"Flute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adverse fates Gave thy lyre to Mr. Yates[2], I have melted at thy strain When Bunn reign'd o'er Drury-lane; For the music of thy strings Haunts the ear when Romer sings. But to me that voice is mute! Tuneless kettle-drum and flute I but hear one liquid lyre— Kettle bubbling on the fire, Whizzing, fizzing, steaming out Music from its curved spot, Wak'ning visions by its song Of thy nut-brown streams, Souchong; Lumps of crystal saccharine— Liquid pearl distill'd ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... was formerly believed, that the snake-charmer can entice snakes out of their holes by the soothing tones of his flute and make them dance to his piping. The dancing is a much simpler affair. When the captured snake rears up and sways the upper part of his body to and fro, the charmer holds out some hard object, perhaps a fragment of brick. The snake bites, but ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... they formed a sort of Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic retainers in a great house, kept more for show than use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat—and not a few among them had arrived at considerable proficiency on the German flute. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... when it was dark, there was a dance on the lawn by torchlight, the torches being held by the servants; the music consisted of a flute, cornet, and violin, but the cornet proved of no use, as some urchin had bunged it up with a cork before the dance commenced. No particular dances were called for; the musicians played just what they chose, the dancers danced whatever they ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... you really doubt my feeling for you? No, Vincent, I still love you," and her voice had a flute-like quality which, though it was without a trace of conviction, very few people who had ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... was easier than praise, it is evident that the amiability of the talented boy had its effect upon those about him: as when, for instance, he secretly read a French story with his sister, and recast the whole Berlin Court into the comic characters of the novel; when they made forbidden music with flute and lute; when he went in disguise to her and they recited the parts of a French comedy to each other. But in order to enjoy even these harmless pleasures the prince was constantly forced into falsehood, deception, and disguise. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... compose fiddling tunes, young man?' Friedrich Wilhelm was roaring at the shrinking Erbprinz. 'Just like my fool of a son. He blows squeaks on a tube which he calls my beloved flute' (the King gave a rough imitation of his son's refined speech). 'No good at all, this younger generation—eh! what, old comrade? A good fight, a good glass of beer, a good pipe, a good wife—that's what a man needs; no French jiggery and music nonsense. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... singing like a robin, while the rain slashed over her, and the thunder boomed and re-echoed from crag to crag like warning guns in magnificent alarums. "I love this!" she cried, her clear voice piercing the veil of water like a flute note. "Don't you?" ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... in Fielding's time, as he was only a year older, and was intimate with Lyttelton. Thomas Augustine Arne, again, famous in days to come as Dr. Arne, was doubtless also at this date practising sedulously upon that "miserable cracked common flute," with which tradition avers he was wont to torment his school-fellows. Gray and Horace Walpole belong to ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... ever anything so delightful as the music of the Paradise Lost? It is like that of a fine organ; has the fullest and the deepest tones of majesty with all the softness and elegance of the Dorian flute: variety without end, and never equaled, unless perhaps by Virgil. Yet the Doctor has little or nothing to say upon this copious theme, but talks something about the unfitness of the English language for blank verse, and how apt it is, in the mouths of some readers, to degenerate into declamation. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... which is a spell Unto all on earth who dwell! O rich voice, of rapturous love, Making melody above! Krishna's, Hari's—one in two, Sound these mortal verses through! Sound like that soft flute which made Such a magic in the shade— Calling deer-eyed maidens nigh, Waking wish and stirring sigh, Thrilling blood and melting breasts, Whispering love's divine unrests, Winning blessings to descend, Bringing earthly ills to ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... allowed to steer the boat. This was a great thing, and it would have been hard to believe of anybody else. The name of the boy that had the father that owned this boat was Piccolo; or, rather, that was his nickname, given him because he could whistle like a piccolo-flute. Once the fellows were disputing whether you could jump halfway across a narrow stream, and then jump back, without touching your feet to the other shore. Piccolo tried it, and sat down in the middle of ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... sir. He was sitting by the bank of the stream playing on his flute; and Miss Barbara, she had climbed one of my apple-trees,—she says they are ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... dirge-like, and not pleasing to a European ear. The pentatonic scale is employed. The violin stands first among musical instruments in their estimation. They have also the guitar, the flageolet, the aeolian flute, a bamboo in which holes are cut, which produce musical sounds when acted upon by the wind, and ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... whom I had obtained with such trouble, and for my own purposes? Can it be that he pretended his intoxication the more easily to outwit me? I had no fear, but believed that he would be sure to select some slim youth who could be taught to play the flute before him or act as cupbearer. What demon put it into his head so suddenly to look for bone and muscle ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... an orchestra, for Ed declared that the national airs must be played, or the whole thing would be a failure. So he had exerted himself to collect all the musical talent he could find, a horn, a fiddle, and a flute, with drum and fife for the martial scenes. Ed looked more beaming than ever, as he waved his baton and led off with Yankee Doodle as a safe beginning, for every one knew that. It was fun to see little Johnny Cooper bang ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... bars of grates, table-legs and bed-posts. Over them, from house to house, strings of flags waved in the light morning breeze, and over these again the air was jocund with the distant tunding of a drum and the voices of flute and clarionet calling men to mirth ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... unmeditative manner, "you were not aware that I have a brother hermit,—a companion be sides the swans and the doe. Dick Fairthorn is a year or two younger than myself, the son of my father's bailiff. He was the cleverest boy at his grammar-school. Unluckily he took to the flute, and unfitted himself for the present century. He condescends, however, to act as my secretary,—a fair classical scholar, plays chess, is useful to me,—I am useful to him. We have an affection for each other. I never forgive any one who laughs at him. The half-hour ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... drawers in all the tables, were in one large heap upon the carpet; bills, letters, tablecloths, tablecovers, dinner knives, decanters, chimney ornaments, books, purses, lead pencils, corkscrews, my silver-mounted flute, with all the mounts gone, and the cruets minus their silver tops. Also all the silver spoons, the electros being turned out upon the heap as "non-negotiables." The piano had been split open and gutted—it was an unredeemed Grand—the burglar or burglars having been seized with the suspicion ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... flocks and herds, and pardon for any offences committed against the nymphs of the streams, the dryads of the woods, and the other deities of the Italian Olympus. This over, bonfires of hay and straw were lighted, music was made with cymbal and flute, and shepherds and sheep were purified by passing through the flames. A feast followed, the simple folk lying on benches of turf, and indulging in generous draughts of their homely wines, such, probably, as the visitor to-day may ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... for joy four things all told * The harp and lute, the flute and flageolet; And be they companied with scents four fold * Rose, myrtle, anemone and violet Nor please all eight an four thou wouldst withold * Good wine and youth and gold ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... to leave me. But what word or gift, I thought, did he bring with him, false and pretty bird? Do I too desire that others should hatch my eggs, content with flute-like ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... notes of a flute, played by a silly gentleman from Tooting, shrilled through the tupping of the guitars, and Mr. Sagittarius, trembling in every limb, hissed in Mrs. ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... down the stairs and Lyman went to bed to forget the mob and to dream of the rippling creek and a voice that was softer and sweeter than the echo of a flute. At early morning there came a rapping on the stairway, to summon him to breakfast. Old Jasper, with his hot hands in his pockets and with a sick expression of countenance was doddering ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... girl, in a small flute voice, "that you know much more than I; do not refuse, then, to instruct me. I cannot explain how it is you speak and breathe. Since you have kept your trunk in its case, I perceive above it your lips closed, and I do not see them move." Piccolissima, fearing she might be laughed ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... better to do than regale himself and a harem with western alleged amusement. There are police, and lights, and municipal regulations. In fact, Zanzibar has come on miserable times from certain points of view. But there remains the fun of listening to all the rumors borne by sea. "Play on the flute in Zanzibar and Africa as far as the lakes will dance!" the Arabs say, and the gentry who once drove slaves or traded ivory refuse to believe that the day of lawlessness is gone forever. One rumor then is worth ten ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... in a zone of silence that lay above the deep-murmuring city. The voice was no more than the half-voice of a flute, sweet, gentle, beguiling. It told, as so many songs tell, of little earthly Love in the grasp of mighty Fate. Still she sang on, softly, as if ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... at Johnson's not tasting the works of Mason and Gray, still more have I wondered at their not tasting his works; that they should be insensible to his energy of diction, to his splendour of images, and comprehension of thought. Tastes may differ as to the violin, the flute, the hautboy, in short all the lesser instruments: but who can be insensible to the powerful impressions ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... tell you, Harry, I could hardly see this girl for the mist of tears that came across me. And her voice—I never heard such a voice. It was very low at first, with deep mellow notes, that seemed to fall singly upon one's ear. Then it became a little louder, and sounded like a flute or a distant hautbois. In the garden-scene it had all the tremulous ecstasy that one hears just before dawn when nightingales are singing. There were moments, later on, when it had the wild passion of violins. You ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... bought "a second hand carpet for the parlor, a bonnet for her sister, shoes and stockings for herself." Her father was calling upon Longfellow some time after this, when Longfellow took the Atlantic, and said, "I want to read to you Emerson's fine poem upon Thoreau's flute." Mr. Alcott interrupted him with delight and said, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... of their very chastity? Would it be best then to marry off the street some Thracian Abrotonus, or some Milesian Bacchis, and seal the bargain by the present of a handful of nuts? But we have known even such turn out intolerable tyrants, Syrian flute-girls and ballet-dancers, as Aristonica, and Oenanthe with her tambourine, and Agathoclea, who have lorded it over kings' diadems.[74] Why Syrian Semiramis was only the servant and concubine of one of king Ninus's ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... beauty deep in shadows stoled. Hushed is the forest; and blue vale and hill Are still, save for the brooklet, sleepily Stumbling the stone, its foam like some white foot: Save for the note of one far whippoorwill, And in my heart her name,—like some sweet bee Within a flow'r,—blowing a fairy flute. ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... spacious rooms where they entertained a great deal. Not long ago, I saw a fascinating drawing of a party in Georgetown in the fifties. It represented four musicians intent upon playing a bass viol, a cello, a violin, and a flute; a few of the company standing near by with curls and puffed coiffures, and among them a tiny man, side-whiskered, so short that he barely reached the shoulders of the ladies. He must, of course, have been ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... Love, "Although ye serve no more Mine images of ivory and bronze With flute-led dances of the days of yore, But leave them to barbarian orisons Of dull hearth-loving hearts, mistaking me: Yet from mine incense ye shall not divorce Remembrance. Fools, these recantations be Ardours that prove you still idolators; And, though ye ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... across the fields and woods the shadows of the white fleecy clouds. The young man, pale and agitated, strode with feverish haste over the short-cropped grass, while the little brooklet at his side seemed to murmur a flute-like, soothing accompaniment to the tumultuous beatings of his heart. He was both elated and depressed at the prospect of submitting his already torn and lacerated feelings to so severe a trial. The thought of beholding Reine again, and of ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... the jolly seven worthies are men. Benten is the only lady. She is the patron of the family and of the sea. She plays the flute and the guitar for the others, and amuses them at their feasts, sometimes even dancing for them. Her real home is in Riu Gu, and she is the Queen of the world under the sea. She often dwells in the sea or ocean caves. Her favorite animal is the ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... doorway, Murmuring to himself, and saying: "Thus it is our daughters leave us, Those we love, and those who love us! Just when they have learned to help us, When we are old and lean upon them, Comes a youth with flaunting feathers, With his flute of reeds, a stranger Wanders piping through the village, Beckons to the fairest maiden, And she follows where he leads her, Leaving all ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... lord of minstrelsy, For this with flute and pipe came nigh The danger of the dog's heads three That ravening at hell's door doth lie; Fain was Narcissus, fair and shy, For love's love lightly lost and won, In a deep well to drown and die; Good luck has he that deals ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to art. Their poor messmates can have little respect for these pretending Rembrandts and Paganinis; and the happiness of the mess would be considerably improved if authority were given to pitch every such sketch-book and every flute out at ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... [Enter Quince the carpenter, Snug the joiner. Bottom the weaver. Flute the bellows-mender. Snout the tinker, and Starveling the taylor] In this scene Shakespeare takes advantage of his knowledge of the theatre, to ridicule the prejudices and competitions of the players. Bottom, who ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... impossible to pronounce an initial vowel without a slight, and to many hardly perceptible, initial noise, the coup de la glotte, I had appealed to musicians who know how difficult it is, in playing on the flute or on the violin, to weaken or to avoid certain noises (Ansatz) arising from the first impulses imparted to the air, before it can produce really musical sensations. Professor Whitney, in quoting this paragraph, leaves out the sentence ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... negligent appearance which rooms are accustomed to present, when their occupants are about to depart. The books were all stowed away in boxes—the pictures taken down—the bed unmade—the sofa littered with papers, and the violin, and flute—the general air of the desolate room, that of a man who has parted with his last hope and wishes to exist ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... durable, because glazed so as to resist the rain. They used vegetable dyes of various colours—brown, purple, yellow, red, and black. Their baskets, made of the same material as their mats, were very beautiful. They had different kinds of musical instruments: one of these was a sort of flute, which was made resonant by the breath of the nostril; another was similar to Pandean pipes, and composed of reeds; and a third was a drum made out of a heavy log. Their mode of saluting was like that of the New Zealanders, by rubbing noses together; and when anything was presented to them, ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... engaged in conversation—though, for the sake of accuracy, it should be said that Mrs. Tanberry was engaged in conversation, Miss Betty in giving ear—when their attention was arrested by sounds of a somewhat musical nature from the lawn, which sounds were immediately identified as emanating from a flute and violin. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... tobacco; so that what with Yram, the language, visitors, fives in the garden, smoking, and bed, my time slipped by more rapidly and pleasantly than might have been expected. I also made myself a small flute; and being a tolerable player, amused myself at times with playing snatches from operas, and airs such as "O where and oh where," and "Home, sweet home." This was of great advantage to me, for the people of the country were ignorant of ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... the next day, and all the next night he meditated. For the first six hours he meditated on knowledge, mystery, and the whole duty of man, just as he had been told to do. And he only stopped once to listen to a flute-player who had stolen into the forest back of the lodge and was trying to tell some young squaw how much he loved her and how lonely he was without her. The flute had only four notes and one of them was out of order; but Andramark had been brought up on that sort of music and it sounded ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... harps with lyric songs. The performers on wind instruments were divided on a similar, although it could not be on the same principle. Dionysius from Heracleia, and Hyperbolus from Cyzicum, sang to the flute, or some such instrument; while Timotheus, Phrynichus, Scaphisius, Diophantus, and Evius, the Chalcidian, first performed the Pythian overture, and then, accompanied by chorusses, displayed the full power of wind instruments in masterly hands. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... hand is to the lute, What the breath is to the flute, What's the mother to the child, What the guide in pathless wild, What is oil to troubled wave, What is ransom to a slave, What is flower to the bee, That ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... hides her round, shining face with a blanket of cloud, and sometimes she even runs away from us altogether, as if she were tired or displeased. But to-night she smiles and uncovers her face, so that all the young men are out, each playing upon his flute near the home ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... games of various kinds, as well as dancing and singing, until nine o'clock, when they had to turn in, and all lights were extinguished. The officers employed their evenings in reading and writing, with an occasional game of chess, or a tune on the flute or ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... Seem still from hopefullest heart of love to rise, And gladden even while grieving; the wild strain That night-winds wake from reeds that breathe in pain, Though breathing still in music; and that voice, Which most he did affect—whose happy choice Made sweet flute-accents for humanity Out of that living heart which cannot die, The Catholic, born of love, that still controls While man is man, the tide ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... creative or productive, and the other educational and philosophical. Of the creative arts, there is one part purer or more akin to knowledge than the other. There is an element of guess-work and an element of number and measure in them. In music, for example, especially in flute-playing, the conjectural element prevails; while in carpentering there is more application of rule and measure. Of the creative arts, then, we may make two classes—the less exact and the more exact. And the exacter part of all of them is really arithmetic ...
— Philebus • Plato
... a thought grew up in his heart, and he began to act. He cut a slim piece of hollow bamboo, and pierced small holes in it. Thus was the first flute (duraio) born. Webubu then built himself a platform high in a corkwood tree, which we call "troba" on the beach, and seating himself there he ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... walked on ahead, side by side, leaving the young women to loiter behind and pick mayflowers. Rhododendrons, orchids, and epigonitis rewarded their search in abundance. From the valley below came up the bleating of goats and the flute-like notes ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... past, and, alighting on a low limb a few rods off, salutes me with "Whew! Whew!" or "Whoit! Whoit!" almost as you would whistle for your dog. I see by his impulsive, graceful movements, and his dimly speckled breast, that it is a thrush. Presently he utters a few soft, mellow, flute-like notes, one of the most simple expressions of melody to be heard, and scuds away, and I see it is the veery, or Wilson's thrush. He is the least of the thrushes in size, being about that of the common bluebird, and he may be distinguished from his relatives by the dimness of the spots upon ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... five-holed flute was heard behind the trees in the island, playing several airs in a minor key. Another flute answered. This interchange of musical phrases lasted for two or three minutes, and the ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... my arms. She is such a wee little thing, and her face is so sweet, and her eyes so childish and wistful, and her voice so musical and flute-like that before I knew what I was doing I lifted her from her feet and hugged her hard and said I meant to love her, first for Guy's sake and then for her own. Was it my fancy, I wonder, or did ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... seaport, with a larger sum of money than he had ever before possessed. He took passage for London, where he landed a few days after, in total ignorance of the place and the language. His brother welcomed him with German warmth, and assisted him to procure employment,—probably in the flute and piano ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... a song, but a melancholy sort of a song. I'd as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute. [Goes ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... the open world all is change, all is life, all is movement. And he who ever moves and journeys with this life-movement, dancing and playing on his flute as he goes, he is the true Renouncer. He is the true disciple of the ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... of Heaven was desired as commander. Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, was noted for his heroism in war and zeal in religion. When other officers returned from battle for wild revels, Maisonneuve withdrew to play the flute or pass hours in religious {76} contemplation. His name occurred to both Dauversiere and Olier as fittest for command; but to make doubly sure, they took lodgings near him, studied his disposition, and then casually told him of their plans and asked his cooeperation. Maisonneuve ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... as he watched the shimmer of the moon on Salome's silky hair, and noted the purely oval outline of her daintily carved face, and the childish grace of her fine form,—as he listened to flute-like tones, as irresistible as Parthenope's, his cold, formal, non-committal mouth stirred, his hand involuntarily opened and closed firmly, as if grasping some "pearl of great price," and his slow, almost stagnant pulses, leaped into ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... in the shade of a large warehouse; the line of slates making a crescent of the full moon, and amid the reverberating yards and brickways Kate's voice sounded as penetrating and direct as a flute. The exquisite accuracy of her ear enabled her to give each note its just value. Dick was astonished, and he ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... bath, to gather fresh vigour for a renewal of similar joys. In this mazy round of chaste dissipation, the hours glide gently on, and the evening is spent in dancing to the music of Pan's pipes, the flute, and haeva drum. They then go to the bath again, and the festivity of the evening is concluded with a repast of fruit, and young cocoanut milk. The whole village indiscriminately join the feast; and the demon of rank and precedence, ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... congratulations from thronging friends; no red eggs are sent to the lucky parents, and no joyous feast is provided in return. Merrymaking of all kinds is forbidden to all classes for the full term of one year, and the familiar sound of the flute and the guitar is hushed in every household and in every street.[*] The ordinary Chinese visiting-card —a piece of red paper about six inches by three, inscribed with its owner's name in large characters—changes to a dusky brown; and the very lines on letter paper, usually ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... Flute, harp, and minstrelsy now tune All hearts to joyful mood; The cheerful music does not reach To ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... another; to the Mediterranean in the west, and in the east to the wilds unknown beyond the road of the Hhaj pilgrimage. "From the other end of the world," quoth he, the companion of a shepherd boy with his flute, at a mountain spring, pitching pebbles at the sheep of his flock to keep them from wandering away over their extent of ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... guide led the way with unerring instinct through the forest. We had gone some distance, when we heard a deep, loud, and long-sustained flute-like note. It was that of a bird. The young Indian stopped, and pointing ahead, uttered the word nira-mimbeu, which I afterwards ascertained meant fife-bird, evidently from the peculiar note we had just heard. The whole party stopped in the attitude of listening, and looking ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... the early morning; all day the water tinkled in the shaft, the bores ground sawdust in the planking of our crazy palace—infinitesimal sounds; and it was only with the return of night that any change would fall on our surroundings, or the four crickets begin to flute together in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there floated up to us the tinkling of the samisens in the tea-houses; the high, sweet voice of a dancing girl as she sang the story of an old, old love; the sad notes of the blind masseur as he sought for trade by the pathos of his bamboo flute; the night-taps from the far-away barracks. Off to the west we could see the fast-disappearing ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... marriage of Vinia and Manlius, and the Parcae in that of Peleus and Thetis. Sir Richard laid great stress on the following in his notes, headed "Compare with Catullus, the sweet and tender little Villanelle, by Mr. Edmund Gosse," for the Viol and Flute—the XIX ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... too, of romance. It might be a garden of Allah, with a plaintive Arab flute singing, among the orange trees, of the wars and the hot passions of the desert. It might be a court in Seville or Granada, with guitars tinkling and lace gleaming among the cool arcades. It is a place ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... clear-cut, swallow-like wings as when he said, in speaking of Paul Alexis' book "Le Besoin d'aimer," "Vous avez trouvez un titre assez laid pour faire reculer les divines etoiles." I know not what instrument to compare with his verse. I suppose I should say a flute; but it seems to me more like a marvellously toned piano. His hands pass over the keys, and he ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... flute In dying notes discovers[7] The woes of hopeless lovers, 35 Whose dirge is ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... bird is proverbial, and it frequents the deepest willow and aspen thickets. Once heard, its sweet song can never be forgotten, and happy is he who can get near enough to hear it undisturbed. Far off, it is flute-like, pure and penetrating, though not loud. Gradually it softens until it sounds but as the faintest of tinkling bell-like notes, which die away leaving one with the assurance that he has been hearing the song ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... troublesome affliction. Suddenly the Wanderlust seized him and he started abroad, ostensibly to complete his medical education, but in reality to wander like a cheerful beggar over Europe, singing and playing his flute for food and lodging. He may have studied a little at Leyden and at Padua, but that was only incidental. After a year or more of vagabondage he returned to London with an alleged medical degree, said to have been obtained at Louvain ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... the flute went down one day to the sea-shore with his nets and his flute; and, taking his stand on a projecting rock, began to play a tune, thinking that the music would bring the fish jumping out of the sea. He went on playing for some time, but not a fish appeared: so at last ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... simultaneously, we produce a body of tones, which—if they are so chosen that they blend harmoniously—is called a Chord; and a series of such chords is an illustration of what is known as Harmony. If, however, we play with one finger only, we produce a melody. The human voice, the flute, horn,—all instruments capable of emitting but one tone at ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... just as cruelly beaten and belaboured, so that next morning he too lay in his bed like a wounded hare, assuring his friends that the task of getting into the haunted castle was no enviable one. Notwithstanding the warning of his companions, the third musician, who played the flute, was still determined to try his luck, and, full of courage and daring, he set out, resolved, if possible, to find and secure the ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... minister behind him, Peter's singing was a pillar of faith. Mr. Cameron had travelled widely in his younger days and had heard grand music in the cathedrals of the old world, magnificent harmonies of trained voices with flute and violin and organ helping to interpret the divine meaning of the old masters. It had all been very grand and he often longed to hear such music again; but he sometimes wondered, as he sat in the shadow of his pulpit ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... many sheep. And every day Glaucon had to lead the sheep up to pasture on Mount Pelion, and watch them while they ate. There was nothing else to do, and he would have found the time very long, if he had not been able to play on a flute. So he played very often and very beautifully, as he sat under the trees and watched the wonderful blue sea afar ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... my enquiries. He told me, a great many years ago, 'he believed he had dedicated to all the Royal Family round[4];' and it was indifferent to him what was the subject of the work dedicated, provided it were innocent. He once dedicated some Musick for the German Flute to Edward, Duke of York. In writing Dedications for others, he considered himself as by no means speaking his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Jervis rather liked this, and was never better pleased than when, on the last evening of the week, he heard the voices of the men raised in song, or the squeaking of the merry fiddle and gleesome flute. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... 'buse yous own.' We has music and parties. We plays de quill, make from willow stick when de sap am up. Yous takes de stick and pounds de bark loose and slips it off, den slit de wood in one end and down one side, puts holes in de bark and put it back on de stick. De quill plays like de flute. ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... deep melancholy. However, Timaessa inspired our younger brother with a criminal passion, and this passion soon turned to a furious madness. The Carian woman hated them both equally; but she loved a flute-player, and received him at night in her chamber. One morning he left there the wreath which he usually wore at feasts. My two brothers, having found this wreath, swore to kill the flute-player, and the next day they caused him to perish under the lash, in spite of his tears and prayers. ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... the roses heard the flute, violin, bassoon, none in all the gay company had been gayer than Sharlee. Past many heads in the dining-room, West had watched her, laughing, radiant, sparkling as the wine itself, a pretty little lady of a joyous sweetness that never knew a care. In the dance, for he had ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... father resumed, "In the name of Zeus, is not this plainly a divine seizure? Is not this a wonderful commotion of soul? Why, the Pythian priestess on the tripod is not moved so much as this! Who of those inspired by Cybele are made beside themselves to this extent by the flute and the kettledrum? Moreover, while many see the same body and the same beauty, only the lover is taken by it. Why is this the case? We get no light on it from Menander's words, 'Love is opportunity; and he that is smitten is the only one wounded.' But the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... one could support your cause with greater eloquence, seriousness, zeal, and energy than he has done, testifying in the highest terms to your services to himself and his affection for you. Marcellinus, you know, is incensed with his flute-playing majesty.[438] In everything, saving and excepting this case of the king, he professes the intention of being your champion. We take what he gives: nothing can move him from his motion as to the religious difficulty, which he made up his mind to bring, and has, in fact, brought several ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... which narrow strings are cut. These are raised and made taut with small wooden bridges and are then picked with a stick or the fingers (Fig. 33). Bamboo Jew's-harps and mouth flutes are played by the men, but the nose flute, so common in most parts of the Philippines, was not seen in ...
— The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Mindanao - The R. F. Cummings Philippine Expedition • Fay-Cooper Cole
... inspired them with terror. They stopped their ears with their fingers and gave clear signs of the unpleasant feelings they were suffering from. But it was quite different when they heard the higher-toned instruments, especially those of wood, as the flute, the clarionet and the oboe. The pure, vibrating notes gave them intense enjoyment judging from the pleased expression of their countenances and ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... the stones lent ear When soft he touched his lute; And beasts came trooping nigh to hear When Orpheus played his flute. ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... what do you say? He'll be giving us into custody again. 'Tillery's our only chance. He daren't touch us there. But I say, he isn't going back to the office. Let's run and get what's in our desks. There's my old flute." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... enormous subjects; two authors alone have given 800 dances in four volumes.[Footnote: Thompson's complete collection of 200 country dances performed at Court, Bath, Tunbridge, and all public assemblies, with proper figures and directions to each set for the violin, German flute, and hautboy, 8s. 6d. Printed for Charles and Samuel Thompson, St. Paul's Churchyard, London, where may be had the yearly dances and minuets. Four volumes, ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... the yard appears In a half-open dressing-gown And bends her mirror on the moon, But trembling on the mirror dark The sad moon only could remark. List! the snow crunches—he draws nigh! The girl on tiptoe forward bounds And her voice sweeter than the sounds Of clarinet or flute doth cry: "What is your name?" The boor looked dazed, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... hymn, by Mrs. Catherine Esling, is well known to many thousands of mourners, as also is its equally sweet tune of "Henley," by Lowell Mason. Melody and words melt together like harp and flute. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... are nothing—or little at best— But duty with greatness the least can invest: One note on the flute or the trumpet may seem A poor petty work for ambition's fond dream,— But what if that note be a need-be to blend And quicken the score from beginning to end? To show forth the mind of the Master, who guides With baton unerring Time's mixture of tides, The good with the evil, the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... simplest and most allied to the material; it gives the latter only just enough form to make it real and perceptible. Very rich and beautiful materials therefore do well to assume this form. You will spoil the beauty you have by superimposing another; as if you make a statue of gold, or flute a jasper column, or bedeck a velvet cloak. The beauty of stuffs appears when they are plain. Even stone gives its specific quality best in great unbroken spaces of wall; the simplicity of the form emphasizes the substance. ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... Grisette Oliver Wendell Holmes The Dark Man Nora Hopper Eurydice Francis William Bourdillon A Woman's Thought Richard Watson Gilder Laus Veneris Louise Chandler Moulton Adonais Will Wallace Harney Face to Face Frances Cochrane Ashore Laurence Hope Khristna and His Flute Laurence Hope Impenitentia Ultima Ernest Dowson Non Sum Quails Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae Ernest Dowson Quid non Speremus, Amantes? Ernest Dowson "So Sweet Love Seemed" Robert Bridges An Old Tune Andrew Lang Refuge William Winter ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... a great deal, for he went to the best boarding school in Paris; but he only learnt what he liked, and what he liked was not much. He can play the flute, ride, fence, dance a minuet, change his shirt every day, answer politely, make a graceful bow, talk elegant trifles, and dress well. As he never had any application, he doesn't know anything about literature; he can scarcely write, his spelling is abominable, his arithmetic limited, and I ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fable which Lord Bacon, in his "Wisdom of the Ancients," has not interpreted. This is the flaying of Marsyas by Apollo. Everybody remembers the accepted version of it, namely,—that the young shepherd found Minerva's flute, and was rash enough to enter into a musical contest with the God of Music. He was vanquished, of course,—and the story is, that the victor fastened him to a tree ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Flute-players, accustomed to having their parts written in the upper octave, and not admitting that their part can be written below that of clarinets or hautboys, frequently transpose entire passages an octave higher. The conductor, if he does not carefully peruse his score, if he ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... drove me away. I ran up the hill through the white and red terraces of the grape. From there I could see the gardens, the elephants with their ears painted, and the oxen with the twisted horns. The wind sung about me like a flute; the sky was a tent of different hues. Something within me had sprung into life. It was love, I knew. It had come before, yes, often, but never as then. For," he added, and the gleam of his eyes was as a fanfare to ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... hall—and find a lady with a face like a tomato singing a song about the derby, to an American tune that was stale in 1907. Yet another, and we are in the midst of a tedious ballet founded upon "Carmen," with the music reduced to jigtime and a flute playing out of tune. A fourth—and we suffer a pair of comedians who impersonate Americans by saying "Naow" and "Amurican." When they break into "My Cousin Carus'" we depart by the fire escape. We have now spent ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... alway in guard, Where on many a sacred shrine Young bulls' thigh-bones burn and shine As the god that is fire overtakes them, and fast The smoke of Arabia to heavenward is cast, Scattering wide its balm: and shrill Now with nimble notes that thrill The flute strikes up for the song, and the harp of gold Strikes up to the song sweet answer: and all behold, All, aswarm as bees, give ear, Who by birth ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... how I hold the flute in my left hand; In right the pheasant's plume, waved like a wand; With visage red, where rouge you think to trace, While the duke pleased, sends down the ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... trodden upon rise up after we have passed, so thick do they grow and so full are they of the strength of the morning. Now it is full chorus. Every instrument of the bird orchestra is taking its part. The flute of the blackbird is mellow with much pecking of winter-ripened apples. He winds his song artlessly along, like a prima donna singing to amuse herself when no one is by. Suddenly a rival with shining black coat and noble orange ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... fairy maze and turn of captivating dance-music, or in some less heated and crowded room, or cool conservatory, listened to the voice of the siren who walked by his side, "while the sweet wind did gently kiss the flowers and make no noise," and the strains of "flute, violin, bassoon," and the sounds of the "dancers dancing in tune," coming to them on the still air of night, seemed like the sounds from another and a far-off world,—listened, listened, listened, while his silver-tongued enchantress builded ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... seated—the old courtiers, of course, understood; for the young ones stood, by the ladies' permission, beside their chairs, to laugh at the same time as they did. Then the Abbot of Turpenay gracefully delivered himself of the following tale, the risky passages of which he gave in a low, soft, flute-like voice:— ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... title poem to the second Lindsay book shook the literary world awake with its perfect interpretation of The Salvation Army leader. It is a poem to be chanted at first with "Bass drums beaten loudly" and then "with banjos"; then softly with "sweet flute music," and finally, as the great General comes face to face with Christ, with a "Grand chorus of all instruments; tambourines to the foreground." Running through this poem is the refrain of "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" and the last ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... this new plan, he left the pilot without so much as a "thank you," running down the steps, two at a time, unobserved by Mr. Lazelle, who was playing the flute. He wanted to see how the "rigging" was made, and stopped to ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May
... second compartment were a jade flute and a golden flageolet. In a third were antique jewels, gold furnishings and a hundred ornaments worth thousands of ounces each. She threw them all into the river. The stricken onlookers ...
— Eastern Shame Girl • Charles Georges Souli
... la Vestale was then new, and very much the fashion; it represented a quadrille of priests and vestals who entered to the sound of delicious music on the flute and harp, and in addition to this there were magicians, a Swiss marriage, Tyrolian betrothals, etc. All the costumes were wonderfully handsome and true to nature; and there had been arranged in the apartments at the palace a supply of costumes ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... he placed some tobacco, at least it looked like tobacco, in a little wooden bowl that he also produced from his basket. Next he said something to his companion, Marut, who drew a flute from his robe made out of a thick reed, and began to play on it a wild and melancholy music, the sound of which seemed to affect my backbone as standing on a great height often does. Presently too Harut broke into a low song whereof I could not understand a word, ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... me not perish. On the day of Tammuz, play for me on the flute of lapis lazuli, together with the lyre[1187] of pearl play for me. Together let the professional dirge singers, male and female, play for me, That the dead may arise and inhale the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... musical instruments and also those produced by the human larynx. Such reenforcement is effected in two general ways—by sounding boards and by inclosed columns of air. Stringed instruments—violin, guitar, piano, etc.—employ sounding boards, while wind instruments, as the flute, pipe organ, and the various kinds of horns, employ air columns for reenforcing their vibrations. In the use of the sounding board, the vibrations are communicated to a larger surface, and in the use of the air column the vibrations are communicated ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... lady loved by Pyramus and was acted by Flute the bellows-mender. It's all in that poet who said what I told you when we were making the Escape from Paris—you remember, about holding the mirror ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... round ornaments on each side. The arms are extended from the body; the well drawn hands hold, one of them a short, round club, the other a musical instrument, of which one end is in the mouth and the other forms an enlargement like that of a flute, made of human bone. It is not probable that this is a pipe. Both thighs have an enlargement, and the toes are not ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... passed through the great street of the city called Cheapside." The road was cleared by beadles and men dressed as devils, and wild men, whose clubs discharged squibs. First came two great standards, bearing the arms of the City and of the Lord Mayor's company; then two drums, a flute, and an ensign of the City, followed by seventy or eighty poor men, two by two, in blue gowns with red sleeves, each one bearing a pike and a target, with the arms of the Lord Mayor's company. These were succeeded ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Teddy whistles that he may hear Her answering whistle, soft and clear; Out of the greenwood, leafy, mute, Pipes her mimicking, silver flute, And, though her mellow measures are Always behind him half a bar, 'Tis sweet to hear her falter so; And Ted calls back, "Bravo, bravo!" "Bravo, bravo!" Comes from ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... as sweet as a bell, and Alexander, a skilled performer on the trigonon, had executed a piece. Finally a troop of female dancers had rushed into the room and swayed and balanced themselves to the music of the double-flute ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the planters themselves in their leisure moments indulged in this delightful amusement. Robert Carter had in his home in Westmoreland County a harpsichord, a piano-forte, an harmonica, a guitar and a flute, and at Williamsburg an organ. He had a good ear, a very delicate touch, was indefatigable in practicing and performed well on several instruments. Especially was he fond of the harmonica, and spent much time in practicing upon it. His skill is thus described by his tutor, "The music ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... disposition in which we find ourselves at the moment of hearing it. It is objective when, affected only by the purely physical sensation of sound, we listen to it passively, and it suggests to us impressions. A march, a waltz, a flute imitating the nightingale, the chromatic scale imitating the murmuring of the wind in the "Pastoral Symphony," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... says, if ever Toots wants a brother, he knows where to find him, either by post or parcel. Mr Feeder like-wise says, that if he may advise, he would recommend Mr Toots to learn the guitar, or, at least the flute; for women like music, when you are paying your addresses to 'em, and he has found ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... in his blighted position would have taken to drinking; but as Mr Swiveller had taken to that before, he only took, on receiving the news that Sophy Wackles was lost to him for ever, to playing the flute; thinking after mature consideration that it was a good, sound, dismal occupation, not only in unison with his own sad thoughts, but calculated to awaken a fellow-feeling in the bosoms of his neighbours. In pursuance of this resolution, he now drew a little ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... explorations he met a landsman who told him about the running down of an emigrant ship, and how he heard a sound coming over the sea 'like a great sorrowful flute or Aeolian harp.' He makes another and very humorous reference to this instrument in a letter to Landor, in which he ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... most worthy and renowned of all the Grecian generals. Eumenes boldly remonstrated, and told Alexander that he plainly saw the best way to acquire promotion in his army would be to throw away arms, and learn to play upon the flute ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... deriv'd from ancient days, With thoughtless reverence we praise; The rites that taught us to combine The joys of musick and of wine, And bade the feast, and song, and bowl O'erfill the saturated soul: But ne'er the flute or lyre applied To cheer despair, or soften pride; Nor call'd them to the gloomy cells Where want repines and vengeance swells; Where hate sits musing to betray, And murder meditates his prey. To dens of guilt ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... our weary life at the fort, and the commandant and I had our quarrels and reconciliations, our greasy games at cards, our dismal duets with his asthmatic flute and my cracked guitar. The poor Fawn took her beatings and her cans of liquor as her lord and master chose to administer them; and she nursed her papoose, or her master in the gout, or her prisoner in the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... has written a passage from a piano concerto of Mozart to illustrate how that composer wished the non-legato to be interpreted—namely, in a flute-like manner,—the piano repeating textually the passages indicated to be ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... a wall, and he saw a rabbit sitting up by the wall with a sort of flute in its mouth, and it playing on ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... expressed the opinion that nothing would become of him. It is true, he could not in this way acquire fingering and scales, but he gained a peculiar intonation arising from his own deep feeling, that has been rarely possessed by any other artist. He was very partial to the overture to "The Magic Flute," but "Don Juan" made ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... that Secret I have kept to do you Service.—At first she said she lov'd me for your sake, because you recommended me; and when I sung, or plaid upon my Flute, wou'd kiss my Cheek, and sigh, and often (when alone) wou'd send for me, and smile, and talk, and set my Hair in Curls, to make me saucy and familiar with her. One Day she said, Endimion, thy Name-sake was thus caress'd by Cynthia: A Goddess did not scorn the humble Swain, whom by her Love ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... than she, but it did not take me long to discover that he was wrapped up in her. His beard was smaller and more neatly trimmed than it had looked at the Cooper Institute meeting, but it still ill became him. He had an unsophisticated smile, which I thought suggestive of a man playing on a flute and which emphasized the discrepancy between his weak face and his reputation ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... the magistrates. 2. A troop of trumpeters. 3. Carts laden with spoils, often very costly and numerous. 4. A body of flute-players. 5. White bulls and oxen for sacrifice. 6. Elephants and rare animals from the conquered countries. 7. The arms and insignia of the leaders of the conquered enemy. 8. The leaders themselves, with their relatives and other captives. 9. The lictors of the Imperator ...
— History of Rome from the Earliest times down to 476 AD • Robert F. Pennell
... making special studies in Rome, she settled in Munich. She painted historical and religious subjects, and a few portraits. "Zacharias Naming the Little St. John" is in the New Picture Gallery, Munich; in the same gallery is also a portrait called the "Boy Playing a Flute"; in the Leuchtenberg Gallery, Petersburg, is her "Three Women at the Sepulchre." She painted a picture called the "Glorification of Religion through Art" and a "Madonna in Prayer." She also executed a number of lithographs ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... a world, to part for praise and sunder. The brooks be bells; the winds, in caverns dumb, Wake fife and flute and flageolet and voice; The fire-shook earth itself be the great drum; And let the air the region's bass out thunder; The firs be violins; the reeds hautboys; Rivers, seas, icebergs fill the great ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... did, on joining your regiment in India as a young subaltern, was to gather all the European children in cantonments together and march them through the place, playing 'The Girl I Left Behind Me' on the flute." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... personal character, the most dissipated, degraded, and corrupt of all the sovereigns in the dynasty. He spent his whole time in vice and debauchery. The only honest accomplishment that he seemed to possess was his skill in playing upon the flute; of this he was very vain. He instituted musical contests, in which the musical performers of Alexandria played for prizes and crowns; and he himself was accustomed to enter the lists with the rest as a competitor. The people of Alexandria, and the world in general, considered ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... piano. Papa Wolf opened his 'cello case. Uncle Hugo put his silver flute to his lips and played a tentative sweet note. In a moment the strains of Schubert's Serenade, exquisitely rendered, filled the quiet house. Roger relighted his pipe and let it go out. Whenever over her shoulder, Elsa cast a quick ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... the first time in his hearing. Even before he seized the meaning of her speech, he noted with a thrill the manner of it. Such a physique as this should go with the high, silvery tone of a flute; so one always imagines it. This girl spoke in the voice of a violin—soft, deep, deliciously resonant. In his mind flashed a picture for which he was a long time accounting—last winter's ballet of the ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... and when the dinner was over, the wooers began to vie with one another both in music and in speeches for the entertainment of the company; 113 and as the drinking went forward and Hippocleides was very much holding the attention of the others, 114 he bade the flute-player play for him a dance-measure; and when the flute-player did so, he danced: and it so befell that he pleased himself in his dancing, but Cleisthenes looked on at the whole matter with suspicion. Then Hippocleides after a certain time bade one bring in a table; and when the table ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... ennui. Moreover, every one in the house, except his mother, looked at him with unfriendly eyes. His father did not like his town manners, his swallow-tail coats, his frilled shirt-fronts, his books, his flute, his fastidious ways, in which he detected—not incorrectly—a disgust for his surroundings; he was for ever complaining and grumbling at his son. "Nothing here," he used to say, "is to his taste; at table he is all in a fret, and doesn't eat; he can't bear the heat and close ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... &c. (high &c. 206); top; top most, upper most; tiptop; culminating &c. v.; meridian, meridional[obs3]; capital, head, polar, supreme, supernal, topgallant. Adv. atop, at the top of the tree. Phr. en flute; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... come to the court. In the great hall there was much merry-making, each one contributing what he could to the entertainment: one jumps, another tumbles, another does magic; there is story-telling, singing, whistling, playing from notes; they play on the harp, the rote, the fiddle, the violin, the flute, and pipe. The maidens sing and dance, and outdo each other in the merry-making. At the wedding that day everything was done which can give joy and incline man's heart to gladness. Drums are beaten, large ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... for a woodthrush sang, oh ever so sweet, and the oriole whistled as clear as a flute, while a locust rattled away like the man who plays the drum and all the noisy things in the theatre-orchestra. But, busiest of all, at his feet an army of black ants hurried around a little hole in the ground, seeming ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... and there was already a winning coquetry in his manners, which amused people, and made them like to play with him. We need not allude to his studies in detail, but on musical instruments, such as the flute and the koto,[16] ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... and strong, My father's flute of silvery tone, The little household's strength of song, The childish treble of my own,— I hear them once more, but ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... and upon these mattings were placed four tables of offerings to the Star-deities. Besides the customary food-offerings, there were placed upon these tables rice-wine, incense, vases of red lacquer containing flowers, a harp and flute, and a needle with five eyes, threaded with threads of five different colors. Black-lacquered oil-lamps were placed beside the tables, to illuminate the feast. In another part of the grounds a tub of water was so placed as to reflect ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... charmed our hours of ease, Being either Blue Hungarian or Purple Viennese, And he cut a gorgeous figure in his blue (or purple) suit As he coaxed enticing noises from (I think it was) the flute. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... for him of whom it was prophesied that he should be Pharaoh. For the head of the child, my foster-brother, was brought to him by the eunuch as he sat in his palace of marble at Alexandria, flushed with Cyprian wine, and played upon the flute before his women. And at his bidding the eunuch lifted up the head by the hair for him to look on. Then he laughed and smote it on the cheek with his sandal, bidding one of the girls crown Pharaoh with flowers. And he bowed the knee, and mocked the head of the innocent ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... the Sun. Filled with a humor truly divine, he strolled unconstrainedly through a multitude of cares like Prince Tamino through his fantastic trials. Music was his talisman, his magic flute with which he could exorcise all the petty terrors that beset him. Has such a man and artist—one who was completely resolved in his works, and therefore still stands bodily before us with all his ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... count with Viar, who, judging by the awe the child shewed of me, must have thought he belonged to me. He was unsparing in his praises of his pupil, saying that he played the flute capitally, danced and fenced admirably, rode well, and wrote a good hand. He shewed me the pens he had cut himself with three, five, and even nine points, and begged to be examined on heraldry, which, as the master observed, was so necessary a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... flute is the music of the smell of wild flowers, of the glistening leaves and gleaming water, of shadows resonant ...
— Fruit-Gathering • Rabindranath Tagore
... text]—originally the altar of Bacchus—from which the leader of these representatives, the leader of the Chorus, could converse with the actors on the stage and take his part in the drama; and round this thymele the Chorus ranged, with measured dance and song, chanting, to the sound of a simple flute, odes such as the world had never heard before or since, save perhaps in the temple-worship at Jerusalem. A chorus now, as you know, means merely any number of persons singing in full harmony on any subject. The Chorus was then in tragedy, and indeed in the higher comedy, ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... sportive wing, At pleasure's call we fly; Hark! they dance, they play, they sing, In merry merry revelry; Hark! the tabors lively beat, And the flute in numbers sweet, Fill the night with delight At the Masquerade. Let the grave ones warn us as they may, Of every harmless joy afraid; Whilst we're young and gay, We'll frolic and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... me his arm, which I gladly accepted, happy to be relieved from the impertinence of my female companion. We returned to tea; after which the ladies sung, and played by turns on the piano forte; while some of the gentlemen accompanied with the flute, the clarinet, and the violin, forming in the whole a very decent concert. An elegant supper, and half an hour's conversation after it, closed the evening; when we returned home, delighted with our entertainment, ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... years earlier. Banneker's nature seemed tuned also to the softer notes in the song of life. He loved music, and often, as a relaxation, he would sit beneath a huge chestnut tree near his house and beguile the hours by playing on his flute or violin.[174] ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... stretch to the fixed stars is plain, but to which of them,—don't now, dear persecuting reader, unsettle our brains by asking. Enough it is that both in Roman and English law the rights of neighborhood are past measuring. Has a man a right to play the German flute, where the partitions are slender, all day long in the house adjoining to yours? Or, supposing a beneficent jury (beneficent to him) finds this to be no legal nuisance, has he a right to play it ill? Or, because juries, when tipsy, will wink at anything, does the privilege extend to the jew's-harp? ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... all ages it is, From Teos, and Lesbos, and Ind; Through the years, like a shuttle of gold, Runs the wonder of song on the wind— The wonder of flute and of lyre, A music made mellow and meet For Sappho, the princess of song. Oh, the South wind, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... latter they act as an incentive to come nearer and take possession of the performers or of the beneficiary of the function by entering through the top of the head. A primitive jews'-harp, universally found among the tribes, is played to frighten away antohs, and so is the flute. ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... not the soft sounds of the flute or the hautboy that I hear, but the sweeter notes of nature's own music. The mellowness of the song, the varied modulations and gradations, the extent of its compass, the great brilliancy of execution are unrivaled. There is probably no bird in the world that possesses ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... last more than a quarter of an hour, and then a big bell rings, and the working men and women tramp gaily by, chatting noisily and in excellent spirits. Now comes the milkman's turn. He, like the chimney-sweep, has his own howl, softer, more flute-like in quality than that of the sweep, but still capable of waking any one who is not a domestic servant in hard training. The milkman also cries "woa" to his horse at every house, and accompanies himself on his ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... handkerchief showing, and a straw hat much too small for him, perched at the back of his head. He plays the guitar. A little chap in white canvas shoes, his face hidden under a felt hat like a broken wing, breathes into a flute; and a tall thin fellow, with bursting over-ripe button boots, draws ribbons—long, twisted, streaming ribbons—of tune out of a fiddle. They stand, unsmiling, but not serious, in the broad sunlight opposite the fruit-shop; the pink spider ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... of the rusty grate, where smoked and smouldered a pile of black turf from the bog,—a deal table without a piece of baize to cover it, yet fraught with things not devoid of interest: a Bible, given by a mother; the Odyssey, the Greek Odyssey; a flute, with broad silver keys; crayons, moreover, and water-colours; and a sketch of a wild prospect near, which, though but half finished, afforded ample proof of the excellence and skill of the boyish hand ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... is called an inadequate instrument. Perhaps it is, until you hear Cecilia play. Then by some secret sympathy you find yourself murmuring, "Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, childlike, pastoral M——; a flute's breathing less divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melodies when, in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which proclaims the winter wind more lenient than for a ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis |
