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Litany   Listen
noun
Litany  n.  (pl. litanies)  A solemn form of supplication in the public worship of various churches, in which the clergy and congregation join, the former leading and the latter responding in alternate sentences. It is usually of a penitential character. "Supplications... for the appeasing of God's wrath were of the Greek church termed litanies, and rogations of the Latin."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Litany" Quotes from Famous Books



... of this, a typical Sunday, would run as follows: Breakfast. A half-hour or so selecting hymns and preparing for Service whilst the hut is being cleared up. The Service: a hymn; Morning prayer to the Psalms; another hymn; prayers from Communion Service and Litany; a final hymn and our special prayer. Wilson strikes the note on which the hymn is to start and I try to hit it after with doubtful success! After church the men go ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... sufficiently high rate the doctrines of Oxford; and so little gifted with taste, that he would have probably failed to appreciate the sublimities of Brady and Tate. Nor could Peter have known that the 'liturgy of the heart' was in the Covenanter's cottage, and that the 'litany' of the spirit breathed from his evening devotions. But it is all known to the Rev. Mr. Cumming. He knows, too, that there were sufferings and privations endured by the persecuted Presbyterians of those ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... his arm round her waist, 'if we begin on that subject, my litany will be as long as the Athanasian Creed, and quite ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume

... to be a stern reproach, the page frightened ran away, leaving the books, the task, and all. Thereupon, the seneschal's better half added this prayer to the litany—"Holy Virgin, how difficult children are ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... Claire giggled without knowing why. Then Abby applied herself with renewed earnestness and volubility to the litany. She did not intend any disrespect: on the contrary, she meant to be very devout. But she not only believed in the injunction "Let your light shine before men," but felt that it behooved her to attract Father Dominic's attention ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley

... not be trusted. One thing is certain, that the reformers found their way into the barracks at Knightsbridge and had lunch there at the expense of the soldiers, who discussed Hone's pamphlets and roared with laughter over the Political Litany. The Prince Regent communicated to both Houses certain papers, and recommended that they should at once be taken into consideration. They contained evidence, so the royal message asserted, of treasonable combinations "to alienate the affections ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford

... upon the Song of Songs—which had been pasted down in the Enschede Bible—the burning litany of love; and from time to time she intoned some verse of tender lyric beauty. There was one verse that haunted ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath

... and she introduced Evelyn to the five sisters, hurrying through their names in a low whisper. "We don't sing the 'O Salutaris,' as there has been exposition. We'll sing this hymn instead, and immediately after you'll sing the 'Ave Maria'; it will take the place of the Litany." ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... the northern and midland counties were tried at Derby by a special commission, and twenty-three received sentence of death; three of them only, however, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. The last prosecution was that of a man named Hone, for some political parodies on the Litany and other parts of our church-service. He was tried for a blasphemous libel; but he was acquitted, chiefly on the ground that his parodies were political, and hence not blasphemous; and the public sympathized with the demagogue by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... wear it. She could hear his very tones as he told her that of all queens she was the peeress, of all women the most beautiful, of all wives the most dear. Almost she forgot the horrors of the night, so certain did it seem that his dear voice must soon again tell her the words that have been love's litany since ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... Morningside Park, after which, he entered the cathedral. The priest whose voice had so often thrilled him stood at his post in his surplice, and the choir had finished the processional hymn. During the responses in the litany, and between the commandments, while the congregation and the choir sang, he heard their natural voices as of old ascending to the vaulted roof and arrested there. He now also heard their spiritual voices resulting from the earnestness of their prayers. These were rung through ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... remarks Bobby, gravely, as he walks beside me carrying my prayer-book. "I could see that: he was taking them out, and putting them in again, with his tongue all through the Litany." ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... beads; Madame de Vendome would fain have confessed her sins to the Bishop of Lisieux, who said to her, "Daughter, be of good cheer; you are in the hands of God." At the same instant, the Comte do Brion and all the lackeys were upon their knees very devoutly singing the Litany of the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... Dictator, at his last dinner party, (coena,) and the very evening before his assassination, being questioned as to the mode of death which, in his opinion, might seem the most eligible, replied—"That which should be most sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character for the whole human race prostrate before God, places such a death in the very van of horrors. "From lightning and tempest; from plague, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... to be of higher rank, and these, for the most part, though by no means all of them, wore their clothes reversed—as I have forgotten to say was done also by Mr. Balmy. Both men and women joined in singing a litany the words of which my father could not catch; the tune was one he had been used to play on his apology for a flute when he was in prison, being, in fact, none other than "Home, Sweet Home." There was no harmony; they never got beyond the first four bars, but these they must have repeated, ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler

... with your usual facetiousness and drollery, call him, Mr. F II—has stopped short in the middle of his play. Some friend has told him that it has not the least merit in it. Oh! that I had the rectifying of the Litany! I would put in a libera nos (Scriptores videlicet) ab amicis! That's all the news. A propos (is it pedantry, writing to a Frenchman, to express myself sometimes by a French word, when an English one would not do ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... mob wi' the roars of a bull-bison forcin' them to hear that the squaw was crazed from the death of her own bit bairn, and but tryin' to comfort her sore heart? Who, I'm askin' ye?" and from each man's lips came the murmur like a response to a litany: ...
— Down the Mother Lode • Vivia Hemphill

... likewise wanting to my Lord's Collection. It varies from all the other Copies, and is printed in 1548. All the rest, I think, in 1549. One reason of my enquiry is, because I want the Title, for the date is at the end of the Book, and indeed twice; both on the end of the Communion Office, and of the Litany. But I beg your pardon for so small an enquiry, whilst you are in quest of Guttenberg and Nic. Jenson. My business consists much ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 219, January 7, 1854 • Various

... reading the Litany," said John, shaking his head with a look of drunken gravity, and having only caught one word of the Major's address to him; "life is short, sir; we are flowers of the field, sir—hiccup—and lilies ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... the probability, the harmony of the verse, and all that belongs to these, that I was forced to regard him, not merely as informed, but thoroughly grounded. He abused the English and scorned the Germans; in short, he laid before me the whole dramaturgic litany which I have so often in my ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... us!" immediately responded the Bohemian and Tolima. Then all knelt down, because it was the Litany, which is not only said at the moment of death, but also for the delivery of dear and near persons from the danger of death. Jagienka knelt; Jurand slipped down from his seat and knelt, and all began ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... no longer singing hymn and litany, swelled, hoarse through their helmets, the martial chorus. This warrior, in front of the Duke and the horsemen, seemed beside himself with the joy of battle. As he rode, and as he chaunted, he threw up his sword in the air like a gleeman, catching ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... good girl!" This was his commendation, from hour to hour; it made up the litany of his gratitude for what she had been to him. "But I dunno's I feel quite up ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... helplessness for a few long hours—hours that seemed centuries to all of us. Observe their restrained but impatient glances at the clock, and listen to their deep-throated responses to the impassioned petitions of the Litany of the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor

... necessary as a base of supplies, and together they guarded it from foes divine and mortal. But to each other they were necessary for wealth and glory, respectively. So it was that even in the earliest period the religious litany, to a great extent, is the book of worship of a warrior-class as prepared for it by the priest. Priest and king—these are the main factors in the making of the hymns of the Rig Veda, and the gods lauded are chiefly ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... and merits are celebrated one by one, as in a litany; for, said one of those poets, an ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... the havoc he has unintentionally wrought, the smoke of the burning cottage is wafted toward him and takes the form of four gray old women. One of them, Dame Care, slips into the rich man's palace by way of the keyhole and croons in his ear her dismal litany of care. Faust replies in a fine ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Daily Service, the Litany, and Office of the Holy Communion, with the ancient musical notation, printed in red and black, with ornamental title ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden

... way of bearing it was that after setting Mrs. Merrifield down, she stopped the carriage at a church she knew to have a noon-tide Litany, knelt there, with the little girl beside her, and tried to say, "Thy will be done! To Thy keeping I commit her." Her "hours" ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... newly-ordained Deacon undertook were the ordinary Sunday ones, and Wednesday and Friday Matins and Litany, Saints'-day prayers and lecture, and an Advent and Lent Evensong and lecture on Wednesdays and Fridays. These last had that great popularity which attends late services. Dr. Cornish used to come on ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Faro Islands which lie far to north of Scotland, the great island of Iceland and Greenland, relics of the times when the Viking ships brought such terror to the other countries of Europe, that the Litany used to read: "From plague, pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, from sudden death and from the fury of the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... poems as "Thanksgiving," "A True Lent," "Litany," and the child's "Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour" reflect the better side of the Cavalier, who can be serious without pulling a long face, who goes to his devotions cheerfully, and who retains even in his religion what Andrew Lang calls a ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... was indescribable. The blend of many colours in costume mixed with the time-mellowed harmonies of shade and substance in the mighty structure, while the air was permeated with the solemn sounds of the recently sung Litany and the slowly pealing bells of loyal welcome. Around were the greatest men and noblest and most beautiful women of Great Britain, and in the stalls was a veritable roll-call of fame in a world-wide Empire. Lord Salisbury was ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... you, I love you!" Glenn repeated it like a litany. "Nancy! Does it make you as happy because I love you as it makes ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... within the British lines it is said that the minister proceeded, upon one occasion, to utter the prayer for the King of England, in the Litany. At the end of the prayer there were no "Amens," the congregation having been composed almost entirely, as the story goes, of believers in American independence. Into the awkward pause after the prayer one voice from the congregation ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... and belongs to the clergy, as the Sanctuary did to the priests of old; but the people are not as of old cut off, but draw near in faith, to taste of the great Sacrifice commemorated upon the Altar. The eagle desk for the Holy Scripture, shows forth one Gospel emblem; the Litany desk is for times of repentance, when the Priest may mourn between porch and altar. The dead rested within and around, in the shadow of their church, and constant services were celebrated, that so the ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... for prayers granted and benefits received, before that altar of Our Lady where hundreds of tapers pierced the air blue with incense with the gilded blades of their lances, there were public prayers every evening at eight. A priest in the pulpit said the rosary, sometimes the Litany of Our Lady was sung to a singular air, a sort of musical cento, but it was impossible to say whence it was constructed, very rhythmical, and continually changing its tone, now fast, now slow, bringing with it, for a moment, a vague recollection of seventeenth-century airs, then turning ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... army, slipped back to Chinon; but he left behind him better and braver men—his five bravest leaders. Joan began her work gloriously by clearing the camp of all bad characters. Father Pasquerel bore her banner through the streets, while Joan, with the priests who followed, sang the Litany and exhorted men to prepare for battle by repentance and prayer. In this, as in all ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... intoning this litany, all four marched out upon the landing pier, stepped into the boat tied there, and from the further end of it slowly lowered into the pond ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... have supposed that, by this time, the theme of universal admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. The curate began to cough; four fits of coughing one morning between the Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here was a discovery—the curate was consumptive. How interestingly melancholy! If the young ladies were energetic before, their sympathy and solicitude now knew no bounds. Such ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... when Sam-Chaong and more than a hundred of the priests most distinguished for learning and piety in the whole of the church, marched in solemn procession, chanting a litany, and took their places on the raised platform from which they were to conduct the service ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... borrowed by Mr. W. from the Litany: 'O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... other's eyes. No low partitions allowing you, with a dreary absence of contrast and mystery, to see everything at all moments; but tall dark panels, under whose shadow I sank with a sense of retirement through the Litany, only to feel with more intensity my burst into the conspicuousness of public life when I was made to stand up on the seat during the psalms or the singing. And the singing was no mechanical affair of official routine; it had a drama. As the moment ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... join in the Litany and Holy Communion. The afternoon was spent in visiting the sick and giving medicine. Several women came to the house for instruction, and seemed to take great interest in Mr. Chambers, teaching; but it was not until ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall

... many conquests:—one day, even, he had kissed her on the lips,—Lily thought that very nice; it was all very well for him to cut a dash at the bar, to stand her a claret and a biscuit; it was all very well for him to sing his love-litany: all this did not help him; at the rate at which he was going, he wouldn't get anywhere ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... priories into which they were divided. The coming storm was heralded at St. Mary's on 11th November, 1535 on which date, "by command of the king," a solemn procession was held in the church to inaugurate its downfall by a Litany, in which the Prior and Canons took part, "with their crosses, candlesticks and vergers before them," as if in mockery of the state of which they were so soon to be deprived. The "Act of Suppression," passed in 1536, sealed the fate of the smaller foundations, to be followed three years ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley

... service well conducted; the prayers were read by Adams, and the lessons by Buffet, the service being preceded by hymns. The greatest devotion was apparent in every individual, and in the children there was a seriousness unknown in the younger part of our communities at home. In the course of the Litany they prayed for their sovereign and all the royal family with much apparent loyalty and sincerity. Some family prayers, which were thought appropriate to their particular case, were added to the usual service; and Adams, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various

... a deafening crash upon the earth. A thunderbolt fell into the pond at the other end of the park, followed by another so close by that the house shook on its foundations. My ladies began to say the Litany; I felt uncertain what to do; if I joined them it would be hypocrisy on my part, and if I did not it would look as if I were showing myself off as an ill-bred wiseacre, who cannot make allowance for country customs and female terrors. But I was wrong; they were not afraid; their faces ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... it," said Eileen feelingly. Her religious exercises were limited to going to church on Sunday morning and coming out, if possible, after the Litany. "And how do ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay

... speak of it, but I am tired to death of reformers," it was only the artist's impatience of the ploughman; it was Rupert and his men not only sneering at Praise God Bare-bones, and singing their mock prayer in the Lenten litany, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis

... cool, dark tomb Receives my heart into its quiet keeping, And some sweet flower begins to bloom Above the grassy mound where I am sleeping; Ah then, my face thou nevermore shalt see, But still my soul will linger close to thee, And in the holy place of night, The litany of love ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... Sunday; in the rows on either side of the main aisle the pews came together in twos, so that when Beth sat at the end of theirs, as she always did, the person in the next pew sat beside her with only the wooden partition between. One Sunday, when she was on her knees, drowsing through the Litany with her cheek on her prayer-book, she became aware of a boy in the next pew with his face turned to her in exactly the same attitude. He had bright fair hair curling crisply, a ruddy fair fat face, and round blue eyes, clear as glass marbles. Beth was pleased with ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... Jersey was frequently attacked and sometimes invaded by the French they never held more than a portion of it temporarily. Indeed, so much was a Norman or French invasion feared, that the islanders inserted in the Litany an additional petition: 'From the fury of the Normans, ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown

... to celebrate, the feast of the Prophet at the house of the sheik El Bekri. The ceremony was began by the recital of a kind of litany, containing the life of Mahomet from his birth to his death. About a hundred sheiks, sitting in a circle, on carpets, with their legs crossed, recited all the verses, swinging their bodies violently backwards and ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... if you were a lady, it were fair The world should know—but, as I am afraid, The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed; And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble Over all sorts of scandals. hear them mumble 55 Their litany of curses—some guess right, And others swear you're a Hermaphrodite; Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes, Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes The very soul that the soul is gone 60 Which lifted from her limbs ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... points of retrenchment are—removing all repetitions, such as the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Collect for the day; a portion of the close of the Litany is omitted at the discretion of the minister. The Communion Service is not read every Sunday. I suppose the Church authorizes this omission at the discretion of the minister, as I have attended service on more ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... life Herrick published his one book, Hesperides and Noble Numbers (1648). The latter half contains his religious poems, and one has only to read there the remarkable "Litany" to see how the religious terror that finds expression in Bunyan's Grace Abounding could master even the most careless ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long

... the worship of the crowd As Hadrian divulged Antinous Would I denote Thy sanctity, not thus Should Love's deep litany be cried aloud. There is a mountain set apart for us Where I have hid Thy soul as in a cloud, And there I dedicate as I have vowed My secret ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer

... filthy, forlorn, and dazed, one suddenly realises the extreme appropriateness of a certain reference in the Litany to All Prisoners ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)

... course not," with a unanimity which gave it the effect of a congregational response in the litany. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... litany, as the great organ pealed, and swinging censers gave off their perfume, visitors came, bringing children, and they stopped at the arches where Rousseau and Voltaire slept side by side, and they said, "It is here." And so the dust of infidel greatness seemed to interfere ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... listened with astonishment to this strange recital, asked her father and aunt how they had been able to learn by heart this bit of prose, and why they recited it as if it were a litany. ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France

... was the order given by Old Hurricane as he followed the minister into the carriage. "And now, sir," he continued, addressing his companion, "I think you had better repeat that part of the church litany that prays to be delivered from 'battle, murder and sudden death,' for if we should be so lucky as to escape Black Donald and his gang, we shall have at least an equal chance of being upset in the darkness of these ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... N. worship, adoration, devotion, aspiration, homage, service, humiliation; kneeling, genuflection, prostration. prayer, invocation, supplication, rogation, intercession, orison, holy breathing; petition &c. (request) 765; collect, litany, Lord's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... swinging blow administered to Mazeroux's chin according to the most scientific rules of the noble art. And Mazeroux foresaw this contingency, for he prudently kept as far away as possible and, to appease the chief's anger, intended a whole litany of excuses: ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... series of strips of glass of unequal length, hung on two stretched tapes. A cork fixed to a wire served as a hammer. Imagine an unskilled hand striking at random on this key-board, with a sudden clash of octaves, dissonances and topsy-turvy chords; and you will have a pretty clear idea of the Toads' litany. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... barns to a little patch of woodland through which a clear stream sparkled, a silent, intimate, leafy oasis amid an army-ridden desert, where there was only a cow to stare at them, knee deep in young mint, only a shy cardinal bird to interrupt them with its exquisite litany. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers

... Alicia's bending of head and knee. But the creed, with its sudden turn toward the altar, caught him unawares, he lost himself wholly in the psalms, the collects left him in deep water, hopeless of ever finding his place again, and the litany baffled him, when he was beginning to feel safe, by changing from "miserable sinners" to "Spare us Good Lord" and "We beseech thee to hear us." If he could just have found the place he would have been all ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... contains a litany in which the titles of the archangel are enumerated. He is, among other things, Secretary of God, Liberator from Infernal Chains, Defender in the Hour of Death, Custodian of the Pope, Spirit of Light, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... As a preparation for the legislature, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christ Church were purified by paint; the niches of the Saints were for the second time emptied of their images; texts of Scripture were blazoned upon the walls, and the Litany was chanted in English. After these preparatory demonstrations, the Deputy opened the new Parliament, which sat for one short but busy month. The Acts of Mary's Parliament, re-establishing ecclesiastical relations ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... as of a breeze Amened to their litany; In their pure sky smiled the trees; And no more was mystery. Clear I saw the Soul at work, All through fair Saint Francis vale, Beauty-making; like a dirk ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall

... without removing our hats, we made a close inspection of the respected carvings. A nearer view did not increase their attractions, so, passing up a flight of stairs, we entered a room where the bonzes were busy praying for rain and apparently going through a species of litany with open books in their hands. Our entrance stopped proceedings for a minute or two, but they soon resumed, quite indifferently, singing and drawling as though ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... poem we possess, or may hereafter possess (be that poem psalm, hymn, sequence, litany, prayer, or form of doctrine), we could attach, or find attached, the musical form best adapted to its highest expression, what delight would we not experience in its rendering? Some such poems might, by reason of old associations, or of especial ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... which marked the Esquimaux congregations. The order of the different meetings of the congregation at Hopedale during winter—and in the other settlements it was pretty much the same—was as follows:—Sunday. Public service in the fore and afternoon. In the morning the Litany was read. The children then met. After the afternoon's service the communicants sung a liturgical hymn, or the candidates for the Lord's supper held a meeting for instruction.—Monday Evening. All the baptized had a meeting, when a suitable discourse was delivered to them. After a short ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... same trip with me. We entered the mosque, which is really very beautiful, and went all over it. The Imaums and Softas, the priests and students, had cast horrified glances upon us from the moment of our entry. Suddenly one of them began to intone in a falsetto voice a sort of Litany, to which the crowd replied in chorus. Soon the Litany turned into angry shouts, and the crowd, led by an old Negro Imaum, in a yellow robe, who seemed to have worked himself into a perfect paroxysm of fury, rushed at us with threatening gestures. This was ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... statues placed in some temple or temple precinct, it is equally certain that some had a shrine or sanctuary of some kind specially erected in their honor. In hymns, too, deities are mentioned that are otherwise unknown. So in a litany, published by Craig,[1417] a long series of gods is introduced. Some are identical with those included in the list just referred to,[1418] others appear here for the first time, as Mishiru, Kilili Ishi-milku. Epithets also occur in lists and ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... the Sublime Porte. The Arabs were struck by the character of the young conqueror. They could not comprehend how it was that the mortal who wielded the thunderbolt should be so merciful. They called him the worthy son of the Prophet, the favourite of the great Allah, and sang in the great mosque a litany ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... Fifteen days he spent in preliminary devotions and alms-deeds, and then he heard mass, was washed with holy water, received the Holy Sacrament, and followed the sacred relics in procession, whilst the priests sang for him the Litany, "as lowde as they mygth crye." Then Sir Owain was locked in the cave, and he groped his way onward in darkness, till he reached a glimmering light; this brightened, and he came out into an underground land, where was a great hall and cloister, in which ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... sabidura; the words with which Len jocularly greets Mariucha are taken from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, commonly called the Litany of Loreto. The Latin phrases are—Stella matutina, Turris eburnea, Sedes sapientiae. Ora pro nobis is the response given by the congregation after ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... green and flame-coloured parrot, hung head downward in his yellow cage, began suddenly a mechanical, dry litany: ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... Juan of Austria, achieved a memorable victory over the Turks. This victory was attributed by Pope Pius V. to the especial interposition of the Blessed Virgin. A new invocation was now added to her Litany, under the title of Auxilium Christianorum; a new festival, that of the Rosary, was now added to those already held in her honour; and all the artistic genius which existed in Italy, and all the piety of orthodox Christendom, were now ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... Youth! Why must we spend these lonely nights? The poets hardly speak the truth,— Despite their praiseful litany, His season is not all delights ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... people, they spared about two hundred wretches who had gathered some bushels of gold and silver (a vague exaggeration) from the smoking ruins of their country. In these annual excursions from the Alps to the neighborhood of Rome and Capua, the churches, that yet escaped, resounded with a fearful litany: "O, save and deliver us from the arrows of the Hungarians!" But the saints were deaf or inexorable; and the torrent rolled forwards, till it was stopped by the extreme land of Calabria. [33] A composition was offered and accepted ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... view of encouraging the Protestants, whom persecution had discouraged and depressed, she recalled all the exiles, and gave liberty to those who had, on account of their religion, been confined in prison. She also altered the religious service, and gave orders that the Lord's prayer, the litany, the creed, and the gospels, should be read in the churches in the vulgar tongue; and she forbade the elevation of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... elected by the clergy and the people. He shrank, however, from the office, and even petitioned the Emperor Maurice to withhold his confirmation of the election. While waiting for the Emperor's answer, Gregory employed the occasion in preaching to the people, calling them to repentance. A Litany was sung through the streets of the city by seven companies of the clergy and people, starting from different churches and meeting at the Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore. From this litany, perhaps, was taken the processional antiphon, "Deprecamur Te Domine," which was ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt

... solemn emotion, read through the grand periods of the Church Litany, and when he had finished, Clarian, with a thrilling "Let us pray," offered up such a thanksgiving as I had never heard, praying to the kind Father who had so mercifully extricated him, that our paths might still be enlightened, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... strangest, weirdest scene that even the pen of poets or brush of painter devised, . . a march round and round the Temple of all the priests, bearing lighted flambeaux and singing in chorus a wild Litany,—a confused medley of supplications to the Sun and Nagaya, which, accompanied as it was by the discordant beating drums and the clanging of bells, had an evidently powerful effect on the minds of the assembled populace, for presently they also joined in the maddening ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... Holy of Holies were celebrated. Not more than a dozen devotees at most were present. These gathered modestly in the rear of the nave and put us to shame with their reverent gravity. Strange chants were chanted; it was a weird music, like a litany of bumblebees. Dense clouds of incense issued from gilded recesses that ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... moving her lips in prayer as she bent over the sufferer. What little Maud knew of religious instruction, had been taught her in the form of the Episcopal church, and she now listened to the formal prayer from the litany appropriate to her situation. A sweet smile gathered over her face as Helen proceeded, and prayed for forgiveness for all sins committed; and as she paused at the close, three voices repeated the ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... philosophic circle for her ministers. In other words, the Academic Temple in the upper world was but a place of meeting; this was the Temple in fact. There the gentle priests talked business; here they worshipped; and of their psalter and litany, their faith and ceremonial practices, enough that the new substitute for religion was only a reembodiment of an old philosophy with the narrowest psychical idea for creed; namely, that the principle of Present Life was all there was in man ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... the tonsured priest, and the monastery, and the nunnery, and the mass, and the Virgin Mary, have grown to be a very great power indeed in English lanes. Between the Roman missal and the chapel hymn-book, the country curate with his good old-fashioned litany is ground very small indeed, and grows less and less between these millstones till he approaches the vanishing-point. The Roman has the broad acres, his patrons have given him the land; the chapel has the common people, and ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies

... real or imaginary, since the day she and Willoughby had first met, she poured forth with a fluency due to frequent repetition, for, with the exception of today's added injuries, Willoughby had heard the whole litany many times before. ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,

... of so young and prepossessing a rector had instantly removed their last scruples as to infant baptism, and settled forever their doubts as to the apostolic succession. They had come in at once. It was even whispered that Maria Upjohn had in an incautious moment confessed that she preferred the litany to Mr. Webb's spontaneous effusions, and had been summarily sat upon by her mother, whose Bible contained an eleventh commandment curiously omitted from the twentieth chapter of Exodus in other versions, and reading: "Thou shalt not become an Episcopalian, ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield

... lack of some paper or material to clean the rear end provoked the following sentiment in the form of a litany: ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... when he has prostrated himself on his knees in four directions in the form of a cross, he says the verse: Receive me, O Lord, etc. And then the Gloria Patri, the Kyrie Eleison, the Pater Noster and the Litany are said, the novice remaining prostrate on the ground before the altar, until the end of the mass. And the brothers ought to be in the choir kneeling while the Litany is said. When the Litany has been said, then shall follow ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... impassioned chant of the Roman litany was ringing in my ears as I sat down to the table to write my message to Richard Jennifer. There were quills and an ink-pot at hand, but no paper. I felt mechanically in my pocket and found, not some old letter, as I hoped, but the crumpled parchment map snatched and hidden ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde

... many contributors to the general fund for the restoration, and some others, made gifts of special objects for the embellishment of the choir. By the end of May, 1892, the mosaic pavement was almost completed, and the bishop's throne, the pulpit, the litany desk, and eighteen stalls had been erected. These gifts were solemnly dedicated at a stately service held on June 2nd, when, after the litany and an anthem, the special service was taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the altar, and after that Te Deum was sung. A sermon was preached ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... at the very beginning of the Chants and Litany, had failed in her part and had, with such a pitiable moan and beseeching glance at her, been hastily withdrawn from the assembly and assisted to the ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner

... fast asleep, she entered his room, looked long and earnestly in his face by the light of a candle, and then stole gently out. And that Sunday, when he went to the old church with her, he felt her hand steal into his as the vicar read the Litany; and the pressure of her hand waxed closer as the vicar's voice sounded through the church: "From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death." Then rose the fervent response from the congregation, "Good Lord, deliver ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... fo, fum!" might be the refrain of this giant's litany. The other types are as plainly stamped. The shepherd's are from the life, and contrast well with the stilted and rather tiresome prophets. The scenes at the babe's crib when the offerings are made of the shepherds' pipe, old hat, and mittens, ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous

... have a strange estimate of a physician's duty if you feel justified in risking many lives to save one!" she said, haughtily. "Not that you are much worse than the fire engines and ambulances. We ought to add a petition to the litany for safety against our safeguards, for they kill more ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... Litany of a Pagan, Donna," he answered. "One has to believe to understand when he goes to church in a city, but if you're a Pagan like me, you only have to understand ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... well performed. Such was always the case at Barchester, as the musical education of the choir had been good, and the voices had been carefully selected. The psalms were beautifully chanted; the Te Deum was magnificently sung; and the litany was given in a manner, which is still to be found at Barchester, but, if my taste be correct, is to be found nowhere else. The litany of Barchester cathedral has long been the special task to which Mr Harding's skill and voice have been devoted. Crowded audiences generally make good performers, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... with the rest of my family to church: it was a church on the ancient model of England, having aisles, galleries, [12] organ, all things ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated on behalf of "all sick persons and young children," and that he would "show his pity upon all prisoners and captives," I wept in ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... it," she said, nodding with an air of childish triumph. "Shall I tell you why? I have hidden it!" Here she fell back on her old litany. "He would kill me if he knew . . . I hid it—oh, years ago! But come, and I will show you; and you shall take a great deal—yes, as much as you can carry—if only you will go away, and ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... it's over. That's the litany of Anglo-India. It's over. Change the scene. Shuffle the puppets—and begin again. I've been doing it for ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... and curious thought came to her mind. It was to read over in this last watch, as though they were a litany, the old letters that her mother loved. It seemed to her that she was about to perform a delicate and sacred duty which would give pleasure to little mother ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... along, Yet no book of devotion is seen in the throng. In the front of the altar no minister stands, But the crimson-clad chief of these warrior bands; And, though solemn the looks and the voices around, You'd listen in vain for a litany's sound. Say! what do they hear in the temple of prayer? Oh! why in the fold has ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... tenth centuries they mercilessly ravaged all the coasts not only of the West but of all Europe from the Rhine to the Adriatic. 'From the fury of the Norsemen, good Lord, deliver us!' was a regular part of the litany of the unhappy French. They settled Iceland and Greenland and prematurely discovered America; they established themselves as the ruling aristocracy in Russia, and as the imperial body-guard and chief bulwark of the Byzantine empire at Constantinople; ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... her; she turned from the table, called for her rosary, and said to Nencia: 'The fine weather has made me neglect my devotions. I must say a litany before I dine.' ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton

... unlike a dalmatic, and a cap resembling a biretta,—was recounting to a congregation, composed chiefly of women, old men, and children, the virtues of their deceased benefactor. Presently, the sermon came to an end, and the colloquial delivery of the discourse was changed for the monotone of a litany recitation: the people answering with ready response, and many of them employing the aid of their rosaries. The fragrance of incense filled the air; tapers and flowers adorned the altar, above which was the statue, not—as one entering by chance might almost have ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.

... he gasped. "Picture to yourself this Crispin Galliard blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl beset by her first lover. Picture it, I say! As well and as easily might you picture old Lucifer warbling a litany for the edification of a ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... and the stern finished as the gilded tail of the reptile; and many a lesser ship, meant for carrying plunder. The Sea King, Olaf (or Anlaff), was the leader; and as tidings came that their sails had been seen upon the North Sea, more earnest than ever rang out the petition in the Litany, 'From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge

... drawn by huge white oxen, who in turn were led by what seemed to me to be very small boys. The latter, stick in hand, walked in front of their beasts, and swelling their youthful voices would intone a kind of litany which the animals apparently ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard

... to God in their own behalf; caused them to recite the litany on their knees, at the foot of a large crucifix; and then ordered them to retire, but to have confidence in Jesus Christ. He himself withdrew also into a chamber; from whence coming out some time after, he went down into the chalop with a little ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... not trouble about me," said Alexey Alexeitch, frowning. "I know my business. If only my enemy intones the litany in the right key. He may . . . out of sheer ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... haled away to the Tower, accused, condemned, and executed in the space of fourteen days, "with sigheing teares" said to the rough Duke of Norfolk, "Hither I came once my lord, to fetch a crown imperial; but now to receive, I hope, a crown immortal." In 1544, the boy was at St. Paul's school; the litany in the English tongue, by the king's command, was that year sung openly in St. Paul's, and we have a glimpse of Harrison with the other children, enforced to buy those books, walking in general procession, as was appointed, before the king went to Boulogne. Harrison was ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... meetings are held every evening in the week. Some of these are devoted to the reading of the Scriptures, others to the communication of accounts from the missionary stations, and others to the singing of hymns or selected verses. On Sunday mornings, the church litany is publicly read, and sermons are delivered to the congregation, which, in many places, is the case likewise in the afternoon. In the evening, discourses are delivered, in which the texts for that day are explained and brought home to the particular circumstances of the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... sun, a place having no Biblical history, but being of interest on account of the great stones to be seen there. No record has been preserved as to the origin of the city, but coins of the first century of the Christian era show that it was then a Roman colony. It is situated in the valley of the Litany, at an elevation of two thousand eight hundred and forty feet above the sea. The chief ruins are in a low part of the valley by the side of the present town, and are surrounded by gardens. Within the inclosing wall are the remains of the temple of ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... ceremony, which is frequently deemed necessary in cases of frailty similar to that of poor Peggy Murtagh:—a ceremony which, in the instance before us, was one of equal pathos and beauty. It consisted of a number of these humble, but pious and well-disposed people joining in what is termed the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which was an earnest solicitation of mercy, through her intercession with her Son, for the errors, frailties, and sins of the departed; and, indeed, when her youth and beauty, and her artlessness ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... watch that he did not lose them afterwards, so that he perforce assumed a really edifying degree of attention. Nor, indeed, did the rest of the congregation err in the direction of restlessness or wandering looks, but rather in the opposite extreme, insomuch that during the litany, when we were no longer supported by music, and had, most of us, assumed attitudes favourable to repose, we appeared one and all to succumb to it, especially towards the close, when, from the body of the church at least, ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... tone of levity in them, but they were certainly not intended to throw any discredit on our Church. In "The Rump, or an exact collection of the choicest poems and songs relating to the late times from 1639" we have "A Litany for the New Year," of which the following will ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... wrote of Baudelaire: "S'est pris l'enfer et s'est fait diable." The lucubrations of the so-called Satanic School of Byron, Shelley and Hugo were surpassed by Baudelaire's rapt worship of evil as the great power of the world. Take his famous Litany to Satan: ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson

... genuflected and fell prone in mute adoration, crying all the time with tears streaming down her face. She was at this time like to dissolve in tears! Without fail the mysteries ended with the Pater Noster, the Ave, a certain Litany which the nuns had taught her, and some gasping words of urgency to the Virgin and Saint Isidore. Love was scourging her slender body at this time truly, and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated worshipper arrived, causing movement in the men's free seats. This oddly disturbed her. Her mind flew again to Faircloth, and the strange impression of her own soul's return declaring this and no other ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... the economic futility of national ambitions will commonly rest its case at this point; having shown as unreservedly as need be that national ambition and all its works belong of right under that rubric of the litany that speaks of Fire, Flood and Pestilence. But an hereditary bent of human nature is not to be put out of the way with an argument showing that it has its disutilities. So with the patriotic animus; it is a factor to be counted with, rather than ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... apostolic letter of warning and denunciation. Sixtus the Fourth fitted out a fleet against them. Innocent the Eighth made them his mark from the beginning of his Pontificate to the end. St. Pius the Fifth added the "Auxilium Christianorum" to our Lady's Litany in thankfulness for his victory over them. Gregory the Thirteenth with the same purpose appointed the Festival of the Rosary. Clement the Ninth died of grief on account of their successes. The venerable Innocent ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman

... They had then to settle what Order of services they should use; "anything they pleased," said the magistrates of Frankfort, "as long as they and the French kept the peace." They decided to adopt the English Order, barring responses, the Litany, the surplice, "and many other things." {54} The Litany was regarded by Knox as rather of the nature of magic than of prayer, the surplice was a Romish rag, and there was some other objection to the congregation's taking part in ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... we beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord;" but though our hands are nationally clean now as regards the administration of justice and the treatment of criminals, we need not hold them up in holy horror as if the Chinese were guilty above all other men, for the framers of the Litany were familiar with dungeons perhaps worse than the prison of the Naam-Hoi magistrate, and with forms of torture which spared not even women, and the judges' and jailers' palms were intimate with the gold of accused persons. ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... it has been a light to the world for thousands of years, that it has been the means of awakening the human intellect and heart, of reforming society, and purifying life. Even in the Old Testament they find the noblest truth and the tenderest piety. The Bible has been the litany, prayer-book, inspirer, comforter of nations and centuries. They cannot and would not emancipate themselves from the traditions in which they were born, nor cut off history behind them. The Christian Church is their ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... the little cuss, now," he said to himself, "that I should have got myself treed like a coon, as I am, this yer way?" and Haley relieved himself by repeating over a not very select litany of imprecations on himself, which, though there was the best possible reason to consider them as true, we shall, as a matter of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... great-grandmother was a Catholic. She was a Bullard. Perhaps it is from her that I have this overwhelming impulse to confession. And lately I have been terrified. I must tell it, or I shall shriek it out some day, in the church, during the Litany. 'From battle and murder, and from sudden ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... not disappear, their local connections kept them alive; but they were so like one another that one of them could be regarded as a form of another, and a multitude of them as forms of one. The god who did most in the way of swallowing up the rest was Ra, the great sun-god of Thebes. The Litany of Ra[7] represents that god as eternal and self-begotten, and sings in seventy-five successive verses seventy-five forms which he assumes; they are the forms of the gods and of all the great elements and parts of the world. The separate gods are reduced from the rank ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... happen at a "Zikr," rogation or litany. Those who wish to see how much can be made of the subject will read "Pearls of the Faith, or Islam's Rosary, being the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah" (Asma-el-Husna) etc. by ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... which the procession had moved had diminished to a dim, melodic undertone, over which the prayer of the Primate rose and fell in swift, rhythmic periods—a litany of ascription and petition, to which the people, standing with faces towards the East and with outstretched ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... held a solemn service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany and celebrating Mass. ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... part blood-red— so there is as great preparation for a triumph as for war. A great number of English priests come to Antwerp from all places. The commandment is given to all the churches to read the Litany daily for the prosperity of the Prince in his enterprise." John Giles to Walsingham, 4 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... while Owen, his confidential secretary, eyed him across the mahogany flat-topped desk. A soft purring sound floated in the open window and half-roused the aged manufacturer. It came from one of his own cars—six cylinders chanting in unison a litany of power to the great modern ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard

... than it is, says the Poilu, and so he has composed a Litany. Every regiment has a different version, but ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke

... evening at least during that reading party upon the Pinky Dinky; we sat about our one fire after a walk in the rain—it was our only wet day—smoked our excessively virile pipes, and elaborated the natural history of the Pinky Dinky. We improvised a sort of Pinky Dinky litany, and Hatherleigh supplied deep notes for ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... indignantly refused to proceed with the ceremony until lights and stole were brought. During the time in which Joan of Arc was receiving the Sacrament, those persons who had been admitted within the castle recited the litany for the departing soul, and never had the mournful invocation for the dying, the supplication of the solemn chant, 'Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison!' been raised from a more tragic place, or on a more ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower

... the lurid litany of the army mule skinner to his gentle charges and embellished it with excerpts from the remarks of a Chicago taxi chauffeur while he changed tires on the road ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... cloudless, And still as still can be, And the stars come forth to listen To the music of the sea. They gather, and gather, and gather, Until they crowd the sky, And listen, in breathless silence, To the solemn litany. It begins in rocky caverns, As a voice that chaunts alone To the pedals of the organ In monotonous undertone; And anon from shelving beaches, And shallow sands beyond, In snow-white robes uprising The ghostly choirs respond. And sadly and unceasing The mournful voice sings ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... The litany was nearly over when Ida heard a familiar step on the stone pavement of the nave. It was Brian's step; and presently he stopped at the door of the high oaken pew, opened it, and came in and seated himself-on ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... himself, from the day that I was seized with dread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse snorting in her sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I have added a petition to the special litany which I address to Saint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save me from indulging in this sort ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac

... come to great misery. Help us, oh God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins for thy name's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God?' Ye shall say this Psalm," repeated the abbot, "every Friday, after the litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly God will cease this extreme scourge." And so,' continues Salford, significantly, 'the convent did say this aforesaid Psalm until there were certain that did murmur ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... in the Dorian mode, which heads the collection in Boyce's Cathedral Music, and which is indeed the first harmonised setting of the Canticles ever composed for the English Liturgy, is very dull, but his harmony of the Litany and of the Versicles after the Creed, has never been equalled for beauty. His Canon tune, to which we sing Ken's Evening Hymn, is also unsurpassed, and his anthem, "If ye love Me," is one of wonderful sweetness and devout feeling. John Redford was his contemporary, and was ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... Southern clergymen of different denominations and still more ardently by Southern women. General Thomas Kilby Smith, commanding the southern districts of Alabama, reported to me that when he suggested to Bishop Wilmer, of the Episcopal diocese of Alabama, the propriety of restoring to the Litany that prayer which includes the President of the United States, the whole of which he had ordered his rectors to expurge, the bishop refused, first, upon the ground that he could not pray for a continuance of martial law, and, secondly, because he would, by ordering the restoration of ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various

... himself. Like a practised hunter, he saw that pursuit was useless, and he was just about to leave the church when, after a short organ prelude, the contralto of the signora delivering its solemn notes gave forth that glorious harmony to which is sung the Litany of the Virgin. The beauty of the voice, the beauty of the chant, the beauty of the words of the sacred hymn, which the fine method of the singer brought out distinctly, made a singular impression on the stalwart stranger. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac

... as he was back home, Mr. Hamerton set to work regularly at the "Graphic Arts." In the diary this phrase is repeated like a litany: "Worked with great pleasure at my book, the 'Graphic Arts.'" But at the same time there is a complaint that it prevents the mind from being happily disposed for artistic work. I have already said how difficult it was for him to turn from one kind of occupation ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... 'of mean and obscure parentage'—are not to be forgotten. He was, says Mr Norway, 'one of those "Turkish captives" of whom so many were languishing in Algiers two centuries ago, and who, there is little doubt, were specially in the minds of the authors of the petition in our Litany, "For all poor prisoners and captives" ... and it may very well be that Adams' name was coupled with this prayer on many a Sunday in Paignton Church, for the agony of his captivity lasted full five years.' ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... sense, the author of her distress; the warnings of the Bible against his "wiles" she accepted as in full force still; and she could offer with all her heart, and with no doubt as to the literal meaning of its closing words, the petition of the old Litany: "That it may please Thee to strengthen such as do stand, and to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up those who fall, and finally to beat ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... minds. It came through The Prymer of the fourteenth century, and contained the more fundamental and familiar portions of the Book of Common Prayer, such as the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Litany, and the Apostles' Creed. This compilation differed in form and somewhat in content in the different dioceses in England, and was partly in Latin and partly in English. In 1542 an attempt was made to produce ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... bath. Meantime, the M'zabite or negro, as he dislocates your legs, cracks your spinal column or dances over you on his knees, drones forth a kind of native psalmody, which, melting into the steamy atmosphere of the place, seems to be the litany of happiness and of the pure in heart. Clean in body and soul as you never were before, skinned, depilated, dissected, you emerge for a new life of ideal perfection, feeling as if you were suddenly relieved ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... "that's Litany Lane. There are sixteen houses in it, and they're all mine. Half way down, on the left, runs off Elm Court, where there are fourteen houses, and those are ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... he were resolved to trump poor Lord Cinquebars in every sentence which he pronounced,—as we so often hear the second clergyman from the Communion Table trumping his weary predecessor, who has just finished the Litany not in the clearest or most audible voice. Every word fell from Mr Fitzhoward with the elaborate accuracy of a separate pistol-shot; and as he became pleased with himself in his progress, and warm with his work, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope

... royal proclamation was issued (27th Dec., 1558) forbidding preaching or the use of other public prayers, rites, or ceremonies save those approved by law until Parliament should have determined otherwise, except in regard to the recitation in English, of the Litany, the Commandments, the Creed, together with the Epistles and Gospels.[2] Still the anti-Catholic party boasted that the new ruler was on their side. The queen's own inclinations were soon made clear by her prohibition addressed to Bishop ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... conceded Flame. In her bright cheeks suddenly an even brighter color glowed. "I like him when he leaves out the Litany," she said. "I've told him I like him when he leaves out the Litany.—He's leaving it out more and more I notice.—Yes, I like him ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... and sparkling it was—the lights, the bright colors, the dancing music! "Dolce Sacramento! Santo Sacramento!" these words of an Italian hymn or litany recurred again and again, with endless iteration. Kitty's sensuous, excitable nature was stirred with delight. Then, suddenly, she remembered her child, and the little face she had seen for the last time in the coffin. She began to cry softly, ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... call at No. 10 Prickett's Lane, and to look after the little orphan children whom Lucy had taken charge of. His occupations, in short, both public and private, were overpowering, and he could not tell how he was to get through them; for, in addition to everything else, it was Friday, and there was a litany service at twelve o'clock at St Roque's. So the young priest had little time to lose as he hurried up once again to Mr ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... Her voice had something of the quality of the Traeumerei in it, and it had affected him like a violin's vibrato, accompanying a death scene—or as a litany might have done, had he been ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... thesis. The duty of submission, not merely to divinely chosen King, but to divinely chosen Landlord and divinely chosen Manufacturer, is implicit in the church's every ceremony, and explicit in many of its creeds. In the Litany the people petition for "increase of grace to hear meekly Thy Word"; and here is this "Word," as little children are made to learn it by heart. If there exists in the world a more perfect summary of slave ethics, I do not know where to ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... waiting; and after that, four days of rest-camp full of marches and parades and great cleansings of implements and of streets, with regulations of the strictest, anticipating all the different occasions for punishment, a thousand fatigues, each with as many harsh knocks, the litany of optimist phrases, abstruse and utopian, in the orders of the day, and a captain who chiefly concerned himself with the two hundred cartridges and the reserve rations. The regiment had no losses, or ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... so absorbed in his litany that he heard nothing. So our old man spoke louder. The hermit did not stir, but made him a sign with his crutch to move aside. The old man stood aloof till the hermit had finished his prayer. When it was over, he raised his ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various



Words linked to "Litany" :   Book of Common Prayer, speech



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