"Ballad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the terrible sarcasm which the damsel's song conveyed—a sarcasm immortalized to all the future, in the undying depths of a song to be remembered. They felt the humiliation of such a record, and hung their heads in shame. At the close of the ballad, Bolivar exclaimed to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... sense. It means the best that can be expected, after making allowance for that escape of etherial spirit which is inevitable in the transfer of poetic thoughts from one language to another. The word popular is also to be taken in a limited meaning regarding all translations. Cowper's ballad of John Gilpin is twenty times more popular than his Homer; yet the latter work is deservedly popular in comparison with the bulk of translations from antiquity. The same thing may be said of Cary's Dante; it is, like Cowper's Homer, as adequate and popular as translated poetry can ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... years old, Jephthah could do no more than just make out the meaning of a printed sentence, whereas Steadfast and Patience could both read easily, and did read whatever came in their way, though that was only a broadside ballad now and then besides their mother's Bible and Prayer-book, and one or two ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a burly black Jamaican in shirt-sleeves loomed up in the distance. Now and then as he advanced he sang a snatch of West Indian ballad. As he espied the "switcheros" a smile broke out on his features and he hastened forward his eyes fixed on the water-pail. In a working species of Spanish he made some request of the boys, the while wiping his ebony brow with his sleeve. The ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... his paternal ground With pride the latent sparks of genius found In many a local ballad, many a tale, As wild and brief as cowslips in the dale, Though unrecorded as the gleams of light That vanish in the quietness of night "Why not," he cried, as from his couch he rose, "To cheer my age, and sweeten my repose, "Why not be just and generous in time, "And bid my tenants pay their ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... well as usual, too," said her uncle, unceremoniously cutting short the ballad. "Haven't you any more news ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... for ever), one might curl one's hair and dye it black, and cock a dirty slouch hat over one ear and take a guitar and sit on a flat stone by the roadside and cross one's legs, and, after a few pings and pongs on the strings, strike up a Ballad with the refrain— ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... feared the police might think I had designs against the house. I didn't know you were a musician. Miss Mayhew, I'm always finding out something new about you, and I'm going to ask you this evening to sing again for me a ballad the melody of which reminded me of a running brook. It took hold on my fancy and has been running in my ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... kerchief. The gaiety of the day seemed infectious, and to have seized even him. People stared to see Black Jem, or Surly Jem, as he was indifferently called, so joyous, and wondered what it could mean. He then fell to singing a snatch of a local ballad at that time in vogue in ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... love sonnets of Petrarch were not then, as now, the most esteemed of his works, yet it has been a great, though a common error, to represent them as little known and coldly admired. Their effect was, in reality, prodigious and universal. Every ballad-singer sung them in the streets, and (says Filippo Villani), "Gravissimi nesciebant abstinere"—"Even the gravest could not abstain ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Mr. Theodore Martin are admirable, but there is none which strikes me as more so than the brilliant imitation of Locksley Hall, And how true to nature the state of mind ascribed to the vulgar snob who is the hero of the ballad, who, bethinking himself of his great disappointment when his cousin married somebody else, bestowed his extremest objurgations upon all who had abetted the hateful result, and then ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... years had been full of excitement. The most memorable engagement in which he took part was a very celebrated one, in November, 1759. A stirring ballad has been written about it by ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... Ancennis as the sun was setting. This forest is celebrated in every ancient French ballad, as being the haunt of fairies, and the scene of the ancient archery of the provinces of Bretagne and Anjou. The road through it was over a green turf, in which the marks of a wheel were scarcely visible The forest on each side was very thick. At short intervals, narrow footpaths ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... mind he realized he ought to adjust his oxygen flow, but before he brought himself to make the adjustment the surplus took its effect. He began to hum, then to dance awkwardly over the sand. A moment later he was singing a wild space ballad that he thought he had forgotten years before. After ten feet he tripped and went sprawling down in the sand. He lay there, trickling the violet sands through the gloves of his spacesuit, feeling very lightheaded and very foolish all ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... Another ballad relates the prowess of William of Cloudslee, who scorned to shoot at an ordinary target, and cutting a hazel rod from a tree, he shot at it from twenty score paces, cleaving the rod ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... proper for a subscription concert, where you are sure of a large audience; of course, where Jenny Lind is the attraction, the same thing is certain. All her concerts are dress concerts. But, for a ballad soiree, or the first appearance of any new star, a pretty hat, with an opera cloak or light shawl, is quite sufficient. For panoramas, negro minstrels, or evening lectures, an ordinary walking costume is sufficient, ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... had never seen any before, laughed till he cried at "Lord Ullin's Daughter" and "The Ballad of the Oysterman." This last was performed with particularly fine effect by Carl and Louise, and everybody knows how funny ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... Englishman. He played his own accompaniment, his fingers, stiffened though they were with hard work, ran lightly over the keys. Every person sat still to listen. Even Martha Perkins forgot to twirl her fingers and leaned forward. It was a simple little English ballad he sang: ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... moonlight into noon Hid in gleaming piles of stone; On the city's paved street Plant gardens lined with lilacs sweet; Let spouting fountains cool the air, Singing in the sun-baked square; Let statue, picture, park and hall, Ballad, flag and festival, The past restore, the day adorn, And make to-morrow a new morn. So shall the drudge in dusty frock Spy behind the city clock Retinues of airy kings, Skirts of angels, starry wings, His fathers shining in bright fables, His children fed at heavenly ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... till pumped out, by reason of her flat bottom, which prevents it from going to the well of the pump; it is always (especially if the ship does not leak) of a dirty colour and disgusting penetrating smell. It seems to have been a sad nuisance in early voyages; and in the earliest sea-ballad known (temp. Hen. VI.) ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... been nursing in my bosom for three years at one and the same time a brave, independent, matter-of-fact young person and the most idiotic, sentimental heroine that ever figured in a romantic opera or a country ballad." Helen did not reply. "Well, my dear," said the duchess after a pause, "I see that you are condemned to pass your days with me in some cheap hotel on the continent." Helen looked up wonderingly. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... have not done with Annie Laurie yet.' And he proceeded with that idle but popular ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young person of that name he would 'lay him doon and dee'—equivalent, in prose, to ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... the "Passionate Little Girl," by Mrs. Hofland—all sparkling trifles in prose. Among the poetry is "the African Mier-Vark," or Ant-eater, by Mr. Pringle, and "the Deadly Nightshade," a sweetly touching ballad, dated from Florence; "the Vulture of the Alps" is of similar character; and we are much pleased with some lines on Birds, by Barry Cornwall, one set of which we copy, the best prose papers being too long ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... it was as suddenly chased away by his hearing the voice of Jane crooning over the words of some doleful old West Country ballad, not of a cheering nature certainly, but sufficient to prove that ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... was low, highly trained, exquisitely soft. She sang an old English ballad with a throbbing sweetness that held her hearers with its charm. And behind her Dick leaned against the table with his banjo and very ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... stanza. This stanza, which is marked 54, occurs between stanzas 53 and 54 of the other copies, and is of some interest and importance. It shows that Lidgate's pupil, put in mind of Lidgate's style by the very mention of his name, introduces a ballad of three stanzas, in which every stanza has a burden after the Lidgate manner. The recurrence of this burden no doubt caused copyists to lose their place, and so the stanza came to be omitted in other copies. Its omission, however, spoils ...
— Caxton's Book of Curtesye • Frederick J. Furnivall
... his finest ballads from the tragic fate of the two lovers. The following verses are a translation from the latter part of the ballad: ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... bards, and ishallyn (ballad singers) commonly go with praises to gentlemen in the English pale, praising in rhymes, otherwise called 'danes,' their extortions, robberies, and abuses as valiantness; which rejoiceth them in their evil doings, and procures a talent of Irish disposition and conversation ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... which sold at three-halfpence a-piece, and for the copyright of which they generously gave me three guineas." Though we may not feel disposed to apply the term "generous" to a payment of half-a-guinea for a Dibdin ballad, yet in all probability we are indebted to the Thompsons for this particular recognition of merit. Happily true genius, when in straits, generally finds relief. Were it otherwise, and had the Thompsons been ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... Olney and its neighbourhood are not ended, for, it was within five miles of this town—at Easton Maudit—that Bishop Percy {37} lived and prepared those Reliques which have inspired a century of ballad literature. Here the future Bishop of Dromore was visited by Dr. Johnson and others. What a pity that with only five miles separating them Cowper and Johnson should never have met! Would Cowper have reconsidered the wish made when he read Johnson's biography of Milton in ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... it is a matter of necessity that I should have nothing to say. If you could see this place of Boulge! You who sit and survey marble palaces rising out of cypress and olive. There is a dreadful vulgar ballad, composed by Mr. Balfe, and sung with the most ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... I. She is all we have, little as she deserves that we should waste a thought on her—though she threatens to run away with the first gipsy that comes to the yett, as did the Countess of Cassillis in the ballad." ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... nice. We must have some grand singing matches, but you mustn't sing that ballad. It's Ruth's special property. She sings it with ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... rank half-volley Its due quietus gets, The bird begins to carol A greeting to the Nets: Amazed at noisy kissing Of ball and wooden blade, In rivalry he whistles A ballad unafraid. ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... is often mentioned in Mr. MacPherson's paraphrases; but the Irish ballad, which gives a spirited account of the debate between the champion and the armourer, is ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Kentucky's soldier poet—and a score of others who won fame, even if some of them lost life—on far different fields. There rare "Ran" Tucker—later famed in Congress and law school—told inimitably the story of "The time the stars fell," or sang the unprecedented ballad of "The Noble Skewball," in ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... bright as flash of swords or oars that shine Through fight or foam Stirs yet the blood thou hast given thy sons like wine To hail in each bright ballad hailed as thine One ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... of this affecting ballad the two cow-men remained draped uncomfortably over the barbed-wire barrier, lost in rapturous enjoyment. When the last note had died away, Stover ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... fame, whose inward commotions had generated their own alleviation in the harmonies of ordered words in which they embodied themselves. In it Annie searched for something to learn before the following night, and found a ballad the look of which she liked, and which she very soon remembered as one she had heard her father read. It was very cold work to learn it at midnight, in winter, and in a garret too; but so intent was she, that before she went to bed, she had learned four or five verses so thoroughly that ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... issued at the rate of three each month,—a story, a ballad, and a Sunday tract. They were collected and published in one volume in 1795. It is said that two million copies were sold the first year. There were also editions in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... And if one biscuit graced the platter 'Twas ever less than fighting matter, Or if they'd beans—no doubt they had 'em— They failed to snap a few at Adam. I fear me as they ate their salade They hummed some raw primeval ballad, And when the Serpent came to dinner, They made remarks about the sinner. No doubt they criticised the cooking And hooked the fruit when none was looking, And when they'd soup—O my! O Deary! The very notion makes ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... got from all human recognition and sympathy,—stripped of these, there is little to distinguish it from the contemporary verse-mongering south of the Tweed. Their compositions are generally as stiff and artificial as a trellis, in striking contrast with the popular ballad-poetry of Scotland (some of which possibly falls within this period, though most of it is later), which clambers, lawlessly if you will, but at least freely and simply, twining the bare stem of old tradition with graceful ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... was a capital Grecian. It is true that his singular mind so ordered and disposed his classic lore as to impress it with something of an original and barbarous character—with an almost Gothic quaintness, more properly belonging to a rich native ballad than to the poetry of Hellas. There was a certain impropriety in his knowing so much Greek—an unfitness in the idea of marble fauns, and satyrs, and even Olympian gods, lugged in under the oaken roof and the painted light of ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... out of her eyes, and the quip on her tongue failed her. Greatly daring, her lover took her in his arms. Through the open windows of the drawing room floated the tender refrain of a ballad. Mrs. Forbes was singing, and sweet words blended with sweet ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... was almost like singing in a whisper, there was a strange, vibrating power in it, as there is in the strings of a violin touched but lightly by the bow. Sir S. transferred his attention from the wall to me as he sang this sad old ballad, and I could not look away, because there was the same compelling power in his eyes as in his voice. No doubt it was only of the song he thought, not of me at all, really; yet I could not shake off the haunting impression of the look, and it made me dream ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of life in a man that may turn either way can be felt through all their popular ethics in legend, chronicle, and ballad. It is a feeling which has been weakened among us by two heavy intellectual forces. The Calvinism of the seventeenth century and the physical science of the nineteenth, whatever other truths they may have taught, have darkened this liberty with ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... his history were probed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave his sad bias to Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood the advice of Polonius to Laertes—advice which, in the selfishness it inculcates, is almost on a par with a sort of ballad upon the economies of money-making, to be occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small retail traders in ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... in story this book holds first place in the hearts of children. "A Book of Ballad Stories," ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... wall, the portrait of a pale man clad in black, the hero of the mysterious legend of the Flying Dutchman. The girls rally Senta upon her abstraction, and as a reply to their idle prattle she sings them the ballad of the doomed mariner. Throughout the song her enthusiasm has been waxing, and at its close, like one inspired, she cries aloud that she will be the woman to save him, that through her the accursed wretch shall find eternal peace. Erik, her betrothed lover, who enters to announce ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... the history of the British monarchy, leaving a deep impression on the public mind, gave rise to this generally diffused ballad, is exceedingly probable; but the style and wording of the song are evidently of a period much later than the age of Henry VIII. Might not the madcap adventure of Prince Charles with Buckingham into Spain, to woo the Infanta, be its real origin? "Heigho! for Antony Rowley" is the chorus. Now "Old ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... we took our departure, gingerly picking our way down the rickety steps. The last we heard of Uncle Robert was a snatch of Negro ballad sung in a high-pitched, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... into the parlor to offer the incense of his cigar in the presence of Alta, who was cooing a sentimental ballad to her guitar. It seemed to be of parting, and the hope of reunion, involving one named Irene. There was a run in the chorus accompaniment which ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... Introduction to the Tale of Tamlane The Young Tamlane Erlinton The Twa Corbies The Douglas Tragedy Young Benjie Lady Anne Lord William The Broomfield-Hill Proud Lady Margaret The Original Ballad of the Broom of Cowdenknows Lord Randal Sir Hugh Le Blond Graeme and Bewick The Duel of Wharton and Stuart, Part I. Part II. The Lament of the Border Widow Fair Helen of Kirkonnel, Part I. Part II. Hughie the Graeme ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... the ballad of Boh Da Thone, Erst a Pretender to Theebaw's throne, Who harried the district of Alalone: How he met with his fate and the V.P.P.* At the hand of ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... present humor and disposition indiscriminately against everybody, but to observe, conform to, and adopt them. For example, if you happened to be in high good humor and a flow of spirits, would you go and sing a 'pont neuf',—[a ballad]—or cut a caper, to la Marechale de Coigny, the Pope's nuncio, or Abbe Sallier, or to any person of natural gravity and melancholy, or who at that time should be in grief? I believe not; as, on the other hand, I suppose, that if you were in low ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... need to hurry. You can take any road you will. You may choose your tavern for lunch with expert care. And when new ground is covered and new troops are seen, we capture sometimes those sharp delightful moments of thirsting interest that made the Retreat into an epic and the Advance a triumphant ballad. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... you all will allow. The queen and her fairy followers were much relieved when the honest katydid narrated a pleasant moral in the form of a ballad ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field
... notoriety—who professed to deliver his sermons in his sleep, and was afterwards discovered to be an imposter; the last benefaction in the parish church, for two poor Irish gentlewomen on their journey home, recommended by letters from the Council; the last new ballad. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... homely and the somewhat savage—a catholicity of taste I could never quite stomach. It was "Paul dearest" here and "Paul dearest" there, especially in his work in connection with the music-house and the stage. In the former, popular ballad singers of both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find songs which they could sing on the American or even ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... was originally writ for the celebrating the Marriage of James Chaunter and Moll Lay, two most excellent Ballad-Singers. I have introduced the Similes that are in all your celebrated Operas: The Swallow, the Moth, the Bee, the Ship, the Flower, &c. Besides, I have a Prison-Scene, which the Ladies always reckon charmingly pathetic. As to the Parts, I have ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... the theory that we have just seen, the tax is the reaction of society against monopoly. Upon this point opinions are unanimous: citizens and legislators, economists, journalists, and ballad-writers, rendering, each in their own tongue, the social thought, vie with each other in proclaiming that the tax should fall upon the rich, strike the superfluous and articles of luxury, and leave those of prime necessity ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... is thus described in a ballad, made upon the quarrel between George the First and the Prince of Wales, at the christening recorded at p. 83 when the Prince and all his household were ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora? ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... was the first of May. The Easter bells had rung in the resurrection of spring a few days before, and she had come eager and joyful. She came, as the German ballad says, light-hearted as the young lover who is going to plant a maypole before the window of his betrothed. She painted the sky blue, the trees green, and all things in bright colors. She aroused the torpid ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... lady in her ninety-seventh year. She gave close attention to the singing of the ballad, and when Mrs. B. had finished, she spoke up: "Thank you, thank you very much! But they're na the words my grandfather wrote." Then she repeated the first stanza ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... happened to a pair of White lovers. The better account, however, makes them Indians. What adds to the interest of this tradition is, that Mr. Thomas Moore has made it the subject of a beautiful ballad entitled "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp." His having taken up the story should, I am aware, have prevented me from attempting to tell it, since it is impossible that any thing from my pen should equal his beautiful ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... informed her the next morning that convulsions of laughter, brought on by his recollection of her story, had kept him waking during the greatest part of the night! and that he had turned it into a ballad. So arose the ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... hours of brain-wringing effort—a price that few in a generation would be willing to give or capable of giving for fame. The labor had been in proportion to the success; it always is! I doubt if there is one word in his ‘duel’ ballad that has not been changed again and again for a more fitting expression, as one might assort the shades of a mosaic until a harmonious whole is produced. I have there in my desk whole scenes that ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... O blest be he! Let him all blessings prove, Who made the chains, the shining chains, The holy chains of love!" —Spanish Ballad. "If you love a lady bright, Seek, and you shall find a way All that love would say, to say If you watch the occasion right." ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms; Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eye-brow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the Justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined,— ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... admitted grudgingly, "I suppose not. But you will come sometimes, won't you? I have a perfectly lovely idea for a ballad and I want to ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Prayer" and the "Liebestod," and when she was recalled at the end of the concert, she sang Senta's ballad as a bonne bouche, something that the audience had not expected, and would send her friends away more than ever pleased ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... years later, Hayne tells of the time that Timrod made the thrilling discovery that he was a poet; that being, perhaps, the most exciting epoch in any life. Coming into school one morning, he showed Paul his first attempt at verse-writing, which Hayne describes as "a ballad of stirring adventures and sanguinary catastrophe," which he thought wonderful, the youthful author, of course, sharing that conviction. Convictions are easy at thirteen, even when one has not the glamour of the sea and the romance ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... She began a patriotic ballad Dick knew and liked. He was not much of a musician, but his taste was good. The song rang true; it was poetry and not warlike jingle, but he had not heard it sung so well before. Clare's voice had been carefully ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... disguised. He quarrels with his friend Philinte for receiving the bow of a man he despises; and with his mistress for enjoying a little harmless ridicule of her friend, when her back is turned. He tells a conceited poet that he prefers the sense and simplicity of an old ballad to the false wit of a modern sonnet—he proves his judgment to be just—and receives a challenge from the poet in reward of his criticism. Such a character, placed in opposition to the false and fantastic ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... early in youth a passionate love of country, and retained it until his death, which, to the general regret, occurred in a few years after he had entered upon political life. Mr. Davis was a poet, although not of a high order; several specimens of good ballad composition are amongst his remains. He cultivated classic literature with success; as an antiquary and an historian acquired reputation; wrote energetically and fluently; spoke in public with earnestness and force, but had none of the graces of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a deliciously brown oblong of the Dutch plaice of the ballad that Samuel Levine appeared to be struck by an idea. He threw down his knife and fork and exclaimed in Hebrew. ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... bright, and rich in fruity treasure, I've heard the blackbird with delight repeat his merry measure; The ballad was a lively one, the tune was loud and cheery, And yet with every setting sun I ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... stage at Charing Cross—in the very face of the stern Rumpers, who, with long faces, rode past the sinful man each day as they came ambling up from the Parliament House. A band of puppet-players and violins set up their shows; and music covers a multitude of incongruities. The ballad was then the great vehicle of personal attack, and Villiers's dawning taste for poetry was shown in the ditties which he now composed, and in which he sometimes assisted vocally. Whilst all the other Cavaliers were forced ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... us in copious and entertaining detail the romance and the poetry, the writings and the imaginations, of the Scandinavian races, interspersed with abundant and well-selected specimens of the historical, romantic, legendary, chivalric, ballad, dramatic, song, and critical literature of Northern Europe. They have brought to light the treasures of the illustrious poets, historians and bards of Scandinavia, in a work of ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... children, pray take heed to my little ballad, which shall lead you into all virtues. My mistakes ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... that Lord John Scott, whose good qualities included a fine voice and a love for Scotch songs, to which his wife contributed at least one exquisite ballad, sang this squib to her Majesty. An improvement on the story, which is at least strictly in keeping with the Prince's character, added, that when another song was suggested, and the "Flowers of the Forest" mentioned, Prince Albert, unacquainted ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... firmness of decisive crises. Edgar Quinet retained all his lofty judgment, Noel Parfait all his mental vivacity, Yvan all his vigorous and intelligent penetration, Labrousse all his animation. In a corner Pierre Lefranc, pamphleteer and ballad-writer, but a pamphleteer like Courier, and a ballad-writer like Beranger smiled at the grave and stern words of Dupont de Bussac. All that brilliant group of young orators of the Left, Baneel with his powerful ardor, Versigny and Victor Chauffour with their youthful ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Evening Shelter In the Gloaming The Palace Peace—a study The Arab Lines on Hearing the Organ Changed First Love Wanderers Sad Memories Companions Ballad Precious Stones Disaster Contentment The Schoolmaster Arcades Ambo Waiting Play Love Thoughts at a Railway Station On the Brink "Forever" Under the Trees Motherhood Mystery Flight On the Beach Lovers, and a Reflection The Cock and the Bull ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... so complex naturally necessitated a fellow having to climb up one hatchway and go down another before he could speak to his chum in the next flat, thus causing one to go through 'sich a getting upstairs' like that mentioned in the celebrated negro ballad. The difference of the deck plan of a modern cruiser, as compared with that of my old ship the Active, was not the only thing I had to learn on being drafted to the Mermaid; for the drills were quite as strange to me at first ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... on Poole, Sherborne on Dorchester, Wimborne on both; the waggons will be fired on as they follow the highway, the trains wrecked on the lines, the ploughman will go armed into the field of tillage; and if we have not a return of ballad literature, the local press at least will celebrate in a high vein the victory of Cerne Abbas or the reverse of Toller Porcorum. At least this will not be dull; when I was younger, I could have welcomed such a world with relief; but it is the New-Old ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... common in those days, one of them being organized by Harry Percy, called "Hotspur" because of his irritability. The ballad of Chevy Chase was founded upon his exploits at the battle of Otterburn, in 1388. The Percys favored Mortimer, and so united ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... wedding-day. I faintly remember something of a chaise and four, in which he made his entry into Glasgow on that morning to fetch the bride home, or carry her thither, I forget which. It so completely made out the stanza of the old ballad— ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... immortalized by a fine ballad of Southey's, it is said that the abbots of Aberbrothwick, in their munificent humanity preserved a beacon on that dangerous reef of rock in the German Ocean, which is supposed to have received its name of the "Bell ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... times. We had heard much of him before we arrived, and a friend of mine had given me some lines of his with the music, in England; one song I published in a recent work;[18] but I was not then aware of the history of the author, of whom the ballad "Mi cal mouri!" was one of the earliest compositions, and that which first tended to make him popular. My friend, who possesses very delicate taste and discrimination, was much struck with the grace and beauty of ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... thus. He approached, and set about turning over the heaps one by one. As soon as he paused, tantalized and puzzled, he was directed anew by an imitative kiss which came from her hiding-place, and by snatches of a local ballad in the smallest ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... the window, her head thrown back and the moonlight on her upturned face. When she woke in the dawn the Maid was already up, trussing the points of her breeches and struggling with her long boots. She was crooning the verse of a ballad: ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... men left the room. Vine remained, leaning against the mantelpiece, and whistling softly to himself. He went through the whole of a popular ballad, and then he tried it in a different key. When he was sure that the three men had had time to leave the building, he too took up his hat and ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had been led by imitation into an accent much more countrified than I was usually careful to affect—a good deal broader indeed than I have written it down; and I was the more ashamed when another voice joined in behind me with a scrap of a ballad: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... say only that, while the mellow music rippled from his parted lips, it seemed as if the gates of Paradise had fallen ajar. He sang an old ballad that I had never heard. It was all about "Douglas Gordon," whose story flowed with the tide of a plaintive accompaniment which I think he must have arranged himself: for somehow, it was like him. All the sadness, all the sweetness in this sweet, sad, old world seemed concentrated ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... them, and the epigram, in all the wide meaning of that word. In fact, we owe it everything, except the sonnet, to which, however, some curious parallels of thought- movement may be traced in the Anthology, American journalism, to which no parallel can be found anywhere, and the ballad in sham Scotch dialect, which one of our most industrious writers has recently proposed should be made the basis for a final and unanimous effort on the part of our second-rate poets to make themselves really romantic. Each new school, as it ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... novel has been discovered to which Shakespeare could have been at all indebted for the plot or matter of The Tempest. There is indeed an old ballad called The Inchanted Island, which was once thought to have contributed something towards the play: but it is now generally held to be more modern than the play, and probably founded upon it; the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... was alluring. Iowa was now the place of the rainbow, and the pot of gold. He was eager to push on toward it, confident of the outcome. His spirit was reflected in one of the songs which we children particularly enjoyed hearing our mother sing, a ballad which consisted of a dialogue between a husband and wife on this very subject of emigration. The words as well as its wailing melody still stir me deeply, for they lay hold of my sub-conscious memory—embodying ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... for an answer, she seated herself at the piano, and again the clear, silvery voice with its bird-like notes, broke forth on the evening air. She sang an old, simple ballad, but with such expression, such pathos and sweetness, that a bright spring sunlight seemed to enter and flood the little rooms of the old house. But no sunshine was half so bright as the joy which lit up ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... popular ballad of the day that Bumpus gave them; but more often a school chorus, or it might be some tender Scotch song like "Comin' Through the Rye," "Annie Laurie," or "Twickenham Ferry;" for boys can appreciate such sentiments more than most folks believe; and ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... This is life in a Border ballad. Such a life as you knew in France but beautiful in a wild—hawk sort of way. Don't the Khyber Rifles bewilder you? They are drawn from these very Hill tribes, and will shoot their own fathers and brothers ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... railway accident or a shipwreck before it could produce any effect on our minds at all. To us the ridiculous bombardments of Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal tragedies, and the battle of Jutland a mere ballad. The words "after thorough artillery preparation" in the news from the front meant nothing to us; but when our seaside trippers learned that an elderly gentleman at breakfast in a week-end marine hotel had been interrupted by a bomb ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... various groups of stragglers, who had deemed it their duty, in spite of the inclement weather to wander some miles out of the city to catch an early glimpse of "My Lord Judge," and the gay Sheriff's officers. Troops, also, of itinerant ballad-singers, rope-dancers, mountebanks, and caravans of wild beasts, still followed the Judges, as they had done throughout the circuit. "Walk more slowly, Ned," said the mother, checking the boy's desire to follow the shows. "I am very tired; let us rest a little here." They lingered until ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... young James, who had certainly had enough of such powerful subjects: and he would not listen to either excuse or explanation from the Borderer, whose defiance as he was led to his execution, and the wail of his wild followers after him, sounds still in the stirring strains of song and ballad. No doubt it was justice that James did—but justice somewhat stern and ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the scene of the great victory of Offa, the Mercian king, over Cynewulf of Wessex in the year 777. One of Elfric's ancestors had fought on the side of Offa, and the exploits of this doughty warrior had formed the subject of a ballad often sung in the winter evenings at Aescendune, so that Elfric explored the scene with great curiosity. Inferior to Dorchester, it ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... Hopper had obtained a copy of the recognizance, signed by the magistrate, he chuckled inwardly and marched out of the office. If there was a flaw in anything, Thomas Harrison had a jocose way of saying, "There is a hole in the ballad." As they went into the street together, his friend said, "Thomas, there's a hole in the ballad. The recognizance we have just signed is good for nothing. The United States have not the slightest claim ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... Introduction to a somewhat longer one, for which I shall solicit insertion on your next open day. The use of the Old Ballad word, Ladie, for Lady, is the only piece of obsoleteness in it; and as it is professedly a tale of ancient times, I trust, that 'the affectionate lovers of venerable antiquity' (as Camden says) will grant me their pardon, and perhaps may be induced to admit a force and propriety ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... but it may be devastated by the awful curse. It throws its jargon into the sweetest harmony. What was it that silenced Sheridan's voice and shattered the golden sceptre with which he swayed parliaments and courts? What foul sprite turned the sweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless ballad? What brought down the majestic form of one who awed the American Senate with his eloquence, and after a while carried him home dead drunk from the office of Secretary of State? What was it that crippled the noble spirit of one of the heroes of the last war, ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... greatly, and lifted the depression which the eternal drizzle had settled on my spirits. That bold girl singing a martial ballad to the storm and taking pleasure in the snellness of the air, was like a rousing summons or a cup of heady wine. The picture ravished my fancy. The proud dark eye, the little wanton curls peeping from the hood, the whole figure alert with youth and life—they cheered ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... unfathomable secrets. I was never struck by a ball from a bandit. I bear the scars of seventeen wounds; but these wounds were made with naked blades. It could be said of me, as in I know not which Scotch ballad: "Did not the Devil's soldiers pass through the balls, instead of the balls passing through them." Yet I have often been fired at; sometimes the barrel of a gun has been pointed at my chest, and that at a few paces from me. My clothes ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... first toll-house, while the toll-keeper was changing some money, I experienced the envy of the gods which hitherto I had known only in Schiller's ballad. A pedestrian passed—the teacher whom I had offended by playing all sorts of pranks during his French lesson. Not one ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to know many of his other songs, except the 'Repentance,' which someone remembered having seen sold as a ballad, with the English on one side and the Irish on the other. And one man told me: 'The first song Raftery wrote was about a hat that was stole from a man that was working in that middle field beyond. When the man was digging, he used to put his hat on a stick in the field to ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... accompanied with the reading of the ballad, slightly transposed and adapted. As Leslie led Sir Charles before the curtain, in response to the continued demand, he ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... the Morte, which I suppose most interested him also, as he took it up first of all. I am not sure if such a Romance as Arthur's is not best told in the artless old English in which it was told to Arthur's artless successors four hundred years ago; or dished up anew in something of a Ballad Style like his own Lady of Shalott, rather than elaborated into a modern Epic form. I never cared, however, for any chivalric Epic; neither Tasso, nor Spenser, nor even Ariosto, whose Epic has a sort of Ballad-humour in it; Don Quixote is the only one of all this sort ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... church embroiderers the foremost figure is that of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine, claimed in Wales and in the Welsh ballad of "The Dream of Maxen Wledig" as being a Welsh princess married to the Emperor Constans. She is said to have embroidered an image of the Virgin, which Muratori speaks of as existing in the Church of Vercelli in the seventeenth century. Bock says it is still ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... bringing Admiralty officials or Captains to join their ships. Groups were collected in front of the different inns, and Jews were looking out for customers, certain of obtaining a ready sale for their trumpery wares. Ballad singers, especially those who could troll forth one of Dibdin's new songs, were collecting a good harvest from eager listeners, and the apple-stall women were driving a thriving trade; as were the shopkeepers of high and low degree, judging ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... ballad of "The Brave Roland," in one of the numbers of the New Monthly Magazine; and Southey's tale of Manuel and Leila, in ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... song, "Helvetie." Serious purpose and intention disguised in gentle gayety and childlike badinage, feeling hiding itself under a smile of satire, a resigned and pensive wisdom expressing itself in rustic round or ballad, the power of suggesting everything in a nothing—these are the points in which the Vaudois poet triumphs. On the reader's side there is emotion and surprise, and on the author's a sort of pleasant slyness ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... house in the same locality, with the sign of the A. B. C, and he also had a second printing office in Durham Rents, without Temple Bar, that is in some house adjacent to Durham House in the Strand. The earliest extant printed ballad was issued by Richard Faques, the Ballad of the Scottish King, of which the only known copy is in the British Museum, and amongst his undated books is one which he printed for Robert Wyer, the Charing Cross ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... sing long ballads in recitative to the company. Whether he did it in all innocence and ignorance, or one of the young squires had mischievously prompted him, there was no knowing; Dame Gresford suspected the latter, when he began the ballad of "Sir Gawaine's Wedding." She would have silenced it, but feared to draw more attention on her charge, who had never heard the song, and did not know what was coming, but listened with increasing eagerness as she heard of King Arthur, and of the giant, and the secret that ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... shouting, women screaming, fiddlers playing, pipes squeeling, youngsters, dancing, hammering up of standings and tents, thumping of restive or lazy animals, the show-man's drum, the lottery-man's speech, the ballad-singer's squall, all come upon us; and lastly, the unheeded sweep of the death-bell, as it tells with sullen tongues that some poor mortal has for ever departed from the cares and amusements, the trade and ...
— Lha Dhu; Or, The Dark Day - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... or some actual grown up young lady, who was teased by, and tried to check the chirpings of the little {566} precocious singing bird—does not appear: but we suspect the former, for this sonnet is immediately followed by "A Pastoral Ballad!" calling upon some Celia unknown to "pity his tears and complaint," &c., in the usual namby-pamby style of these compositions. To any one who considers the smart, espiegle, highly artificial style of "Tom Moore's" after compositions, his "Pastoral Ballad" ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 • Various
... author adds a long poem, of nine verses, entitled "A Digger's Ballad," of which the following verse, the last one, will give our readers a ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... pulled out of his pocket a small printed sheet, and was soon declaiming from it. It was not very much to the point, except as illustrating the national spirit which he believed so divine. It was a ballad describing the tortures which the Spaniards had intended to inflict upon the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... choruses are some of the finest of MacDowell's little known part-songs for male voices, and are both written to his own lines. The first is a stirring ballad of olden times:— ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte
... behalf of a gentleman who has risked his mistress's favour for my poor cheek's sake?" And she fell to laughing again, her mirth growing greater as I turned red in the face. "You mustn't blush when you come to town," she cried, "or they'll make a ballad on you, and cry you in the ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... England was to have one great poet schooled in the love of both morality and beauty. John Milton's poetry shows not only his sublimity and high ideals, but also his admiration for beauty, music, and art. Wigglesworth's verse is inferior to much of the ballad doggerel, but it has a swing and a directness fitted to catch the popular ear and to lodge in the memory. While some of his work seems humorous to us, it would not have made that impression on the early Puritans. At the same time, we must not rely on verse like this for our understanding ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... not translations, we notice "Parsenlied," dating from the year 1819, when Goethe's Divan appeared, and it is quite possible that the Parsi Nameh of that work suggested to Platen the composition of his poem.[143] His best known ballad, "Harmosan," written in 1830, has a Persian warrior for its hero. The source for the poem is probably Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... experiences, and illustrated them with flashes of his wit. For it was the habit of this eccentric earl, when refinements of the court began to pall upon him, or his absence from Whitehall became a necessity, to seek fresh adventure and intrigue disguised as a porter, a beggar, or a ballad-monger. And so carefully did he hide his identity in the character he assumed, that his most intimate friends failed to ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... part of our imaginary history would be rich with colouring from romance, ballad, and chronicle. We should find ourselves in the company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as those who rode with Chaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest,—from the royal cloth of state to the den of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thus worked his way into Court favour. During the brief royalty of Jane Grey, his wife was confined. His child was christened at the Tower church, and Suffolk and Pembroke were "gossips," and Jane herself was godmother. The day that Mary was proclaimed, he put out a ballad, which, as he expected, brought him into trouble. "The next day," he is telling his own story, "after the queen was come to the Tower, the foresaid ballad came into the hands of Secretary Bourne, who ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... those brass-nailed doors and wrought-iron balconies, the Cherub said; and malefactors famed in history and ballad had swung from that tall gallows which caught the eye before Ecija's eight church towers. There had been famous fighting, too, by the river bank; but now the place slept, dreaming of peace, and the whirr ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Scotch ballad "Edom o' Gordon" the Lady Rodes is represented as being shut up by Gordon in her burning castle. The ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of Iviza, bearing them out with the testimony of his father, who had been cabin boy on Captain Riquer's xebec, and which assaulted the frigate Felicidad, captained by the formidable corsair "the Pope." Stirred by these heroic recollections, he hummed in his quavering old voice the ballad in which Ivizan sailors had celebrated the triumph, verses in Castilian, for greater solemnity, ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... There is a whole ballad—nay, a whole history of the middle ages in this story; for among thousands I can recall none as perfectly characteristic of the times. The absolute aristocratic control of the life of a white slave; its abuse by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... expression about his mouth. A self-reliant, prejudiced, and often very irascible old man, it was a very difficult task to manage him. Some of his Cabinet advisers made it a point to be always with him, to prevent others from ingratiating themselves into his good will, and they were thus chronicled in a ballad of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... known better than to have set an example of rhyming before Archie Blair. He turned and looked down at the elder, and the sight of him marching peaceably beside Captain Jimmie reminded him of an old doggerel ballad: "But man, there's worse than that written in your ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... whistling in a yet louder key in the depths of the bluish darkness. They were nearing their destination. The lights of Lourdes already shone out on the horizon. Then the whole train again sang a canticle—the rhymed story of Bernadette, that endless ballad of six times ten couplets, in which the Angelic Salutation ever returns as a refrain, all besetting and distracting, opening to the human mind the portals of the heaven ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... powder could be shaken out into the pan, and the gun made to prime itself. Thus he was ready for action an instant sooner than his enemy, whom he shot dead just as Paugus pulled trigger, and sent a bullet whistling over his head. The story has no good foundation, while the popular ballad, written at the time, and very faithful to the facts, says that, the other officers being killed, the ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... to the immediate culprit. Him she followed into the street; and coming near enough to distinguish his profile reflected on a wall, she continued to keep him in view from a short distance. The light-hearted young cavalier whistled, as he went, an old Portuguese ballad of romance; and in a quarter of an hour came up to an house, the front door of which he began to open with a pass-key. This operation was the signal for Catalina that the hour of vengeance had struck; and, stepping hastily up, she tapped the Portuguese on the shoulder, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... allowed to sing only one verse of a song, and their merits or faults were similarly recorded. Several of the Intermediates had entered for the competition. Rose Butler trilled forth a sentimental little ditty in a rather quavering mezzo; Annie Turner, whose compass was contralto, poured out a sea ballad—a trifle flat; Nora Cleary raised a storm of applause by a funny Irish song, and received marks for style, though her voice was poor in quality; and Elsie Bartlett scored for St. Elgiva's by reaching high B with the utmost clearness and ease. The Intermediates grinned ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... active toes, and Bagg double-shuffled, and the torches flared, and "Kandy for Kids" and "Don't be Foolish and Fully Fooled" persuaded the populace, and Signor Fakerino created mystification, and Billy Topsail employed his sweet little pipe most wistfully in the old ballad of the coast: ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... music—a little playing and a little singing from the younger ladies of the company, myself included. Milly sang an English ballad very sweetly, and Angus Egerton stood by the piano looking down ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... passes St. Keyne, where the waters of the well are said to possess a remarkable property, according to Thomas Fuller, who says, "whether husband or wife came first to drink thereof, they get the mastery thereby". The well has been immortalized in Southey's well-known ballad, ...
— The Cornish Riviera • Sidney Heath
... line of circumstances that I should remain for tea; and after tea Phyllis played and sang for me in the little parlor, for Phyllis was a musician of no small merit. When in reply to my inquiry she sang a simple Scotch ballad her mother had sung so touchingly many years before, a great lump rose in my throat, and I sat far over in the shadow that she and Mary might not see how blurred were my eyes, and how unmanageable my emotion. At what age does it come ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men * have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic airs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with great expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the drawing- room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come into his head "apropos of our young friend," and he sang one about a ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... of the relations of apprentices to their masters; though I confess that I do not know whether Edmund Burgess could have become a citizen of York after serving an apprenticeship in London. Evil May Day is closely described in Hall's Chronicle. The ballad, said to be by Churchill, a contemporary, does not agree with it in all respects; but the story-teller may surely have license to follow whatever is most suitable to the purpose. The sermon is exactly as given by Hall, who is also responsible for the description of the King's sports ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Mary lived, and in which David Rizzio was murdered; and also the State Rooms. Dr Johnson was a great reciter of all sorts of things serious or comical. I over-heard him repeating here, in a kind of muttering tone, a line of the old ballad, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... voice singing somewhere through the dawn awoke Steve Packard and informed him that Terry was up and about. He lay still a moment, listening. He remembered the song, which, by the way, he had not heard for a good many years, the ballad of a cowboy sick and lonely in a big city, yearning for the open country. At times when Terry's humming 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 ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... both in the drama and in hymns. Her play, 'Vivia Perpetua' (1841), tells of the author's rapt aspiration after an ideal, symbolized in a pagan's conversion to Christianity. She published also 'The Royal Progress,' a ballad (1845), on the giving tip of the feudal privileges of the Isle of Wight to Edward I.; and poems upon the humanitarian interests which the Anti-Corn-Law League endeavored to further. Her hymns are the happiest expressions ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... on other accounts, the ballad addressed to Geoffrey Chaucer by Eustache Deschamps deserves repetition. Its text requires to be established, in order that we may be aware of its real obscurities—for no future memoir of Chaucer can be considered as complete, without some ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 55, November 16, 1850 • Various
... quips and cranks and wreathed smiles now. And meek, humble-minded Martha, in former days so diffident, blushing and taciturn, has found out the value of a deferential demeanor and the knack of being a good listener, and can sing a ballad with a pathos and dramatic effect that eclipse the highly-embellished performances ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... abominable thing. She was going to call upon him for the "stunt" which had been inescapably identified with him, the song, "I went up in a balloon so big." He met the crisis heroically. He said loudly, as the shaky strains of the Swiss ballad died on the midnight mountain air of 157th Street (while the older men concealed yawns and applauded, and the family in the adjoining flat rapped on the radiator): "I'm sorry my throat 's so sore to-night. Otherwise I'd sing a song I learned from a ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis |
