"Psalms" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... murder, which there's no denyin' is as good as a play, 'e bein' 'ung, 'avin' 'it 'is wife over the 'ead with the poker when she weren't lookin', and a-berryin' 'er corpse in a back garding, without even a stone to mark the place, let alone a line from the Psalms and a ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... he, as a holiday the Jews ever kept it,—have a peculiar set service for it in their Seders, set psalms to sing, set lessons to read, set prayers to say, good and godly all,—none but as they have used from ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... communion from Dr. Channing; "both my sisters were very religious," says Miss Sedgwick; while the letters I have quoted from two of her brothers, young lawyers and men of the world, have the devoutness of the psalms. "I can never be sufficiently grateful to my Maker for having given me such a sister," says Robert; and Theodore: "selfish, unthankful as I am, the tears are in my eyes, and I thank God that I have such a sister." Of course one can use a religious ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... sung by my sire, Like some prophetic bard tuning the lyre? Sweet were the notes that he taught to the young; Psalms for the Sabbath, on Sabbath were sung; And the young minstrels enraptured would come To the little lone cottage I ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... dispersed in groups, which chose their beds on the fields as they could best find shelter and convenience. A few of the principal leaders held wakeful conference with Burley on the state of their affairs, and some watchmen were appointed who kept themselves on the alert by chanting psalms, or listening to the exercises of the more gifted of ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... neglect the poor," she said to herself. "Old Scott was very solemn. He's a good man, is Scott, he's a very religious man, he knows his Bible beautiful. He does everything by the Psalms; it's wonderful what he finds in them—the weather and everything else. I asked him before the storm came yesterday if we was going to have rain, and he said 'Read your Psalms and you'll know. Don't the Psalms for the day say "the Lord of glory thundereth"?' and he looked at a black ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... goes to church, says his prayers, sings psalms, says 'Lord, Lord,' who is in God and establishing His kingdom. No; it is he who is doing it. The earth is to be His kingdom, and your prayers must be deeds, your actions music ascending to heaven. The Church must be the kingdom of God in ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... promise may seem to have been fulfilled. It was during the later years of David and the earlier years of Solomon; but we have the warrant of Scripture itself for affirming, that even then the promise was not fulfilled. In the Book of Psalms, David speaks of a hope of entering into a future rest. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quoting this passage, infers from it that God's promise had not been exhausted nor fulfilled, by the ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so fruitful as to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and Western, developed out of the double account in Genesis, and the indications in the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the book of Job, a vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point. As regards the whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain occult powers in numerals. Philo Judaeus, while believing in an instantaneous ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to it—here, Dolan, come in to your duty. In the meantime, you may as well tell Katty not to boil the mutton too much; it's on your knees you ought to be at your rosary, or the seven penitential psalms, any way." ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... in thoughtfulness he became aware of the monotony of a tuneless chant, as if, it struck him, an insane young chorister or canon were galloping straight on end hippomaniacally through the Psalms. There was a creak at intervals, leading him to think it a machine that might have run away ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and in like manner returning to Judgment. "Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him." "Then shall they see the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory."[38] While farther, the "clouds" and "heavens" are used as interchangeable words in those Psalms which most distinctly set forth the power of God: "He bowed the heavens also, and came down; he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies." And, again: "Thy mercy, oh Lord, is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... 67). Moslems accept the Pentateuch, the Psalter and the Gospel; but assert (Koran, passim.) that all extant copies have been hopelessly corrupted, and they are right. Moses, to whom the Pentateuch is attributed, notices his own death and burial—"the mair the miracle," said the old Scotch lady. The "Psalms of David" range over a period of some five hundred years, and there are three Isaiahs who pass with the vulgar for one. The many apocryphal Gospels, all of which have been held genuine and canonical at different times and in different places, prove that the four, which ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... near enough to see, all the people were muttering and gobbling over the Psalms, the Captain rolling out his short alternate verses as though he were directing his own quartermaster on a course. While the porpoise was very close to the ship and listening hard the ash-shoot was emptied almost on his head, which scared him so badly that he dived deep, ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... of all sorts of fruit trees; in the introduction to the Psalter, he says of the thanksgiving psalms: 'There one looks into the hearts of the saints as into bright and beautiful gardens—nay, as into heaven itself, where pure and happy thoughts of God and His goodness are ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... God. The inhabitants of Florence obeyed, and came forth to the Piazza of the Duoma, bringing these works of perdition, which were soon piled up in a huge stack, which the youthful reformers set on fire, singing religious psalms and hymns the while. On this pile were burned many copies of Boccaccio and of Margante Maggiore, and pictures by Fro Bartalommeo, who from that day forward renounced the art of this world to consecrate his brush utterly and entirely ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... all over there at home so distinctly, as if you really were here; it was again that Sunday morning; all you children stood before the table and sung your Psalms, as you do every morning. You stood devoutly with folded hands; and father and mother were just as pious; and then the door was opened, and little sister Mary, who is not two years old yet, and who always dances when she hears music or singing, of whatever kind it ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... with him on the Praying Weaver's stone, and talk of the Covenanters till their tears ran down. Her view of history was wholly artless, a design in snow and ink; upon the one side, tender innocents with psalms upon their lips; upon the other, the persecutors, booted, bloody-minded, flushed with wine: a suffering Christ, a raging Beelzebub. PERSECUTOR was a word that knocked upon the woman's heart; it was her highest thought of wickedness, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... being here but the Primate and Mrs. Selwyn, yet I think some dozen more may come, though I don't like it. I need not say that making a scene on such occasions is to my mind very objectionable. I could much prefer being quite alone. I have translated some appropriate Psalms, but the 2nd and 57th they hardly know as yet quite well; so our service will be Psalms 96, 97, 114; 1st lesson 2 Kings, v. 9—15, Magnificat; 2nd lesson Acts viii. 5-12, and the Baptismal Service. Henry Tagalana reads the first, ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Rollo's brother, was a wicked and malignant sorcerer; his time was spent in conjuring devils and doing wicked deeds, instead of fasting, scourging, and singing holy psalms: this Mercurius knew; and he, therefore, was fully at ease as to the final result of his wager with ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... covered with white numerals, which hung like a lamp in the middle of the building. Oh, how brilliantly does the spirit of invention manifest itself in the Protestant Church! For who would think it! The numbers on this board are those of the Psalms for the day, which are generally chalked on a common black tablet, and have a very sobering effect on an esthetic mind, but which, in the form above described, even ornament the church and fully make up for the want of pictures by Raphael. Such progress delights me infinitely, since I, as a Protestant ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... must admit, however, that the very name of Luther might have offended Roman Catholics. He was represented to us as a perfect saint, almost as inspired and infallible. His hymns sung in church seemed to us little different from the Psalms of David, and I well remember what a shock it gave me when at Oxford, much later in life, I heard Luther spoken of like any other mortal, nay, as a heretic, and a most dangerous heretic too. When I was a boy I remember that in some places the same building had to be used for Protestant ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... true," said he, "for I have had trouble enough with guests here lately, not as honest as you. Why, sir," said he, filling my mug, "only yesterday there came here such a surly-faced varlet as you never saw, who whined and sang psalms as he drank my ale; and then when the time came to pay, told me to score it to one Captain Merriman, in whose sendee he was, and who would come and pay it presently. I ask you, sir, how would you ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... perish and be damned. But he must pursue this course in order to lead us to repentance; otherwise we would never inquire about his Word and will. And if we seek grace, he is ready to help us up again, to grant us forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit, and eternal life. The Psalms and the Prophets here and there speak of this. "Jehovah hath chastened me sore; but he hath not given me over unto death," Ps 118, 18. "Jehovah raiseth up them that are bowed down," ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... his day, as of Bunyan's not long before, delighted. The preaching of the time did nothing more for young Carey than for the rest of England and Scotland, whom the parish church had not driven into dissent or secession. But he could not help knowing the Prayer-Book, and especially its psalms and lessons, and he was duly confirmed. The family training, too, was exceptionally scriptural, though not evangelical. "I had many stirrings of mind occasioned by being often obliged to read books of a religious character; and, having been accustomed from my infancy ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... musicians, too, among us. True, merry beggars, indeed, that, being within the reach of the lash for singing libellous songs at London, were fain to fly into one cover, and here they sing all our poets' ditties. They can sing anything, most tunably, sir, but psalms. What they may do hereafter, under a triple tree, is much expected; but they live very civilly and ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Paraphrase on the Book of Job; the Songs of Moses, Deborah and David; the ii. viii. ciii. cxiv, cxlviii. Psalms. Four chapters of Isaiah, and the third of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... God for the wickedness of man which lay so heavy on creation. The gaunt troopers riding at ease with swinging legs and swaying stirrups—and singing now a refrain from Ronsard, and now one of those verses of Marot's psalms which all the world had sung three decades before—wore their most lamb-like aspect. Behind them Madame St. Lo chattered to Suzanne of a riding mask which had not been brought, or planned expedients, if nothing sufficiently ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... they are not likely to have preserved what they did not appreciate and could not read: the libraries they founded were for bibles, missals and prayer-books: the schools they established were for teaching children to read the Testament and prayer book, and to sing hymns and psalms, while the ancient manuscripts they transcribed were, at best, the hagiological productions of the Fathers of the ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... With these words Jesus prefaced one of His most impressive discourses. The mention of shepherd and sheep must have brought to the minds of His hearers many of the oft-quoted passages from prophets and psalms.[874] The figure is an effective one, and all the more so when we consider the circumstances under which it was used by the Master. Pastoral conditions prevailed in Palestine, and the dignity of the shepherd's vocation was very generally recognized. By specific prophecy ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... sand and shingle? They could not keep house on the waves, any more than the gulls! Those who still held their religious assemblies in the cave called the Baillies' Barn, met often, read and sang the comminatory psalms more than any others, and prayed much against the wiles and force of their enemies both temporal and spiritual; while Mr Crathie went every Sunday to Church, grew redder in the nose, and hotter in ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... repeat catechisms, psalms, hymns, and portions of Scripture. I accustomed them also to pass a kind of free conversational examination, according to their age and ability, in those subjects by which I hoped to see them ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... considered the legitimate successor of Mendelssohn, whose friend he had been for more than twenty years. He resembled his master in many respects, though he lacked both his genius and his sympathy. Mendelssohn translated the Pentateuch and the Psalms into German, Friedlaender translated the Haftarot (selections from the Prophets) and the prayer book. Mendelssohn encouraged the publication of the Meassef; he did likewise, and contributed several articles to the journal. ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... cattle-rustlin'," he said, coming to the point at once. "It's got to quit, an' it's right up to us to see it does quit. I ain't come here like a politician, nor a sky-pilot to talk the rights an' wrongs of things. It's not in my line ladlin' out psalms an' things. Ther's folks paid fer that sort o' hogwash. It's jest been decided to run a gang o' vigilantes over this district, an' every feller called upon's expected to roll up prompt. I've been around an' located twelve of the boys from the ranges. I want eight more. With me ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... stay with me, Theodora! Is the dull heaven Gaunt prates of, with its psalms and crowns, better than my love? Will you be happier there than here?"—holding her close, that she might feel the strong throb of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... Mrs. Lightbody, "but what can a body do? Jean maun baith sing her psalms and busk her cockernony the gate the gudeman likes, and nae ither gate; for he's maister and mair at hame, I can tell ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... old men, and children, were joined two or three pilgrims, surprised on their journey by the invasion; a few monks, and a priest. The pilgrims carried a staff, a gourd hung at the belt, and they chanted psalms in a plaintive voice: one came from the Ukraine, another from the Yellow sea, and a third from the Finland provinces. This last, who was an aged man, carried at his waist a little padlocked collecting-box, ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... with a black pall in the middle of the aisle—the cure in a black satin vestment; all the congregation in black. I went out before the end of the service. All the black draperies and the black kneeling figures and the funeral psalms were so inexpressibly sad and dreary. I was glad to get out into the sunshine and to the top of the hill, where the cemetery gates stood wide open and the sun was streaming down on all the green graves with their fresh flowers and plants. Soon we heard the ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... volume, he turned to me and remarked, "This looks a rare edition, Mr. Stevens; don't you think so? I do not remember having seen it before," and raised the bid to 5s. I replied that I had little doubt of its rarity, though comparatively a late edition of the Psalms, and at the same time gave Mr. Wilkinson a sixpenny nod. Thenceforward a "spirited competition" arose between Mr. Lilly and myself, until finally the lot was knocked down to Stevens for 19s.' The volume had ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... souls. All Indo-European antiquity had placed paradise in the beginning; all its poets had wept a vanished golden age. Israel placed the age of gold in the future. The perennial poesy of religious souls, the Psalms, blossomed from this exalted piety, with their divine and melancholy harmony. Israel became truly and specially the people of God, while around it the pagan religions were more and more reduced, in Persia and Babylonia, to an official charlatanism, in Egypt and Syria to a gross idolatry, and ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... 1868 he was Hulsean Lecturer, and Lady Margaret's Preacher in 1874-5. From 1867 to 1872 he was third cursal prebendary of S. David's Cathedral. From 1874 to 1876 he was one of the Whitehall preachers. The Dean is the author of "The Book of Psalms, a New Translation with Notes, Critical and Exegetical;" Hulsean Lectures on "Immortality"; a volume of Sermons; occasional Sermons; Articles in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of the Bible; Contemporary Review; Good Words, &c. And he is a member of the Company engaged ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... the Bible is that it is a Universal Human Document. The world is based upon sentiment—i.e., the personality of man and his feelings brought to bear upon facts. It is also the world's dynamic force. Now, the books of the Bible—especially, perhaps, the magical, beautiful Psalms—are the most tender and sentimental (the word has been misused, of course) that were ever written. They express the thoughts and feelings of generations of men who always did express their thoughts and feelings, and thought ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... old man kept on pacing the room to and fro, now humming psalms softly, now impressively instructing his daughter how to behave with the bridegroom. And then he also counted something on his ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... there, and Harold did not stand up throughout the whole service, but kept his hands locked over his brow, and knelt on. Perhaps he heard little more, from the ringing of those words in his ears, for he moved no more, nor looked up, through prayers or psalms, or anything else, until the brief ceremony was entirely over, and I touched him; and then he looked up, and his eyes were swimming and streaming ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out at the Zion Gate, and looked at the so-called tomb of David. I had been reading all the morning in the Psalms, and his history in Samuel and Kings. "Bring thou down Shimei's hoar head to the grave with blood," are the last words of the dying monarch as recorded by the history. What they call the tomb is now a crumbling old mosque; from which Jew and Christian are excluded ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this and similar depreciatory opinions, it may be pointed out that one does not look in these extra-Danielic stories for such a knowledge of the human heart as is displayed in the Psalms, nor for such knowledge of the Godhead as is revealed in St. John's Gospel. If we look for fully developed doctrine of this kind, we shall no doubt be disappointed. But we do find religious teaching after the tenor of the old covenant, such as might be expected ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... that mounted guard upon the battlements had filled the neighbourhood with their mementoes—broken tobacco-pipes for the most part, and that in a surprising plenty, but also metal buttons from their coats. There were times when I thought I could have heard the pious sound of psalms out of the martyrs' dungeons, and see the soldiers tramp the ramparts with their glinting pipes, and the dawn rising behind them out of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inference. The Battle of Gibeon is spirited again—but you sacrifice it in last stanza to the Song at Bethlehem. Is it quite orthodox to do so. The first was good, you suppose, for that dispensation. Why set the word against the word? It puzzles a weak Christian. So Watts's Psalms are an implied censure on David's. But as long as the Bible is supposed to be an equally divine Emanation with the Testament, so long it will stagger weaklings to have them set in opposition. Godiva is delicately touch'd. I have always thought it a beautiful story characteristic of old English times. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... he gave every one of them a hassock and a common-prayer book: and at the same time employed an itinerant singing-master, who goes about the country for that purpose, to instruct them rightly in the tunes of the psalms, upon which they now very much value themselves, and indeed out-do most of the country churches ...
— English Satires • Various
... comes to read the Service, what do you think he found? Why, there was a man's thigh-bone, large as life, stuck in the middle of the big Prayer-Book at the Psalms for the day. Then, when he opens the Bible to read the lessons, blessed if there wasn't a coffin-plate, worn as thin as a sheet of paper, marking the place, Then he goes into the pulpit, and the ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... he, 'and what my opponent has said about me is true enough, but I'm always the same. I don't profess religion when I run for office, and then turn around and associate with bad people when the campaign's over. I'm no hypocrite. I don't sing many psalms. Neither does my opponent; and, talking about singing, I'd just like to hear my friend who is running against me sing the song—for the benefit of this audience—I heard him sing the night after he was nominated. I ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... continued after a pause, during which we walked in silence towards the spot where we had left our comrades—"it's a curious fact that wherever the missionaries get a footin' all these things come to an end at once, an' the savages take to doin' each other good and singin' psalms, just like Methodists." ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... they could make the marble live. Some half-dozen of priests, with red copes (I presume it was a martyr's day, for on such days the Church's dress is red), ranged in a pew near the altar, were singing psalms. Whether the good men were thinking of their dinner, I knew not; but they yawned portentously, wrung their hands with an air of helplessness, and looked at us as if they half expected that we would volunteer to do duty for an hour or so in their stead. A bishop ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... said a solemn voice at the door—"and what's it saying in Scripture?—'If any provide not for his own house he is worse than an infidel.' But the Lord is my shield. What for should I defend myself? I am a worm and no man, saith the Psalms." ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... who is in such wretched plight that he sells poison to Romeo in spite of a Draconian law, gives us another unflattering picture of a tradesman; and when Falstaff declares, "I would I were a weaver; I could sing psalms or anything," we have a premature reflection on the Puritan, middle-class conscience and religion. In "As You Like It," Shakespeare came near drawing a pastoral sketch of shepherds and shepherdesses on conventional lines. If he failed to do so, it was as ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... alas! my Stock is exhausted, and I must send them away grieved and disappointed.—Permit me, Sir, to be an Advocate with you, and, by your Means, with your generous Friends in their Behalf. The Books I principally want for them are, Watts' Psalms and Hymns, and Bibles. The two first they cannot be supplied with any other Way than by a Collection, as they are not among the Books which your Society give away. I am the rather importunate for a good ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... verse: "And He said unto them, these are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the psalms concerning Me. Then opened He their understanding that they ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... and smiled-"with a book of Chronicles, and a book of Proverbs, and a book of Psalms, and a ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... seeking for is Psalms 68, 31, 'Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God,' under which name all that part of Africa inhabited by negroes may be comprehended, and that these are the people here intended is clear from Jer. 13, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... "These are my words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me." ...
— His Life - A Complete Story in the Words of the Four Gospels • William E. Barton, Theodore G. Soares, Sydney Strong
... creature's signature, let him tell himself that one of the kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate his lodging. There may be better pictures in the National Gallery; but not a painter among the generations had a better heart. Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms tell us, is the death of his saints. It had need to be precious; for it is very costly, when by the stroke, a mother is left desolate, and the peace-maker, and peace- looker, of a whole society is laid in the ground with ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... When I was a boy I had to go to church. Our old preacher faithfully urged us for hours at a time to get ready for heaven, a glorious place away up in space where all wore crowns and there wasn't a Democrat in town, everybody played psalms on big gold harps, and every day was Sunday. I early learned to hate heaven and look on hell as my only home. Now you come along, rub hell off the map, and threaten me with a heaven here on earth worse than the old one. Hell would be a ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... apple, green, red, and white, Sun of his day and his night— The apple allied to the thorn, Child of the rose. Porches untrod of forest houses All before him, all day long, "Yankee Doodle" his marching song; And the evening breeze Joined his psalms of praise As he sang the ways ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... their livelihood it is to be thought and foreseen (i.e., provided) that they live in good manners under ecclesiastical rules, and sing psalms and keep wakes and hold their hearts and tongues and bodies clean from all forbidden [things] to Almighty God. But, as to those living in common life, what have we to say how they deal their alms, or exercise hospitality, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... said nothing. They saw the lights of evening, and heard lugubrious songs coming toward them. And then, like spectres chased by the wind, appeared the black penitents. The crucifix was before them. They were Brothers of Mercy, holding torches, singing psalms on the way to the cemetery. In accordance with the Italian custom, the cortege marched quickly. The crosses, the coffin, the banners, seemed to leap on the deserted quay. Jacques and Therese stood against the wall in order that the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... glitter of chivalry there is but the sombre homespun of Puritan peasants. In place of the "long-drawn aisle and fretted vault" of Gothic cathedral there is but the rude log meeting-house and schoolhouse. Instead of Christmas merriment there is only the noise of axe and hammer or the dreary droning of psalms. It seems a history bleak and barren of poetic inspiration, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... valet, to Marot's adversary, Sagon, is spirited in its insolence. L'Enfer is a satiric outbreak of indignation suggested by his imprisonment in the Chatelet on the charge of heresy. His versified translation of forty-nine Psalms added to his glory, and brought him the honour of personal danger from the hostility of the Sorbonne; but to attempt such a translation is to aim at what is impossible. His gift to French poetry is especially a gift of finer art—firm and delicate expression, felicity in rendering a ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... Monkbarns ca' the Refractory" [meaning probably Refectory], "and so awa to the Prior's ain house. It's like he could use it to listen what the monks were saying at meal-time,and then he might come ben here and see that they were busy skreighing awa wi' the psalms doun below there; and then, when he saw a' was right and tight, he might step awa and fetch in a bonnie lass at the cove yonderfor they were queer hands the monks, unless mony lees is made on them. But our folk were at great pains lang syne to big up the passage in some parts, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... blessed man, the Archbishop John", says a later ecclesiastical historian,[56] "opened the gates of the city, 5 March, 493, which Odovacar had closed, and went forth with crosses and thuribles and the Holy Gospels, seeking peace. While the priests and the rest of the clergy round him intoned the psalms, he, falling prostrate on the ground, obtained that which he desired. He welcomed the new King coming from the East, and peace was granted unto him, including not only the citizens of Ravenna, but all the other Romans[57], for whom the ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... felicitous way of introducing a poet, nor can we say that Mr. Smith's poems are distinguished by either fire or culture. He has a placid, pleasant way of writing, and, indeed, his verses cannot do any harm, though he really should not publish such attempts at metrical versions of the Psalms ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the Knight and his nephew reverently received at the door, and conducted across the hall to the chapel, where the parish Priest, Father Cyril, and some of the neighbouring clergy had been chanting psalms since morning light. On the way Sir Eustace held some conference with the chief, Brother Michael, who had come prepared to assist in conveying Arthur, if possible, to Glastonbury, but was very glad to find that ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old songs and psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely odds and ends and ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Bishop was present, but did nothing except to pronounce the benediction. In America the sermon is the principal thing; but here all this magnificent ceremonial of prayer and chanted responses and psalms and anthems was the setting to a short, meagre discourse, which would not have been considered of any account among the elaborate intellectual efforts of New England ministers. While this was going on, the light came through the stained glass windows and fell upon the congregation, tingeing them ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... story land of childhood. In Germany every child passes through fairyland, but there was no such land in Josiah Franklin's tallow shop, except when the busy man sometimes played the violin in the inner room and sang psalms to the music, usually in ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... close! The day approaches which shall discompose All earthly sects, the elements shall blend In utter ruin, and with joy shall send Just spirits to their spheres in heaven's repose. The Highest comes in Holy Land to hold His sovran court and synod sanctified, As all the psalms and prophets have foretold: The riches of his grace He will spread wide Through his own realm, that seat and chosen fold Of ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... a clean heart, O God.' 'A broken and a contrite heart; a broken and a contrite heart,' was her continual cry till she died with these words on her lips, 'A broken and a contrite heart Thou wilt not despise.' And, thus, with the most penitential of David's penitential Psalms in her mouth, and with the holy candle of her Church in her hand, Teresa of Jesus went forth from her banishment ...
— Santa Teresa - an Appreciation: with some of the best passages of the Saint's Writings • Alexander Whyte
... These conditions provided a rich soil for the propagation of the crowd-mind when, in the eleventh century, flagellation, a voluntary self-scourging, was preached by the monks. Substituting flagellation for reciting penitential psalms was advocated by the reformers. A scale was drawn up, making one thousand strokes equivalent to ten psalms, or fifteen thousand to the entire psalter. This craze spread by leaps—and crowds. Flagellant fraternities sprang up. Priests carrying banners led through the streets great processions reciting ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... meeting — Eloquent sermon of the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw on the Heavenly Vision; release of woman from bondage of centuries, crucifixion of reformers, the visions of all ages — Miss Anthony opens the Council — Mrs. Stanton's address; psalms of women's lives in a minor key, sympathy as a civil agent powerless until coined into law, women have been mere echoes of men — Council demands all employments shall be open to women, equal pay for equal work, a single standard ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... even if folks has ben through seas o' trouble, they needn't be everlastin'ly spittin' up salt brine. 'Passin' through the valley of sorrow they make it full o' fountings;' that's what the Psalms ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... established for ever before thee; thy throne shall be established for ever" (2 Sam. vii. 16). We know that princes of the family of David succeeded one another on the throne for 450 years, until the Jews were carried into captivity; but we learn from the Psalms that it had been revealed to David himself that this promise was not to be fulfilled in any such earthly and temporal manner. And his faith and hopes are expressed continually in glowing words, describing a Kingdom of Messiah, which should be universal and without end, ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... of the duke of Bavaria. His books were burnt at the gates of the church; and on the 6th of July, he was led to the suburbs of Constance, to be burnt alive. On his arrival at the place of execution, he fell on his knees, sung several portions of the Psalms, looked steadfastly towards heaven, and repeated these words: "Into thy hands, O Lord! do I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O most good ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... his appearans reglar at church—me carrying a handsome large black marocky Prayer-book and Bible, with the psalms and lessons marked out with red ribbings; and you'd have thought, as I graivly laid the volloms down before him, and as he berried his head in his nicely brushed hat, before service began, that such a pious, proper ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... child, and have we not been told that precocity does not fulfill its promises? But this boy was an exception. He was incarnated into a family that prized music, poetry, philosophy, and yet held fast to the Christian faith. His father set psalms to music, his sister wrote madrigals, and his mother played sweet strains on a harp to waken him at morningtide. The entire household united in a devotion to poetry and art. Possibly this atmosphere of high thinking was too rarefied for real comfort—the gravity of the situation being sustained ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... emancipating effect upon prevalent taste; but a more positive influence came into play through Herder's warm predilection for the popular songs, which had been so long neglected, and for all that rises, as in the Psalms, Homer, Shakespeare, Ossian, from primitive sources of feeling, and finds spontaneous expression in poetry. The effect of his pioneering was marked, especially upon Goethe. Herder understood the revulsion of feeling from the unnatural restraint ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... last something of what the simplicity and sincerity of the first Christian feeling must have been! No 'allowances' to make for scandalous mistranslations and misquotations—no foolish legends, or unedifying tales of barbarous people—no cursing psalms—no old Semitic nonsense about God resting on the seventh day, delivered in the solemn sing-song which makes it not ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Psalms of David, translated into Lyric Verse: Proposed as an Essay, supplying the Perspicuity and Coherence according to the Modern Art of Poetry; not known to have been attempted before in any Language. With a Preface containing some Observations of the great and general Defectiveness of ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... and in visiting his family tomb; and who, when he took his wife on a pleasure trip to Dorchester "to eat cherries and rasberries," spent his entire day within-doors reading that cheerful book, Calvin on Psalms;—in the house of such a pleasure-seeker but small provision was made for the entertainment or amusement of his children. They were sometimes led solemnly to the house of some old, influential, or pious person, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... squabbled—he's not quite fiery enough, the beloved Barthrop! He's awfully judicious, but he must have a lead. He's a submissioner, I'm afraid, as a witty prelate once said! You know the two sides of the choir, Decani and Cantoris as they are called. Decani always begin the psalms and say the versicles, Cantoris always respond. People are always one or the other, and Barthrop is a ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... forget the chateau en Espagne he has been dreaming of; in Spain, however, they build them of solider materials." The people did not shew so much joy at the Dauphin's recovery. They looked upon him as a devotee, who did nothing but sing psalms. They loved the Duc d'Orleans, who lived in the capital, and had acquired the name of the King of Paris. These sentiments were not just; the Dauphin only sang psalms when imitating the tones of one of the choristers of the chapel. The people afterwards acknowledged their error, and ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... lands do." With few attendants, he writes:—"We are still slowly crawling over the world's crust. Reaching the dominions of the King of Abyssinia, we camped near Ras Alonla, and the priests used to gather at 3 a.m. in knots of two and three and chant for an hour in a wild melodious manner the Psalms of David. Awakened at this unearthly hour no one could help being impressed. Some of them had children who chanted." Again he writes:—"We have just passed a famous convent. The great high priest, who only comes out to meet the King, and who is supposed ...
— General Gordon - Saint and Soldier • J. Wardle
... the spring and early summer following were heavy with rains and great heat. When the Hermit visited his penitent at the feast of Pentecost, she appeared to him so weak and wasted that, when they had recited the Veni, sancte spiritus, and the proper psalms, he taxed her with too great rigour of penitential practices; but she replied that her weakness was not due to an excess of discipline, but that she had brought back from her labours among the sick a heaviness of body which the intemperance of the season no doubt ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... such constant guard, we sat or lay listening of an evening to a most discordant noise caused by the singing of psalms and hymns at the same time at different farms. We sometimes joined in. As a people we ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. "The Freeman's Oath" and an almanac were issued from the Cambridge press in 1639, and in 1640 the first English book printed in America, a collection of the psalms in meter, made by various ministers, and known as the Bay Psalm Book. The poetry of this version was worse, if possible, than that of Sternhold and Hopkins's famous rendering; but it is noteworthy that one of the principal ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... in the temples and elsewhere; because they are composed with such a trick that they proclaim only what the devil commands, and are understood only by those to whom they are addressed. It is well known that the cavern, woods or depths in which the devil hides himself were these chants or psalms which he himself has composed, and which cannot be understood in their true significance except by those who are accustomed to the peculiar ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton
... have always wished for a more happy metrical version than they have yet obtained of the Book of Psalms: this wish the piety of Blackmore led him to gratify; and he produced, 1721, a new version of the psalms of David, fitted to the tunes used in churches; which, being recommended by the archbishops and many bishops, obtained a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... uproarious satire of the pseudo-classicism and the school harmony, counterpoint and "composition" of the nineteenth century; and the music is not less ludicrous than the words. It is a parody of the very kind of music Wagner wrote in his Rienzi days, with sneers at the Jewish composers of psalms. Walther, in wrath, disgust and despair, cries out that he wants to learn how to sing, not ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... girl can put one over on Court, I'll eat my hat; but it's worth trying, for if Court keeps on like this we'll all be buying prayer-books and singing psalms ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... I recalled Mary's first good-night in Edinburgh: that "serenade of 500 rascals with vile fiddles and rebecks;" that singing, "in bad accord," of Protestant psalms by the wet crowd beneath the palace windows, while the fires on Arthur's Seat shot flickering gleams of welcome through the dreary fog. What a lullaby for poor Mary, half Frenchwoman ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... those grand mountains, "excellent with the cedars." Seeing the holy man of Timbuctoo praying with his face towards Mecca, I went down to him, and we conversed for a long time on religious matters. He is tolerably well informed, having read the Books of Moses and the Psalms of David, but, like all Mahommedans, his ideas of religion consist mainly of forms, and its reward is a sensual paradise. The more intelligent of the Moslems give a spiritual interpretation to the nature of the Heaven promised by the Prophet, ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... he continued, "to understand the Lord's enthusiasm for David. I suppose it was the Psalms that did it." ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... lamps trimmed and burning before the pulpits of unmarried preachers. They are really the best women to be found in any church. They never go astray, they are the gentle maiden sisters of all souls, the faded feminine love-psalms of a benighted ministry who wither and grow old without ever suspecting that their hope was marriage no less than it is the hope of the giddiest girl. However, a preacher rarely takes one of them ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... a Psalm," came, after a great struggle for breath. "It was so nice to know Babie was saying her Psalms at night, and thinking ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... now, both very good players—but we had only a short spell of music in the music room on account of a choir practise, for to-morrow; the parson came and took our musicians down to the dining-room to sing over hymns and psalms, verse by verse. I heard the wheeze of the harmonium, and got back to my own chest-lid (sailor term for my own business)—"Every man to his own chest-lid and the cook to the foresheet," is it not a suggestive saying? ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... in those days must have been an interesting performance. When the first settlers came to New England from the old country, they brought with them a few tunes to which they sang all the psalms and hymns. The proper mode of rendering these was through the nose. With the lapse of time and the advent of a new generation, these tunes became jangled together in inextricable confusion. The practice was ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... the psalms and the paeans The shibboleths shift, and the faiths, And the temples that challenged the aeons Are tenanted only by wraiths; Swoon to silence the cymbals and psalters, The worships ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis |
