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing." "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." How often, before this picture, has some saddened soul uttered the words of the Psalm: "I have gone astray like a lost sheep: seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments"! And as if to afford still more direct assurance of the patience and long-suffering tenderness of the Lord, the Good Shepherd is sometimes represented in the catacombs as bearing, not a sheep, but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... he broke in impulsively, spurred on to exhibit and make the most of his little store of book knowledge, desirous of showing her that he was not wholly a stupid clod. "'The Psalm of Life,' 'Excelsior,' an' . . . I ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... Sunday morning. The children were all taught in Malay, and I often heard them repeating the multiplication-table, up to twenty times twenty, very glibly. They always wound up with singing, and it was very pleasing to hear many of our old psalm-tunes in these remote mountains, sung with Malay words. Singing is one of the real blessings which Missionaries introduce among savage nations, whose native chants are ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... whatever you do, seek to make it possible for all to have a share by seeing that every thought is expressed within the intelligence of even the younger members, that is, of those who desire to have a share. This does not mean descending to "baby-talk." Just read the Twenty-third Psalm; that is not baby talk, but a child of seven can understand what is meant up to the measure of his experience; the language is essentially simple though ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... remember, under an attack of disorder in the neighbourhood of the brain, causing severe suffering, lying—we know not how long, it might be a thousand years for any thing we knew—singing over and over again in our mind, for we were speechless with pain, the 148th psalm, which we had just chanced to hear sung, in Brady and Tate's version, to a new and somewhat peculiar tune. Oh, how those "dreadful whales" and "glittering scales" did quaver and quiver in our poor head! Lying ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... His hand upon all that old history and says, 'It is fulfilled here in Me.' A familiar note in Old Testament Messianic prophecy too is caught and echoed here, especially that grand marriage ode of the forty-fifth psalm, in which he must be a very prosaic or very deeply prejudiced reader who hears nothing more than the shrill wedding greetings at the marriage of some Jewish king with a foreign princess. Its bounding hopes and its magnificent sweep of vision are a world too ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Pike and Hayward's cases of conscience, with the spiritual companion Dickenson's religious letters Neil's 23 sermons on important subjects Durham's exposition of the ten commands Owen on the CXXX Psalm Sibb's soul's conflict, together with the bruised reed and smoaking flax Dickson's truth's victory over error Durham's unsearchable riches of Christ, in fourteen communion sermons Adamson's loss and recovery of elect sinners Rawlin's sermons on justification Durham's ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... brown-eyed lad, and a general favorite. Perseverance seemed bred in his very bone. When only nine years old, he received from his Sunday-school teacher a copy of the New Testament as a reward for repeating the one hundred nineteenth psalm on two successive evenings with only five errors. The following year, at the age of ten, he went to work in the cotton factory near his home, as a "piecer." Out of his first week's wages he saved enough to purchase ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... surest method of recovery, in the absence of the detective system. Joseph Tyler in the "Boston Gazette," Nov. 21, 1761, is inclined to be sarcastic, and Samuel Brazer, of Worcester, in 1802, is witty, but modest. As to stealing psalm-books, no one would dream of doing such a thing in these days. Our modern thieves are not interested in devotional books; ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 4: Quaint and Curious Advertisements • Henry M. Brooks
... wise and good God, who is the author and owner of our system, that I propose for the object of my praise and adoration." Thereupon follows the form of adoration, or liturgy, including an invocation, psalm, indication of philosophic reading to take the place of the lessons, singing of the Hymn to the Creator from Milton's Paradise Lost, and litany. The whole is not without elevation, and the litany, composed as it is by a young man of twenty-two, touches one with a feeling almost of pathos for its ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More
... none to soothe, save that which is drawn from the hiding-places of the past. There is no repose, no refreshment to the mind, in our popular compositions. There is to us more of touching pathos, heart-thrilling expression, in some of the old psalm-tunes, feelingly played, than in a whole batch of modernisms. The strains go home, and the 'fountains of the great deep are broken up;' the great deep of unfathomable feeling, that lies far, far below the surface of the world-hardened heart; and as the unwonted yet unchecked ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... "Have mercy of me, Lord God, have mercy of me; for my soul trusteth in thee; and under the shadow of thy wings I shall hope till wickedness overpass. I shall cry to the highest God; to God that did well to me," and the rest of the psalm. ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... independent observation and judgment, his mouth must "taste for itself," xii. 11. He is bold sometimes almost to blasphemy, he accuses God of destroying innocent and guilty alike, ix. 22, and does not scruple to parody a psalm, vii. 17 f. Yet he does this because he must be true to facts, whatever comes of theories: he must cling to the God of conscience against the God ...
— Introduction to the Old Testament • John Edgar McFadyen
... time as clearly as the application of literary criticism to the Old Testament brought out the defects of his knowledge of the authorship of the Jewish scriptures. Just as it was wrong and futile to pretend that when he said "David said" and quoted a psalm, he did not mean to ascribe it to David, it is futile to argue that when he said "resist not evil" and "love your enemies" he sanctioned the patriotic pursuit ...
— Landmarks in the History of Early Christianity • Kirsopp Lake
... the book called the Bible, that convey to us any idea of God, are some chapters in Job, and the 19th Psalm; I recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions; for they treat of the Deity through his works. They take the book of Creation as the word of God; they refer to no other book; and all the inferences they make are drawn ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... barrel-organs. We have heard on the undoubted authority of ear and eyewitnesses, that in a neighbouring province there is a church where the psalms are sung to a barrel-organ, but unfortunately the psalm tunes come in the middle of the set, and the jigs and waltzes have to be played through before the psalm can start. Just so is it with Darwinism and all similar theories. All his fantasias, as we saw in a late article, are made to come round at last to religious questions, with which ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... beeches and the pines, and brought with it the sounds of a lonely and mysterious night, that hard by them in the starry darkness the divine Huntress was abroad, and about the base of AEtna she and her forest maids drove the chase with horn and hound. In the cities ladies sang the psalm of Adonis brought back from 'the stream eternal of Acheron.' Under the mystic moon love-lorn damsels did their magic rites, and knit up spells of power to bring home the men they loved. Among the vines and under the grey olives songs were singing of Daphnis all ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... before, in that same living room, blushing and awkward, acknowledging his introduction, looking fearfully about him at the bric-a- brac his swinging shoulders threatened to break, asking how long since Swinburne died, and boastfully announcing that he had read "Excelsior" and the "Psalm of Life." ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... over to Lilo and placed his heavy hand on his shoulder—"Sit down, you damned little psalm-singing kanaka hog, or I'll knock your eye out. ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... which day by day were fashioned when as yet there was none of them. Do I not hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am I not grieved with them that rise up against thee? Yea, I hate them right sore, as though they were mine enemies." (Psalm CXXXIX.) There is not a word of this which we cannot endorse with more significance, as well as with greater heartiness than those can who look upon God as He is commonly represented to them; whatever comfort, therefore, those in distress have been in the habit of ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... dialogue, the cxxxvi. Psalm was chanted; and then another gentleman described the erroneous notions which the Jews had of the expected Messiah. His remarks were ...
— Gems Gathered in Haste - A New Year's Gift for Sunday Schools • Anonymous
... went, to be met in the doorway by an elder in his Sabbath "blacks," his solemn face surrounded by a fringe of sandy whisker. The pews were very narrow and very high, shut in a box-like seclusion by wooden doors; the minister, in his pulpit, was just giving out the number of the psalm, and the precentor, after tapping his tuning-fork and holding it to his ear, burst forth into wailing notes of surprising strength and volume. Margot rose automatically to her feet, to subside in confusion, as the seated congregation ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... round him, and took out the great Prayer-book. He read a psalm and a prayer from the Burial Service, and the sentence for funerals at sea. Then he touched each of their heads, and, in short broken sentences, gave thanks for those still left to him, and for the blessed hope they could feel for those ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... 5th, however, the subject of my prayer all at once became different. I was reading Psalm lxxxi., and was particularly struck, more than at any time before, with verse 10: "Open thy month wide, and I will fill it." I thought a few moments about these words, and then was led to apply them to the case of the Orphan-House. It struck ...
— Answers to Prayer - From George Mueller's Narratives • George Mueller
... greater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and the sun fiercer. There were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs like rheumatism, to be supported. I minded then, and have often minded since, on the lines in our Scotch psalm:— ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wall lies Babylon, the mighty; Faint echoes of her songs come drifting by; Within there is a hymn of consecration, A psalm that lifts the fervent soul on high; And yet, sometimes, where bows the hooded choir, There comes the old call of the World's Desire: "The rose's dust is ashen Be petals white or red, And vain the sighs of passion When summer's light is fled; The garden's fruitful ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... neighbourhood of his house in a state of growth and development congenial to the St. Ambrose trained mind, and here Mr. Dutton, after old Micklethwayte custom, was attending the early matins, when, in the alternate verses of the psalm, he heard a fresh young voice that seemed to renew those days gone by, and looking across the central aisle his eyes met a pair of dark ones which gave a sudden glitter of gladness at the encounter. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... things very easily; and as the horses jogged slowly along, he relieved the monotony of the journey by singing sundry old-fashioned psalm tunes, which had not then gone out of use. He was a good singer; and Harry was so pleased with the music, and so unaccustomed to the heavy jolt of the wagon, that he could not go to sleep ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... not the man to be Commander-in-Chief: dashder old fool never lived: a dashed old psalm-singing, blundering old woman," says Sir Thomas, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hundred and third psalm. Then Principal Haime, in his long "Prince Albert" and a ridiculously inadequate collar that emphasized his scrawny neck, reminded us of the sacred associations we had formed, of the peculiar responsibilities that rested on us, who were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... in the 51st Psalm, "I acknowledge my faults, and my sin is ever before me." Now, think of this! If any man had occasion to boast it was King David. He had been a poor sheep-boy attending the flocks of his father, a farmer at Bethlehem, and he was taken from the sheepfolds and exalted ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... moon beam—could not fail to refresh and delight me: especially as the tranquillity of the place was only disturbed by the sounds of two or three groups of bourgeoises, strolling arm in arm, and singing what seemed to be a popular, national air—of which the tune was somewhat psalm-like. The broad walks abounded with bowers, and open seats; and the general effect was at once singular and pleasing. The Hotel-Royal is an excellent inn; and the owners of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Wallace were from the 71st Psalm—"My trust from my youth! O Lord God, thou art my hope ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... shining Over fields of frozen calm; I can hear the chapel organ, And the singing of the psalm. ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... not destined to marry her, I hope that either I or she may die,'" meaning that he could not bear to witness her union with another. Despite Raba's protest, other instances are on record of prayers similar to the one of which he disapproved. Or, again, the Midrash offers a curious illustration of Psalm lxii. 10, "Surely men of low degree are a breath, and men of high degree a lie." The first clause of the verse alludes to those who say in the usual way of the world, that a certain man is about to wed a certain maiden, and ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... would find their labour lost in endeavouring to harmonize the incantations of their sorcerers and witches, which more resemble the howlings of wolves and growlings of bears, than any thing human. But though the hymn and psalm-tunes of the Brethren's Church are mostly of antient construction, and, though rich in harmony, have no airy melodies to make them easily understood by unmusical ears, yet the Esquimaux soon learn to sing them correctly; and the voices of the women are remarkably ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... so bold as to say it's in Scriptur', but it's in the Psalm-book I dare swear. Mother, she were a tip-top tearin' religious woman, and she used to say it to me when I was younger ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... it. Thither speed And bid him know I sent thee, speaking thus, "He whom the Christians name 'the Rock' am I: My Master heard thy prayer: I sought thy church, And sang myself her Consecration rite: Close thou that service with thanksgiving psalm."' ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... I live within the calm, And the birds and roses know That the days that come and go Are as peaceful as the flow Of a prayer beneath a psalm. ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... for them; He will care for me," she said to herself. The night air cooled her brow, a holy peace and calm came to her troubled heart. Kneeling, she repeated as her prayer the psalm which the rector ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the leaves aimlessly, and finally left it spread at one of these open places; and with both elbows resting on the bed and both hands supporting her head, looked to see what she was to find there. It chanced to be the beginning of the 119th psalm. ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... had burst all my bounds and come into the open. Had anyone then fulfilled for me that joy, I should have lived in my death. I should have lost nothing in the loss of my all. Do they want to tell me now that all this was false? The psalm of my praise which was sung so devotedly, did it bring me down from my heaven, not to make heaven of earth, but only to level ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... forevermore! God's angel sweetly smiling in her sleep; How beautiful—how radiant of heaven! The ring I gave begirt her finger still; Her golden hair was wreathed with immortelles; The lips half-parted seemed to move in psalm Or holy blessing. As I kissed her brow, It seemed as if her dead cheeks flushed again As in those happy days beneath the pines; And as my warm tears fell upon her face, Methought I heard that dear familiar voice So full of love and faith and calmest peace, So near and yet so far ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... offices, meant by this peculiarity to recall to our memory as strongly as he could what passed formerly at the time of the accomplishment of the mysteries which we honour. That is why we chant in the sixth place the psalm which we had avoided in the beginning. It is true that certain blunderers treat this with indifference and contempt, thinking it much better to follow the ordinary usage of each day. But, as we have already said, he wished by this ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... that he was a missionary, the farmer gave him a hearty welcome, and proposed in the evening that he should give them a service. To this he readily assented, and supper being ended, a clearance was made, the big Bible and the psalm-books were brought out, and the family was seated. Moffat inquired for the servants, "May none of your ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... their independence. What is known as "The Great Trek" of the thirties, which opened up the Transvaal and subsequently the Orange Free State and Natal, was due entirely to unrest among the Cape Boers. There is something of the epic in the narrative of those doughty, psalm-singing trekkers who, like the Mormons in the American West, went forth in their canvas-covered wagons with a rifle in one hand and the Bible in the other. They fought the savage, endured untold hardships, and met fate with a grim smile on their lips. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... name, a little name, Uncadenced for the ear, Unhonored by ancestral claim, Unsanctified by prayer and psalm The solemn ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the happiness chiefly of the allusion had tempted the preacher to employ this text, and that the covenanting zealots were nowise pacified towards him. Another preacher, after reproaching him to his face with his misgovernment, ordered this psalm ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... the church in these words: 'upon thy right hand did stand the Queen in gold of Ophir: her clothing is of wrought gold: she shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the Virgins her companions that follow her shall enter into the king's palace.' Psalm xlv. 9-16." Lastly they asked, "Is it not expedient that a priest be present and minister at the marriage ceremony?" The wise one answered, "This is expedient on the earth, but not in the heavens, by reason of the representation of the Lord ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... commotion last Sabbath she made, Wi' babs o' red roses, and breast-knots o'erlaid; The dominie stickit the psalm very nearly. O gin my wife wad dress hooly and fairly! Hooly and fairly, hooly and fairly; O gin my wife wad dress ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... I would willingly be understood), suppose you design to preach about Election and Reprobation. As for the eighth chapter to the Romans, that is too well known! but there is a little private place in the Psalms that will do the business as well! Psalm xc. 19, In the multitude of my thoughts within me, thy ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... on morality, therefore I have contented myself with the most simple and the most naked recital of facts; but I may, perhaps, be permitted to apply here those two verses of the 37th Psalm, which appear so expressly made for the purpose: "I have seen the impious exalted like the cedars of Lebanon: Yea, he passed away, and, lo, he was not; yea, I sought him, but ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... to me; I bring to life, I bring to death; The spirit does but mean the breath. I know no more.' And he,—shall he, Man, her last work, who seemed so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who rolled the psalm to wintry skies And built him fanes of fruitless prayer, Who trusted God was love indeed, And love creation's final law, Though Nature, red in tooth and claw, With ravine shrieked against his creed,— Who loved, who suffered countless ills, Who battled for the true, the just,— Be blown ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... made gallant display in the days of the patriarchs of Communipaw. The language likewise continues unadulterated by barbarous innovations; and so critically correct is the village schoolmaster in his dialect that his reading of a Low Dutch psalm has much the same effect on the nerves as ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Only they are deafened as well as blinded, and Bee feels that she is losing her senses. Surely her brain is wandering, else she could never hear the notes of the anthem again, and Tim's voice singing the words of the old psalm in ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... letter. Outside in the night the Puritan troops are heard singing the One Hundred and Seventeenth Psalm: ...
— Oliver Cromwell • John Drinkwater
... put down the sack with Little Klaus in it by the church-door, and thought that he might as well go in and hear a psalm before going on farther. Little Klaus could not get out, and everybody was in ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... its pioneers, and taste and imagination are confused and confounded in the medium. A nature like Falkland's could not see liberty clearly even through John Pym—how much less through nasal psalm-singing butchers and brewers building a scaffold for the king. So, in our own time, the great question that so sorely rent us was seen by taste and imagination in the form of delicate, highly-cultured women, of a superficial tranquil elegance of society, of patriarchal ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... granted his prayer. As the wife and daughter of the Philistine king were both bereft of reason, we can understand his exclamation: "Do I lack madmen, that ye have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence?" Thus it was that David was rescued. Thereupon he composed the Psalm beginning with the words, "I will bless the Lord at all times," which includes even ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... remote musical progenitor in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice not five years since; and again I have heard it far away in mid- Atlantic upon a grey sea-Sabbath in June, when neither winds nor waves are stirring, so that the emigrants gather on deck, and their plaintive psalm goes forth upon the silver haze of the sky, and on the wilderness of a sea that has sighed till it can sigh no longer. Or it may be heard at some Methodist Camp Meeting upon a Welsh hillside, but in the churches it is ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... version the performance usually closes at this point; but there is still another striking and powerful scene, that in which Raoul and Valentin are united by the dying Marcel. Then the three join in a sublime trio, and for the last time chant together the old Lutheran psalm, and await their fate amid the triumphant harpings that sound from the orchestra and the hosanna they ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... what the words of the dear old psalm had been to the young Highlander—like water to a parched soul, bringing back memories of childhood, wooded glens, heather-clad hills, rippling burns, and above all the old grey kirk where the Scotch laddie used to sit beside his mother—that dear mother in whom his whole soul was ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... same direction toward the village. Contemptuously:] Where? Oh, yes, that's him! There they both are! They're just walkin' around the parson's garden. Well, what about it? You think I ought to be gettin' away? I'm not afeard o' them psalm-singin' donkeys. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the old Etonian reverently. "There is a preliminary P before the name. This, however, is silent. Like the tomb. Compare such words as ptarmigan, psalm, ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... scattered up to heaven. Animals which Turnbull was too much of a Londoner and MacIan too much of a Northerner to know, slipped by among the tangle or ran pattering up the tree-trunks. Both the men, according to their several creeds, felt the full thunder of the psalm of life as they had never heard it before; MacIan felt God the Father, benignant in all His energies, and Turnbull that ultimate anonymous energy, that Natura Naturans, which is the whole theme of Lucretius. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... vary with each individual, and of conceptions we have no certain standard? The old Hebrew attitude to this question is expressed by the verse of the Psalmist: "The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth hath He given to the sons of men" (Psalm cxv), which implies that man must not try to penetrate the secrets of the universe. Philo is sufficiently a philosopher to desire knowledge about things Divine and human, but at the same time he has a complete distrust ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... each exactly like that one in front of the house of the Cotterills, stretched downwards into the dead heart of Bursley, and upwards over the brow of the hill into space. And although Arthur Cotterill knew Trafalgar Road as well as Mrs Hopkins knew the hundred and twenty-first Psalm, the effect of the scene on him was most uncanny. He watched Simeon persuade the loaded barrow down the step into the tiny front garden, not daring to help him, because Simeon did not like to be helped by ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... to dinner, and he came to tea; and he drove out with the widow in the carriage with the lozenge on it; and at church he handed the psalm-book; and, in short, he paid her every attention which could be expected from so polite a ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... famine and dried the mother's breast from her infant's withered lips? Is it blasphemy to say that He is the author of the pestilence; that He ordered some of His children to consume others with fire and sword? Is it blasphemy to believe what we read in the 109th Psalm? If these things are not blasphemy, then there is no blasphemy. If there be a God I desire Him to write in the book of judgment opposite my name that I denied these ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... had been performed, the prayer said, a psalm sung, and the black dirt thrown in, they waited by him in sympathy. His feeling was that they had done a monstrous thing; that the mother he had known was somewhere alive and well. He stood a moment so, watching the sun sink below the far rim of the prairie while the white ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... very literal rendering of the Psalm, but found it impossible to advance further than the awakening in Patience's mind an expectation of a future, but equally literal table, the dainties on which Toby and Silas would not be ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... their voices reached the first psalm's end, They heard a new, strange rustling round their house; Then came the porter: "Here comes many a friend, Pushing aside your budding orchard boughs; Come, brothers, justify your holy vows. Here be God's patient, poor, four-footed things Seek healing at God's well, whence ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... never once had needed to cringe or stoop. He loved and honoured men too much not to wish to be loved and honoured by them; He had enjoyed days of unbounded popularity, but now His soul was filled with reproach to the uttermost; and He could have appropriated the words of the Psalm, "I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... her think of someone, but of whom? As soon as he left the church, Monseigneur had commenced a psalm, which he recited in a low voice, alternating the verses thereof with his deacons. And Angelique trembled when she saw him turn his eyes towards their window, for he seemed to her so severe, so haughty, and so cold, as if he were condemning the vanity of all earthly affection. He turned his face ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... specialists. The essential feature of the reformed services was that they were compiled in the common tongue and not in the Latin of ecclesiastical experts, that a Book of Common Prayer was used, that congregational psalm-singing replaced the sacerdotal solo, and a communion was substituted for a priestly miracle. Religious service was to be something rendered by the people themselves, and not performed for their benefit by ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... the exquisite measures of the Eightieth Psalm, one of the most touching appeals of David the Poet-King, in which he says over and over again, "Turn us again, O God, and cause Thy Face to shine, and we ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... full collection of the harmonized compositions of ancient date, including nine sets of pieces and responses, and fifteen litanies, with a few of the more ancient Psalm Chants. They are given in full score, and in their proper cliffs. In the upper part, however, the treble is substituted for the "cantus" or "medius" cliff: and the whole work is so arranged as to suit the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various
... It was just a verse from a psalm. She said, I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.... Be of good courage and He shall strengthen ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the crimson twilight Like the close of an Angel's Psalm, And it lay on my fevered spirit With a touch of ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... thinks much in images, words are very live to him, phrases that imply a picture eloquent beyond their value. Rummaging in the dusty pigeon-holes of memory, I came once upon a graphic version of the famous Psalm, "The Lord is my Shepherd": and from the places employed in its illustration, which are all in the immediate neighbourhood of a house then occupied by my father, I am able to date it before the seventh year of my age, although it was probably ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... trees might be compared to holy men, grown old in the service of God: for this is God's promise to his servants,—"The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon."—Psalm xc. 11, 12. ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... sermons on Sabbath evenings from the scanty shelf: but the songs of Burns have been haunting his lips, and cheering his heart, and moulding him, unconsciously to himself, in clearing and in pasture all the weary week. True, if he be what a Scotchman should be, more than one old Hebrew psalm has brought its message to him during these week-days; but there are feelings of his nature on which those psalms, not from defect, but from their very purpose, do not touch: how is he to express them, but in the songs which echo them? ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... rather awe-inspiring, Eric thought, to be walking easily about at the bottom of the sea, knowing that around and above him lay the mighty element of death. And there, under the water, the eighth psalm came into his mind, and he realized its beauty as he had never been able ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... give of its appearance on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade all the town to be his guests. A ceremony of consecration, festive as well as religious, was now to be performed. A prayer and discourse from the Rev. Mr. Higginson, and the outpouring of a psalm from the general throat of the community, was to be made acceptable to the grosser sense by ale, cider, wine, and brandy, in copious effusion, and, as some authorities aver, by an ox, roasted whole, or at least, by the weight and substance of an ox, in ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prayer meeting. I think everybody prayed. There were no skeptics present. I have been under fire in the war, I have stood by deathbeds during the cholera epidemic in Chicago, but I never was so sorely tried. I could with difficulty command my voice as I read the ninety-first Psalm. I read without comment, and then I prayed that God would still the anger of the deep and bring us safely to our desired heaven. The people were weeping all around me. I also read from ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... they lay all the rest of that night in a lodge near unto Coudray, where they were comforted in their miseries by the gracious words of one of their company, called Sweer-to-go, who showed them that this adventure had been foretold by the prophet David, Psalm. Quum exsurgerent homines in nos, forte vivos deglutissent nos; when we were eaten in the salad, with salt, oil, and vinegar. Quum irasceretur furor eorum in nos, forsitan aqua absorbuisset nos; when he ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the east of the county, whose seat in church commanded a view of the neighbourhood. During an afternoon service one Sunday a violent gale was raging which had already unroofed several barns. The time came, says Mr. Lower, for the psalm before the sermon, and the clerk rose to announce it. "Let us sing to the praise and glo—Please, sir, Mas' ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... of Zechariah are "three distinct styles and aspects of affairs." (Ibid.) "The cursing Psalms," (!!!) he informs us, were not "evangelically inspired;" (p. 63;) and yet we are constrained to remember that the cixth Psalm (specially alluded to) is evangelically interpreted by St. Peter[52]. The true translation of Psalm xxii. 17, (learnedly discussed, long since, by Bishop Pearson,) is not "they pierced My hands and My feet,"—but "like a lion;" (notwithstanding that ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... homes. The stars were again out while many were yet traveling, but the great light that fell upon them was the glory of the Lord, as they carried the brilliant scenes of the day in their hearts. Every heart-beat had the solemnity of a vow, a prayer, a song of praise, a psalm of thanksgiving. What devout worship in those homes that night when the fathers told the touching story of the Greyfriars' ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... the past moment, and Mary sobbing out all her weakness, weariness and gladness on his breast. Above their heads the bright star shone, pendant between the snowy wings of the dividing cloud, and the sound of the sea was as a sacred psalm ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... been spoken to like that,—and by his own son! The pang of it was almost more than he could bear. But presently he had so far mastered himself as to take up his pen and continue his writing. When that was finished, he opened his Bible and read his wonted chapter. It was just the simple twenty-third psalm: "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want." It was his favourite psalm, and always had a remarkable tranquillising effect upon him. James Mesurier's faith in God was very great. Then he knelt down and prayed in silence,—prayed with a great love for his disobedient children; and, when he rose ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... into the psychology of the period that we can estimate its attitude towards the poetry written by the pioneers themselves. The "Bay Psalm Book" (1640), the first book printed in the colonies, is a wretched doggerel arrangement of the magnificent King James Version of the Psalms, designed to be sung in churches. Few of the New England churches could sing more than half-a-dozen ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... for Example, to modernize so lofty an Ode as the 104th Psalm, the Choice of Metaphors shou'd, methinks, have been considered, as one of the most remarkable Difficulties. There seems to have been a Necessity, that they shou'd be noble, as well as natural; and yet, if too much rais'd, ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... naughty, naughty girl! Don't you know circus people are all wicked, and don't go to heaven when they die? I should think you'd be ashamed! Go right up-stairs, Ellen, and go to bed; and you boys can each learn a psalm, and you'll have no ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... with both your ears—"your iniquities ... your sins ... your hands ... your fingers ... your lips ... your tongue ..." the slime of sin is oozing over everything! Turn back to that sixty-sixth Psalm[14]—"if I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me." How much more if the sin of the heart get into the hands or the life! And the fact to put down plainly in blackest ink once for all is this—sin hinders prayer. There is nothing surprising ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... the Doctor's philosophic apathy in such occurrences. The Psalmist, it may be safely affirmed, knew as much of human nature as the Doctor, and was as well acquainted too with what was becoming worship. He, however, differs egregiously in opinion. In the 107th psalm, which so beautifully describes the manifold goodness, and yet the varying providences of the Most High, we find a passage which strikingly applies to such a case as we have been contemplating, and which, at the same time, points out the natural and highly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... through Carolinian woods, Ever muffled in the hoods Of their fir-trees' aromatic evergreen, I can hear the mellow stops, Ever swaying in their tops, To the playing of an organist unseen. And the breezes bring the balm Of the solitude and psalm, From that indolence of calm, In the land of pine and palm, Over hills, and over rivers and savannas, Till my feelings undergo All their mortal overthrow, In celestial strains which flow, In a song of peace below, From those regions ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cut, cut out, carved, planed down, polished; and he refers to Lee, who characterizes it as a silly theory that bara meant to create ex nihilo. In Joshua xvii. 15 and 18, the same verb is used in the sense of cutting down trees; in Psalm civ. 30 it is translated by 'Thou renewest the face of the earth.' In Arabic, too, according to Lane, bara means properly, though not always, to create out of pre-existing matter. All this shows that in the verb bara, as in the Sanskrit ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... Krugersdorp Commando first. All went well, and the burghers comprising the force received me very cordially. There was a lot of questioning and explanations; one of the commandants was so moved by my address that he requested those who were present to conclude the meeting by singing Psalm 134, verse 3, after which he exhorted his fellow burghers in an impassioned speech to be ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... address either one of them in the wife's regulation terms of virtuous sarcasm, as woman, creature, or thing, for losing their hearts to her husband. But life, what was it, and who was she? She had, like the singer of the psalm of Asaph, been plagued and chastened all the day long; but could she, by retributive words, in order to please herself—the individual—"offend against the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... women singing in unison, and seemingly afraid to trust their voices. As for the people in the room no one tried to join in this part of the service—no one except Honnor Cunyngham, who appeared to know the words of the Psalm and the music equally well, for she accompanied the minister throughout, singing boldly and simply and without shyness, her clear voice making marked contrast with his raven notes. Nor was this all; for, when the Psalm was finished, the ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... latter in black and blue dresses and mob-caps. Then the schoolmaster appeared, and we were informed that it being the first Sunday in the month, the pastor had to do duty in an adjoining parish, according to custom, and that the schoolmaster would read the prayers and lessons instead. A psalm was sung, portions of Scripture and short prayers were read, another straggler or two joining the little congregation as the service went on. The schoolmaster, who officiated, played the harmonium and sang ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... between us. Let us then begin with Adam and examine the charter of privileges which was given to him. "Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." In the eighth Psalm we have a still fuller description of this charter which through Adam was given to all mankind. "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet. All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... that character—be invited to read prayers before Congress the next morning. The motion was passed; and the next morning Mr. Duche appeared, and after reading several prayers in the Established form, then read the Collect for the 7th of September, which was the thirty-fifth Psalm. This was the next morning after the startling news had come of the cannonade of Boston;" and, says John Adams, "I never saw a greater effect upon an audience: it seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... dull notes of the last psalm died away among the lofty recesses of the church, a procession of pious Christians appeared at the door and advanced slowly to the altar. It was composed both of men and women barefooted, clothed in black garments, and with ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... shout beside thine Oak, O North! O South! wave answer with thy Palm; And in our Union's heritage Together sing the Nation's Psalm! W. R. Wallace. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick |
