"Rhythmical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the sounds, creeping slowly like some timid animal, there came into the room a small black figure just visible in the faint starlight. It peered round the edge of the door, hesitated a moment, and then advanced with an odd rhythmical sort of motion. And after the first figure came a second, and after the second a third; and then several entered together, till a whole group of them stood on the floor between Jimbo ...
— Jimbo - A Fantasy • Algernon Blackwood
... of a piece of music is determined by the particular character of the rendering it requires; the question, therefore, comes to this: does the sustained tone, the vocal element, the cantilena predominate, or the rhythmical movement? (Figuration). The conductor should ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... but a number of pieces strung together, a collection of reflections arranged in accordance with aesthetic rules. It is certainly the standard of an artist's greatness to note what he can take in with a single glance and set out in rhythmical form. The infinite profusion of images and incidents in the Homeric epic must force us to admit that such a wide range of vision is next to impossible. Where, however, a poet is unable to observe artistically with a single glance, he usually piles conception on conception, and endeavours ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... the most adventure-fraught thoroughfare in the United States. We could hardly persuade ourselves that we were not passing through some magnificent old estate—of late, perhaps, somewhat fallen into neglect—so perfect was the lawn-like smoothness of the grassy uplands, so rhythmical were the undulations of the slopes, so majestic the natural avenues of enormous oaks, so admirable the diversity of hill and dell, knoll and glade, shrubbery and lawn, forest and park, interspersed with frequent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... on the floor below, the stillness in the cottage was merrily broken by an outburst of dance-music—with a rhythmical thump-thump of feet, keeping time to the cheerful tune. Toff was playing his fiddle; and Toff's boy was dancing ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... capacity, as there had to be ample space for the dancers. Merry groups hovered around the flaming logs, while within the house a fiddle sang its simple and ravishing tunes. Everybody talked and laughed; it was a lively racket of clashing voices and rhythmical feet. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... in a shed beside the house, and fronting the road. I heard the hammers stop plying their continual rhythmical beat. She had seen why they ceased. A rider had come up to the forge and dismounted, leading his horse in to be re-shod. The broad red light of the forge-fire had revealed the face of the rider to Amante, and she apprehended the consequence that ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... sampans with butterfly sails all set are going down stream at racing speed. In striking contrast to these, are the up-stream boats, crawling along at scarcely perceptible pace against the current, in response to the rhythmical movements of a line of men, women, and children harnessed one behind ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... in the book are better known for their work in prose than in poetry: W.E.B. Du Bois whose well-known prose at its best is, however, impassioned and rhythmical; and Benjamin Brawley who is the author, among other works, of one of the best handbooks on the English drama that has yet appeared ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... sight of the bulging child offended him. Ogden Ford was round and blobby and looked overfed. He had the plethoric habit of one to whom wholesome exercise is a stranger and the sallow complexion of the confirmed candy-fiend. Even now, a bare half hour after breakfast, his jaws were moving with a rhythmical, champing motion. ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... positions which it assumed in making an attack upon a portion of decomposed matter were also shown, the movements quite fascinating the observer by their rhythmical character. The supposed action of the flagella in the production of the movements observed was explained, distinct evidence being afforded of a remarkable spiral motion, at least of those behind. The process of fission was illustrated in all its observed stages ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... me after I've been dancing for two hours, while I'm still reeling drunk with the movement, when I've lost my head, when I've got no mind left but only a rhythmical body! It's as bad as making love to someone you've drugged ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... turned from lead to black. Many people were still on the ground grouped about the bases of the trees and holding on. Several such clusters were praying, and in one the Mormon missionary was exhorting. A weird sound, rhythmical, faint as the faintest chirp of a far cricket, enduring but for a moment, but in the moment suggesting to him vaguely the thought of heaven and celestial music, came to his ear. He glanced about him and saw, at ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... big, empty, lonely church, and there and then I delivered my first lecture! I shall never forget the feeling of power and of delight which came upon me as my voice rolled down the aisles, and the passion in me broke into balanced sentences, and never paused for rhythmical expression, while I felt that all I wanted was to see the church full of upturned faces, instead of the emptiness of the silent pews. And as though in a dream the solitude became peopled, and I saw the listening faces and the eager eyes, and as the sentences came unbidden from my lips, and ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... others pushed the body out of their way, and the service went on with the same methodical precision, with neither more nor less haste. In the midst of the projectiles that fell and burst continually the same unvarying rhythmical movements went on uninterruptedly about the gun; the cartridge and shell were introduced, the gun was pointed, the lanyard pulled, the carriage brought back to place; and all with such undeviating regularity that the men ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... He spoke in the rhythmical way of Tennesseans, emphasizing the auxiliary verbs beyond their usual value. After reading the letter he extended his hand. "I am very glad to meet you, sir. I am indeed. Bill, take care of Mr.——" He paused, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... mutilated "Boulak edition," unwisely preferred by the translator) "that Lane has succeeded in preserving" "The measured and finished language Lane chose for his version is eminently fitted to represent the rhythmical tongue of the Arab" (Memoir, p. xxvii.). "The translation itself is distinguished by its singular accuracy and by the marvellous way in which the Oriental tone and colour are retained " (ibid.). The writer has taken scant trouble to read me when he asserts that the Bulak edit was my text, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the sound of a human voice raised in a sort of chant, ghostly and mournful as the sound of the falling dew. As it came, rising and falling, monotonous and rhythmical, the very plain song of desolation, Adams felt his hair lift and his flesh crawl, till one of the porters, springing erect from his crouching position, sent his voice through ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... itself—as a piece of unusual physical energy or as a poem of grace—it is a dead failure as dramatic expression. There is a place for a unique style of walking—it is the circus or the cake-walk; there is a place for surprisingly rhythmical evolutions of arms and legs—it is on the dance floor or the stage. Don't let your agility and grace put your thoughts out ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... melody: and though this is not generally thought requisite in a modern hymn, it is asking nothing extra of a choir that would sing the plain-song tunes; for even if they are sung in unison, they must first be known by heart (otherwise their rhythmical freedom, which defies notation, and is indispensable to their beauty, cannot be approached), and when once a choir has got thus far, the under parts, being phrased with the melody, will easily follow it. An explanation of the notation ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... over in her sleep, leaving him free to rise, and stretch himself exhaustedly; and as he stood looking down upon the night's achievement, upon the rhythmical rise and fall of his wife's breast beneath its light covering, new fires were kindled in the man's deep heart; new intimations of the height and depth, and power of that 'grand impulsion,' which men call Love; and with ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... yuletide. punctuality, regularity, steadiness. V. recur in regular order, recur in regular succession; return, revolve; come again, come in its turn; come round, come round again; beat, pulsate; alternate; intermit. Adj. periodic, periodical; serial, recurrent, cyclical, rhythmical; recurring &c v.; intermittent, remittent; alternate, every other. hourly; diurnal, daily; quotidian, tertian, weekly; hebdomadal^, hebdomadary^; biweekly, fortnightly; bimonthly; catamenial^; monthly, menstrual; yearly, annual; biennial, triennial, &c; centennial, secular; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... version of the Psalter {222} is not that of the Authorized Version of 1611, but that of the Great Bible of 1540. This was retained in the Prayer-book because the people had become familiar with it, and because it is more rhythmical and suited to chanting. The Psalter is divided into sixty portions to be used at Daily Morning and Evening Prayer and is thus designed to be read through once ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... began to a sort of rhythmical accompaniment by Mr. Burdekin, who intoned "Tops advance, retire and cross. Balance at corners. (Very nice, Miss Grimstone!) More 'abandon,' Chawner! Lift the feet more from the floor. Not so high as that! Oh, dear me! that last figure over again. And slide the ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... roam, for long days and nights of glory and of love, for intense hours of emotion and of life lived with exultant desperation. It was a melody that seemed to set the soul of Creation dancing before an ark. The tomtoms accompanied it with an irregular but rhythmical roar which Domini thought was like the deep-voiced shouting of squadrons of ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... softened by distance and water, as they plied up and down the flowing highway. Once a barge went past under the Battersea bank, with music playing in the stern, and Ralph raised himself on his elbow to watch it as it went down the stream with flags flying behind, and the rhythmical throb of the row-locks sounding ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... of the Crusaders, "God wills it!" may listen to hear above the present din and discord, the stern mandate of His laws, bidding the world "Onward! onward!" and catch the rhythmical reply of all its movements, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the drama so adorned was entirely the offspring of popular impulse, in opposition to many rigorous attempts in favour of classical methods, it was at the same time raised above the tone of common expression by the rhythmical mode which it assumed, in a manner decisive of its ideal tendency. It thus displays a combination rare in this kind of poetry: the spirit of an untutored will, embodied in a form the romantic expression of which ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... noise of the stamping was deadened; a man's voice talking to the animals and swearing at them was heard from the rear of the building. A faint tickle grew soon into a clear and continuous jingling, rhythmical with the movements of the horses, now stopping, now resuming in a sudden peal accompanied by the deadened noise of an iron-shod hoof, pawing ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... mile of the gate in the stout picket fence which surrounded our garden as a protection against the invasion of predatory animals, when my horse, Prince, suddenly pricked up his ears, and, looking away to the eastward, whinnied, while at the same moment the rhythmical beat of cantering hoofs came softly to my ear from a considerable distance, floating on the gentle, almost imperceptible, easterly zephyr that happened to be breathing at the moment. Aroused thus from some day-dream into which I had fallen, I glanced up, and, looking in the direction of the sound, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... she heard the plash of oars—rhythmical, steady, and surely very near. For a moment she listened. Then a sort of panic seized her. She remembered the incident of the evening, the hidden boat, Paolo's assertion that it was waiting near ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... verses are repeated or read at many of the library story hours. Lear's nonsense rhymes and certain rhythmical story poems are especially enjoyed by the children. Outlines of stories or selections from books designed to lead to the reading of an entire book are mentioned in connection with Dickens, Kipling, Stevenson, Scott, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... agreement, have been rendered significant of arithmetic numbers. This is the idea on which the Memoria Technica of Dr. Grey proceeds. More appropriately it might have been named Memoria Barbarica, for the dreadful violence done to the most beautiful, rhythmical, and melodious names would, at any rate, have remained as a repulsive expression of barbarism to all musical ears, had the practical benefits of this machinery been all that they profess to be. Meantime these benefits are really none at all. They offer us a mere mockery, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... mio cor n'ha dui.... With all this effort no one is convinced of Falserina's emotion, and her long-winded oration reads like a schoolboy's exercise upon some line of the fourth Aeneid. Yet if we allow the sense of rhythmical melody to intervene between our intellectual perception and Marino's language, we shall still be able to translate these outpourings into something which upon the operatic stage would keep its value. False rhetoric and the inability to stop when enough and more than enough has been said ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... short, snappy sentences, and in a tense, rather high-keyed voice; but once warmed up he swung along in rounded, almost classic periods; and his voice deepened and softened and, as he became yet more absorbed in his subject, grew rhythmical, musical almost, the while his words took on added color ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... parts of Gil Blas as they successively appeared. The work is incomplete, but each several part is excellent and can be appreciated by itself. Borrow has resuscitated a literary form which had been many years abandoned, and he has resuscitated it in no artificial manner—as a rhythmical form is rehabilitated, or as a dilettante re-establishes for a moment the vogue of the roundel or the virelay—but quite naturally as the inevitable setting for a picture which has to include the actors and the observations of the author's vagabond life. To a clear and unprejudiced ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... is one of the loveliest of birds. With his elegant plumage, his rhythmical, undulatory flight, his beautiful song, and his more beautiful soul, he ought to be one of the best beloved, if not one of the most famous; but he has never yet had half his deserts. He is like the chickadee, and yet different. He is not so extremely confiding, nor should I call him merry. ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... "The air is full of love and dreams; we have left the slender moon behind us in Switzerland; here she is nearing her full, and the summer is upon us with all her richness and completeness—the spring of our love has passed." Her voice fell into its rhythmical cadence, as if she were whispering a prophecy inspired by some ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... delighted on hearing him. He possesses the fluency, volubility, and copiousness for which the Wrens are noted, and besides these qualities, and what is rarely found conjoined with them, a wild, sweet, rhythmical cadence that holds you entranced. I shall not soon forget that perfect June day, when, loitering in a low, ancient Hemlock, in whose cathedral aisles the coolness and freshness seemed perennial, the silence ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... discussed by the author is that of the rhythmical variations of level, or "seiches," of deep lakes; he applies the usual formula to Lake Tahoe, and calculates from it the length of a complete longitudinal and of a transverse "seiche;" these are found to be eighteen or nineteen ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... its character with lightning rapidity. It was in turn a ferry-boat—imitation of passengers descending the gangway by rhythmical patting of hand on thwart; a hospital ship chased by a submarine—cormorant's neck and head naturally mistaken for periscope; a destroyer attacking a submarine—said cormorant kindly obliging with quick diving act when approached; a food-ship laden with bananas represented ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... sound now began to attract my attention, and, having turned about, I perceived that behind me was a broken window, in places patched with brown paper; the corner of one sheet of paper was detached, and the rain trickled down upon it with a rhythmical sound. ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... upon which Sardou's play floats,—what is it like? Much of it like shreds and patches of many things with which the operatic stage has long been familiar. There are efforts at characterization by means of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical symbols, of which the most striking, and least original, is a succession of chords which serves as an introduction to the first scene. This and much else came out of Wagner's workshop, and, like all else of the same origin in the score, is impotent because there is no trace of Wagner's ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... by his detestation of what he deemed a fraud, by his dislike for what he heard was Macpherson's private character, and by his prejudice against all unrhymed poetry, whether it was blank verse or rhythmical prose. And yet, his own prose was rhythmical, and often as tumid as the worst bombast in Macpherson. He was too, on the whole, an artificial writer, while the best parts of Ossian are natural. He allowed himself therefore to see distinctly and to characterise ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... disappear, and Tinka threatened with "If I hear one sound out of you—if you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time—You better not, that's all!" Mrs. Babbitt sat over by the piano, making a nightgown and gazing with respect while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the rhythmical wiggling and squeaking ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... I had set myself. The many ordinary insignificant characters whom I have intentionally introduced into the play would have become indistinct, and indistinguishable from one another, if I had allowed all of them to speak in one and the same rhythmical measure. We are no longer living in the days of Shakespeare. Among sculptors there is already talk of painting statues in the natural colors. Much can be said both for and against this. I have ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... stayed on after Hamilton had left, and had for companion Miss Marguerite Whitland, a lady in whose judgment he had a most embarrassing faith. He had given her plenty of work to do, and the rhythmical tap-tap of her typewriter came faintly through the door which separated the ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... very great, consisting not merely of intricate rhyme and assonance, which he has faithfully reproduced, but a text often corrupt and meaning often obscure. He says himself in his preface that "The life-blood of rhythmical translation is this commandment—that a good poem shall not be turned into a bad one;" and this commandment, as far as we can see, he has not broken in a single case, while in some instances, we are bold enough to say, the translation is better than ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... trained all his life to rhythmical drunkenness. Four months or so had generally elapsed between his bouts—sometimes six; it all depended on the length of the voyage. Six months now elapsed before he felt even an inclination to look at the rum cask, that tiny dark spot away on ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Hawaiian poet; and, besides translating some of our best hymns, has composed enough to make up the greater part of a bulky volume, which is said to be of great merit. He says that the language lends itself very readily to rhythmical expression. He was indefatigable in his youth, and was four times let down the pali by ropes to preach in the Waimanu Valley. Neither he nor his wife can mount a horse now, and it is very dreary for them, as the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to say it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of rhythmical crashing—a crash every time the jaws bite off ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... has been well observed, that every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose. The merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way "sounding always the increase of his winning." Every prose-writer has more or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets, who, when deprived of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle of modulation left in ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... was looking behind him. He could not see the pursuing boat, but he could hear the sizzle of foam under her keel as she slipped through the water, and the rhythmical ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... awhile lost in ease when I heard a footstep approaching and the rhythmical rustling of drapery, and knew eyes were now regarding me that I feared, yet much ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... of his knowledge betrayed the intimate acquaintance which he had gained of the affairs of the State during his four years in the Senate. His message caught the inspiration of this fresh and joyous maturity. It was written, too, in the easy, graceful style, rhythmical and subdued in expression, which afterward contributed to his extreme charm as an orator. From the first, Seward was an ardent optimist, and this first message is that of noble youth, delighting in ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... seen for the pushing, jostling crowd, but everywhere the terrible, silent war went on until there came a time when fighting ceased; for each must look out for himself. They seemed to be in an immense cave, and the tide was broken into cross-currents rushing violently to the accompaniment of rhythmical thunder. They were shaken, jostled, pushed about and pushed together, hundreds of the smaller creatures dying from the pressure. Then there was a moment of comparative quiet, during which fighting was resumed, and there could be seen the swiftly flying walls of a large ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... proffered the book. Then, as the juryman took the volume in his hand, the voice of the usher resounded through the court like that of a priest intoning some refrain or antiphon—an effect that was increased by the rhythmical and archaic ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... music;—also in dancing."—Universal and Critical Dict. In verse, the proportion which forms rhythm—that is, the chime of quantities—is applied to the sounds of syllables. Sounds, however, may be considered as a species of motion, especially those which are rhythmical or musical.[487] It seems more strictly correct, to regard rhythm as a property of poetic numbers, than to identify it with them. It is their proportion or modulation, rather than the numbers themselves. According to Dr. Webster, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the critical instinct which he brought to the task of creation. His theory of verse is simple, in fact too simple to account for all of the facts. The aim of poetry, according to Poe, is not truth but pleasure—the rhythmical creation of beauty. Poetry should be brief, indefinite, and musical. Its chief instrument is sound. A certain quaintness or grotesqueness of tone is a means for satisfying the thirst for supernal beauty. Hence the musical lyric is to Poe the only true type of poetry; a long poem does ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... of heralding drops, and then a steady, rhythmical drumming on the shake roof. The man smiled, with that ineffable delight in the music which no one really knows but the ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... briefly as a 'master-builder,' had my ear been able to endure a sentence ending with two consecutive trochees, and each of those trochees ending with the same syllable er. Ah, reader! I would the gods had made thee rhythmical, that thou mightest comprehend the thousandth part of my labors in the evasion of cacophon. Phil. has a general dislike to the Puseyites, though he is too learned to be ignorant, (as are often the Low-Church, or Evangelical, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... breathe the same fierce, proud, cruel spirit. In the diction there is very little art. Rhyme, although it is known to the mountaineers, is seldom used, and their poetry is, as a rule, nothing more than rhythmical or blank verse broken into irregular stanzas of from seven to eleven metrical feet. This kind of verse they improvise with great readiness and facility. It seems to be the form of expression which their stronger feelings naturally take. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... leaned back and closed her eyes. The warm, sweet air, with its odor of earth, wooed her; the little breeze that made so faint a rustle in the ilex leaves touched her cheek like quick, fluttering kisses. The rhythmical drops from the fountain seemed falling to the music of an old order of things, some simple, elemental way of loving that made harmony through all life. Could love, that had meant only duty, have anything to do with this great ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... another and a deeper reason for emotion: it seemed she had been engaged to a young poet whose verses, to her untaught and girlish judgment, seemed inspired by draughts of the true Helicon, and whose rhythmical raptures had stirred her maiden heart to ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... following rhyme in concert they struck alternately the upper and lower ends of the sticks together, occasionally half inverting them and thus striking the upper ends together in an underhand way. They struck once for each accented syllable of the following rhyme, making it a very rhythmical game. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... the task of keeping a look-out for the preliminary symptoms of mumps to have leisure to bestow much attention on this phenomenon. The discomfort it caused was not sufficient to keep him awake, and presently he turned on his side and began to fill the room with a rhythmical snoring. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... these passages, notwithstanding the decline of the style, retain the impress of the great master of language. But the equably diffused grace is gone; instead of the endless variety of the early dialogues, traces of the rhythmical monotonous cadence of the Laws begin to appear; and already an approach is made to the technical language of Aristotle, in the frequent use of the words 'essence,' 'power,' 'generation,' 'motion,' 'rest,' ...
— Sophist • Plato
... shutter and revealed herself. But apart from maidenly shrinkings, familiarity with war had made her realize the sacred duties of a sentry, and she had remained in discreet seclusion, awake until his spell was over. But now the rhythmical beat of the heavy boots kept her from sleeping and would have irritated her nerves intolerably had not her sound common sense told her that the stout fellow who wore them was protecting her from the Hun, together with a million or so ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... in many other places. Artificial as this arrangement sounds when analyzed, it is a natural procedure for one who wished to impress on his hearers a series of philosophic propositions without the aid of writing, and I can imagine that these rhythmical formulae uttered in that grave and pleasant voice which the Buddha is said to have possessed, seemed to the leisurely yet eager groups who sat round him under some wayside banyan or in the monastery park, to be not tedious ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... you'll wake up some day with the feeling that the world is much more beautiful than it was when you were young, that a landscape has a closer meaning, that the sky is more companionable, that outdoor colour and motion are more splendidly audacious and beautifully rhythmical than you had ever thought. That's true. The gently snow-clad little pines out my window are more to me than the whole Taft Administration. They'll soon be better than the year's dividends. And the few great craftsmen in words who can confirm this feeling—they ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... great announcement. It was his habit to chant in his bath what Pollyooly believed to be poetry; and it is improbable that an observant child of twelve, who had passed the seven standards at Muttle Deeping school, could have been mistaken in a matter of that kind. At any rate his chanting was rhythmical. The habit may have borne witness to the goodness of his conscience, or it may not (it may merely have been a by-product of an excellent digestion), but that morning it seemed to her that he chanted more loudly and with a ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... them and ourselves. Now some persons have the faculty of discerning spirits, that is, of clothing them in bodily form, and others have not; but of those who have it all do not discern them in the same form, or clothe them in the same body. The form will be rhythmical to some, to other some audible, to others yet again odorous, "aromatic pain," or bliss. These modes are no matter, they are accidents of our state. They cause the form to be relative, just as the conception of God is; but the substance is constant. I have seen innumerable ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... Madeira, Tapajos, and Purus subside, the Negro, fed by the spring rains in Guiana and Venezuela, presses downward till the central stream rolls back the now sluggish affluents from the south. There is, therefore, a rhythmical correspondence in the rise and fall of the arms of the Amazon, so that this great fresh-water sea sways alternately north and south; while the onward swell in the grand trunk is a progressive undulation eastward. As the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... slight, and the pitch grew to be the characteristic feature of the accent. Consequently, when Virgil read a passage of the AEneid to Augustus and Livia the effect on the ear of the comparatively unstressed language, with the rhythmical rise and fall of the pitch, would have been very different from that made by the conversation of the average man, with the accented syllables more ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... spiritual faculty is best made through its instinctive joy in the life of animals and flowers, the clouds and the winds. Here it may learn very easily that wonder and adoration, which are the gateways to the presence of God. In simple forms of verse, music, and rhythmical movement it can be encouraged—as the Salvation Army has discovered—to give this happy adoration a natural, dramatic, and rhythmic expression: for the young child, as we know, reproduces the mental condition of the primitive, and primitive ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... and her spirits, which had been somewhat depressed at the parting from her father and Reynolds, revived. There was nothing which thrilled and stimulated her so much as riding on Midnight through the great wilderness. Her lithe, supple body swayed in a rhythmical motion as the horse sped on his way. Riding was one of the few attractions which made the northland tolerable, and she wondered what she would ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... her place in the ceremony of peace, now about to take place, were repeated. Then along a white path of moonlight, in their Indian costumes, the five girls led by Polly, swaying her pipes of peace slowly above her head, came dancing with a queer, rhythmical movement of their bodies, arms ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... sublimity of the passage, frequently differ as to its precise meaning. A metrical translation of these odes in English is apt to remind us of the metrical versions of the Hebrew Psalms. A part of one chorus in Aeschylus, which forms a distinct picture, has been given in rhythmical prose; three choruses of Sophocles and two of Euripides have, not without ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... arbitrary barrier between the continents is disappearing, and the classic traits of the West are being mingled with those of the subtle, sensuous, spiritual East. It is as if the art of music, with its new scales, its new harmonies, its new coloring, its new rhythmical life, were being revolutionized, as if it were returning to its beginnings. It is as if some of the original impulse to make music were reawakening. And so, through this confusion, Berlioz has suddenly flamed with significance. For he himself ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... lyre, 'harmony' and rhythm alone are employed; also in other arts, such as that of the shepherd's pipe, which are essentially similar to these. In dancing, rhythm alone is used without 'harmony'; for even dancing imitates character, emotion, and action, by rhythmical movement. ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... (tacitus precator totum, vi. A. 55), which was a common practice also at Rome, and is believed to be characteristic of the magical spell;[391] and except in the case of the first prayer, which is addressed to the chief deity Jupiter Grabovius, it is accompanied by some kind of dancing or rhythmical movement (tripodatio).[392] Thus in outward form this ritual seems to show but little advance on the Roman prayer of the Arvales, and indeed it may in substance go back to a time as remote as that in which the latter ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... Kilian Krautl. "How can a man be decent, who has such a foolish name?'' said his would-be employer. Then again, a certain Augustinian monk, who was a favorite in a large city, owed his popularity partly to his rhythmical ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... boys throwing stones will always differ more or less in their attitudes, as will two billiard-players. The familiar fact that each individual has a characteristic gait, illustrates the point still better. The rhythmical motion of the leg is simple, and on the Cuvierian hypothesis, should react on the body in some uniform way. But in consequence of those slight differences of structure which consist with identity of species, no two individuals ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... and half upon the floor, seemingly dazed at what had occurred; and then he turned upon his heel and strode out of the room between the two spearmen of the guard, who raised their weapons as he passed, and followed him with a quick, rhythmical tread down the ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... one afternoon, to the big lake at the headwaters of a wilderness river. Above the roar of rapids far behind, and the fret of the current near at hand, the rhythmical clunk, clunk of the poles and the lap, lap of my little canoe as she breasted the ripples were the only sounds that broke the forest stillness. We were silent, as men always are to whom the woods have spoken their ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... she gave this pretext for her visit, her ferret-like eyes were making the tour of the apartment. Besides, she did not insist, speaking immediately afterward of her son Pascal, on hearing the rhythmical noise of the pestle, which had not ceased in ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... was of the old-fashioned swingingly sorrowful sort, and it would be hard to say how long it was after that before the boy could hear the air played without a recurrence of the bitterness of that moment. The rhythmical pathos of the violins was in such accord with a faint sound of weeping which he heard near him, presently, that for a little while he believed this sound to be part of the music and part of himself. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... credulities the poets of Greece and Rome had versified the same old-time beliefs. Before Rome was founded the Etruscan race, who flourished in what is now modern Tuscany, had the Books of the Tages fashioned in rhythmical mould, from which their traditions, ordinances, and religious teachings were drawn. They believed in genii as fervently as a Persian. Here is one Etruscan legend ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... this not altogether gratuitous description of a spot celebrated in America for its picturesque situation and horrors, I resume the rhythmical tale of ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... body acts rhythmically. There is not only rhythmical alternation of the lower limbs and of the movements of the weight from foot to foot but all the lines of the body ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... tired that night, and it was a luxury to lie flat upon my back on the beach, listening to the rhythmical thud of the big, long wave at my feet, and the song of the stars overhead. There is something unspeakably tranquillizing in the studded dome of heaven; there is also something unspeakably sad. It bends over the struggling, yearning, aching human heart, as a mother, who has ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... had worked! Not alone in the daytime, but also sometimes, when orders were heavy, far into the night. It was strange for one, passing along that deserted street at midnight, to hear issuing from the black shop of Boaz Negro the rhythmical tap-tap-tap of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... volume of his blasphemy. So she knew the present occasion merited attention. A long canoe, with paddles flashing back the rays of the westering sun, was crossing the current from above and urging in for the eddy. Hay Stockard watched it intently. Three men rose and dipped, rose and dipped, in rhythmical precision; but a red bandanna, wrapped about the head of one, caught ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... put in the doctor. "What did they want with dancing? The directness of their customs made such artificial devices for personal contact quite unnecessary. It's only our Victorian austerity which makes these rhythmical embraces so attractive. Puritan America loves ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... figures both here and on the back suggests that Sir Edward Burne Jones must have made a study of this magnificent dalmatic, from which it would seem that much of his inspiration might have been drawn. The composition is singularly restful and rhythmical. The little black outlines to the white silk faces, and to the glowing figures, give this work a peculiarly decorative quality, not often seen in other embroideries of the period. It is unique and one of the most valuable examples of its art in the world. It is now in the Treasury of ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... my window and look out upon the strip of beach, the hauled-up fishing boats and the nets hung out to dry looming vague in the starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a few yards beyond; and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that has recurred all ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... following compartment, the mess-room and sleeping quarters for the crew. Solid, rhythmical snores were issuing from the cook's open mouth as he lay sprawled out on his bunk; the smell of coffee hovered in the air; the cabin was quiet and comfortable with an atmosphere of sleep and rest. The radio-man, reading ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... find a name of such distinction as the late Laureate's formally opposed to Tyrwhitt, and committed to the opinion which may seem to have been Dryden's, that the verse of Chaucer is "rhythmical, not metrical." This hardly self-explicating distinction of Dr Geo. Fred. Nott's, Southey in his Life of Cowper has explained in set terms—a verse for which the number of beats or accents is ruled is rhythmical—for example, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... The rhythmical, accustomed chug of the engines had fallen to quarter speed, leaving an uncanny stillness throughout the ship. Silently we slipped between the long piers, drew up on the waterside town, seized the buoy, and came to rest. All around us lay other ships of all sizes, motionless on the inky ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... open-air sound that word has! The music of the wind is in it, and a peculiarly free, rhythmical swing, suggestive of the swirling lariat. Colorado is not, as some conjecture, a corruption or revised edition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, who was sent out by the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico in 1540 in search of the seven cities ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... said that the sensory exciting effects of hearing, including music, finally rest—may probably be regarded as a fundamental quality of neuro-muscular tissue. Not only are the chief physiological functions of the body, like the circulation and the respiration, definitely rhythmical, but our senses insist on imparting a rhythmic grouping even to an absolutely uniform succession of sensations. It seems probable, although this view is still liable to be disputed, that this rhythm is the result of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was Cornwall—the lights of the herring fleet, the distant rhythmical beat of the mining-stamps, that peculiar scent as of precious spices coming with the wind of the sea, as though borne from distant magical lands, all told him that he was, at ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... their breasts in perfect time, opened with an introductory. The performers remained seated, except two, and once three, and twice a single soloist. These stood in the group, making a slight movement with the feet and rhythmical quiver of the body as they sang. There was a pause after the introductory, and then the real business of the opera—for it was no less—began; an opera where every singer was an accomplished actor. The leading ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conductor to be perfectly well acquainted with the times of the different movements in the work of which he is about to conduct the performance or rehearsals; he wishes to impart to the musicians acting under his orders the rhythmical feeling within him, to decide the duration of each bar, and to cause the uniform observance of this duration by all the performers. Now this precision and this uniformity can only be established in the more or less numerous assemblage of band and chorus by means of certain signs ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... temple, where the bonzes officiate to the accompaniment of sacred bells and wooden clappers,—looking, from where we sit, more like puppets than anything else, some squatting in rows like peaceful mummies, others executing rhythmical marches before the golden background where stand the gods. We do not laugh to-night, and speak but little, more forcibly struck by the scene than we were on the first night; we only look on, trying to understand. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... of mine, the conductor has the chief part to play. He, as the chief virtuoso and artifex, is called upon to see that the whole is harmoniously articulated and that it receives a living form. In the rhythmical and dynamical climax, from letters B to E (repeated from H to L), as also in some of the ritenuti; especially in ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... such more special considerations are possible. Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, I may here observe that we are not wholly without indications in nature of the physical causation whereby the effect of cosmic harmony is produced. The universal tendency of motion to become rhythmical—itself, as Mr. Spencer was the first to show, a necessary consequence of the persistence of force—is, so to speak, a conservative tendency: it sets a premium against natural cataclysms. But a more important ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... a member of a grown-up non-family party; never before had she gone walking with an actual adult young man for her escort; and she felt that she owed it to her position to appear in as brilliant an aspect as possible. She managed to give herself a rhythmical, switching motion, causing her kneelength skirt to swing from side to side—a pomp that brought her a great deal of satisfaction as she now and then caught the effect by twisting her neck enough to see down behind, over ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... down the little staircase to the road, the boys crowding round him. "Brats, the British army!" he would say, and stand, looking and listening, his eyes filled with gathering tears, and his heart full of proud memories, while the rhythmical beat of the footsteps went ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... the instrumentalities of reproduction may seem gross and trivial from a conventional point of view, its essence is really ideal, the perfect type, indeed, of ideality, since form and an identical life are therein sustained successfully by a more rhythmical flux of matter. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... inscrutable material entities,—forms of matter imponderable, and therefore inconceivable; but they have been shown to be diverse, but interchangeable modes of molecular motion, omnipresent, ceaselessly active. The wondrous phenomena of light, heat, and electricity are seen to be due to the rhythmical vibration of atoms. There is thus no such thing as rest: from the planet to the ultimate particle, all things are endlessly moving: and the mystic song of the Earth-Spirit in "Faust" is recognized as the expression of the sublimest ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... with ordinary readers it has been more or less discredited by the far greater number of abortive efforts, on the part sometimes of considerable poets, to adapt it to purposes with which it has no expressional correspondence; or to vary it by rhythmical movements which are destructive ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... scene of Melisande's death—one of the most pathetic and affecting pages in all music. One must wonder at the elasticity and richness of the harmonic texture—which, while it is incurably "irregular," is never crude or inchoate; at the distinction of the melodic line; at the rhythmical variety; at the masterly and individual orchestration. No faculty of trained perception is required justly to value the excellences of Debussy's score. There is great beauty, great eloquence, in this music. It has sincerity, dignity, and reserve, yet it is both deeply impassioned and enamoringly ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... throng; the preacher paused a moment, then started boldly forward with upraised hands. Then a curious thing happened. A sharp cry arose far off down toward the swamp and the sound of great footsteps coming, coming as from the end of the world; there swelled a rhythmical chanting, wilder and more primitive than song. On, on it came, until it swung into sight. An old man led the band—tall, massive, with tufted gray hair and wrinkled leathery skin, and his eyes were the eyes of death. He reached the circle of light, and Zora started: once before ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... with his sower's bag at his waist, was returning towards them, scattering the seed with broad rhythmical gestures. He had heard his wife, and he paused to say to her: "Let him nurse and sleep till the sun comes back. He will be a man by harvest time." And, pointing to the great field which he was sowing with his assistants, he ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the city itself. The sunset begins to burn red behind Magdalen Tower, all the towers and aery pinnacles rise blue yet distinct against it. And this festival is not only one of nature. The glittering ice is spread over the meadows, and, everywhere from morning till moonlight, the rhythmical ring of the skate and the sound of voices sonorous with the joy of living, travel far on the frosty air. Sometimes the very rivers are frozen, and the broad, bare highway of the Thames and the tree-sheltered path of the Cherwell are alive with black ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... then:—I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... glorious, and I trotted across the fields, listening to the song of the larks and the rhythmical clang of my sword against my boot. Then I entered the forest and walked my horse. Branches of trees caressed my face as I passed, and now and then I caught a leaf with my teeth and chewed it, from sheer gladness of heart at ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... with a curiosity that at times became impatient. Here and there a long black coat and a three-cornered hat came down the street in solemn gloom and vanished behind the bier into the house. At last the door opened. The coffin stood on the bier, the pall covered both; gently, in rhythmical motion, there appeared a black moving mass; now they were in their places; the pall-bearers adjusted their hats. The procession moved, rippling, wavering. On top gleamed bright the hammer which Valentine had polished, and told that what they were now surrendering ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... to follow the ball straight in the line of the flag as far as the arms will let it go, and then, having done everything that is possible, it swings itself out at the other side of the shoulders. The entire movement must be perfectly smooth and rhythmical; in the downward swing, while the club is gaining speed, there must not be the semblance of a jerk anywhere such as would cause a jump, or a double swing, or what might be called a cricket stroke. That, in a few lines, is the whole story of the downward swing; but it needs some little elaboration ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... much of his time and talents was frittered away in compiling and composing for musical collections. There is sufficient evidence that even the genius of Burns could not support him in the monotonous task of writing love-verses, on heaving bosoms and sparkling eyes, and twisting them into such rhythmical forms as might suit the capricious evolutions of Scotch reels and strathspeys." Even if Burns, instead of continual song-writing during the last eight years of his life, had concentrated his strength on "his grand plan of a dramatic composition" ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... troops. Torches were waved hither and thither. In the open space in front of the palace a huge bonfire had been lit. Everywhere was the pleasant murmur of cheerful voices. Further down the street they were singing in a low rhythmical chant the National Anthem. Now the King was in sight, and a roar of voices welcomed him. The front of the palace blazed out in a fire of illuminations, a shower of rockets shrieked upwards from the park. The King was coming. Long live ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... to "sway onward with a long-drawn chaunt" which gave "noble value and emphasis to the metrical structure and pauses." His delivery was full and distinctive, but it "took much less account than Tennyson's of the poem as a rhythmical whole; his delivery had more affinity to that of an actor, laying stress on all the light and shade of the composition—its touches of character, the conversational points, its dramatic give-and-take. In those qualities of ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... difficult for an ordinary crew to handle, one mast, made like the rest of steel, was transformed into a smokestack—still bearing sails—a donkey engine was installed in the hold, and the booms went aloft, or the anchor rose to the peak to the tune of smoky puffing instead of the rhythmical chanty songs of the sailors. So the modern schooner, a very leviathan of sailing craft, plows the seas, electric-lighted, steering by steam, a telephone system connecting all parts of her hull—everything modern about her except her name. Not as dignified, graceful, and picturesque as the ship perhaps—but ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... to silence. He scratched his head, and Frank watched the sparks fly, and heard the rhythmical sledge. "I wish he wouldn't talk so much about compensation," thought Sally. "I don't know what the man won't be asking ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... a Styrian country-dance—a musical recitative accompanied by the cithern and set to a tune sufficiently rhythmical to act as one of the original purposes of a ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... Singing a rhythmical dancing-tune, with the upper portion of the body bent forward, and executing dainty steps with their feet, they circled faster and faster ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... for a heavy wagon had injured one of his hands, and he had lost the use of one of his lungs in youth. But he always brought out lyric parts most expressively, and had a "wonderfully crisp and buoyant execution in rhythmical passages." He continued to play occasionally in different cities, and with increased frequency made visits to England, France and Germany, to make known his compositions. He was in England in the spring of 1888, for on May 3, the London Philharmonic gave almost an entire program of Grieg's music. ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... themselves to influence mankind. The spirits caused suffering; they slew victims; they brought misfortune; they were also the source of good or "luck ". Man regarded spirits emotionally; he conjured them with emotion; he warded off their attacks with emotion; and his emotions were given rhythmical expression by means of metrical ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... speech of feeling. Even the prose of emotion always wanders into the rhythmical. Hence, as well as for other reasons belonging to its nature, it is one chief mode in which men unite to praise God; for in thus praising they hold communion with each other, and the praise expands ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... his own words and perhaps by something rhythmical in the moving mass of men McGregor became feverishly anxious that the dapper young man should understand. "Do you remember—when you were a boy—some man who had been a soldier telling you that the men who marched had ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... of the book. All that is a natural feeling in the artist, but it has nothing to do with art. Art has to do only with the creation of beauty, whether it be in words, or sounds, or colour, or outline, or rhythmical movement; and the man who writes music is no more truly an artist than the man who plays that music, the poet who composes rhythms in words no more truly an artist than the dancer who composes rhythms with the body, and the one is no more to be preferred to the other, than the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... heard of a citizen who made an annual joke. I believe I have in April or May an annual poetic conatus rather than afflatus, experimenting to the length of thirty lines or so, if I may judge from the dates of the rhythmical scraps I detect among my MSS. I look upon this incontinence as merely the redundancy of a susceptibility to poetry which makes all the bards my daily treasures, and I can well run the risk of being ridiculous once a year for the benefit of happy reading ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... lips and throat. The waves of the sand-dunes were as the waves of the ocean. He did not look backward, dreading to see what little progress he had made. Ahead were miles on miles of graceful heaps, swelling mounds, crested ridges, all different, yet regular and rhythmical, drift on drift, dune on dune, in endless waves. Wisps of sand were whipped from their summits in white ribbons and wreaths, and pale clouds of sand shrouded little hollows. The morning breeze, rising out ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey |
