"Rhapsody" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the ponderous Mycenaean shield; the last in the iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate and light round buckler." [Footnote: Ibid., vol. ii. p. x.] We cannot guess how he found these things out, for corslets are as common in one "rhapsody" as in another when circumstances call for the mention of corslets, and are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are "bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than the Iliad. As for "the iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so much as ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Directeur Melange adultere de tout Lune de Miel The Hippopotamus Dans le Restaurant Whispers of Immortality Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service Sweeney Among the Nightingales The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Portrait of a Lady Preludes Rhapsody on a Windy Night Morning at the Window The Boston Evening Transcript Aunt Helen Cousin Nancy Mr. Apollinax Hysteria Conversation Galante La Figlia ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... enough, at all events. There is no rhapsody about her when she talks of poverty. She chronicles every stage of the misery, as though she had felt them all; and how unlike it she looks! There is an almost insolent well-being about her that puzzles me. She will not heed this, or suffer that, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Times of Captain Seth Brewster, which my publisher, and several independent critics he kept in his employ, had praised into an unprecedented sale, though it was indeed the veriest rubbish, his pent up enthusiasm gushed forth in a rhapsody of joy. I told him, too, that two sonnets which I had written, over the signature of Mary, had been published in the "New Bedford Mercury," the editor of which very excellent paper said they were charming, though he never paid me a penny for them. It may interest all aspiring ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... had never but once seen the man who had brought him the manuscript. I was convinced of the truth of what he said, and I gave an order for his liberation. To avoid irritating the susceptibility of the Minister of Police I wrote to him the following few lines:—"The libel is the most miserable rhapsody imaginable. The author, probably with the view of selling his pamphlet in Holstein, predicts that Denmark will conquer every other nation and become the greatest kingdom in the world. This alone will suffice to prove to you how little clanger there is in rubbish ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... bit of rhapsody the steadying effect of statistics may be abundantly had from the records of the great Worthy Park plantation, elaborated expressly for posterity's information. This estate, lying in St. John's parish ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... we descended the hill, I walked reverently, my soul upraised in chaste and fervent ecstasy. However, this fine, poetical rhapsody was banished, suddenly and most unpleasantly, by my companion who, setting fingers to mouth, emitted a shrill whistle,—three ear-piercing blasts that shattered the night's holy calm and startled me ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... really to have wit, than really, in the boldest and most enduring sense, to have imagination. But it is immeasurably easier to pretend to have imagination than to pretend to have wit. A man may indulge in a sham rhapsody, because it may be the triumph of a rhapsody to be unintelligible. But a man cannot indulge in a sham joke, because it is the ruin of a joke to be unintelligible. A man may pretend to be a poet: he can no more pretend to be a wit ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the little hall, when the waltz was over and all the other couples had seated themselves, ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... occasions. Our brown thrush, for instance, is a magnificent singer, albeit he is not of the best school, being too "sensational" to suit the most exacting taste. His song is a grand improvisation: a good deal jumbled, to be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,—that is, it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, at an occasional grotesque or overwrought passage, but unless ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... more lovely than even the most glowing descriptions had led them to expect. Nor was she only beautiful. Shelley soon discovered that she had "cultivated her mind beyond what I have ever met in Italian women;" and a rhapsody composed by her upon the subject of Uranian Love—Il Vero Amore—justifies the belief that she possessed an intellect of more than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs. Shelley to see her, and both did all they could to make her convent-prison less irksome, by frequent visits, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... as if they were natural, yet no man was ever born of a swearing constitution.' But it is a custom, a low and paltry custom, picked up by low and paltry spirits who have no sense of honor, no regard to decency, but are forced to substitute some rhapsody of nonsense to supply the vacancy of good sense. Hence the silliness of the practice can only be equalled by the silliness of those ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... Cedars by water. It was a delightful afternoon of June, the river warm and still, and the soft, fitful western breeze occasionally rich with the perfume of the gardens of Putney and Chiswick. Waldershare talked the whole way. It was a rhapsody of fancy, fun, knowledge, anecdote, brilliant badinage—even passionate seriousness. Sometimes he recited poetry, and his voice was musical; and, then, when he had attuned his companions to a sentimental pitch, he would break into mockery, and touch ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... having so precipitately undertaken a work of this nature, which required more time than he employed about it. There is nothing great or learned in his commentaries upon the Bible; every thing low and mean: and though he had studied divinity, he has rather composed a rhapsody of theological questions, than a commentary upon the scripture text: to which we may add, that he wanted understanding, and usually followed his ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... innumerable concerts and music festivals was sought for. His was a name to conjure with. Between him and these assaults on his almost proverbial kindness stood the Princess, and the list of his great musical productions during this period, to say nothing of his literary work, like the rhapsody on Chopin, is the tale of what the world owes her for her devotion. The relations between Liszt and the Princess were frankly acknowledged, and by the world as frankly accepted, as if they were two exceptional beings ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... embarked, an old woman came forward from the crowd and, mounting on a rock near the slip, began a fierce rhapsody in Gaelic, pointing at the bailiff and waving her withered arms with ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... to the old sealer's regretful rhapsody. The situation is too grave for them to be thinking of gain by the capture of fur-seals, even though it should prove "a mine of wealth," as Seagriff called it. Of what value is wealth to them while their very lives are in jeopardy? They were rejoiced when they first set foot on land; but time ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... one footman, who had been an antient servant in the family.—As their first route was to France, they went in the Dover stage, and thence embarked for Calais, without any thing material happening, except it were, that on sight of the ocean, Natura was fired with a devout rhapsody at the thoughts of finding himself upon it, in a manner so vastly different from that in which, but a few months since, his despair had led him to project; and the resolution he made within himself never to ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... the excluded, far more sentient portion at least, to the altogether inferior and less sentient, and upon the ground of that faculty builds the vision of its redemption! If it could be so, then how should the seeming apostle's affected rhapsody of hope be to us other than a mere puff-ball of falsest rhetoric, a special-pleading for nothing, as degrading to art as ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... was powerful (almost too loud sometimes) and most persuasive; he was eloquent and impassioned, but he used little gesture or any artifice to engage attention. He commenced with a rhapsody—startling in the sudden flow of its eloquence, thrilling in its higher tones, tender and compassionate (almost to tears) in its lower passages—a ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... little chest with a gulp of morning air and found no better words for his rhapsody than: ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... human intellect, for these creatures of a Tiberius or a Richelieu still used plausible arguments in their reasoning, and with more or less adroitness. With Saint-Just, there is no connection of ideas; there is no sequence or march in his rhapsody; like an instrument strained to the utmost, his mind plays only false notes in violent fits and starts; logical continuity, the art then so common of regularly developing a theme, has disappeared; he stumbles over the ground, piling up telling aphorisms and dogmatic ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any well-used copy of 'The Seasons,' the book generally opens of itself with the Rhapsody on Love, or with one of the stories, perhaps of Damon and Musidora. These also are prominent in our Collections of Extracts, and are the parts of his work which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... theology, and at twenty-four becomes the colleague of his famous grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, in the church at Northampton. He marries the beautiful Sarah Pierrepont, whom he describes in his journal in a prose rhapsody which, like his mystical rhapsodies on religion in the same youthful period, glows with a clear unearthly beauty unmatched in any English prose of that century. For twenty-three years he serves the Northampton church, and his sermons win him the rank of the foremost preacher in New England. John ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... something at once both lofty and ludicrous in the rhapsody of this robber chief, thus associating himself with one of the great names of antiquity. It showed, however, that he had at least the merit of knowing the remarkable facts in the history of his country. He became more calm, ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... of inspiration came, she spoke for the first few moments in a low voice and not invariably distinct utterance. Her discourse gave evidence of an imagination hopelessly entangled with her reason; it was a vague and incomprehensible rhapsody, which, however, seemed to spread its own atmosphere round the hearer's soul, and to move his feelings by some influence unconnected with the words. As she proceeded beautiful but shadowy images would sometimes be seen like bright things moving in a turbid river, or a strong ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... me just now is time. I might give you a shilling at a pinch, but a half hour is an article which I do not happen to have about me.... By the way, your rhapsody over the East in "M.K." ["Meister Karl"] had something to do with my acceptance of the Turkish Mission; and if you have been lying, I shall ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... regard to consequences. But in the midst of all this, a new power has arisen in the world, and standing with face to the east, has drawn a sword, before the circle of which even the spectral shadow of cholera has quailed and gone back! Humanity might well break out in rhapsody and ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... now and then caricature with pencil and pen. Mary Lepell, in one of those jeux d' esprit, described the "Six Maids of Honour" as six volumes bound in calf.—The first, Miss Meadows, as mingled satire, and reflection; the second as a plain treatise on morality; the third as a rhapsody; the fourth (supposed to be the future Lady Pembroke) as a volume, neatly bound, of "The Whole Art of Dressing;" the next a miscellaneous work, with essays on "Gallantry;" the sixth, a folio collection ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... Space, Joannes the unresting and undying, was to be a deeply tragic personage. Schubart warmed himself with this idea; and talked about it in his cups, to the astonishment of simple souls. He even wrote a certain rhapsody connected with it, which is published in his poems. But here he rested; and the project of the Wandering Jew, which Goethe likewise meditated in his youth, is still unexecuted. Goethe turned to other objects: and poor Schubart was surprised by death, in the midst ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... effective; but, even so, this scene of the Ascension is fraught with dramatic emphasis. The Descent of the Holy Ghost is less interesting. There is a monotony in the upraised hands, while the feeling of devotional rhapsody is perhaps unduly enforced. The relief of the Maries at the Tomb, which occupies the western end of this pulpit, is almost Pisanesque in the relative size of the people to the architecture. There is a combination of trees and pilasters ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... he is coming. I knew he would come. Why should he not come?" This she exclaimed to her mother, and then went on to speak of him with a wild rhapsody of joy, as though there had hardly been any breach in her happiness. And she continued to sing the praises of her husband till Mrs. Holt hardly knew how to bear her enthusiasm in a fitting mood. ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... impassioned eloquence, where he is an unrivalled master, to appear forthwith in those of intellectual gymnastics, where, at least, he is not surpassed. He is familiar with every one of the intervening stages between the rhapsody and the demonstration,—between the loftiest reach of aspirant passion, from which, with reptile instinct, the understanding slinks downwards to the earth, and that fierce antagonism of naked thoughts, where the crested ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... from its grief in a moment shall cease, And the soul hush its cries in the cadence of peace, And the life with the laughter of rhapsody blest Shall rejoice through the years in the ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... not; it might probably rekindle the zeal for the church in the powers of Europe which has been so far decaying. On Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor. Those learned luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and Walpole are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley Montague. You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate incessantly, and consequently cannot figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance: we have some idea of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history, Greek, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Believe me, monsieur le duc, that it is not at the moment when a man is about to render up his soul, that a man of my good feeling would outrage the divinity whom he adores. "No, I am not the author of the '<Cour du Roi Petaud.>' The verses of this rhapsody are not worth much, it is true; but indeed they are not mine: they are too miserable, and of too bad a style. All this vile trash spread abroad in my name, all those pamphlets without talent, make me lose my senses, and now I have scarcely ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... tells us "that nothing can happen more beautiful than death," and he has exprest the humanist view of mortality in a hymn which his admirers regard as the high-water mark of modern poetry. But will this rhapsody bear thinking about? Is death "delicate, lovely and soothing," "delicious," coming to us with "serenades"? Does death "lave us in a flood of bliss"? Does "the body gratefully nestle close to death"? ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... for laying by all reserve, and I prostrated myself before this divinity with all the adoration of a profound devotee, and poured out such a rhapsody of love and admiration, as to leave no doubt in her mind of the tenderness of my heart, the acuteness of my wit, and the excellence of my taste. In short, the emir's widow had every reason to be satisfied with the choice she had made; and she very soon ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... Johnson denounced it as an imposture from the first. He pointed out that Macpherson had never produced the manuscripts from which he professed to have translated it when challenged to do so. He maintained also that the so-called poem had no merits; that "it was a mere unconnected rhapsody, a tiresome repetition of the same images;" and his opinion soon became so generally adopted, that Macpherson wrote him a furious letter of abuse, even threatening him with personal violence; to which Johnson replied "that he would not be deterred from exposing what he ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... dispute it, but she always went off into some rhapsody about a "bonnie lad she had left in ould Ireland, jist the boy that would be afther breaking the heart of ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... he said presently, breaking in on Mr. Martel's rhapsody. "Miss Eleanor's young yet. Don't you believe ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... enough to say, without applying this poetical rhapsody to Aouda, that she was a charming woman, in all the European acceptation of the phrase. She spoke English with great purity, and the guide had not exaggerated in saying that the young Parsee had been ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... he lived, amidst the untold horrors of the "Black Plague," he illustrated by deeds of charity and mercy his doctrine of disinterested benevolence. Woolman's whole life was a nobler Imitation of Christ than that fervid rhapsody of monastic piety which ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... dainty and graceful ways as he went about the daily duties of food-hunting, singing, and driving off marauders, which occupied his hours from dawn to late evening, and left him spirit enough for many a midnight rhapsody. It was in his domestic relations that I desired to see him,—the wooing of the bride and building the nest, the training of mocking-bird babies and starting them in the world; and no loitering and dreaming in the pine grove, however tempting, would ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... will see that the promises contained in the Bible whether national or personal, are nothing else than statements of the universal law of Cause and Effect applied to the inmost principles of our being, and that therefore it is not mere rhapsody, but the figurative expression of a great truth when the Psalmist says '"The Lord is my Shepherd," and "Thou art my God and the ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... at the capital of the nation, Miss Alice Somebody came in contact with a young gentleman named Rhapsody,—of pleasant and respectable demeanor, an office-holder, but not high up enough to suit the tastes and aims of Colonel Somebody and his lady; and so, our friend Rhapsody stood little or no chance for ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... caroled, like a bird on a branch. At last Grandpa, after some mild protesting, was lulled by the rhapsody, and dozed once more; when Johnnie adroitly tapered off his song, brought the chair to a cautious stop, drew the book from its warm hiding place, sank into the morris chair, and again there swept into the kitchen, as on ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... of any use," was my answer, as if pretending to condole; and where another man would have uttered a fervent rhapsody, ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by the door, startled from his rhapsody by the appearance of the intruder, who had made himself quite at home, regardless of the fact that the final words of their last meeting had given no promise of a friendship which would make his air of easy familiarity acceptable to Peter, whose first impulse moved ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... gallantry. Of one alleged point of resemblance there is no evidence. The loveliness assigned to Shakespeare's youth was not, as far as we can learn, definitely set to Pembroke's account. Francis Davison, when dedicating his 'Poetical Rhapsody' to the earl in 1602 in a very eulogistic sonnet, makes a cautiously qualified reference to the attractiveness of ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... doctor's rhapsody may have been is not known; for, stamping too energetically upon the seaweed on the edge of the rock, his foot slipped, and he disappeared, with the perpendicular descent and velocity of a deep-sea lead, into ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... father left me. You perceive, Mr. Stewart, by what means I knew you after your warning about the kicking, eh? I suspected it was yourself, when I saw an American gentleman with his arm in a sling, and so I made bold to accost you in the midst of your rhapsody ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... most appreciative criticism of Wagner and his work that has ever, even yet, been penned. This booklet, "Wagner at Bayreuth," is a masterpiece of insight and erudition, written by a man of imagination, who saw and felt, and knew how to mold his feelings into words—words that burn. It is a rhapsody of appreciation. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... poet, "is a wild rhapsody, miserably deficient in versification, but as the sentiments are the genuine feelings of my heart, for that reason I have a particular pleasure ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... her heart sink, and her whole being disturbed with a heavy sense of terror, as Sarah uttered the incoherent rhapsody which we have just repeated. The vague, but strongly expressed warnings which she had previously heard from Nelly, and the earnest admonitions which that person had given her to beware of evil designs on the part of Donnel Dhu and ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke." In reply to the noble passage: "The age of chivalry is gone ...," Paine shrewdly says: "In the rhapsody of his imagination he has discovered a world of windmills, and his sorrows are that there are ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... sit up like Julius Caesar; and die as you lived, in your clothes: don't strip yourself: let the old women strip you; that is their delight laying out a chap; that is the time they brighten up, the old sorceresses." He concluded this amiable rhapsody, the latter part of which was levelled at a lugubrious weakness of his grandmother's for the superfluous embellishment of the dead, by telling her it was bad enough to be tied by the foot like an ass, without settling down on his back like a cast ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... begin to feel he had done a fine thing in not dying. After all, was it not moral cowardice as much as love that had tempted him to die? He had wrestled with it, thrown it. "Yes," said he, when her rhapsody was over, "perhaps I ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the tear in her eye? Had she not proudly told Frank that his love-making was nothing but a boy's silly rhapsody? Had she not said so while she had yet reason to hope that her blood was as good as his own? Had she not seen at a glance that his love tirade was worthy of ridicule, and of no other notice? And yet there was a tear now in her eye because this ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... in the middle of David's rather incoherent rhapsody that these words burst upon his ears. He and Clive started to their feet, and found close behind them a half dozen of those miserable beggars. Two of them were old men, whose bleary eyes and stooping frames indicated extreme age. One was a woman on, crutches. Number Four was a thin, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... but lying in the [Greek: moimeterion] (cemetery)—the sleeping place; or, as the vivid old Hebrew faith would have it, the house of the living (Bethaim). Is not this testimony for the soul's immortality worth as much as all the rhapsody written thereon, from Plato ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... still going strong on his second rhapsody when he was interrupted by another high-speed entrance. It was ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... time usually chosen to send young Men abroad, is, I think, of all other, that which renders them least capable of reaping those Advantages."—Locke, on Ed., p. 372. "It is a mere figment of the human imagination, a rhapsody of the transcendent unintelligible."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 120. "It contains a greater assemblage of sublime ideas, of bold and daring figures, than is perhaps any where to be met with."—Blair's Rhet., p. 162. "The order in which the two last ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... this is," she said, as she glanced into the pages of Solomon's Song. "I mean the synopsis at the head of each chapter, explaining away the real nature of that rhapsody. You needn't be alarmed: nobody claims inspiration for the chapter headings. Indeed, many divines treat them with contempt. It seems the drollest thing to think of the four-and-twenty elders, or bishops, or whatever number they were, sitting with long faces ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... clasped all the angels of its delirium,—and then, just at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this I thought ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... there are on feet and tubs without feet, tubs sunken in the floor so that one goes down steps into them, tubs of large dimensions and tubs of small, and all with or without "showers," as the purchaser may prefer. Truly the warm baths so highly recommended in Count Rumford's rhapsody are to be had for the turning of one's own faucet at any moment of ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood
... Steele's papers had many imitations, as the Historian, here named; the Rhapsody, Observator, Moderator, Growler, Censor, Hermit, Surprize, Silent Monitor, Inquisitor, Pilgrim, Restorer, Instructor, Grumbler, &c. There was also in 1712 a Rambler, anticipating the name of Dr. Johnsons Rambler ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... on to relate the conclusion of Frank's rhapsody, but he took great pains to convince me that if there was ever a high-principled, pure-minded, much-injured individual, that exemplary character was the gentleman now walking by my side; and I was convinced, but at the same time ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... grovelling condition of a clerk or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station.... I mean to prepare the way for futurity.... I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war." This may be regarded as a boyish rhapsody; but all boys are not given ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... sufficient to lead a man into a gallop, requiring two relays, at least, of fresh readers,—we in England—who know him best by his worst book, the book against Priests, &c., which has been most circulated—know him disadvantageously. That book is a rhapsody of incoherence. M. Michelet was light-headed, I believe, when he wrote it: and it is well that his keepers overtook him in time to intercept a second part. But his History of France is quite another thing. A man, in whatsoever craft ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... walk out without touching her, intending to call back his good-night. But he could not do it. There was something flamey about her to-night that went to his head. Her tender, tremulous little smile and the turn of the buoyant little head stirred in him a lover's rhapsody. ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... all men are created equal, and therefore free—little dreaming that, within the short period of one hundred years, their descendants would bear to be told by any orator, however popular, that the utterance of that principle was merely a rhetorical rhapsody; or by any judge, however venerated, that it was attended by mental reservation, which rendered it hypocritical and false. By the ordinance of 1787, they dedicated all of the national domain not yet ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... might take his leave of the portrait, for he would never give it up again for any treasure, and that to possess the favour of the original he would forsake all the world. He fell into many more such passionate and incoherent expressions of rhapsody, as of one suddenly smitten and spell-bound with hapless love, bitterly reproaching the ambassador for never having brought him any answers to the many affectionate letters which he had written to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... be expected that the young man entirely understood the rhapsody of Holden, though familiar with his moods. He saw, however, it had some connection with the one idea that had mastered all others, leaving them, notwithstanding, at perfect liberty, except so far as they interfered with itself. For it cannot have escaped observation, that on all subjects but one ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... withstanding beauty, and repairing the dilapidated estate with Peruvian gold. She sounded him, as a very wise man, on the chances of Oliver Dynevor doing something for his nephew, but did not receive much encouragement; though he prophesied that James was certain to get on, and uttered a rhapsody that nearly destroyed his new reputation for judgment. Lady Conway gave him an affectionate invitation to visit her whenever he could, and summoned the young ladies to wish him good-bye. The mute, blushing gratitude of Isabel's look was ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... parliamentary grants to make them good! ne'ertheless I like the frontispiece. The Elephant is pleasant; and I am glad you are getting into a wider scope of subjects. There may be too much, not religion, but too many good words into a book, till it becomes, as Sh. says of religion, a rhapsody of words. I will just name that you have brought in the Song to the Shepherds in four or five if not six places. Now this is not good economy. The Enoch is fine; and here I can sacrifice Elijah to it, because 'tis illustrative only, and not disparaging of the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Of rant and rhapsody in virtue's praise, Be most sublimely good, verbosely grand, And with poetic trappings grace thy prose Till it outmantle ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... is the strongest force in him, so that at times he is almost submerged by it, and he loses the sense of outward things. In this condition of trance the sense of time vanishes, there is, he asserts, no such thing, no past or future, only now, which is eternity. In The Story of my Heart, a rhapsody of mystic experience and aspiration he describes in detail several such moments of exaltation or trance. He seems to be peculiarly sensitive to sunshine. As the moon typifies to Keats the eternal essence in all things, so to Jefferies the sun seems to be the physical expression or symbol ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... popularity. The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold placed him on another platform, that of the Dii Majores of English verse. These cantos are separated from their predecessors, not by a stage, but by a gulf. Previous to their publication he had only shown how far the force of rhapsody could go; now he struck with his right hand, and from the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of Nature were the mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Wordsworth, and the happy companionship of Shelley, played their part in fostering. Faultlessness ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of your better self, and so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the old covers and love them for all that they have meant in the past. Yes, it was the olive-green line of Scott's novels which started me on to rhapsody. They were the first books I ever owned—long, long before I could appreciate or even understand them. But at last I realized what a treasure they were. In my boyhood I read them by surreptitious candle-ends in the dead of the night, when the sense of crime added ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... into a rhapsody over her new acquaintance and found to her surprise (it was always a surprise to Sylvia that Judith's tastes and judgments so frequently differed from hers) that Judith by no means shared her enthusiasm. She admitted, but as if it were a matter of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... said, with a French shrug of her shoulders; and then she fell into a rhapsody about the book, about the snatches of poetry interspersed in it, about the two heroines, Leonora and Neaera; about the two heroes, Walter Lorraine and his rival the young duke—"and what good company you ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... more than a Rhapsody of tragical Adventures, which captivated the the Imagination and distracted the Heart[15]. 'Twas pleasant enough to read them, but nothing more was got by it than feeding the Mind with Chimaeras, which were ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... strange rhapsody?—Is it owing to my being here? That I am not at Sinclair's? But if there be infection in that house, how has my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... style in which some man may not under some circumstances express himself. There is therefore no style which the drama rejects, none which it does not occasionally require. It is in the discernment of place, of time, and of person, that the inferior artists fail. The fantastic rhapsody of Mercutio, the elaborate declamation of Antony, are, where Shakspeare has placed them, natural and pleasing. But Dryden would have made Mercutio challenge Tybalt in hyperboles as fanciful as those in which he describes the chariot of Mab. Corneille would have represented Antony as scolding ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... edition of 1780, p. 1., entitled "The State of England in the year 2199," which is without date in the MS., but in the edition bears date March 21, 1771; as likewise the "Invitation to Miss Warb[u]rt[o]n," edit. p. 35., which appears in the MS. without any name; and the "Extempore Rhapsody, March 21, 1771," edit. p. 37., also undated in the MS., but which supplies the name of "Yates," expressed in the edition by asterisks; and also six lines at the end, which were omitted in the edition on account of their indecency. There are several variations in the manuscript, which prove that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... individual was respected. Similarly, God gave him the work of formulating each of the ten commandments. Slowly the moral treasure grew. The jurist gave law, the poet sang songs, the prophet poured out his rhapsody, the patriot and martyr died for principle, and the roll of the heroes lengthened. At last the pages of Jewish history were filled with names glowing and glorious as the nights ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... floodgate for the belief of a mass of mythical stuff which we will no more grant to be historically true than Niebuhr will admit the validity of the legends of early Rome." The poets of every land have enjoyed a sort of rhapsody when in their highest flights. This rhapsody or ecstasy is all that these idolaters of reason will concede. Doederlein's views of inspiration were much more elevated than those held by many of his confreres; but he too speaks of poetical excitement, and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... emerged. Pausing by the horse rack he surveyed the two men and boy, if not with indifference, at least with apathy. Just above his head swung the sign with its legend, "Slosson—Entertainment"; but if he were Slosson, one could take the last half of the sign either as a poetic rhapsody on the part of the painter, or the yielding to some meaningless convention, for in his person, Mr. Slosson suggested none of those qualities of brain or heart that trenched upon the lighter amenities of life. He was black-haired and bull-necked, and there was about him a certain ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Your rhapsody, happy or not, will it not awaken the suspicions of De Chemerant? Will you not thus compromise the safety of those whom you have, I ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... rhapsody against creeds and confessions. Dr Johnson shewed, that 'what he called "imposition", was only a voluntary declaration of agreement in certain articles of faith, which a church has a right to require, just ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... and said good-night. But when I had reached my bedroom in the Hotel de la Ville, I sat down, obstinate and unconvinced, and penned this rhapsody, which I have lately found among papers of nearly twenty years ago. I give ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... what I had read of Goethe; from Carlyle's early articles in the Edinburgh and Foreign Reviews, though for a long time I saw nothing in these (as my father saw nothing in them to the last) but insane rhapsody. From these sources, and from the acquaintance I kept up with the French literature of the time, I derived, among other ideas which the general turning upside down of the opinions of European thinkers had brought uppermost, these in particular: ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... was remarkably piercing, I perceived in it somewhat of the wildness which always characterizes a Glonglim. He was evidently impatient for discussion; and having informed himself of the subject of my rhapsody when he joined our party, he vehemently exclaimed,—"I am surprised at your falling in with that popular prejudice; while it is easy to show, that but for some feeling of love, or pity, or admiration, with which the rose happens to be ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... from Mr. Dryden's Funeral, where we had an Ode in Horace sung, instead of David's Psalms; whence you may find that we don't think a Poet worth Christian Burial; the Pomp of the Ceremony was a kind of Rhapsody, and fitter, I think, for Hudibras than him; because the Cavalcade was mostly Burlesque; but he was an extraordinary Man, and bury'd after an extraordinary Fashion; for I believe there was never such another Burial seen; the Oration indeed was ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called "The Devil's Drive" the notion of which I took ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... one which nobody would think of controverting, where—and here is the point—where any beauty has been shown. But how, where that is not the case? where the hatter is simply introduced, as God made him and as his fellow-men have miscalled him, at the crisis of a high-flown rhapsody? And what are we to say, where a man of Whitman's notable capacity for putting things in a bright, picturesque, and novel way, simply gives up the attempt, and indulges, with apparent exultation, in an inventory of trades or implements, with no more colour or coherence than so many index-words out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as calmly as I could, in reply to this strange rhapsody, "will ye be sae kind as tell me what a' this means?" An' first I looked at the dochter, wha was still lyin on the sofa, wi' her face buried wi' fricht in the cushions, and then at the mother, wha was sittin in a chair, starin at me, an' gaspin for breath, but noo evidently ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... forcing himself, now she was out of sight, to look on it as a vision from the other world, he rose into a state of unnatural excitement, and concluded in a style of eloquence that electrified the simple; for it bordered on rhapsody. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... power of outlying and exotic modes. Both have been profoundly impressed by the artistic currents of the Paris about them. Both, like so many other French musicians, have been kindled by the bright colors of Spain, Ravel in his orchestral Rhapsody, in his one-act opera "L'Heure espagnol" and in the piano-piece in the collection "Miroirs" entitled "Alborada del Graciozo," Debussy in "Iberia" and in some of his preludes. Indeed, a parallelism exists throughout their respective works. Debussy writes "Homage a Rameau"; Ravel "Le Tombeau ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... answered the wild rhapsody which I wrote to tell her how much in love I was with Elena Barry-Smith. And in the nature of things I had not written Bettie again to tell her I was, and by a deal the more, in love with Avis Beechinor. The task ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al
... of several airy and graceful productions in verse, which were published anonymously, such as Lines written at Ampthill Park, in 1818; Advice to Julia, a letter in Rhyme, in which he sketched high life in London, in 1820. He also published Crockford House: a rhapsody, in 1827. Moore in his Diary has embalmed numerous examples of his satiric wit. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... you; there are no words," said Fairley, in that curious monotone which the recital of verse may give, or which constant singing may leave in a minstrel's ordinary speech. "I cannot tell, but my fiddle might play her to you in a rhapsody that should set the music in your soul vibrating. There are women whose image cunning fingers may catch with brush and pigment and limn it on canvas; there are women whose image may be traced in burning words so that a vision of her rises ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... hand, contemplated the strange fanatic before him, and listened to his heated rhapsody, with indescribable bewilderment. He looked him in the face with curious particularity; saw there the marks of education; and ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... a rhapsody on a girl's mouth is proper in poetry, but scarcely germane to the record of a purely business transaction. Please answer the next question tersely, if ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... the poet fired to sing The snail's discreet degrees, A rhapsody of sauntering, A gloria of ease; Proclaiming their's the baser part Who consciously forswear The delicate and gentle art Of never ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... canton'd in a heptarchy, A rhapsody of nations to supply, Among themselves maintain'd eternal wars, And still the ladies ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... you are like all the rest—French and Russians and Germans! Why spoil my rhapsody ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... eyes the heightened color of the fair enthusiast, who, accompanying her rhapsody with action expressive as her words, had to repeat her question, "Have you such a friend?" before he found recollection to answer ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... the cutting criticism that his work is "hardly national." [Footnote: Wendell, Literary History of America (1911), pp 495-498.] And so with all other histories, one dismisses him as the author of a vague rhapsody called "The Marshes of Glynn," another exalts him as a poet who rivals Poe in melody and far surpasses him in thought or feeling. Evidently there is no settled criticism of Lanier, as of Bryant or Longfellow; ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... truly say, that the grief with which I read this rhapsody of predetermined insult, had the rhapsodist himself for ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 7th of May, a month after Danton's death, Robespierre delivered a long speech before the Convention, a speech that marks his apogee. It was a high-flown rhapsody on civic morality and purism. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists were bitterly attacked; Jean Jacques Rousseau was deified. The State should adopt his religious attitude, his universal church of nature. In that church, nature herself is the chief priest and there ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em; And so proceed ad infinitum. 721 SWIFT: Poetry, A Rhapsody. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... little chapel, beside the main edifice, is the stone fount where the infant Jeanne was baptized. Fastened to the wall there hangs a remnant of the iron balustrade, that Jeanne's hands must have rested on during the hours that she passed in rhapsody, seeing what never was seen on land or sea. A few steps from the church stands the cot where the maid was born, almost as humbly as the Christ Child. Entering through the small doorway, you see the room in which Jeanne ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... good poem, the "Plus haut toujours!" of Jean Allard-Meeus, a hymn of real aerial majesty. In English Major Maurice Baring's ode "In Memoriam: A.H." is equally unique, and, in its complete diversity from Allard-Meeus' rhapsody, suggests that the aeroplane has a wide field before it in the realms of imaginative writing. Major Baring's subject is the death of Auberon Herbert, Lord Lucas, who was killed on November 3rd, 1916. This distinguished young statesman and soldier had just been promoted, after a career of prolonged ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... sir," said Peveril; "and if so, I think I may fairly ask you your purpose in thus bearing me company, and the meaning of all this rhapsody. If it be mere banter, I can endure it within proper limit; although it is uncivil on the part of a stranger. If you have any farther purpose, speak it out; I am not to ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... strange thoughts came over me as I sat growing more and more convinced that Louis' talk to me was a boyish rhapsody, and yet I knew then, as I had before known, that my own heart was touched by his presence. If he had been older, I should have felt that heaven had opened; as it was, I longed to be full of hope and to dream of days ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... not likely that Theodoric ever read a letter like this before affixing to it his (perhaps stencilled) signature. If he did, he must surely have smiled to see his few angry Teutonic words transmuted into this wonderful rhapsody about sucking-fishes and torpedoes and shell-fish ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... persuasion!" she rippled. "See how thou art shaken into thyself, man. What! No phrase of lackadaisical rapture! Why, I looked to see thee invert thine incorporate satin in an airy rhapsody—upheld and kept unruffled by some fantastical twist of thine imagination. Oh, Fancy—Fancy! Couldst not e'en sustain thy knight cap-a-pie!" and she laughed the harder as she saw her lover's face ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... found her living alone in a little room on the top story of a cheap boarding-house quite out of touch with all human relations, but apparently happy in the enjoyment of her own spiritual blessings. Her time was occupied in writing booklets on sanctification—page after page of dreamy rhapsody. She proved to be one of a small group of persons who claim that entire salvation involves three steps instead of two; not only must there be conversion and sanctification, but a third, which they call 'crucifixion' or 'perfect redemption,' and which seems to bear the same relation ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... be bent. General French, since his retirement to command of the forces in England, seems much older. So common is this quick aging that Lady Jellicoe, who went to Scotland to see her husband after the big naval battle, wrote to Mrs. Page in a sort of rhapsody and with evident surprise that the Admiral really did not seem older! The weight of this thing is so prodigious that it is changing all men who have to do with it. Men and women (who do not wear mourning) mention the death of their sons in a way that a stranger ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... harp, nor on it dirges Longer let Eolus play; Touch it, and those notes of sadness Change to joyous rhapsody! And tho' the grape, the gift of Autumn, Has been prest to crown the bowl— Still in thy tresses shine its clusters, While down thy snowy ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... after a rhapsody on the divine merits of an air-cooling system, clawed his billowing black hair, and sighed, "Sounds improbable, don't it? Must be true, though; it's going to appear in the Gazette, and that's the motor-dealer's bible. If you don't believe it, read the ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... of thought, could not talk of Shakespeare, what is to be said by us punier men who are compelled to peep about for matter of discourse? "Everything is inadequate." That perhaps is the reason why talk about Shakespeare, even from the sanest of men, is apt to convert itself into perfervid rhapsody. Meanwhile, from those whose sanity is less assured, it runs to the delirium of some harebrained cipher of Shakespeare-Geheimnis, and an amused world is asked to listen while some female Dogberry ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... marriage, which irrationally tyrannising over sexual relations, produces unnatural celibacy and prostitution. These threads, and many others, were all taken up in his first serious poem, 'Queen Mab' (1812-13), an over-long rhapsody, partly in blank verse, partly in loose metres. The spirit of Ianthe is rapt by the Fairy Mab in her pellucid car to the confines of the universe, where the past, present, and future of the earth are unfolded to the spirit's gaze. We see tyrants writhing upon their ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... rhapsody, and may now be reminded, in explanation of allusions in the following letter, that the arm of Dr Livingstone, the African traveller, was crushed and crunched by the bite and "chaw" of a lion. He will also ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... it is unnecessary to speak in detail. It was one long rhapsody, and rhapsodies are apt to be a little tiresome to those other than the rhapsodists. Everybody has known such hours for themselves—or if they have not they are unfortunate. They breakfasted frugally—there is a delicious ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... and his own fervent adoration. I was the only being to whom he had opened his heart, and, the floodgates being set free, the torrent burst forth in this tempestuous and incoherent manner. I let him go on, for I thought it did him good; but his rhapsody added very ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... Richard Watson Gilder, of Edith Thomas, of Robert Underwood Johnson—whose "Italian Rhapsody" and "The Winter Hour" can never be forgotten—and certain verses of Edmund Clarence Stedman. But les jeunes prefer the new verse makers. There is even a kind of cult for the Imagists. A spokesman ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... would surely have thought the danger past, at least for a time, and any man of common sense would have told him to stop worrying over phantoms. This healthy lesson would have been worth much for practical education, but it was quite upset by the sudden rush of a new actor upon the stage with a rhapsody that made Russell seem sane, and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams |
