"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... listen while I sing that sweet ditty of country contentment and an angler's life, writ by worthy Master Hackle ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... horsemen on the knoll this spiritual ditty was unheard. They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every fold of the subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and dismay in ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... (He embraces ALF, and smothers him with kisses.) Oh, you've been and rubbed off some of your cheek on my complexion—you dirty boy! (He playfully "bashes" ALF's hat in.) Now show the comp'ny how pretty you can sing. (ALF attempts a Music-hall ditty, in which he, not unnaturally, breaks down.) It ain't my son's fault, Ladies and Gentlemen, it's all this little gal in front here, lookin' at him and makin' him shy! (To a small Child, severely.) You oughter know worse, you ought! (Clumps of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... daisies, or to pick A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook, These shades are all my own. The timorous hare, Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, Scarce shuns me; and the stock-dove unalarmed Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends His long love-ditty for my near approach. Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm That age or injury has hollowed deep, Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves He has outslept the winter, ventures forth To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun, The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play. He sees ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... all earnestness this grave-yard ditty chimed not in with the joyous temper of the company. There was sly nudging and smiling, a snicker from an ill-mannered page, and the only sighs were those ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... have read between our lines, and, in spite of all our infelicities of expression, guessed a little more correctly what our thought was. But alas! this was not on fate's programme, so we can only think, with the German ditty:— ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... head, and the tete-a-tete was put an end to by a burst of singing from one of the sergeants, who was followed at the end of his song by others, each giving a ditty in his turn; the singer standing up in front of the table, stretching his chin well into the air, as though to abstract every possible wrinkle from his throat, and then plunging into the melody. When this was over one of the foreign hussars—the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... off.... It never went off... you will understand the allusion. This song achieved instant popularity, and when Tartarin was passing, the stevedores on the quay and the grubby urchins hanging round his door would chant this insulting little ditty... only they sang it from a safe distance ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... the gorgio to his fair, And thus his ditty ran:— 'Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come, And not ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... a wholesome lesson even from savages, as in this instance of their forebearance. For somewhat similar reasons, perhaps, married people alone are here permitted to eat ducks. They hold their corrobories, (midnight ceremonies), and sing the same melancholy ditty that breaks the stillness of night on the shores of Jervis' Bay, or on the banks of the Macquarie; and during the ceremony imitate the several birds and beasts with which they are acquainted. If these inland tribes differ in anything ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... but just left it," answered the monk, "and you may thank me if the storm is averted for the moment, although it must burst erelong. Before the ambassador could obtain his audience, I hurried to the archduke, and chanted the old ditty; told him you were the Maccabees of the century—the bulwarks of Christendom: that without you the Turks would long since have been in Gradiska—that the Venetians, through fear and lust of gain, were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... Ferd. The ditty does remember my drown'd father. This is no mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owes.[389-102] I hear ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... saccharine tune sung by someone who strode stiffly to and fro in a glare of amber footlights—wasn't there a song about: "And I lo-ong to settle down, in that old Long Island town!" Wasn't there such a ditty? It came softly back, unbidden, to the sentimental attic of our memory as we passed along that fine avenue of trees and revisited, for the first time since we moved away, the wide space of those Long Island fields and ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... lust of gain, On virtue still, and nature's pleasing themes, Pour'd forth his unpremeditated strain: The world forsaking with a calm disdain. Here laugh'd he, careless in his easy seat; Here quaff'd, encircl'd with the joyous train, Oft moralizing sage: his ditty sweet He loathed much to ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... and hear a friend Trill forth harmonious ditty, Strange things I'll tell which late ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... sang the Spanish cavalier, And thus his ditty ran; God send the Gypsy lassie here, And not ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Leicester and myself, whose rooms lay in the same direction, were steering along, very soberly, under a bright moonlight, when something put it into the heads of some other stragglers of the party to break out, at the top of their voices, into a stanza of that immortal ditty—"We won't go home till morning." Instantly we could hear a window, which we well knew to be the dean's, open above us, and as the unmelodious chorus went on, his wrath found vent in the usual strain—"Who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... time that Talbot had seen this warlike ditty. Its intention was to guard soldiers from saying too much in front of strangers. Talbot vowed, however, to apply its moral to himself at all times and under ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... skelpin' kiss, [smacking] While she held up her greedy gab, [mouth] Just like an aumous dish; [alms] Ilk smack still did crack still Just like a cadger's whip; [hawker's] Then, swaggering an' staggering, He roar'd this ditty up— ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... grunts and ejaculations, which ended in a series of long and doleful whistles, and then broke out into a song. So he went up, and found the stranger sitting upright in bed, combing his curls with his fingers, and chaunting unto himself a cheerful ditty. ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... Well, he would have it attended to, sometime; his life was valuable now. But he wasn't going to hurry about it, if a sound leg meant his being taken and ordered off to this dam-fool War. Nicky-Nan pursed up his lips as he worked, whistling to himself a cheerful, tuneless ditty. Some one tapped ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... Edgerton's tone may, at moments, have been more faltering and more tender than usual; Julia's glance might sometimes encounter his, and then they both might seem to fall, in mutual confusion, to the ground. Perhaps she sung some little ditty at his instance—some ditty that she had often sung for me. Nay, at his departure, she might have attended him to the entrance, and he may have taken her hand and retained his grasp upon it rather longer than was absolutely necessary for his farewell. How was ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side A pleasanter spot you never spied; But when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, what ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... for his voyage out below the island, having only nine men in his party, for all of the remainder of the company went with Karlsefni. And one day when Thorhall was carrying water aboard his ship, and was drinking, he recited this ditty:[35-1] ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... where the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail, capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron de Ross ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... but, lifting his babe from its mother's lap, commenced tossing it in the air and singing a pleasant nursery ditty. Caroline sat in a moody state of mind for some minutes, and then left the room to give some directions about tea. On her return, Ellis said, in as cheerful a voice as if no unpleasant incident ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... seven miles up the canon from Wallace and the grade drops two hundred and thirty-five feet to the mile, being a masterpiece of engineering. Ed gets his two cars to the main line, all right, whistling a careless ditty. Then when they should of stopped they did not. They kept sneaking and creaking along on him. He couldn't get the brake of the forward car up very tight, and in setting the brake of the rear car, with a brakeman's stick for a lever, he broke ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... into a wooden pail And sang a country ditty, An innocent fond lovers' tale, That was not wise nor witty, Pathetically rustical, Too ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... Sleep no more, my gentle mate! With your tiny tawny bill, Wake the tuneful echo shrill, On vale or hill; Or in her airy rocky seat, Let her listen and repeat The tender ditty that you tell, The sad lament, The dire event, To luckless Itys that befell. Thence the strain Shall rise again, And soar amain, Up to the lofty palace gate Where mighty Apollo sits in state In Jove's abode, with his ivory lyre, Hymning aloud to the heavenly choir, While all the gods shall ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... she had never thanked me at all. It is owing to her recollection of this piece of good service that I have the permission of wandering, like the ghost of some departed gentleman usher, through these deserted halls, sometimes, as the old Irish ditty expresses it— ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... at what he had, been writing, "poetry, I protest!—Ay, I know this poor fellow's in love; and every man who is in love is a poet, 'with a woeful ditty to his mistress's eyebrow.' Pray what colour may Miss Sidney's eyebrows be?—she is really a pretty girl—I think I remember seeing her at some races.—Why does she never come to town?—But of course she is not to blame for that, but her fortune I suppose.—Marrying ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... not each ditty with the glorious tale?[60] Ah! such, alas! the hero's amplest fate! When granite moulders and when records fail, A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.[bw] Pride! bend thine eye from Heaven to thine estate, See how the Mighty shrink into a song! Can Volume, Pillar, Pile preserve ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... ventricle, crop, craw, maw, gizzard, breadbasket; mouth. pocket, pouch, fob, sheath, scabbard, socket, bag, sac, sack, saccule, wallet, cardcase, scrip, poke, knit, knapsack, haversack, sachel, satchel, reticule, budget, net; ditty bag, ditty box; housewife, hussif; saddlebags; portfolio; quiver &c (magazine) 636. chest, box, coffer, caddy, case, casket, pyx, pix, caisson, desk, bureau, reliquary; trunk, portmanteau, band-box, valise; grip, grip sack [U.S.]; skippet, vasculum; boot, imperial; vache; cage, manger, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... its horns for the uprights; he put a bar across, and fastened on the strings without any tuning-pegs! then came the performance, all harsh and out of tune; he shouted something himself, and the lyre played something else, and the love ditty sent us into fits of laughter. Why, Echo, chatterbox that she is, would not answer him; she was ashamed to be caught mimicking such a rough ridiculous song. Oh, and the pet that your beau brought you in his arms!—a bear cub nearly as shaggy as himself. Now then, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the early days expressed itself in what were called pipes—a ditty either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme. These pipes were a substitute for the newspaper, and the fear of satire checked ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... any difference to him, however; he went in all weathers, rain or sunshine, winter and summer. There is a little ditty he used ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... sparkling beneath the bank of evergreen, and making the roses come into the fair singer's cheeks, and warming the golden sheen of her hair, had much to do with it. When she came to "Ben Bolt," that old ditty that has all the pathos of our lost youth in it, there was a tiny quiver in her voice; and when she finished, had he been near he would have seen the glint of two unshed tears in her eyes, for the song carried her thoughts to where her mother was ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... story; but nearer and dearer still than he, or any living songster, was our ill-fated fellow-craftsman Tannahill. Poor weaver chiel! what we owe to you!— your "Braes of Balquidder," and "Yon Burnside," and "Gloomy Winter," and the "Minstrel's" wailing ditty, and the noble "Gleneiffer." Oh! how they did ring above the rattle of a thousand shuttles! Let me again proclaim the debt which we owe to these song spirits, as they walked in melody from loom to loom, ministering to the low-hearted; and when the breast ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... burthen bore, In such wild cadence, as the breeze Makes through December's leafless trees. The chorus first could Allen know, "Roderigh Vich Alpine, ho! ieroe!" And near, and nearer, as they rowed, Distinct the martial ditty flowed. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... her maidens, she opened the window. The rich melody came upon her senses through the balmy odour of myrtle boughs and leaves of honeysuckle. The chords were touched with a skilful hand, and the prelude, a wild and extempore commentary on the ballad, was succeeded by the following ditty:— ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... stole Aileen Aroon, soiled it by inserting sordid and incongruous jerks into the refrain, and called the stolen and adulterated article Robin Adair. An artisan of the same kidney was soon found to write words down to the degraded ditty: and, so strong is Flunkeyism, and so weak is Criticism, in these islands, that the polluted tune actually superseded the clean melody; and this ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... growth of the lusty brood within. The scuffle of little feet over the rough floor brings indolent, half-indifferent guessing as to which of the lesser four-foots they belonged. The whippoorwills down in the river woods call until they drop off, one by one, and the timid ditty of a singing mouse that lives under the floor by my cot is the last message the sandman sends to close our eyes before sleep. And such sleep! That first steel-blue starlit night in the open we said that we meant to sleep and sleep it out, even if we lost a whole day by it. It seemed ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... before it, and takes in the elements of form and colour. She pats it to sleep, and, on the borders of dream-land, those "sphere- born, harmonious sisters, voice and verse," visit it in the form of a plaintive ditty, which has ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... to these effusions, LEGION poured forth Ballades, and Rondeaux, and wrote a Chant Royal on a General Election which occupied a whole column of a newspaper, and needed three men to read, with a boy for the "envoy." But this ditty was not thought to have seriously affected the voting classes in any direction. LEGION was now usually spoken of as "the versatile Mr. LEGION," a compliment which never failed to annoy him hugely. Sated with popular applause, he turned into ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... utterance is so distinct and beautiful—you sing too with a taste as well as power which would prove that contemplation was as happy in bringing about perfection in the one as in the other art. Do sing me, Margaret, that little ditty which you ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... a red chiton. A little lamp hanging from the ceiling threw a dull light on him and on the lute he was playing. To the faint sound of the instrument, which was rather a large one, and which he had propped on the pillow by his side, he was singing, or rather murmuring a long ditty. Twice, thrice, four times he repeated it in the same way. Now and again he suddenly let his voice sound more loudly—and though his hair was quite grey his voice was not unpleasing—and sang a few phrases full of expression ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... succeeded in this, he attempted, by all sorts of antics and grimaces, to make them laugh or speak; but he failed, for the slumber-flag waved over them, and its fear was upon them. Then, in a freak of incredible rashness, he sang, in a loud voice, the first line of a popular ditty, and took to ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... were dispersed hither and thither in the bushes, gazing with all their eyes, endeavouring to attract her attention; some by conversations with one another; one richly-dressed Gascon squire, of the train of Edward's ally, the Count de Bearn, by singing a Provencal love ditty; while a merchant of Bristol set up a counter attempt with a long doleful English ballad. All the time the fair spinster sat in the doorway, with the utmost gravity, twisting her thread and twirling her spindle; but it might ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were short and twilight came on rapidly. Sitting there in the gathering gloom, I began to hum inadvertently a little song which Herbert loved me to sing to him. Hearing my voice chant his favorite ditty, the poor little creature stirred in his crib, and his pale lips parted into a smile. Presently, in broken tones he ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... harpsichord, and sang, in sweet unaffected style, one of the songs of her native country, a merry ditty, with a breathing of sadness in the refrain of it, like a twilight wind in a bed ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... hearth and home—a song which had cheered, and warmed, and softened many a kindly and honest heart: and with this Happy Jack sang—and exceedingly well too, but with a sort of dreadfully ludicrous sentiment—the highly appropriate ditty of ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... ride in the park, With Jack humming bars from a ditty; Kissing me (when it grows dark). Fy! ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... Through this house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire: Every elf, and fairy sprite, Hop as light as bird, from brier; And this ditty after me Sing, and dance ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... in vain for hours for the rhymes that would not come, and the man of politics hammered at his heavy hexameter long indeed before his Albion was finally "hoed" into shape; while the beer-besotted convivialist cudgelled his poor wits cold sober in rhyming the light little bottle-ditty that should have sprung like Aphrodite from the froth of ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... cluster of tall whortleberry bushes, where he was effectually concealed. Scarcely had he done this, when to his great terror he saw two Indians peeping cautiously out of a thick canebrake. Deceived by the song of Yates, who with stentorian lungs was still giving forth his woodland ditty, they supposed both had passed. Young Downing thought it impossible but that the savages must have seen him as he concealed himself. Greatly alarmed he raised his gun, intending to shoot one and to trust to his heels for escape from ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... himself, who seems first to have invented this fancy, and behind whose broad mantle later poets have sheltered themselves, may not have felt an inclination to depart from the Greek opinion of Philomel's ditty. Why otherwise did he not simply and at once—as his masters Homer and Theocritus had done before him—describe her notes as mournful, instead of casting about for some cause that might excuse him for giving them that character? ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... he had the customary doleful ditty to tell. Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other uncalledfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the western sky was clear and flushed with vivid crimson, toward which the prairie rolled away in varying tones of blue. Lights shone in the windows behind the veranda, and from one which stood open a hoarse voice drifted out, singing in a maudlin fashion snatches of an old music-hall ditty. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... not be allowed to frighten her any more. All the children seemed so depressed and confounded, that their guests exerted themselves to be merry again, and to efface, as far as was possible, the impression of the late scene. When Mr Hope returned, he found Mr Grey singing his single ditty, about Dame Dumshire and her crockery-ware, amidst great mirth and unbounded applause. Then Mrs Enderby was fluttered, and somewhat flattered, by an entreaty that she would favour the company with one of ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... a lover's sin Let them not read my ditty, it will be To their dull ears so musicless and thin That they will have no joy of it, but ye To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile, Ye who have learned who Eros ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... voice, sweet as the wildbird's song; She comes to tell me I have tarried long: I hear her now an old love ditty hum, And now she calls—I come, dear love, ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... yet be as now thou art, That in thy waters may be seen The image of a poet's heart, How bright, how solemn, how serene! Such as did once the poet bless, Who, pouring here a later ditty, Could find no refuge from distress, But in the milder grief ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... to the r'ar, coverin' his chagrin by hummin' a stanzy or two from the well-known ditty, 'Bill, of Smoky Hill.' ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... would, could, or durst attempt. James Montgomery will live by his smaller poems—his larger are long lyrics—and when was a long lyric any other than tedious? Hunt has sung many a joyous carol, and many a pathetic ditty, but produced no high or lasting poem. Pollok has aimed at a higher object than almost any poet of his day; he has sought, like Milton, to enshrine religion in poetic form, and to attract to it poetic admirers: he did so in good faith, and he expended ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... a very astounding prophecy. If the numbers mentioned at the beginning of the oracular ditty be added together without using the ace, they make the year 1776. Now the value of an ace in Seven-up (and seven is the uppermost word in the line in which our ace occurs) is four. So four, added to the former sum, makes the year 1780. But even the first NAPOLEON had not made his appearance ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., Issue 31, October 29, 1870 • Various
... and advance, but deemed it only good manners to give some intimation of his approach. He was now within about twenty yards from them, and made an attempt at a comic song, which, however, quivered off into as dismal and cowardly a ditty as ever proceeded from human lips. Harry and the Spectre, both startled by the voice, turned round to observe his approach, when, to his utter consternation, the Shan-dhinne-dhuv sank, as it were, into the earth and disappeared. The hair rose upon Barney's head, and when ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in black, standing with white face and quivering lip in a corner of the mean chamber. Then he laughed again, and in a hoarse voice, sorely suggestive of the bottle, he broke into song. He lay back in his chair, his long, spare legs outstretched, his spurs jingling to the lilt of his ditty whose burden ran: ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... could be put upon a stage without interference by the police.—And now his companion told him how this woman had been invited to sing at a banquet given by the magnates of a mighty Trust, and had gone after midnight to the most exclusive club in the town, and sung her popular ditty, "Won't you come and play with me?" The merry magnates had taken the invitation literally—with the result that the actress had escaped from the room with half her clothing torn off her. And a little while later an official of this trust had wished to get rid of his wife and marry a chorus-girl; ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... return to the songs of my boatmen) how strange some of their words are: in one, they repeatedly chanted the 'sentiment' that 'God made man, and man makes'—what do you think?—'money!' Is not that a peculiar poetical proposition? Another ditty to which they frequently treat me they call Caesar's song; it is an extremely spirited war-song, beginning 'The trumpets blow, the bugles sound—Oh, stand your ground!' It has puzzled me not a little to determine ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... Comes the Teian bard of pleasure, Round his brow where joy reposes Radiant love enwreaths his roses, Rapture in his verse is ringing, Soft persuasion in his singing:— 'Twas the same melodious ditty Moved Polycrates to pity, Made that tyrant heart surrender Captive to a tone so tender: To the younger bard inclining, Round his brow the roses twining, First the wreath in red wine steeping, He his ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... already caused some surprise to Russell that a Spanish chieftain should speak English with the Irish accent; but now to find one who claimed to be the King of Spain lightly trolling an Irish ditty to a rollicking tune was, to say the least, just a little unusual. It occurred to him, however, that "His Majesty" must have learned his English from an Irishman; and further thought showed him that such a fact was perfectly natural, since, being a Catholic, he had of course ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... and bland; moreover, she sings charmingly; while of Mr. DAVID JAMES as the pastor Jackson it may be said, "Sure such a pere was never seen!" The Irishman, Mr. CHAUNCEY OLCOTT, has a mighty purty voice, and gains a hearty encore for a ditty of which the music is not particularly striking. Mr. PERCY REEVE has written words which go glibly to AUDRAN's music, and fit the situations. The piece is capitally played and sung all round; and marvellous is Miss VICTOR ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... composed this ditty Hans Eitelfritz he, fair Colln's son, His kindred dwell in the goodly city, But he himself in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... those who find Omar Khayyam or "In Memoriam" incapable of removing the of burden of their woes, will no doubt appreciate the "Owl and the Pussy-cat," or the Bab Ballads. In some form or other verse and song are closely linked with happiness; and a ditty from any age has ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... as I was seeking My ponies in their green retreat, I heard a lady sing a ditty To me which sounded ...
— A Bibliography of the writings in Prose and Verse of George Henry Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... heard for the first time yearly about the same place, and the hill tops not far from the abodes of man are its favourite resort. Thus we have the ditty:— ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... far-off province. Who was the first to give it shape and form? No one asks, and no one cares. A student well acquainted with the habits of the people in these matters says, 'If they knew the author of a ditty, they would not learn it, far less if they discovered that it was a scholar's.' If the cadence takes their ear, they consecrate the song at once by placing it upon the honoured list of 'ancient lays.' Passing from lip to lip and from district to district, it receives additions and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... was boiling, and it served him as a signal. In a harsh, untuneful voice he began to chant an old coon-ditty. The effect of his music was instantaneous as regards the more sensitive ears of the pup. Its eyes opened, and it lifted its head alertly. Then, with a quick wriggle, he sat up on his hind quarters, and, throwing ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... She would cry no more for an ungrateful fellow,—ungrateful for not seeing through the stone walls how she had been employed all the morning; and making it up. So she bathed her red eyes, made a great alteration in her dress, and came dancing into the room humming an Italian ditty. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... [a] sitting under midnight's misty moon, Lo I see the spirits flitting o'er the waters one by one! Slumber wraps the silent city, and the droning mills are dumb; One lone whippowil's shrill ditty calls her mate that ne'er will come. Sadly moans the mighty river, foaming down the fettered falls, Where of old he thundered ever o'er abrupt and lofty walls. Great Unkthee [69]—god of waters—lifts no more his mighty head;— Fled he with the timid ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... the gleam of heavenly light which Thou hast lent him: He calls it Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier than any beast. Saving Thy Gracious Presence, he to me A long-legged grasshopper appears to be, That springing flies, and flying springs, And in the grass the same old ditty sings. Would he still lay among the grass he grows in! Each bit of dung he seeks, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... pressing out their wrinkled clothing was begun. Harriet and Jane handled the irons. Miss Elting took down the curtains, which also were sadly in need of ironing, while Margery and Hazel prepared the noon meal. Tommy perched herself on the rail of the upper deck, and caroled forth a lisping ditty. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... qualities that shone out conspicuously in his works were, besides learning, a genial though somewhat caustic humour, and a thorough contempt for effeminacy of all kinds. The fop, the epicure, the warbling poet who gargled his throat before murmuring his recondite ditty, the purist, and above all the mock-philosopher with his nostrum for purifying the world, these are all caricatured by Varro in his pithy, good-humoured way; the spirit of the Menippean satires remained, though the form was changed to one more befitting the grave ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to plead her cause without once interrupting her. The impossibility of crying out and stopping her ears caused her inexpressible torture. The words of the young woman entered her mind, slow and plaintive, as an irritating ditty. At first, she fancied the murderers inflicted this kind of torture on her out of sheer diabolical cruelty. Her sole means of defence was to close her eyes, as soon as her niece knelt before her, then although she heard, she did not ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... day, "Give me to gaze once more on the blue hills," to the girl in the booking-office, when what he really wanted was a ticket (of a light heliotrope colour) to St. James's Park. Lord BYRON, on the other hand, composed a sorrowful ditty on the decadence of the Isles of Greece whilst shaving; but the invention of the safety-razor and the energetic action of M. VENIZELOS will most likely render it unnecessary for anyone to repeat such a performance. As ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... true solder," said Lance Outram to himself, "would put a stop to thy snivelling ditty, by making a broad arrow quiver in your heart, and no great alarm given. But, dang it, I have not the right spirit for a soldier—I cannot fight a man till my blood's up; and for shooting him from behind a wall it is cruelly like to stalking a ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... sauntered next on to the scene, and sang—in a rather peacock voice—a little ditty lamenting the weather, at which a velvet-coated cavalier came to the rescue, and chanting his offer of help sheltered her with a huge green umbrella, under which they proceeded to make love, and finally executed a dance beneath its friendly shade. The whole of the little performance ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... guard went to the forecastle to hear the prisoners singing. He found the ten together, in high good humour, listening to a "shanty" sung by three of their number. The voices were melodious enough, and the words of the ditty—chanted by many stout fellows in many a forecastle before and since—of that character which pleases the soldier nature. Private Grimes forgot all about the unprotected state of the deck, and sat ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... sentiment. The merry Swiss boys whooped, and smacked their legs, and twirled their merry Swiss girls about, until vengeance overtook them—a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jodeling refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... stick, pushed as if starting the boat, and then pulled as if rowing, and with every pull of the oar, the girl ran a few steps, making it appear that the boat shot forward. All the while the boy sang a boat-song or a love-ditty to his sweetheart. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... ye gods, how I pity The ears those sweet sounds never heard; More tuneful than loveliest ditty E'er poured from the throat of a bird. There's a prize for each honest endeavour, But none for the man who's a shirk; And the pluck that we've showed on the river, Shall tell in the ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... be frightened away by sound, moved to his former position below the alder tree. Seating himself at its root, with his eyes fixed on the window, in a voice low but distinct, he sang to one of the sweet sad lays of long ago, a ditty to his mistress, of which the following paraphrase will ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... shall I write a love-ditty To my Alice on Valentine's day? How win the affection or pity Of a being so lively and gay? For I'm an unpicturesque creature, Fond of pipes and port wine and a doze Without a respectable feature, With a squint and ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... Ulfson had been walking about the fields to look at the crop, both smoking their evening pipes. But as they came down toward the brink whence the path leads between the two adjoining rye-fields, they heard a sweet, sad voice crooning some old ditty down between the birch-trees at the precipice; they stopped to listen, and soon recognized Aasa's yellow hair over the tops the rye; the shadow as of a painful emotion flitted over the father's countenance, and he turned his back on his guest and started to go; then again paused, and said, ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... cotillon, at whist or quadrille; And seek admiration by vauntingly telling Of drawing and painting, and musical skill; But give me the fair one, in country or city, Whose home and its duties are dear to her heart, Who cheerfully warbles some rustical ditty, While plying the needle with exquisite art: The bright little needle, the swift-flying needle, The needle directed ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... she must agree to become the wife of one or other of them, and if she did not make up her mind, and give them an answer that very day, she was to be killed and eaten by both of them. In order the more strongly to impress the audience with her forlorn condition, Whackinta sang a tender and touching ditty, composed by herself expressly for the occasion, and sang it so well that it ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... and couldn't have done it worse; He sat down on the handles, an' went to spinnin' verse. He wrote it nice and pretty—an agricultural ditty; But all o' his pesky measures didn't measure an acre more, Nor his p'ints didn't turn a furrow that ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... it's not an improving song for young officers neither. I'll try 'Twisting Jane' if you gentlemen will support me with the chorus;" and in a deep mellow voice he embarked without more ado on the following barrack-room ditty:— ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... handsome? Ain't dey gran'? Ain't dey splendid? Goodness, lan'! Wy dey's pu'fect f'om dey fo'heads to dey feet!" An' sich steppin' to de music down de line, 'T ain't de music by itself dat meks it fine, Hit's de walkin', step by step, An' de keepin' time wid "Hep," Dat it mek a common ditty soun' divine. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... his answer was, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" And when Albinus [for he was then our procurator] asked him, Who he was? and whence he came? and why he uttered such words? he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him. Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he said so; but he every day uttered these lamentable words, as if ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... bethought himself for a moment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye, and a voice that was by no means bad, excepting that it ran occasionally into a falsetto, like the notes of a split reed, he quavered forth a quaint old ditty,— ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... singing, and Roaring Billy insisted on bawling out at the top of his stentorian lungs the doleful ditty of "Lord Bateman and his Daughters," which ran to thirty verses, and lasted half-an-hour. Hardly were the last words out of his mouth, when an impatient wight struck up the "Leathern Bottel," and heartily did they all join in the chorus, ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... would catch glimpses of picturesque groups of eager card-players, crowded round a flickering candle. From the darkness there would steal the sound of flute or zither, of voices singing. Occasionally it would be some strident ditty of the Paris music-halls, but more often it was sad and plaintive. But early in October the rains commenced and the stream became a roaring torrent, and a clammy mist lay like a white ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome |
