"Lilt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silence for quite a long time after his sister had finished the story of Gerty Keane, and of her fondness for her lonesome, friendless, and unlovable father; sat gazing out upon the moonlit landscape, but seeing nothing; sat while the nightingale's lilt, plaintive and low or mournfully sweet, bubbled tremulously from the grove, but hearing nothing. And in the shadow of the old-fashioned arm-chair snuggled Flora, her eyes resting lovingly, wistfully on her brother's sad but ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... Dromore' again that night with its queer haunting lilt. And when she had gone up, and he was smoking over the fire, the girl in her dark-red frock seemed to come, and sit opposite with her eyes fixed on his, just as she had been sitting while they talked. Dark red had suited her! Suited the look on her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Sam's lilt ceased abruptly. The riders came hurrying. Sam appeared, with Mormon waddling after, too swiftly for his best ease or grace of motion, both grabbing at Sandy, swatting him on the back ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... the training proved worth while. He was saluted from a hundred laughing heads at a score of windows with the song that had followed him all over Canada. He drove into the College, not to the stirring strains of "Oh, Canada," but to the syncopated lilt of "Johnny's ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... quality; some of the most famous musical composers, inspired by his works, have graced them with admirable music. One of the most attractive features in his lyrics is their spontaneous ease of expression. They seem to lilt into music of their own accord, as naturally as birds sing. The best of these are found in the comedies of the Second Period and in the romantic plays of the Fourth. "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more" in Much Ado About Nothing; "Blow, blow, thou winter ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... vertiginous tempest of tones Debora danced the Dance of Space. She revolved in lenten movement to the lilt of the music, her eyes staring and full of broken lights. As her gaze collided with her companion's he saw a disk of many-coloured fire; and then her languorous gestures were transformed into shivering intensities. She danced like the wine-steeped Noah; she ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... in my flushed hours I dream (High thought) instead of armour gleam Or warrior cantos ream by ream To load the shelves - Songs with a lilt of words, that ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... full of the dear old time— So full of the dear old friends I knew. And under its rhythm, and lilt, and ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... singing. I think the angels opened the windows when they heard it. I think it made the very heart of our Lord glad. What a surprise it was to those in that gloomy old prison. They had heard the walls ring with groans and shrieks. They had heard bitter oaths in the night, but songs with the lilt of an irrepressible joy in them—they had never heard anything like ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... split the sand On the sun-flooded beach? Hath not my naked body felt the water sing When the sea hath enveloped it With rippling music? Have I not felt The lilt of waves beneath my boat, The flap of sail, The strain of mast, The wild rush Of the lightning-charged winds? Have I not smelt the swift, keen flight Of winged odours before the tempest? Here is joy awake, aglow; Here is the tumult ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... came to the windows of the ballroom, the swing of the dancers and the lilt of the ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... had a lilt, a go, a flourish. To employ a vulgarism of the hour, it had the punch. It landed you and between the eyes. It required neither commentaries nor explanation. It was all there. It was tangible as a brickbat, self-evident as ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... her soft, deep, loving eyes and her smiling mouth. Every now and then she burst into song; and then her thrilling voice, so sweet and fresh, had tones in it that only birds and good women full of love may compass. Mostly the song was a lilt or a verse which spoke for her own heart and love; but just as the clock struck three, she broke into a low laugh which ended in a merry, mocking melody, and which was evidently the conclusion of her argument concerning Sophy's ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... should play egregiously ill, but that the effect of good music should be produced by his evil playing. The people were evidently excited to sorrow when the attempt was at a mournful strain, and to ardour when the lilt took a loftier flight. To me who stood by, the difference of intention on the part of the performer was hardly discernible; indeed to be recognised only by the occasional catching of some familiar word in the burden of the song. The same observation ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... I hate to think of it empty. We had such good times there twelve months ago. They have a song here to a nursery rhyme lilt, Apres le Guerre Finis; it goes on to tell of all the good times we'll have when the war is ended. Every night I invent a new story of my own celebration of the event, usually, as when I was a kiddie, ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... it may look strangely like the mustiest history. In my mind, and in yours I hope, it will always be connected with a breezy summer-house on a headland of the Louisiana gulf coast, the rustling of palmetto leaves, the fine flash of roses, a tumult of mocking-bird voices, the soft lilt of Creole patois, and the endless dash and roar of a fragrant sea over which the gulls and pelicans never ceased their flight, and beside which you smoked while ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... passionately as he loved strong drink. And when his soul clamoured for expression, it usually uttered itself in one or the other of the two ways, and more usually in both ways. And when he had drunk, his brain a-lilt with unsung song and the devil in him aroused and rampant, his soul found its supreme utterance ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... the rigging. The passengers were all below. Then, suddenly, a burst of music came up as some one opened a saloon port-hole and as quickly closed it again—a tenor voice singing to the piano some trivial modern song with a trashy sentimental lilt. It was—in this setting of sea and sky—painful; O'Malley caught himself thinking of a barrel-organ in ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... on the grass, puris naturalibus, are basking in the sun, or regaling themselves on buns and cocoa. The whole place is vibrant with the intense zest the young feel in life, and with the whole-hearted powers of enjoyment of boyhood. A school-song set to a captivating waltz-lilt record the charms of ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... more than any Negro poet writing in the dialect to-day, summons to his work the lilt, the spontaneity and charm of which Dunbar was the supreme master whenever he employed that medium. It is well to say a word here about the dialect poems of James Edwin Campbell. In dialect, Campbell ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... door, the reception was nearing its highest tide. The rooms were bright with uniforms and with trailing gowns, gay with the hum of voices; and the lilt of a waltz came softly to them from across the distance. As they halted on the threshold, Weldon lifted his eyes and suddenly found them resting full upon Ethel Dent. The girl was quite at the farther end of the long room, the central ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... all about us were ripening to their harvestry. The wind gossiped with the grasses along our way, and over them the buttercups danced, goldenly-glad. Waves of sinuous shadow went over the ripe hayfields, and plundering bees sang a freebooting lilt in ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was it in death's cold land there was no perfume Of the scented flowers, or lilt of a bird's gay tune. No sea there, or no cool of a wind's fresh breath, No woods, no plains, no dreams, and ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... not you struck by the gloom and horror of those long-held notes, to which the words are set: 'Dans la foret prochaine'? We find here all the sinister spells of Jerusalem Delivered, just as we find all chivalry in the chorus with the Spanish lilt, and in the march tune. How original is the alegro with the modulations of the four cymbals (tuned to C, D, C, G)! How elegant is the call to the lists! The whole movement of the heroic life of the period is there: the mind enters ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... door, and when she lifts the blind Floats through the darkened chamber of her sleep; While leagues away my love-winged messages Go flocking home; and though they mingle not, Our thoughts seek one another. In the lilt Of winds I hear her whisper: "Oh that I Might melt into the moonbeams, and with them Leap through the void, and shed myself with them Upon my lover." Slow the night creeps on. Sleep harbours in the little room. She dreams ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... I was walkin on the strand, I spied ane auld man sit On ane auld black rock; and aye the waves Cam washin up its fit. His lips they gaed as gien they wad lilt, But o' liltin, wae's me, was nane! He spak but an owercome, dreary and dreigh, A burden wha's sang was gane: "Robbie and Jeanie war twa bonnie bairns; They playt thegither i' the gloamin's hush: Up cam the tide and the mune and the sterns, And pairtit the twa ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... had gone to the coast on business. Shon had won the reputation of being a "white man," to say nothing of his victories in the region of gallantry. He made no wealth; he only got that he might spend. Irishman-like he would barter the chances of fortune for the lilt of a voice or the clatter of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the wheel, and tall, like some figure of a goddess of antiquity. The moon rose, and its light glorified her. It fell upon the shattered deck, defining every dreary detail. The waves rose and fell with the lilt of music. The tinkling breeze was cool and fresh and invigorating. Fear vanished from her. She felt herself a part of the elements, a part of the night, the lone representative of life and consciousness, and God amid the waste ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... love of pleasure. The guitars and banjos were playing some wailing tune, with a note of sadness in the core of it so keen and penetrating that it made the water come to Harry's eyes. But it changed suddenly to something that had all the sway and lilt of the rosy South. Men sprang to their feet and clasping arms about one another began to sway back and forth in the waltz and ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wanting to but Jerry did not wait for encouragement. With a lilt of enjoyment in his voice he said a rhyme he had learned sometime—he could not remember ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... movement, so far as it had a clear aim, was to Europeanise the world, to extend the franchise to negroes, put Polynesians into trousers, and train the teeming myriads of India to appreciate the exquisite lilt of The Lady of the Lake. There is always some absurdity mixed with human greatness, and we must not let the fact that the middle Victorians counted Scott, the suffrage and pantaloons among the supreme blessings of life, conceal from us the very real nobility of their ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... about with rigid necks, playing the while in perfect time and tune. It chanced that out of one of the bundles there stuck the end of what the clerk saw to be a cittern, so drawing it forth, he tuned it up and twanged a harmony to the merry lilt which the dancers played. On that they dropped their own instruments, and putting their hands to the ground they hopped about faster and faster, ever shouting to him to play more briskly, until at last for very weariness all three ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... by wind after wind of heavenly melody," he writes at another time. His best poems move to the cadence of a tune. He probably heard them as did Milton the lines of "Paradise Lost". Sometimes there was a lilt like the singing of a bird, and sometimes the lyric cry, and yet again the music of the orchestra. "He has an ear for the distribution of instruments, and this gives him a desire for the antiphonal, for introducing an answer, or an echo, or a compensating ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... lips that he had "sown a rich seed, and that the hour was coming when his country would reap its glorious fruits." His Greek Marseillaise ([Greek: Deute paides ton Hellenon]) is known to Englishmen through Byron's translation, "Sons of the Greeks, arise, etc." But the glorious lilt and swing of his Polemisterion, though probably familiar to every child in Greece, is less known in ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... bright-eyed people, whom, being no Goethe, I do not profess to understand or approve. Must the lover do more than love his mistress, and weave his sonnets about her white brows? I may see my mistress Italy embowered in a belfry, a fresco, the scope of a Piazza, the lilt of a Stornello, the fragrance of a legend. If I don't find a legend to hand I may, as lief as not, invent one. It shall be a legend fitted close to the soul of a fact, if I succeed: and if I fail, put ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... go to Lueneburg!" repeated the boy, with a mocking lilt in his voice. "And Lueneburg is twenty miles from Hamburg. Hadst thought of that!" He ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... so pleasantly, interestingly near in these last days; the Marchesino (strutting from the hips and making his bold eyes round), Peppina, Ruffo. They went by and returned, gathered about her, separated, melted away as people do in our musings. Her eyes were fixed on the low roof of the cave. The lilt of the water seemed to rock her soul in a cradle. "Madre—Ruffo! Madre—Ruffo!" The words were in her mind like a refrain. And then the oddity, the promiscuity of life struck her. How many differences there were in this small group of people by whom she was surrounded! What ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... while to get Carquinez to loosen up. Nor was he ever really himself until he felt the mellow warmth of the vine singing in his blood. He was an artist, it is true, always an artist; but somehow, sober, the high pitch and lilt went out of his thought-processes and he was prone to be as deadly dull as a British Sunday—not dull as other men are dull, but dull when measured by the sprightly wight that Monte Carquinez was when he was ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... his greatest weapon in life He felt things, he did not study them If women hadn't memory, she answered, they wouldn't have much Lilt of existence lulling to sleep wisdom and tried experience Lonely we come into the world, and lonely we go out of it Never to be content with ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... ideas and vision. He liked the lilt and swing of the Lays and Ballads, and enjoyed the Essays with their superb colouring. Disputing Macaulay's dictum that neither painters nor poets are helped by the advances in civilisation, science and refinement, he wrote: "This argument disproved by the examples of men like Shakespeare and ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... wait for his music. Dropping him a little demure, mocking curtsy she turned and ran down the box-edged path, singing as she went, and the air she sang was Stephen La Mothe's "Heigh-ho! love is my life; Live I in loving and love I to live!" and the lilt of the music ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... with him, clear and insistent after yesterday's impersonal vision of her at rehearsal, what was she now, when every tremulous lilt of the zither-string voice, and every little gesture of the impulsive hands, and every eager change of the glowing face, were fresh and living, in all their beautiful reality, but a matter of minutes ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... indefinitely; and the reader will admit that there is as much of a lilt about those which are here quoted as there is about the majority of the ditties which he has hummed to himself in his hour of contentment. Here is Philodemus' ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... noble ring: nay, sad in spirit and shorn of her gold, oft shall she pass o'er paths of exile now our lord all laughter has laid aside, all mirth and revel. Many a spear morning-cold shall be clasped amain, lifted aloft; nor shall lilt of harp those warriors wake; but the wan-hued raven, fain o'er the fallen, his feast shall praise and boast to the eagle how bravely he ate when he and the ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... Moore as wireless operator was swift of the swiftest; he despatched with a lightning lilt, and the keenness of his ears, for which he was famous on more than one ocean, made it possible for him to receive signals with rarely ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... affairs in his study, Conscience drove to the station to meet him on a fine young Saturday morning at the beginning of June. She set out from the house which maintained a sort of lordly aloofness among pine-covered hills, more than usually conscious of the lilt of ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... man's proximity came like a shock. It had made him start. He brought—thus the idea came unbidden to his mind—something with him that galvanised him quite absurdly, as fear does, or delight, or great wonder. There was a music in his voice too—a certain—well, he could only call it lilt, that reminded him of plainsong, intoning, chanting. Drawling was not the ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... throughout, many pretty rustic scenes, and sufficient interest to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. The Gentle Shepherd is the work of a poet, and gives a higher impression of Ramsay's power than his songs alone would warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly without the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly of service in showing the immeasurable superiority of Burns. Ramsay was a successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man of business. He exchanged wig-making ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Lilt thy song, and lute away In the wildest fashion:— Pour thy rippling roundelay O'er the heights of passion!— Flash it down the fretted strings Till thy mad lips, missing All but smothered whisperings, Press ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... wagons clattered; Listened we for an English voice ever, ever in vain; Far in the west, year out, year in, terrible thunders battered, Drumming the doom of whom—of whom? Hope in our hearts lay shattered.... Then we heard the lilt of Highland pipes and English ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various
... as she saw his face cloud, she hurried on. "Oh, don't be hurt! You misunderstand. How you misunderstand! Take me in to supper to-night, will you? And then you shall talk to me, and I'll listen." Her voice rose like clear sweet music in a lilt of joy. "I'll listen with all my heart, my hands openly in yours if you will, so that all may see and know ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... figure, hasn't she?" he said to Mihul. He made vague curving motions in the air with one hand, more or less opposing ones with the other. "That sort of an up-and-sideways lilt ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... to their festivities. If so, he was in no haste to let realization overtake anticipation. His reins hung loose. He hummed snatches of Spanish, French, and English songs. Their cosmopolitan freedom of variety was as out of keeping with the scene as their lilt, which had the tripping, self-carrying impetus of the sheer ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... her down with sound of viol; Wheeling angels, past espial, Descanting on "Viola." ANGELS. Sing, in our footing, a Lovely lilt of "Viola!" ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... sang, her songs being of her own land, one of the highlands, with the perfume of the gorse and the heather in the lilt of it, and the second, by demand of Sandy, the gipsy song which had been handed down from woodland mother to woodland child for hundreds of years; a song which sent Nancy's lawless blood to her cheeks ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... feast in the maple-tree shade, The lilt of a song to an old-fashioned tune, The talk of a friend, or the kiss of a maid, To sweeten the cup that we drink to the noon. Oh, the deep noon, the full noon, Of all the day the best! When the blue sky burns, and the great sun turns To ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... among the manuscripts of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, making himself an able antiquary at a time when most youth are idling or philandering. Moreover, he was himself the son of a border chief and knew minstrelsy almost at his nurse's knee: and the lilt of a ballad was always like wine to his heart. It makes you think of Sir Philip Sidney's splendid testimony to such an influence: "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... Preston Peabody Song: On May Morning John Milton A May Burden Francis Thompson Corinna's Going a-Maying Robert Herrick "Sister, Awake" Unknown May Edward Hovell-Thurlow May Henry Sylvester Cornwell A Spring Lilt Unknown Summer Longings Denis Florence MacCarthy Midsummer John Townsend Trowbridge A Midsummer Song Richard Watson Gilder June, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal" James Russell Lowell June Harrison Smith Morris Harvest Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Scythe Song Andrew Lang September George ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... talk, in which the clock tinker indulged so freely, afforded his young friend no little amusement. His tongue had long obeyed the lilt of classic diction; his thought came easy in Elizabethan phrase. The slight Celtic brogue served to enhance the piquancy of his talk. Moreover he was really a man of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... restless blue. The crag-torn sky is not the sky I love, But one unbroken sapphire spanning all; And nobler than the branches of a pine Aslant upon a precipice's edge Are the strained spars of some great battle-ship Plowing across the sunset. No bird's lilt So takes me as the whistling of the gale Among the shrouds. My cradle-song was this, Strange inarticulate sorrows of the sea, Blithe rhythms upgathered from the Sirens' caves. Perchance of earthly voices the last voice That shall an instant my freed spirit stay ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... pony, shifting his position to ease his cramped limbs after the manner of the range rider. In spite of himself, his eyes would drift toward the jaunty little figure on the pinto. The masculine in him approved mightily her lissom grace and the proud lilt of her dark head, with its sun-kissed face set in profile to him. He thought her serviceable costume very becoming, from the pinched felt hat pinned to the dark mass of hair, and the red silk kerchief knotted loosely round the pretty throat, to the leggings beneath the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... as dusk was falling. It was rather an impressive moment and the pipers, rising to the occasion, played "Blue bonnets o'er the Border." Behind was the sunset in a sky of brilliant crimson. In front stretched great uplands of a dim green, while we, the new Crusaders, crossed over to the lilt of the pipes, whose music astonished Palestine now heard for the first time; and with us in great columns moved guns and cavalry, camels and transport, half seen in a haze of hanging dust. These of course are ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... hills' recess, The antique home of quietness. Nor to the folk can piper play The tune of "Hills and Far Away," For they are with them. Morn can fire No peaks of weary heart's desire, Nor the red sunset flame behind Some ancient ridge of longing mind. For Arcady is here, around, In lilt of stream, in the clear sound Of lark and moorbird, in the bold Gay glamour of the evening gold, And so the wheel of seasons moves To kirk and market, to mild loves And modest hates, and still the sight Of brown kind faces, and when night Draws dark around with age ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... for the footsteps of the absent boys, but for a long time there was no break in the lilt of the forest. Then—it must have been two o'clock—he heard the quick beat of running feet, and directly Gastong, as Jack had fancifully named his new acquaintance, came spurting ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Margot—Margot, who was in flaming red to-night, and looked a devil's daughter indeed, with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinkling as she threw herself into the thick of the dance and kicked, and whirled, and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and the fluting ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... have taken his degree from some college of venders, his call has such finesse. I cannot reproduce the lilt of it—"Here's where you get your horoscope, a dime, ten cents." It is suggestive of the midways of country fairs, shooting galleries on the Board Walk, and circuses in the springtime. "Here's where you get your ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... bird, my bonnie, bonnie bird, Is that a sang ye borrow? Are these some words ye've learnt by heart, Or a lilt o' dool an' sorrow? 'Oh, no, no, no,' the wee bird sang; 'I've flown sin' mornin' early; But sic a day o' wind an' rain— Oh, ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Maitland were then some five floors below. "Stop 'er at Nineteen," ordered the detective. There was a lilt of exultancy in his voice. "We got him now, all right, all right. He'll try to get down by— There!" Overhead the crash of a gate forced open was followed by a scurry of footsteps over the tiling. "Stop 'er and we'll head him off. So ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... wy the bairns were ta'en in wi' him. Man, a've seen him tak a wee laddie on his knee that his ain mither cudna quiet, an' lilt 'Sing a song o' saxpence' till the bit mannie wud be lauchin' like a gude ane, an' ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... is a certain family resemblance, in the melody as in the theme, that to the untrained and unaccustomed ear may convey an impression of monotony. But to each ballad, as to each psalm, there belongs a peculiar strain or lilt, touched, as a rule, with a solemn or piercing pathos, often cast in the plaintive minor mode, that alone can bring out the full inner meaning of the words, and that is endeared and hallowed by centuries of association. As easily might we explain ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... all the country round; so, catching up my stick, I swung off in that direction. It was bright, but cold, and the surf, I remember, was booming loudly, though there had been no wind in our parts for days. I zigzagged up the steep pathway, breathing in the thin, keen morning air, and humming a lilt as I went, until I came out, a little short of breath, among the whins upon the top. Looking down the long slope of the farther side, I saw Cousin Edie, as I had expected; and I saw Jim Horscroft ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... calling of birds, The lowing of cattle Must blend with the words. Without these, indeed, you Would find it ere long, As though I should read you The words of a song That lamely would linger When lacking the rune, The voice of the singer, The lilt ...
— The Man from Snowy River • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... umbrella then. And at the same moment a singing voice became audible in the trees behind them. The song came floating to them through the sunlight with a sound of wind and birds. It had a marvellous quality, very sweet and very moving. There was a lilt in it, a laughing, happy lilt, as though the Earth herself ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... of dawn descends the hills, And round me, as I greet the day, I hear the lilt of laughing rills And songs of fountains ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... D'ARGENS. A volley of most rough-paced off-hand Rhyming, direct from the heart; "Ode [as he afterwards terms it, or irrepressible extempore LILT] ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... LILT-PYPE, s. a musical instrument, the upper part of which was in the form of a flageolet, terminating below in a ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... saw the girl. She was huddled in a corner, wrapped in fear, but the eyes that watched him were as blue as the skies over Caronne. The ragged dress did not hide the gentle curves of her body, nor did the tear-streaked grime spoil the lilt of her face. "Why, 'tis springtime in here," cried Cappen, "and Primavera herself is strewing ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... pastorela, which had had such a luxuriant growth in Southern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A highly elaborated metrical system mainly distinguishes these writers, but some of page xiii their work catches a pleasing lilt which is supposed to represent the imitation of songs of the people. The popular element in the Galician productions is slight, but it was to bear important fruit later, for its spirit is that of the serranas of Ruiz and Santillana, and ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... not without merit, and has a good lilt and swing. I noted it tempted me to sing it, for I knew the tune well, and in the volume of voices was an emotional attraction. I repressed the inclination even to move my lips. But some others rose and joined in. My fellow on the left did not. The ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... a little space like an animal in a cage, over the hedge through the apple-boughs a boy's clear voice rose suddenly, singing a rollicking tune, with a snapping of fingers and tapping of feet in time to its merry lilt. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... the dulcet instrument We favour, still the lilt will stop; And with a gorgeous chalice blent Oft lurks the tiny poisoned drop. I'm not so spry myself to-night; I'll try a dose of arrowroot. You'll own that Indigestion's quite A Rift ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... American poetry with a truer lilt of song than these early verses, and there has been none since. Two years later, in 1833, Holmes went to complete his medical studies in Paris, and the lines ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... well known. At the end of a pleasant evening when there had been music—in which James himself was the first connoisseur in Scotland, inventing, some say, the national lilt, the rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so adaptable to mirth—"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... pleasant he made it all! And the things he knew that I should know!— The stage, the "drop," and the frescoed wall; The sudden flash of the lights; and oh, The orchestra, with its melody, And the lilt and jingle and jubilee Of "The Little ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... a very good sword, and is cunning of fence, for your comfort," said Randal. So I hummed the old lilt of the Leslies, whence, they say, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... example and drastic phrase, rather than by enunciating the impressive moral commonplaces of tragic poetry.[59] Aristophanes, too, had been abused for his "unintelligible" poetry,—"mere psychologic puzzling,"[60]—by a "chattering" public which preferred the lilt of nursery rhymes. The magnificent portrait of Aristophanes is conceived in the very spirit of the riotous exuberance of intellect ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... glasses met in a tink and a pledge and her ready laughter rose in duet with his. She caught the lilt of a popular song from, the tenpiece orchestra and sang upward with the tirralirra of a lark, and the group at the adjoining table threw her a shout. Mr. Fitzgibbons beat a knife-and-fork tattoo on his plate and pinched her cheek ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... more of a poet, than other birds,—has a duet in his throat. He bursts from the grass and sings in bursts—plays his own obligato while he goes. One can never see him in his eager flurry, between his low heaven and his low nest, without catching the lilt of inspiration. Like the true poet, he suits the action to the word in a weary world, and does his flying and singing together. The song that he throws around him, is the very spirit of his wings—of all ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... achievements. The poem was dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was as rejoiced and grateful as only a true friend could be. The artist could admire the piece profoundly, but still not more sincerely than Edmund Burke, the statesman and the orator. As Tennyson had a lilt and Byron a sentiment, swiftly and easily appealing, consciously or unconsciously caught, and sincerely felt or insincerely imitated, so Goldsmith possessed a teaching charm and a guiding grace that can be traced in many later poets and amongst the works of greatest ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... Tennyson's reading had the lilt, the tenderness and the rhythm that makes music in the soul. It was neither singing, nor chanting, nor speaking, but a subtle mixture of the three; and the effect upon me was one of haunting harmonies that ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... through the open window, came the tinkling of Tom's ukulele and the rollicking lilt of his voice in an Hawaiian hula. It ended in a throbbing, primitive love-call from the sensuous tropic night that no one could mistake. There was a burst of young voices, and a clamour for more. Frederick did not speak. He had sensed ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... the heavy mist that hung above the Missouri, came a strange, new trumpet-call from Brannon. The opening notes, reiterated and smooth-flowing, were unlike the first sprightly lilt of reveille. As Dallas stilled the squeaking of the well-pulley to listen, they fell upon ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... fine!" said Dud to Jim, as they made their way through the chatting, laughing throng, and caught the lilt of the music on the beach beyond, where bathers, reckless of the church bells' call, were disporting themselves in the sunlit waves. "It's tough, with a place like this so near, to be shut up on a desert island for a whole vacation. I say, ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... Steenson, a rambling, rattling chiel' he had been in his young days, and could play weel on the pipes; he was famous at 'Hoopers and Girders'—a' Cumberland couldna, touch him at 'Jockie Lattin'—and he had the finest finger for the back-lilt between Berwick and Carlisle. The like o' Steenie wasna the sort that they made Whigs o'. And so he became a Tory, as they ca' it, which we now ca' Jacobites, just out of a kind of needcessity, that he might belang to some side or other. He had nae ill will ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... suddenly upon her—an agonizing sense of youth's futility. Rackingly above the crash and lilt of music, the quick, wild thud of dancing feet, the sharp, staccato notes of laughter—she heard the dull, heavy, unrhythmical tread of the oncoming years—gray years, limping eternally from to-morrow on, through unloved ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... unkindly. Missy liked Arthur Simpson. He wore a big blue-denim apron and had red hair and freckles—not a romantic figure by any means; but there was a mischievous imp in his eye and a rollicking lilt in his voice that made you like him, anyway. Missy wished he hadn't been a witness to her predicament. Not that she felt at all sentimental toward Arthur. Arthur "went with" Genevieve Hicks, a girl whom Missy privately ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... some ticket, When his statue's built, Tell the gazer "'Twas a cricket Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt Sweet and low, when strength usurped Softness' place ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... and musical lilt of this poem may be readily traced to its sources. It is due to the skillful use of short vowels, liquid consonants, internal rhyme, and constant alliteration. These are matters of technique which Lanier ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... spirit, but a sense of form beyond the common. She does not pretend to heroics and she seldom allows herself to touch a note of pathos; her mission is just to inspire other hearts with the infectious gay courage of her own. It finds a natural expression in the easy lilt of her measures. She is fluent rather than polished and never overlays her designs with excess of embroidery. Long practice has made her familiar with a craft which is not so easy as it looks; and in particular she has ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... shaking herself, gravely composing her face, and clearing her throat, she began, in a high, shrill, piercing voice, rocking her head to the peculiar lilt of the words, and interpolating short ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... sky was deepest blue and flecked with summer clouds. Loud-voiced birds called gaily of the summer's ending, talked of travel in a glad, gay lilt. The bees droned on; the bullfrogs gave forth a deep wise thought or two; while softly, deeply, brownly, flowed the stream beside the path, with only a far, still fisherman here and there who noticed not. But Courtland heard ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... we turn over the leaves, we may find ourselves in sympathy with some one or other of these staid joys and smiling sorrows. If we do we shall be strangely pleased, for there is a genuine pathos in these simple words, and the lines go with a lilt, and sing themselves to music ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... answer him immediately and he smiled to himself as he paddled in silence. For, if the truth must be told, Mr. Philip Kendrick was enjoying himself immensely. He had only the sound of her voice from which to draw deductions; but the cultured tones of it and the lilt of her low laughter bespoke an education and refinement with which he failed to reconcile the idea that she ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse |
