"Dirge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this, with my love. Mr. Chorley saw the entrance of the Empereur into the Tuileries. He looked radiant. The more I read that elegy on the death of Daniel Webster, the more I find to admire. It is as grand as a dirge upon an organ. Love to the dear ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled, But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world? The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... thanked me, and made a pretence of eating the wing, just to please me; but when the waiter was taken away to the kitchen, I found all the bird on the plate. This morning, just before daylight, I heard her playing a wild, mournful thing on the piano, that sounded like a dirge or a wail; and Ruth says when she went into the parlor to open the blinds, she found her praying, and thinks she was on her knees for an hour. Please God! sometimes I wish she was in heaven with my mother, for she will never see any ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... evening, and he would be a delightful neighbor if only his voice were pleasing. But there is little charm in the music, for it is in truth a dismal chant, with the air and cheerfulness of a funeral dirge—a pessimistic performance that inspires the listener with a desire to choke him then ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... itself, is no subject for tragedy, and the poet hurries us rapidly from the ominous preparation to the fatal moment of decision: the city is saved, the two competitors for the throne fall by each other's hands, and the whole is closed by their funeral dirge, sung conjointly by the sisters and a chorus of Theban virgins. It is worthy of remark that Antigone's determination to inter her brother, notwithstanding the prohibition with which Sophocles opens his own piece, which he names after her, is interwoven with the conclusion ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... disappointed by the immortal agony (dashed with one stroke of magnificent wrath) of 'Helen of Kirkconnell,' the bustle, frolic, and battle-joy of the Border pieces proper, the solemn notes of 'The Lyke-Wake Dirge,' the eeriness of 'Clerk Saunders' and 'The ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... the wind brought mournful strains of the victim's dirge to our lodge. I fastened the door, with robes against it to keep the sound out. Then a smell of burning drifted through the window, and I stop-gapped that, too, ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... unquiet slumber, vexed by deformed, fleeting, shapeless phantoms; and, waking, as the sun, through a veil of hazy cloud, glinted with a sickly ray across the casement, she heard her father settled back betimes to his one pursuit, and calling forth from his Familiar a low mournful strain, like a dirge over the dead. ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sometimes looking up to the height of Heaven, calling out with shrieks of agony, as if invoking the Father of Nature; others grovelled upon the ground, beating their foreheads with their hands, while others again made their moan in a sort of dirge, in their own way, for though one could not understand the words, the sense of all was plain in the agony ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... lifted locks. Thou, night! the while Dost listen to his sad harp's wild complaint, Mother of shadows! as to thee he pours The broken strain, and plaintively deplores The fall of Druid fame! Hark! murmurs faint Breathe on the wavy air! and now more loud Swells the deep dirge; accustomed to complain Of holy rites unpaid, and of the crowd Whose ceaseless steps the sacred haunts profane. O'er the wild plain the hurrying tempest flies, And, mid the storm unheard, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin redbreast" in The White Devil, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls it, is like a breath of the west wind over an aeolian harp. Where, in any language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's Fourth Song,—"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... music, literature or poetry, but the contour of the finished product and the purpose it will serve depends upon the arrangement of the raw materials, which is subject to the constructor's design. Building materials may be formed to prison or palace; notes may be arranged as fanfare or funeral dirge; words may be indited to inspire passion or peace, all according to the will of the designer. So also the majestic rhythm of the Word of God has wrought the primal substance: arche, into the multitudinous forms which comprise the phenomenal world, ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... men and women. They seated themselves in ranks in one of the courtyards of the pa, stripped to the waist. An old chieftainess, who moved along the ranks with regular steps, brandishing an ornamental spear in time to her movements, now recited the first verse of a song in a monotonous, dirge-like measure. This was joined in by the others, who also kept time by quivering their hands and arms, nodding their heads and bending their bodies in accordance with each emphasis ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... mysterious voices of po, the tenebrae of the Tahitian gods; the boom of the cascade in the abyss; the deep bass of the river in the rocky chute; the sigh of the wind in the trees; the murmur of the stream near by; the fantasia and dirge of the lofty night in the tropics. What a setting for her telling some old legend ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... passion urge For the one whelming wave to spring aloof. She, tenderness, is pitiless to them Resisting in her godhead nature's truth. No flower their face shall be, but writhen stem; Their youth a frost, their age the dirge for youth. These miserably disinclined, The lamentably unembraced, Insult the Pleasures Earth designed To people and beflower the waste. Wherefore the Pleasures pass them by: For death they live, in life ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... diftongo. Diploma diplomo. Diplomacy diplomatio. Diphtheria difterio. Dire terura. Direct (govern) direkti. Direct (command) ordoni. Direct (straight) rekta. Directly (time) tuj. Directly rekte. Director direktoro. Directory adresaro. Dirge funebra kanto. Dirt (soil) malpurigi. Dirt malpurajxo. Dirt (mud) koto. Dirtiness malpureco. Dirty malpura. Disable kripli. Disadvantage malutilo. Disagree malkonsenti. Disagreement malkonsento. Disappear malaperi. Disappoint malkontentigi. Disappointment malkontentigo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, "William, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!" As I said these words, I perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... us sing a dirge,— A dirge for myriad chances dead; In grief your mournful accents merge: Sing, sing the girls we ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... ardent speaker into observant host as Atticus turned with a whispered order to the slave who stood behind him. He was shocked, too, failing to perceive its note of defiant bitterness, by a laugh from Lucian and his careless, "My felicitations, Atticus, on your welding of dirge and exhortation into one epideictic oration! Aulus," he added, looking across the table, "don't forget to make a note of the prepositions the master used in ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... had made elaborate preparations for the final services. The funeral in Springfield was on May 4th. The order of service included a dirge, a prayer, the reading of his second inaugural address, and an oration. The latter was by Bishop Simpson and was worthy of the noble and eloquent orator. It was a beautiful day, the rain which had been falling during the long journey was over, and May sunshine filled earth and ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... commemorations. First came the Fourth of July, when, in obedience to the old custom which I had known so well in my student days, the American colony visited the cemetery of the Rue Picpus and laid wreaths upon the tomb of Lafayette,—the American band performing a dirge, and our marines on duty firing a farewell volley. It was in every way a warm and hearty tribute. A week later was the unveiling of the statue of Camille Desmoulins in the garden of the Palais Royal,—this ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... Court, preceded by Chief Justice Chase. Of the Cabinet Secretary Stanton and Secretary McCulloch were present. After prayer by the chaplain, the Declaration of Independence was read by Hon. EDWARD MCPHERSON, Clerk of the House. After the reading of the Declaration, followed by the playing of a dirge by the band, Hon. SCHUYLER COLFAX, Speaker of the House of Representatives, introduced the orator of the day, Hon. ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... Sing another dirge in wailing, For another vessel sailing With the shadow-ships at sea; Shadow-ships for ever sinking — Shadow-ships whose pumps are clinking, And whose thirsty holds are ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... moving swiftly through the atmosphere now, feel the tortured rush of air that whipped against the sides of the projectile in a moaning dirge that mingled with the roar ...
— The Monster • S. M. Tenneshaw
... as we drove through the clean, white streets, feeling absolutely hushed with the beauty which assailed us on every side, suddenly we heard the sound of music, mournful as a dirge—a martial dirge. And presently we saw approaching us the saddest, most touching yet awful procession I ever beheld. It was a military funeral. First came the band; then came two men bearing aloft the cover to the casket, wreathed in flowers and streaming with crape. ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... passed the plains, the place of the sleepless winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its dirge ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... Youth, love and roses blossom; the gaunt ward Dislimns and disappears, and, opening out, Shows brooks and forests, and the blue beyond Of mountains. Small the pipe; but oh! do thou, Peak-faced and suffering piper, blow therein The dirge of heroes dead; and to these sick, These dying, sound the triumph over death. Behold! each greatly breathes; each tastes a joy Unknown before, in dying; for each knows A hero dies with him - though unfulfilled, Yet conquering truly - and not dies ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the common marvel of this "harp of thousand strings?" And sorrow! it veils all faces, and bows all forms alike, and sends the same shudder through the frame, and casts the same darkness upon the walls, and peals forth in the same dirge of maternal agony by the dead boy's cradle in the sumptuous chamber, and the baby's last sleep on its bed of straw. And Death! how wonderfully it makes them all alike who in the street wore such various garments, and had such distinct aims, and were whirled apart ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There honor comes a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair To dwell a weeping ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... road, as the animal moved, the curtains were parted for a few inches only. Through the gap in the dark draperies a wan white hand appeared; waved tremulously a last farewell; and vanished from my view. The curtains closed again on her dark and solitary life. The dreary wind sounded its long, low dirge over the rippling waters of the lake. The ponies took their places in the ferryboat which was kept for the passage of animals to and from the island. With slow, regular strokes the men rowed us to the mainland and took their leave. I looked back at the distant house. I thought of her in the dark ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... midnight, by the fitful glare of the dying embers, those two silent men and that pale woman seemed to be keeping a vigil in an abode of death. And the pattering rain and moan of the night-wind sounded like a dirge. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... opened his eyes the following morning, the soft hum of insects fell on his ear instead of the roar of London traffic. Through the open window the southern air blew upon his face. Above the sound of busy wings the distant sea sang its low dirge. It was a living perspective of sound. The least rustle near at hand overpowered it, and yet it was always there—an unceasing throb to be felt as much as heard. Some acoustic formation of the land carried the noise, for the sea was eight miles away. It was ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... the hall in grand and solemn state. Then thousands gathered to bow the head in reverence as the plumed hearse drove down the line. There was all the pomp of military display—drooping flags, battalions with reversed arms, and bands playing dirge-like airs. Now, the wife of the President was leaving the White House, and there was scarcely a friend to tell her good-by. She passed down the public stairway, entered her carriage, and quietly drove to the depot where we took the cars. The ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... But the fittest dirge is his own last lay, written on the day he completed his thirty-sixth year, soon after his arrival at Missolonghi, when his hopes of obtaining distinction in the Greek cause were, perhaps, brightest; and yet it breathes of dejection ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... hand in the air. "Please!" she interrupted. "He can't be that bad! You make him sound like a dirge player at a Hindu funeral. What did he tell you? What did you ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... tried, with that strange Greek pertinacity that understands no refusals, all the hotels and tourist agencies he had called at the day before, he became weary and disconsolate. The march had become a dirge; no longer it suggested happiness to be, but failure. An Englishman threw him a piastre, and he turned into a cafe. Calling for a glass of wine, he flung himself down on the wooden bench and tried to think. But really ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus: 'Go where glory waits thee.' It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is sorrowful and hideous ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... daughter of the wandering musicians who had, at the open grave, played as a dirge, or, rather, as a ringing hymn of resurrection and deliverance, the chant of the fatherland-that dark girl to whom he had said: "Bring me this jewel, and come and live in peace with the Zilahs"—was the mother of this beautiful, fascinating ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... round—weird little tune! . . . Well, and what now? Only one thing certain. Sooner give up life than give her up! Far sooner! Love her, achieve her—or give up everything, and drown to that tune going on and on, that little dancing dirge of summer! ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... up suddenly, all aglow with light within. Out into the night came the dirge of the organ for ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... . . . For the next twenty-four hours he did not come out of it. The postilion Antipka said afterwards that he saw Gerasim through a crack in the wall, sitting on his bedstead, his face in his hand. From time to time he uttered soft regular sounds; he was wailing a dirge, that is, swaying backwards and forwards with his eyes shut, and shaking his head as drivers or bargemen do when they chant their melancholy songs. Antipka could not bear it, and he came away from the crack. When Gerasim came out of the garret next day, no particular ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... poets sing a dirge: The year must perish; all the flowers are dead; The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail Runs in the stubble, but the lark ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... complaining flute In dying notes discovers The woes of hopeless lovers, Whose dirge is whisper'd ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... prisoners in Fidelio,—the sublime and adoring hymn of the "Alleluia" in The Mount of Olives,—the matchless pomp of the Sinfonia Eroica,—the passionate beauty of the sentiment of Adelaida,—the aerial grace of his quartets and waltzes,—the thrilling and almost awful pathos of the dirge written for six trombones,—but, above all, they will recall to mind the noblest work ever conceived and perfected by composer, one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, the Mass in D. And, bearing these wonders in their memory, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... 'There went a dirge through the forest's gloom. ...An exile was borne to a lonely tomb, "Brother;"—so the chant was sung In the slumberer's native tongue— "Friend and brother! not for thee Shall the ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... poor girl. Not hers the hovering sense of marriage bells Tuning the air with fragrance of sweet sound; But the low dirge that ever rose and died, Recurring without pause or any close, Like one verse chaunted aye in sleepless brain. Down to the shore it drew her from the heights, Like witch's demon-spell, that fearful moan. She knew that somewhere in the green abyss His body swung in curves of watery force, Now in a ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... with the stately, is one that only Browning could have compassed, and the effect is singularly appropriate. As the disciples of the old humanist bear their dead master up to his grave on the mountain-top, chanting their dirge and eulogy, the lines of the poem seem actually to move to the steady climbing ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... giants. Well! to-night, I think the officers who chance to be in town will go to the President's House with these thoughts in mind. To-morrow we return to the lines; and a great battle chant will be written before we tread these streets again. For us it may be a paean or it may be a dirge, and only the gods know which! We salute our flag to-night—the government that may last as lasted Greece or Rome, or the government which may perish, not two years old! I think that General Lee will be there for a short time. It is something like a recognition ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... The consciousness of life need be no comfort to me. In that wild chaunt there is breathing a keen spirit of vengeance. Oh! that I had not survived to hear it! Too surely do I know what will follow that dirge of death. It might ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... his veins. He was full of the strong joy of living. And then, in the midst of it all, came a dull, crashing blow. It was as though all his castles in the air had come toppling about his ears, the blue sky had turned to stony grey and the sweet waltz music had become a dirge. Always a keen watcher of men's faces, he had glanced for a second time at a gaunt, sallow man who wore a loose check suit and a grey Homburg hat. The eyes of the two men met. Then the blood had turned to ice in Trent's veins ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... papers are full of praise for those devoted sons of the motherland, the Kundu and the Chakravarti zamindars. If only, say they, the country had a few more of such staunch patriots, the mills of Manchester would have, had to sound their own dirge to ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... is putting an end to him at once,' said Miss Gwynne, 'and I think we had better play his funeral dirge. Lady Mary, will you give us 'The Dead March in Saul,' or something appropriate? Never mind, Netta; I daresay cousin Howel will turn out a great man by-and-by;' this last clause was whispered to Netta, whilst the young hostess went towards a grand piano that ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... they buried the lad Godwin, with chant and dirge; and when the funeral was done Hereward went up toward the high altar, and bade Winter and Gwenoch come with him. And there he knelt, and vowed a vow to God and St. Guthlac and the Lady Torfrida his true love, never to leave from slaying while there was a Frenchman ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... men of the party have dived into "The Welsh Rarebit Warren," there to spend the early hours of the morning, listening to sentimental songs chanted amid fumes of tobacco and spirits, to hear sorry wit, and make vapid remarks. The great feature of the evening being a melodramatic dirge, supposed to be sung by a condemned felon—a triumphant lamentation and delineation of brutal character,—so eloquent and thrilling, in its monosyllabic groans of anguish, that it is a wonder the kidneys, consumed in such numbers, are ever digested. ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... Palestinian winter, which are dreaded as peculiarly unhealthy, while verse 4b and verse 5 present the advent of spring, and contrast the new life in animals and plants with the feebleness of the man dying in his chamber and unable to eat. Still another explanation is that the whole is part of a dirge, to be taken literally, and describing the mourners in house and garden. I venture, though with some hesitation, to prefer, on the whole, the old allegorical theory, for reasons which it would be impossible to condense here. It is by no means free from difficulty, but is, as I think, less difficult ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... and touching his reminiscence of his lost youth and the priceless boon of liberty. He commences in a quiet descriptive way, leaving one at a loss to know whether it is to be a joyful lyric a dirge he ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... funeral discourse. Then all accompanied the remains to the rock-hewn cemetery. Men bore the coffin on their shoulders, and on the coffin lay the dead man's sword, crowned with garlands, and his shako pierced with a bullet-hole. Leading the procession marched a student chorus singing a dirge, while weeping women brought up the rear. When the family vault was reached, the seven brothers of the deceased took the coffin and laid it in the niche prepared to receive it; then they rolled a great stone before the opening, came out of the ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... number of rents in an old, ragged, faded, dusty coat. Indeed, that morning all comparisons seemed to take on a tinge of melancholy; the reason being that throughout the previous evening there had been moaning in my soul a mournful dirge on the future life. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... never see beneath the wall That timid little creature, all too bright, That stretches her fair neck, slender and white, Invoking the pale moon, and vainly tries Her throbbing throat, as if to charm the night With song—but, hush—it perishes in sighs, And there will be no dirge ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... soul played upon by the unknown musician of the sleepless hours. Now a mad, ecstatic chorus dinned in her ears and set her blood coursing; and again despair seized her with a dirge. Periods of semiconsciousness only came to her, and from one of these she was suddenly startled into wakefulness by her own words. "I have the right to make of my life what I can." But when she beheld the road of terrors that stretched between her and the shining ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... exultation, like a huge volcano's roar! There they stand, the batter'd columns, underneath the murky sky, In the hush of desperation, not to conquer but to die. Hark! the bagpipe's fitful wailing—not the pibroch loud and shrill, That, with hope of bloody banquet, lured the ravens from the hill— But a dirge both low and solemn, fit for ears of dying men, Marshall'd for their latest battle, never more to fight again. Madness—madness! Why this shrinking? Were we less inured to war When our reapers swept the harvest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... flung herself into it and became more and more intolerably arch, Alice became more and more severe. She purified the accompaniment from all taint of the young lady's intentions. It grew graver and graver. It was a hymn, a solemn chant, a dirge. The dirge of the last hope of the young ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... possession of me, a heavy weight to settle down upon my spirits. I played on dreamily, until suddenly I was stopped by a cry from Constance, 'Do for pity's sake stop that wail, Hilda; one would think you were playing our funeral dirge!' ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... borne together and was lessened because it was shared. I stand there sometimes now, where the two dead trees are leaning close together, and as the wind sighs through the bare boughs, it chants no dirge to me, but only a hymn ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... nights, and still days, steps of Time in his flight. The days shall pass rapid as swifts on the wing. O'er the face of the hills, o'er the face of the seas, O'er streamlets of silver, and forests that ring With a dirge for the dead, chanted low by the breeze; The face of the waters, the brow of the mounts Deep scarred but not shrivelled, and woods tufted green, Their youth shall renew; and the rocks to the founts ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... song for the willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... star, Nor heeds the public scorn, or transient curse, Unknown alike to honour and remorse. Behold the leering belle, caress'd by all, Adorn each private feast and public ball, 140 Where peers attentive listen and adore, And not one matron shuns the titled whore. At Peter's obsequies[5] I sung no dirge; Nor has my satire yet supplied a scourge For the vile tribes of usurers and bites, Who sneak at Jonathan's, and swear at White's. Each low pursuit, and slighter folly, bred Within the selfish heart and hollow head, Thrives uncontroll'd, and blossoms o'er the land, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... music echoes from the walls, But music with a dirge-like sound; And pale and silent are the guests, And every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... tenderly to rest, Those for their country dying,— Let breaking hearts and trembling lips Pour the sad dirge of sighing. Yet louder than the requiem raise The song of exultation, That the great heritage is ours To ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... insures the absence forever of death, and mourning, and pain, and crying. The dirge music has sung its last song. The minor chords are gone. All the old things of a sorrowful sort are quite gone. And as John looks He that sitteth on the throne makes the glad announcement, "Behold, I make all things new." And John is bidden to ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... rear of the Confederate line and it was a weird and ghastly ride. Now and then his horse's feet sank in mud, and the frogs still dared to croak around the pools, making on such a night the most ominous of all sounds. It seemed a sort of funeral dirge for both North and South, a croak telling of the ruin and death that were to ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... strength and assurance which these simple children obtain from their Moses and the Prophets. Yet external Nature does its share in their training; witness that most poetic of all their songs, which always reminds me of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge" in the "Scottish ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... their own, and at first Bibbs wished to avoid this, but upon reflection he offered no objection—he divined that the Knights and their service would be not precisely a consolation, but a satisfaction to his father. So the Knights led the procession, with their band playing a dirge part of the long way to the cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in two lines, plumed hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the carriages ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... man!" continued the woman wrathfully. "Will you hold your old doddering tongue, Caleb, and let the gentlefolk speak!" But there was no cessation of the dreary, dirge-like sounds. They found out afterwards that Caleb always worked with cotton-wool in his ears, so his wife's remonstrance failed to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... wind sang a dirge all through the night, and ceased not till day darted over the hills. It was not very pleasant for the old tree to hear the children's regrets and words of grief as they came around it in the morning to play and ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... a melancholy dirge in Norman French; the words, of which the following is an imitation, were united to a tune as doleful as they ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... final statement, whether intentional or not, is something I shall remember to my grave. I don't think that Carse meant it literally—on my own head—but I was unable to shake his words out of my ears, and throughout the night and the following day they hung about me like a dirge. ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... was turned from the contemplation of these difficulties by a sudden change in Rory's tune. He stopped in the midst of his low, wailing dirge and struck up loudly the lively air that told again and again of the mirth produced when "Jinny banged the Weaver." Scotty raised his head and looked across the pasture-field. That tune always ushered Weaver Jimmy upon the stage, and there he was, coming over the field, easily recognisable ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... although the adjective is redundant. Nobody ever thinks of a cheerful phantom. Strangely enough, considering her evident sadness, she was whistling softly to herself, over and over, some dreary little minor air that sounded like a Bohemian dirge. She glanced up quickly when I made a misstep and my dishes jingled. All considered, the tray was out of the picture: the sea, the misty starlight, the girl, with her beauty—even the sad little whistle that stopped now and then to go bravely ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... silent, steadfast stone, Dirge and song and shoutings low In thy heart Dwell serene,—and sorrow? No, It has none, [10] ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... he was so glad, did he slink off to his study forthwith and play a dirge on his piano, and there sit listlessly in his chair for the rest of the morning staring out of the window through his glass, till Jill tripped in and fetched him ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... thee on Time's remotest age, Ten thousand years, ten thousand times told o'er; Still, still with thee my onward course I urge; And now no longer hear the surge Of Time's light billows breaking on the shore Of distant earth; no more the solemn dirge— Requiem of worlds, when such are numbered o'er— Steals by: still thou art on ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... all pass, and they that bide can but make the dirge. But I'll be obliged if you'll say to Mr. Alexander that if there is aught—" He gathered up the reins. "It will be snowing presently. I always thought that I'd like to part on a day like this, gray and quiet, with all the color and the shouting lifted elsewhere." He was gone, ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... ears, but he dared not,—as if he should like to rush down the stairs, but he could not. For the old man fixed him with his eyes, and, keeping his head turned towards his prisoner, began to march up and down the broken stone floor, and blew so wild a dirge that in a few moments ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... streams of Eridan,[90] On either side banked with a lily wall, Whiter than both, rides the triumphant swan, And sings his dirge, and prophesies his fall, Diving into his watery funeral! But Eridan to Cedron must submit His flowery shore; nor can he envy it, If, when Apollo sings, his ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... sanctified, About the bed there sighing stood The sweet and flowery sisterhood: Some hung the head, while some did bring, To wash her, water from the spring; Some laid her forth, while others wept, But all a solemn fast there kept: The holy sisters, some among, The sacred dirge and trental sung. But ah! what sweet smelt everywhere, As Heaven had spent all perfumes there. At last, when prayers for the dead And rites were all accomplished, They, weeping, spread a lawny loom, And closed her up as in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... as their rapid course they urge, A passing bell, a solemn dirge; Hoarse ravens join the strain. They see a coffin on a bier, A priest and mourners too appear, Slow ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... One went so far as to declare it "the happiest part of a negro's life." They aver that the Africans, on their way to slavery, are so merry, that they dance and sing. But upon a careful examination of witnesses, it was found that their singing consisted of dirge-like lamentations for their native land. One of the captains threatened to flog a woman, because the mournfulness of her song was too painful to him. After meals they jumped up in their irons for exercise. ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... poet, a geographer, a roughly clever diplomat, a fighter, a man with a polyhedric personality, that caught and gave, something from and to every one. And he died dissatisfied, at Trieste, in 1890, at the age of sixty-nine, and Swinburne sang a dirge for him that was ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... be ere provision is needed for the like purpose," answered Bucklaw; "but you should not drink up the last flask at a dirge; there is ill ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... wearied by the festivities, soon fell asleep. He was presently awakened by the sound of music, and, looking about the apartment, saw at the opposite end, three phantom ladies, grotesquely attired, singing a mournful dirge. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... lament for his beautiful boy he uttered the voice of parental sorrow in immortal accents. In the poems, "In Memoriam," and in "The Dirge," he records how lonely the lovely Concord Valley is to him since his brothers are gone as he wanders there in ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... there a burdened branch creaked under its travail. Now and then the wind that drove the snow rose to a gusty whisper, and a stark limb scraped the eaves of the house with grating, lifeless fingers. But between the occasional stress-cries of the storm, there came the low, dirge-like monotony of the sifting snowfall. And as always in old houses there were the little voices and the minute nameless stirrings of the night. The ghost-moan of drafty chimneys and the creak of warped timbers became audible accentuators of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... Let dirge be sung, and trentals rightly read, For Love is dead: Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth My mistress' marble heart; Which epitaph containeth, "Her eyes were once his dart." From so ungrateful fancy; From such a female frenzy; From them that use men thus, ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... that old Rabbits had come by just at the wrong moment! They took his impending punishment even more cheerfully than he did himself, as our friends generally do, and promised to go in a body and see the operation. One, indeed, Simmonds, lamented over his sad fate, and sang by way of a dirge— ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... that, among several other proposals, some were for having the funeral procession made through the triumphal gate, preceded by the image of Victory which is in the senate-house, and the children of highest rank and of both sexes singing the funeral dirge. Others proposed, that on the day of the funeral, they should lay aside their gold rings, and wear rings of iron; and others, that his bones should be collected by the priests of the principal colleges. One likewise proposed to transfer the name of August to September, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... battle field, and the cold pale moon Look'd down on the dead and dying, And the wind pass'd o'er with a dirge and a wail, Where the young and the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... he would never desert Ulster, nevertheless made it plain that Ulster on this occasion should take her place beside the rest of Ireland. Only Mr. GINNELL remained obdurate. In his ears the Convention sounds "the funeral dirge of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... Clarke tells of the constant and active interest Mr Stevenson took in the missionaries and their work, often aiding them by his advice and fine insight into the character of the natives; and a translation follows of a dirge by one of the chiefs, so fine that we ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... with his back to the trunk. About his feet dry wood was then placed, and half way up his body. When this had been accomplished, the Indians formed themselves in a circle about the unhappy man, and began to chant a slow weird dirge in the ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... hands their knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung, There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay. And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... a motley throng, Slow measures chanting of a dirge-like song. In one great circle dizzily they swing, A squaw and chief alternate in the ring. Coarse raven locks stream over robes of white, Their deep set orbs emit a lurid light, And as through pine ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... lungs, for the most part; with the comedy of his queer fate: the tragedy was in the spectacles through which I chose to look. He was conscious of inconvenience, and above all of a great renouncement; but how could he have heard a mere dirge in the bells of his accession? The sagacity and the jealousy were mine, and his the impressions and the harvest. Of course, as regards Mrs. Wimbush, I was worsted in my encounters, for wasn't the state of his health the very reason for ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... roses well, Mademoiselle," said she; "in three days I shall be here for a bouquet, and in less than thrice three days I promise you there shall be a dirge sung for the lady ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... dost thou shiver, While she whom thou hast driven away Is bold amidst the chilly spray? What good is all thy vain remorse? Thinkst thou from jaws of death to force A sacrifice so lightly thrust Upon the altar of thy lust? A host like thee could nothing urge To meet one tone of her sad dirge: ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... of a bird courtship and marriage with its attendant feast and tragedy, all followed by the long dirge of No. 142, constitutes one of the longest nursery novels. Its opportunities for the illustrator are very marked, and a copy illustrated by the children themselves would be an addition to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... chair in a corner, where he sat chanting a funeral march in a sepulchral murmur, allowing a parenthetical hic to punctuate the dirge in place of the drum. Whenever a batch of newcomers entered, he rose to drink with them; and, at such times, after pouring off his liquor with a rich melancholy, shedding tears after every swallow, he would make an exploring tour of the room on his way back to his corner, stopping to look ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... they parted asunder and gave place to the wain. And the others when they had brought him to the famous house, laid him on a fretted bed, and set beside him minstrel leaders of the dirge, who wailed a mournful lay, while the women made moan with them. And among the women white-armed Andromache led the lamentation, while in her hands she held the head of Hector slayer of men: "Husband, thou art gone young from life, and leavest me a widow in thy halls. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... attention to the game, he puffed out his cheeks and began to chant the De profundis. When he had got to the end of it, he began it all over again. The game came to a conclusion in the midst of this dirge. It was he who was beaten, but his defeat did not seem to ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... Honor playing now—a sort of dirge or lament for the chief of a clan. Suddenly she stops, and her head droops low over the keys. She has forgotten everything but the sore pain at her own heart and the anxious dread that is making every ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... be his own, and his friends treated his efforts as the wanderings of fatuity. The proofs of his capacity are, his Ode on Evening, his Ode on the Passions (particularly the fine personification of Hope), his Ode to Fear, the Dirge in Cymbeline, the Lines on Thomson's Grave, and his Eclogues, parts of which are admirable. But perhaps his Ode on the Poetical Character is the best of all. A rich distilled perfume emanates from it like the breath of genius; a golden cloud ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... Air, fitly praised by our neighbor of the Albion, as one of the finest productions of the present time. We do not know of any poet at home or abroad to whose fame it would not have added new luster. In the July number of the Knickerbocker we find the following "Dirge," which ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... both gondoliers crossed themselves. The Veronese also bared his head and made the sign of reverence, for they were passing the island of San Michele, toward which a mournful procession of boats, each with its torch and its banner of black, was slowly gliding, while back over the water echoed the dirge from those sobbing cellos. Here, where only the dead were sleeping, the sky was as blue and the sea as calm as if sorrow had never been born ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... was a worshipper of Art and sensualistic beauty, and who regarded the sciences as the mere handmaids of Art, exalting the aesthetic above the moral nature in man, quite naturally regretted that he had not lived in the palmy days of the anthropomorphic creed of Hellas, before the dirge of Pan was chanted in the Isle of Naxos. His "Gods of Greek Land" is as fine a piece of heathenish longing as could well be written at so late a day. His heart was evidently far away from the century in which ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... whistling?" asked Lialia, gaily, as she came across the garden. "It's like a dirge for ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... You hear Tennyson, indeed, sometimes, and Byron sometimes, in some passages of the Roman; but then again you have a new note,—nowhere clearer than in a certain brief lyric, sang in a meeting of minstrels, a sort of dirge over a dead brother;—THAT not only charmed the ear and brain, it soothed ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... many noble traits of character. The Harper, O'Dugan, was the last companion that clung to the last of the Desmonds; the Bard of Tyrconnell, Owen Ward, accompanied the Ulster chiefs in their exile, and poured out his Gaelic dirge above their Roman graves. Although the Bardic compositions continued to be chiefly personal, relating to the inauguration, journeys, exploits, or death of some favourite chief, a large number of devotional poems on the passion ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... summer sun. Poor was their lot, their bread in labour found; No parent blessed them, and no kindred owned; They smiled to hear the wise their choice condemn; They loved—they loved—and love was wealth to them! Hark—one short week—again the holy bell! Still shone the sun; but dirge like boomed the knell,— The icy hand had severed breast from breast; Left life to toil, and summoned Death to rest. Full fifty years since then have passed away, Her cheek is furrowed, and her hair is gray. Yet, when she speaks of him (the ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... ugly face, a shriveled form, a bad complexion. Nothing made of clay can hide it. No beauty of person can conceal deformity of spirit. A bad temper will look hateful in the prettiest face. A hollow heart will sound its dirge of woe through the most perfectly organized form. Peering through all outward Beauty is seen the hateful demon of a bad heart. Shining through all bodily deformity are always visible the angel faces of the virtues ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... 63 On the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland; considered as the Subject of Poetry; inscribed to Mr. John Home 66 An Epistle, addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, on his Edition of Shakespeare's Works 78 Dirge in Cymbeline, sung by Guiderus and Arviragus over Fidele, supposed to be dead 87 Verses written on a Paper which contained a Piece of Bride-cake, given to the Author by a Lady 89 To Miss Aurelia C——R, on her Weeping at her Sister's Wedding 91 Sonnet 91 Song. The Sentiments ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... This woeful dirge of the mother's heart, and the wife's sorrow, had almost every eye in tears; and, indeed, it was impossible that the sympathy for her should not be deep and general. They all knew the excellence and mildness of her husband's character, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... terribly cut up at the premature death of his follower; Lizzie, having smothered her head with fluffy feathers from some cockatoos that had been roasted for supper, employed herself in chanting a most weird kind of dirge over the body, to which she beat a species of accompaniment on the bottom of a pint pot; while Ferdinand, by Dunmore's directions, had set to work to strip a sheet of bark off a tea-tree, to act as a rude coffin. A great difficulty now presented itself, ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... sudden, and with a moaning of wind instruments punctuated by the roll of drums, the band struck into a dirge. The procession moved. And all of a sudden Sammy found that Scalawag was marking time just as he had been taught to do in the circus ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... at his work, wrestling with his confused ideas. And all the time a curious stifled sound was in his ears—a grievous sound, as though something were incessantly complaining. Perhaps it was only the dirge of poverty itself, some strophe of which was always ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke's grand dirge over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pack on his back, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... chair, except those behind the counters, in the store. Miss Keith took that with an exclamation of impatience. Crawford Smith, whistling a mournful dirge, sauntered to the end of the counter and sat down upon a ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... looking for one another and quietly murmuring. One of the black-boys, whose turn at watching had just come, was already riding round with one leg cocked lazily over the pommel of the saddle, and chanting a coroboree dirge, both to let the cattle know that he was about and ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman |
