"Melody" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there is music in light! Hence, Phoebus is god of the Sun and of the Lyre, and Memnon yields sweet sounds to welcome approaching day. For this reason, the disciples of Zoroaster and Pythagoras hail the rising sun with the melody of harps; and the birds pour forth their love of light in song. Perchance the order of the universe is revealed in the story of Thebes rising to the lyre of Amphion; and Ibycus might have spoken sublime truth, when he told of music in the ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... his love proclaim With all her different tongues; And spread the honours of his Name In melody and songs. ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... the Fairy Queen receiv'd With happy Mourning Cheer The Body of this valiant Knight, Whom she esteem'd so dear; For with her dancing Nymphs in Green She fetch'd him from his Bed, With Musick and with Melody, As soon ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... like a review of troops, giving an opportunity for all to see them, they descended from the grotto and formed themselves into a little company fantastically arranged, while an orchestra of thirty violins discoursed sweet music, and marched to the melody of these violins by a beautiful dance step, approaching and halting before their majesties. After this they danced their ballet, so fantastically invented, with so many turns and convolutions, twinings and twistings, in which no lady failed to find her own place again, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... Boswell himself had met Whitefield; for mentioning him in his Letter to the People of Scotland (p. 25), he adds:—'Of whose pious and animated society I had some share.' Southey thus describes Whitefield in his Life of Wesley (i. 126):—'His voice excelled both in melody and compass, and its fine modulations were happily accompanied by that grace of action which he possessed in an eminent degree, and which has been said to be the chief requisite of an orator. An ignorant man described his eloquence oddly but strikingly, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... side." Then the services began, the preacher leading the hymns, and the cracked voices of the old ladies joining in at the wrong places. But after a while a venerable negro in the gallery tuned up, and sang down the shrill swallows with natural melody. The prayers were long, and broken by ejaculations from the pews. The text was announced amid profound silence, after everybody had coughed several times, and then the itinerant launched into his sermon. ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... was under the influence of a nightmare, and making an effort she sat up in the bed. Suddenly she heard a distant sound of sweet music, a mysterious melody whose notes ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... sing—how oft in glee Came a truant boy like me, Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody, Till the gurgle and refrain Of your music in his brain Wrought a happiness as keen ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... tongueless and log-struck bells of Buddhism are sombre and saddening. "As merry as a marriage bell," could never be said of the boom from a Buddhist temple, even though it pour waves of sound through sunny leagues. There is a vast difference between the peal and play of the chimes of Europe and the liquid melody which floods the landscape of Chinese Asia. The one music, high in air, seems ever to tell of faith, triumph and aspiration; the other in minor notes, from bells hung low on yokes, perpetually echoes the pessimism of despair, the folly ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the actor in him. When telling a story he never mimicked his personages; his drama seldom lay in clash of character, but in thought; it was the sheer beauty of the words, the melody of the cadenced voice, the glowing eyes which fascinated you and always and above all the scintillating, coruscating humour that lifted his monologues ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... these shells That at their bidding casements open wide And Innocence puts vine-leaves in her hair, And wantons like a maenad. Let that pass. Your lute I know is chaste. And therefore play: Ravish my ears with some sweet melody; My soul is in a prison-house, and needs Music to cure its madness. Good Bianca, Entreat ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... 'Dorothy Q,' written to the portrait of my great-grandmother which you see on the wall there. All these I have a liking for, and when I speak of the poems I like best there are two others that ought to be included—'The Silent Melody' and 'The Last Leaf.' I think these are ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... recollection old Homer, Ossian, and Milton, and associating with his performance the melancholy grandeur of their geniuses; you are to imagine that you hear his slow, solemn, well-accented enunciation, and his voice of affecting trembling melody; you are to remember the pitch of passion and enthusiasm to which the congregation were raised; and then the few moments of portentous, deathlike silence which reigned throughout the house; the preacher removing his white handkerchief from his aged face, (even yet wet from the recent torrent ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... be said that, when they begin to learn mathematics, their whole souls are absorbed in tracing the connection between the premisses and the conclusion, and that to them geometry is pure science. So I think it may be said that mechanics and osteology are pure science. On the other hand, melody in music is pure art. You cannot reason about it; there is no proposition involved in it. So, again, in the pictorial art, an arabesque, or a "harmony in grey," touches none but the aesthetic faculty. But a great mathematician, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... Annunciation, the Assumption, and the Nativity of the Virgin, all the chants were taken from older Masses, e.g., from the masses of Advent and of certain Virgins and Martyrs. The Procession of the Purification, both words and melody, was borrowed from the Greeks by Pope Sergius. For the Mass of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross all the chants were taken from elsewhere, with the possible exception of the Communion. The Introit and the Gradual were taken from Maundy Thursday, the Alleluia ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... the American organ; see HARMONIUM) when the bellows are expanded. The pitch of the note is determined by the length and thickness of the reeds, reduction of the length tending to sharpen the note, while reduction of the thickness lowers it. The right hand plays the melody on the keyboard, while the left works the bellows and manipulates the two or three bass harmony keys, which sound the simple chords of the tonic and dominant. The archetype of the accordion is the cheng (q.v.), or Chinese organ, between which and the harmonium ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... strength to lift a languid head:— Rose and fainting violet By the water's margin set Swoon and sink as they were dead Though their weary leaves be fed With the foam-drops of the pool Where it trembles dark and cool Wrinkled by the fountain spraying O'er it. And the honey-bee Hums his drowsy melody And wanders in his course a-straying Through the sweet and tangled glade With his golden mead o'erladen, Where beneath the pleasant shade Of the darkling boughs a maiden— Milky limb and fiery tress, All at sweetest random ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... which these poets produce, you can hardly give from German poetry. Examples enough you can give from German poetry of the effect produced by genius, thought, and feeling expressing themselves in clear language, simple language, passionate language, eloquent language, with harmony and melody; but not of the peculiar effect exercised by eminent power of style. Every reader of Dante can at once call to mind what the peculiar effect I mean is; I spoke of it in my lectures on translating Homer, and there I took an example of it from Dante, ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... people who, absorbed in commerce, politics, and other pursuits, think that music is a mere family pastime—an ear-gratifying enjoyment. Great popularity has its drawbacks as well as its advantages, and there is no doubt that the widespread, instantaneous appreciation and popularity of melody has detracted somewhat from the proper recognition of the higher and graver attributes of music. But that music is a power and has influenced humanity with dynamic force in politics, religion, peace, and war, no one ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... from ship to ship, as the foxhunters, swelled in numbers from all sides, and those that could not run mounted some neighbouring hummock of ice and gave a loud halloo, which said far more for robust health than for tuneful melody." ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... seem justly destined to live in perpetual favor, and it must surround these with clusters of new tunes, which shall be as solid and correct in their harmony as the older, while their lightness and fluency of melody belong to the present day. There must be anthems and chants, and there must be a clear and thorough exposition of the elements of vocal music to help on the tyros who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... at the ranch the previous evening. He was sitting now with his fiddle on his knee, having gone through the repertory most favored by his hostess, with the exception of "Silver Threads." That was an afternoon melody, Banjo maintained, and one would have strained his friendship and shaken his respect if he had insisted upon the musician putting bow to ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... into their congregational services. The early Christians followed the example of the synagogue; and when they celebrated the praises of God "in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs," [216:6] their melody was "the fruit of the lips." [216:7] For many centuries after this period, the use of instrumental music was unknown ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Gathering again in drops upon the pines, And tremulous as they, in the deep night 85 My being was condensed; and as the rays Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died Like footsteps of weak melody: thy name Among the many sounds alone I heard 90 Of what might be articulate; though still I listened through the night when sound was none. Ione wakened then, and said to me: 'Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night? I always knew, what I desired ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Hyacinth and Rose-Blossom. The rhythmic prose Hymns to Night exhale a delicate melancholy, moving in a vague haze, and yet breathing a peace which comes from a knowledge of the deeper meanings of things, divined rather than experienced. Their stealing melody haunts the soul, however dazed the mind may be with their vagueness, and their exaltation of death above life. In his Spiritual Poems we feel a simple, passionate intensity of adoration, a yearning sympathy for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... to the voice of absent man, a hard, hollow goddess, a flute for the piping of heaven—composing and chanting unmusical songs, her inner ear fastened upon another melody. And heaven, protecting a creature at that moment so estranged from earth, led her down the wild road, held back the threatening forest branches, brought her, all but standing up at the wheel like a lunatic, safely to the foot of ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... interest and my joy as I learned that the Zikites are looking forward to a period of time corresponding to our Millennium. Their religious literature is full of references to this coming golden age, and many poetical compositions point to it with rapturous melody ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... happier moments, which irresistibly interested and absorbed your attention: he could make you forget everything but himself, and the rich, easy, yet earnest eloquence, which gave colour to his language and melody to his voice. In that hour of renewed intercourse with one who had at first awakened, if not her heart, at least her imagination and her deeper thoughts, certain it is that even Legard was not missed. As ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... establish this mysterious rapport between an inert material and himself. He could not have divined at the first stroke all its resources and caprices, its faults and its virtues. His instrument only became a soul for him and a source of melody after long study; he only came to understand it as two friends ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith
... flute-like notes which soared above the soft murmur of a viol still strumming in the villa as a skylark cuts the mists. It was not another nightingale as I at first thought, but Imperia's voice from the laurel thicket mocking the melody. As she sang there appeared within the circle of the tiny temple's columns a white-robed figure, outlined against the pale green and lemon yellow of the dawn. It might have been a statue save that as the song of the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... Lord of lords, who alone rulest always in eternity, and who correctest all our wanderings,—Giver of melody to the choir of the angels, listen Thou a little to our bitter grief, and come and rule us, oh Thou highest King, with Thy love which ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... spray of pine needles rustled along the roof, or a pine cone dropped with a quick reverberating tap-tap that for an instant startled her. Lying thus, wide awake, she fell into a dreamy reminiscence of the past, hearing snatches of old melody in the moving pines, fragments of sentences, old words, and familiar epithets in the murmuring wind at her ear, and even the faint breath of long-forgotten kisses on her cheek. She remembered her mother—a pallid creature, who had slowly faded out of one of her ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... are having it now; and whatever happens to the fashion of the age, it makes no difference—there are always high and brave and amusing lives to be lived; and a change of key, however exotic, does not exclude melody. Even Chinamen, hard as we find it to believe, enjoy being Chinese. And the Chinaman stands alone to be unthinkable; natural enough, as the representative of the only other great civilisation. Take my people ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... long poles clothed with all kinds of flowers then in season, and which were afterwards carried through the streets of the town with much solemnity, the clergy, singing men and boys, dressed in their sacred vestments, closing the procession, and chanting in a grave and appropriate melody the "Benedicite." The boundaries of the parish were marked in many points by Gospel trees, where the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... years was it since the simple words had been sung in that house, and the notes of the old piano sounded to the lilting cadence of its melody? And now, of the two who had sung it together, one was gone, and the other—well, for the other some of the golden radiance still shone after all the bitter years fate had meted out; and the scent of the ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... happily. Miss O'Dowd was delighted with her hosts, whose character she resolved to maintain in spite of their reputation for pride and haughtiness. Lady Jane sang an Irish melody for her, Lady Callonby gave her slips of a rose geranium she got from the Princess Augusta, and Lord Kilkee won her heart by the performance of that most graceful step 'yclept "cover the buckle" in an Irish jig. But, alas! how short-lived is human bliss, for ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... insignificant works of the stereotyped sort, with much sound and very little thought and feeling, the hand of a master is visible, and talent is perceptible; while many passages are remarkable for their poetic figures, melody of versification, and beauty and force of expression. No poet previous to Pushkin can be compared to him for talent, and for direct, independent inspiration. His poetry is chiefly the poetry of figures ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... which attract our admiration, or excite our fears, the greater part display their appetites, or develope their instincts, during the day time only; especially—with few exceptions—all those remarkable for beauty of plumage, and vocal melody. Predacious animals are chiefly distinguished for their nocturnal habits; and ideas of rapine, terror and blood, are ever associated with the tiger, the hyena, and the wolf. Among the feathered tribes, the owl and the bat, also companions of darkness, are shunned ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 581, Saturday, December 15, 1832 • Various
... Gray," along with many more, shows how warm was the impulse to this expression of feelings, which were at once intensified and drawn out of the sphere of revelations too individual by the breath of the melody which carried them forth. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... elevated dignity; her mien and motion superb, and gracefully majestic; her voice full, clear, and strong; so that no violence of passion could be too much for her; and when distress or tenderness possessed her, she subsided into the most affecting melody and softness. In the art of exciting pity, she had a power beyond all the actresses I have yet seen, or what your imagination can conceive. In scenes of anger, defiance, or resentment, while she was impetuous and terrible, she poured out the sentiment with an enchanting harmony; ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the Sea who had married an earthly maiden; and was at last deserted by her from some scruples of conscience. The original features of it are strictly preserved, and it is told indirectly by the old Sea King to his children in a wild, irregular melody, of which the following extract will convey but an imperfect idea. It is Easter time, and the mother has left her sea palace for the church on the hill side, with a ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... that week she went back to that same place with that same cry. The last time she went some one was in the church. It was the organist, practising some new Easter music for the next day's services. A burst of triumphant melody greeted her as she noiselessly opened the side door. She met the florist coming out, for he had just completed the decorating, and the place was a mass of bloom. All around the chancel stood the tall, white Easter lilies, waiting, like the angels ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... until then, began to sing softly in Creole French, a Louisianian air. The words of this melody were soft and expressive. Although restrained, the noble contralto overpowered the noise of the torrents of rain and violent gusts of wind, which seemed to shake the old house to ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... was an hour high when he walked his horse up the last hill that hides the valley of the Saar. Already, through the constant rushing melody of bird music, his ears had distinguished another sound—a low, incessant hum, monotonous, interminable as the noise of a stream in a gorge. It was not the river Saar moving over its bed of sand and yellow pebbles; it was not the breeze ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... surroundings, whisked me off in a twinkling, far from the actual—ten, fifteen years backwards—to my student life in Paris, and set me to thinking, as I had not thought for many a long day, of my hero, friend, and comrade, Edmund Pair; for it was a tune of Pair's composition, a melody he had written to a nursery rhyme, and used to sing a good deal, half in fun, half in earnest, to ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... burst of music from a piano, in which I felt Zenobia's character, although heretofore I had known nothing of her skill upon the instrument. Two or three canary-birds, excited by this gush of sound, sang piercingly, and did their utmost to produce a kindred melody. A bright illumination streamed through, the door of the front drawing-room; and I had barely stept across the threshold before Zenobia came forward to meet me, laughing, and ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the chant rose a second melody, a single melodious voice, and the King seemed to hear the words: "I am an angel, and thou ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... lamp or two flashed in our eyes from the other side of a little cove, and sparkled in broken lights upon the uneasy wavelets which splashed and tinkled against the sides of several coasting-vessels moored near at hand. The semi-silence of the night was broken by musical sounds, scarcely melody, but an uneven kind of chant, commencing in unison, and dying away in a prolonged melancholy, wailing chord, swelling and falling, almost like the notes produced by an AEolian harp as the wind sweeps over its strings. ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... reverently to her human nature, kindly to her present weakness, encouragingly to her hopes; receive her counsels with respect and confidence, so far as they are worthy, and be assured that a better day will begin to dawn. The birth of a new spiritual life will be given in this new marriage, and melody as from the harps of angels will be breathed from the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... heard, we are told, in the regions south of St. Louis even in Our days. A young French officer, the Chevalier d'Artaguette, captured by the Chickasaws, was burned at the stake. He and his kin were loved by all the French and the song they used to sing of him is kept in a negro melody ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... every external form in which it may be lodged. We may "pshaw" and "pooh" at Harry Gill and the Idiot Boy; but the deep and tremulous tenderness of sentiment, the strong-winged flight of fancy, the excelling and unvarying purity, which pervade all the writings of Wordsworth, and the exquisite melody of his lyrical poems, must ever continue to attract and purify the mind. The very excesses into which his one-sided theory betrayed him, acted as a useful counter-agent to the prevailing bad taste of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... liking for "Prometheus Unbound" may be reckoned the touch-stone of a man's capacity for understanding lyric poetry. The world in which the action is supposed to move, rings with spirit voices; and what these spirits sing, is melody more purged of mortal dross than any other poet's ear has caught, while listening to his own heart's song, or to the rhythms of the world. There are hymns in "Prometheus", which seem to realize the miracle of making words, detached from meaning, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... catcalls and squawks as have given the bird his common name, is a wonder when in the next moment his throat swells and beginning phut-phut-coquillicot, he gives forth a long glorious song, only second to that of the wood thrush in melody. He is a jester, a ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... the foot of the chromatic scale, sound, round and full, each semitone in succession and at separate intervals. The instrument is mute to every note until you strike the one to which the guitar string is attuned; then indeed, the spirit of melody imprisoned within the musical string recognizes its kindred sound, and springs sweetly forth to meet it. You pause, and a low, sweet strain sighs softly through the room, as if a zephyr had swept the string, dying gently away like the faintest breathing of the evening ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... drastic; thanks to the intermissions, discretions, a general habit of mercy to gathered barbarians, that reflected the good manners of its interpreters, representatives though these might be but of the order in which taste was natural and melody rank. It was easy at all events to answer Kate. "Ah my dear, you know ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... horsehair hanging about her face, a red and black robe, a staff, and cabalistic signs upon her cloak. Hugo demanded a potion to make Zara adore him, and one to destroy Roderigo. Hagar, in a fine dramatic melody, promised both, and proceeded to call up the spirit who would ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... was also very gloomy. My vis-a-vis was an old Buffalo girl who must have remembered coming out to "dance by the light of the moon" a couple of generations ago, when that melody was popular. ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... confessed and began to make his excuse, "Silly knight!" said she, "who couldst not guess that my falcon, too, was abroad to avenge the blessed Stephen. Or dost think that it was a hawk, of all birds, that sang a melody in the ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Romanus." The phrase sounds strangely, in my ears, like the accents of an unknown language or the burden of a half-forgotten melody. In those four initial letters there seems to me always to lie embodied an epitome of the world's history—the rise and decline and fall of Rome. On the escutcheons of the Roman nobles, the S.P.Q.R. are still blazoned forth conspicuously, ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... was still audible. The melody of voices suggested that its occupants were busy telling each ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... tail begemmed with painted plumage." "Wherefore {give} me," he retorted, "a beauty that is dumb, if I am surpassed in voice?" "By the will of the Fates," {said she}, "have your respective qualities been assigned; beauty to you, strength to the Eagle, melody to the Nightingale, to the Raven presages, unpropitious omens to the Crow; all of {these} are contented ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... help clapping his hands and crying bravo! As bad luck would have it, this triumph, to which she had not been accustomed, instead of encouraging the musician, frightened her so much, that voice and harpsichord stopped at the same instant, and silence immediately succeeded to the melody for which the chevalier had so imprudently ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... where our birds are there is scarcely a tree in sight to tangle the singing in. It is a meadow with miles of sunlight in it. It seems like a kind of world-melody to walk in the height of noon there—infinite grass, infinite sky, gusts of bobolinks' voices—it's as if the air that drifted down made music of itself; and the song of all the singing everywhere—the song the soul hears—comes on the ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... strain touched some chord in the sodden brain. The man gave a feeble whinny, trying to follow the melody. He pulled himself together and lurched forward in a sudden impulse to join the band of pilgrims. But by the time he had taken three steps they had vanished, miraculously, as it seemed ...
— The Christmas Angel • Abbie Farwell Brown
... The divine melody ceased; the elder stranger rose; the words were on the lips of Egremont, that would have asked some explanation of this sweet and holy mystery, when in the vacant and star-lit arch on which his glance was fixed, he beheld a female form. She was apparently in ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... now within that valley Through the red-litten windows, see Vast forms that move fantastically To a discordant melody; While, like a rapid, ghastly river, Through the pale door, A hideous throng rush out forever And laugh—but ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... key!" Master left the cooks and joined the artists. The melody was heard again, this ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... direction. There were piano solos that were not tedious,—full of melody and feeling, and with few of the pyrotechnical displays which are too common in modern virtuoso-playing; vocal duets and quartets from the Italian operas, and from Orfeo and other German masterpieces; and solos, if not equal to the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... tune, and a prolonged squeal of the instrument, gave the congregation below matter to speculate upon. Wilfrid put up his finger and sat reverently down, while Emilia plunged tremblingly at the note that was howling its life away. And as she managed to swim into the stream of the sacred melody again, her head was turned toward her lover under a new sensation; and the first words she murmured were, "We have never been ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the end of the square, fleeing from the publicity of the street. They came to the Moorish arcades of the evangelist temple, whose colors were beginning to grow pale, vanishing into the shade of dusk. Before either of them could utter a word they were enveloped in a wave of soft melody,—music that seemed to come from afar, stray chords from the organ, the voices of virgins and children who were chanting in English with bird-like notes ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Then this was the tall figure he had seen striding over the hills—this was the neighbor he had shunned and avoided, preferring solitude. How kind he was, and how his voice affected him! It was like long-forgotten melody. He asked himself whether he had seen the earl anywhere. He could not remember. He could not recall to his mind that they had ever met, yet he had most certainly heard his voice. He fell asleep thinking of this, and dreamed of Madaline ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... spray, stopping his whistling now and then to sing,—foolish songs without words or rhyme or rhythm, the songs of a heart too much engrossed with the joy of living to take cognizance of mere rules of melody! ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... banks of the Thames. But though the country seems to be the seat of contemplation, two great writers have been in opposite opinions. Cicero says, woods and groves, and rivers winding through the meadows, and the refreshing breeze, with the melody of birds, may have their attraction; but they rather relax the mind into indolence, than rouse our attention, or give vigour to our faculties. Sylvarum amaenitas, et praeterlabentia flumina, et inspirantes ramis arborum aurae, volucrumque cantus, et ipsa late circumspiciendi libertas ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... and buffaloes were to be seen, the latter sporting with their young ones on the plains, the former preferring to browse on the slopes and uplands; and innumerable birds of all shapes and sizes enlivened the scene with their varied gyrations, and filled the air with melody. ...
— The Pioneers • R.M. Ballantyne
... the placid melancholy of which was still heightened by its calm and sweet melody, ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... on she played; one ranchman after another softly suggesting some desired melody, and her eager little fingers rendering it upon the instant. The men ceased sprawling and sat up. If they had found the Gray Lady's voice a marvel, here was a greater. That any child—a despised "female" child—could evoke such music seemed past belief; ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... bewitched by supple allurement of her motion, by the black flame of her gaze, by the savage melody of her chant—wonders more and more who she may be, while she waits for him with her ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... watching the stars or the trees lit up now and then by the flickering flames of the wood fire; till all at once, unasked, as if moved by the rippling stream hard by, Ida began to sing in a low voice the beautiful old melody of "Flow on, thou Shining River," and Hester took up the second part of the duet till about half through, the music sounding wonderfully sweet and solemn out in those primeval groves, when suddenly Hester ceased singing, and sat with lips apart ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... a man dealt with more generously by posthumous fame. In the Civil War, two lines of verse, fitted to a stirring melody, became the marching song ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... hungry, and ignorant, but free forever from anything but the memorial scars of the fetters and the whip, singing rude songs in which the new triumph of freedom struggled and heaved below the sad melody that had been shaped for bondage; as in their camps and hovels there grew up to their half-superstitious eyes the image of a great Father almost more than man, to whom they owed their freedom,—were they not half right? For ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... singularly responsive to musical thoughts and effects; indeed, she found a peculiar pleasure and incentive in glancing at his face from time to time, for she saw reflected there the varied characteristics of the melody. But once, as she looked up to see how he liked an old English ballad, she caught that which instantly brought the ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... "manifestations" were really only different in detail from the first. The guitar was placed on the lap, the curtain fell and it played; so did the fiddle—out of tune, as usual—and also a little glass harmonicon with actually a soupcon of melody. A mouth-organ tootle-tooed, and what Colonel Fay described as a "shingle nail" was driven with a hammer into a piece of wood. A third of a tumbler of water laid on the lap of the Indescribable Phenomenon was drunk, and the great ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... all night, and sometimes gets shot for them, and always deserves it—so there were no cadences and fiorituri, the trite, turgid, and feeble expletives of song, the skim-milk with which mindless musicians and mindless writers quench fire, wash out colour, and drown melody ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... smile of encouragement for Maddy, who was pale with nervous timidity, he listened while her sweet, birdlike voice trembled for a moment with fear; and then, gaining from its own sound, filled the room with melody, and made those who had wandered off to other parts of the building hasten back ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... played lightly a delicate movement, and then broke into an Irish air, "The Harp that once through Tara's Halls." From one Irish melody to another her light fingers wandered. She played with perfect correctness—with fire, with spirit. Soon she forgot herself. When she stopped, tears were running down ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... immobile, listening for a while and then began to play so plaintive and wistful a melody that Harry felt the old sorrow wake and stir within his heart and demand a reckoning of the forgetful years. Not realizing that he did so, he arose and began to pace up and down the room, nor remembered where he was until he looked up to see Pearl watching him, surprise ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... insisted, her fingers breaking suddenly into a livelier melody. "Tell it me at once? You were there all the time. I could see you watching. Tell ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... deeply. I asked my sisters about Beethoven, and learned that the news of his death had just arrived. Obsessed as I still was by the terrible grief caused by Weber's death, this fresh loss, due to the decease of this great master of melody, who had only just entered my life, filled me with strange anguish, a feeling nearly akin to my childish dread of the ghostly fifths on the violin. It was now Beethoven's music that I longed to know more thoroughly; I came to Leipzig, and found his music ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... will repay the reader to peruse, even if the version has not much charm, the long extract from Gottfried's Tristan, with an eye to the noble and knightly way in which the legend is conceived and taken up. Mr. Kroeger, who can give it no grace in translation, is a warm partisan in matters of melody and rhythm, appreciating Coleridge and Swinburne. Altogether, he is a sincere and useful interpreter between our public—rather careless of musty poetry—and the fine old ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... that year, and there can be little doubt that Borrow intended The Gold Horns for that volume, and rejected it at last. He was conscious, perhaps, that his hand had lacked the skill needful to reproduce a lyric the melody of which would have taxed the powers of Coleridge or of Shelley. Nevertheless, his ...
— The Gold Horns • Adam Gottlob Oehlenschlager
... versifyings to the naming of places. Which has the right of it, let us not undertake to pronounce without consideration. England herself has long ago determined the question. As Mr. Emerson says of English names,—"They are an atmosphere of legendary melody spread over the land; older than all epics and histories which clothe a nation, this undershirt sits close to the body." Dean Trench, who handles words as a numismatist his coins, has said substantially the same thing. And it is true not of England only; for the various lands of Europe are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... still. His heroine is not the tragic figure that stands out in lines of fire from the pages of Apollonius. His lovers' speeches have a certain beauty and tenderness of their own, but they lack the haunting melody and the resistless passion that make the Rhodian's lines immortal. And while to a great extent he lacks the peculiar merits of the Greek,[491] he possesses his most serious blemish, the blemish that ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... out of mere street-buffoonery into an ideal fairyland of the grotesque, how much more stateliness must verse and music have added to their tragedy! And how much have we lost, toward a true appreciation of their dramatic art, by losing almost utterly not only the laws of their melody and harmony, but even the true metric time of their odes!—music and metre, which must have surely been as noble as their poetry, their sculpture, their architecture, possessed by the same exquisite sense of form and of proportion. One thing we can understand—how this ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... forwards to his slow melody, and gave themselves up to the enjoyment of it, and coppers, and even silver, poured into the handsome singer's hat, and more than one of them would have liked to have followed the penny which she threw to him, and to have ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... not philosophic enough to resolve such difficult questions," she answered, smiling; "but, yonder are the musicians, waiting to sooth us with the melody of sweet sounds; we are all prepared for a dance, and here is my hand, if you will look a little more in the dancing mood,—if not, I ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... Queen was delivered of a male child, so beautiful that it filled all beholders with delight. His eyes were as sunshine, his forehead like the glow of the full moon, his lips like clustered roses, and his cry like the melody of many instruments; and the Queen loved him, and comforted ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... aloes and of pastils, that came from the house, mixing with the scent of the rose water, completely perfumed and embalmed the air. Besides, he heard from within a concert of instrumental music, accompanied with the harmonious notes of nightingales and other birds. This charming melody, and the smell of several sorts of savory dishes, made the porter conclude there was a feast, with great rejoicings within. His business seldom leading him that way, he knew not to whom the mansion belonged; but he went ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... whole island resounded with the strains of hundreds of Aeolian harps. And suddenly there began a wild unceasing symphony. It swelled in the surrounding woods, filling the air with an indescribable melody. Sad and solemn were its prolonged strains; they resounded like the arpeggios of some funeral march, then, changing into a trembling thrill, they shook the air like the song of a nightingale, and died away in a long sigh. They did not quite cease, but grew louder again, ringing ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... their ears, and after satisfying his own thirst, with that of his weary animals, Major Denham laid himself down by one of the distant wells, far from his companions, and these moments of tranquillity, the freshness of the air, with the melody of the hundred songsters that were perched amongst the creeping plants, whose flowers threw an aromatic odour all around, were a relief scarcely to be described. Ere long, however, the noisy kafila, and ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... under the influence of the drug, and makes one think of "The Ecstasies of Mr. Hochenez." Zizi is passionately fond of music, and, not satisfied with listening to it, he indulges in it himself. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when everybody is asleep, a strange, fantastic melody, which the Kreislers and the musicians of the future might well envy, breaks in upon the silence. It is Zizi walking upon the key-board of the piano which has been left open, and who is at once astonished and delighted at hearing the keys ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... so delightful to listen to the notes of the bells, so familiar to him, whose pure tones had accompanied with their charming melody all his wanderings in childhood and youth. At the same time, the mood in which the best musical ideas came to him suddenly overpowered him. A new air, well worth remembering, pressed itself on him unbidden, and his excited imagination showed him in its train himself, and by his side, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... spill his sugar. He also declined. After the custom that had prevailed in the tavern cellar, the tin cup went round and round, the result was the same or nearly so as at the tavern. Some sang, others danced, one or two slept, some wanted to fight. Alfred attempted to pour melody on the troubled revellers but the only effect of his song was to encourage Ben Paul to knock the bottom out of a new tin pail endeavoring to keep time to the song as he had seen Alfred ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... ouzel (Merula boulboul) is perhaps the finest songster in the Himalayas. Throughout the early summer the cock makes the wooded hillsides ring with his blackbird-like melody. The grey-winged ouzel is a near relative of the English blackbird. Take a cock blackbird and paint his wings dark grey, and cover his bill with red colouring matter, and you will have to all appearances a grey-winged ouzel. In order to effect the transformation of the brown female, it is ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... as titmice, chipmunks, pipits and squinches, are constantly seen in coveys or even bevies just now. A party of pipwinks visited my copse yesterday afternoon, and indulged in delicious morceaux of melody before the red sun ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... his Confinement more tolerable, she would carry him in the Dusk of the Evening, or by the favour of Moon-light, to unfrequented Groves, and Solitudes, and show him where to lye down in Safety, and sleep amidst the Falls of Waters, and Melody of Nightingales. Her Part was to watch and hold him in her Arms, for fear of her Country-men, and wake on Occasions to consult his Safety. In this manner did the Lovers pass away their Time, till they had learn'd a Language ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... admitting no comparison with one another. We have here no series of moments, but prolonged and interpenetrating phases; their sequence is not a substitution of one point for another, but rather resembles a musical resolution of harmony into harmony. And of this ever-new melody which constitutes our inner life every moment contains a resonance or an echo of past moments. "What are we really, what is our character, except the condensation of the history which we have lived since our birth, even before our birth, since we bring with us our prenatal dispositions? Without ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... when he departed from the Alhambra she betook herself to her mirador, overlooking the Vega, whence she watched the army as it went in shining order along the road leading to Loxa, and every burst of warlike melody that came swelling on the breeze was answered by a gush ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... kind, all free; pretty women also, and pleasures of endless variety exceeding the dreams of Mohammed as far as the brightness of the meridian sun exceeds the dim twinkle of the glowworm! Program for the voyage: embarkation amid the melody of the best band in the world; that music that so attracted you this morning not to be mentioned in comparison. Appropriate entertainments for each week day, to be announced daily. Each Sunday to be celebrated, first, with ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... to the sum of earthly Bliss, Which I enjoy; and must confess to find In all things else Delight indeed, but such As us'd or not, works in the Mind no Change Nor vehement Desire; these Delicacies I mean of Taste, Sight, Smell, Herbs, Fruits, and Flowers, Walks, and the Melody of Birds: but here Far otherwise, transported I behold, Transported touch; here Passion first I felt, Commotion strange! in all Enjoyments else Superiour and unmov'd, here only weak Against the Charms of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the fence,—at his age! Oh, if I could eliminate the irregular verb 'to chuck' from the vocabulary of this school, I could 'make out of the broken sounds of life a song, and out of life itself a melody,'" and she flew down-stairs like a breeze, to find the patient Mr. Bowker. Mr. Bowker was a nice little man, who had not all his wits about him, but whose heart was quite intact, and who swept with energy and washed windows with assiduity. He belonged to the Salvation Army, and the most ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... little while ago of Stephen Collins Foster, the song writer. In that matter I had, and could have had, no unkindly thought or purpose. The story of the musical scrapbook rested not with me, but as I stated, upon the averment of Will S. Hays, a rival song writer. But that the melody of Old Folks at Home may be found in Schubert's posthumous Rosemonde admits not of contradiction for there it is, and this would seem to be in some sort corroborative evidence of the truth of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... fill the new settlement with harmony. In that terrible snow-storm which occurred in the middle of April, I often saw a sparrow alight on a bough of a tree near the house, and send up to heaven such a strain of full, gushing melody, as melted my heart with pity and admiration. It reminded me of a child of God in the midst of trials and afflictions, yet rejoicing in faith, and trusting continually in the care of a Father in heaven. Was the cold little sparrow singing ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... Old Dominion, its historical romance and social and scenic features, familiar and endeared; so that the annals and the aspects of no State in the Union are better known—even to the local peculiarities of life and language—to the general reader, than those of Virginia, from negro melody to picturesque landscape, from old manorial estates to field sports, and from improvident households to heroic beauties; and among the freshest touches to the historical and social picture are those bestowed by Irving in some of ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... recompense which awaited it in the regions of everlasting glory, His Auditors felt their scattered spirits insensibly return. They threw themselves with confidence upon the mercy of their Judge; They hung with delight upon the consoling words of the Preacher; and while his full voice swelled into melody, They were transported to those happy regions which He painted to their imaginations in colours ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Life and Fate—all are remarkably rhythmic, metric, regular throughout. In all crafts and arts, in all machines, in organic bodies, in our daily occupations everywhere there is rhythm, meter, accent, melody. All that we do with a certain skill unnoticed, we do rhythmically. There is rhythm everywhere; it insinuates itself everywhere. All mechanism is metric, rhythmic. There must be more in it than this. Is it ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... more charming than the sounding of the reveille in Paris. It is dawn. One hears first, nearby, a roll of drums, followed by the blast of a bugle, exquisite melody, winged and warlike. Then all is still. In twenty seconds the drums roll again, then the bugle rings out, but further off. Then silence once more. An instant later, further off still, the same song of bugle ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... pitch, melody, harmony, and rhythm is necessary to the singer, but the orator may, by cultivation, develop a speaking voice of musical quality without being able to distinguish Old Hundred from ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... alongside, I heard all that went on. 'Since your minds are made up,' says Arion, 'at least let me get my mantle on, and sing my own dirge; and then I will throw myself into the sea of my own accord.'—The sailors agreed. He threw his minstrel's cloak about him, and sang a most sweet melody; and then he let himself drop into the water, never doubting but that his last moment had come. But I caught him up on my back, and swam to shore ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... their own music, and wild, strange melody it is. It seems to inspire one with a wish to dance. The Puerto Ricans are very fond of this amusement, and when they hear the music of the band, they ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... combines means of enjoyment, and discovers unsuspected sources of interest and pleasure. The sense of harmony, modern as it seems to be, must have been a latent and indirect consequence of the development of the sense of hearing and of melody. Use, at least, could never have called it into existence. Nature favours and develops enjoyments to a certain extent, for they subserve self-preservation and sexual and social preference in innumerable ways. ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... was a strange, wild howl that he gave forth; but such as, he declared, was an exact imitation of the savage Albanian mode, laughing, the while, at our disappointment, who had expected a wild Eastern melody. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 470 - Volume XVII, No. 470, Saturday, January 8, 1831 • Various
... is not to be mistaken, the high-figured phrases, loosely welded together, lulling the imagination into acquiescence by the flow of the melody. Lines like these might well occur in Richard II. The same Shakespearian note is clearly audible in such a passage as this, where ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... interest us, in despite of the languor of a continued allegory; Drayton, who, though less known, possesses perhaps equal powers of poetry; Beaumont the elder, whose poem on Bosworth Field carries us back to the days of the Plantagenets; Fairfax, the translator of Tasso, the melody of whose numbers became the model of Waller; besides many others, who ornamented this era of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... soul was full of harsh, unforgiving thoughts. And Margaret Greylston, as she lay with a throbbing head and an aching heart upon her snowy pillow, thought the hours of that bright afternoon and evening very long and very weary. And yet those hours were full of light, and melody, and fragrance, for the sun shone, and the sky was blue, the birds sang, and the waters rippled; even the autumn flowers were giving their sweet, last kisses to the air. Earth was fair,—why, then, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... somewhere among the hills for days to come, gave her God-speed. But we four fell momentarily silent, as if we meant things which we might not speak. It was almost a relief to hear tapping on the sidewalk the wooden leg of Peleg Bemus, while a familiar, thin little stream of melody from his flute made its ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... was marched out of the area; and, as the clanking sound of his chains became gradually fainter in the distance, the same voice that had before interrupted the proceedings, pronounced a "God be praised!—God be praised!" with such melody of sorrow in its intonations that no one could listen to it unmoved. Both officers and men were more or less affected, and all hoped—they scarcely knew why or what—but all hoped something favourable would ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... breeze of melody The blackbird puffs upon the budding tree, While the wild poppy lights upon the lea And blazes ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... illuminate the external! Ye shall enjoy spiritual and passional freedom; your guides shall no longer be the despotism of ignorant laws, nor the whip of an imaginary conscience,—but the natural impulses of your nature, which are the melody of Life, and the natural affinities, which are its harmony! The reflections from the upper spheres shall irradiate the lower, and Death is the triumphal arch through which we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... at Thankful Rest. The garden was gay with tender leaves and blossoms, and the orchard white with bloom. There the birds made sweet melody as of yore; and, as of yore, the sunny river brawled and whispered and played as it hurried through the ...
— Thankful Rest • Annie S. Swan
... for the soldier-like qualities which he possessed, to accompany his son on this his first expedition. So out of the barrack-yard, with something of an air, marched my dear brother, his single drum and fife playing the inspiring old melody, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... boys. Let some leader start up a song in a natural way, and soon you will have a chorus of unexpected melody and harmony. As the fire dies down, let the songs be of a more quiet type, like "My Old Kentucky Home," and ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson |
