"Cymbal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... adorn the walls of the War Department, that it might act as an incentive to some future occupant of that lofty station! I advise the use of leather, because if we used any metal it might convey to our minds the idea of 'a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.' ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... great plantation bell, and spend the next several hours in exhorting, praying and singing their curious, doleful hymns. The whites gave them instruction and training along these lines. Heart and conscious were alike cultivated—not alone the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Statistics show that there were 466,000 slaves belonging to churches in the South: Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and other sects. So the owners of these christianized people thought that they were doing missionary work ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... By this haut-gout carbonade; By thy colours red and white; By the tavern, thy delight; By the sound thy orgies spread; By the shine of noses red; By thy table free for all; By the jovial carnival; By thy language cabalistic; By thy cymbal, drum, and his stick; By the tunes thy quart-pots strike up; By thy sighs, the broken hiccup; By thy mystic set of ranters; By thy never-tamed panthers; By this sweet, this fresh and free air; By thy goat, as chaste as we are; By thy fulsome Cretan lass; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... offer the people. For ordinary people philosophy is as tasteless as the white of an egg. As the preachers spoke far above the heads of the people, they soon lost touch with their flocks; the hungry sheep looked up, and were not fed; the sermons were tinkling brass and clanging cymbal; and the ministers, instead of attending to their pastoral duties, were hidden away in their studies in clouds of philosophical and theological smoke, and employed their time composing discourses, which neither ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... sails, and the benches of the curved ships were smoking; when the holy Mother of the Gods, remembering that these pines were cut down on the heights of Ida, filled the air with the tinkling of the clashing cymbal, and with the noise of the blown boxwood {pipe}. Borne through the yielding air by her harnessed lions, she said: "Turnus, in vain dost thou hurl the flames with thy sacrilegious right hand; I will save {the ships}, and the devouring flames shall not, with my permission, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... it an art full of life, passion, laughter, and tears. The instrument which the gypsies prefer is the violin, which they call bas' alja, 'the king of instruments.' They also play the viola, the cymbal, ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... opened with a terrifying clash of cymbal and thump of drum. "Back at the end of my first turn," he said as he Red. Terry followed his lithe, electric figure. She turned to meet the heavy-lidded gaze of the woman seated opposite. She relaxed, then, and sat back with a little sigh. "Well! If he talks ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... One is a kind of harp, held between the left arm and the side, and played with one hand by means of a quill or plectrum. [PLATE CXXVI., Fig. 3.] Another is a lyre, played by the hand; while a third is apparently cymbal. But in the later times we see besides these instruments—a harp of a different make played with both hands, two or three kinds of lyre, the double pipe, the guitar or cithern, the tambourine, a nameless instrument, and more ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... qualities, but he is wanting in—love. He loves his readers and his fellow-poets as little as he loves himself, and thus we may apply to him the maxim of the apostle—'Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not love (charity), I am become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.' I have lately read the poems of Platen, and cannot deny his great talent. But, as I said, he is deficient in love, and thus he will never produce the effect which he ought. He will be feared, and will be the idol of those who would like to be as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... ecstasy upon modern Russia and bade it ring its bells and sound its chants, bade it push onward with its old faith and vigor, since the Slavonic grandeur and glory were assured. For through the savage trumpet-blasts and rude and lumbering rhythms, through the cymbal-crashing Mongol marches and warm, uncouth peasant chants that are his music, there surges that vision, that sense of ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... together. A ribbon, passed over her left shoulder, is carried through a ring, from which hangs a seal. On her arms and shoulders appear to have stood two lions, which formed side supports to the mirror that was attached to the figure's head. If the face of the cymbal-player cannot boast of much beauty, and her figure is thought to "lack distinction," still it is granted that the tout ensemble of the work was not without originality, and may have possessed a certain amount of elegance.[877] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... who was seated in a low juniper-tree, weeping most bitterly and now and then smiting its hands together in sorrow. The hands of the monkey, being of metal (as indeed was the creature's entire body), produced, as they beat together, the cymbal-like sounds which ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... lyric inn Where the rarer sort so long Drew the rein, to 'scape the din Of the cymbal and the gong, Topers of the classic bin,— Oporto, sherris and tokay, Muscatel, and beaujolais— Conning some old Book of Airs, Lolling in their Queen Anne chairs— Catch or glee or madrigal, Writ for viol or virginal; Or from France some courtly ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... particularly suited to express itself worthily in music, for in no other form of artistic endeavor is this balance more requisite. Music without emotion is, to be sure, like "sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal" and dies in short order. On the other hand, music which is a mere display of crude emotion soon palls. The works of modern French composers deserve enthusiastic study for their charm, their finish and their ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... with a serene step and unruffled brow, followed by the sulky and disappointed Aizif, . . smiling gently on Theos and Sah-luma she reseated herself, and touched a small bell at her side. It gave a sharp kling-klang like a suddenly struck cymbal—and lo! ... the marble floor yawned asunder, and the banquet-table with all its costly fruits and flowers vanished underground with the swiftness of lightning! The floor closed again, . . the broad, circular centre-space of the hall was now clear from all obstruction,—and ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... energy of cheerfulness, that its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire, and the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid—such is the influence of a bright example— performed a sort of jig, and clattered like a deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use of its twin brother." . ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... hunger, warre, or such like, then they goe to consult with their idol, which they do after this manner: they fall down prostrate before the idol, and pray vnto it, and put in the presence of the same, a cymbal: and about the same certaine persons stand, which are chosen amongst them by lot: vpon their cymball they place a siluer tode, and sound the cymball, and to whomsoeuer of those lotted persons that tode goeth, he is taken, and by and by slaine: and immediately, I know ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... the populace all round him shouted: 'Glory! Glory! Glory to the immortal Julius! He has comforted us in our sorrow, in our great woe! He has bestowed on us verses sweeter than honey, more musical than the cymbal's note, more fragrant than the rose, purer than the azure of heaven! Carry him in triumph, encircle his inspired head with the soft breath of incense, cool his brow with the rhythmic movement of palm-leaves, scatter at his feet ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... this topic silence is golden; while speech reaches not even the dignity of sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, and is but the weary clatter of an endless logomachy. One can but suspect that Hume also had reached this conviction; and that his shadowy and inconsistent theism was the expression of his desire to rest in a state of mind, which distinctly excluded negation, while it included as little as ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... India originally practised the Patriarchal religion. Even the later worship of Vishnu was cheerful and social; accompanied with the festive song, the sprightly dance, and the resounding cymbal, with libations of milk and honey, garlands, and perfumes from aromatic ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... they gape for the husks that ye proffer Or yearn to your song? And we—have we nothing to offer Who ruled them so long— In the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbal, the blare of the ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... the man, his feelings, his surroundings, his hopes, his desires, and his sorrows,—these, and these alone, mean that complete sympathy, without which the white man among Malays, is but as a sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... were not sermons.... either kind was bad and ought not to be allowed... a homily... sermons... homilies... a quiet homily might be something rather nice... and have not Charity—sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.... Caritas... I have none I am sure.... Fraulein Pfaff would listen. She would smile afterwards and talk about a "schone Predigt"—certainly.... If she should ask about the sermon? Everything would come ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... inclosure, of which he had the key, the door of which he unlocked, and we went into a pleasant green plot, in which stood a small hillock like a steeple, all adorned with fragrant herbs and trees. He then beat upon a cymbal, at the sound of which many animals of various kinds came down, from the mount, some like apes, some like cats, others like monkeys, and some having human faces, which gathered around him to the number of four thousand, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... bride and groom, had gone amid the shouting and the tumult of the populace, and after the phaeton and the sorrel mare had actually taken the bride and groom from the barn to the railway station, after the fiddle and the bassoon and the horn and the tinkling cymbal at Morty Sands's dance had frayed and torn the sleep of those pale souls who would sleep on such a night in Harvey, Grant Adams and his father, leaving Jasper to trip whatever fantastic toes he might have, ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... harp and the viol and cymbal, Instead of the lyre, the guitar and the flute, He has but the dry, wither'd Ram's-horn, the symbol Of gloom and despondence; the rest all ...
— Songs of Labor and Other Poems • Morris Rosenfeld
... shone like diamonds in the dark spaces between the clouds. The rugged fortress lay swathed in the softness of the creamy light. No noise broke the stillness, save the dull drum-beat of their horses' hoofs on the turf, or their cymbal-clatter where they crossed a road, and the occasional shrill call from ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... the rich viol, trump, cymbal, nor horn, Guitar, nor cittern, nor the pining flute, Are half so sweet as tender human ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... Hearing a cymbal in your dreams, foretells the death of a very aged person of your acquaintance. The sun will shine, but you will see it darkly ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... ceremony, it was now evidently approaching a climax. The chanting grew louder and more furious and the cymbal players clashed their huge metal instruments together with a deafening clangor. Suddenly, from the passage from which the galleries branched off, there appeared six men clad in robes of flaming scarlet and conical caps of the ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... which Israel saw, When Moses gave them miracles and law: Yet, gracious Charity, indulgent guest, Were not thy power exerted in my breast, Those speeches would send up unheeded pray'r; That scorn of life would be but wild despair; A cymbal's sound were better than my voice; My faith were form, ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... have felt. He had seen much of the world for a youngster, and could make a good show with what he knew. He could play on the piano, and though the aged instrument which the old countryman had got at second-hand for his granddaughter gave forth sounds which might have come from a tinkling cymbal, yet Ferdy played with a certain dash and could bring from it tunes which the girl thought very fine. The two soon began to be so much together that both Rhodes and Keith fell to rallying Ferdy as to his conquest. Ferdy accepted ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... longer danced merrily in the light. Evening was setting in apace, and Hyzlo, accepting one dream as equal in veracity with the other, crossed to the embrasure and, his elbows on the sill, watched the sun—looking like a sulphur-coloured cymbal—sink behind the sky-line. He was still in the same attitude when the blue of the heavens—ah! but not that gorgeous, hard Alexandrian blue—melted into peacock and cool ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... have ventured on thy strident streets, Mid whir of traffic in the vibrant hour When Commerce with its clashing cymbal greets The mighty Mammon in his pomp of power.... And in the quiet dusk of eventide, As wearied toilers quit the marts of Trade, Have I been of their pageant—or allied With Passion's revel in ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... either love or selfishness I may "bestow all my goods to feed the poor and give my body to be burned," but love alone profiteth; while all the subtle forms of selfishness and self-seeking are "sounding brass and clanging cymbal." Selfishness, even when it does a service, has its eye on its own merit, or the reward it is to gain. In so doing it forfeits merit and reward both. Selfishness never succeeds in getting outside of itself. From all the joys ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... covering this leg with your finger and imagining it swinging to the right. So that Titian, having to retain the vertical position for Bacchus' forward leg, used the aggressive standing leg of the cymbal lady to accentuate its spring ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... him in some wonder, "here was the daintiest festal ever devised: delicate youths and exquisite maidens footing it to pipe and cymbal as blithely as if they would ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name? And then I will profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me you that work iniquity;" and on these of St. Paul: "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." "I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection, lest, perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... epithets, Frederick saw the whole dance over again with his mind's eye. He saw how the childlike body, after cowering and trembling a while in the corner of the room, approached the flower again to the accompaniment of music played by a tom-tom, a cymbal, and a flute. Something which was not pleasure drew her to it. The first time she had traced her way to the source of the perfume by sniffing fragrance in the air. Her mouth had been open, the nostrils of her fine little nose had quivered. Hans Fuellenberg was correct in his observation that her ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... threatened with closure for want of funds, it is clear that mere "charity" is a useless resort. "Charity" moreover leaks. Though it is much puffed up and advertiseth itself, and is supported on the public platforms with sounding brass and tinkling cymbal, nevertheless it faileth. There is knowledge, and it remains, prophecies and they are fulfilled, but this thing which we call "charity" faileth, it vanisheth away. "The fund will soon be exhausted," we hear on all sides. Why ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... I will make it truth in you; for though you depart from life yourself, you shall keep touch with the learned and hold communion with the best. Consider the mighty Demosthenes, whose son he was, and whither I exalted him; consider Aeschines; how came a Philip to pay court to the cymbal-woman's brat? how but for my sake? Dame Statuary here had the breeding of Socrates himself; but no sooner could he discern the better part, than he deserted her and enlisted with me; since when, his name ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... the king in priestly raiment sang the Christ that was to be, Voice and lute and clashing cymbal joined in joyous harmony, While the Spirit, heaven-descended, ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... presentation of his own suffering, the heart of her who loves him not, is as unavailing as it is unmanly. The poet who sings most wailfully of the torments of the lover's hell, is but a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal in the ears of her who has at best only a general compassion to meet the song withal—possibly only an individual vanity which crowns her with his woes as with the trophies of a conquest. True, he is understood ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... as a drawback rather than as an advantage. Mrs. Spalding, who was no poetess, would undoubtedly have welcomed Mr. Glascock as her niece's husband with all an aunt's energy. When told by Miss Petrie that old Lord Peterborough was a tinkling cymbal she snapped angrily at her gifted countrywoman. But she was too honest a woman, and too conscious also of her niece's strength, to say a word to urge her on. Mr. Spalding as an American minister, with full powers at the court of a European sovereign, felt that he ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... rough diamond sparkle at his will, And cuts a gem from quartz or coral-reef. Better a skillful cobbler at his last Than unlearned poet twangling on the lyre; Who sails on land and gallops on the blast, And mounts the welkin on a braying ass, Clattering a shattered cymbal bright with brass, And slips his girth and tumbles in the mire. All poetry must be, if it be true, Like the keen arrows of the—Grecian god Apollo, that caught fire as they flew. Ah, such was Byron's, but alas he trod Ofttimes among the brambles and the rue, And sometimes ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... censer streaming [fn95] clouds of fragrance, in the hands of the trembling descendant of Aaron approaching the inner sanctuary of the INVISIBLE AND ALMIGHTY; three hundred sons of song, accompanied with psaltery and cymbal, and "the harp with a solemn sound," resounding the attributes of HIM WHO IS, AND EVER SHALL BE;[fn96] and hundreds of thousands of worshippers prostrating their foreheads on the pavement in awe and extacy, as ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... of their carols the musicians pause for rest, the cymbal-player throws his cymbal on the floor, and the candle-lighter does the same thing with his tray, and into these the master of the house deposits his gifts to his parish church, and if they are a newly-married couple they ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... ages before our traditions, By the altars of dark superstitions, The imperious question has come; When the death-stricken victim lay sobbing At the feet of his slayer and priest, And his heart was laid smoking and throbbing To the sound of the cymbal and drum On the steps of the high Teocallis; When the delicate Greek at his feast Poured forth the red wine from his chalice With mocking and cynical prayer; When by Nile Egypt worshipping lay, And afar, through the rosy, flushed air The Memnon called out to the day; Where the Muezzin's ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... should spend daily more than an hour reading words that they understand not at all, or very imperfectly; and that the beautiful and sublime thought and language of the book of psalms, which are admired by all educated men, should be, to those who read them every day for years, nothing but a tinkling cymbal, vox et praeterea nihil. This is often the case even with priests who practise piously and methodically mental prayer. And yet nowhere are such beautiful acts of faith and confidence in God's power expressed as in the Psalms (e.g., 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 16, 19, 25, 27, 30, 34, 43, ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley
... sooner had the Sun uttered these words than Fortune, as if she had been playing on a cymbal, began to unwind her wheel, which, whirling about like a hurricane, huddled all the world into an unparalleled confusion. Fortune gave a mighty squeak, saying, 'Fly, wheel, and the devil drive thee.'"—Fortune ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... weighty sound, And from good men's lips they hail us; But a tinkling cymbal, a drum's rebound, For help or for comfort they fail us! His Life's fruit away he forfeit flings Who catches after ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... palms! Clashing your cymbal tones, In thro' the mystic moans Of pines at solemn psalms: Ye myrtles, singing Love's inspired song, We ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... lovely correspondent. You don't write your letters with your pen, or with your tongue, you write them with your heart. Hearts are different; some, I suppose, are born sound and musical, others are born uncertain and unmusical, and are at best a mere tinkling cymbal. Yours, I have no doubt, has blessed and cheered and delighted the soul of the mother who bore you from the very first opening of your eyes upon the world, and that dear heart has gone on with that cheering influence from that time to the present, and it will go on cheering everybody ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... of virtue the ends thereof. Be not beneficent for a name or cymbal of applause; nor exact and punctual in commerce for the advantages of trust and credit, which attend the reputation of just and true dealing: for such rewards, though unsought for, plain virtue will bring with ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... iron elbows fastened to their centres and jointed to levers, and are wrapped in fleeces of wool. In the tops of the cylinders are openings, each about three digits in diameter. Close to these openings are bronze dolphins, mounted on joints and holding chains in their mouths, from which hang cymbal-shaped valves, let down under ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... all our conscious superiority in other respects, if destitute of the knowledge of "the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent," we shall prove but as "a sounding brass, and as a tinkling cymbal." Our boasted attainments, as enhancing our responsibility, will minister to our final condemnation; and while imagining we have been defective in nothing, we shall feel the everlasting remorse connected ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... of the various corps, the trumpeters and the musicians, covered with gold and silver lace, are dazzling to look at; the kettledrum suspended at the saddle-bow, overcharged with painted and gilded ornaments, is a curiosity for a glass case; the Negro cymbal-player of the French guards resembles the sultan of a fairy-tale. Behind the carriage and alongside of it trot the body-guards, with sword and carbine, wearing red breeches, high black boots, and a blue coat sewn with white embroidery, all of them unquestionable ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... hair As it streamed o'er her; her blue veins that rose Along her most transparent brow; her nostril 390 Dilated from its symmetry; her lips Apart; her voice that clove through all the din, As a lute pierceth through the cymbal's clash, Jarred but not drowned by the loud brattling; her Waved arms, more dazzling with their own born whiteness Than the steel her hand held, which she caught up From a dead soldier's grasp;—all these things made Her seem unto the troops a prophetess ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... right arm, across his back, and along his left arm, and as he turned his body he kept the trident rolling around crossing his back and breast and giving it a new impetus with each arm. The trident had on it two cymbal-shaped iron plates which kept up ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... this Neapolitan dance when the lady kneels, whilst the gentleman moves round her, not as a master, but as a conqueror.—What at this moment were the charms and dignity of Corinne. How regal, even in kneeling, did she appear! And when she arose, striking her aerial cymbal, she seemed animated with that lively enthusiasm of youth and beauty, which would create a belief that nothing was wanting to complete her happiness. Alas! it was far otherwise; but Oswald feared it, and sighed in the midst of his admiration of Corinne, ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... a mistaken separation into two words, chimbe bell, of chymbal or chymbel, the old form of "cymbal," Lat. cymbalum), a mechanical arrangement by which a set of bells in a church or other tower, or in a clock, are struck so as to produce a sequence of musical sounds or a tune. For the mechanism of such an arrangement ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... the phrase, yet apt the verse, More ponderous than nimble; For since grimed War here laid aside His Orient pomp, 'twould ill befit Overmuch to ply The Rhyme's barbaric cymbal. ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... last night we had been kept awake by the drumming and fifing, singing and shouting, weeping and howling, pulling at accordions and striking the monotonous Shingungo. Merolla names this cymbal Longa, and describes it justly as two iron bells joined by an arched bar: I found it upon the Tanganyika Lake, and suffered severely from its monotonous horrors. Monteiro and Gamitto (p. 232) give an illustration of what is known ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... lyre, the cithara (or zithern), and the harp. The wind-instruments were the pipe, the clarionet, and the trumpet. Besides these, there were clanging instruments which were used chiefly in religious ceremonies: such were castanets, the cymbal, and the tambourine. Dancing was originally connected with religious worship. Mimetic dances were a favorite diversion at feasts. There were warlike dances by men in armor, who went through the movements of attack and defense. In mimetic dances ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... really care, are always personal. How many of us are truly interested as to the best mode of governing India? But in a question touching the character of a prime minister we all muster together like bees round a sounding cymbal." ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... a tumultuous rush of every produceable sound; tom-tom, conch-shell, cymbal, flute, stringed instruments and bells burst into chorus together. The idol was going to be carried out from his innermost shrine behind the lights; and as the great doors moved slowly, the excitement became intense, the thrill of it quivered through all ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... crowd heard Pharaoh speak to these poor people with such unwonted kindness, the like of which they had never heard before, they uttered mad shouts of joy. As the king proceeded on his way in his two-wheeled golden chariot, a long array of soldiers, cymbal players, and dancing girls following behind, the palm-groves resounded with the cries of the people. Joseph fled with the boy down narrow streets so as to avoid the crowd that wanted to press round him and look at and pet Pharaoh's ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... the time[63] when the Sithonian[64] matrons are wont to celebrate the triennial festival of Bacchus. Night is conscious of their rites; by night Rhodope resounds with the tinklings of the shrill cymbal. By night the queen goes out of her house, and is arrayed according to the rites of the God, and carries the arms of the frantic solemnity. Her head is covered with vine leaves; from her left side hang down ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... appetite at tea-time, which surprised and disturbed his mother, for she had filled the house with fragrant suggestions of good things coming, in honor of Mr. Lindsay, who was to be her guest at tea. And chiefly the genteel form of doughnut called in the native dialect cymbal (Qu. Symbol? B. G.) which graced the board with its plastic forms, suggestive of the most pleasing objects,—the spiral ringlets pendent from the brow of beauty; the magic circlet, which is the pledge of plighted affection,—the indissoluble knot, which ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the vernacular. "Sure, Paulina is no good, you bet; but see, look at her house—dere is no Rutenian house like dat, so beeg. Ah!" she continued rapturously, "you come an' see me and Jacob dance de 'czardas,' wit Arnud on de cymbal. Dat Arnud he's come from de old country, an' he's de whole show, de whole ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... language of the Apostle, if you could speak with the tongues of angels and men; and if you knew all mysteries, and had all knowledge; and if you had faith, so as to remove mountains, and have not charity—even though you be a virgin—you are become as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. Neither will your virginity, nor all other gifts, profit ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... bride, To win the fair he tries a thousand forms, Basks on the sands, or gambols in the storms. A Dolphin now, his scaly sides he laves, 450 And bears the sportive damsel on the waves; She strikes the cymbal as he moves along, And wondering Ocean listens to the song. —And now a spotted Pard the lover stalks, Plays round her steps, and guards her ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... sleep-inspiring exhibition. It has been so often described that I need not trouble my readers with it. The women are gaily dressed in brocades and gauzy textures, and glitter with spangles and tawdry ornaments. The musical accompaniment of clanging zither, asthmatic fiddle, timber-toned drum, clanging cymbal, and harsh metallic triangle, is a sore affliction, and when the dusky prima donna throws back her head, extends her chest, gets up to her high note, with her hand behind her ear, and her poura-stained mouth and teeth wide expanded like the jaws of a fangless wolf, and the demoniac ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... for all sorts of games, playing-cards along with the blocks for printing them, dice, and other apparatus for gambling; there were worldly music-books, and musical instruments in all the pretty varieties of lute, drum, cymbal, and trumpet; there were masks and masquerading-dresses used in the old Carnival shows; there were handsome copies of Ovid, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Pulci, and other books of a vain or impure sort; there were all the implements of feminine vanity—rouge-pots, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... ran out of the sanctuary, her footsteps waking the echoes of the roof which once had resounded to the clash of cymbal, the roll of drum and blare of trumpets. She heard Ellen's strident voice calling to her, telling her to come and join them in the crypts; she paid no heed, she ran on and out into the sunshine and down to the maid, who ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... The headsmen's voices! They shound like a broken brass cymbal. I hear the music of the fatal drum and the kettle-drums, and sho I shuppose that that poor man, Charudatta, is being led to the place of execution. I musht go and shee it. It is a great delight to shee ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... flowers they fanned his face, And incense sweetened all the place. Each raised his mighty voice as loud As thunders of an angry cloud, And conchs their stirring summons gave That echoed through the giant's cave. Then on his breast they rained their blows, And high the wild commotion rose When cymbal vied with drum and horn. And war cries on the gale upborne. Through all the air loud discord spread, And, struck with fear, the birds fell dead. But still he slept and took his rest. Then dashed they on his shaggy chest Clubs, maces, fragments of the rock: He moved not once, nor felt the shock. ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... be relied upon as high and noble. His faults are as honest as he himself, the inherent defects of his genius. No writer of our day stands more sturdily for the idea that, whereas art is precious, personality is more precious still; without which art is a tinkling cymbal and with which even a defective art can conquer Time, like a garment not all-seemly, that yet cannot ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... light-armed archers far and near Surveyed the tangled ground, Their centre ranks, with pike and spear, A twilight forest frowned, Their barbed horsemen, in the rear, The stern battalia crowned. No cymbal clashed, no clarion rang, Still were the pipe and drum; Save heavy tread, and armor's clang, The sullen march was dumb. There breathed no wind their crests to shake, Or wave their flags abroad; Scarce the frail aspen seemed to quake, That shadowed o'er their road. Their vaward scouts no tidings ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the Canon, "'with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal." ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... that beautiful stream winds through the fertile land of Xeres. The infidel host was far inferior in number to the Christians; but then it was composed of hardy and dexterous troops, seasoned to war, and admirably armed. The camp shone gloriously in the setting sun, and resounded with the clash of cymbal, the note of the trumpet, and the neighing of fiery Arabian steeds. There were swarthy troops from every nation of the African coast, together with legions from Syria and Egypt, while the light Bedouins were careering about the adjacent plain. What grieved and incensed ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... startle and to find true expression. He has not followed those great novelists who write French a child may read and understand. He calls the moon 'a spiritual gray wafer'; it faints in 'a red wind'; 'truth beats at the bars of a man's bosom'; the sun is 'a sulphur-colored cymbal'; a man moves with 'the jaunty grace of a young elephant.' But even these oddities are significant and to be placed high above the slipshod sequences of words that have done duty till they are as meaningless as the imprint on ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... steps Directly to the FIRST AND ONLY FAIR. Spare not in such a cause. Spend all the powers Of rant and rhapsody in virtue's praise, Be most sublimely good, verbosely grand, And with poetic trappings grace thy prose Till it outmantle all the pride of verse.— Ah, tinkling cymbal and high-sounding brass Smitten in vain! such music cannot charm The eclipse that intercepts truth's heavenly beam, And chills and darkens a wide-wandering soul. The still small voice is wanted. He must speak, Whose word leaps forth ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... trumpet, trombone, ophicleide[obs3]; French horn, saxophone, sax [informal], buglehorn[obs3], saxhorn, flugelhorn[obs3], althorn[obs3], helicanhorn[obs3], posthorn[obs3]; sackbut, euphonium, bombardon tuba[obs3]. [Vibrating surfaces] cymbal, bell, gong; tambour|!, tambourine, tamborine[obs3]; drum, tom-tom; tabor, tabret[obs3], tabourine[obs3], taborin[obs3]; side drum, kettle drum; timpani, tympani[obs3]; tymbal[obs3], timbrel[obs3], castanet, bones; musical glasses, musical stones; harmonica, sounding-board, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... charity, and of course one must take his word for it, and leave his actions and conduct out of all consideration. With him, to love God is to say you do, whether you really do or not. This is charity of the "sounding brass and tinkling cymbal" assortment. ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... to take a tin pot of coffee from the cook, and then, going on to the topsail-sheet bitts, he carefully seated himself, and leisurely began to stir up the sugar in his beverage with an iron spoon, making a little cymbal music with it on the outside while he gulped it down. He had not been many minutes occupied in this way when Ben hailed the deck ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... which forget God? Let him cry out, till his face is black, "Turn ye, turn ye, from your evil ways." If ye be ordained to turn, ye shall turn; if not, all his zeal will avail no more than a tinkling cymbal. Therefore, he that is praying, and he that is preaching; he that is speaking the truth, and he that is lying; he that is labouring honestly, and he that is stealing; he that is chaste, and he that is impure; he that is over-reaching, and he that ...
— A Solemn Caution Against the Ten Horns of Calvinism • Thomas Taylor
... the only soil to be found. In them the strange and savage trees—spined, and sown thick with sharp teeth—found their rootage, and writhed about, splitting the rock into endless cracks and fissures with their fierce effort—sea-grape, with leaves like cymbal-shaped plates of green metal; gum-elemi trees, with trunks of glistening bronze; and seven-year apples, with fruit ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... as rapidly as the rugged nature of the mountains would permit, guided by Hamet el Zegri, the bold alcayde of Ronda, who knew every pass and defile: not a drum nor the clash of a cymbal nor the blast of a trumpet was permitted to be heard. The mass of war rolled quietly on as the gathering cloud to the brow of the mountains, intending to burst down like ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... [Greek: kuma], a swelling or rising wave, and used to express a swelling cluster of foamy blossom. Connected with that word, but in a sort the reverse of it, you have the Greek '[Greek: kumbe],' the hollow of a cup, or bowl; whence [Greek: kumbalou], a cymbal,—that is to say, a musical instrument owing its tone to its hollowness. These words become in Latin, cymba, and cymbalum; and I think you will find it entirely convenient and advantageous to call the leaf-stalk distinctively the 'cymba,' retaining ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... consumed an incredible quantity. Where good wine flows and fish-soup is brewed, be sure there will be gypsies to be found. Almost before they thought of it, a brown band of musicians appeared, who, as soon as the cymbal-player was seated on an upturned basket, began ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... considered as vital and really essential to the rites of magic. The show, the drapery, the priestly ornaments and instruments, are to the really spiritual Occultist, but, as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. That they had, and still have, their legitimate uses, is true, but these uses do not concern magic, per se, nor its manifold powers. They awed the popular mind, and impressed upon the masses a due ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... Schadow's Filatrice, or Spinning Girl, and his classic bas-reliefs are worthy of all admiration. The English school of sculpture appears to advantage in Gibson's fine group, Mars and Cupid, and his bas-relief of Hero and Leander—Chantry's busts of George IV. and Canning—Westmacott's Cymbal Plaery—Wyatt's ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... stand with your pleasure that I prick forward? Methinks, by all yonder clash and clang, if there be no more than five hundred men beyond the sand-hills, half of the Soldan's retinue must be drummers and cymbal-tossers. Shall I ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... sounding brass and tinkling cymbal of sparkling oratory, may command a hearing, may succeed in breathing a new life into this modern Mohammedanism, and make the name of the martyred Joseph ring as loud, and stir the souls of men as much, as the mighty name of ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... shall grasp— As one doth the glittering hasp Of a dagger made splendid with gems and with gold— The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely. And out of the stark Eternity, awful and dark, Immensity silent and cold,— Universe-shaking as trumpets, or thunderous metals That cymbal; yet pensive and pearly And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals, Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early,— The majestic music of Death, where he plays On the organ of ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... numeral; the more places you carry it out to, the greater the sum. Judge, then, of Kooloo's esteem. Nor is the allusion to the ciphers at all inappropriate, seeing that, in themselves, Kooloo's profession turned out to be worthless. He was, alas! as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal; one of those who make no music ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the bounty that nurtured our corn. We bring thee our songs and our garlands for tribute, The gold of our fields and the gold of our fruit; O giver of mellowing radiance, we hail thee, We praise thee, O Surya, with cymbal and flute. ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... Commonwealth didapper, may have room to stand beside you ... He [Needham] was one of the spokes of Harrington's Rota, till he was turned out for cracking. As for Harrington, he's but a demi-semi in the Rump's music, and should be good at the cymbal; for he is all for wheeling instruments, and, having a good invention, may in time find out the way to ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... culture, indeed, suits not all persons. Geniuses must be explored, and the manner of instructing proportioned to them. But there is one thing which suits all persons, and without which knowledge is nothing but "a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal": this is the supernatural culture of the soul, or the habitual endeavor of man of rendering himself more pleasing in the sight of God by the acquisition of solid Christian virtues, in order thus to reach his last end—his eternal ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... Christiana had carried her out of their sight. So she went and called and entered in at the gate with all the ceremonies of joy that her husband Christian had done before her. At her departure her children wept, but Mr. Great-heart and Mr. Valiant played upon the well-tuned cymbal and harp for joy. So all departed to their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various |
