"Diapason" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if our Republic be true to herself, the future of the human race is assured by our example. No sweep of overwhelming armies, no ponderous treatises on the rights of man, no hymns to liberty, though set to martial music and resounding with the full diapason of a million human throats, can exert so persuasive an influence as does the spectacle of a great republic, occupying a quarter of the civilized globe, and governed quietly and sagely by ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... diapason is the ad interium, or interval betwixt and between the extremes of an octave, according to the diatonic scale. The turns of music consist of the appoggiatura which is the principal note, or that on which the turn is made, together ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... highly respectable tenants. In this dwelling Mrs. Garland's and Anne's ears were soothed morning, noon, and night by the music of the mill, the wheels and cogs of which, being of wood, produced notes that might have borne in their minds a remote resemblance to the wooden tones of the stopped diapason in an organ. Occasionally, when the miller was bolting, there was added to these continuous sounds the cheerful clicking of the hopper, which did not deprive them of rest except when it was kept going all night; and over and above ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... and valley and river-depths, where the soil is drenched, and the waters are reddened, and nameless graves are scattered,—cleaving clearly through the rattle of musketry, mingling grandly with the "diapason of the cannonade," or floating softly up under the silent stars, "the thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice" ceases not to cry unto us day and night; its echoes linger tenderly and tearfully around every hearth-stone, and vibrate with a royal ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... combers break in thunder on the barrier reefs,— Where, unceasing, sounds the mighty diapason of the deep,— Ringed in bursts of wild wave-laughter, ringed in leagues of flying foam,— Long lagoons of softest azure, curving beaches white as snow, Lap in sweetness and in beauty ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... sound. The reeds and weeds and trunks of trees, like the great and lesser pipes of an organ, thunder a low bass. The melancholy hoot of the owl and the mellow complaint of the whippoorwill join in the solemn diapason of the forest, filling the solitudes with grand, stately marches. There are no sounds of Nature or art so true in harmony as this ceaseless murmur of the American woods. So accordant is it with the solemn majesty of form ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... sister, with much augmented confidence in the efficacy of the sacrament, poured forth from the bottom of her heart the thanksgiving that follows, uttering it boldly and triumphantly in the stopt-diapason note which her voice acquired when her heart was in her speech, and which will never be forgotten by those who knew her. The ecstasy of faith almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a glowing irradiation, and brought ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... supplication I could discern a clear symphony of triumph and blessing, swelled with an ever-increasing volume. It was the voice of those who had been bondmen and bondwomen, and the grand diapason swept up from ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... where now she dwelt so simply with the Beaubien, seemed not to have caused even a ripple in the full current of her joy. Her life was a symphony of thanksgiving; an antiphony, in which all Nature voiced its responses to her in a diapason, full, rich, and harmonious. Often that autumn she might have been seen standing among the tinted leaves on the college campus, and drinking in their silent message. And then she might have been heard to exclaim, as she turned her rapt gaze beyond ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... building, not an assembly-hall; no, during the watches of the night she had risen to the conception of a working-girls' home. Her father had been listening to the mellow and flowing hautboy of Susan Bates, and to the deep diapason of Tom Bingham; but his daughter had now pulled out the coupler and was screaming shrilly above all the other voices of the organ. He felt ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... B.mol express command to the pox not to run about any longer in gleaning up of coppersmiths and tinkers; for the jobbernolls had already a pretty good beginning in their dance of the British jig called the estrindore, to a perfect diapason, with one foot in the fire, and their head in the middle, as goodman Ragot was wont ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... silence and solemnity, that you would never dream you were near the busy haunt of men, were it not, that a long linked diapason of bells, modulated by every possible inflection of their lofty language, convinced you that you were basking amidst all this voluptuous quiet, beneath the walls of a concealed city, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... too, the story goes, And kings and heroes lie entombed within her; There pious Saints, in marble pomp repose, Whose shrines are worn by knees of many a Sinner; There, too, full many an Aldermanic nose Roll'd its loud diapason after dinner; And there stood high the holy sconce of Becket, —Till four assassins came from France ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... swaggering along Main Street, nothing except war-bread, the shortage of coal and sugar, and outrageous prices reminded her that the terrific drama was still being played beyond the ocean to the diapason of an orchestra thundering from England to Asia and from Africa ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... men, struck down unarmed and defenceless, and the shrieks of women struggling with their murderers; while through all, and above all, boomed out the deep-toned bells of the metropolitan churches—one long burial-peal; and amid this ghastly diapason it was the pleasure of the tiger-hearted Charles to accept the reluctant and informal recantation of his two horror-stricken victims; after which he compelled them without remorse to the agony of seeing their friends and followers butchered before ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... countless hordes from the dense woods emerge, And roll upon our serried lines like ocean's angry surge. Our ranks are silent—on each face the light of battle glows: 'Ready!' At once our polished tubes are levelled on our foes. Now leaps a livid lightning up—from rank to rank it flies— A fearful diapason rends the arches of the skies. The wooded hills seem reeling before that fierce recoil; With fire and smoke the valleys like Etna's craters boil: From red volcanoes bursting, hissing, hurtling in the sky, A thousand ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the mouth organ. He played excellently well, with all sorts of variations and frills. We smoked in silence. The deep rumble of the cattle filled the air with its diapason. Always the shrill coyotes raved out in the mesquite. Sacatone Bill had finished his meal, and had gone to sit by Jed Parker, his old friend. They talked together low-voiced. The evening grew, and the eastern sky silvered over the mountains in ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... voiceless voices, of pixy tambourines beating the silence. There was a hush, the sibilant hush of waters rushing down from the far snows of the Holy Cross; and a flutter—the flutter of all the little leaves clapping their hands; and a big voiceless voice of solemn undertone—the diapason of the pines harping the age-old melodies to the touch of the wind's invisible hands, melodies of the soul of the sea in the heart of the tree, of strength and power and eternity. As she listened, she ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and suddenly there was disclosed intimately the brilliant, shimmering surf breaking on the tortuous coral reef that banded the island a mile away. It was like a circlet of quicksilver in the sun, a quivering, shining, waving wreath. Soon we heard the eternal diapason of these shores, the constant and immortal music of the breakers on the white stone barrier, a low, deep, resonant note that lulls the soul to sleep by day as it does ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... paddle I saw with eyes that were clouded by blood and sweat Grace raise her hand as though in a last farewell, and then as she faced round once more our glances met. She said no word. I could not have heard if she had, for all sound was swallowed up in one great pulsating diapason; but she afterward said that she felt impelled to look at me, and knew that I would turn my head. And so for an instant, there where the barriers of caste and wealth had melted away before the presence of death, our two souls met in a bond ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... gulls flashed, skirling and screeching in the sunlight, their weird, thin calls mingling with the diapason of the surf that boomed against the beach and the hundred reefs of Kon Klayu. Overhead a constant stream of gulls and sea-parrots plied between their fishing grounds and the south end of the island ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... still tremble when the thunders cease Of the loud diapason,—and again Through the rapt stillness steals the hymn of peace; Melodious and sweet its far refrain Dying in distance, as the shadows die Of white wings vanished up the morning sky, As farther still—and thinner—more remote— A film of sound, the aerial voices ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... dark nights in the Philippines when the air seems so dense that you can almost take hold of it with your hands—when the heavy clouds blanket the earth so closely that the terrible thunders seem to shake the earth in its orbit, with the deep-toned diapason of their melody—when the lightening bugs flutter from twig to twig, revealing their lanterned wings—when the human heart beats with a conscious thump in anticipation of something awful—when those who are out alone whistle to give themselves courage—when ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... me?" And desolate, my desolations pity, Thou in thy beauty's carack sitt'st to see My tragic downfall, and my funeral ditty. No timbrel, but my heart thou play'st upon, Whose strings are stretched unto the highest key; The diapason, love; love is the unison; In love my life and labours waste away. Only regardless to the world thou leav'st me, Whilst slain hopes, turning from the feast of sorrow, Unto despair, their king, which ne'er deceives me, Captives my heart, whose black night hates the morrow, And he ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... means of which his visitors sought admittance to his abode. In fact, he rather prided himself on being able to guess with almost invariable correctness what special type of man or woman was at his door, provided he could hear the whole diapason of their knock from beginning to end. When he was shut in his "den," however, the sounds were muffled by distance, and he could form no just judgment,—sometimes, indeed, he did not hear them at all, especially if he happened to be playing his 'cello at the time. So that this morning ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... shaking hands, crying greetings, mumbling confidential asides. An observer who did not understand would find it all as aimless as the activity of an ant-heap—as puzzling as the slow writhings of a swarm of bees. Clouds of cigar smoke over all—voices blended into one continual diapason; medley, and miasma of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... a little shame, and her senor father a little feeling. But as nobody appeared with these requisites in their hands, to comply with these requests, there was nothing for it but to go on lowering her diapason until her angry protestations were gradually transformed into a far-away mutter like the sounds of distant thunder, and the party returned to its normal state ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... and wrinkle of her clothing left uncovered by the robe, did not hear the aimless argument that followed between Hank and Murphy. The sonorous shwoo-oosh of the wind-tormented pine tops surged through the very soul of her, the diapason accompaniment to the miserere of motherhood. Somewhere on this wild mountainside was Jack, huddled from the wind in a cave, or wandering miserably through the storm. Wrapped in soft luxury all her life, Mrs. Singleton Corey shuddered as she looked forth through her silken veil, ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... current of delicate essay-writing, as in "The Haunted Mind," and "Sunday at Home." "Little Annie's Ramble," again, foreshadows his charming children's tales. It is rather remarkable that he should thus have sounded, though faintly, the whole diapason in his first works. Moreover, he had already at this time attained a style at once flowing and large in its outline, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... boulders brown with weed and sea wrack, then swing forward with seemingly irresistible might, to be shattered as if their crystal was that of glass and to fly skyward a hundred feet, scintillant white star drift of comminuted sea. The crash of such waves on such rocks, the hollow diapason of their like on sands, and the shrill roar of a pebbly beach torn and tossed by the waves, all sprang from nothingness into vibrant being there in the black woods as the gale shouldered by the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... rousing words the Journal of Columbus's voyage begins; and they sound a salt and mighty chord which contains the true diapason of the symphony of his voyages. There could not have been a more fortunate beginning, with clear weather and a calm sea, and the wind in exactly the right quarter. On Saturday and Sunday the same conditions held, so there was time and opportunity ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... Porthos were always loud enough to be heard by everybody. His murmurs were in the diapason of ordinary roaring. Athos heard him, and uttered an exclamation which made Aramis start. The latter took Athos by the arm, and, after having asked Porthos' permission to say a word to his friend in private, "My dear Athos," he began, "you ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... are one that needs a tight hand, Mistress. Come, now, humility and obedience, these are the Christian graces that best become your youth. Say, can the Church, through me, its minister, count on these from you? or" (suddenly letting loose his diapason) "did you send for me to ask advice, and yet go your own way, hiding a high stomach and a wilful heart under a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... hand-to-hand fighting (David was near enough to hold an easy conversation with Goliath before bringing him down), can hardly be brought within the designation. The twang of either heavy or light was but a thin contribution to the orchestra of battle compared to "the diapason of the cannonade." How much we have lost in the absence of this element of tremendous noise from the conflicts of ancient days! What a tool it would have been in Homer's hands! How trivial, to the author of the book of Job, would have seemed the noise of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... sitting together on the wide window-seat, the sound of the traffic from below coming murmuringly to their ears like some muted diapason. ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... soil. Each child in the great crowd that gathers in our schools, is in some respects like a particular musical instrument, designed by God, in its complicated mechanism, to perform its particular part, to yield its own particular tone in the diapason of life; and I shudder when I think how rudely it is often played upon by untaught teachers—teachers who have drifted to their work, or resorted to it as a temporary occupation, for its profits, but who have never thought of ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... fall forward, and with great celerity and gravity made me a low but important bow; then choosing more particularly to make my acquaintance he further advanced, and with another reverence he introduced himself as Doctor Jolks, in a murmured diapason. He bowed me back again into my uncle's study, and the light of old ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... of human voices beat against the tall buildings, rising and falling in frightful diapason, as if it were the echo from a thousand savage creatures of the jungle clashing their ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... chests, and healthy lungs, and noble throats, and above all, their musical hearts, they poured out the harmony so clear and full, that every glass in the room rang like a harp, and a bolt of ice seemed to shoot down Grace Carden's backbone; and, in the chorus, gentle George's bass was like a diapason. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Janeiro and are confirming among us. Your words were great and good because they were yours, without any doubt; but they were so, above all, because they were in accord with the ideal of justice in pursuit of which humanity is slowly marching—with that solemn diapason hung between heaven and earth which furnishes the pitch from time to time to men and peoples and worlds, in order that they may not ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... dry In order to their stations leap, And Music's power obey. 10 From harmony, from heavenly harmony This universal frame began; From harmony to harmony Through all the compass of the notes it ran, The diapason closing full ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... addition of the second or third stop. Before this, however, and perhaps for some little time after, there were many organs in use, which were committed to the diaphony of Hucbald, having in place of the diapason three ranks of pipes, speaking an octave and the fifth between. Each of these combined sounds was treated in the same way as simple ones are on other instruments, and if chords were attempted upon them the effect must have been hideous indeed; ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... The following alterations were made in the Great organ: Open Diapason (ii) extended from gamut G to CC. Mixture replaced by new pipes where required. New Trumpet inserted, and the old one ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Priory Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield • George Worley
... He did not indulge his longing to sit beside her; he stood at a little distance, respectfully, and allowed her to think her thoughts. Those thoughts and her memories were very busy just then; she was glad because the everlasting diapason of the falls made ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the next day. The other contained but one exposure. While not so spectacular as some of those spoiled, it shows very well the erect mane, the wicked narrowing of the eyes, the flattening of the ears of an angry lion. You must imagine, furthermore, the deep rumbling diapason of his growling. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... is staying here a fortnight longer, and is living at the castle. She keeps herself continually at the highest diapason of grace and charm, without ever missing the opportunity of effectually ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... touch the strings so fine? Who up the lofty diapason roll Such sweet, such sad, such solemn airs divine, And let them ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... in attempting to harmonize these fashionable diversities, to keep her rooms full until the famous interview, moved about continually, took part in ten different conversations, raising her harmonious and velvety voice to the twittering diapason which distinguishes Oriental women, caressing and coaxing, the mind supple as the body, touching on all subjects, and mixing in the requisite proportions fashion and charity sermons, theatres and bazaars, the dressmaker and the confessor. The mistress of the house united a great personal charm ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... the splendid music of the siege, the stir of arms, the bustle of giving order, the alertness of expectation. I did not think a woman's life could be tuned to so high a diapason. Just think of it! Yesterday, and for many yesterdays, I was a leaguered lady, a priestess of battles; I stood for the King; existence was one fierce ecstasy. To drop from that brisk spin and whetted edge of life into this housewife's twilight ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... particular evening he sat over his pipe rather longer than usual, seduced by the beauty of the scene and the moment. It was very quiet. The prolonged rumble of the mine's stamp-mill came to his ears in a ceaseless diapason, but the sound was so much a matter of course that Lockwood no longer heard it. The millions of pines and redwoods that covered the flanks of the mountains were absolutely still. No wind was stirring in their needles. But ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... kindly woman. She owned the house on shares with her brother. The brother, by-the-bye, was sleeping so tranquilly in his own chamber that the orchestra of the Opera-house could not have awakened him, wonderful as its diapason is said to be. ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... inches in length to the great pedal pipe, 32ft. high and a yard in width, with an interior capacity of 224 cubic feet. In the "great organ" there are 18 stops, viz.: Clarion (2ft.), ditto (4ft.), posanne, trumpet, principal (1 and 2), gamba, stopped diapason, four open diapasons, doublette, harmonic flute, mixture sesquialtra, fifteenth, and twelfth, containing altogether 1,338 pipes. In the "choir organ" there are nine stops, viz.: Wald flute, fifteenth stopped ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... an octave. Here Lucrece says she will 'bear the diapason' with deep groans, i.e., 'hum' a 'burden' or drone an octave lower than the nightingale's 'descant.' The earliest 'burden' known is that in the ancient Round 'Sumer is icumen in,' of the 13th century. Here four voices sing the real music in canon ...
— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor
... junior reviewers, the overgrowth of meticulousness in their peerings for an opinion, as if it were a cultivated habit in them to scrutinize the tool-marks and be blind to the building, to hearken for the key-creaks and be deaf to the diapason, to judge the landscape by a nocturnal exploration with a flash-lantern. In other words, to carry on the old game of sampling the poem or drama by quoting the worst line or worst passage only, in ignorance or not of Coleridge's proof that a versification of any length ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... longer thunders its "full-mouthed diapason," but the nightingales fill the long summer nights with their surges of wild rhapsodies. Both the eye and the ear of the artist receive refreshment and stimulus here. The garden is a bath of verdancy and coolness even upon the most torrid day. The very light which filters ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... once we did, till disproportioned sin Jarred against Nature's chime and with harsh din Broke the fair music that all creatures made To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed In perfect diapason whilst they stood In first obedience and their state ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... good, beautiful, natural, healthy, vibrates in unison with the harmonics of this great "Diapason of Nature"; in other words, it is in alignment with the constructive principle ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... trumpet, and cymbal, rung forth at once, and the deep and regular shout, which for ages has been the English acclamation, sounded amidst the shrill and irregular yells of the Arabs, like the diapason of the organ amid the howling of a storm. There was silence ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... camp for several days; then, too, their boats were built of poorly seasoned lumber and in consequence were in need of frequent attention. Eventually, however, they came within hearing of a faint whisper, as of wind among pine branches, then of a muffled murmur that grew to a sullen diapason. The current quickened beneath them, the river- banks closed in, and finally beetling cliffs arose, between which was a cleft ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... wilderness, as it booms across its level surface. As far south as Kadesh (probably Petra) the tremor spreads, and away in the forests of Edom the wild creatures in their terror slip their calves, and the oaks are scathed and stripped of their leafy honours. And all the while, like a mighty diapason sounding on through the tumult, the voice of the sons of God in the heavenly temple is heard ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... made up of diverse elements. It was not swayed by a set purpose and a common motive. It was not welded by coherence of intent. Its eddies rushed here or filtered there, according as arguments or protests gained attention by sharp clamor above the continuous diapason of voices. One who was versed in the natures and the moods of mobs would have found that mass particularly menacing by reason of the lack of unanimity. Too many men of the component elements did not know what it was all about! The arguments pro and con were developing ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... church, Miss Larrabee would begin to rumble like distant thunder and, as the storm grew thicker, she would flash out crooked chain-lightning imprecations on the heads of the young people, their fathers and mothers and uncles and aunts. By the day of the wedding she would be rolling a steady diapason of polite, decolourised, expurgated, ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... Northumberland Street suggest the burly presence of 'rare Ben Jonson;' nor opulent Kensington revive the stately head of Addison; nor a certain window in Wellington Street reveal in fancy's picture the rugged lineaments and splendid eyes of Dickens." But to the true pilgrim London speaks like the diapason of a great organ. "He stands amid achievements that are finished, careers that are consummated, great deeds that are done, great memories that are immortal; he views and comprehends the sum of all that is possible to human ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... of ravishment, Make thy sad grove in my dishevell'd hair: As the dank earth weeps at thy languishment, So I at each sad strain will strain a tear, And with deep groans the diapason bear: For burthen-wise I'll hum on Tarquin still, While thou on Tereus descant'st ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... fitfully glad. She was near the man who had enlarged her capacity from girl's to woman's, a little note or two of young feeling to a whole diapason; and though nearness was perhaps not in itself a great reason for felicity when viewed beside the complete realization of all that a woman can desire in such circumstances, it was much in comparison with the outer darkness of the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... remotest bound. The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the human mind, "as when a lion roareth." 559:12 It is heard in the desert and in dark places of fear. It arouses the "seven thunders" of evil, and stirs their latent forces to utter the full diapason of secret tones. Then is 559:15 the power of Truth demonstrated, - made manifest in the destruction of error. Then will a voice from harmony cry: "Go and take the little book. . . . Take it, and eat 559:18 it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... and the sawmills, they mingle with wagon rumblings and human voices; the air is rent by steam-whistles whose agonising wails rise skyward, meeting and blending above the large squares in a booming diapason, a deep-throated, throbbing roar that enwraps the entire city. Telegraph messengers dart hither and yon, scattering orders and quotations from distant markets. The powerful, vitalising chant of commerce booms through the air; the wheat in India, the coffee ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... as thinkers, as scientists, as men of business, as parents, as lovers, or anything else—will be greatened by being subordinated to the conscious aim of pleasing Him. That aim should persist, like a strain of melody, one long, holden-down, diapason note, through all our lives. Perfume can be diffused into the air, and dislodge no atom of that which it makes fragrant. This supreme aim can be pursued through, and by means of, all nearer ones, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and who could possibly care for "The Mysteries of Udolpho"? But the unknown person in regard to whom Mr. Tolman felt the greatest curiosity was the subscriber who now had in his possession a volume entitled "Dormstock's Logarithms of the Diapason." ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... furnishing me with half-a-dozen of those lynx-eyed commentators who would discern innumerable beauties and veracities through the calfskin walls of my beatified bantling. They might find, at last, that I had "the gold-strung harp of Apollo" and played a "most excellent diapason, celestial music of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... better provided with singers than it is at the present moment. Their voices, in every line of this department, were well-toned and powerful. They easily reached the highest notes according to the tone given by the diapason. Since then, the powers of most of the singers who still remain on the stage have diminished, and those called in to supply the place of such as are dead or have retired, are not near so rich in voice as their predecessors. The diapason, however, has remained ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... terrible discord, as of a brass band with broken bassoons, and trumpets all out of order, from the further end of the building,—a terrible noise of most unmusical music, such as Bartholomew Fair in its loudest days could hardly have known. At such a diapason one would have thought that the tender ears of May Fair and Belgravia would have been crushed and cracked and riven asunder; that female voices would have shrieked, and the intensity of fashionable ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... that beautiful Liturgy into our hearts! Not faithless we to the simple worship that our forefathers had loved; but Conscience told us there was no apostasy in the feelings that rose within us when that deep organ began to blow, that choir of youthful voices so sweetly to join the diapason,—our eyes fixed all the while on that divine Picture over the Altar, ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various
... dark to dawn again, primitive, brutal, honest, and without fear. Something (to his idea not much) had been done to catch at that life in passing, but its poet had not yet arisen. The few sporadic attempts, thus he told himself, had only touched the keynote. He strove for the diapason, the great song that should embrace in itself a whole epoch, a complete era, the voice of an entire people, wherein all people should be included—they and their legends, their folk lore, their fightings, their loves and their lusts, their blunt, grim humour, their stoicism under stress, their ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... virile note of power as if some long-dreamed-of mastery were his at last swelled like a diapason through his voice—"we're in for a thaw, a big thaw, but it will take time to melt down that mountain out there in the crevasse; and you and I are here—alone—for a fortnight, at least a fortnight." He emphasized the ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... he saw nothing but froth and spray and flitting stone, and then the roar that came back from the towering walls swelled into a great diapason terrifying and bewildering. Seaforth glanced over his shoulder and saw that ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... in the other—making, rather than marring and undoing them. Life and growth are an attuning, death and decay are an untuning; both involve a succession of greater or smaller attunings and untunings; organic life is "the diapason closing full in man"; it is the fulness of a tone that varies in pitch, quality, and in the harmonics to which it gives rise; it ranges through every degree of complexity from the endless combinations of life-and-death ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... of the spectrum!" cried Edmund. "The diapason of color! It is their national hymn, or the hymn of their race, written on a prismatic, instead of a sonometric, staff. And, mark me, this has a significance beyond ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... the irascible to the rational (which is placed as hypate) making the diatessaron (or fourth), that of the irascible to the concupiscent (or nete) making the diapente (or fifth), and that of the rational to the concupiscent (as hypate to nete) making an octave or diapason. But should you place the rational in the middle, you would make the irascible farther from the concupiscent; though some of the philosophers have taken the irascible and the concupiscent faculty for the selfsame, ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... themselves into crosses and diamonds of different shapes; while, in the middle of this wonderful transformation scene, the wind blew with immense force, howling over sea and land with a wild shriek and deep diapason, accompanied by blinding showers of hail and sleet and snow, that made us all creep under the folds of the canvas of our tent ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... king was a certain contrast in the voices of the two interlocutors. The voice of Monsieur was calm and natural while he spoke thus; while that of M. de Mazarin jumped by a note and a half to reply above the diapason of his usual voice. It might have been said that he wished that voice to strike, at the end of the salon, any ear that was ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... everywhere in modern science the chief variable, is only a time-length, indefinitely and arbitrarily divisible. There is no genuine duration, nothing really tending to evolution in Spencer's evolution: no more than there is in the periodic working of a turbine or in the stationary tremble of a diapason. Is not this what is emphasised by the perpetual employment of mechanical images and vulgar engineering metaphors, the least fault of which is to suppose a homogeneous time, and a motionless theatre of change which is at bottom only space? "In ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... of blue yellow-backed warblers. Numbers of them, a dozen at least, could be heard singing at once directly over one's head, running up the scale not one after another, but literally in unison. Here the tufted titmouse, the very soul of monotony, piped and piped and piped, as if his diapason stop were pulled out and stuck, and could not be pushed in again. He is an odd genius. With plenty of notes, he wearies you almost to distraction, harping on one string for half an hour together. He is the one Southern bird that I should perhaps be sorry ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... diapason of human experience, with its joyous majors and its sobbing minors, He knew. Except, of course, the experiences growing out of sin. These He could not know. They belong to the abnormal side of life. And there was nothing ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... by its subtle music, hero women bore the long hours of absence and suspense; and in its tender harmonies the little children were rocked to sleep. Ay, love of country! All the voices of man and nature in a continent caught it up and breathed it forth, hurled it in mighty diapason far up into God's heaven. Love of country! It was indeed a mighty truth. They preached it, loved it, lived for it, died for it, till at last it made ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... about to start forward again a lamentable gigantic sound began vibrating in their ears, a rumbling, groaning note rising by quick degrees to a strident shriek. Other sounds, hollow and shrill—treble mingling with diapason—joined in the first. The noise came from just beyond the pressure-mound at the foot of which the party ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... heart to heart, with the single line or passion of the melody, conditioned and responding to it in all its varied phases—(the individual and collective, the soul and its surroundings)—the grand diapason of harmony rolls on—and the magic unity of music is complete! Hence, part of its power over men. But like all organic, basic life-principles, its relations with the human spirit defy analysis. Its unitive influence cannot be denied, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... quiet evening air led through the soft rehearsal of the water to its banks the creak of tough ash thole-pins, and the groan of gunwale, and the splash of oars, and even a sound of human staple, such as is accepted by the civilized world as our national diapason. ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... was room and to spare on the hard, level expanse. Lines of white surf stretched to right and left far as the eyes could see. The piercing cries of the gulls floating on the eddying wind were relieved against the blooming diapason of the sea. And the solitude was as the solitude of some lost island of the main. They descended, sinking in the loose, fine sand of the banks, and the soft, pale sand that edged them, and made their way to the yellow and vast sands that extended to the calling monster, ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... its song apart May hint a symphony of art, Since under all, within, and over, Is diapason of ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... my ear is fed the livelong day, Now from the hollow's deepest dell, now from the top-most spray, The comrades of my lay, they tune their wild notes for my pleasure, And I, can I refrain to swell their diapason's measure? With its own clusters loaded, with its rich foliage dress'd, Each bough is hanging down, and each shapely stem depress'd, While nestle there inhabitants, a feather'd tuneful choir, That in the strife of song breathe forth a flame of minstrel fire. O happy ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... periodic "dip" of an immortal individual into materiality for the working out of karma, after an interval, long or short, spent under other conditions of existence. These alternations constitute the broader and deeper diapason of human life, of which the change from waking to sleeping represents the lesser, and the momentary awareness and unawareness of the sense mechanism to ...
— Four-Dimensional Vistas • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... as far beyond him as what he means to be will be from what he shall attain to. One dreams of romance and renown, of all that should be and is not. And as he dreams the birds awaken. In the East there comes a greenish tinge. Far up the track, there is a sullen roar, and then the hoarse diapason of an engine whistle. The roar strengthens and strengthens. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... he gave us blank verse of noble artistry. But he was far more than a mere technician. He fairly meets the test set by John Davidson. "In the poet the whole assembly of his being is harmonious; no organ is master; a diapason extends throughout the entire scale; his whole body, his whole soul is rapt into the making of his poetry.... Poetry is the product of originality, of a first-hand experience and observation of life, of a direct communion with men and women, ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... a stately gateway for a stream which enters from another and broader valley; but it is but one among many small cascades, which round the arc of the falls flash out in foam among the dark foliage, and contribute their tiny warble to the diapason of the waterfall. It rewards one well for penetrating the deep gash which has been made into the earth. It seemed so very far away from all buzzing, frivolous, or vexing things, in the cool, dark abyss into which only the noon-day sun penetrates. All beautiful things which love damp; ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... visits of this life-consumer, this vampire that sucks out the blood, to his constant, never-failing presence? There are those who feel within themselves the power of living fullest lives, of sounding every chord of the full diapason of passion and feeling, yet who have been so hemmed around, so shut in by adverse and narrowing circumstances, that never, no, not once in their half-century of years which stretch from childhood to old age, have they been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... many Infinite forms and varieties, In every part of the earth, In this day of my generation. But the flesh is a little different, And here and there the organism a nobler one, And the idea bigger, broader, deeper, Of a more divine quality and diapason. He is included in us, as the lesser in the greater; All our enactments are repetitions of his; Enlarged and adorned; And we pass through all his phases, Some time or other, in our beginnings— Through his, and an infinity of larger ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... short interval an incident occurred so strange and thrilling that the stout miners uttered treble cries, like women, and then one mighty "Hah!" burst like a diapason from ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... curiosity. It appeared to him, however, to be immaterial as to which end the mouth was to be applied, for he put the lower part of the instrument to his mouth, and drawing up his breath to its full extent, sent such a puff of wind into it, as would have been sufficient for a diapason pipe of an organ; not hearing, however, the accustomed sound, he delivered the instrument to John Lander, who brought out of it the shrillest note which he could, which set the king and his eunuchs into a violent laugh, and he expressed his delight to the donors of so ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... elements my frame would turn; No worms should riot on my coffined clay, But the cold limbs, from that sepulchral urn, In the slow storms of ages waste away! Loud winds, and thunder's diapason high, Should be my requiem through the coming time, And the white summit, fading in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... the Atlantic's swell Along our rocky shores, Whose thunders diapason well New England's ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... friends in London; and it was not long until Tom was requested to go through an anthem on the great office- desk. Tom was only too glad to be asked, and he kept the whole office in a roar for an hour with all the varieties of the instrument—from the diapason to the flute-stop—and the devil a more business was done in the office that day, and Tom before long made the sober English fellows as great idlers as the chaps in Dublin. Well—it was not long until ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... the Fourth and Third together, in other still more felonious and deadly, though refined ways. By doing clap-traps, namely; letting off Parliamentary blue-lights, to awaken the Sleeping Swineries, and charm them into diapason for you,—what a music! Or, without clap-trap or previous felony of your own, you may feloniously, in the pinch of things, make truce with the evident Demagogos, and Son of Nox and of Perdition, who has got 'within those walls' of yours, and is grown important to you by the Awakened ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to the difficulties in interpreting the works of Rameau and of Gluck, I would point out the change in the diapason or pitch which at that time was a tone lower than in our days. The organ of St. Merry had a pitch in B flat. In addition to the tempi and the different instruments which make the execution difficult, ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... till the snow clothes it and one can go by sledge. Away to the southwest, beyond the patches of firwood and the gray, steeply [Transcriber: original 'steply'] rolling land, there toned the far diapason of artillery; strings of army transport, Red Cross vehicles, and miscellaneous men straggled ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... but the story of the bygone? The elegy, too, comes to us as the last lamenting, sadly solemn swan-song of that glorious golden time. And, indeed, are not all poesies but various notes of that mighty diapason of Thought and Feeling, that has, through the ages, been singing ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... hammers beating upon boards could be heard above the noises of the street and behind all was the constant droning of a big steam saw and the whir of the heavy stones in the new grist mill. It was the beginning of that amazing diapason of industry which accompanied the building of the ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... listening amid the dead diapason of wind and wave, for the voice of his governess. But no sound came from the opposite room; and at last, alarmed by the omnious silence, he took up his crutches ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... unceasingly into the high arches of the hall. The music served as obbligato for the mighty diapason of men's voices; the thousands ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... alone could not share the general hilarity. The uproar caused by this simple joke did not even chase the frown from his brow. He was provoked at not being able to bring himself within the diapason of this somewhat vulgar gayety: he was aware that his melancholy countenance, his black clothes, his want of sympathy jarred unpleasantly on the other jovial guests. He did not intend any longer to play the part of a killjoy. Without ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... drop—like blood. Then a fierce and sudden howl from the wind, like some hoarse demon's signal, and the storm began. But what a puny storm was that which raged outside could one have seen the tempest in this murderous soul! Not all the tones of great material nature's diapason could find this tortured spirit voice enough. Yet to find the very heavens in tune with his mood brought the Greek to a ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... the villages, moving always eastward, until at length they arrived at the fortified town where Teganisoris made his home, a spot toward the foot of Lake Ontario, and not widely removed from that stupendous cataract which, from the beginning of earth, had uplifted its thunderous diapason here in the savage wilderness—Ontoneagrea, object of superstitious awe ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... the Holy Spirit's indwelling, of the wondrous inner peace that follows obedience in hard places, of the joys of service, of the delight of being able to sympathize. His experience ran through the whole diapason of human feelings, and so He can find a key-note in every one of its tones for the sweet rich ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... the storm, there rose the deeper thunder of running waters. Already the rocky slides were shedding the downpour; the draws and gulches were leading it into the creek. But above their gurgling murmur there came a hoarser roar that shook the ground, reverberating through the damp air like the diapason of some mighty storm-piece. At daybreak he hurried up the canyon to find its source, plunging along through the rain until, on the edge of the bluff that looked out up the Alamo, he halted, astounded at the spectacle. From its ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... night. — The play was Coleman's amusing comedy of" John Bull." There was no diminution of the uproar. Every note on the diapason of discord was run through. The prize-fighters, or hitites as they were called, mustered in considerable numbers, and the battles between them and the pitites were fierce and many. It was now, for the first time, that the letters O.P. came into ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... No hand, they diapason o'er, Well skill'd I throw with sweep sublime; For me, no academic lore Has taught the solemn strain to pour, Or build the ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... fixed on driving, just on the manipulation of the swift machine. Exhaust and interplay, the rhythm of each whirling cam and shaft, the chatter of the cylinders, the droning diapason of the blades, all blent into one intricate yet perfect harmony of mechanism; and as a leader knows each instrument in the great orchestra and follows each, even as his eye reads the score, so Stern's keen ear analyzed each sound and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... dissection of a snail, beautifully done—and hurled it across the room, to smash resoundingly upon the cemented floor under the bookcase; then, without either haste or pause, he swept his arm along a shelf of re-agents and sent them to mingle with the debris on the floor. They fell in a diapason of smashes. "H'm!" he said, regarding the wreckage with a calmer visage. "Silly!" he remarked after a pause. "One hardly ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... redeemed. In the rush of the winds that set the forest in motion, like giants wrestling on the hills, I see the tossing up of the triumphal branches that shall wave all along the line of our King as He comes to take empire. In the stormy diapason of the ocean's organ, and the more gentle strains that in the calm come sounding up from the crystal and jasper keys at the beach, I hear the prophecy: "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters fill ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage |
