"Melodious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... auburn, of the precise shade and hue of her hair, and possessed great expression. In reciting, or in speaking with animation, they appeared to become darker, and, as it were, to flash fire. . . . Her voice was melodious, guided by excellent taste, and well suited to reading and recitation, in ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... species, one less numerous than the other. First, the devotees of music, who went to nearly every concert, extremely knowing, extremely blase, extremely disdainful and fastidious, with precise views about every musical composition, every conductor, and every performer; weary of melodious nights at which the same melodies were ever heard, but addicted to them, as some people are addicted to vices equally deleterious. These devotees would have had trouble with their conscience or their instincts had they not, by coming to the concert, put themselves ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... stirring Scotch air Thorpe rose to his feet and began whistling a clear, melodious accompaniment. The notes trilled out, pure and bird-like. The boys broke into hearty applause when he finished. Their approval emboldened him ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... soft but animated expression of the whole countenance,—the dimpled mouth,—the small, clear, and even teeth,—all these now characterised Charles de Haldimar; and if to these we add a voice rich, full, and melodious, and a smile sweet and fascinating, we shall be at no loss to account for the readiness with which Sir Everard suffered his imagination to draw on the brother for those attributes he ascribed ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... with laughter, either at Apple Orchard, where hill and meadow echoed to the joyous carol, or in any other place. Sitting beneath the oaks, and looking to the old house buried in its beautiful golden trees, the girls sang with their pure, melodious voices, songs which made the fresh, yet dreamy autumn dearer still, and wrapped the hearts of those who listened in a smiling, calm delight. Give youth only skies and pure fresh breezes, and the ready laughter shows how happy these things, simple ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... The melodious chimes resounding from the belfry of a clock-tower in the center of Columbia Avenue, caused us to take notice of the rapidly elapsing time. To our surprise, the immense time-piece indicated an advanced ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... piece give a ductile, gracious, high-bred character to it. The chromatic involutions are many and interesting. When the F minor part is reached the ear experiences the relief of a strongly contrasted rhythm. The simple duple measure, so naturally ornamented, is nobly, broadly melodious. After the return of the first dimpling theme there is a short coda, a chiaroscura, and then with a few chords the composition goes to rest. A bird flew that way! Rubato should be employed, for, as Kleczynski says, "Here ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... those elfin things, Clad all in white like any chorister, Come fluttering forth on his melodious wings, That made soft music at each little stir, But something louder than a bee's demur Before he lights upon a bunch of broom, And thus 'gan he with Saturn to confer,— And O his voice was sweet, touch'd with the gloom Of that sad theme that argued ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... ushered us into it with the air of one who had till now held in reserve his great stroke and was ready to deliver it. Yet I think he waited till we had looked at some comparatively trifling sculptures by Nicolo Pisano before he raised his voice, and uttered a melodious species of howl. While we stood in some amazement at this, the conscious structure of the dome caught the sound and prolonged it with a variety and sweetness of which I could not have dreamed. The man poured out in quick succession his musical wails, and ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... z-d-t," and what character in its long, piercing note! Its straight, tapering, sharp beak is typical of its voice. Its note goes like a shaft from a crossbow; it is a little too sharp and piercing when near at hand, but, heard in the proper perspective, it is eminently melodious and pleasing. It is one of the major notes of the fields at this season. In fact, it easily dominates all others. "Spring o' the year! spring o' the year!" it says, with a long-drawn breath, a little plaintive, but not complaining or melancholy. ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... the reviews are, some extolling what others vilify; it just tends to keep a sensible man of his own opinion, unmoved by such seemingly unreasonable praise or censure. When Coleridge first published Christabel (intrinsically a most melodious and sweet performance) it was positively hooted by the critics; see in particular the Edinburgh Review. Coleridge left behind him a very much improved and enlarged version of the poem, which I did ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... All gracious curves of slender wings, Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings, Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings; Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bell Wherewith in every lonesome dell Time to himself his hours doth tell; All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones, Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans, And night's unearthly under-tones; All placid lakes and waveless deeps, All cool reposing mountain-steeps, Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps; — Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights, And warmths, and mysteries, and mights, Of Nature's utmost depths ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... and the merry throng emerged upon the lawn and made a direct assault upon the dancing platform, lured by strains of irresistible music. Some strolled about but none out of the radius of that melodious magnetism, and Pee-wee remained undisturbed on the ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... know?" he replied in his soft, melodious voice. "I am not of Egypt; I can only say what is told to me by ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... To weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed: For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed boy, 15 And I have arrows[159:1] mystically dipped Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead? And shall he die unwept, and sink to earth 'Without the meed of one melodious tear'? Thy Burns, and Nature's own beloved bard, 20 Who to the 'Illustrious[159:2] of his native Land So properly did look for patronage.' Ghost of Mcenas! hide thy blushing face! They snatch'd him from the sickle and the plough— To ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... ever went into the fields, but she fancied that some of her little family seemed to welcome her approach, either by hopping before her, or entertaining her with their melodious notes, which afforded her ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... with their dead, grey-yellow shores. The stillness of death reigns in this wilderness, interrupted only by the thunderings of the avalanche and by the noise which occasions the motion of the glaciers. No bird moves its wings or raises its twittering in this sorrowful region; only the melodious sighs of the cuckoo are borne thither ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... been jogging along, apparently oblivious to everything but the blazing vision of sun and cloud above the lake, purpling shapes of mirage, reflecting the smooth surface of the glowing water. But as the young man's voice—fallen into a melodious murmur—ceased, she took up ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... early riser. She was one morning walking in the garden, leaning on her husband's arm, when the sound of a harp attracted their notice: they listened attentively, and heard a soft melodious voice distinctly ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... prelate noted for his philosophical writings and especially for his theory of vision which was the foundation for modern investigations of the subject. "His style has always been esteemed admirable; simple, felicitous and sweetly melodious. His dialogues are sustained with great skill." Minto's Manual of English ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... company, there could be no dullness. Alone with his host and hostess, Otway would have found the occasion rather solemn, and have wished it over, but Arnold's melodious voice, his sprightly discussion and anecdotage, his frequent laughter, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... neighbors: Friend clasped friend in his arms; and they who before were as strangers, Meeting in exile, became straightway as friends to each other, Drawn by the gentle bond of a common country together. But in the neighboring hall a strain of music, proceeding From the accordant strings of Michael's melodious fiddle, Broke up all further speech. Away, like children delighted, All things forgotten beside, they gave themselves to the maddening Whirl of the dizzy dance, as it swept and swayed to the music, Dreamlike, with beaming eyes and the rush of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... long melodious sorrow-song has just been interrupted by three stanzas, in which Shelley lashes the reviewer of Keats. He now bursts forth afresh ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... first time he had felt anything, and at this moment would declare in broad Scotch that he'd never been sick at all, qualifying the oath with "except for a minute now and then." He brought a cornet-a-piston to practice on, having had three weeks' instructions on that melodious instrument; and if you could hear the horrid sounds that come! especially at heavy rolls. When I hint he is not improving, there comes a confession: "I don't feel quite right yet, you see!" But he blows away manfully, and in self-defence I try ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... produced. I have been told by some of the members, that when Sir John Cox Hippisley rose in the House, it was a signal for the other members to retire to take their dinners, or to converse upon other subjects; for, if they remained in the House, the baronet's voice was so melodious, that it was sure to send them ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... latter by far the most interesting was that of a dog-fancier, from whose residence melodious howls, in the dog-dialect of every tribe deserving to be represented in so choice a company, were wafted up the stream, and met our ears before our eyes beheld the landing-stage of the establishment, where the dog-fancier and some ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... see before us from the lawn The lark go up to greet the dawn! All birds that love the English sky Throng round my path when she is by: The blackbird from a neighboring thorn With music brims the cup of morn, And in a thick, melodious rain The mavis pours her mellow strain! But only when my Katie's voice Makes all the listening woods rejoice I hear—with cheeks that flush and pale— The passion ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... like this sprang up, there must be sufficient reason for it to cause it to involve more or less all orders of minds; and the wisest and most experienced men, and the most thoroughly trained scholars, fell into the general admiration, and keenly enjoyed so melodious an expression of a general state of feeling, without asking too pertinaciously for higher views and deeper meanings. Old Quakers were troubled at detecting hidden copies and secret studies of Byron among young men and maidens who were to be preserved from all stimulants to the passions; and they ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... hath Among the leaves, and far beyond the path, With myrtle and with jasmin roofed across, Enlaced with vine, and carpeted with moss, Whose only threshold is a plaited brook, Whereby the primrose at herself may look; While birds of song melodious make the air— But oh! I must not take ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... know that language well—so much is there in the untranslatable magic of expression, the little subtleties of style. But Maltravers, fresh, as he himself had said, from the study of great and original writers, could not but feel that he was listening to feeble though melodious mediocrity. It was the poetry of words, not things. He thought it cruel, however, to be hypercritical, and he uttered all the commonplaces of eulogium that occurred to him. The young man was enchanted: ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the hurts which sin has made. I see thee in the crowd alone; I will be thy companion. Quit thy friends as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, And the bell of beetle and of bee Knell their melodious memory. Behind thee leave thy merchandise, Thy churches and thy charities; And leave thy peacock wit behind; Enough for thee the primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind: Leave all thy pedant lore apart; God hid the whole world in thy heart. Love shuns ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... their own use. Tosi did not think this indispensable. But he points out the need of the teacher having an extensive repertoire of graded exercises and vocalises. To his mind these should always be melodious and singable. "If the master does not understand composition let him provide himself with good examples of Sol-Fa-ing in divers stiles, which insensibly lead from the most easy to the most difficult, according as he finds the ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor
... of our host. Swank next tried pantomime, using the French gesture for beauty, a circular motion of the hands about his face accompanied by sickening smiles. Baahaabaa watched him intently, slapped his hip sharply, uttering a melodious command and shortly afterward Hitoia-Upa presented Swank with a beautifully made wreath of elecampane blossoms (inula helenion) exactly matching his beard. This was all very well but got ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... one at each side of the altar, they leave an impression of awkward discomfort on the memory. A certain hardness, peculiar to the Florentine manner, is felt in them. But this quality may have been intended by the sculptors for the sake of contrast with what is eminently graceful, peaceful, and melodious in the other fragments of the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... hands in the air, each holding a torch. The prince was so astonished that he durst not move a step—when he felt himself gently pushed on by some other hands from behind him. He walked on, in great perplexity, till he entered a vestibule inlaid with porphyry and lapis-stone, where the most melodious voice he had ever ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... the fire of the future statesman in his dark eye; perhaps she had heard the ring of sublimity in the melodious voice that afterward said "Honor thy father and thy mother." Perhaps she had seen the shrewdness of the future great diplomat in his maneuvers to have his baby way, and being a bright woman she set her wits to work to defy the king, defeat his law and elude the cruel vigilance ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... rooms, wending her way back alone, in a dull and dejected mood, towards her apartment, when upon reaching the outside corner of the wall of the Pear Fragrance court, she caught, issuing from inside the walls, the harmonious strains of the fife and the melodious modulations of voices singing. Lin Tai-y readily knew that it was the twelve singing-girls rehearsing a play; and though she did not give her mind to go and listen, yet a couple of lines were of a sudden blown into her ears, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... is tall, elegant and graceful. His manners are singularly polite, and uniformly unembarassed. His voice is melodious, and he is eminently endowed by nature with the gift of eloquence. A person of your penetration will therefore readily imagine, that his society is courted by the fair. His propensity to the tender passion appears to have ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... passages; but why does he not tell the reader that almost the whole Koran, and indeed all classical Arab prose, is composed in such "jingle"? "Doubtfully pleasing in the Arabic," it may "sound the reverse of melodious in our own tongue" (p. 282); yet no one finds fault with it in the older English authors (Terminal Essay, p. 220), and all praised the free use of it in Eastwick's "Gulistan." Torrens, Lane and Payne deliberately rejected it, each for his own and several reason; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... him! for what remain of the days of the years of his life are few and evil. "Can it be that I still actually exist? My body is so shrunk that there is hardly anything of me left but my voice, and my bed makes me think of the melodious grave of the enchanter Merlin, which is in the forest of Broceliand in Brittany, under high oaks whose tops shine like green flames to heaven. Ah, I envy thee those trees, brother Merlin, and their fresh waving! for over my ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... implication, their noble husbands and themselves:—"There is," says Mr. Blake, "the Tower and the Monument; the old Change, Guild-Hall, and Blackwall-Hall, which some would fain burn again; there is Bow steeple, the Holy Bible, the Silver Bells of Aaron, the godly-outed ministers; the melodious musick of the Gospels; Smithfield martyrs yet alive; and the best society, the very best in all the world for civility, loyalty, men, and manners; with the greatest cash, bulk, mass, and stock of all sorts of silks, cinnamon, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 195, July 23, 1853 • Various
... and she lay awake and thought of them until at last the slow-moving stars left her wrapped in sleep—a sleep from which she was not aroused until William shook the foundations of the tavern with his melodious bell, informing everybody that the hour for breakfast ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... observations we may remark, that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more frequently repeated than those which are little more than muster- rolls of names. They are not always more appropriate or more melodious than other names. Every one of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of passion in the poet's mystic book And I've lingered in delight to catch the rhythm of the brook; I've felt the ecstasy that comes when prima donnas reach For upper C and hold it in a long, melodious screech. And yet the charm of all these blissful memories fades away As I think upon the fortune that befell the other day, As I bring to recollection, with a joyous, wistful sigh, That I woke and felt the need of extra covers ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... gate was arched like a great hall and over walls and roof ramped vines with grapes of many colours; the red like rubies and the black like ebonies; and beyond it lay a bower of trelliced boughs growing fruits single and composite, and small birds on branches sang with melodious recite, and the thousand-noted nightingale shrilled with her varied shright; the turtle with her cooing filled the site; the blackbird whistled like human wight[FN47] and the ring-dove moaned like a drinker in grievous plight. The trees ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... poetry. The merits of The Masque of Shadows and other Poems were acknowledged on all sides. It was seen that the art of ballad writing—which Goethe calls the most difficult of arts—was not, as some averred, a forgotten one. The Masque of Shadows itself is melodious and vivid from the first line to the end, but the captain jewel is the necromantic and thrilling Rime of Redemption—the story of a woman who erred and of a man who prayed and wrestled with God in prayer for her, and ultimately wrung her salvation by self-sacrifice from Divine Justice. ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... land worth fronting the noble, silent, uncontaminating, healthful sea? Whence can come no coster-mongers' cries, no agitating skir of bagpipes or the maddening hurdy-gurdy, no German band expecting half a crown for the creation of insanity; only sweet murmur of the wavelets, and the melodious whistle of a boatman catching your breakfast lobster. Where, again, if you ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... I were a tiny browny bird from out the south, Settled among the alder-holts, and twittering by the stream; I would put my tiny tail down, and put up my tiny mouth, And sing my tiny life away in one melodious dream. ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... greatest creation: the "Tosca Symphony." Beside this he had written the "D-minor Violin Concerto" for Brodsky; the "Liturgy of Joseph of Arimathea," for four voices with organ accompaniment; half a dozen of the melodious songs that were his special delight: and, lastly, the little, one-act opera "Iris," for which he had written both libretto and score, and which created a furore on its performance in Petersburg, the ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... coincide with an old pagan festival of that day, in which fire, noise, and uproar, if not broken heads and bloodshed, were conspicuous features. The penny trumpets blown on this occasion recall the like melodious instruments which figure so largely in the celebration of Befana (the Eve of Epiphany) ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... a short time give elegant carriage and beauty to his bantams, according to his standard of beauty, I can see no good reason to doubt that female birds, by selecting, during thousands of generations, the most melodious or beautiful males, according to their standard of beauty, might produce a marked effect. I strongly suspect that some well-known laws, with respect to the plumage of male and female birds, in comparison with the plumage of ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... disagreeable feelings that depressed him, and, the more effectually to accomplish this, burst forth into a bravura song with so much emphasis as utterly to drown, and no doubt to confound, two larks, which, up to that time, had been pouring their melodious souls out of their little bodies in the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... closest intercourse, while on most days the Prussian King rode over from a neighbouring village to figure as a sad, reproachful guest at the rides, parades, and dinners that cemented the new Franco-Russian alliance. Yet, amid all the melodious raptures of Alexander over Napoleon's newly discovered virtues, it is easy to detect the clinging ground-tone of Muscovite ambition. An event had occurred which excited the hopes of both Emperors. At the close of May, the Sultan ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... heard it; but for once an audience of two was sufficient for the stimulus and reward of the readers. That and the actual enjoyment of the parts they were playing. Dr. Harrison read well, with cultivated and critical accuracy. His voice was good and melodious, his English enunciation excellent; his knowledge of his author thorough, as far as acquaintanceship went; and his habit of reading a dramatically practised one. But Faith, amid all her delight, had felt a want in it, as compared with the reading to which of late ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... a viol or bass viol are generally admitted to be more melodious than those produced by other kinds of instruments, and many have expressed a desire to see an instrument so constructed as to be played with keys, like the organ or piano forte, and give the tones of the violin. This is the character of the instrument here ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... pause that comes between the sound And recognition, all the finer sense Is swathed in a melodious eloquence, Which makes his name seem ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the verandah are like old friends, and are always welcome. The curious cry which they make as they wheel in and out of the verandah in the last few minutes before they plunge into bed under the eaves, sounds almost melodious by contrast with the strange noises made by other birds. There is also a species of peewit who utters a rather pretty call, which might be supposed to be the Marathi version of what the English ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... it was the Cup Day. It was fine overhead and hot, yet a charming day. The race for the Cup was next, and the ring was settling down to business. Suddenly, amidst the general uproar, a fine-sounding voice, true and melodious, was heard intoning what at first sounded to most people a church hymn. But it was not a church hymn. It was a new method of shouting out the odds, attracting attention to an exceedingly well-got-up gentleman in a grey frock suit, patent leather boots, white spats, ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... sunset, that bubbling "mar-guer-ite" with which the blackbirds woo, and the light diminuendo with which the bluebird caressed the air after an April flight. Perhaps Joan's musical faculty was less untrained than any other. After all, that "Aubade Provencale" was just the melodious story of the woods in spring. Every note linked itself to an emotional, subconscious memory. It filled Joan's heart with the freshness of childhood and pained her only because it struck a spear of delight into her pain. She was eighteen, she had grown like a tree, drinking in sunshine and ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... gathered up their baskets and Peggy started to go to the grocery store when her attention was caught by the melodious singing of Mrs. Butler's canary-bird. "He's crazy about being alive, just as I am," thought Peggy. "I wish ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... their wise, perennially significant way, figure Nature itself, their sacred All, or Pan, as a portentous commingling of these two discords; as musical, humane, oracular in its upper part, yet ending below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? The union of melodious, celestial Freewill and Reason, with foul Irrationality and Lust; in which, nevertheless, dwelt a mysterious unspeakable Fear and half-mad panic Awe; as for mortals there well might! And is not man a microcosm, or epitomized ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... efforts to bring these discordant social elements together and to keep her salons full until the famous interview, constantly moved about, carried on ten different conversations at once, raising her soft, melodious voice to the purring pitch that distinguishes Oriental women,—a wheedling, seductive voice, and a mind as supple as her waist, opening all sorts of subjects, and, as convention requires, mingling fashions and sermons on charity, theatres ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... fighters. Turnbull was still engaged in countering and pommelling with the third young man. The fourth young man was still engaged with himself, kicking his legs in helpless rotation on the back of the car and talking with melodious rationality. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... years of his life to have stepped forward in facile supremacy, beneath the eyes of those clustered ladies. Instead of that, they had looked upon his shame; they had interchanged glances of amusement at each repetition of his defeat; had murmured comments in their melodious speech; had ended by losing all interest in him—as intuition apprised him was the wont ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... bravely dressed, with yataghans and silver-hilted pistols in their belts, preceded this somber equipage. Perhaps Margrave divined the disdainful thought that passed through my mind, vaguely and half-unconsciously; for he said with a hollow, bitter laugh that had replaced the lively peal of his once melodious mirth: ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... anthologies. His facility in the handling of blank verse is also remarkable. Lovers of Milton may regret the massive grandeur of an earlier style; but, as in every art, so in poetry, we pay for advance in technical accomplishment, in suppleness and melodious phrasing, by the loss of other qualities ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... was abbot there, and Canute was king, that monarch honored the monastery of Ely with his presence on several occasions. Monkish traditions say, that on one of these visits as the king approached, he heard the pious inmates of the monastery chanting their hymn of praise; and so melodious were the voices of the devotees, that his royal heart was touched, and he poured forth his feelings in a Saxon ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... heart of the good cavalier melted at the sound, for it recalled the happier days of his country. Urging forward his weary steed, he at length arrived at a broad grassy area, on the summit of the hill, surrounded by the forest. Here the melodious voices rose in full chorus, like the swelling of the breeze; but whence they came, he could not tell. Sometimes they were before, sometimes behind him; sometimes in the air, sometimes as if from within the bosom of the earth. ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... rather associated with the choir than the dome. Be this as it may, Wren would have been gratified indeed to have seen the favourite offspring of his genius filled from arch to arch, and to have listened to the clear and melodious high-pitched voice of the great preacher, always articulate, and with an articulation after Wren's own heart that did not drop the last words of the sentences. Wren would have been further gratified to have seen his dome used, in addition to weekday services, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... might thereby be given to others or kept for oneself: and then I thought of Sandy Tom—of his large, round, soft head; his fine eyes (they were yellow, not blue, and glared with infinite tenderness); his melodious purr; his ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... martial precision, keeping time, is uncertain. In this case the bees took the lead; the man with his tin-pan music kept the rear, and was soon at a respectful distance. They were either not in a mood, just then, to be charmed by melodious sounds, or their business was too urgent to allow them to stop and listen! Their means of locomotion being superior to his, he gave up in despair, out of breath, after following about a mile. Another person, about the same time in the day, saw a swarm moving ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... President, declared him "the bright particular star of the revolt."[372] He was not an impassioned orator. He spoke deliberately, and rarely with animation or with gesture; and his voice, high pitched and penetrating, was neither mellow nor melodious. But he was marvellously pleasing. His perennial wit kept his audiences expectant, and his compact, forceful utterances seemed to break the argument of an opponent as a hammer shatters a pane of glass. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Dian's fane at Taurica, Where now a captive priestess, she alway Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands 130 Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry Amid their barbarous twitter! In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter! Ay, most likely 'tis in Spain That we and Waring meet again Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid All fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... imperceptible sounds which are confounded, on a fine summer day, in an immense murmuring. The bumble-bee has his song as well as the nightingale, the honey-bee is the warbler of the mosses, the cricket is the lark of the tall grass, the maggot is the wren—it has only a sigh, but the sigh is melodious! ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... red as a boiled lobster. Mademoiselle stood opposite to him, shaking her pretty head, and murmuring: "Quel mensonge! Quel bete mensonge!" while Madame broke into a low and melodious laughter, and as she laughed, looked first at the ring and then at Juliette's ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... pitch he will comfort her. 'He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord.' The effects of all which will be she will have joy and gladness; she will be thankful, and be melodious in her voice, in her soul to the Lord. This, I say, will follow upon her deliverance from her desert, her wilderness, her desolate, and comfortless state: all which is more fully expressed by her repeated ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... attended divine service regularly in the church every Sunday. Mr Evans, who was a good musician, had taught them to sing in parts; and it has a wonderfully pleasing effect upon a stranger to hear these dingy sons and daughters of the wilderness raising their melodious voices in harmony in praise of the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... the accents of a grave melodious voice, which, from its slow and measured tones, would seem to be in the action of reading or reciting aloud. I see a small room sparely furnished, and at a table covered with books and manuscripts is seated a man of noble ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... dinner. Vanya seated himself at the piano and played from one of his unpublished scores. Ilse sang two Scandinavian songs in her fresh, wholesome, melodious voice—the song called Ygdrasil, and the Song of Thokk. Wardner had brought a violin, and he and Vanya accompanied Marya's Asiatic songs, but with some difficulty on the sculptor's part, as modern instruments are scarcely adapted ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... and majesty of this music, its melodious themes and thrilling harmonies, are utterly beyond my powers of description; the air and sky seemed filled and pulsating with prayer and praise, then resounding with grand crescendoes of triumphant shouts; each ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... and a rather common-place one at that; but if she could have put her voice upon her canvas, she might have retrieved the Garcia fortunes. For it was so musical, so tender, so sympathizing, so melodious, so replete with the graciousness of womanhood, that she seemed to have invented the language. And yet that sentence was only an exaggerated form of the 'How d'ye do,' whined out, doled out, lisped out, or shot out from the pretty ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... also, I said to myself ill-humouredly, were probably stage jewels.... I cannot account for the sudden train of associations this word evoked: sweeping, magnificent gestures, star-like eyes, and a goddess' brows shining through innumerable years; a bar or two of melodious ritornello; an ineffable sense of poetry and grandeur, and—but I am not sure—a note or two of a distant, distant voice. Could it be Malibran—or Catalani ... and was my stage jewel bewitched, a kind of Solomon's ring, conjuring up great spirits? All I can say is that I have rarely spent ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... were clumsy; his manners were awkward, except when he was inspired by some grand thought or tender sympathy, when his whole person and appearance became transfigured. His sole enduring charms were his beautiful eyes and melodious voice. ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the most pleasing echo of all the echoes we have read of. The guide sounded two sonorous notes, about half an octave apart; the echo answered with the most enchanting, the most melodious, the richest blending of sweet sounds that one can imagine. It was like a long-drawn chord of a church organ, infinitely softened by distance. I may be extravagant in this matter, but if this be the case my ear is to blame—not my pen. I am describing a memory—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... melodious, bubbling song that is his chief fascination. He has so great a variety of strains that many people have thought that he learned them from other birds, and so have called him what many ornithologists declare that he is not — a mocking ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... then sit down upon their tails in despair. Their forlorn condition, left friendless amid this babel, gets upon their nerves, and after a slight rehearsal, just to make certain of the tune, they lift up their voices in melodious concert, to the scandal of the two females, who cannot escape the neighbourhood, and regard the pointers with horror. Distant friends, also in bonds and distress of mind, feel comforted and join cheerfully, while a large black retriever, who had foolishly attempted to obstruct a luggage ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... the Princess Louisa was in the room, too; Louisa, who became of Anspach shortly; not Wilhelmina, who lies in fever and relapse and small-pox, and close at death's door, almost since the beginning of these bad days. The Crown-Prince reads, we say, with a voice of melodious clearness, in French more or less instructive. "At other times there went on discourse, about public matters, foreign news, things in general; discourse of a cheerful or of a serious nature," always with some substance of sense in it,—"and not the least smut permitted, as ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Senate he is quite a different person. There his unmistakable genius for oratory is given full sweep and when he speaks his colleagues usually listen, not because they agree with what he says but because they are charmed by the easy and melodious flow of his words. There is a hint of Ingersoll in his speeches which are full of alliteration and rhythmic phrases. He has a sense of form sadly lacking in his stammering and inarticulate colleagues, for oratory in the Senate is probably at ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... bottom-lands and thickets in everything he says, and dashes of shadow and sunshine over the waving wheat are in all the varying expressions of his swarthy face. The grip of his hand is a thing to bet on, and the undue loudness of his voice in greeting you is even lulling and melodious, since unconsciously it argues for the frankness of a nature that has nothing to conceal. Very probably you are forced to smile, meeting the old man in town, where he never seems at ease, and invariably apologizes in some way for his presence, saying, perhaps, by way of explanation: ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... in his melodious bass voice, "I am proud of this honor." He was not sure of another word as he stood, with bagging trousers and sweat-beaded face, but he made a superhuman effort to call up his comatose wits. "I should be ungrateful were I not proud of this ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... to write, with a fidelity, an unwearied earnestness, of which there is no other living instance; of which, among British poets especially, Wordsworth alone offers any resemblance. And this in our view is the result. To our minds, in these soft, melodious imaginations of his, there is embodied the Wisdom which is proper to this time; the beautiful, the religious Wisdom, which may still, with something of its old impressiveness, speak to the whole soul; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... and could call To use, still other implements, unknown, Or only valued in his hands alone! The Lyre, whose burning inspiration came Still darting upward, sudden as the flame; The murmuring wind-harp, whose melodious sighs 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... charm that once breathed from the spot, and once smiled from the faces?" A poet has said, "Eternity itself cannot restore the loss struck from the minute." Are you happy in the spot on which you tarry with the persons whose voices are now melodious to your ear? beware of parting; or, if part you must, say not in insolent defiance to Time and Destiny, "What ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with the men who had won from him through his own devices, and malice undisguised shone in his lean flat face. At sight of the blue cards falling in the first deal, silence came over the company, and from the distant parade-ground the bugle sounded the melancholy strain of taps. Faint, far, solemn, melodious, the music travelled unhindered across ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... living peacefully in their fair garden, while Satan was still seeking in vain a way to enter there, the Peacock was the most beautiful of all the companions who surrounded the happy pair. His plumage shone like pearl and emerald, and his voice was so melodious that he was selected to sing the Lord's praises every day in the streets of heaven. But he was then, as now, very, very vain; and Satan, prowling about outside the ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... coin); farthing. arenal m. sandy place. argentado, -a silvery, silvered. argentino, -a silvery. rido, -a dry, dried up, barren. arma f. arms, weapon. armar arm, start. armona f. harmony, music, rhythm, concord, peace. armonioso, -a harmonious, melodious. aroma m. aroma, fragrance, scent, perfume. aromoso, -a aromatic, fragrant. arpa f. harp. arrancar tear out, pluck out, wring, wrest, tear away, take away. arrebatar bear away, catch, snatch up, attract, captivate, charm; —se grow furious, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Ingerman?" he cried. "Is he a tall, lanky, cadaverous, rather crooked person, with black hair turning gray, and an absurdly melodious voice?" ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... art and a new literature. We can see that Longfellow was essentially a scholar—a receiver of impressions from books; that he was like an AEolian harp, blown upon by many winds, so that his music was in many regards necessarily a melodious echo of what was 'whispered by world-wandering winds.' And we can see, too, that he came into American literary life just as it was passing from the germ to the plant, and that every year ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... met the serpent. Now before it tempted Eve and became accursed, the serpent had been the most beautiful of all the creatures. Its head was of all the colours of the most beautiful jewels; it had eyes like emeralds, and a melodious voice; it had slender and graceful legs, and it fed on perfumed flowers and delicious fruits. Now it was loathsome to look upon; it wriggled on its belly in the dust, and all creatures spurned and hated it. And when it saw Eve it was enraged to think of the curse that had come ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... are taking Young Folks, for God's Sake Twig the editorial style; it is incredible; we are all left panting in the rear; twig, O twig it. His name is Clinton; I should say the most melodious prosewriter now alive; it's like buttermilk and blacking; it sings and hums away in that last sheet, like a great old kettle full of bilge water. You know: none of us could do it, boy. See No. 571, last page: an article ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his second cargo—he convinced them by undeniable authorities, that the cuckoo was a very odd kind of bird which sung only at certain seasons of the year, and assured them that whenever the proper time arrived, all the cuckoos they had purchased would once again "tune their melodious throats." After this it would only be fair to allow the Chinese sometimes to trick the European purchaser with a wooden ham instead of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... an unknown reason endured thirst the easiest and suffered the least of all, approached, sat close to him, and, embracing his neck with her arms, said in her quiet, melodious voice. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Reece, with music by Berthold Tours.—This justly favourite composer has written the simplest, most touching, and melodious music to a very touching and sad story. It is a compliment to this ballad to recommend it to all who wish for a good cry. It has this advantage over the maudlin griefs of the discontented folk to whom we have called attention in previous notices, that the ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... expression of his thoughts, like some of the other men, but he had a vein of humour. A relative of his used to come over from Evesham to sing in our church choir, and I remember a special occasion when the choir was somewhat piano until this singer's part came in; he had a strong and not very melodious voice, and the effort and the effect alike were startling. Tom was in church at the time, and had evidently been watching expectantly for the fortissimo climax; he told me afterwards that "when S. opened his mouth I knew it was sure to ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... have heard thee with the Muses singing— Heard that full, melodious voice of thine, Silver-clear throughout the ether ringing— Seen thy locks in golden clusters shine; And thine eye, so bright With its innate light, Hath ere now been bent so ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... spirits clustering round! They welcome him with sweet melodious sound. We hear their golden instruments of praise, As they around him whirl a threading maze; In great delight he views their beckoning arms, And lustrous eyes, and perfect, moving forms. And see! he seizes one bright, charming girl, As the enchanting ring doth nearer whirl; He grasps ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... Mr. Gilbert, the author of so much that is great and glorious in our national drama; at all events they proved themselves able to arrest and retain the attention of very ordinary audiences. But who can deny dignity and even grandeur to 'Luria,' or withhold the meed of a melodious tear from 'Mildred Tresham'? What action of what play is more happily conceived or better rendered than that of 'Pippa Passes'?—where innocence and its reverse, tender love and violent passion, are presented with emphasis, and yet blended into a dramatic unity and a poetic ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Clibborn, I have loved you in secret almost ever since I came to the parish. The moment I saw you I felt an affinity between us. Our tastes are so similar; we both understand Art and Literature. When you played to me the divine melodies of Mendelssohn, when I read to you the melodious verses of Lord Tennyson, I felt that my happiness in life would be ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... With a scream of amazement and joy she embraced the animal, pulled out one or two practicable blossoms, pressed them to her lips, and flung them into her admirers. They flung them back, with loud melodious cries, and a little boy in one of the stageboxes snatched up his sister's carnations and offered them. "Che carino!" exclaimed the singer. She darted at the little boy and kissed him. Now the noise became tremendous. "Silence! silence!" shouted many old gentlemen behind. "Let the ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... but shout, like her, 'O Happy Day!' I say, Richard, you remember that singing? how we would hear her from the forge? All day, washing, cooking—melodious soul! There was 'O Happy Day', and there was—By God, how charmingly holy! how ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... Ahasuerus, the wandering Jew, recount the Bible story in such broad outlines as could be given only by a man who was familiar with it. When Shelley was in Italy and the word came to him of the massacre at Manchester, he wrote his "Masque of Anarchy." There are few more melodious lines of his writing than those which occur in this long poem in the section regarding freedom. Four of those lines are often quoted. They are at the very heart of Shelley's best work. ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... undimmed supremacy of fame, he spent much of his time in fighting shadows, involved in clouds of darkness and dissatisfaction. That was no doubt the price he paid for his exquisite perception of beauty and his power of melodious expression. But we make a great mistake if we merely think of Tennyson as a rich and ample nature moving serenely through life. He was "black-blooded," he once said, adding, "like all the Tennysons." Doubtless he had in his mind his father, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "flicker," alias "yarup." He is an old favorite of my boyhood, and his note to me means very much. He announces his arrival by a long, loud call, repeated from the dry branch of some tree, or a stake in the fence,—a thoroughly melodious April sound. I think how Solomon finished that beautiful description of spring, "And the voice of the turtle is heard in the land," and see that a description of spring in this farming country, to be equally characteristic, should culminate in ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... artistiques"—to rooms fit only for peasants? Ces dames had just come from Paris; doubtless, they were not yet accustomed to provincial customs—aux moeurs provinciales. Then there were exchanged certain melodious acerbities, which proved that these ladies had entered the lists on previous occasions, and that each was well practised in the other's methods of warfare. Opportunely, Renard appeared on the scene; his announcement that we proposed still to continue taking ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... to keep his word, or else Apollonius passed the door by chance when his brother believed him far away. He heard his brother's savage outbreak of anger, he heard the clear tone of the wife's voice, still clear and melodious in spite of her excitement. He heard them both without understanding what they were saying. He was shocked. He had not imagined that the breach between them had gone so far. And he was the cause of this breach. He must do what he could ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the colored people, calls to mind a petition offered for myself, when Field Superintendent, soon after my appointment. An old black woman in New Orleans was called upon to pray, after I had spoken to the people. She chanted her words in soft, melodious tones, keeping time with her body swaying back and forth, as she prayed. She prayed for the former superintendent, Dr. Roy. She thanked God for his patient, loving care of the people. She told the Lord how he went as a prophet of Israel, back and ...
— American Missionary, August, 1888, (Vol. XLII, No. 8) • Various
... mounting to so great an altitude. It affords me a vivid conception of the pleasure with which I should witness the soaring and singing of the Skylark, known to me only by description. I have but to imagine the chirruping of the Woodcock to be a melodious series of notes, to feel that I am listening to that bird, which is so familiarized to our imaginations by English poetry that in our early days we always expect his greetings with a summer sunrise. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... lore has ever a charm for me, and I bid him show me these same things. So we turned a little aside into the forest, and found ourselves in a lovely glade, where the light shone so soft and golden, and where the songs of the birds sounded so sweet and melodious, that I felt as though we were stepping through an enchanted world, and well could I believe that the fairies danced around the well, sunk deep in its mossy dell, and fringed about with ferns and flowers and the shade of ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in the old memoirs, visited by Hogarth, and where, twenty years ago, there used to be a crowd of guests. Standing in the centre, I note a stray roysterer issuing from some long-closed cafe, hurrying home, while the carillons in their airy rococo-looking tower play their melodious tunes in a wheezy jangle that is interesting and novel. This chime has a celebrity in this quarter of France. I stayed long in the centre of that solitary place, listening to that ...
— A Day's Tour • Percy Fitzgerald |
