"Lute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dark tower, where," says he, "we had cold cheer, such as herrings and biscuit, for it was Lent." Arriving at Paris, the bishop caused him to be carefully instructed in all the requisite accomplishments of a page,—the French tongue, dancing, fencing, and playing on the lute: and after nine years spent under his protection, Melvil passed into the service of the constable Montmorenci, by whose interest he obtained a pension from the king of France. Whilst in this situation, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... portraits; but most of them seem christened by chance, like children at a foundling hospital. There is a portrait of Languet,(343) the friend of Sir Philip Sydney; and divers of himself and all his great kindred; particularly his sister-in-law, with a vast lute, and Sacharissa, charmingly handsome, But there are really four very great curiosities, I believe as old portraits as any extant in England: they are, Fitzallen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Humphry Stafford, the first Duke ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... business cares, leave her hurriedly and without the customary morning kiss? Woman, on her way to market, rapidly reviews similar instances in fiction, in which this first forgetting proved to be "the little rift within the lute." ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... winged horse Pegasus, which to the Greeks symbolized the attainment of poetic inspiration. Here also are figures representing the arts of literature, sculpture and music, by the familiar symbols, a lamp, a statuette and a lute. The panel to the right of the center one shows Apollo, sun-god and patron-god of the arts, drawn in his chariot, with a procession of devotees. These panels are repeated on the other five faces about the dome. They are among the finest reliefs on the Exposition ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... thou didst not tune alone The lyre that loving Orpheus smote With subtle touch, who struck the golden note That pierced dread Pluto's heart of stone, And won again Eurydice his own; Nor yet Erate's lute, nor Sappho's throat That thrilled the ear in Grecian isles remote, Where Homer sang, and Art had built her throne: But thou, Euterpe, touched blind Milton's tongue, And swept the thousand chords of Shakespeare's soul; Woke Byron from his hours of idle dream, And then he sang mankind ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... myrtle-bowers, That breathe a gale of fragrance round, I charm the fairy-footed hours With my lov'd lute's romantic sound; Or crowns of living laurel weave, For those that win the ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... told you often enough that Mr. Lewis hates literary women! I am not goose enough to expect him to sympathize with any intellectual pursuits of mine. No. Fatima in the harem, or Nourmahal thrumming her lute under a palm-tree, is his belle-ideale; failing that, a housekeeper ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Palace of my Pleasures, O Doors of Ivory, let the King come in. With silver lamps before him, and with measures Of low lute-music let him come. Begin, Ye suppliant lilies and ye frail white roses, Imploring sweetnesses of hands and eyes, To let Love through to the most secret closes Of all his flowery Court of Paradise." ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... the thanks and homage of the newly-created noble, Henry descended from the canopy, and passed into an inner room with the Lady Anne, where a collation was prepared for them. Their slight meal over, Anne took up her lute, and playing a lively prelude, sang two or three French songs with so much skill and grace, that Henry, who was passionately fond of music, was quite enraptured. Two delightful hours having passed by, almost imperceptibly, an usher approached the king, and whispering ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Master of thy faith, Whom Islam also owns. Our Prophet saith 'He was a true apostle, yea, a Word And Spirit sent before me from the Lord.' Thus the Book witnesseth; and well I know By what thou art, O dearest, it is so. As the lute's tone the maker's hand betrays, The sweet ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... stairs come a fluting dwarf and an effeminate-looking slave playing a lute, preceded by others with lights; then SHALNASSAR, leaning on GUeLISTANE; finally a eunuch with a whip stuck in his belt. GUeLISTANE frees herself and comes forward, seeming to search the floor for something; the others come forward ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... By LUTE WILCOX. A handbook for the practical application of water in the production of crops. A complete treatise on water supply, canal construction, reservoirs and ponds, pipes for irrigation purposes, flumes and their structure, methods of applying water, irrigation of field crops, the ...
— Talks on Manures • Joseph Harris
... an old court poet of long ago. The tiny ivory spokes were fretted like ivy-twigs in the North, but on the leaves of silk was painted a love-story of the South. There was a tea-house, with a maiden playing a lute, and the words of the song, fantastic black ideographs, floated off to the ears of her lover. Foh-Kyung spread out its leaves in the sun, and looked ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Chinese musical instruments, also called "the Scholar's Lute." The word kin also means "to prohibit"; and this name is said to have been given to the instrument because music, according to Chinese belief, "restrains evil passions, and corrects the human heart." See Williams's ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... notes, but they were intended simply to elucidate the text. Though succinct, they are sufficient for the general reader. Here and there, however, we come upon a more elaborate note, such as that upon the tuning of the lute (Vol. viii., 179), where Mr. Payne's musical knowledge enables him to elucidate an obscure technical point. He also identified (giving proper chapter and verse references), collated, and where needful corrected all the Koranic citations with which the text swarms, a task which demanded great ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... painful situation by music, or by reading, or by conversation. Grief, like the dull adder, stops its ear that it may not hear the song of the charmer; and while she sang to him or played to him upon the lute, at that time an instrument still extremely common in England, or read to him from the books which she thought best calculated to attract his attention, she could see by the vacant eye that sometimes filled ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... discordant music. These fits are not the consequence of violent or contending passions: they grow not out of sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or hatred, or despair. For in the hour of affliction the tones of our fellow-creatures are ravishing as the most delicate lute; and in the flush moment of joy where is the smiler who loves not a witness to his revelry or a listener to his good fortune? Fear makes us feel our humanity, and then we fly to men, and Hope is the parent of kindness. The misanthrope ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... flute, The melancholy lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo - Were ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... sad complaints may move just Aeacus, No dreadful threats can fear judge Rhodomanth. Wert thou as strong as mighty Hercules, That tamed the huge monsters of the world, Playedst thou as sweet, on the sweet sounding lute, As did the spouse of fair Eurydice, That did enchant the waters with his noise, And made stones, birds, and beasts, to lead a dance, Constrained the hilly trees to follow him, Thou couldst not move the judge of Erebus, Nor move compassion in grim Pluto's heart; For ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... in hand, he was following the flock of the poor goatherd who had brought him up, and whose son he had always fancied himself to be. The child of the old King's only daughter by a secret marriage with one much beneath her in station—a stranger, some said, who, by the wonderful magic of his lute-playing, had made the young Princess love him; while others spoke of an artist from Rimini, to whom the Princess had shown much, perhaps too much honour, and who had suddenly disappeared from the city, leaving his work in the Cathedral unfinished—he had been, ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... griefs, when fate First leaves the young heart lone and desolate In the wide world, without that only tie For which it loved to live or feared to die; Lorn as the hung-up lute, that ne'er hath spoken Since the sad day its ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... Strauss had been travelling in the East he had conceived a sudden horror for this Christian annihilation of will, and Guntram revolts along with him, and refuses to submit to the rules of his Order. He breaks his lute—a symbol of false hope in the redemption of humanity through faith—and rouses himself from the glorious dreams in which he used to believe, for he sees they are shadows that are scattered by the light of real life. He does not ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... end of the first week in December, and arrived in Paris on the 16th of December 1765. A sort of apocryphal tradition is said to linger in the island about Rousseau's last evening on the island, how after supper he called for a lute, and sang some passably bad verses. See M. Bougy's J.J. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... honor of being the first wind instrument mentioned in the Bible (Genesis iv, 21), where we are told that "Jubal is the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ." The Hebrew word here is ugab, which is sometimes translated in the Septuagint by cithara (the ancient lute), sometimes by psalm, sometimes by organ. Sir John Stainer ("Dictionary of Musical Terms," p. 444) says: "It is probable that in its earliest form the ugab was nothing more than a Pan's-pipes or syrinx, but that it gradually developed ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... more beautiful than his mind. I am better than all my contemporaries whom I have known, yet I am worth nothing. When Saint Francis had composed his Song of the Sun he rejoiced. He thought: 'We shall go, my brothers and I, into the cities, and stand in the public squares, with a lute, on the market-day. Good people will come near us, and we shall say to them: "We are the jugglers of God, and we shall sing a lay to you. If you are pleased, you will reward us." They will promise, and when we shall have sung, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... under the amenities of a Grecian sky, too fierce a memento could whisper itself of torrid zones, under the stern discipline of the Doric Spartan it was that you looked for it; or, on the other hand, if the lute might, at intervals, be heard or fancied warbling too effeminately for the martial European key of the Grecian muses, amidst the sweet blandishments it was of Ionian groves that you arrested the initial elements of such a relaxing modulation. Twenty-five centuries ago, when Europe and Asia ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... too marked not to provoke frequent comment, and whenever it was alluded to in her hearing, her spine stiffened and her head went up. It was quite evident to her family that the rift in the lute was serious, and strange to say, it was her father, who might have been expected to hail the signs, who was most concerned to see them. He expostulated with her when she spoke bitterly of Billy's son, as once he had been so ready to ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... more soft than seasoned lute, Hast thou no sunlit word for me? Though long to me so coyly mute, Sure ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Let the social philosopher answer. One thing is certain: They did not establish homes and raise children. On the contrary, they led a gay, butterfly existence for nearly two years; then came a gift in the lute. Quarrels developed over parts, respective degrees of ability, and leadership. Ethel Tuckerman fell out with Lane Cross, because she discovered him making love to Irma Ottley. Irma and Bliss Bridge released each other, the latter transferring his affections to Georgia Timberlake. Stephanie ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... particularly the military, as he certainly intended to have redressed all abuses, and to have rewarded us according to our merits. He was of a gay disposition, and fond of music; and it is said that his attendants, while his illness was at the height, brought a lute player into his apartment, in hopes of soothing his distress. While a favourite air was playing, he was said to have beat time with perfect accuracy, and expired just when the tune ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... pungency of satire there has been nothing like it since Swift laid down his pen, and for sheer sweetness and tenderness of feeling—ex forti dulcedo—nothing to be mentioned in the same breath with it since the lute fell from the tired hand of Theocritus.' These were foolish exaggerations. But one must not condemn a thing because it has been over-praised. Maltby's 'Ariel' was a delicate, brilliant work; and ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... he said, "to rest awhile, And sip the fragrant wine of life, My lute to pleasure's halls I'll bring And while the sun ascends I'll sing, And all my world without shall ring Like merry chiming bells that peal Not half the rapture that they feel." Alas! he found but tangled moss, Above ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... know that," says Mr. Desmond still full of unholy enjoyment. "I lack 'bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair;' but if you will wait a moment I will run back to Coole and get the ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... ambitious work in folio form, so arranged that four persons might sing from it, and bearing the title: "The Psalms of David in Metre, the Plain song being the common Tune, to be sung and played upon the Lute, Orpharion, Citterne, or Bass-viol, severally or together; the singing Part to be either Tenor or Treble to the instrument, according to the Nature of the Voice, or for Four Voices; with Ten Short Tunes in ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... scriptorium? Was he some 'Frenchman' imported from sunny Champagne, where Thibaut, the mawkish singer was making verses which his people loved to listen to? Did he teach the young novices French as well as writing? Did he touch the lute himself on Feast-days, and charm them with some new lyric of Gasse Brusle, or delight them with one of Rutebeuf's merry ditties? France was all alive with song at this time, and princes were rivals now for poetic fame. It may be that this 'foreigner' brought ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... of his companion's displeasure. The sun, then setting, shone full on his countenance as he looked round; and that countenance was one that might have haunted the nymphs of Delos; the face of Apollo, not as the hero, but the shepherd—not of the bow, but of the lute—not the Python-slayer, but the young dreamer by shady places—he whom the sculptor has portrayed leaning idly against the tree—the boy-god whose home is yet on earth, and to whom the Oracle and ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... as I have seen birds flit back into a forest. In Tennyson's poetry two things are clear. They are mediaeval in location; they are modern in temper. Their geography is yesterday, their spirit is to-day; and so we have the questions and thoughts of our era as themes for Tennyson's voice and lute. His treatment is ancient: his theme is recent. He has given diagnosis and alleviation of present sickness, but hides face and voice ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... springing spray Buoyant with birds that sing to welcome May And April in those eyes that mourn for thee: "This is my singing month; my hawthorn tree Burgeons once more," we seemed to hear thee say, "This is my singing month: my fingers stray Over the lute. What shall the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... thar'," George Olver explained to me. "I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days. Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'—I suppose it's true—there was some fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to Sandwich te-own, and they offered him a hundred and fifty ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... lute than Orpheus given To thee, did trees thy voice obey; The blood revisits not the clay Which He, with ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... Robert was good last night. He told me he had been defending Swedenborg and the spirits, which suggested to me some notion of superhuman virtue on his part. Yes; love him. He is my right 'glory'; and the 'lute and harp' would go for nothing beside him, even if 'Athenaeums' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... Monday, that's all I remember, except that there's a rift in the lute of life at Alabama Ranch. Yesterday of course was Sunday. And out of that day of rest Dinky-Dunk spent just five hours over at Casa Grande. When he showed up, rather silent and constrained and an hour and a half late for dinner, I asked ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... and her household conducted in the most frugal style. Her attire suggested a continual conflict between elegance and economy—between real poverty and feigned prodigality. She wore a corsage and overskirt of black satin; but the upper part of the underskirt, which was not visible, was made of lute-string costing thirty sous a yard, and her laces were Chantilly only in appearance. Still, her love of finery had never carried her so far as shop-lifting, or induced her to part with her honor for gewgaws—irregularities which are so common nowadays, ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... the pleasing note of lute and lyre, The lily's purple, the red rose's glow; It wonders at the witchery of the fire, And marvels at the magic ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... she wandered about the large mansion like a restless spirit whose duties in life are fulfilled, and who longs to take its flight. Sometimes she took her lute, and in wild and plaintive voice she would sing those romances which Gomez Arias had loved to hear. Then she would ramble through the garden, and visit those spots endeared by the recollection of her love. Sometimes, too, in the stillness of night, a most piercing scream would issue from ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... be one of the Mr. Lutes or Miss Nedra Jennings Nuncheons, of Stephen French Whitman's "Predestined," who were regular habitues of "Benedetto's," under which name Gonfarone's was thinly disguised. Mr. Lute wrote a quatrain once every three months for the "Mauve Monthly," and Miss Nuncheon, tall and thin, with a mop of orange-coloured hair, contributed somewhere stories about the "smart set," "a society existing far off amid the glamour of opera-boxes, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... With wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... assistant, first to plough and break up that barbarous Nation by Conquest, and then to sow it with seeds of civility when by King James made Lord Deputy of Ireland.' The 'good laws and Provisions' made by former Governors were 'like good lessons set for a Lute out of tune, useless untill the Instrument was fitted for them.' Sir Arthur established new and wider circuits for Justices of Assize, with the most excellent results, for, 'like good Planets in their several spheres, they carried the influence of Justice round about the Kingdom.' And, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... to me. The human spirit rebels against this everlasting armour on the soul. After Han came T'ang. Have you never read Ling Po? There's scraps of him in English in that little book you have—what is it?—the LUTE OF JADE? He was the inevitable Epicurean; the Omar Khayyam after the Prophet. Life ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... along the moorland roads between his houses of Stow and Bideford, while every woman ran out to her door to look at the great Sir Richard, the pride of North Devon; or, sitting there in the low mullioned window at Burrough, with his cup of malmsey before him, and the lute to which he had just been singing laid across his knees, while the red western sun streamed in upon his high, bland forehead, and soft curling locks; ever the same steadfast, God-fearing, chivalrous man, conscious (as far as a soul so healthy could be conscious) ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... and again a pause. Then he is silent for six or eight minutes, and then another toll, and so on. Acteon would stop in mid-chase, Maria would defer her evening song, and Orpheus himself would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel and romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white campanero. He is never seen to feed with the other cotingas, nor is it known in what part of Guiana ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... gipsy-heart, thou and I! 'Tis the mad piper, Spring, who is leading; 'Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through the brain, irresistibly pleading; Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman, light-footed, lute-throated and fleet, We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer's song; ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... him, in the high, strident voice of Lute Perkins. He took a deep breath of fresh, clean air, and looked about him. After the hot, dusty room, the grove, with its green foliage, through which the moonlight filtered, looked invitingly cool. He sauntered forward, ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... we kept our cares to ourselves, and were cheerful with one another. We bought or borrowed books, and read them together, we learned to make Holland lace, studied Dutch cookery, and Annora, by Eustace's wish, took lessons on the lute and spinnet, her education in those matters having been untimely cut short. By the way, she had a real taste for music, and the finding that her performance and her singing amused and refreshed him gave her further zeal to continue the study and conquer ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cannot be considered to have been progressive. Their instruments of the mid-16th century hardly can be distinguished from those made around 1700. During this 150 years the pioneering Flemish makers added the four-foot register, a second keyboard, and lute and buff stops to their instruments. However, the very fact that the Italian builders were unwilling to change their models suggests that their instruments were good enough to demand no further improvements. Anyone who has heard ...
— Italian Harpsichord-Building in the 16th and 17th Centuries • John D. Shortridge
... shows a seated lady in a green dress, playing a lute left-handed. This most unusual position is probably not really intentional, but the drawing has accidentally been reversed. She is surrounded, like her companion with the hawk, by flower sprays, a thistle, cornflower, strawberries, ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... her bright hair, and leaned over the railing, a la Juliet, having first decked Hosey out in a sketchy but effective Romeo costume consisting of a hastily snatched up scarf over one shoulder, Pinky's little turban, and a frying pan for a lute. Mother Brewster did the Nurse, and by the time Hosea began his limping climb up the balcony, the turban over one eye and the scarf winding itself about his stocky legs, they ended by tumbling in a heap of ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... a most exquisite player of the lute, so charmed the Dolphins with his playing, that once being in great trouble and throwing himself into the sea, a Dolphin bore him on his back ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... the buildings and grounds, it is safe to conclude that the chateau has been entirely remodelled since the days when the young Scottish archer listened to the voice of the Countess Isabelle, as she sang to the accompaniment of her lute while he acted as sentinel in the "spacious latticed gallery" of the chateau. It is needless to say that we failed to discover the spacious gallery or the maze of stairs, vaults, and galleries above and under ground which are described ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... at rest, especially since thou hast a large property indeed, though thou art not so rich as Pallas or Seneca. For seest thou, with us at present it is well to write verses, to sing to a lute, to declaim, and to compete in the Circus; but better, and especially safer, not to write verses, not to play, not to sing, and not to compete in the Circus. Best of all, is it to know how to admire when Bronzebeard admires. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... herself for wishing to be unsexed; that God has given her the nursery, the ball-room, the opera, and that, if these fail, He has graciously provided the kitchen, the wash-tub, and the needle? Or shall I tell her that she is a lute, a moonbeam, a rosebud; and touch my guitar, and weave flowers in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and come sing with your pipe a lengthened strain; or, if you had now rather, with your clear voice, or on the harp or lute of Phoebus. Do ye hear? or does a pleasing frenzy delude me? I seem to hear [her], and to wander [with her] along the hallowed groves, through which pleasant rivulets and gales make their way. Me, when a child, and fatigued with play, in sleep ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... master of many instruments. Milton's mighty organ was no less obedient to his touch than the little lute of the troubadour. He was never the same; that was his strength. Clarke's style possessed at once the chiselled chasteness of a Greek marble column and the elaborate deviltry of the late Renaissance. At times his winged words seemed to flutter down the page frantically like Baroque ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... not see here, as in other old noble castles the highborn lady sitting among her maidens in the great hall turning the spinning-wheel. No, she played upon the ringing lute, and sang to its tones. Her songs were not always the old Danish ditties, however, but songs in foreign tongues. All was life and hospitality; noble guests came from far and wide; there were sounds of music and the clanging of flagons, so loud that ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... different costumes; the third moresca was led by a young woman upon a car which was drawn by a unicorn, and upon it were several persons bound to the trunk of a tree, while seated under the bushes were four lute players. The young woman loosed the bonds of the captives, who immediately descended and danced while the lute players sang beautiful canzone—at least so says Gagnolo; the cultured Duchess of Mantua, however, wrote that the music was so doleful that it was scarcely worth listening to. Isabella, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... little playing on the Lute,—enter Orsames with his Arms across, looking melancholy, follow'd by Geron with a Lute in ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... prerogatives of the parliament or Crown.' But the emphasis was different. Howe insisted on the greatness of the change in local administration; Johnston on the amount of still surviving control by the mother country. The little rift in the lute was already apparent, and was increased by the natural tendency of the governor to consult the courtly Johnston, and to show impatience at the brusque familiarity ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... stilled in the hall, a lute breathed a melody from a neighbouring room, the servants in claret and ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... were placed sweet-scented shrubs, and marble vases filled with gathered flowers; and, in the midst, a fountain, whose spars and coral seemed the spoil of some sea-nymph's grotto, fell down in a sparkling shower, and echoed the music of Giulietta's lute. Pleasant, too, was it in an evening to walk the broad terrace which overlooked the ocean, and watch the silver moonlight reflected on the sea, till air and water were ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various
... nature of the ball, rose and drank the health of the distinguished guest in long and flowery praises. Rezanov responded in briefer but no less felicitous vein, and concluded by remarking that the only rift in the lute of his present enchanting experience was the fear that whereas he had nearly died of starvation several times during the past three years, he was now threatened with a far more ignominious end, so delicious and irresistible were ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... only stay in the garden with the thin visaged old French woman who taught her to read and to write and to embroider and to play upon an old lute and to curtsy and to dance. One thing she learned that the French woman did not teach her—to whistle! She remembers answering the sea-gulls who mewed outside in the harbor and the sparrows who twittered in the ivy and the tiny pair of love-birds who dwelt in a cage at ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... her slave resigns. Approach, ye minstrels, try the soothing strain, [bb]Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain: No sounds, alas! would touch th' impervious ear, Though dancing mountains witness'd Orpheus near; Nor lute nor lyre his feeble pow'rs attend, Nor sweeter musick of a virtuous friend; But everlasting dictates crowd his tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning tale, and ling'ring jest, Perplex the fawning ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... submitted, because your mockery was more desirable than the adoration of any other woman. And all this helped to make a master-poet of me. Eh, why not, when such monstrous passions spoke through me—as if some implacable god elected to play godlike music on a mountebank's lute? And I made admirable plays. Why not, when there was no tragedy more poignant than mine?—and where in any comedy was any figure one-half so ludicrous as mine? Ah, yes, Fate gained her ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Men fancy sorrows Until time brings the substance of despair, And then their griefs are shadows. Give me exile! It brought me love. Ah! days of gentle joy, When pastime only parted us, and he Returned with tales to make our children stare; Or called my lute, while, round my waist entwined, His hand kept chorus to my lay. No more! O, we were happier than the happy birds; And sweeter were our lives than the sweet flowers; The stars were not more tranquil in their course, Yet not more bright! The fountains in their ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... wrote home to his mother, "are one continued market, and thronged with populace so much that a coach can hardly pass. The common sort are a jolly, lively kind of animals, more industrious than Italians usually are; they work till evening; then they take their lute or guitar (for they all play) and walk about the city or upon the seashore with it, to enjoy the fresco." There was, in fact, a bold gayety in the aspect of the city, without the refinement which you do not ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... hall, a mandolin lying forgotten on a chair, she told Mary Seyton to take it, to see, she said, if she could recall her old talent. In reality the queen was one of the best musicians of the time, and played admirably, says Brantome, on the lute and viol d'amour, an instrument much ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... lute! And pour thy soft consoling tone, While I, a list'ning mourner mute, Will call ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr
... forced to confess Katharine would ill answer this character, it being soon apparent of what manner of gentleness she was composed, for her music-master rushed into the room to complain that the gentle Katharine, his pupil, had broken his head with her lute, for presuming to find fault with her performance; which, when Petruchio heard, he said: 'It is a brave wench; I love her more than ever, and long to have some chat with her'; and hurrying the old gentleman for a positive answer, he said: 'My business is in haste, signior Baptista, ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the mulatto would not eat any more, arose; the filibuster imitated her, and says, "Reassure yourself, my Angela, there is nothing to fear. Come into the garden, the night is fine, the moon magnificent. Tell Mirette to bring my lute; in order to make you forget these painful thoughts I will sing you the Scotch ballads ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... last month, told me they had dances at Court in Epiphany octave, when we rade for our lives from Oxford; and that very night my Lord's Grace of Exeter was beheaden at Pleshy, his wife, the Lady Elizabeth, was at the cushion dance and singing to her lute in the Lady Blanche [the Princess Royal] her chamber, where all the Court ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... always with colours sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit with retributions called on the other side of the grave offences that walk upon this; and once even the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said—"one of whom I know, and the others too surely I shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, I saw ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... this, managed to open its unlocked door with his free hand, descended a winding stair and came into the upper hall. It was in darkness, but up the wide staircase streamed the perfumed light of many myrtle candles, and with it laughter, and the sound of a man's voice singing to a lute. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... sent some fifty years earlier) at his labors; and consider, what those labors would achieve for the Black- haired People. He would bring light to the most excellent minds; the God of Light said, "I have seen to that." He would in time waken the lute-strings of the Spirit, and set Chu Hia all a-song; the God of Music said, "I have seen to that." They foresaw Wu Taotse and Ma Yuan; they foresaw Ssu-k'ung T'u and the Banished Angel; and asked "Is it not enough?" And the thought grew on them that it was not enough, till they sighed with the apprehensions ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... courtier's, toying with a sword, Nor minstrel's, laid across a lute; Chiefs, uplifted to the Lord When all the ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... noiselessly forth upon the loggia, accompanying the noble improvisatrice with lute and rhythmic posture; the night deepened and the stars came out, and still her hearers listened breathlessly, as in moments of emotion the chant leaped wildly to meet the urgency of her thought, or deepened in melting tenderness to its pathos; for such was ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... Viola, all the while insensible to the poignant dramatic value of it as warbled by the ironic Clown in the presence of the blinded pair. But indeed the whole of Twelfth Night is burdened with melody; behind every garden-door a lute is tinkling, and at each change of scene some unseen hand is overheard touching a harp-string. The lovely, infatuated lyrics arrive, dramatically, to relieve this ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... we to each other belong, Come graceful elf, And around my lute in sympathy strong Now wind thyself; And quake as if mov’d by zephyr’s wing, ’Neath the clang of the chord, And a morning song with glee we’ll sing To our ...
— The Expedition to Birting's Land - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... lute is tuned to her voice, The air grows proud for honour of that sound, And rocks do leap to show how they rejoice That in the earth such music should be found. Whenas her hair more worth, more pale ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Phillis - Licia • Thomas Lodge and Giles Fletcher
... what is not is largely a matter of opinion. Instrumental music has been to some a rock of offense, exciting the spirit, through the sense of hearing, to wrong thoughts—through "the lascivious pleasing of a lute." Others think dancing wicked, while a few allow square dances, but condemn the waltz. Some sects allow pipe-organ music, but draw the line at the violin; while others, still, employ a whole orchestra in their religious ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... of a dower chest was one part of it, and the setting of infinite stitches, each as perfect as a tiny pearl, in much "fair and broidered raiment" was another. The princesses in the fairy tales did their fine needlework to the accompaniment of songs upon a lute; so one set stitches in one's wedding garments, to the ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... The grim musician Leads all men through the mazes of that dance, To different sounds in different measures moving; Sometimes he plays a lute, sometimes a drum, To ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... at the altar, but turns to her lover who plays upon a lute. Death meantime, as a hideous old hag, extinguishes the ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... gentleman after him, was recusant at the sight of his daughter's luggage; and yet it only loaded one sumpter mule, besides forming a few bundles which could be easily bestowed upon the saddles of his two knappen, while her lute hung by a silken string on her arm. Both she and her aunt thought she had been extremely moderate; but his cry was, What could she want with so much? Her mother had never been allowed more than would go into a pair of ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rise Before my dazzled eyes! Young zephyrs wave their wanton wings, And melody celestial rings. All blooming on the lawn the nymphs advance, And touch the lute, and range the dance: And the blithe shepherds, on the mountain's side, Arrayed in all their rural pride, Exalt the festive note, Inviting Echo from her inmost grot—— But ah! the landscape glows with fainter light; It darkens, swims, and flies for ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... the Musique-meeting at the Post-office, where I was once before. And thither anon come all the Gresham College, and a great deal of noble company: and the new instrument was brought called the Arched Viall, where being tuned with lute-strings, and played on with kees like an organ, a piece of parchment is always kept moving; and the strings, which by the kees are pressed down upon it, are grated in imitation of a bow, by the parchment; and so it ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the curtain; and I enquired concerning them and behold they were his brethren.[FN43] he set before them what they needed of wine and dessert, and they ceased not to press the damsel to sing, till she called for the lute and tuning it, intoned these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Bud Perkins left home he found Piggy and Jimmy and old Abe and Mealy in the menagerie tent. Whereupon the South End was able to present a bristling front to the North End—a front which even the pleasings of the lute in the circus band could not break. But the boys knew that the band playing in the circus tent meant that the performance in the ring was about to begin. So they cut short an interesting dialogue with a keeper, ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... the long cries to Allah of the Moslem boatmen and the clear music of an 'ood or lute; the deep note of the native drums had been silenced. It had given way to the song of an Arab tenor. The music of the 'ood, whose seven double strings, made of lamb's gut, are played with a slip of a vulture's feather, drifted ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... consent to letting down the barriers even in these unconventional surroundings. You can adjust the matter to suit yourself, but I ab-so-lute-ly refuse to sit cheek by jowl with ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... when he burst into tears, and said, 'Ah! they did not make their graves so in antiquity [1].' 'Confucius mourned for his mother the regular period of three years,— three years nominally, but in fact only twenty-seven months. Five days after the mourning was expired, he played on his lute, but could not sing. It required other five days before he could accompany an instrument with his voice [2]. Some writers have represented Confucius as teaching his disciples important lessons from the manner in which he buried his mother, and having a design to correct ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... Savaric spake, "If coblas you know to make, Song and music to wake For your part, Horse and lute shall you take Of Jongleur, lightly forsake Cloister for woodland brake With ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... flown, And left the valley that night alone. No sigh was borne from the leafy hill, No murmur came from the lapsing rill; The boughs of the willow in silence wept, And the aspen leaves in that sabbath slept. The valley dreamed, and the fairy lute Of the whispering reed by the brook was mute. The slender rush o'er the glassy rill, As a marble shaft, was erect and still, And no airy sylph on the mirror wave, A dimpling trace of its footstep gave. The moon shone down, but the shadows ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... closely veiled. But few persons had seen her after her illness, and on returning home she often mentioned the old acquaintances whom she had met without being recognised by them. The apartments she occupied were warm and comfortable. The harp and lute had been sent from Prebrunn with the rest of her property, and though she would not have ventured to sing even a single note, she resolved to touch their chords again. Playing on the harp afforded her special pleasure, and Frau Traut ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... we are told that Themistocles said on one occasion, "'Tis true that I have never learned how to tune a harp, or play upon a lute, but I know how to raise a small and inconsiderable city to glory and greatness." So might it be said of Harland and Wolff. They have given Belfast not only a potency for good, but a world-wide reputation. Their ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... precisely an aeolian lute Hung in the wandering winds of sentiment, But drown me if the ugliest, meanest brute Grunting and fretting in that sultry tent Did n't just floor me ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... is haunted by the spirit of those passionate, dream-led scholars that made the Renaissance, and crowded to those lectures filled with that dangerous new charm which always belongs to the poetic presentation of new knowledge—those lectures, "musical as is Apollo's lute," being given up on the hill nearby, by a ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... our still dwelling-place wraps night's dusky mantle about her, Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning, Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death's mystery open. If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern, Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the steed it shall be red-roan, And the lover shall be noble, With an eye that takes the breath, And the lute he plays upon Shall strike ladies into trouble, As his sword ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... table who have shown themselves more studious in the morning at the lectures and debates concerning wisdom and arms. And this is held to be one of the most distinguished honors. For six days they ordain to sing with music at table. Only a few, however, sing; or there is one voice accompanying the lute and one for each other instrument. And when all alike in service join their hands, nothing is found to be wanting. The old men placed at the head of the cooking business and of the refectories of the servants praise the cleanliness of the streets, the houses, the ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... beautifully, and, with Ronsard, regret for the lost wonder of his own youth was perhaps the acutest emotion he ever knew. He was himself, in his early years, one of those glorious youths who have the genius of charm and comeliness, of grace and strength and the arts. He excelled at football as in lute-playing. He danced, fenced, and rode better than the best; and, with his noble countenance, his strong limbs, his fair beard, and his "eyes full of gentle gravity," he must have been the picture of the perfect courtier ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... adverse, found them happy and hopeful. No. 1, who had been a mechanic, proposed to increase his earnings by mending bicycles. No. 2 was an agriculturist pure and simple, and showed me his fowls and pigs with pride. Here, however, I found a little rift within the rural lute, for on asking him how his wife liked the life he replied after a little hesitation, 'Not very well, sir: you see, she has been accustomed to ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... certayn plowmans son of the contrey of the age of xvi yeres, that neuer coming moche amonge company but alway went to plough and husbandry. On a tyme this yonge lad went to a weddyng with his fader, where he se one lute[78] vpon a lute; and whan he came home at nyght his moder asked hym, what sporte he had at weddynge. This lad answeryd and sayd: by my trouth, moder, quod he, there was one that brought a gose in his armes and tykled her so vpon the neck, that she crekyd ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... interludes were also filled with scenic and musical effects. For instance one showed the ecstasy of David, dancing before the ark "to the sound of a large lute, a violin, a trombone, but more especially to his own harp." These references to the employment of many instruments in accompanying the voice or the dance make us wonder whether our historical stories of the birth and development of the orchestra are well ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... coincidences: still, as the Dormont case and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur. A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown's flageolet. It is a modest instrument; but what was he to play upon,—a lute, a concertina, a barrel-organ? ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that night 2 yards of lute-string ribbon, a light pink, and didn't begrech it. But I have never dast, not in his most placid and serene moments - I have never dast, to say the word "Mermaid' ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... charnel-vaults and sepulchres, Lingering and sitting by a new-made grave, As loth to leave the body that it loved, And linked itself by carnal sensualty To a degenerate and degraded state. SEC. BRO. How charming is divine Philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns. Eld. Bro. List! list! I hear Some far-off hallo break the silent air. SEC. BRO. Methought so too; what should it be? ELD. BRO. For certain, Either some one, like us, night-foundered here, Or else some neighbour woodman, ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... melancholy, and even tragical. Ariosto is the superlative poet of fantastic imagination combined with a foundation of good sense, reason, and benevolence. Goethe has said of him very aptly: "From a cloud of gold wisdom sometimes thunders sublime sentences, whilst to a harmonious lute, folly seems to riot in savage digressions yet all the while maintains a perfect measure." Ariosto was well read in the classics, but fundamentally his master ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... reviv'd in thee, That like a deluge bursts away; Or Taliesin tune the lay; Or thou, wild Merlin, with thy song Pour thy ungovern'd soul along; Or those perchance of later age More artful swell their measur'd rage, Sweet bards whose love-taught numbers suit Soft measures and the Lesbian lute; Whether, Iolo, mirtle-crown'd, Thy harp such amorous verse resound As love's and beauty's prize hath won; Or led by Gwilym's plaintive song, I hear him teach his melting tale In whispers to ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... old player of that part. And there are emotions of which the body may be yet more eloquent than the face; there was the figure of Watts's "Hope" drooping over as she drooped, not more lissom and speaking than her own; just then it caught my eye, and on the spot it was as though the lute's last string of that sweet masterpiece had ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... on:—"It doesn't matter. If you had ever done so, I believe you would confirm my experience of the position. If Orpheus had whistled, instead of singing to a lute, Eurydice would have stopped with Pluto, and Orpheus would have cut a very poor figure. I began to perceive that Achilles wasn't going to respond, and I knew the hare wouldn't, all along. So I walked ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... was in a great summer hotel where extravagances of all sorts are in vogue, and it had been her latest game to call with her lute-like voice over the phone to three of her men friends who had wooed her the strongest, daring them all to come to her at once, promising to fly with the one who reached her first, but if none ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... not love him yet as she would when she learned love, but at least she had given herself to no other mortal man. And the miracle of the Child of a God there before him lighted up his face as his inward soul, so that he took up his lute and lifted his rich, deep voice in a joyous song—the Song of Zarathustra. For the legend of their people had the name of the babe-to-come as Zarathustra, and Chojon knew that ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... when the sun had lowered behind the grove, the company grown more silent, and Mrs. Forrester, leaning beside the door of the tower, turned the great pegs of a Chinese lute. The notes tinkled like a mandolin, but with now and then an alien wail, a lament unknown to the West. "Sing for us," begged the dark-eyed girl; "a native song." The other smiled, and bending forward as if to recollect, began in a low voice, somewhat veiled, but musical and full of meaning. ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the House last night," said Eleanor Stringham to her mother; "in all the years we've been married neither of us has made jokes, and I don't like it now. I'm afraid it's the beginning of the rift in the lute." ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... whispers and of shadows. Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell; Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, What the still night suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered is from other worlds, It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... Singing where the future lies Wrapped in hues of Paradise, Pleading with her poignant note That forever seems to float Farther down the vista that is calling to thy heart. Hearken! From the heights Where thy soul alights Bend thine ear to listen for the lute of Love is sighing: "Eagle-heart, child-heart, Love is love, and art is art; Answer while thy lips are red; Wilt thou have a barren bed? Choose between us which to wed: Answer, for thy bride awaits, and fragile hours ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... to the King that he should break off his relations with this infamous woman, the source of all the woes which were desolating the kingdom, and when Ta Chi on this account grossly insulted him he struck her with his lute. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... know all this? I saw—much. More I learned from her diary. This I found in it, from Fiona Macleod: 'For, truly, that wandering voice, that twilight-whisper, that breath so dewy-sweet, that flame-winged lute-player whom none sees but for a moment, in a rainbow-shimmer of joy, or a sudden lightning-flare of passion, this exquisite mystery we call Amor, comes, to some rapt visionaries at least, not with a song upon the lips that all may hear, or with blithe viol of public ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London |
