"Dirge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the defence of the house; and to the father, who followed the coffins, and the mother, who hid herself in the thicket, there was something like pleasure in the roll of the drum, and the measure of the dead march, and the warlike tone of the shrill dirge which was sung round the open graves, and the discharge of firearms over them—a satisfaction like that of fulfilling the last wish of their boy. This done, and the graves fenced and planted, the childless pair departed, wishing, perhaps, in their own ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... as dignity. Its author, had he lived in the nineteenth century, in default of new worlds to explore, or Armadas to fight, might have written an In Memoriam. In previous English poetry no such dirge is to be found as his Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney. A couple of stanzas will indicate its ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... are of the world, and will not leave the earth; some who sing, others who hum, others who talk. Certain poems are like clarions, and celebrate the battle of Crecy, of which Chaucer had not spoken; others resemble lovers' serenades; others a dirge for the dead. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... white rivulet gleam, And the leaf of December fall sere on the stream; While Irfon his dirge whispers on through the combe, And the purple-topt hills gather round ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... and white, with silver crosses, the procession moves on to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. The padre sheltered by a white umbrella, reads the Latin prayers aloud. A small boy swings the smoking censer, and the singers undertake a melancholy dirge. The withered body, with the hands crossed on the breast, clothed all in black, is borne aloft upon a bamboo litter, mounted with a black box painted with the skull and bones, and decked with candles. Women in black veils with candles follow, mumbling prayers, the words ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... home, a young girl passed him, walking very briskly. She paused for a moment just ahead of him to give some money to a poor woman who, doubled up on the pavement in a black shawl, was grinding out from a wheezy little organ a thin, dirge-like strain. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... gowned like a bride in white. But the white on this occasion was not the emblem of purity; rather was it the pallor of icy death. The rigorous storms seemed to prophesy of trouble; the very winds were rehearsing a dirge to be plaintively sung over mountains and moors ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... distant and sullen roar of the ocean, as it breaks in sheets of foam on the rock-bound coast—the fitful cry of curlew, as it wings over them its solitary way—or the occasional low moaning of the wind, as, stealing through amidst the rocks, it seems to pour forth a mournful dirge for the shades of departed greatness:—when we look on a scene like this, we have before our gaze all that is known of these men of the olden time. Their blood-stained rites, their solemn mysteries, are forgotten; but their simple temples still ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... at Vanity Fair In robes that rival the tulip's glare, Think on the chaplet of leaves which round His fading forehead will soon be bound, And on each dirge the priests will say When his cold corse ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... ordinary share of sensibility can witness a ceremony involving such consequences without the deepest emotion. The scene produced an effect upon the spirit of Jane which was never effaced. The wreath of flowers which crowned the beautiful victim; the veil enveloping her person; the solemn and dirge-like chant, the requiem of her burial to all the pleasures of sense and time; the pall which overspread her, emblematic of her consignment to a living tomb, all so deeply affected the impassioned child, that, burying her face in her hands, she wept ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... psalms and anthems, a dirge accompanied by trumpets was sung, "And the King said to all the people that were with him, rend your clothes and gird you with sackcloth and mourn. And the King himself followed the bier. And they buried him; and ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... rise Above thy lonely, sun-bleached frame; No epitaph of well-turned lies Shall be inscribed beneath thy name; No bells for thee a dirge shall ring, No choir beside thy grave shall sing, Yet hast thou ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... the silver streams of Eridan,[90] On either side banked with a lily wall, Whiter than both, rides the triumphant swan, And sings his dirge, and prophesies his fall, Diving into his watery funeral! But Eridan to Cedron must submit His flowery shore; nor can he envy it, If, when Apollo sings, his swans ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Secretary Stanton and Secretary McCulloch were present. After prayer by the chaplain, the Declaration of Independence was read by Hon. EDWARD MCPHERSON, Clerk of the House. After the reading of the Declaration, followed by the playing of a dirge by the band, Hon. SCHUYLER COLFAX, Speaker of the House of Representatives, introduced the orator of the day, Hon. J. A. ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... Emperor Inkyo (A.D. 453), the Korean Court sent eighty musicians robed in black, who marched in procession to the Yamato palace, playing and singing a dirge as they went." ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... him through his career, for it may be found in Bonald, and also in De Maistre, though not, perhaps, in the volumes he had already published. It was less original than he at first imagined, for the English divines commonly held it from the seventeenth century, and its dirge was sung only the other day by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol.[404] A Scottish professor would even be justified in claiming it for Reid. But of course it was Lamennais who gave it most importance, in his programme ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... underneath the murky sky, In the hush of desperation, not to conquer but to die. Hark! the bagpipe's fitful wailing—not the pibroch loud and shrill, That, with hope of bloody banquet, lured the ravens from the hill— But a dirge both low and solemn, fit for ears of dying men, Marshall'd for their latest battle, never more to fight again. Madness—madness! Why this shrinking? Were we less inured to war When our reapers swept the harvest from the field of red Dunbar? Fetch my horse, and blow the trumpet!—Call the riders ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... On the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland; considered as the Subject of Poetry; inscribed to Mr. John Home 66 An Epistle, addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, on his Edition of Shakespeare's Works 78 Dirge in Cymbeline, sung by Guiderus and Arviragus over Fidele, supposed to be dead 87 Verses written on a Paper which contained a Piece of Bride-cake, given to the Author by a Lady 89 To Miss Aurelia C——R, on her Weeping at her Sister's Wedding 91 Sonnet 91 Song. The Sentiments borrowed from Shakespeare ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... wind brought mournful strains of the victim's dirge to our lodge. I fastened the door, with robes against it to keep the sound out. Then a smell of burning drifted through the window, and I stop-gapped that, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... in his arms, never petitioned for mercy. She gave no sign of life or being, saving that she moaned at regular intervals in piteous accents:—'He has forgotten and abandoned me!' as if that one simple expression comprised in itself, her acknowledgment of the uselessness of her life, and her dirge for her expected death. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... that, when a warrior is about to meet death, he must sing a death dirge. Hakadah thought of his Ohitika as a person who would meet his death without a struggle, so he began to sing a dirge for him, at the same time hugging him tight to himself. As if he were a human being, he whispered in ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... more, which is, not paying a proper regard to the present temper of the company, or the occasion of their meeting, in introducing a topic of conversation, by which as great an absurdity is sometimes committed, as it would be to sing a dirge at a wedding, or ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... Loud lamentation; "Weep for our warrior slain, Ne'er shall we see again, Our mighty captain." Rises the harpist old, Calls for his harp of gold, Sweeps through its mournful strings, And loud the music rings, The dirge ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... is your heart on your halfpenny,[1] or are you saying a dirge for your father's soul? ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... rather a dark rim of brooding on the rough horizon seemed to thicken itself against the light under the sullen march of vapors—the muffled funeral of the year. Dry trees and naked crags stood forth, and the dirge of the wind went to and fro, and there was ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... dark shadows, as rock beneath or tree above assails the gentle stillness of its onward flow. Only that which comes from the heart goes again to the heart. We find a new and delicious personality, a simple Greek naturalness, in this exquisite dirge that scarcely owns the 'blasphemy of grief,' that are wanted in his sententious instructions ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... contained a constantly recurring Asiatic element. This comes out most often as a note of warning; like the motif of Ortrud in the opera of "Lohengrin," it mingles ominously in every chorus of Hellenic enterprise or paean of Hellenic victory, and finally swells into a national dirge at the Turkish conquest of the peninsula. It comes out in the legendary history of the Argonautic Expedition and the Trojan War; in the arrival of Phoenician Cadmus and Phrygian Pelops in Grecian lands; in the appearance of Tyrian ships on the coast of the Peloponnesus, where they gather the ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... manner, her every-day clothes, her usual hat. Jones, noting these details, inwardly commended them. But at once, another detail was apparent. The entrance to the room where the Bella figlia had been succeeded by a dirge, was blocked. There ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... complaining flute In dying notes discovers The woes of hopeless lovers, Whose dirge is whisper'd by ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... queen or dairymaid, but the barrier between himself and her was built of the old hurdles of low birth and iron fortune. Here anyway in his heart rang the knell 'Good-bye,' the farewell, farewell, farewell which every poet worth his salt has heard not once but many times, and, in the middle of the dirge the bell rang so remorselessly, came the exquisite chrysm of a fondling hand ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... all new to you, captain," Rovard Grauffis said sourly, "but Lucas Trask's dirge for the Decline and Fall of the Sword-Worlds is an old song to the rest of us. I have too much to do to stay here ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... earnest, quiet moonbeam looks in fixedly, marking the bars of the grated windows on the prostrate, sleeping forms. The mother and daughter are singing together a wild and melancholy dirge, common as a ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... parted asunder and gave place to the wain. And the others when they had brought him to the famous house, laid him on a fretted bed, and set beside him minstrel leaders of the dirge, who wailed a mournful lay, while the women made moan with them. And among the women white-armed Andromache led the lamentation, while in her hands she held the head of Hector slayer of men: "Husband, thou art gone young from life, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... dirge-like sound as it floated through the air, calling upon all good Christians to pray for the repose of the departed or departing soul. No prayer rose to their lips, and they soon returned to the ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... glaring upon the moon as she coursed through a cloudy heaven. The wind whistled through the leaves, and its melancholy moaning sounded like our death-dirge. Several times through the night I heard the howl of the prairie wolf, and I knew it was Lincoln; but the Jarochos had pickets all around, and the hunter dared not approach our position. He ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Greek and French, and many of his Latin poems were published under the title 'Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum' (Amsterdam, 1637). His English poems on such themes as a 'Love Dirge,' 'The Poet Forsaken,' 'The Lover's Remonstrance,' 'Address to an Inconstant Mistress,' etc., do not show depth of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... out the incessant dirge, grown resignedly sweet now; so intense in its infinite peace, that a calm of love, beyond all human understanding and above all earthly passions, sank deep into my soul, and so permeated my whole being with ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... up the mansion, spread the festive board; Welcome the gay, the noble, and the fair! Through the bright hall in joyous concert poured, Let mirth and music sound the dirge of care! But ask thou not if happiness be there, If the loud laugh disguise convulsive throe, Or if the brow the heart's true livery wear; Lift not the festal mask!—enough to know No scene of mortal life but teems with ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... pass'd the miserable day In the rich house that late was full of pride; Then the sun fell, and all the paths were grey, And Menelaus from the mountain-side Came, and through palace doors all open wide Rang the wild dirge that told him of the thing That Helen, that the Queen had strangely died. Then on his ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... to the proposal and accompany them to the rock, for the purpose of gathering flowers for the feast. On reaching the rock, We-no-na ran to its summit and standing on its edge upbraided her parents who were below, for their cruelty, and then singing a death-dirge, threw herself from the precipice and dashed them in pieces ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pale swan in her watery nest Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending; 'Few words,' quoth she, 'shall fit the trespass best, Where no excuse can give the fault amending: In me moe woes than words are now depending; And my laments would be drawn out too long, To tell them all with ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... wandering musicians who had, at the open grave, played as a dirge, or, rather, as a ringing hymn of resurrection and deliverance, the chant of the fatherland-that dark girl to whom he had said: "Bring me this jewel, and come and live in peace with the Zilahs"—was the mother of this beautiful, fascinating ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a last look at the long-expiring gardens. It was a wet night—the lamps burnt dimly—the military band played in the minor key—the waiters stalked about with so silent, melancholy a tread, that we took their towels for pocket-handkerchiefs; the concert in the open rain went off tamely—dirge-like, in spite of the "Siege of Acre," which was described in a set of quadrilles, embellished with blue fire and maroons, and adorned with a dozen double drums, thumped at intervals, like death notes, in various parts of the doomed gardens. The divertissement was anything but diverting, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... parents. Mr. Colbert was stooping by a distant tomb reading its epitaph to little Jennie, who listened with the deepest interest. There was no sound to mar the stillness of that peaceful retreat, the whispering winds went, dirge-like, through the waving grass, and the leaves rustled softly above ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... Rabbits had come by just at the wrong moment! They took his impending punishment even more cheerfully than he did himself, as our friends generally do, and promised to go in a body and see the operation. One, indeed, Simmonds, lamented over his sad fate, and sang by way of a dirge— ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... each scene Where cisterns had so lately been: Away in frantic haste he sprung, And sought to cool his burning tongue. He howled, and to his famished cry The dreary echoes gave reply; And owlet's dirge, through shadows dim, Rolled back in ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... and the dance, and arose a weird dirge of compassion over what might have been! So moving was it, the player himself was melted. His dark nature showed its fairest side,—sensitive refinement, grace of expression, flowing ease of manner. Quick was he in fancy, emotional, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... interments? What valley of desolation is this, where the peaceful songs which follow the hard labors of the day are replaced by the death dirge? where the repose of evening is exchanged for the repose of eternity? What is this valley of the shadow, where every village mourns for its many dead, and buries them at the same hour of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... own lamentations were pathetic. She would sit for hours singing or rather mourning out a kind of dirge over herself: "Yesterday I was a woman, now I am a horror, a thing all people run from. Yesterday they would eat with me, now they spit on me. Yesterday they would talk to me with a sweet mouth, now they greet ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... deep peace within. Shirley sat at the window, watching the rack in heaven, the mist on earth, listening to certain notes of the gale that plained like restless spirits—notes which, had she not been so young, gay, and healthy, would have swept her trembling nerves like some omen, some anticipatory dirge. In this her prime of existence and bloom of beauty they but subdued vivacity to pensiveness. Snatches of sweet ballads haunted her ear; now and then she sang a stanza. Her accents obeyed the fitful impulse of the wind; they swelled as ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... works, his "Indian Suite" for full orchestra, a work that has been often performed, and always with the effect of a new and profound sensation, particularly in the case of the deeply impressive dirge. ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... wakes the guests a'mornings, parading round the terraces with his bagpipes, and after dinner, as usual at the feasts of Highland magnates, he marches round the table in kilt and flying tartans with his drone-like dirge or furious slogan,—being rewarded on the spot with whisky ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... while declaring that he would never desert Ulster, nevertheless made it plain that Ulster on this occasion should take her place beside the rest of Ireland. Only Mr. GINNELL remained obdurate. In his ears the Convention sounds "the funeral dirge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... stormy midnight, by the fitful glare of the dying embers, those two silent men and that pale woman seemed to be keeping a vigil in an abode of death. And the pattering rain and moan of the night-wind sounded like a dirge. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... ere provision is needed for the like purpose," answered Bucklaw; "but you should not drink up the last flask at a dirge; there ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... was being securely bound with his back to the trunk. About his feet dry wood was then placed, and half way up his body. When this had been accomplished, the Indians formed themselves in a circle about the unhappy man, and began to chant a slow weird dirge in ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... rough, you trod it bravely. I saw that you had learned how doing is a nobler thing than dreaming, yet kept the holy fire burning in the holy place. But now you go, and there will be no return. The stars are faded from the sky. The leaves writhe on the greensward. The breezes wail a dirge. The summer rain is pallid like winter snow. And—O bitterest cup of all!—the golden memories of the past have vanished from your heart. I totter down to the grave, while you go on from strength to strength. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... permitted to go to the street indicated, and they had hardly secured a good place before they heard martial music, playing a solemn dirge. ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... for a few inches only. Through the gap in the dark draperies a wan white hand appeared; waved tremulously a last farewell; and vanished from my view. The curtains closed again on her dark and solitary life. The dreary wind sounded its long, low dirge over the rippling waters of the lake. The ponies took their places in the ferryboat which was kept for the passage of animals to and from the island. With slow, regular strokes the men rowed us to the mainland ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... Be brave and conquer. Be young and happy. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! Would you know the segreto per esser felice? Here it is, in a smiling mistress and a cup of Falernian." As the boy tosses the cup and sings his song—hark! what is that chaunt coming nearer and nearer? What is that dirge which will disturb us? The lights of the festival burn dim—the cheeks turn pale—the voice quavers—and the cup drops on the floor. Who's there? Death and Fate are at the gate, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that have seen her not our whole lives long, We to whose ears her dirge was cradle-song, The dirge men sang who laid in earth her living head, Is it by such light that we live to see Rise, with rent hair and raiment, Liberty? Does her grave open ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... narrow, straggling path into the cool dusk of the woods, she began to sing. The crooning chant was as mournful as a funeral dirge. ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Miss Oliver said once, when they were coming home in the darkness and heard a dog howl, "When a dog cries like that the Angel of Death is passing." Rilla listened with a curdling fear at her heart. It was Dog Monday—she felt sure of it. Whose dirge was he howling—to whose spirit was he sending that ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sounds of inanimate objects, she has provided that all seasons should pour into his ear some pleasant intimations of heaven. In autumn, when the harvest-hymn of the day-time has ceased, at early nightfall, the green nocturnal grasshoppers commence their autumnal dirge, and fill the mind with a keen sense of the rapid passing of time. These sounds do not sadden the mind, but deepen the tone of our feelings, and prepare us for a renewal of cheerfulness, by inspiring us with the poetic sentiment of melancholy. This sombre state of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... bringers of evil tidings announced the triumph of Truth. The conviction of a burlesque on baronetcy was expected in sulky helplessness—but the overthrow of the CHAMPION of LIBERTY, the ORATOR whose eloquence was to have been the passing dirge of Justice—his overthrow was the overthrow of thousands. With his, hearts sunk, and menaces grew silent; the monster at his whetstone dropped the half-sharpened dagger at the conviction of Henry Hunt; and the tool of his excitement unscrewed ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... chair thinking. It was one of the many messages of sorrow that had winged their way through the country in the weeks following the close of the war; one of the murmurs of pain that had swelled the funeral dirge vibrating ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... dirge be sung, and trentals rightly read, For Love is dead; Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth My mistress' marble heart; Which epitaph containeth, Her eyes were once his dart. From so ungrateful fancy, From such a female franzy, ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... am done. Fidelio, play me a dirge To put me in good spirits. Merry music Is sure to make ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... dirge, or funeral song. "So called from the first word in the Catholic mass for the dead, Requiem ternum dona iis Domine (Give eternal ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... he goes on. "Haven't I pitied the poor victims who had to go through with it? Think of having to run that gauntlet—morbidly curious old women, silly girls, bored men—and trying to keep step to that confounded dirge. Wedding march, indeed! They make it sound more like the march of the condemned. Tum-tum-te-dum! Ugh! I tell you, Marjorie, I'm not going to have it. Nor any of this stodgy, grewsome fuss. I mean ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... Neglect—desolation is engraven on all around, and even the little wicket, as it swings slowly to and fro, seems to say, "All gone! go-ne!" The wind, how meaningly it steals through the deserted rooms, as though breathing a funereal dirge over the departed! How "eloquent of wo" is that sound! Now swelling forth, as it were, in wild and uncontrollable grief, and now sinking exhaustedly into a low and touching mournfulness which seems almost ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... couples promenaded in a stiff but stately manner round the room to a dirge-like march scraped upon the violin, the boys taking the parts of ladies jibbing away from their partners in a highly unlady-like fashion, and the boy burdened with the companionship of the younger Miss Mutlow walking along in a very ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... had composed a doleful poem in English in memory of her husband. It is needless to expatiate on its poetic merit or felicity of diction. As my ill-luck would have it, the composer had indicated that the dirge was to be chanted to the mode Behaga. So the widow one day entreated me to sing it to her thus. Like the silly innocent that I was, I weakly acceded. There was unfortunately no one there but I who could ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... song for the willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding through ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... the tomb, excepting now and then the scream of a fish-hawk or the singing of a hermit-thrush that had approached the bank of the river after the firing had ceased, and seemed singing the funeral dirge of the red warriors who had already fallen. All of a sudden the thrush flew past Mayall into the forest, and the practiced ear of Mayall heard a rippling in the stream, like running water dashing against ...
— The Forest King - Wild Hunter of the Adaca • Hervey Keyes
... of the shovel as it struck the earth. I felt sad and sick at heart, and leaned against a tree; a nightingale concealed in the leaves was pouring forth its plaintive notes to the night air, and its low warble sounded like the dirge of the departed. Far beyond, in the plain, the French watch-fires were burning, and I could see from time to time the fatigue-parties moving in search of their wounded. At this moment the clock of the convent struck eleven, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... will relate, that gives a more interesting account of this phenomenon than either of these. A war party of the Pascagoula tribe, headed by their chief, having been hotly pursued by a victorious enemy, had rushed into the bay (sooner than submit), and were drowned, while singing a melancholy dirge, which annually returns in token of the sad ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... enormous evils. Think, rather, how much we have to be thankful for. The world in which we live, in spite of all the scars of sin and suffering upon it, is a happy world. It is not, as many would morbidly paint it, flooded with tears and strewn with wrecks, plaintive with a perpetual dirge of sorrow. True, the "Everlasting Hills" are in glory, but there are numberless eminences of grace, and love, and mercy below; many green spots in the lower valley, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... her gloved hands, but gently now, as though smoothing them and preparing them to look upon what they must see presently. She opened the little door, and was suddenly standing in the midst of the frightened herd of retainers and servants, while the last strains of the dirge came echoing under the deep archway. At that instant another sound startled the air—the deep bell-note of the great bloodhounds, chained in the courtyard from sunrise to sunset; and it sank to a wail, and ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... be owned that, anyhow for once, the Thrush was crestfallen. He almost never knew any ditties but joyous ones; but on the present occasion, with no attempt at concealment, he went away wailing to the thicket, and outpoured his wounded vanity in something very like a dirge. He then buried his beak in rather sulky fashion under his wing, and ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... the contemplation of these difficulties by a sudden change in Rory's tune. He stopped in the midst of his low, wailing dirge and struck up loudly the lively air that told again and again of the mirth produced when "Jinny banged the Weaver." Scotty raised his head and looked across the pasture-field. That tune always ushered Weaver Jimmy upon the stage, and there he was, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... of the feelings or emotions, how the note or song of a single bird will sink into the memory, and become inseparably associated with your grief or joy! Shall I ever again be able to hear the song of the oriole without being pierced through and through? Can it ever be other than a dirge for the dead to me? Day after day, and week after week, this bird whistled and warbled in a mulberry by the door, while sorrow, like a pall, darkened my day. So loud and persistent was the singer that his note teased ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... shore Beside the knelling surge, And sea-nymphs evermore Shall sadly chant thy dirge. They come! they come, The spirits of the deep, While near thy sea-weed pillow My lonely watch ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... top thing, round and round—weird little tune! . . . Well, and what now? Only one thing certain. Sooner give up life than give her up! Far sooner! Love her, achieve her—or give up everything, and drown to that tune going on and on, that little dancing dirge of summer! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... The cry floated over the waves — Far over the pitiless waves; It smote on the dark and it rended the clouds; The billows below them were weaving white shrouds Out of the foam of the surge, And the wind-voices chanted a dirge: Lost! Lost! Lost! Wailed wilder the lips of ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... dying man's cabin and I repaired to my stateroom, very moved by this scene. All day long I was aquiver with gruesome forebodings. That night I slept poorly, and between my fitful dreams, I thought I heard a distant moaning, like a funeral dirge. Was it a prayer for the dead, murmured in ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... directly beneath my window. It was led by a priest, bearing the banner of the church, and followed by two boys, holding long flambeaux in their hands. Next came a double file of priests in their surplices, with a missal in one hand and a lighted wax taper in the other, chanting the funeral dirge at intervals—now pausing, and then again taking up the mournful burden of their lamentation, accompanied by others, who played upon a rude kind of bassoon, with a dismal and wailing sound. Then followed various symbols of the church, and the bier borne on the shoulders of four ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... listlessly began to turn over the papers on the table. Presently he paused. He had taken up a sheet of paper on which Senor Perkins had evidently been essaying some composition in verse. It seemed to have been of a lugubrious character. The titular line at the top of the page, "Dirge," had been crossed out for the substituted "In Memoriam." ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... he will "stoutly that second worke assoyle." The first six books were published together in 1596. He remained most of the year in London, during which The Four Hymns on Love and Beauty, Earthly and Heavenly, were published; and also a Dirge (Daphnaida) on Douglas Howard, the wife of Arthur Gorges, the spirited narrator of the Island Voyage of Essex and Ralegh, written in 1591; and a "spousal verse" (Prothalamion), on the marriage of ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... cold midnight storm, That unsparingly beat on her thin fragile form; Her black eyes flash'd sternly whence reason had fled, And she glanc'd on my sight like some ghost of the dead, As she sang a loud strain to the hoarse dashing surge, That rang on my ears like the plaint of a dirge. ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... drawl, like a dirge, with many a dying fall, was the vehicle in which the tender expressions of the poet were conveyed to our ears; and I was reproached by my companions for having injudiciously praised the verses of the Swan ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... prove that gentlest poetry has ever been the produce both of heathery mountain and broomy brae; but the names of the sweet singers are heard no more, and the plough has gone over their graves. And they had their music too, plaintive or dirge-like, as it sighed for the absent, or wailed for the dead. The fragments were caught up, as they floated about in decay; and by him, the sweetest lyrist of them all, were often revivified by a happy word that let in a soul, or, by a few touches of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... will be a warning to all young wives who go out walking with handsome young men. Mr. Kimball's son is now no more. He sleeps beneath the cypress, the myrtle, and the willow. The music is a dirge by the eminent pianist for Mr. Kimball's son. ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... between the body of the church, between two little doors, they were wont to pray for the soul of the Bishop of London. William Norman, who was a great benefactor to the City, in obtaining the confirmation of their liberties from William the Conqueror, a priest saying the office De Profundis (called a dirge); and from thence they passed to the churchyard, where Thomas a Becket's parents were buried, and there, near their tomb, they said also, for all the faithful deceased, De Profundis again. The City procession ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... singing when his lodger entered the kitchen, but his was no joyful ditty. It was a dirge, which he was intoning as he bent over the cookstove. A slow and solemn and mournful wail dealing with death and burial of one "Old Storm Along," whoever he may ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... plectrum, Pettalus says, laughing, "Go sing the rest to the Stygian ghosts," and fixes the point of the sword in his left temple. He falls, and with his dying fingers he touches once again the strings of the lyre; and in his fall he plays a mournful dirge.[12] The fierce Lycormas does not suffer him to fall unpunished; and tearing away a massive bar from the doorpost on the right, he dashes it against the bones of the middle of the neck {of Pettalus}; struck, he falls to the ground, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... the papers are full of praise for those devoted sons of the motherland, the Kundu and the Chakravarti zamindars. If only, say they, the country had a few more of such staunch patriots, the mills of Manchester would have, had to sound their own dirge to the ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... latitude, and in addition to this, a violent storm was coming on. The wind blew in fitful gusts, howling and sighing among the huge trees with which the house was surrounded, and then dying away with a melancholy, dirge-like moan. The old tree rubbed their leafless branches against the window panes, and the fowls which had roosted there for the night, were fain to clap their wings, and make prodigious efforts to preserve their ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... the "Procession of the Angels" took place. Figures dressed in silk and gold, with silver wings, were carried by on platforms to the sound of music. The body of the Saviour lay in a sort of glass hearse, carried by men chanting a dirge, and followed by the Virgin. This procession was really pretty, but had an odd, unnatural effect amongst the fresh green trees, the smell of incense mingling with the fragrance of the flowers, and the gaudy silk and gold and plumes of feathers gilded by the soft setting sun, as they flashed along. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... the leaves from the lofty limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that last solemn lullaby, a dirge. Lydgate, conscious of an energetic frame in its prime, felt some compassion when the figure which he was likely soon to overtake turned round, and in advancing towards him showed more markedly than ever the signs of premature age—the student's bent shoulders, the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... driven away Is bold amidst the chilly spray? What good is all thy vain remorse? Thinkst thou from jaws of death to force A sacrifice so lightly thrust Upon the altar of thy lust? A host like thee could nothing urge To meet one tone of her sad dirge: ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... a walking pace, came the priest; beside him sat the deacon driving; behind the cart four peasants, bareheaded, carried the coffin, covered with a white cloth; two women followed the coffin. The shrill wailing voice of one of them suddenly reached my ears; I listened; she was intoning a dirge. Very dismal sounded this chanted, monotonous, hopelessly-sorrowful lament among the empty fields. The coachman whipped up the horses; he wanted to get in front of this procession. To meet a corpse on the road is a bad omen. And he ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... my name By absence shall appear; When I have lost all hopes of fame, Which once I held so dear; When 'plucked' I seek a vain relief In plaintive dirge or sonnet; Thou wilt have caused that bitter ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... of Bacchus, come and join In solemn dirge, while tapers shine Around the grape-embossed ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole |
