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Chant   Listen
verb
Chant  v. i.  
1.
To make melody with the voice; to sing. "Chant to the sound of the viol."
2.
(Mus.) To sing, as in reciting a chant.
To chant horses or To chant horses, to sing their praise; to overpraise; to cheat in selling. See Chaunter.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Chant" Quotes from Famous Books



... session desiring "to come forward." It was to many an impressive sight to see Straight Rory rise in the precentor's box, feel round, with much facial contortion, for the pitch—he despised a tuning-fork—and then, straightening himself up till he bent over backwards, raise the chant that introduced the tune to the congregation. But to the young men under the gallery he was more humorous than impressive, and it is to be feared that they waited for the precentor's weekly performance with a delighted expectation that never flagged and that ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... batting average of thirty-three point nought seven for Middlesex, he had been engaged by the astute musical-comedy impresario to whom the idea first occurred that, if you have got to have young men to chant 'We are merry and gay, tra-la, for this is Bohemia,' in the Artists' Ball scene, you might just as well have young men whose names are known to the public. He had not been an actor long, for loss of form had put him out of first-class cricket, ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... on the anvil lent cheer to the otherwise harsh and unlovely mood that had fallen upon Nature over night. It sang a song of defiance that even the mournful chant of sheep on the distant slopes failed to subdue. The crowing of a belated and no doubt mortified rooster, the barking of faraway dogs, the sighing of journeying winds, the lugubrious whistle of Mr. Clarence Dillingford, —all ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon

... with some scouts, previous to their meeting the Germans. It was quite impressive. Forming the four men up in line, the Chief gave each of them instructions, waving signs and symbols over their heads and bodies, then with a chant sent them on their journey. The actual obeisance was too sacred in itself to film. I was told by the interpreter afterwards that he was glad I did not do so, as they would have been ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... temple! thou whose hundred kings Watch over thee, emblazoned on thy walls, Tell me, within thy memory-hallowed halls What chant of triumph, or what war-song rings? Thou hast known Clovis and his Frankish train, Whose mighty hand Saint Remy's hand did keep And in thy spacious vault perhaps may sleep An echo of the voice of Charlemagne. For God thou has known ...
— Main Street and Other Poems • Alfred Joyce Kilmer

... calling it a carol and dividing it into staves, Dickens would have us think of it not as a narrative but as a song, full of the joy and good will that Christmas ought to diffuse. It is a rill from the fountain of the first great Christmas chant, "On earth peace, good will toward men." The theme is not so much the duty of service as the joy of service, the happiness that we feel in making others happy; and the four carols mark the four stages in the conversion of Scrooge ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith

... be, Yet art His care; He, too, has given thee Gifts rich and rare. Still, then, thy voice upraise, Still chant thy Maker’s praise While we are rapt in sleep, Still thou thy vigil keep; Still let some earthly cry Go to our God on high; Humbly, yet fervently, piercingly call, Call for ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... bonfire of pamphlets. I would take a few hundreds from that mound there and give them the match right in front of that Church, or better still before the Stock Exchange. And I would have two sandwich-men stand about the bonfire, as high priests of the Temple, and chant the praises of second-hand Jerry and his second-hand book-shop. This will be the sacrifice which you will have offered to the god of Trade right in front of his sanctuary that he might soften the induration in the breasts of these worthy citizens, your rich neighbours. And if he does not, why, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... by four colored oarsmen. It looked as if it might have come out of some old picture. Two oarsmen were seated in the bows, pulling, and two stood up in the stern, facing their companions, each working a long oar, bending and recovering and uttering a low, wild chant. The spectacle emerged from the fog on the one hand and plunged into it ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... a poet to chant the epic of sex. The mystery of it puzzled the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a source of deepest excitement, it generated the most revolting ceremonies, bizarre customs, astounding ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... marching kit (as it would be called now), quite earnestly, and, as it seemed to me, very sensibly—though he went through little mimicries that made his wife scream with laughter, and me too; and in the middle of breakfast Barty sang "Le Chant du Depart" as well as ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... of many of the earlier operas, as those of Mozart, etc., the unaccompanied recitative (recitativo secco) is not barred. As with the plain-chant of the church, only the pitch of the tone is indicated. Its length was left to the discretion of the artist, who was supposed to be familiar with the accepted style of delivery termed "recitativo parlante." The example is from the recitative "Dove sono," ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... appeared, and from the Spanish ships musical bell-notes rose towards heaven, blending with the echoing chant: "Allahu akbar, allahu akbar, allahu akbar," and the devout words: "There is no God save Allah, and Mohammed is the prophet of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... invader. Ere another moon shall wax and wane the brightest star in the galaxy of nations may fall from the zenith of her glory never to rise again. Ere the modest violets of early spring shall ope their beauteous eyes the genius of civilization may chant the wailing requiem of the proudest nationality the world has ever seen, as she shatters her withered and tear-moistened lilies o'er the bloody tomb of butchered ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser

... closed. But then a tremendous chant burst out, followed by a wild surging of the crowd: the soldiers were singing.—'These are our soldiers,' the people cried; 'they shall be yours, Holy Father. They come from the fields and the workshops; they will keep ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various

... attack on Warsaw, when the loss of the Russians amounted to upwards of twenty thousand men, the soldiery mounted the breach, repeating in measured chant, one of their popular songs: "Come, let ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various

... Rainy Lake. Glancing along the broad waters of the lake the glint of something strange caught my sight. Yes, there they were! Coming with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant. We put into the rocky shore, and, mounting upon a crag which guarded the head of the rapid, I waved to the leading canoe as it swept along. In the centre sat a figure in uniform, with a forage-cap on head, and I could see that he was scanning through ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... measured sound of drumming followed the beating of loads with a hundred sticks; a wild, weird chanting burst from the ranks and died down again as one or another individual or group felt moved to song. One lot had a formal chant and response. Their leader, in a high falsetto, ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... close of the chant, the mother first and then each sister took from her bosom the white rosebud and dropped it into the grave. Then followed her schoolmates and companions who each dropped in the bud she carried. A carpet of white rosebuds was thus formed, on which the ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... spans high [seven feet six inches], clad in skins of wild beasts, darker-complexioned than would have been expected in that part of the world; and when some of our men went on shore and showed them bells and pictures, they began to dance round our men with a hoarse noise and unintelligible chant, and to excite our admiration they took arrows a cubit and a half long, and put them down their own throats to the bottom of their stomachs without seeming any the worse for it. Then they drew them up again, and seemed much ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... looked at her with a certain intelligence in his eyes, and then struck a few wild, startling chords. They proved to be the basis of a sea-chant. Denas heard them with a quick movement of her head and an involuntary though slight movement of the hands, as she cried out in ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... lama was much impressed by the plan. 'We will begin tomorrow, and a blessing on thee for showing old feet such a near road.' A deep, sing-song Chinese half-chant closed the sentence. Even the priest was impressed, and the headman feared an evil spell: but none could look at the lama's simple, eager ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... escorted by British infantry with arms reversed, the band playing, to the dull rolling accompaniment of the drums, that splendid funeral march which English people call The Dead March in Saul, but which is really no other than the ancient Catholic chant of Adeste Fideles. General Middlemore, dropping with fatigue, formally handed over the body to me; and the coffin was lowered into the long-boat of the Belle-Poule, which then started for the ship. The scene at that moment was very fine. It was a striking moment A magnificent sunset had been ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... the chief door in the screen, another priest in a very irreverential and hurried manner read some chapters from it, the choir constantly repeating the words, 'Gospodi poluomini,' (the Lord have mercy on us). The effect of these words, in a rich chant, soft, full, and swelling, is very beautiful. They continually occur throughout the service. We could see the high priest all the time through the open work of the chief door moving about before ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... at once with cunning and cruelty. It was on a Sabbath morning, when we had assembled to take sweet counsel together in the Lord's house. Our temple was but constructed of wooden logs; but when shall the chant of trained hirelings, or the sounding of tin and brass tubes amid the aisles of a minster, arise so sweetly to Heaven, as did the psalm in which we united at once our voices and our hearts! An excellent worthy, who now sleeps in the Lord, Nehemia Solsgrace, long the companion of my ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... quickly gathered in the shadow of the trees and watched the scene with laughing interest. A wide circle of colored lanterns swayed in the breeze, and, within, a line of white-robed figures wound and unwound about a tiny tree to the music of a solemn chant. ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster

... prate of fallen man And choirs repeat the chant, While unco' guid with unction urge Repression of the joys that surge, And jail for those who can't. The poor deluded duds forget That something drew the sting When Adam tiptoed to his fall, And made it hardly hurt at all. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy

... denouncing the conduct of Marguerite, and cursing her for having brought death upon him. Marguerite seeks consolation in religious worship; but the fiend is at her elbow even in the holy fane, and his taunts and the accusing chant of a choir of demons interrupt her prayers. The devil reveals himself in his proper (or improper) person at the end, and ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... passed the night with them. And surrounded by those utterers of Brahma, the king shone resplendent in their midst. And that evening, at once beautiful and terrible, those Brahmanas having lighted their (sacred) fires, began to chant the Vedas and hold mutual converse. And those foremost of Brahmanas, with swan-sweet voices spent the night, comforting that ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... Brookfield:—the change in her father's soups, and his remarks on them, and which he preferred; his fight with his medicine, and declaration that he was as sound as any man on shore; the health of the servants; Mr. Marter the curate's call with a Gregorian chant; doubts of his orthodoxy; Cornelia's lonely walks and singular appetite; the bills, and so forth—ending, "What is to be ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... seemed to spin about on their axes, as it were, uttering a low, moaning chant as they whirled. It was a mania, the spirit of demonism. Something unseen seemed to urge ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... Compose Rush-rings, and Myrtle-berry chains, And stuck with glorious King-cups in their bonnets, Adorned with Laurel slip, chant true love sonnets." ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

... had formed themselves in a circle with the two priests standing alone in the center. All but these two had dropped on their knees, while the leaders, elevating their long arms toward the zenith, gazed upward, uttering a kind of chant in their queer, ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss

... has gone by, with the penitents in their black hoods, and the wax torches sputtering in the wet, and the little bell ringing, and the priests droning their monotonous chant. A pleasant sight to meet me at the window! I shall go back ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins

... eve, within yon studious nook, I ope my brass-embossed book, Portray'd with many a holy deed Of martyrs crown'd with heavenly meed; Then, as my taper waxes dim, Chant, ere I sleep, my measured hymn. * * * * * Who but would cast his pomp away, To take my staff and amice grey, And to the world's tumultuous stage, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... proseedings of y^e Virginia Company, & y^e ill news from thence aboute M^r. Blackwell & his company, and making inquirey about y^e hiring & buying of shiping for their vioage, some Dutchmen made them faire offers aboute goeing with them. Also one M^r. Thomas Weston, a m^{r}chant of London, came to Leyden aboute y^e same time, (who was well aquainted with some of them, and a furtherer of them in their former proseedings,) haveing much conferance w^th M^r. Robinson & other of y^e cheefe of them, perswaded them ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford

... know but the nation of the Hirondelles," came the ragged chant of strong male voices, resonant and gay ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... in two ranks. They tell off from the right in fours. "Move to the right in fours. Quick March," comes the order. The bugles strike up. The men swing into column formation, heads erect and picking up the step. To the song of the bugles they chant words as they march. "We've got four years to do this job. We've got four years to do ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... song" which John the Apostle heard in the Holy City. The musician-pope, Gregory XIII, to whom Palestrina dedicated his grandest motets, entrusted him with the sacred task of revising the ancient chant. Pope Sixtus V greatly praised his beautiful mass, "Assumpta est Maria" and ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... joined the choir, came singing up the stairs and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached room F. Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced the troubles ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster

... burn; And howling ghouls gape thro' vapours, Two siffling vampyres dance on fire, Each mottled sage a conquered page To him whose hate no Doom can turn, No bat-faced gnome can stem the blaze: Hence harlots, ghastly with giant sin, Chant runes to him in strobic gloom As figgum's plied before his throne. Malignly mute, he peers thro' haze; Infernal paeons shake each Inn, Blue lights 'twixt opals burn and bloom In deep-hued haunts of ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque

... young self-supporting woman in Honolulu trace their ancestry back to Kamehameha with great pride. The chant is a weird sing-song which relates the ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... a poem of Byron's, written between 1812 and 1819, representing the author himself as wandering over the world in quest of satisfaction and returning sated to disgust; it abounds in striking thoughts and vivid descriptions; in his "Dernier Chant of C. H." Lamartine takes up the hero where Byron ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... decorated and women leaned out at the windows of houses. Old priests dressed in white gowns waddled along. Strong young men carried the platform on which the Virgin rested. The procession stopped. Someone started a chant in a loud clear voice. Other voices took it up. Children ran about gathering in money. All the time there was a loud hum of ordinary conversation going on. Women shouted across the street to other women. ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson

... bits of grass at him and then turned to go on with an argument she had been having with Ishmael when the sight of the vernal squills had distracted them. Nicky would not leave them alone; determined not to be ignored, he went on pelting her and kept up his monotonous chant: "I'm the King of the Castle, I'm the King ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... little turret at its north-eastern corner, the oaken door of which, studded with quarrel-headed nails, was at one time never opened, but when the priests ascended the six steep and spiral steps, and stood around the tomb to chant masses for the dead. ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... Preacher, smiling upon us, "it is day and a very glorious one; already a thousand little choristers of God's great cathedral have begun to chant your marriage hymn. Go forth together, Man and Wife, upon this great wide road that we call Life; go forth together, made strong in Faith, and brave with Hope, and the memory of Him who walked these ways before you; who joyed and sorrowed and suffered and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... removed from the civilised world, they made songs among themselves—fantastic descriptions of their own country. By word of mouth these poems were handed on from generation to generation, and generally sung to the accompaniment of the kantele in a weird sort of chant. By such means the wonderful Sagas of Iceland were preserved to us until the year 1270, when they first began to be written down on sheepskins, in Runic writing, for Iceland at that date shone as a glorious literary ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... critical juncture my father's old follower Kishori came to the rescue, and finished the episode for us, at express speed, to the quickstep of Dasuraya's jingling verses. The impression of the soft slow chant of Krittivasa's[7] fourteen-syllabled measure was swept clean away and we were left overwhelmed by a flood of rhymes ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore

... white heads did the Dedannan host listen to Finola's chant, and when the music ceased and only sobs broke the stillness, the four swans spread their wings, and, soaring high, paused but for one short moment to gaze on the kneeling forms of Lir and Bove Derg. Then, stretching their graceful necks ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... here you see the fields and hear the birds, and here you can bathe in the Ganges. We did; and then breakfasted; and then set out in palanquins for the nearest railway station. The bearers sang a rhythmic chant as they bore us smoothly along through mustard and pulses, yellow and orange and mauve. The sun blazed hot; the bronzed figures streamed with sweat; the cheerful voices never failed or flagged. I dozed and drowsed, while East and ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

... to chant the invocation, then stopped suddenly. "I must not; you know I am a Catholic." Suspicion that had been scotched, not killed, raised its head. "What was his present venture?" Her eye had not changed in expression, nor a tone of her voice, but ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... gloated over the image of Robb stricken to the ground. Through the hours of darkness, she now and then sang to herself, and the melodies were those she had known when a girl, or a child, common songs of the street. It was her chant of ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... things of which one can truly say that only Richard Wagner could have penned them. The accent of grief is intensely passionate, yet it remains solemn, sublime. Then the Bacchanal music and Tannhaeuser's chant in praise of Venus are heard; but all the tumult dies down, and the pilgrims end the piece not as it began, but triumphantly. We have here, as I have said, the great Wagner, working confidently and with ease on a vast scale. The curtain rises; and if we could not see ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... the plum-tree's heart. It crowned the girl. Her raiment, the dark leaves, the red wall, the golden plums, were woven by the passing glow to a block of pagan colour. And her face above it, chaste, serene, was like the scentless summer evening. A bird amongst the currant bushes kept a little chant vibrating; and all the plum-tree's shape and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... YEO-HEAVE-YEOING. The chant or noise made at the windlass and purchase-falls in a merchantman, to cheer and lighten labour, but not ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... answer to her knuckling. She knocked louder and listened. A door slammed violently at the back of the house, a distant clatter of what sounded like saucepans came from beyond, and above it all a tremulous but harsh voice bellowed industriously through an interminable chant. By the time the third verse was reached Mr. Wilks's neighbours on both sides were beating madly upon their walls and blood-curdling threats strained through ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... temps a laissie son manteau De vent, de froidure et de pluye, Et s'est vestu de brouderie, De soleil luyant, cler et beau. Il n'y a beste, ne oyseau, Qu'en son jargon ne chant ou crie; Le temps a laissie son manteau De vent de froidure et de pluye. Riviere, fontaine et ruisseau Portent, en livree jolie, Gouttes d'argent d'orfavrerie, Chascun s'abille de nouveau. Le ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc

... sang the death-chant of the Real Dogs. Then he stepped silently out, leading the file of warriors to the wall under the tree, that he might be the first to climb and meet the soldiers in ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin

... earth? Behold, the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded.'—Then the other side would answer, 'The Lord hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation.' I cannot tell you how sweet it was. There was another chant they were very fond of. A few would begin with Solomon's petition—'Have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O Lord my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, which thy servant ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... Fall back on either side, and let the mules Pass on; the body in my palace once Deposited, ye then may weep your fill. 900 He said; they, opening, gave the litter way. Arrived within the royal house, they stretch'd The breathless Hector on a sumptuous bed, And singers placed beside him, who should chant The strain funereal; they with many a groan 905 The dirge began, and still, at every close, The female train with many a groan replied. Then, in the midst, Andromache white-arm'd Between her palms the dreadful Hector's ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... amusement and at first did not answer. Then she began to skip around her companion and chant, "I know a secret, ...
— The Hunters • William Morrison

... you may at first fancy, is the especially childish part of the work. Not so. It is the especially chivalric and Christian part of it. It characterises the Christian chant or canticle, as a higher thing than a Greek ode, melos, or hymnos, or than ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... was found in a submarine temple, from which the sea receded every seven years for the benefit of pilgrims. Thus he became the patron of anchor forgers, and thence of smiths in general. Charles Dickens, in Great Expectations describes an Essex blacksmith as working to a chant, the refrain of which was "Old Clem." I have heard the explosions at Hursley before 1860, but more modern blacksmiths despise the custom. At Twyford, however, the festival is kept, and at the dinner a story ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... a song which in the later days at Greyhope, Lali had sung for Marion, first in her own language, with the few notes of an Indian chant, and afterwards, by the help of the celebrated musician who had taught her both music and singing, both of which she had learned but slowly, it was translated and set to music. Lali looked Marion steadily in the eyes for a moment and then rose. It cost her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, am studying Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry, and learning the concertina on the instrument of one of my fellow-passengers. Besides this, I have had the getting up and management of our choir. We practise three or four times a week; we chant the Venite, Glorias, and Te Deums, and sing one hymn. I have two basses, two tenors, one alto, and lots of girls, and the singing certainly is better than you would hear in nine country places out of ten. I have been glad by this means to form ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler

... Brahmanas began to wave their upper garments in joy. And all around, the monarchs who had been unsuccessful, uttered exclamations of grief and despair. And flowers were rained from the skies all over the amphitheatre. And the musicians struck up in concert. Bards and heralds began to chant in sweet tones the praises (of the hero who accomplished the feat). And beholding Arjuna, Drupada—that slayer of foes,— was filled with joy. And the monarch desired to assist with his forces the hero if the occasion arose. And when the uproar was at its height, Yudhishthira, the foremost ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)

... the supper went on, through the flowery speech of the old Colonel when he stood to propose a toast, through the happy tinkle of laughter when Stuart responded, through the thrilling moment when at last the bride rose to cut the mammoth cake. In her nervous excitement, Mary actually began to chant the line aloud, as the first slice was lifted from the great silver salver: "All went merry—" Then she clapped her hand over her mouth, but nobody had noticed, for Allison had drawn the wedding-ring, and a chorus of laughing ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston

... His conservation of the Faith Persecution of the Manicheans Opposition to the Arians His enemies; Faustina Quarrel with the Empress Establishment of Spiritual Authority Opposition to Temporal Power Ambrose retires to his cathedral; Ambrosian chant Rebellion of Soldiers; triumph of Ambrose Sent as Ambassador to Maximus; his intrepidity His rebuke of Theodosius; penance of the Emperor Fidelity and ability of Ambrose as Bishop His private virtues His ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... mansions of purpureal mould; the Host Of heaven assembled to adore with harp And hymn, the First and Last, the Living God; They knelt,—a universal choir, and glow'd More beauteous while they breathed the chant divine, And Hallelujah! Hallelujah! peal'd, And thrill'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 337, October 25, 1828. • Various

... lightly lifted. Jarvo gave a sharp command, and all four of the men broke into a rhythmic chant. Jarvo, leading the way, sprang immediately upon the first foothold, where none seemed to be, and without pause to the next. So perfectly were the men trained that it was as if but one set of muscles were inspiring ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... the Volga That turns his back upon Europe, And the two great cities on his banks, Novgorod and Astrakhan; Where the world is a few soft colours, And under the dove-like evening The boatmen chant ancient songs, The ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... glossy breadfruit and banana, groups of natives were twining garlands of roses and ohia blossoms. The lights of happy foreign homes flashed from under verandahs festooned with passion-flowers, and the low chant, to me nearly intolerable, but which the natives love, mingled with the ceaseless moaning of the surf and the sighing of the breeze through the trees, and a heavy fragrance, unlike the faint sweet odours of the north, filled the evening air. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... boys could easily see the exciting scene as a line of black ran on board the steam-boat, each carrying two or more sticks of wood on his head, and keeping rhythmic time to the droning chant which every man ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne

... down the precipice he plunged along Mid ragged cliffs that in his passage lay: All torn and mangled by the fearful fray, Naught save the echo of his fall arose. The winds that still around that summit play, The sporting rill that far beneath it flows, Chant, where the Indian fell, ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... slow chant when I was young; To me these rivulets sing as once they sung, No need this hour of ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)

... been seen in this way, escaping from the fire. And Marius was present when the Fathers, duly certified of the fact, by "acclamation," muttering their judgment all together, in a kind of low, rhythmical chant, decreed Caelum—the privilege of divine rank ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater

... shoulder, and that hostilities on his part were about to be opened, he, as if just for fun, dropped his own dear brown self on the branch below him, flapped his wings, and soon perching himself on a tree a little further off, gravely re-opened his beak and resumed his monotonous chant. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle

... that was quite unintelligible to his listener. Then, with gentle touch, Phil began to pass his hand cautiously over his patient's body, searching for possible fractured ribs or some similar injury; but the old man waved him impatiently away, and presently broke forth in a low, crooning sort of chant. ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... Khayyam's poetry have just been read to me, and I feel as if I had spent the last half-hour in a magnificent sepulcher. Yes, it is a tomb in which hope, joy and the power of acting nobly lie buried. Every beautiful description, every deep thought glides insensibly into the same mournful chant of the brevity of life, of the slow decay and dissolution of all earthly things. The poet's bright, fond memories of love, youth and beauty are but the funeral torches shedding their light on this tomb, or to modify the image a little, they are the flowers that bloom on it, watered ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... constant rosary The bedesmen firs incline; And fair as frescoes be Among the shrines of Italy, These lights and shadows are, Impalpable in gray and green Upon the hills afar And the gold westering sun between. The music! Hark! Oh, an it be no rapturous lark, Yet has the lesser chant The blessedness of song. The snowbird mendicant Intones the antiphon— Et ...
— Ballads of Peace in War • Michael Earls

... angelic magnificence will roll back and off. The day for which all other days are made has closed, and the world has burned down, and the last cinder has gone out, and an angel flying on errand from world to world will poise long enough over the dead earth to chant the funeral litany as he cries, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... several of the most civilised nations of antiquity considered it the most honourable mode of disposing of the bodies of the dead. While the body is being reduced to ashes the priests tell their beads and chant prayers for the soul of the departed, as the followers of almost every religious sect in Japan believe in a state ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver

... whence the sounds seemed to come. But no door, no light, only the black walls, the black wet flags, with their faint yellow reflections of flickering oil-lamps; moreover, complete silence. I stopped a minute, and then the chant rose again; this time it seemed to me most certainly from the lane I had just left. I went back—nothing. Thus backwards and forwards, the sounds always beckoning, as it were, one way, only to beckon me back, vainly, to ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... friends' bodies either turning to corruption or being eaten by wild beasts is distasteful to us, and therefore we burn our dead.' The corpse is burnt with wood, and during the cremation the mourners arrange themselves around the fire and chant and dance. The ashes are buried, and the ground leveled. This custom is still adhered to among the Nou-su of the independent Lolo territory or more correctly Papu country of Western Szech'wan. The tribesmen who dwell in the neighborhood of Weining and Chao-t'ong have adopted burial as the means ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... Kuching in 1855, which was at the time a great event. I find the following passage in my journal: "Every evening, before late dinner, the Lundus go up to Mr. Gomes's room to say their prayers, and sing, or rather chant, their hymns. There is something very affecting in this little service—the Dyak voices singing of Christ's second coming with His holy angels, and rejoicing that He came once before for their salvation; then praying for holy, gentle hearts to receive Him. I always feel ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... chant, I heard him say, With sobbing voice and deep heart-heaving sigh, "Dry up thae tears, my Jean, for things away, Time's but a watch-tick in eternity; We darena sing of earth, but lift our prayer To Him whose promises are never vain, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... The chant went up from the black masses of men and women kneeling in the cathedral, like a sudden breaking out of light in darkness, and the silence was shattered as by a peal of thunder. The voices floated up with the clouds of incense that had begun to cast thin bluish veils over the fanciful ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac

... le soleil tomber bien d'autres choses Que les feuilles des bois, et l'ecume des eaux, Bien d'autres s'en aller que le parfum des roses Et le chant des oiseaux. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... the 29th of October, and to it came many old friends and veteran co-workers in the anti-slavery cause. The services were in keeping with the record of the life they commemorated. They were opened by that beautiful chant, "Thy will be done," followed by a touching prayer from the Rev. Mr. Morrison, who then briefly sketched the life of her who lay so still and beautiful before them. He was followed by Elizur Wright, who, overcome by the memories with which she was identified, memories of struggles, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... great cat. The slow lapping of blood broke in on the stillness. Then the voice shrilled high and wild. I could see that the man had marked his forehead with blood, and that his hands were red and dripping. He seemed to be declaiming some savage chant, to which my neighbours began to keep time with their bodies. Wilder and wilder it grew, till it ended in a scream like a seamew's. Whoever the madman was, he knew the mystery of Indian souls, for in a little he would have had that host lusting blindly for death. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... these alien eyes, the cantor, intoning his Hebrew chant on the steps of the Ark, lit the great many-branched Chanukah candlestick. Truly, the world was changing ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... that came to her ear, weaving them together in some form which she understood, but which was jargon to all others; and often, as she went alone through the green lanes or the bustling streets, the passenger would turn in pity and fear to hear her half chant—half murmur—ditties that seemed to suit only a wandering and unsettled imagination. And as Mrs. Boxer, in her visits to the various shops in the suburb, took care to bemoan her hard fate in attending to a creature so evidently moon-stricken, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... convent, where a narrow room awaits this dreaming eager little watcher. Our poor little Madelon! Not more difference between this gay, familiar music to which all her life has been set hitherto, and the melancholy chant of the nuns, whose echoes have already passed from her memory, than between the future she is picturing to herself and the one preparing for her—but ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... 'twas thine to see God's choir announce the Saviour's birth, And hear those waves of melody Chant peace and good will ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass

... the page of disease and death and pestilence, ever following in the train of famine—to which nothing existing was to be found in the page of Josephus, or on the canvas of Poussin, or in the dismal chant of Dante ... that they should be in circumstances like these, and yet be able calmly and temperately to take up questions of permanent policy, he held to be ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... beyond the possibility of complete satisfaction, and there is suffering because the will is thwarted and cheated of its ideal. Macbeth's passionate ambition to be a king, encouraged in him by the witches' chant, is an ambition for something that no being a king can satisfy; and the tragedy of his passion lies in the painful effort by which he wins his object and the painful disillusion when ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James

... hand into the breast of his blue cotton shirt, and pulled out a sort of instrument made from the shell of a tortoise, with three or four strings stretched across, and in a low, monotonous tone, something between a chant and a whine, not altogether unmusical, he commenced his story. But first he struck his instrument, and ran over a short prelude, which may be imagined by a series of false notes, running ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat

... lifted in a grimace of exasperation. "Please, Colonel," he said wearily, "this is not a kindergarten exercise. In confirmation of his success, listen...." He touched a button on his desk and out of the air came the emotionless chant of a newscaster. ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton

... set free the royal princes who had been taken at Agincourt; and that, whatever quarrel might arise with France, England should never make peace without holding Normandy. Then, he laid down his head, and asked the attendant priests to chant the penitential psalms. Amid which solemn sounds, on the thirty- first of August, one thousand four hundred and twenty-two, in only the thirty-fourth year of his age and the tenth of his reign, King ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... cannot be," answered the monk; "so, since we shall never find them, let us chant the Burial Office over this great grave of theirs and begone—the sooner the better, for yon place has ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... the fluffy bolls looking like artificial roses and the stray blossoms strangely shaped and delicately pink. Sometimes a group of Negro pickers would chant in rich voices as they picked. "Da cotton want a-pickin' so ba-ad!" But it was astonishing to the Beechams to find how many aches they had and how few pounds of cotton when ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means

... reasoned analysis of experience. Acquired laziness. We have no respect for those who were born lazy; it is like being born a millionaire: they cannot appreciate their bliss. It is the man who has hammered his laziness out of the stubborn material of life for whom we chant praise and allelulia. ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... and hearkened to the chanting of the cleric until matins were performed. "Let us chant our music now," said Fionnuala. So they began, and chanted a solemn, slow, sweet, fairy song in adoration of the High King of ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston

... heavily upon the novice. The hushed interior was bathed in a dim, religious light; and the congregation, seated on small wooden chairs, gazed in reverent silence at the pulpit, where a gentleman of commanding presence and sparkling pince-nez was delivering a species of chant. Behind a gold curtain at the end of the room mysterious forms flitted to and fro. Archie, who had been expecting something on the lines of the New York Stock Exchange, which he had once been privileged to visit when it was ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse

... gospel to his tribe. Father Gabriel was sent, and in one month heard four hundred confessions, and offered to many the sacred body of the Lord. He also baptized eighty small children and some larger ones. The custom was there introduced of having boys march in procession in the public streets, and chant the Christian belief. The same thing has been done in the church, so greatly to the delight of the people that even the chiefs of the tribe think it small honor to them if they are not sometimes examined in the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... returned Larry. "I mean it. If not a Republican!" he added, ostentatiously, and began to chant: ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... has already had the fate of every folksong—the version of it that was circulated among the Bavarian troops lacks the middle stanza and has in other ways also been "sung to pieces." But it has also been worked over artistically. The Chemnitz Director of Church Music, Prof. Mayerhoff, has set the "Chant of Hate Against England" to music for male voices. The song was rendered publicly at a great meeting in a concert in the Alberthalle at Leipsic, and was taken up in roaring chorus by the audience. The composer himself accompanied his composition on ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various



Words linked to "Chant" :   sing, plainsong, tone, chanting, talk, speak, cantillate, plainchant, intone, singsong, Gregorian chant, religious song, Hare Krishna, Hallel, chanter, intonate, verbalise, utter, verbalize, mouth



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