"Lilting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my doors And hide myself? Must I wear up the rags Of mortal perished beauty and be old? Or is there power left upon my mouth Like colour, and lilting of ruin in my eyes? Am I still rare enough to be your mate? Then why must I shame at feasts and bear myself In shy ungainly ways, made flushed and conscious By squat numb gestures of my shapeless head— Ay, and its wagging shadow—clouted up, Twice tangled with a bundle ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... shall say what lilting voice, timid-bold and sly-sincere, whispered to the maidens, beating out its syllables against the new stays so tightly laced for the occasion? Perhaps the words of the children's doggerel, with a name or so altered, met the moment ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... hid herself in the water, under the roots of a tree, close to a ford where Mr. Jackal always came to drink. By and by, sure enough, he came lilting along in a self-satisfied way, and went right into the water for a good long draught. Whereupon Miss Crocodile seized him by the right leg, and held on. He guessed at once what had happened, and called out, 'Oh! my heart's adored! I'm ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... to enjoy it. The Gay Spark had already an enormous prestige; it bore the agreeable, captivating label of Vienna; and immense sums were being made out of it in all the capitals of the world. George did not hope for immortal strains, but he anticipated a distinguished, lilting gaiety, and in the 'book' a witty and cosmopolitan flavour that would lift the thing high above such English musical comedies as he had seen. It was impossible that a work of so universal and prodigious a vogue should not have ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... color and the perfume of life are in them. Listen to the mocking, railing drollery of "There cam' a young man," the sly humor of the "Laird o' Cockpen," or "Hey, Johnnie Cope!" and you may understand one side of Scottish character. The Border ballads, that go lilting along to the galloping of horses and jingling of spurs, are the interpretation of another side. The same active influence accompanies the Jacobite songs—"Up wi' the bonnets for bonnie Dundee!" filled many a legion for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... we all remained very silent, as if oppressed by the awe of these tales, and I had to take a desperate measure to change the trend of thought. In a low voice I began to sing a lilting Irish melody with a sweet refrain in which Miss Jelliffe joined, soon followed by Sammy's deep tones and Susie's shrill ones, while Frenchy began to keep time with ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... along the early hills, Ere yet the lark was risen up, Ere yet the dawn with firelight fills The night-dew of the bramble-cup,— I heard the fairies in a ring Sing as they tripped a lilting round Soft as the moon on wavering wing. The starlight shook as if with sound, As if with echoing, and the stars Prankt their bright eyes with trembling gleams; While red with war the gusty Mars Rained upon earth his ruddy beams. He shone alone, low down ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... numbers—but we have no bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, when the whole house rings, from garret to cellar, with the cries of children teething, or in the hooping-cough, the little linnet sits silent on his perch, a moping bunch of feathers, and then falls down dead, when his lilting life might have been saved by the simplest medicinal food skilfully administered. Surely if we have physicians to attend our treadmills, and regulate the diet and day's work of merciless ruffians, we should not suffer our ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... little flame that needed only time to destroy an arena of gladiators. Curving, pearly nails with flecks of white in them, a light low laugh, a sweet low voice! Perhaps this was her charm, a sort of samosen tone—low lilting minors that have to do with ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... but before he had listened to the first verse of Rolling Home he knew Captain Matt Peasley for the singer and suspected his daughter of faking the accompaniment. He listened at the head of the stairs and presently was treated to a rendition of a lilting little Swedish ballad, followed by one or two selections from the Grand Banks and the doleful song of the Ferocious Whale and the Five Brave Boys. Then he heard Florry ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... thoughts veered. If Samson left, would he ever return? Might not the old man after all be right? When he had seen other women and tasted other allurements would he, like Ulysses, still hold his barren Ithaca above the gilded invitation of Calypso? History has only one Ulysses. Sally's voice was lilting like a bird's as she walked happily. The song was one of those old ballads that have been held intact since the stock learned to sing them in the heather of the Scotch highlands before ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... they were tired, Marie brought her mandolin,—for having remarked once idly that she could play it, Eveley that night had brought her one as a little gift of love. And she played soft Spanish love-songs, singing in her pretty lilting voice. Then altogether they prepared their supper and because the night was still young and lovely, and they were happy and free from pressing care, they decided suddenly for a drive. They crossed the bay on the ferry to Coronado, and went down on the sands of the beach for a while, standing quietly ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... don't we'll let 'em think we're coming along, as innocent as Mary's little lamb, so I'll let their ray stay on us. It's too thin to carry anything, and if they thicken it up much I've got an axe set to chop it off." Seaton whistled a merry lilting refrain as his fingers played ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... violets and roses, passing sweet; Of throbbing heart-songs, tuned to lilting measures; Of fervent verse—with somewhat halting feet; Of every dainty Valentine that's fashioned You've had a rather goodly share each year; So will you take, in place of love-impassioned Epistles, something quieter, my dear? Three ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... his road he goes That the best of life's gifts is wine," came again the lilting chorus from the tower. It was the only sound that disturbed the silence—the silence of ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... fiddler. He was a Chevalier or something, and could look a woman through and through. What money he had was made, the Lord knows where, not out of fiddling, I'll be bound, for his was no music to set the tongue lilting. He'd been in the Pacific a while, they say, and was a Jack-of-all-trades in America. That's how he came across these islands, you may imagine—slap in the sea-way to Yokohama as they are. There's been many a good ship ashore on Ken's Island, lad, believe me, and there'll ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... Polly, lilting him up, "there he goes! now—one, two, three!" and little Dick was spun in so merrily that the tears ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... Summer time; It has lost its rhythm and lilting rhyme— For the grace goes out of the day so soon, And the tired head aches in the glare of noon, And the way seems long to the hills that lie Under the calm of the ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hours. He could be heard all over the house. Miriam had never seen him, but she noticed that great haste was always made to get a pupil to the saal and that he taught impatiently. He shouted and corrected and mimicked. Only Millie's singing, apparently, he left untouched. You could hear her lilting away through her little high songs as serenely as ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... forest floor to earth. There was no breeze. And as David stood there, scarcely daring to breathe, they heard the sound of shepherd pipes coming from the edge of the wood. It was a minor tune, but somehow lilting too, with the rippling of water in it, and the laughter of birds flying high, and the whisper of reeds as they bend together by the edge of streams, and the gaiety of crickets by night, and the pouring ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... "Flowers of the Forest," two other versions appear in the Collections. That version beginning, "I've heard the lilting at our yow-milking," is the composition of Miss Jane Elliot, the daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, Lord Justice-Clerk, who died in 1766. She composed the song about the middle of the century, in imitation of an old version to the same tune. The other version, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... a lilting one-step. Miss Vost arched her eyebrows. Peter arose, and they glided off. It developed that Miss Vost was well qualified. There was divineness in her youthful grace; she put her heart into the dance. It seemed ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the lilting of the music stirring her pulses and lifting her feet, despite the unmusical rage she was in, "and I've ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... contributed some item to the general entertainment, and in spite of fierce denials even the least accomplished were compelled to perform. It brought out quite unexpected talent. Peachy, who had always declared her music "wasn't up to anything," charmed the company by lilting darkie melodies or pathetic Indian songs, Captain Preston remembered conjuring tricks which he had learned in India, Mr. Roper proved a genius at relating short stories, and Mrs. Cameron could recite old ballads with the fervor of a medieval minstrel. The walls of the Italian salon seemed to melt ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... Heroes," and "to Zeus the Saviour," and casts a little incense upon the altar. The guests all sing a "Pean," not a warrior's charging song this time, but a short hymn in praise of the Wine-God, some lilting catch ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... the placing of colors—the purple fruit, the gold-green vine or the scarlet pomegranate flower in her maze-like embroidery. "But how can you make pictures in the windows," she would say, with her lilting laughter, "if you ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... a joyous day, a' Nature's breathing forth, In gladness an' in loveliness owre a' the wide, wide earth? The linties they are lilting love, on ilka bush an' tree, Oh! may such joy be ever felt, my ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... marching men of the other, and to shrink back hastily from the sight of the coffin. Tangled it would seem inextricably with streams of traffic, surging both ways, moved the "ships of the desert," loaded with emerald-green bersim; long, lilting necks, and calm, mysterious eyes of camels high above the cloaked heads of striding Bedouins, heads of defiant Arab prisoners, chained and handcuffed to each other; heads of blue-eyed water buffaloes, and heads of trim ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the lady aborigine began to laugh. Straightway I forgot the outlandish gown, forgot the cannon-ball beads, forgot the sparse fringe, forgave the absence of "lines." Such a voice! A lilting, melodious thing. She broke into a torrent of speech, with bewildering gestures, and I saw that her hands were exquisitely formed and as expressive as her voice. Her German was the musical tongue of the Viennese, possessing none of ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... lilting what you sung, Your smile is always in my heart, your name beside my tongue; But you've as many sweethearts as you'd count on both your hands, And for myself there's not a thumb or little ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the light in her room increased there drifted across her uneasy dreams the lilting notes of a whistled call. Pure and liquidly sweet they persisted until there came to Rhoda that faint stir of hope and longing that she had experienced the day before. She opened her eyes and finally, as the call continued, ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... seemed studying the familiar landscape with a stranger's and an artist's interest. Catherine took a sly look at him, expressing small admiration. She then turned her attention to seeking out objects of amusement for herself, and tripped merrily on, lilting a tune to ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... by, growing a little curious about the nature of the place to which he had ordered this man to drive him, he leaned forward a little and asked the broad-faced Irishman, who was lilting a merry tune to himself as they ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... a jargon to the girl, but he addressed me in the lilting, sing-song speech of Shainsa. I made no answer, gesturing him to be seated. On Wolf, formal courtesy requires a series of polite non sequiturs, and while a direct question merely borders on rudeness, a direct answer is the ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... knees and crept downstairs. The freshness of the rain-wind blew against her white face as she went out into the yard, and cooled her dry, burning eyes. A merry rollicking whistle was lilting up the lane. A moment later Pacifique ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and sometimes with a fierce eagerness that almost frightened the boy; and sometimes he frowned, and said under his breath, "Tut, tut, that will not do!" but oftener he laughed without a sound, nodding his head in time to the lilting tune, and seeming vastly pleased with Nick, the singing, and last, but not ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... page. "Why, I don't know," she said, "any more than you do—except that first one to the tune of 'St. Louis.'" She hummed a lilting measure or two. "That's our prize song all right, and who do ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... the gleaming depths of her the orchestra was lilting a gay waltz, silver clattered over the white napery of the dining-room, men and women laughed and chattered and flirted; men wrote telegrams, making appointments for the morrow at early hours, and the wireless flashed them forth. They were sent with the certainty on the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... her eye and on an idle impulse she started it. By chance, the record left on the machine had been that of the latest tango, and as she listened to the pulsing, languorous strains, Willa commenced half-unconsciously to sway in rhythm with its lilting harmony. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... brocade, Powder and puff and patches, Gallants lilting a serenade Of old-time trolls and catches. And 'tis O! for the lips And the finger tips, And the ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... her, So shall ye do weel; But and ben she'll guide the house, I'se get milk and meal. Ye'se get lilting while she sits With her ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... France, struck me, in the white and gold paneling, and the chimney, which lifted its mass of design to the ceiling. I must have been staring at this and thinking of Madame de Ferrier when my name was called in a lilting and excited fashion: ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... like a thousand gems Dinah's eyes were burning and smarting with the brightness. And still that tender waltz-music ran lilting through her brain, drifting as it were through the ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... out of this absolute essence of sheer sound distinctions of rhythm and pitch began to appear, and to assume definite musical form. The theme at first was pastoral and sweet, suggestive of rustling grasses and murmuring reeds, interwoven with which was an exquisite lilting tune, the song of the souls as they sped down the river. But one by one other elements crept into the strain; it increased in volume and variety of tone, in complexity of rhythm and tune, till it grew at length into a ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... the whispering larches Swinging to the low-lipped wind; God, they piped, is lilting in our arches, For He loveth ...
— Eyes of Youth - A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O. • Various
... wind That scurried round our cot. I slept: and waked What time the summer storm, that rose and fell In sullen gusts, flew by; and slept again, And dreamed a glad return. When morning broke A glorious day begun. The storm was gone: The sparkling waves toyed with the lilting breeze; The merry sun shone bright; and all the blue Was decked with tiny flecks of feathery white. A gladsome morn! But I, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... below, 6: A fine lilting lyric of the Captain's love for his lass; his farewell; and his death. ...
— A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs • Hubert G. Shearin
... the blonde who laughed, and the man who flushed. Terry cocked her head just a little to one side, like a knowing bird, looked up into space beyond the piano top, and played the lilting little melody with charm and fidelity. The dark young man followed her with a wagging of the head and little jerks of both outspread hands. His expression was beatific, enraptured. He hummed a little under his ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... minute more will see the brood Of the shaggy forest god, and on his lip Will rest the rushes he is wont to play. His train in woven baskets bear ripe fruit And weave a dance with ropes of gray acorns, So light their touch the grasses scarcely sway As they the measure tread to the lilting flute. Alas! 't is ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... a dainty, winsome thing; She's Queen of Summertime, and Princess of the Spring. Her lovely, smiling lips are roses set to rhyme, She has a merry, lilting laugh, like Bluebells all a-chime. The radiance of her smile, the sunshine in her eyes, Is like the Dawn of breaking Day ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... overtones, quavering, weird, cadenced, throbbing with the sufferings of a race. Or perhaps that well-developed sense of humor which has, for more than a century, made ancestral sorrows bearable finds fuller expression in the lilting turn of a note than in the flashes of wit which abundantly enliven the pages of this volume. There is one lyric in particular which, in evident sincerity of feeling, simple and unaffected grace, ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... the group around William lit up with smiles, for, marching proudly in front, and carrying an enormous bunch of roses, was Tommy Watson, his head erect, his shoulders well back, his face aglow. To his signal the band aligned in front of the little group, and broke into a new tune, a lilting march, written around a then popular song, now almost forgotten, "Bill, our Bill." Perhaps there are some ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... refinement. A tantalizing thing to meet a disembodied voice like that, a low laugh, a mystery! The lady might have a face like a dried prune! (Only he knew that she hadn't!) Voices were not to be relied upon. Take that "hello-girl," for instance; she had had the softest lilting voice over the wire, then when he got a look at her she hadn't been a day under forty-five and her face——! Certainly it hadn't been the fairest that e'er the sun shone on! (Only in this case he knew it must be different!) He was a hopeless fool if ever ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... the window seat, looking out on the fading day. Leonora had gone to pay some calls; Edward was looking after some planting up in the new spinney. Thus she found herself playing on the old piano. She did not know how she came to be doing it. A silly lilting wavering tune came from before her in the dusk—a tune in which major notes with their cheerful insistence wavered and melted into minor sounds, as, beneath a bridge, the high lights on dark waters melt and ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... or the first part of Wallenstein, and Wallenstein, are introduced in the original manuscript by a prelude in one act, entitled Wallenstein's camp. This is written in rhyme, and in nine syllable verse, in the same lilting metre (if that expression may be permitted) with the second eclogue of Spencer's Shepherd's Calendar. This prelude possesses a sort of broad humour, and is not deficient in character, but to have translated it into prose, or into any other metre than that of the original, would ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... Nature had ceased her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle in the herbage—the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall hardly stirred the dust. In the distance sounded the cry of a lost soul. It was the barn owl starting on her rounds. The dormouse cowered back until she passed—white—gleaming, swift and silent ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... a lilting day of June, and Melissa's whole being in tune with it, that she was called in to the ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... kind, how very kind you are, to bother with my sums, when you have so much Greek in your head!" And, obeying an impulse, as she so often did, she caught his hand in both her own and kissed it heartily. Then she skimmed across the parlor, and he heard her child's voice "lilting lightly up the" stairs as he stood—in a position suggestive of Mrs. Jarley's wax-works—gazing fixedly at the hand which she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... in music, as little as he knew of it. He had an ear for melody, a dramatic vision, and the poetic conception of sound. Reading some lilting lyric, he could fancy the words marching to melody, and would cast about among his friends for some one who could supply a tuneful setting. Once he wrote to his friend the Rev. Dr. Parker, who was a skilled musician, urging him to write a score for Tennyson's ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... where's the orchestra?' he demanded when the applause had subsided, and the orchestra, one mouth-organ strong, promptly struck up a lilting music-hall ditty. From that he slid into 'My Little Grey Home,' with a very liberal measure of time to the long-drawn notes especially. The song was caught up and ran down the trench in full chorus. When it finished the orchestra was just on the point of starting another tune, when ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... chill and burn and chill, Cooling old angers, warming hearts again. The ancient building quickens to the thrill Of lilting feet; but only singing rain Flutters old echoes in the portico; Those who can still ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... the new day came, and the rest of the household had gone to their usual avocations, that any real sleep came to her. The twins were singing when she awoke at noon; indeed, they almost always were singing: but this morning it was a lilting baby song about "The sun is always shining, somewhere, somewhere", and Katherine took heart as she listened, then rose and dressed in great haste, for it was years since she had remained in bed so late in the day, and she was wondering what the ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... when the band is cock-a-hoop, There's a lilting kind of magic in the swagger of the troop, Swinging all aboard the steamer with her nose toward the sea. What is calling, Billy Khaki, that you're foot- ing ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... the troops rapidly fell into line and marched northward along the turnpike, the Creole band began to play again one of those lilting waltz tunes, and the speed of the men increased, their feet rising and falling swiftly to the rhythm of the galloping air. Jackson, who was near the head of the column, looked back and Harry saw a faint smile pass over his grim face. He saw ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... cried in lilting accents. "I'm so glad! It's been simply ages.... And looking so well! I don't believe you've ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... and took their accustomed places. A dart, propelled by an urchin of the upper regions who evidently had no fear of the monitor's stick, sailed serenely downward and found a resting place in a blonde lock of the salesgirl's hair. The footlights flashed on, and the musicians struck up a lilting, popular air, ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... drums and a lilting flourish by the pirate trumpeter as a farewell to Charles Town and its tavern and its girls, and the company passed from view. The lane was again deserted and silent and Jack offered to escort Dorothy Stuart to her own home. As they loitered across an open field, he cried in a ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... It has mountains up which one may climb from tropic forest jungles into open, pine-forested parks, and up again into the dense tropic forest, with its drapery of vines, its varied hanging orchids, and its graceful, lilting fern trees. It has mountains forested to the upper rim on one side with tropic jungle and on the other with sturdy pine trees; at the crest line the children of the Tropics meet and intermingle with those of the temperate zone. There are gigantic, rolling, ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... here: men waited from incident to incident only—the moving of a line of steel caps, a pause in the music, a head thrust out from a closed window and drawn back again.... Again the music broke out, and this time it was an air that they played—a lilting melancholy melody, that the priest recognised, yet could not identify. Men laughed subduedly near him; he saw a face wrinkled with bitter mirth turned back, and he heard what was said. It was "Jumping Joan" that was being played—the ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... with a faint hiss. Afterwards floated on the air the music of the shingle, hundreds of pebbles pattering with liquid footsteps down the sand. Peals of laughter, the continuous bass roar of the men, an occasional uncertain soprano lilting of the women, came from the group. The girls were reciting ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... The lilting witchery, the unrest Of winged dreams, is in our breast; But ever dear Fulfilment's eyes Gaze otherward. The long-sought prize, My lute, must to the gods belong. The dream is lovelier than ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... merits of the candidates, predicting the result of the election, or giving an occasional cheer for their respective parties, with the twirl of a stick or the throwing up of a hat; while from the houses on both sides of the street the scraping of fiddles, and the lilting of ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... solemn, and I believe he is never in the least aware of his frivolous caperings over the floor of induction. Indeed, his unconsciousness is what makes him an unfailing delight. He even makes his good old short-worded Saxon go in lilting waltz-time. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... sat in her silk and lace, With gems on her bosom and smiles on her face, And hot-house blossoms in her hair, While her fan kept time to the swaying rhyme Of the lilting opera air. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... recapturing the color, the flavor, the movement of life in "the quarters," in the cotton field and in the canebrake. Even in this effort, white authors had led the way; Irvin Russell and Joel Chandler Harris had made the path straight for Paul Laurence Dunbar, with his lilting lyrics, often infused with the pathos ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... a wondrous cosmos of biscuits, light as the heart of a boy. And Frank, singing a French ditty, created wheat cakes. His method struck me as poetic. He scorned the ordinary uninspired cook's manner of turning the half-baked cake. One side being done, he waited until the ditty reached a certain lilting upward leap in the refrain, when, with a dexterous movement of the frying-pan, he tossed the cake into the air, making it execute a joyful somersault, and catching it with a sizzling splat in the pan, just as the lilting ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... obediently. The reaction from despair brought joyousness. Of a sudden, she became aware of the blending perfumes of the wild flowers and the lilting of an amorous thrush in the wood. Her lids narrowed to dreamy contemplation of the green-and-gold traceries on the ground, where the sunlight fell dappled through screening foliage. Fear was fled from her. Her thought flew to ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... all about us, on the tips of swaying bushes and in the tops of trees, thousands of golden larks were singing. They were in appearance like our meadow-larks back east, but their note was quite different; more joyous and lilting, but with the same liquid quality. We flushed many sparrows of different sorts; and we saw the plumed quail, the gallant, trim, little, well-groomed gentlemen, running rapidly ahead of us. And over it all showered the clear warmth of the sun, like ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... Russia. They are very like the 'Little' Russians, so called to distinguish them from the people of 'Great' Russia on the north. They live in the same neat, thatched and whitewashed cottages. They have the same gayly colored national costumes still in wear, and the same fairy tales, the same merry lilting songs, so different from the melancholy strains of northern folk music. Almost the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... and planted, I could hear its voice. Sometimes it rose strong and insistent—in spring, when rains were plenty; sometimes in August when the sky for weeks had been hard and dry, it sank to a low murmur, but it was seldom silent. All the year through its voice was a lilting undertone, and the seasons ran away to the thread of its ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... two elder ones—had a vague remembrance of an Uncle David who had brought them toys and sweetmeats in a dim past). Aunt Vivie and Mummie used to get up the most amusing Suffrage meetings in the long, narrow garden behind the house; or they combined forces with Lady Maud Parry, and spoke in lilting contralto or mezzo-soprano (with the compliant tenor or baritone of here and there a captive man) across the two gardens. Or somehow they commandeered the Square Garden on the pretext of a vast Garden Party, at which every one talked and laughed ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... shaped pottery jars on their heads were coming home with water from the well. Suddenly I came out on an open plaza with trees from which the last leaves were falling through the greenish sunset light. The place was filled with the lilting music of a grind-organ and with a crunch of steps on the gravel as people danced. There were soldiers and servant-girls, and red-cheeked apprentice-boys with their sweethearts, and respectable shop-keepers, and their wives with mantillas over their gleaming black ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... this collection two songs, both strongly marked with the camp, neither setting forth the slightest earthly claim to be regarded as 'elevated poesie,' yet both remarkably sing-able, and probably destined to become broadly popular. Of these, 'Bully Boy Billy,' is set to a lilting 'devil may care' Low-Dutch camp tune—one of the kind which 'sings itself,' and is well adapted to a roaring chorus. From the same we find a lyric detailing the loss of a briarwood pipe stolen in a raid, which the grieving 'sojer' trusts (as we most sincerely do with him) may be found ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... had come in, tip-toe to her room and peep, to see a sleeping face so pale and haggard that she withdrew, suddenly sorry, she did not quite know why. Judy could look old ... she reflected. Georgie herself felt a lilting sense of interest in this day which she had not hitherto during her stay at Paradise Cottage. Nothing had happened, and yet somehow she felt different. It was not even that she had had a letter from Val, for he had written two days ago, and so ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... monarch seriously, but the lilting melody pleased everybody except "Mr. Wood." The "Oh, Oh's" and "Ah, Ah's" of the chorus apparently stirred him to speech. He strolled from a corner of the saloon to the side of Gray, the American engineer, and said, with a contemptuous ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... themselves; and could not help stopping to look after her for a long way on the road, as every now and then she stuck one of her arms a-kimbo in her side, and gave a dance round in the whirling-jig way, louping like daft, and lilting like a grey-lintie. From her way of speaking, they also saw immediately that she too was an Eirisher.—They must be a bonny family when they are all ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one which Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, "a cripple would crawl five miles to hear." And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs's father's son took heart to forget some of his trepidation. "I'll be any kind of idiot," he said, "if you'll laugh at me some more. It won't be ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... mother with a lilting squeal of joy, and Ethel's eyes opened and narrowed with a cold and appraising scrutiny. Her hands twisted together in her lap; she seemed to be weighing and balancing. At length, with a little brooding cry, she caught the baby in ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... upon thee, brother!" cried Robin, forgetting to scowl. "Out on thee with thy honied phrases, thy quipsome lilting rhymes! Here go I to do a thing I ha' no lust to do—and all by reason o' thee! Off—off wi' the halter, lads—loose the hangman-claws of him! Hereafter, since he can pay no ransom, he shall be our serf; to have a hangman fetch and carry shall ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... seen so many dead before." The lilting words danced up and down his brain, While corpses jumped and capered in the rain. No, no; he wouldn't count them any more.... The dead have done with pain: They've choked; they can't ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... Away in some sunken gardens ahead of them a band was playing, and a cluster of little lights about the bandstand showed a crowd of people down below dancing on the grass. These little lights, these bobbing black heads and the lilting music, this little inflamed Centre of throbbing sounds and ruddy illumination, made the dome of the moonlit world about it seem very vast and cool and silent. Our visitors began to realize that Bath could be very beautiful. They went to the parapet ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... closer to each other, wing brushed wing, sleepy lids lowered over soft eyes to shut out the crimson glory of the dying sun. Then the little throats throbbed as they voiced gratitude to their Creator in gentle, low pitched notes, lilting with the joy of life, plaintive with the ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... are cheerful, melodious and sweet; we hear them sung and whistled all day upon the street. Some lilting ragtime ditty that's rollicking and gay will gain the public favor and hold it—for a day. But when the day is ended, and we are tired and worn, and more than half persuaded that man was made to mourn, how soothing then the music our fathers ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... he said; "far have I wandered, and many a town I've seen, and many a prospect that was fine, and I have made songs to maids and mountains, and foreign castles too, but never a verse to Dunchuach. I do not know the words, but at my heart is lilting the very tune, and the spirit of it is ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... the very thing they are afraid of, because they bore you so infernally? If I look at a woman, Eleanor's on her ear.... Queer," he pondered; "she's good. Look how kind she is to old O'Brien's lame child. And she can sing." He hummed to himself a lovely Lilting line of one of Eleanor's songs. "Confound it! why did I meet Lily? Eleanor is a million times too ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Harding. They were, in many ways, strangely assorted companions, the elderly English lady accustomed to the smoother side of life, and the young American who had struggled hard from boyhood, but they were sensible of a mutual lilting. Mrs. Keith had a trace of the grand manner, which had its effect on Harding; he showed a naive frankness she found attractive. Besides, his talk and conduct were marked by a laboured correctness which amused and pleased her. She thought he had ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... back: the shoulders straightened, and the lashes lifted over sparkling eyes; vivacity came to her whole body in a flash; and she tripped down the steps, with her pretty hands rising in time to the lilting little tune she ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... Shakespeare's lilting stanza conveys a great truth—the power of cheerfulness to give impetus and endurance. The a at the end of lines is merely an addition in singing; the ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... darkness and the glooms of night. One by one it liberated from the enmeshments of its tangled wooded heights the constellations to gladden the eye and lure the fancy. Its largess of silver torrents flung down its slopes made fertile the little fields, and bestowed a lilting song on the silence, and took a turn at the mill-wheel, and did not disdain the thirst of the humble cattle. It gave pasturage in summer, and shelter from the winds of the winter. It was the assertive feature of his life; he could hardly ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... oddest book she had ever seen. The words were arranged in charming little rows, and when you read them over and over they sang themselves into your very heart. They told you, lilting along, of a road that no one but you ever knew—a road that led in and out through wonders of beauty and faded at the day's end into your heart's desire. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... irritating to him. He could not bear to hear him speak with trembling voice and gleaming eyes of the grand mountains and the silent corries around Ben-Nevis, the red deer trooping over the misty steeps, and the brown hinds lying among the green plumes of fern, and the wren and the thrush lilting ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... And shone the roundness where his honest cheeks Played to the rippling gladness of his mouth! In childhood rambles, it was mostly he She chose for partner, spite of blandishment; And to her winsome ways he would forego His pompous surveillance of wine and plate, To guard her, lilting, where the summer lay On honeyed murmuring limes, and under elms, August with knotted centuries of strength And rooks sonorous in their shadowy heights. By thymy slopes, foot-deep in sward they roved, Both lightly garrulous, and she, sweet ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... was there, he made no sign, and at length my sportsman's eagerness began to flag, and my eye roamed across the meadows to the church spire, under the shadow of which life as I could never know it was lilting merrily northwards. Here I was and here I should remain, like a cabbage, till Death pulled me ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... This distinction is very apparent in the group of lyrics which deal with the less complete divisions of love. An almost oppressive intensity of womanhood pulses in A Woman's Last Word, In a Year, and Any Wife to Any Husband: the first, with its depth of self-abasement and its cloying lilting melody, trembles, exquisite as it is, on the verge of the "sentimental." There is a rarer, subtler pathos in Two in the Campagna. The outward scene finds its way to his senses, and its images make a language ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... cried. "Does Marise pay you to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you pay yourselves for what you drink to-night. Soul of desires!"—as the musicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting, quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub—"a quadrille, you angels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen! Partners, ladies! A ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... carry brooms and with slow and mystic movements sweep widely on either side with the intent of gathering up the wandering soul. Meanwhile crackers are fired to the weird sound of a minor, falsetto lilting. After a considerable journey over the countryside they return to prove the success of their venture. For this the clothes of the sick man must be reweighed to see whether the weight of the spirit ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... assent with stately compliance. Undulating across the studio, she returned with a mandolin—not the one I remembered, but a pretty bit of workmanship in inlaid wood. Bending above this, she relieved the wait by merry, lilting tunes like the music of a bobolink, while Kitty fidgetted in and out, the puckers in her forehead every ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After" (1886), "Demeter and Other Poems" (1889), and "The Death of Oenone, Akbar's Dream, and Other Poems," in the year of the Poet's death (1892). In these various volumes there is much admirable work and many tuneful lyrics in the old charming, lilting strain, with not a few serious, thoughtful, stately pieces of verse, "the after-glow," as Stedman phrases it, "of a still radiant genius.... His after-song," continues this fine critic, "does not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... the magistrate, in an authoritative tone—"lilting and singing sae near the latter end o' the Sabbath! This house may hear ye sing anither tune yet. Aweel, we hae a' backslidings to answer for—Stanchells, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various |
