"Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sorrowful, low lamentation; Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision, As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches. With such a prelude as this, and hearts that throbbed with emotion, Slowly they entered the Teche, where it flows through the green Opelousas, And, through the amber air, above the crest of the woodland, Saw the column of smoke that arose from a neighboring dwelling;— Sounds of a horn ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... sonnet has all the strange strength of that despair which is but the prelude to a ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... way from the arm of Ione, still cast round her, as if that soft embrace embarrassed; and placing her light and graceful instrument on her knee, after a short prelude, she sang the ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... must say that you are as ungrateful as you are presumptuous; for I am not such a novice in the affairs of the world as to be ignorant that when a young lady professes to be of a different opinion from her friends, it is only a prelude to something worse. She begins by saying that she is determined to think for herself, and she is determined to act for herself—and then it is all over with her: and all the money, &c. that has been spent upon her education is so much dead ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... we have the same thing said by another man in another key. 'Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.' The prelude to the assertion makes all the difference. Here is the warranted confidence of a ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... touch, she drew from the keys a plaintive prelude, which soon modulated itself into "The Light of other Days." She played and sang it with so much feeling, that it seemed the voice of memory floating with softened sadness over the far-off waters of the past. The tune was familiar to Alfred, but it had never sung itself ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child
... nocturne, prelude and polonaise Clamour and wander and wail on the opiate air, Piercing our hearts with echo of passionate days, Peopling a top front lodging with shapes of care. And as our souls, uncovered, would shamefully hide away, The radiant hands light up the enchanted ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... yet happy in my sadness. Oftentimes I am sad and wretched withal; but to-night, I know not why, I am resigned—feeling as if some great, sad joy spread its wings around me for protection. Oh that I might ever continue so! I fear this is but a prelude to a storm-wind which shall rush over and break me as a hurricane would ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... they not brought it yet? My book?—I finished it one summer's night, And felt my blood all beating into song. I meant to print those verses in my book, A prelude, hinting at that deeper night Which darkens all our knowledge. Then I thought The measure moved too lightly. Do you recall Those verses, Elsa? They would pass the time. How happy I was the night I wrote that song!" Then, one of those bowed shadows raised her head And, like a mother crooning to her ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... of capacities, the prelude of which we have seen in the division of labor, does not fulfil the entire destiny of machinery, and the views of Providence extend far beyond. With the introduction of machinery into economy, wings ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... heard the prelude soft; And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide, From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, 30 The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide: The level chambers, ready with their pride, Were glowing to receive a thousand guests: The carved ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the faraway hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful passage[15] of the "Prelude," has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the great thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... its dependents could make no head. The people who had come to listen stayed to vote, and the suffrage of the centuries gave the "new man" as a colleague to Lucius Cassius Longinus. But this triumph was but the prelude to another. The people, now assembled in the plebeian gathering of the tribes, were asked by the tribune Titus Manlius Mancinus whom they willed to conduct the war against Jugurtha. The answer "Marius" was given by overwhelming numbers, and the ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz,—the clocks began to strike the hour of three ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... lids of dusk are falling O'er the dreamy eyes of day, And the whippoorwills are calling, And the lesson laid away,— May Mem'ry soft and tender As the prelude of the night, Bend over you and render As tranquil ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... prelude to the disasters that were to befall the Spaniards. The Mexicans made desperate assaults upon the Spanish quarters, in which both sides suffered severely. At last Montezuma, at the request of Cortes, tried to interpose. But his subjects, in fury ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... only the prelude to a much more important match shortly to follow, I shall not attempt to describe it fully here, as the reader will probably be far more interested in the incidents of Sixth versus School ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... spun about, and dashed into a stormy prelude, modulating into the accompaniment to the refrain of Sullivan's Once Again, which she ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... in the closing hours of this age and as a prelude to their final restoration, they should bud and blossom and fill the face of the whole ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... England. The presence of a large party, with all its aimless and agitated displacements, had served only to isolate the pair and give them (at least to the young man's fancy) a deeper feeling of communion, and their days there had been like some musical prelude, where the instruments, breathing low, seem to hold back the waves of ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... about, like the prelude of an apocalypse, spreading the terror of the ultimate end of the earth. And amidst it thousands of voices could be heard above, shrieking, bellowing, calling, as from a great distance. It was only the wind, the great motive breath of all this disorder, the voice of the invisible ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... With this prelude, he took a few seeds and began to coax the bird, until it, in point of fact, performed various tricks, on the stage, clasping in its beak ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... and I'll give you all a treat." He played the sentimental prelude of this characteristic product of the vaudeville stage, every note of which was plagiarized from a thousand plagiarisms and which imagined that eternity rhymed with serenity and mother with weather. With gestures that could belong to no other school than that of the twice-dailies and the ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... with his back to the wall. He vanishes in the shining cloud of a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more. His intellectual sensibility and his elemental soul make for mystifications. As if he knew the frailness of his tenure on life, he sought ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... weird-like prelude: and then came a voice like that of a thrush, at which every other in the room seemed to hush instinctively. ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... heard a step behind her she started-for it might be Constantine following her up; when a gust of wind flung the stinging sand in her face, or the storm-flash threw a lurid light on the sky, her heart stood still, for was not this the prelude to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... modern, welcome sound, breaking in distractingly on the primeval silence. Kurt hastened to the road and saw the encouraging prelude of dust. The passing tourist gave him the requisite supply of gasoline ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... danse allemande, or German dance), a name for two kinds of dance, one a German national dance, in 2-4 time, the other somewhat resembling a waltz. The movement in a suite following the prelude, and preceding the courante (q.v.), with which it is contrasted in rhythm, is also called an allemande, but has no connexion with the dance. The name, however, is given to pieces of music based on the dance movement, examples of which are found ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... gentlemen," announced Teddy Tucker, in a loud voice, "you have witnessed a most satisfying, edifying, gratifying, ennobling, superb and sublime spectacular prelude, as our press agent would say. But, if you know what's good for you, you will now hasten to the high places, for there's going to be something doing around here in ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... pope may be termed the special feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded the Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary milieu was prepared. The organization of the five great nations, and the levelling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still evolving in the establishment ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the prelude to a grand orchestral performance. Beginning somewhat softly, Hodge fires away with a gravity and emotion which do him infinite credit, each succeeding repetition of the word "stwuns" being rendered with ever-increasing pathos and emphasis, until, like the final burst of an orchestral prelude, with ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... he had not laughed in many a day; but it was laughter that did not jar the silence of the room—such laughter as formed a fit prelude for ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... must live Knowing that he grows wiser every day Or else not live at all, and seeing too Each little drop of wisdom as it falls Into the dimpling cistern of his heart: For this unnatural growth the trainer blame, Pity the tree,"— "The Prelude," Bk. V, ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... very purpose, even in the best of men, a spark of spitefulness or, at all events, of mischief. Perhaps we had better not investigate this point too closely, for we should not find anything very flattering to ourselves. We should see that this movement of relaxation or expansion is nothing but a prelude to laughter, that the laugher immediately retires within himself, more self-assertive and conceited than ever, and is evidently disposed to look upon another's personality as a marionette of which he pulls the strings. ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... his face anxiously. The man's brows had depressed and his strong jaws had become set. She knew that expression. Usually it was the prelude to uncompromising action. ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... evidently only a prelude to a severer rehearsal. When she returned to the waterfall she unearthed from her stores a large piece of yellow soap and some yards of rough cotton "sheeting." These she deposited beside the basin and again ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... gazed on the debutante—they had no word, no look for each other: for they recognised in her voice the tones of a grief of which long ago they heard the prelude—and every note found its echo in ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... a devoted mother to his boy, who in the square, old-fashioned pew sits where his eye can rest upon his beautiful sister, as her snowy fingers sweep once more the organ keys, which tremble joyfully as it were to the familiar touch. Low, deep-toned, and heavy is the prelude to the song, and they who listen feel the floor tremble beneath their feet. Then a strain of richest melody echoes through the house, arid the congregation hold their breath, as Maude De Vere sings to them of the ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... then lost sight of him, until he finally appeared in his box. After looking all about him and making some persons happy with a lordly salute, he sat down, as though he were indeed the man for whom the chair was waiting. The artillerymen then became silent and the orchestra tore into the prelude. ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... opportunity, they seldom fail to avail themselves of it. It is necessary to watch them strictly, as articles frequently disappear in a mysterious manner whilst Gitanas are telling fortunes. The bahi, moreover, is occasionally the prelude to a device which we shall now attempt to describe, and which is called HOKKANO BARO, or the great trick, of which we have already said something in the former part of this work. It consists in persuading some credulous person to deposit whatever money and ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... deceased comes back to life. The tarsi quiver, those of the fore-legs first; the palpi and the antennae move slowly to and fro: this is the prelude to the awakening. Now the legs begin to kick. The insect bends slightly at its pinched waist; it buttresses itself on its head and back; it turns over. There it goes, jogging away, ready to become an apparent corpse once more if ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... a few bars of a prelude, as if to get himself into harmony with the recollection of what he had heard the master play, and then began a lively melody, in which he seemed as usual to pour out his soul. Long before he reached the end of it, Mary had reached ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... obedience to her word the lovely girl bent her fair form over the lute, and, after a wild prelude full of strange thrilling melodies, poured out a voice as liquid and as clear, aye! and as soft, withal, as the nightingale's, in a soft Sapphic love-strain full of the glorious poetry of ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... fortune; indeed, it was the prelude to a disaster worse than any that McClellan had suffered. Pope advanced by the route of the original invasion, and reached exactly the point where McDowell's army had been routed. Here he paused and waited. While he lay there Jackson made ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... tradition, and move in a world locally altogether different. Mr. Abbey is still young, he is full of ideas and intentions, and the work he has done may, in view of his time of life, of his opportunities and the singular completeness of his talent, be regarded really as a kind of foretaste and prelude. It can hardly fail that he will do better things still, when everything is so favorable. Life itself is his subject, and that is always at his door. The only obstacle, therefore, that can be imagined in Mr. Abbey's future career is a possible embarrassment as to what to choose. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... the name of Heaven is coming now," he said to himself, "that calls for so ominous a prelude? It must be something more than usually serious. May the good Lord give me courage ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... in all the circumstances which formed the prelude to this contemplated tragedy. Hitherto the Queen-mother had created dangers for herself—had started at shadows—and distrusted even those who sought to serve her; while her son, silent, saturnine, and inert, ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... struggle, suffer, and endure, to keep myself in, and progress in this condition; but my sufferings, struggles, and endurances, being for love and in love and because of love, were and are in themselves beautiful, and leave in the recollection nothing inharmonious. They are the difficult prelude to a glorious melody. ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... light breaking into a vault a few notes of prelude were struck upon the piano in the parlor below, and a sweet ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... good he can do it," said Bob, with no small amount of pride; and Leander, with his head held so high that it was almost impossible to see his instrument, struck one or two notes as a prelude, while Joe took his station at a point about as far distant from the ring as the door of the tent ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... himself, would have nothing to apprehend, whether at the moment of his death, he falls asleep for ever; or whether that sleep is only a prelude to another existence, in which he shall find himself in the presence of his God. Addressing himself to the Divinity, he might with ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... early next day summoned to attend my uncle in his private room, which lay in a corner turret of the old building; and thither I accordingly went, wondering all the way what this unusual measure might prelude. When I entered the room, he did not rise in his usual courteous way to greet me, but simply pointed to a chair opposite to his own. This boded nothing agreeable. I sat down, however, silently waiting until he should open ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume II. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... rousing one of her maidens, she opened the window. The rich melody came upon her senses through the balmy odour of myrtle boughs and leaves of honeysuckle. The chords were touched with a skilful hand, and the prelude, a wild and extempore commentary on the ballad, was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... in the fact that a violation of the rules of a demilitarized zone is equivalent to a resort to war; but this exception is more apparent than real for the violation of a demilitarized zone would be only a brief prelude to hostilities. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... during his temporary absence from Greece in 1828. On the 4th of June he addressed a memorial to the Duke of Clarence, then Lord High Admiral, who just two years afterwards was to become King of England. This memorial, eloquent in its simplicity and earnestness, the prelude to many others that were to be presented in later years, claims to be here quoted in full. "To his Royal Highness the Lord High Admiral," it ran, "the memorial of Lord Cochrane humbly showeth;—That for fourteen years your memorialist has suffered, among many injuries and privations, ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane
... with his wonted tact, makes use of a vulgar superstition, of a type in which mortal presentiment is already embodied, to make a common ground on which the hearer and Lady Macbeth may meet. After this prelude we are prepared to be possessed by her emotion more fully, to feel in her ears the dull tramp of the blood that seems to make the raven's croak yet hoarser than it is, and to betray the stealthy advance of the mind to its fell purpose. For Lady ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... thing you can do is to get back to town," he said kindly to that young man; "you need a little sleep. It is not a pleasant prelude to your marriage. By the way, that is to-morrow, is it not?" ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... Browning's penultimate book, that "Parleyings with certain people of importance in their day" which fell somewhat coldly upon all save Browning fanatics, and which, when it seemed to show that the poet's hand had palsied, served only as the discordant prelude to the swan song of "Asolando," the last and almost the greatest of his glories. Perhaps only Browning would ever have thought of undertaking a poetical parley with Bubb Dodington. Dodington is now largely, and not undeservedly forgotten. His ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... according to the general persuasion, have been tried in vain, there reigns nought but weariness and complete indifferentism—the mother of chaos and night in the scientific world, but at the same time the source of, or at least the prelude to, the re-creation and reinstallation of a science, when it has fallen into confusion, obscurity, and ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Movement was not merely a new way of considering human beings in their public capacity; it meant also a new kind of sensitiveness to their environment. If we turn, say, from Pope's 'The Rape of the Lock' to Wordsworth's 'The Prelude', it is as if we have passed from a saloon crowded with a bewigged and painted company, wittily conversing in an atmosphere that has become rather stuffy, into the freshness of a starlit night. And just as, on stepping into the open air, the splendours of mountain, ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... treatment of Ariel and Caliban we realise man's struggle with Nature and his longing to sever connection with her. In Macbeth, as a prelude to a bloody crime of treachery and treason, we are introduced to a scene of barren heath where the three witches appear as personifications of Nature's malignant forces; and in King Lear it is the fury of a father's love turned into curses by ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... the 'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to improvise. Now what do ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... habit. But when the child has come to that age when the eyes are by habit directed to the same object, and afterwards it loses that power, this circumstance alone may be looked upon as a frequent prelude ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... a time of famine, is, in its own right, the richest, easiest, and happiest of life. Nay, by managing its own work and following its own happy inspiration, youth is doing the best it can to endow the leisure of age. A full, busy youth is your only prelude to a self-contained and independent age; and the muff inevitably develops into the bore. There are not many Doctor Johnsons, to set forth upon their first romantic voyage at sixty-four. If we wish to scale Mont Blanc or visit a thieves' kitchen ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Haven he noticed how the weather had changed. The brightness of the day had passed and the sky was a mackerel grey. The wind, drifting in from the northeast, hummed a weird prelude to the coming storm upon the telephone wires stretched along ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... leaving the room, when the balconies of the house across the way lighted up. They opened wide and soon there came the strains of a tender prelude ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... exposure to the noxious atmosphere of the jungle, proved inimical to the constitution of the king. On his return to Bangkok he complained of general weariness and prostration, which was the prelude to fever. Foreign physicians were consulted, but at no stage of the case was any European treatment employed. He rapidly grew worse, and was soon past saving. On the day before his death he called to his bedside ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... and immediately, without further prelude, we fell to a most remarkable conversation. Madame Beck (for Madame Beck it was; she had entered by a little door behind me, and being shod with the shoes of silence, I had heard neither her entrance nor approach)—Madame Beck had exhausted ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... difficulty. And Heracleius was sent from Byzantium to Tripolis in Libya, and after conquering the Vandals of that district in battle, he easily captured the cities, and leaving his ships there, led his army on foot toward Carthage. Such, then, was the sequence of events which formed the prelude of the war. ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... assistant found the pulse in Leithgow's wrist, and another bent over him in such fashion that the prisoners could not see what he was doing. Ku Sui too bent over, something in his hands. The prelude to living death ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... shore. It is true they might guide themselves by the sun during the day, and by the pole-star at night, but if once the sky was overcast, they would become entirely at a loss for their bearings. Hence the discovery of the polar tendency of the magnetic needle was a necessary prelude to any extended voyages away from land. This appears to have been known to the Chinese from quite ancient times, and utilised on their junks as early as the eleventh century. The Arabs, who voyaged to Ceylon and Java, appear to have ...
— The Story of Geographical Discovery - How the World Became Known • Joseph Jacobs
... Mrs Rampy, in a soft sarcastic tone which she was wont to assume when stung to the quick, and which her friend knew from experience was the prelude to a burst of passion, "I may be wrong as usual, but as you have never seen or conwersed with this Scotsman, an' don't know nothink about 'im, perhaps you will condescend to give me an' Liz the ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... were fixed upon the future. No two women had ever been loved as they were loved. All this work, this washing and ironing, it resembled nothing more than the opening scene in an opera: a sort of prelude, for the sake of contrast. They would see—O-o-oh, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... forces at his disposal in those days of his absolute lordship of life and death along the African littoral, to conceive was with Oliver-Reis no more than the prelude to execution. The habit of swift realization of his every wish had grown with him, and that habit ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... God, our good advocate, With your dear son, In Fenestro adored, I salute you, And ask his assistance; And without further prelude, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... wandering, forever grieves Low overhead, Above grey mosses whispering of leaves Fallen and dead. And through the lonely night sweeps their refrain Like Chopin's prelude, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... evening to say good-by to Mrs. Davis, and dropped in for a regular concert. Laura seems really very fond of music. Miss Hilst was playing on the harmonium. I always like to see her, but especially when she sits down to the harmonium, and playing the prelude, keeps her eyes on the keys. There is so much earnestness and intentness in her face, combined with calmness. She reminds me of Saint Cecilia, the most sympathetic of all saints, with whom I should have fallen in love had she ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... "Prelude," iv. 1207-1229. The ascetic element in Wordsworth's ethics should by no means be forgotten by those who envy his brave and unruffled outlook upon life. As Hutton says excellently (Essays, p. 81), "there is volition and self-government in every ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... bounced back and forth from hand to hand, in play, but those which fell to the ground. While we were marveling at this display of refinement, Menelaus rushed up, "He is the one with whom you will rest upon your elbow," he panted, "what you see now, is only a prelude to the dinner." Menelaus had scarcely ceased speaking when Trimalchio snapped his fingers; the eunuch, hearing the signal, held the chamber-pot for him while he still continued playing. After relieving his bladder, he called for water to wash his hands, barely ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... piano told that somebody was to play or sing. David took the seat and began a prelude. Then he sang in a ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... or whose principles are not in union with, those of Homer and Virgil; or because they do not observe the custom of invocation, or because they weave one history or tale with another, or because they finish the song with an epilogue on what has been said and a prelude on what is to be said, and many other kinds of criticism and censure, from whence it seems they would imply that they themselves, if the fancy took them, could be the true poets; and yet in fact they are no other than worms, that know not how to do anything well, but are born only to gnaw and befoul ...
— The Heroic Enthusiasts,(1 of 2) (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... having surmounted all the difficulties of obscure origin and limited education, by the brilliancy of his talents, has determined to give his son the advantage of early instruction and liberal information, as a prelude to his advancement in the arts. Talent is not often hereditary (or at least in succession); but the facility of Transit's pencil is astonishing: with the rapidity of a Fuseli he sketches the human figure ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... show that the public betrothal or formal 'troth-plight' which was at the time a common prelude to a wedding carried with it all the privileges of marriage. But neither Shakespeare's detailed description of a betrothal {23} nor of the solemn verbal contract that ordinarily preceded marriage lends the contention much support. Moreover, the whole circumstances of the case ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... should be her home, if she would come to him,—not as his wife. That idea of some half-valid morganatic marriage had again been dissipated by the rough reproaches of the priest, and could only be used as a prelude to his viler proposal. And, though he loved the girl after his fashion, he desired to wound her by no such vile proposal. He did not wish to live a life of sin, if such life might be avoided. If he made his proposal, it would be but for her sake; ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... themselves, suffering at the time from heat and thirst, would have relished something of a similar kind. As the crystal drops fell back from the acacia leaves, the huge animal was heard to utter a low grunt expressive of gratification. The hunters hoped that this was the prelude to his sleep, and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Heale could have watched Tom's face as he read, much more could she have heard his words as he finished, all jealousy would have passed from her mind: for as he read, the cynical smile grew sharper and sharper, forming a fit prelude for the "Little fool!" which ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... study of an age must ever prelude and accompany the study of its individuals, if comprehension is to wait upon our labours. To proceed otherwise is to judge an individual Hottentot or South Sea Islander by the code of manners that obtains in Belgravia ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... prelude to the last revisal, which, in the month of January, ninety-seven, Mr. Cowper was persuaded to undertake; and to a faithful copy, as I trust, of which, I have at this time the honor to conduct the reader. But it may not be amiss to observe, that with ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Hillsborough a detail of the diversion of a few boys in the street with a drum, which at no time is unusual in populous places, and pictured it to his lordship, who, it seems gave it its full weight, as a prelude to a designed insurrection, in which "persons of all kinds, sexes and ages," were to bear their part - The common amusements of children were construed rebellion, and his lordship had minute accounts of them sent to him by this busy journalist, as grounds upon ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... appearances which in the rocks, the veins, and solid stones, give such evident, such universal testimony of the power of fire, in bringing bodies into fusion, or introducing fluidity, the necessary prelude to solidity ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... will. But I have not told you all my story, for this is but the prelude. About a year ago a young doctor rented an office in our block. We met each other, at first only now and then, and afterwards oftener; and six months ago he told me ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... my boys and girls, my women, household and intimates, Now the performer launches his nerve, he has pass'd his prelude on the reeds within. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... merely as a prelude to a narrative I am about to lay before the public, of one of the most memorable instances of the infatuation of gain to be found in the whole history of commerce. I allude to the famous Mississippi Bubble. It is a matter that has passed into a proverb, and become a phrase in ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... scenes and unseemly violences, that I can see or hear each separate incident in its detail, can indeed see or hear little else. So much in this place do men live by pain that my friendship with you, in the way through which I am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise, nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the while been a real ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... the chatter of civilized men and the deliberations of barbarians. With La Hontan, the Baron de Saint-Castin would have led up to his business by a long prelude on other subjects. With Madockawando, he waited until the tobacco had mellowed both their spirits, ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... I bid thee brave, Unappall'd, War's dubious wave, 'Till the doom'd period close! War in vain shall spend his rage, Prelude to a peaceful age That shall redress his woes. Sweden! rouse thy martial band; ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... sphere," pregnant with friendly tidings, reassure us. "Strange," said a gifted metaphysician once, "that the barrel organ, man, should terminate every tune with the strain of immortality!" Not strange, but divinely natural. It is the tentative prelude to the thrilling music of our eternal bliss written in the score of destiny. When at night we gaze far out into immensity, along the shining vistas of God's abode, and are almost crushed by the overwhelming prospects that sweep upon our vision, do not ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... (lines 1-88) he tears from its present place and puts it before the Fifth Book, where it serves as the prelude to the Calypso tale. The rest of the Telemachiad is the work of another poet. Indeed the rest of the First Book (after the Introduction) is not by the same man who produced the Second Book. Then the Second Book is certainly older than the First, and ought somehow to be placed before ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... station or of birth has no tendency to prelude the favour of God. In this respect, he "seeth not as a man seeth," but, in the past dispensations of his mercy, appears to have preferred the lowly as objects of high and distinguishing manifestations. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... continue, and these sleepless nights or the agitated sleep which maddened him should return, and following them, this over-excitement of the brain in troubling the nutrition of the encephalic mass, it might be the prelude ...
— Conscience, Complete • Hector Malot
... with a description of the ruins of eastern America. Although the Martians who survived terrestrial bacteria have left the planet, astronomical observations show a recurrence on the red planet of the same lights that were a prelude to the first onslaught. The conclusion is inevitable: a second invasion is on the way. Serviss pictures the gathering together of the most famous scientists of the day—Edison, Roentgen, Lord Kelvin and others. The Martian machines and ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... past the town we saw neither any of our troops nor those of the enemy, and heard no firing. Although there was complete absence of the usual prelude to battle, still the apprehension came over us that something serious in that line was not very remote, either in time or place. The commanders of both armies were conscious of the importance of the impending contest, which perhaps explains ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... said the barber, "I give my word here and before God that I will not repeat what your worship says, to King, Rook or earthly man—an oath I learned from the ballad of the curate, who, in the prelude, told the king of the thief who had robbed him of the hundred gold crowns ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... long closeted together, and at the proper, ceremonious hour for visitors they repaired to the house of Capulet, who did not hide his sense of the honor done him by the prince. With scarcely any prelude Hamlet unfolded the motive of his visit, and was listened to with rapt attention by old Capulet, who inwardly blessed his stars that he had not given his daughter's hand to the County Paris, as he was on the point of doing. The ladies were not visible on this occasion; the fatigues of the ball ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... repeated commands of the King. Then, accompanying his voice with the harp, so as to grace, but yet not drown, the sense of what he sung, he chanted in a sort of recitative one of those ancient adventures of love and knighthood which were wont of yore to win the public attention. So soon as he began to prelude, the insignificance of his personal appearance seemed to disappear, and his countenance glowed with energy and inspiration. His full, manly, mellow voice, so absolutely under command of the purest taste, thrilled on every ear and to every heart. Richard, ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... told Valentine an artful story, as a prelude to draw his secret from him, saying that Valentine knew he wished to match his daughter with Thurio, but that she was stubborn and disobedient to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the Easterner's mind, like a film, took lasting impressions of three men—the iron-nerved master of the ceremony; the Swede, pale, motionless, terrible; and Johnnie, serene yet ferocious, brutish yet heroic. The entire prelude had in it a tragedy greater than the tragedy of action, and this aspect was accentuated by the long, mellow cry of the blizzard, as it sped the tumbling and wailing flakes into the black abyss ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... was stormy. We stayed quietly under shelter, preparing for our real journey after so much prelude. The Isaac Newton's steam-whistle had sent up the curtain; the overture had followed with strains Der-Frei-schutzy in the Adirondacks, pastoral in the valleys of Vermont and New Hampshire, funebral and andante in the fogs of Mollychunkamug; now it was to end in an allegretto gallopade, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... of course the ladies know;— I have my doubts. No matter,—here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech. 'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings;— Prologues in metre are to other pros As worsted stockings are ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and transitions now possible for mortal mind will be found to be equally 90:12 possible for the body. Then being will be recognized as spiritual, and death will be obsolete, though now some insist that death is the necessary prelude to 90:15 immortality. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... connecting railroads that McLeod had leased; and, finally, the obtaining of undisputed sovereignty over a great part of the anthracite coal mines. The warfare now began without those fanciful ceremonials, heralds or proclamations considered so necessary by Governments as a prelude to slaughter. These formalities are dispensed with by ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... cayenne, and one teaspoonful of made mustard, rub smooth and add one-half teaspoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the juice of one small lime. Lay the tripe in this sauce as soon as it is removed from the fire. Serve with buttered toast. An excellent prelude to this dish is a ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... expeditions beyond the first mission of Lord Arundel and his forces, yet it is impossible not to suspect (as the French at the time anticipated) that this decided interference, on the part of England, with the affairs of France, may have been a prelude to the enterprise of the next reign. Who can say that the battle and victory at St. Cloud passed away without any influence on the course of events which made Henry V. heir to the King ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... England in 1909; Images Old and New appeared in 1915. Aldington and "H. D." (Hilda Doolittle, his American wife) are conceded to be two of the foremost imagist poets; their sensitive, firm and clean-cut lines put to shame their scores of imitators. Aldington's War and Love (1918), from which "Prelude" is taken, is somewhat more regular in pattern; the poems in this latter volume are less consciously artistic but warmer and more ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... to know that he was listening at the door, and to proclaim it in a crowd of voices to all the town! Would they never be still? They ceased at last, and then the silence was so new and terrible that it seemed the prelude to some ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... flooded with dark. The great wonder began—the amazing prelude with its brooding, its surmisals, its storms, its pounding hooves remorselessly pursuing, and flashes of the horn, like the blare of lightning. She surrendered herself, and as the curtain rose settled down to drink with the eyes as well as with the ears; ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... of a damn fool and I can prove it," Jerry announced without prelude of any kind save, perhaps, the viciousness with which he thrust a pitchfork into a cock of hay. The two were turning over hay-cocks that had been drenched with another unwelcome storm, and they had not been talking much. "Forking" soggy hay when the sun is blistering hot ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... venders went about holding up photographic portraits of the tamer, lustily shouting his professional and private virtues. Their voices were, however, soon drowned in the clash of the brass band, which played a prelude to what was coming. At the conclusion of this a lone and last voice cried out, "Ice-cold lemonade," but it was promptly suppressed by those near the crier, as Brinton ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... is not only not a declaration of war or the prelude to a declaration of war, but a species midway of humanitarian sentimentalism and lawyerlike arguments which can have, at least for the present, but one consequence, that of encouraging Germany in intransigentism—that is, the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... not lacking. We can understand the song of the poet, the ripple of the brook, the meaning of the man who wants $5 until next Monday, the inscriptions on the tombs of the Pharaohs, the language of flowers, the "step lively" of the conductor, and the prelude of the milk cans at 4 A. M. Certain large-eared ones even assert that they are wise to the vibrations of the tympanum produced by concussion of the air emanating from Mr. H. James. But who can comprehend the meaning of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... eyes at the wonderful evolutions of the graceful performers. The music stirred him a good deal; he had also been introduced to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often the prelude of a lyric burst from his pen. Others might have wealth and beauty, he thought to himself, but what were these to the gift of genius? In fifty years the wealth of these people would have passed into other ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... been cited by Cullere, is the fear of stealing objects in view, and is often the prelude of kleptomania. The latter disease has gained notoriety in this country, and nearly every large store has agents to watch the apparently growing number of kleptomaniacs. These unfortunate persons, not seldom from the highest classes of society, are unable to combat an intense ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... or be discouraged by them, because many times the discouraging outlook is but the prelude to a bounteous harvest. Work with an undaunted faith in the mighty Invisible, knowing that you serve the only Power, are governed by the one Principle, Infinite Justice, that ever rewards according to service. Doing your best, the Best ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... not do less than bow to this flattery, but he wondered what such a curious prelude foreshadowed. "It means no good to me," he thought, "or he would not begin with such praise." But ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... well satisfied with their quality and value; she then produced a worn-out girl's cloak, and the crushed remnants of a girl's bonnet, as well as other tattered things. In this dainty raiment she instructed Florence to dress herself, and as this seemed a prelude to her release, the child complied as fast as possible. Mrs. Brown then resumed her seat on the bones, and smoked a very short, black pipe, after which she gave the child a rabbit-skin to carry, that she might appear like her ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... evil, the Parsis to-day regard as the capital event in the history of the world. It was the immediate prelude to the revelation of the Law which Ormuzd vouchsafed to ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... Earl now said, without any prelude, "four years ago I was affianced to your sister, Dame Blanch. You stipulated that Gascony be given up to you in guaranty, as a settlement on any children I might have by that incomparable lady. I assented, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... be excelled. Neither has he overlooked the irony which the subject naturally suggested: the great lord, who is driven by idleness and ennui to deceive a poor drunkard, can make no better use of his situation than the latter, who every moment relapses into his vulgar habits. The last half of this prelude, that in which the tinker, in his new state, again drinks himself out of his senses, and is transformed in his sleep into his former condition, is from some accident or other, lost. It ought to have followed at the end of the larger piece. The occasional ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... during the hot middle hours, so that he found no opportunity of consulting his fellows. Further, the foremen of the yard were specially active. The Pirate had been for some time fearful lest the capture of Suwarndrug should prove to be the prelude to an assault upon his stronger fort and headquarters at Gheria, and to meet the danger he had had nine new vessels laid down. Three of them had been finished, but the work had been much interrupted by the rains, and the delay in the completion of the remaining six had irritated him. He had visited ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... carriage stopped at the door, Sophy came out with such a perturbed an expression, as seemed to prelude fatal tidings; and Lucy was pausing to listen, when she was ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Nilghai opened his eyes. The old chanty whereof he, among a very few, possessed all the words was not a pretty one, but Dick had heard it many times before without wincing. Without prelude he launched into that stately tune that calls together and troubles the hearts of the gipsies of ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... happy be, O lucky Bridegroom and your Bride, To celebrate your Nuptials I've prepar'd A Rural Dance, and Magick Harmony, To serve for Prelude to your future Joys. ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... organ rose softly the prelude to a Moody and Sankey hymn, and, in keeping with the music, the voice of Vance sank to ...
— Vera - The Medium • Richard Harding Davis
... this, and I found I could sell the stuff at a good price. I put up a small plant, but just as I got it started a tremendous storm came up, and every bit of that black sand went out to sea. During the twenty-eight years that have intervened it has never come back." This incident was really the prelude to the development set ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... and after a prelude, the beauty of which astonished all those around the queen's person, for they had no idea that he could play in tune, sang in a clear ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Here was the prelude to the historic drama of democracy—a challenge to every form of government and every privilege not ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... near them with a running rush, and died away and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent. The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses, the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... standard and observed in an historic spirit, where shall we find an illustration more impressive than in Abraham Lincoln, whose life, career and death might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... to bring the French Signore the plate of oysters from Fusaro, which he had ordered as the prelude to his dinner, was surprised by the deep gravity of ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... follow? A sound comes from the very back of the room, such a sound that every head turns in astonished search for the source of it. Such voice has the wind in garret-chimneys on a winter night. It is a thin wail, a prelude of lamentation; it troubles the blood. The speaker no one seems to know; he is a man of yellow visage, with head sunk between pointed shoulders, on his crown a mere scalp-lock. He seems to be afflicted with a disease of the muscles; his malformed ...
— Demos • George Gissing |
