"Chant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possessed, and snapped by Fate at its supremest moment, can never die from out the heart. All other troubles are swallowed up in this, and if the individual is of too stern a fiber to be completely crushed into the dust, time will come bearing healing, and the memory of that once ideal condition will chant in the heart a ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... position is reversed and they occupy the front of the room. Some old man, the keeper of tribal tradition and song, acts as the leader, calling out the words of the dance songs a line ahead. He begins the proceedings by striking up a low chant, an invitation to the people assembled to dance. The chorus accompany him lightly on their drums. Then at the proper place, he strikes a crashing double beat; the drums boom out in answer; the song arises high and shrill; the dancers leap into their ...
— The Dance Festivals of the Alaskan Eskimo • Ernest William Hawkes
... of nations, especially to the Canaanites, who formed their troop of singers and musicians, and, with much skill and effect, mourned the deceased, as they did at Sifara—the mother beginning to intone a chant, which was then taken up by those most learned and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... been thrown into confusion. Accordingly the king added to this suggestion a solemn oath that he would not budge from the city until he had made an edict, sacred and inviolable. The enthusiasm of the deputies was at its height; a rush took place to the church of St. Sauveur to chant a Te Deum. All the princes were there to give thanks to God. Never were king, court, and people so joyous." The Duke of Guise wrote to the Spanish ambassador, "At length we have, in full assembly of the states, had our edict of union solemnly sworn and established as fundamental law of this ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of me I heard his voice, deep and musical, droning a weird kind of chant that seemed to be utterly everlasting. It was not loud, but rather like a deep organ note that carries a long distance. In a while he came nearer, walking unconcernedly with his face to the sky. Over ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... music of a more joyous character, but still of a joy subdued and tranquil, rang throughout the chamber, and from the walls beyond, in a choral peal. Symphonious with the melody, those in the room lifted their voices in chant. The words of this hymn were simple. They expressed no regret, no farewell, but rather a greeting to the new world whither the deceased had preceded the living. Indeed, in their language, the funeral hymn is called the 'Birth Song.' Then the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... there was a rustle of leaves, and soon shrill, untrained voices of the choir-boys were screaming the chant like a number of baby ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... banner and pall are black, with white embroidery, and the members of a red-clothed confraternity attend the funerals, bearing a crucifix and tapers. Many of them are quite old men, and they raise a quavering chant as they climb the steep ascent to the cathedral, which is a late Renaissance building, and not interesting, though finely placed. The campanile is an evident copy of that of S. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... never heard the like of it; for it had no words, but was just a sing-song—a chant, low at first, then rising shrill and clear and strong, and reaching out as though to challenge the waters twinkling between raft and horizon. Through it there ran a note of high courage touched with tremulous yearning—yearning to escape ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... only fond of repeating quotations from the old English poets, but also verses from the old Sternhold and Hopkins hymn-book, which he had studied in the Salisbury meeting-house when a boy, and sometimes when alone he would sing, or rather chant, them in his deep voice, without a particle of melody. His favorite verses were the following translation of the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... a small harp advanced into the centre of the horse-shoe table, and after striking a chord, began to sing, or rather to chant one of the ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... the vivid blue of the sapphire glitters in my neck; and when thus I spread my tail, a gemmy brightness strikes the eye from a plumage varied with a thousand glowing colours.' At this moment, a nightingale began to chant forth his melodious lay; at which the peacock, dropping his expanded tail, cried out, 'Ah what avails my silent unmeaning beauty, when I am so far excelled in voice by such a little russet-feathered wretch as that!' And, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... Twilight of his Fancy's Theme, Scar'd from his Sins, repented in a Fright, Had he view'd Scotland had turn'd Proselyte. A Land where one may pray with curst Intent; Oh, may they never suffer Banishment! Had Cain been Scot, God would have chant'd his Doom, Not forc'd him wander, but confin'd him home. Like Jews they spread, and as Infection fly, As if the Devil had Ubiquity. Hence 'tis they live as Rovers, and defie This or that Place, Rags of Geography. They're ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... pocket? Oh, Marster! de devil is 'bout heah, sho'! Marse Nat, you fling it up, suh. I ain' nuttin but a po' sinful nigger. Oh, Lordy!" And handing over the quarter tremulously, George Washington flung himself flat on the ground and, as a sort of religious incantation, began to chant in a wild, quavering ...
— "George Washington's" Last Duel - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... shoulder, and that hostilities on his part were about to be opened, he, as if just for fun, dropped his own dear brown self on the branch below him, flapped his wings, and soon perching himself on a tree a little further off, gravely re-opened his beak and resumed his monotonous chant. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... did the Dedannan host listen to Finola's chant, and when the music ceased and only sobs broke the stillness, the four swans spread their wings, and, soaring high, paused but for one short moment to gaze on the kneeling forms of Lir and Bove Derg. Then, stretching their ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... knocking her head ostentatiously in the dust as she did so. We followed suit instantly. Then Hilda rose and began walking slowly round the big drum in the nave, saying aloud at each step, in a sort of monotonous chant, like a priest intoning, the four mystic words, "Aum, mani, padme, hum," "Aum, mani, padme, hum," many times over. We repeated the sacred formula after her, as if we had always been brought up to it. I noticed that Hilda walked ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... all this, gentlemen and Catholics! Do you still regret the priests and choristers who used awhile ago to preach and chant in the Parisian churches? Where is the man, who at the very sight of this new congregation, so tolerant, so intelligent, listening with such gratitude to these noble lessons of politics and morality; ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... power of arousing overtones from his keyboard. His aesthetic mysticism is allied with a semi-brutal frankness. Feathers fallen from the wings of peri adorn the heads of equivocal persons. Cosmogonies jostle evil farceurs, and the silvery voices of children chant blasphemies. Laforgue could repeat with Arthur Rimbaud: "I accustomed myself to simple hallucinations: I saw, quite frankly, a mosque in place of a factory, a school of drums kept by the angels; post-chaises on the road to heaven, a drawing-room at the bottom of a lake; ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... discussion was had at that time, the hour being late, and so the meeting was closed with prayer and singing. Masters and servants joined to chant a hymn, of which the following, written many years after by Gregory of Nazianzum, might almost seem to be ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... other hand, shows a complete mastery of form. He was a close student of Horace; he tried successfully the most exacting of exotic verse-forms, and enjoyed the distinction of having written the only English example of the difficult Chant-Royal. Graceful vers de societe and bits of witty epigram flowed from him without effort. But it was not to this often dangerous facility that Bunner owed his poetic fame. His tenderness, his quick sympathy with nature, his insight into the human heart, above all, the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... shone the sun aslant, Brimming the church with gold and purple mist, 530 Meet atmosphere to bosom that rich chant. Where fifty voices in one strand did twist Their varicolored tones, and left no want To the delighted soul, which sank abyssed In the warm music cloud, while, far below, The organ heaved its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... and of the vassals who died at Roncevaux'; and it is suggested that in the Chanson de Roland by one Turoldus or Theroulde, a poem preserved in a manuscript of the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigour and freshness; it is not without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a document of some poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic value; he sees ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... their bodies were transparent, and contracted or expanded like the folds of a serpent. As they moved in majestic order, he heard a low sound—the ghost, as it were, of voice—which each caught and echoed from the other; a low sound, but musical, which seemed the chant of some unspeakably tranquil joy. None of these apparitions heeded him. His intense longing to accost them, to be of them, to make one of this movement of aerial happiness,—for such it seemed to him,—made him stretch forth his arms and seek to cry aloud, but only ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... before, they began spreading out across the prairie, heading now for the cottonwoods, while others still faced and fired on the far blue skirmish line. The fierce wind, sweeping across the direction of the attack, deadened all sound of hoof or war chant, but there was no mistaking the signs, no doubt of the intent, when, in a little moment more, the earth began to tremble beneath the dancing pony feet, telling, almost with the swiftness of sight, that the grand advance had again begun. But other eyes were watching ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... this most tiresome chant, all the candles having been extinguished, the celebrated Miserere commenced. It is, indeed, sublime, but I think loses much of its effect from the fatigue of body, and mind, too, in which it is heard by the auditors. The Miserere ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... their confessions like a gay antiphonal chant. A bright color had come up in Lydia's cheeks. She looked very sunny and good-humored, like a cheerful child, an expression which up to that year had been habitual to her. Dr. Melton looked at ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... much more interesting sound than Father Nicholas's drowsy monotone, or Father Warner's dry staccato. He at least was interested in his subject; no one could doubt that. As soon as the last note of the last chant had died away, Bruno came forward to the steps of the altar. He had given due notice of his intention beforehand, and every one (with Beatrice in particular) was prepared ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... from her of the chime of bells which was rung at the opening of the university, and which, with the additions afterward made to it, have done beautiful service. On the bells she thus gave were inscribed the verses of the ninety- fifth chant of Tennyson's "In Memoriam''; and some weeks afterward I had the pleasure of placing in her hands what she considered an ample return for her gift— a friendly letter from Tennyson himself, containing some of the stanzas written out in ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... Tom continued to chant, with pauses: 'Some streets are longer than others.... Very few streets are straight.... But we read in the Bible of the street which is called Straight.... Oxford Street is nearly straight.... A street is what you go along.... It has ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... am not gone yet." He wagged his head cunningly and began to laugh to himself. His mind apparently rambled, for he started to chant a French love song in a voice that had long since lost its capacity for a sustained tone. The words were distinct, although the melody was broken, and the spectacle was gruesome enough. As he concluded he looked at the valet as if for approbation and began to ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... gentleman. When you see his poor clothes, and thin, gray hair, his loitering step, and dreamy eye, you might pass him by as an inefficient man; but when you hear his voice always speaking for the noble and generous side, or recounting, in a half-melancholy chant, the recollections of his youth; when you know that his heart beats with the simple emotion of a boy's heart, and that his courtesy is as delicate as a girl's modesty, you will understand why Prue declares that she has never seen but one man ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... with their handfuls of flour, the sham cook with his pots and pans wreathed with vine-branches, the sham cavalier in theatrical cloak and trunk hose who dashes about on a pony, the solemn group tossing a doll to a church-like chant in a blanket, the chaff and violet bunches flung from the windows, the fun and life and buzz and colour of it all. It is something very different, one feels, from the common country fair of home. In the first ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... the existence of God and the mysteries of the Trinity, the incarnation, and redemption, as states an anonymous but very circumstantial relation written at Manila, on April 20, 1572. This is more evident in the song which the Mandayan baylanas use in their sacrifices, when they chant the Miminsad, saying: [Here follow the words of this song, for which consult our Vol. XII, p. 270, note.] ... The Mandayas believe that Mansilatan is the father of Batla (man being a prefix which indicates paternity, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... there was a deep silence, and then, as upon his arrival, there rose the sound of music—not joyful this time, but solemn, like a chant at the grave of the dead. It came nearer and again the ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... hand thou hast taken, So loudly resoundeth thy praise; Else why, since our tent was forsaken, Hast sung with such frequence thy lays? Men, like thou, who, when foes are appearing, Would to chant the foe's praises begin, Will attack not, when battle is nearing, But the name of base ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... brother of Pope Urbane And Valmond, Emperor of Allemaine, Appareled in magnificent attire With retinue of many a knight and squire, On St. John's eve, at vespers, proudly sat And heard the priests chant the Magnificat. And as he listened, o'er and o'er again Repeated, like a burden or refrain, He caught the words, "Deposuit potentes De sede, et exaltavit humiles"; And slowly lifting up his kingly head, He to a learned clerk beside ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... at Constantinople, and exhibited the qualities of a great statesman. He regulated the Roman liturgy, the calendar of festivals, the order of processions, the fashions of sacerdotal garments; he himself officiated in the canon of the mass, devised many solemn and pompous rites, and invented the chant known by his name. He established schools of music, administered the Church revenues with precision and justice, and set an example of almsgiving and charity; for such was the misery of the times that even Roman ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... or chaplain, than king's chancellor,"[332] who had been prepared beforehand, rose, and affected remonstrance; but, speaking in English, his words were not understood by the crowd. A bard in the Geraldine train cut short his speech with an Irish battle chant; and the wild troop rushed, shouting, out of the abbey, and galloped from ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... ideas, it must be remembered that the Japanese are not singular in preferring it, as several of the most civilised nations of antiquity considered it the most honourable mode of disposing of the bodies of the dead. While the body is being reduced to ashes the priests tell their beads and chant prayers for the soul of the departed, as the followers of almost every religious sect in Japan believe in a ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... that, while I am on the throne here, people who feel it necessary to chant 'Come, little seven!' must ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... singing again," he said, listening to the droning chant that came indistinctly through the dark. "One would think they would long ago have been too drunk to stand. How some of these recruits the King sends over to us would ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... the possibility of complete satisfaction, and there is suffering because the will is thwarted and cheated of its ideal. Macbeth's passionate ambition to be a king, encouraged in him by the witches' chant, is an ambition for something that no being a king can satisfy; and the tragedy of his passion lies in the painful effort by which he wins his object and the painful disillusion when ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... atavistic—all save one, a student, who stared wistfully through his spectacles across the waters. Later, when twilight deepened, when the moon had changed from silver to gold, the orators gave place to a singer. He had been a bootblack in America. Now he had become a bard. His plaintive minor chant evoked, one knew not how, the flavour of that age-long history of oppression and wrong these were now determined to avenge. Their conventional costumes were proof that we had harboured them—almost, indeed, assimilated them. And suddenly they had reverted. They were ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... services very attractive. Let our Choirs, and those who have charge of the musical part of the services, do their part to make the singing pleasant and lively. It is a grievous thing to note how slovenly this part of the service is in some places. For instance, in many chapels where they have a chant-book, the run is on three or four. It is a symptom of inertness when STELLA is sung as though it were the only 6-8's tune. Will someone see to it, that a ditch is dug to every singing ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... plant. Thus in the Hindoo Koosh a fire is kindled with twigs of the sacred cedar; and the Dainyal or sibyl, with a cloth over her head, inhales the thick pungent smoke till she is seized with convulsions and falls senseless to the ground. Soon she rises and raises a shrill chant, which is caught up and loudly repeated by her audience. So Apollo's prophetess ate the sacred laurel and was fumigated with it before she prophesied. The Bacchanals ate ivy, and their inspired fury was by some believed to be due to the exciting and intoxicating properties of the plant. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... prepared, commenced dancing around the circle in a most frantic manner, pulling with all his might, so as to stretch out the rope, and by his jerking movements loosening himself by tearing out the flesh. The young man's dance was accompanied by a chant by those who were standing around, assisted by the thumping of a hideous drum, to keep the time. The young brave who was undergoing this self-torture finally succeeded in tearing himself loose, and the rope relaxed from its sudden tightness and fell back toward the centre pole ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... roses, she beheld her husband, in a check suit and a white Homburg hat, performing the wildest evolutions, while opposite him a lady, smothered in coloured silks and coins, tattooed and painted, dyed and scented, covered with kohl and crowned with ostrich feathers, screamed a nasal chant of the East, and bounded ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... to them. The Romans call them CERAUNIA from keraun'oc, thunder, and in the catalogue of the possessions of a noble Veronese published in 1656, we find them mentioned under this name.[20] Every one knows Cymbeline's funeral chant in ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... against him, and he had the Mortification of seeing the People always receive with Pleasure any thing that exposed and satyriz'd his Conduct. That indeed in his own Defence, he had imploy'd some others to chant his Praise; but they were such wretched Poetasters, and did it so awkardly, that their Performances prov'd more bitter Invectives than the Satyrs of the others; for whenever there happen'd the least Flaw in his Administration, he was sure ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... appear'd Elysian creatures robed in fleecy light, Together flocking from celestial haunts, And mansions of purpureal mould; the Host Of heaven assembled to adore with harp And hymn, the First and Last, the Living God; They knelt,—a universal choir, and glow'd More beauteous while they breathed the chant divine, And Hallelujah! Hallelujah! peal'd, And thrill'd the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various
... Shore." In this and in many similar rhapsodies Whitman holds obstinately to what may be termed the three points of his national creed. The first is the newness of America, and its expression is in his well-known chant of "Pioneers, O Pioneers." Yet this new America is subtly related to the past; and in Whitman's later poems, such as "Passage to India," the spiritual kinship of orient and occident is emphasized. The second ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... time upon Tarzan of the Apes in the full of his strength." But still Ska, the vulture, circled and soared above him, and the ape-man, notwithstanding his boasts, felt a shudder of apprehension. Through his brain ran a persistent and doleful chant to which he involuntarily set two words, repeated over and over again in horrible monotony: "Ska knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself in anger, he picked up a rock and hurled it ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... clippings." Mrs. Heeny, swooping down on her bag, drew from it a handful of newspaper cuttings, which she spread on her ample lap and proceeded to sort with a moistened forefinger. "Here," she said, holding one of the slips at arm's length; and throwing back her head she read, in a slow unpunctuated chant: '"Mrs. Henley Fairford gave another of her natty little dinners last Wednesday as usual it was smart small and exclusive and there was much gnashing of teeth among the left-outs as Madame Olga Loukowska gave some of her new steppe dances ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... actually finds strength enough to express his sentiments of real love for the lovely absent one—of a love, indeed, which is evidently returned. His heart, like the poet's, now beats with a pure love, and causes him to chant the absence of his friend in the most beautiful strain. Where is the old Harold? It would seem as if the poet, tired of a companion so disagreeable and so opposed to his tastes, and wishing to get rid of him but not knowing how, had first changed and moulded him to his own ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... urchin would have been puzzled to tell. There flashed into Taffy's brain the vision of the whole earth lauding and adoring— sun-worshippers and Christians, priests and small children; nation after nation prostrating itself and arising to join the chant— "the differing world's agreeing sacrifice." Yes, it was Praise that made men brothers; Praise, the creature's first and last act of homage to his Creator; Praise that made him kin with the angels. Praise had lifted this tower; had expressed itself in its ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was smothered by the walls of the house, Packard's memory strove for the words which his ears failed to catch. And more often than not the words, retrieved from oblivion, were less than worth the effort; no poet had builded the chant, which, rather, grown to goodly proportions of perhaps a hundred verses, had resulted from a natural evolution like a modern Odyssey, or some sprawling vine which was what it was because of its environment. But while lines were faulty and rhymes were ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... began to pass his hand cautiously over his patient's body, searching for possible fractured ribs or some similar injury; but the old man waved him impatiently away, and presently broke forth in a low, crooning sort of chant. ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... view, Marian stood still at a very short distance from the grave. Steenie was humming a plaintive ditty, or rather dirge; for it partook of a double character, something between an alehouse roundelay and a funeral chant. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... adds to its solemn beauty and stateliness, while the varied phases of spiritualized thought and emotional grief which find expression in the poem seem to elevate it in its harmonies to the rank of a profound psalm-chant from the choir of heaven. In the sumptuously embellished edition of the elegy, embodying Mr. Harry Fenn's drawings, with a sympathetic preface by the Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, there is a brief but luminous analysis of the nine divisions of the poem, or commentary ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... occupied in thoughtfulness he became aware of the monotony of a tuneless chant, as if, it struck him, an insane young chorister or canon were galloping straight on end hippomaniacally through the Psalms. There was a creak at intervals, leading him to think it a machine that might have run ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Died mournful on the evening breeze away, Ere down the precipice he plunged along Mid ragged cliffs that in his passage lay: All torn and mangled by the fearful fray, Naught save the echo of his fall arose. The winds that still around that summit play, The sporting rill that far beneath it flows, Chant, where the Indian fell, their requiem ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... chant, Match'd with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there is ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... Dance on! for ever young, for ever fair, Lightfooted as a frightened bounding deer, Thy wreath of vine-leaves twisted in thy hair, Through all the changing seasons of the year, And tread, to Autumn's gorgeous hymn of praise, And to the happy Spring's light lilt of pleasure, And to the dirgeful chant of Winter's days, And ever varying, ever suited measure; And in the Summer, when the reeking earth Swings a vast censer, as it is most meet, Praise thou for lavish gifts, new hopes, new birth, Praise with the dancing of thy ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... and vanished into air, And left Valmiki wondering there. The pupils of the holy man, Moved by their love of him, began To chant that verse, and ever more They marvelled as they sang it o'er: "Behold, the four-lined balanced rime, Repeated over many a time, In words that from the hermit broke In shock of grief, becomes a sloke." This measure ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... groans. Instead of the big descending phrase we sink into lower depths of gloom, wilder than ever, on the first tripping motive. As the sighing strain resounds below in the midst of a chorus of demon shrieks, there enters the chant of inexorable fate. Mockery yields to a tinge of pathos, a sense almost of majestic ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... comes to his senses once more, finds himself kneeling upon the green grass on the slope of a sequestered valley, lulled by the tinkling bells of the flock and the piping of a shepherd from a rock hard by. The pious chant of pilgrims, passing on their way to Rome, wakens his slumbering conscience, and bids him expiate his guilt by a life of abstinence and humiliation. His meditations are interrupted by the appearance of the Landgrave of Thuringia, his liege lord, who is hunting with Wolfram von Eschinbach, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... bathed in a dim, religious light; and the congregation, seated on small wooden chairs, gazed in reverent silence at the pulpit, where a gentleman of commanding presence and sparkling pince-nez was delivering a species of chant. Behind a gold curtain at the end of the room mysterious forms flitted to and fro. Archie, who had been expecting something on the lines of the New York Stock Exchange, which he had once been privileged to visit when it ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... glory, reflect that this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and who had the courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor always present to them.'" With the solemnity of the chant the young voice went on while the flag-covered casket was lifted from car to bier. "'For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... thinkers!... To Jean Jacques Rousseau, and his pupil, Maximilian Robespierre!" This enumeration of names was received with a triple salvo of applause, and was encored, with which request M. Saint Just complied. The banquet concluded with the "Marseillaise" and the "Chant du Depart" sung by the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Like echoes softly flung from rock and hill, Took up the strain, and all the hollow air Seemed mourning for the dead; for, on that day, The little people of the snow had come, From mountain-peak, and cloud, and icy hall, To Eva's burial. As the murmur died, The funeral train renewed the solemn chant. ...
— The Little People of the Snow • William Cullen Bryant
... express, but the "peace-ship" had inconsiderately stalled, and the choking, wheezing, and snorting of the engine, as old Dan frenziedly cranked, together with the Claxon, operated by Skeet Wigglesworth, rudely interrupted the Seniors' chant. A vociferous ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... more important than the praise of the lips. But the praise of the heart is hindered by singing, both because the attention of the singers is distracted from the consideration of what they are singing, so long as they give all their attention to the chant, and because others are less able to understand the things that are sung than if they were recited without chant. Therefore chants should not be ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... from him, a flame sprang up behind his spectacles, and the something that slept or dreamed in Wilkinson awoke. He was away with Mrs. Norman in a lovely land, in Provence of the thirteenth century. A strange chant broke from him; it startled Evey, where she sat at the other end of the room. He was reciting his own translation of a ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... grave mischief. The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is instantly transferred to the record. The poet chanting was felt to be a divine man. Henceforth the chant is divine also. The writer was a just and wise spirit. Henceforward it is settled the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into worship of his statue. Instantly the book becomes noxious.[17] The guide is a tyrant. We sought a brother, and lo, a governor. The sluggish ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... The broad horizon above the lake was piled deep with clouds. Beyond the oak trees, in the southern sky, great tongues of flame shot up into the dark heavens out of the blast furnaces of the steel works. Deep-toned, full-throated frogs had begun their monotonous chant. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a child's voice from the neighbouring house began repeating in a kind of chant: "Take and read, take and read." Augustin shuddered. What was this refrain? Was it a nursery-rhyme that the little children of the countryside used to sing? He could not recollect it; he had never heard it before.... Immediately, as upon a divine command, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... servitude to Satan, with their present, pure life of glorious liberty in the Lord Jesus Christ. And then they sing, so earnestly for they are thinking of their pagan sisters of the wild tribes, sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, in the regions beyond. The hymn is Draper's "Missionary Chant." ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... E'en as I chant, lo! out of death, and out of ooze and slime, The blossoms rapidly blooming, sympathy, help, love, From west and east, from south and north and over sea, Its hot spurr'd hearts and hands humanity to human aid moves on; And from within a thought ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... wash himself free of its stain; and it was this very hatred of natural flesh that had precipitated a perilous worship of deified flesh. But the Gothic cathedral had intervened; he had been taken by the beauty of its architecture and the beauty of its Gregorian chant. But now he realised—if not in all its truth, at least in part—that his love of God had only taken the form of a gratification of the senses, a sensuality higher but as intense as those which he so much reproved. His life had been but a sin, an abomination. And as a woman ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... know—but though the advancing aeons Win every painful step by blood and fire, Though tortured mouths must chant the world's great paeans, And martyred souls ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... into order. Mary Nellen was a wonderful person. She arranged and dusted and put questions to Anne as to Cicero and Virgil, and then, when Anne convoyed her further, to the colonel, and he found a worn lexicon in the attic and began to dig out translations and chant melodious periods. The daughters could have hugged Mary Nellen, bright-eyed and intent on advancement up the hill of learning, for they gave him something to do to mitigate suspense until his son should come. And one day at ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... arms they cannot overpower us, With hunger they would fain devour us; Foe beside foe in an iron ring. Has want crossed our borders, or hunger, or dearth? Listen: I chant the tidings of Spring: Our soil is our ally in this great thing; Already new bread ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Paddy dear, and did ye hear The news that's going round? No cheers for brave Paul Kruger Must be heard on Irish ground. No more the English tourist at Killarney will be seen, Unless you join the pirate's cause, And chant "God ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... The vivaces, at the theatre of Quiquendone, lagged like real adagios. The allegros were "long-drawn out" indeed. The demisemiquavers were scarcely equal to the ordinary semibreves of other countries. The most rapid runs, performed according to Quiquendonian taste, had the solemn march of a chant. The gayest shakes were languishing and measured, that they might not shock the ears of the dilettanti. To give an example, the rapid air sung by Figaro, on his entrance in the first act of "Le Barbier de Seville," lasted fifty-eight minutes—when ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... move, to the impressive strains of a battle-chant, and I said to myself, "Now, if the rope don't break I judge THIS will fetch that guide into the camp." I watched the rope gliding down the hill, and presently when I was all fixed for triumph I was confronted by a bitter disappointment; ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... began to chant, or rather to declaim, singingly and rhythmically, to the accompaniment of the two lutes, his own hymn to Venus. Neither the voice, though somewhat injured, nor the verses were bad, so that reproaches ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of which you cannot approve. There are Psalms, at the end of which a light on the altar is extinguished. There is the Song of Moses, the Canticle of Zachary, the Miserere—which is the 50th Psalm you read and chant regularly in your church—the Lord's Prayer in silence; and then all is darkness and distress—what the Church was when our Lord suffered, what the whole world is now except ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... bans the pale Usurper Death beyond my fields of Life. In Winds that wrap my path, lo, I shall sing To thee a choral eternal, Lord of Days, And Life with myriad hearts in me shall sing Thy glory to scan forever, and chant thy praise. ...
— The Masque of the Elements • Herman Scheffauer
... The chant of the wheels rose again, increased to a dull roar, and deadened the sound of all talk. But Lindsay knew the girl was weakening. She was no match for ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... chant began to fill the place, as if a priest were intoning hymns. As that chant rose and fell, voices all about took up the echoing refrain. Jim tried to reach Lucille, but he could move his arm only a few ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... myself acquainted with all the approved renderings of the Episcopal morning service, but when the clergyman who officiated at the Abbey began to twang out "Dearly beloved brethren," &c., in a nasal, drawling semi-chant, I was taken completely aback. It sounded as though some graceless Friar Tuck had wormed himself into the desk and was endeavoring, under the pretense of reading the service, to caricature as broadly as possible the alleged peculiarity of Methodistic pulpit enunciation superimposed ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... man arose and commenced to hitch around the stove with stiff joints, like a mechanical figure. The company broke into a wild chant in a minor key, commencing on a high note and descending the whole gamut, with ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... swayed in the darkness, chanting in a dialect not altogether familiar to me, a monotonous wailing chant, with a single recurrent phrase: "Kamaina! Kama-aina!" It began on a high note, descending in weird chromatics to the lowest tone the human ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... society. Her absolutely perfect hymn—for such it truly is—was born of her own deep longings for a fuller inflow of that love that casteth out all fear. This has been the genesis of all the soul-songs that devout disciples of our Lord chant into the ears of their Master in their hours of sweetest and closest fellowship. Mrs. Prentiss has put a new song into the mouths of a multitude of those ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... the singing. The words—the inspiring words of the labor chant had caught the people on the sidewalk, and a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... Bishop of Poitiers has been called "the father of Christian hymnology." About the middle of the 4th century he regulated the ecclesiastical song-service, wrote chant music (to Scripture words or his own) and prescribed its place and use in his choirs. He died A.D. 368. In the Church calendars, Jan. 13th (following "Twelfth Night"), is still kept as "St. Hilary's Day" in the Church of England, ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... influence have been re-absorbed, and are now as completely Catholic as they were before Henry VIII. In these half-village half-towns you may chance on a busy market day to come across a great building abutting on the street, and may listen to the organ and the chant; there is incense and gorgeous ceremony, the golden tinkle of the altar-bell. Bow your head, it is the host; cross yourself, it is the mass. The butcher and the dealer are busy with the sheep, but it is ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... hand; and as he stood on the steps of this Gothic mansion, listening to the chant, watching the revellers disappearing in the gray and yellow gloom of the park, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... unknown traveller whose high-pitched, quavering Arab song rose far away, and grew louder as he approached, and passed us in a whirlwind of lugubrious music, and tapered slowly off into distance and silence—a chant a mile long. ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... recollected terms Of these most brisk and giddy-paced times. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain. The knitters and the spinners in the sun And the free maids that weave their threads with bones Do use to chant it; it is silly sooth And dallies with the innocence of love ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... suddenly attentive. Turning over the leaves of the hymnbook, he then gave out the first two lines of a hymn. The choir accordion in the front side bench awoke like an infant into wailing life, and Cissy Appleby, soprano, took up a little more musically the lugubrious chant. At the close of the verse the preacher joined in, after a sailor fashion, with a breezy bass that seemed to fill the little building with the trouble of the sea. Then followed prayer from Deacon Shadwell, broken by "Amens" from the preacher, with a nautical suggestion ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Knightsbridge has his faults—ah! even the peerage of England is not exempt from them. With Diana for his wife, he flies the halls where she sits severe and serene, and is to be found (shrouded in smoke, 'tis true,) in those caves where the contrite chimney-sweep sings his terrible death chant, or the Bacchanalian judge administers a satiric law. Lord Knightsbridge has his faults, then; but he has the gout at Rougetnoirbourg, near the Rhine, and thither his wife is hastening to minister ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... moonbeams, gliding slowly over the dusty road with slippered feet, there was something soft and radiant in their moving whiteness. Nearer, their pointed hoods made them monastical as a procession stealing from a range of cells to chant a midnight mass. In the shadowy dusk of the tiny side alleys they were like wandering ghosts intent on unholy errands or returning ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens |
