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Rhapsody   Listen
noun
Rhapsody  n.  (pl. rhapsodies)  
1.
A recitation or song of a rhapsodist; a portion of an epic poem adapted for recitation, or usually recited, at one time; hence, a division of the Iliad or the Odyssey; called also a book.
2.
A disconnected series of sentences or statements composed under excitement, and without dependence or natural connection; rambling composition. "A rhapsody of words." "A rhapsody of tales."
3.
(Mus.) A composition irregular in form, like an improvisation; as, Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsodies."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rhapsody" Quotes from Famous Books



... is coming. I knew he would come. Why should he not come?" This she exclaimed to her mother, and then went on to speak of him with a wild rhapsody of joy, as though there had hardly been any breach in her happiness. And she continued to sing the praises of her husband till Mrs. Holt hardly knew how to bear her enthusiasm in a fitting mood. For she, who was not in love, still thought that this man's conduct had been scandalous, wicked, ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope

... certainly not. I have made acquaintance with her this morning, and—and there is everything to interest one in her:' and then, as Arthur looked delighted, and was ready to break into a rhapsody—'Her simplicity especially. When you write you had better mention her entire ignorance of the want of sanction. I cannot think how she was kept ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for Inez Alvarez— though she has neither blonde complexion, nor blue eyes. Instead she is a morena, or brunette, with eyes and hair of the darkest. But she is also a beauty, of the type immortalised by many bards—Byron among the number, when he wrote his rhapsody on ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid

... voice had lost its richness and sounded hard. "I should like to tell you something of myself. Oh"—she laughed rather cynically—"I'm not going to bore you with a rhapsody intended to convey to you that I am a much misunderstood woman and all the rest of it. Only, if you are to see me again, I think I should like you to know just who ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... strike the undiscerning. He likewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any well-used copy of 'The Seasons,' the book generally opens of itself with the Rhapsody on Love, or with one of the stories, perhaps of Damon and Musidora. These also are prominent in our Collections of Extracts, and are the parts of his work which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the author ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... last before I sleep—before I can sleep in peace. I have just finished reading the rhapsody which it enclosed; and whilst my mind is full and warm upon the subject, let me write, for I can write to my own satisfaction at no other time. I admire and love you, my child, for the generous indignation ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... a rhapsody on the divine merits of an air-cooling system, clawed his billowing black hair, and sighed, "Sounds improbable, don't it? Must be true, though; it's going to appear in the Gazette, and that's the motor-dealer's bible. If you don't believe it, read the blurbs we publish about ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... the heightened color of the fair enthusiast, who, accompanying her rhapsody with action expressive as her words, had to repeat her question, "Have you such a friend?" before he found recollection to ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... as was my wont, to see Blanche. She was radiant: she was wild with spirits: a saucy triumph blazed in her blue eyes. She talked, she rattled in her childish way. She uttered, in the course of her rhapsody, a hint—an intimation—so terrible that the truth flashed across me in a moment. Did I ask her? She would lie to me. But I knew how to make falsehood impossible. And I ordered her ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... scene, unless by those present. There was not the least order in all he stammered out (to speak sincerely) with the most inconceivable incoherence. Bonaparte was no orator. Perceiving the bad effect produced upon the meeting by this rhapsody, and the progressive confusion of the speaker, I whispered (pulling his coat gently at the same time)—'Retire, General, you no longer know what you are saying.' I made a sign to Berthier to second me in persuading him to leave the place; when suddenly, after stammering out a few words more, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey

... interrupted speech affected them more than his reasoning! Short sighs escaped them; they swayed to and fro with the rhythm of his voice and movements. They had begun to comprehend this exacerbation of emotion—this paroxysmal rhapsody. This was the dithyrambic exaltation they had ardently waited for. They responded quickly. First with groans, equally inarticulate murmurs of assent, shouts of "Glory," and the reckless invocation of sacred names. Then a wave of hysteria seemed ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... religions depend for their origin and continuation directly upon inspiration, I state an historic fact. It may be known under other names, of credit or discredit, as mysticism, ecstasy, rhapsody, demoniac possession, the divine afflatus, the gnosis, or, in its latest christening, 'cosmic consciousness.' All are but expressions of a belief that knowledge arises, words are uttered or actions performed not through conscious ideation or reflective purpose, but through ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... modesty; Calls virtue hypocrite; takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love, And sets a blister there; makes marriage-vows As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow; Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... on the water, as Pendennyss had done to avoid his friend, Lord Henry Stapleton. An excuse of business, which served for his apology, kept the colonel from seeing Denbigh to return the book, until after his visit to the cottage. His rhapsody of love, and offers to desert his intended wife, were nothing but the common-place talk of his purposes; and his presumption in alluding to his situation with Miss Moseley, proceeded from his impressions as to Julia's real character. In the struggle for the bell, the pocket-book of Denbigh accidentally ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper

... Cooking Egg Le Directeur Melange adultere de tout Lune de Miel The Hippopotamus Dans le Restaurant Whispers of Immortality Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service Sweeney Among the Nightingales The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Portrait of a Lady Preludes Rhapsody on a Windy Night Morning at the Window The Boston Evening Transcript Aunt Helen Cousin Nancy Mr. Apollinax Hysteria Conversation Galante La ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot

... to a demand of your hand, you deigned to reply with that energetic and encouraging monosyllable, yes—dear and categorical affirmative—" exclaimed Tom, going off again at half-cock, highly impressed with the notion that rhapsody, instead of music, was the food of love—"Yes, dear and categorical affirmative, with what ecstasy did not my drowsy ears drink in the melodious sounds—what extravagance of delight my throbbing ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper

... and clasped all the angels of its delirium,—and then, just at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... and over the hills, her blood throbbing, her heart pounding as she felt the soft, southwest wind in her face, the siren song of freedom ringing in her ears. The divine sweetness of the mountain air was in her nostrils. She was recalled from her state of rhapsody by the sound of pounding hoofs behind her. She half turned in her saddle, expecting to see Jo. She didn't need the commanding-toned "Wait!" to rein ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... been individual instances of inefficiency, and even failure of character, in some officers of the Government during a period of seventy years, as is the case in all Governments, but such instances were few, if they occurred at all, and such as to afford no just pretext for the rhapsody and insinuations of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... manner that strangely contradicted her abilities to suffer under the pangs of love and unrequited idolatry. But then, business men are no more immune to the foolish venom on Cupid's arrows than poets—perhaps less, since they have no outlet of rhapsody. That was one of the troubles with Kedzie's poet. By the time Gilfoyle had finished a poem of love he was so exhausted that any other emotion was welcome, best of all a good quarrel and the healthful exercise ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... yer soul—is it you?' says I, my feelings rising into a rhapsody of affection for him: 'Give ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... Cedars by water. It was a delightful afternoon of June, the river warm and still, and the soft, fitful western breeze occasionally rich with the perfume of the gardens of Putney and Chiswick. Waldershare talked the whole way. It was a rhapsody of fancy, fun, knowledge, anecdote, brilliant badinage—even passionate seriousness. Sometimes he recited poetry, and his voice was musical; and, then, when he had attuned his companions to a sentimental pitch, he would break into mockery, and touch with delicate satire ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... fifteen, 8287 were actually attending school! Among other direct taxes, every quadruped that can be called a horse, above two years old, pays a dollar a year, and every dog a dollar and a half. Does not all this sound painfully civilized? If the influence of the tropics has betrayed me into rhapsody and ecstacy in earlier letters, these dry details will turn the scale in ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... immeasurably scurrilous, that I think they must prosecute her. She accuses them and her husband of a conspiracy to betray and ruin his own daughter, without, even attempting to assign a motive to them. Of the House of Argyll she says not a word. In short, it is a most dull incoherent rhapsody, that gives no account at all of the story that gave origin to her book, and at which no mortal could guess from it; and the 246 pages contain nothing but invectives on her four supposed enemies, and endless tiresome ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole

... Dedication Katie Why Silent? Two Portraits La Belle Juive An Exotic The Rosebuds A Mother's Wail Our Willie Address Delivered at the Opening of the New Theatre at Richmond A Vision of Poesy The Past Dreams The Arctic Voyager Dramatic Fragment The Summer Bower A Rhapsody of a Southern Winter Night Flower-Life A Summer Shower Baby's Age The Messenger Rose On Pressing Some Flowers 1866—Addressed to the Old Year Stanzas: A Mother Gazes Upon Her Daughter, Arrayed for an Approaching Bridal. Written in Illustration of a Tableau Vivant Hymn ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... was only the spokesman of his age who was lucky enough to get a hearing. He spoke a language that was a jargon of rhapsody, but he spoke vaguely of terrors, and perils, and earthquakes, and thunderings, the day of wrath; and because he spoke so darkly men listened all the more eagerly, for there was a vague anticipation of the breaking up of the great waters, and that things that had been heretofore ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... intending to call back his good-night. But he could not do it. There was something flamey about her to-night that went to his head. Her tender, tremulous little smile and the turn of the buoyant little head stirred in him a lover's rhapsody. ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... The reader must leave rhapsody, and may now be reminded, in explanation of allusions in the following letter, that the arm of Dr Livingstone, the African traveller, was crushed and crunched by the bite and "chaw" of a lion. He will also please ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... laughter of earliest manhood. He dazzled and infected everyone with his mockery and his laughter. There never was such an undergraduate, so merry, so learned in medieval trifling and terminology, so perfectly spontaneous in rhapsody and extravaganza, so positive and final in his judgments—who spoke French, too, like a Frenchman, in a manner unintelligible ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley

... nearly a year after the famous Quarterly article on Endymion, in which the reviewer had so severely taken to task "Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody)." It suggests that Keats retained at least a certain share of good spirits, in spite of the Quarterly and Fanny Brawne and the approach of death. His observation, too, was often that of a spirited common-sense realist rather than ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd

... 7th of May, a month after Danton's death, Robespierre delivered a long speech before the Convention, a speech that marks his apogee. It was a high-flown rhapsody on civic morality and purism. Voltaire and the Encyclopedists were bitterly attacked; Jean Jacques Rousseau was deified. The State should adopt his religious attitude, his universal church of nature. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston

... the minister answered, with a quick glance from his calm eyes. Not a bit of sentiment or of speculative rhapsody there; but downright, cool common sense, with just a little bit of authority. Diana did not know exactly how to meet it; and before she had arranged her words, they heard wheels again, and then the doctor ...
— Diana • Susan Warner

... Merrilies," "Deserted," "Eros," and the well-known sets, "Five Norman Songs," "Six Scotch Songs," "Three Songs of the Night," and "Three Songs of the East." Her piano music is also excellent, among the best examples being the Rhapsody, the Meditation, a poetic revery, the charming Spring Idyll, and her early suite, entitled ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... the poems of Richard Watson Gilder, of Edith Thomas, of Robert Underwood Johnson—whose "Italian Rhapsody" and "The Winter Hour" can never be forgotten—and certain verses of Edmund Clarence Stedman. But les jeunes prefer the new verse makers. There is even a kind of cult for the Imagists. A spokesman for the Imagists tells us briefly that "free verse" is a term that may be attached to all ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... admiring! Whatever Warburton here asserted was false, and whatever he conjectured was erroneous; but his blunders were quite original.—The good sense and knowledge of Tyrwhitt have demolished the whole edifice, without leaving a single brick standing. The absurd rhapsody has been worth preserving, for the sake of the masterly confutation: no uncommon result of ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... our first interview with these young ladies, when they appeared under all the disadvantages incidental to a condition of utter limpness of soaked and draggled clothing, I fear I should lay myself open to the charge of indulging in unbridled rhapsody were I to attempt a description of the effect produced upon our rather susceptible hearts on the occasion of this their second visit. Not that on the present occasion their charms were very greatly enhanced by the adventitious aid of dress; far from it—but the present opportunity ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood

... then that she should win the heart of the simple old man speedily and utterly; for what can bard desire beyond a true listener—a mind into which his own may, in verse or tale or rhapsody, in pibroch or coronach, overflow? But when, one evening, in girlish merriment, she took up his pipes, blew the bag full, and began to let a highland air burst fitfully from the chanter, the jubilation of the old man broke all the bounds of reason. He jumped from ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... as if they were come of our best English blood. But now, confining our attention to M. Michelet, we in England—who know him best by his worst book, the book against priests, etc.—know him disadvantageously. That book is a rhapsody of incoherence. But his "History of France" is quite another thing. A man, in whatsoever craft he sails, cannot stretch away out of sight when he is linked to the windings of the shore by towing-ropes of History. Facts, and the consequences ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey

... once new and true can be said, it is always best to say nothing; as it is in this case to refrain from all reiteration of rhapsody which must have been somewhat "mouldy ere" any living man's "grandsires had nails on their toes," if not at that yet remoter date "when King Pepin of France was a little boy" and "Queen Guinever of Britain was a little wench." In the Merchant of Venice, at all events, there is hardly a single ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... the want of sufficient expansion in the development of some of its leading suggestions. But it must be judged as the earnest utterances of a poet, rather than a grave didactic treatise. With the purpose which the author had in view, a spice of rhapsody is no defect. He presents a beautiful example of the smiling wisdom of which he is such an eloquent advocate. He has an intuitive sense of the genial and joyous aspects of life, and has no sympathies to waste on the victims of 'carking care' or morbid melancholy. A more ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Indian paradise for me, and described its pleasant prairies and crystal rivers, its countless herds of fat buffalo and horses, its perennial and luxuriant grass, and other charms dear to an Indian's heart, in a rhapsody that was almost poetry. Another, an obscure man of the Cathead Sioux, is believed to have seen the hole through which issue the herds of buffalo which the Great Spirit calls forth from the centre of the earth to feed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... and said good-night. But when I had reached my bedroom in the Hotel de la Ville, I sat down, obstinate and unconvinced, and penned this rhapsody, which I have lately found among papers of nearly twenty years ago. I give it as ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... more to ask what she was talking about. When the substance of the Snowden rhapsody was given her, she nodded—as well as her several chins would permit her to nod—and announced that ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... within earshot of this debate, and may have been the victim of some association or confusion; anyhow, after answering the usual questions about Labour, the League of Nations, the length of ladies' dresses, and other great matters, I took refuge in a rhapsody of warm and well-deserved praise of American bathrooms. The editor, I understand, running a gloomy eye down the column of his contributor's 'story,' and seeing nothing but metaphysical terms such as justice, freedom, the abstract disapproval of sweating, swindling, and the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... a piano at a conservatory of music. She can take a Hungarian rhapsody and turn it into a goulash in ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... indelicate and unfeminine rhapsody, Captain Ludlow has seen proper to ascribe to me!" she said, while her voice ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper

... country girl could alone have addressed this rhapsody to a stranger. A woman of the world with half her talent and moral worth, would have blushed at her imprudence in betraying the romance of her nature. Juliet was a novice in the world, and she spoke with the simplicity and earnestness of truth. Godfrey smiled in his heart at her want ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... undiscerning. He likewise abounds with sentimental common-places, that, from the manner in which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any well-used copy of the 'Seasons' the book generally opens of itself with the rhapsody on love, or with one of the stories (perhaps 'Damon and Musidora'); these also are prominent in our collections of Extracts, and are the parts of his Work, which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the author to general notice. Pope, repaying praises ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... Discontinuity — N. discontinuity; disjunction &c 44; anacoluthon^; interruption, break, fracture, flaw, fault, crack, cut; gap &c (interval) 198; solution of continuity, caesura; broken thread; parenthesis, episode, rhapsody, patchwork; intermission; alternation &c (periodicity) 138; dropping fire. V. be discontinuous &c adj.; alternate, intermit, sputter, stop and start, hesitate. discontinue, pause, interrupt; intervene; break, break in upon, break off; interpose &c 228; break ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... his eye was remarkably piercing, I perceived in it somewhat of the wildness which always characterizes a Glonglim. He was evidently impatient for discussion; and having informed himself of the subject of my rhapsody when he joined our party, he vehemently exclaimed,—"I am surprised at your falling in with that popular prejudice; while it is easy to show, that but for some feeling of love, or pity, or admiration, with which the rose ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... is not of the best school, being too "sensational" to suit the most exacting taste. His song is a grand improvisation: a good deal jumbled, to be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,—that is, it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, at an occasional grotesque or overwrought passage, but unless you are well used ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey

... beauty of childhood. It demands no elaborate expression. Simplicity is its only coinage. A rhapsody on the exquisiteness of the fruit's flavour would have bored Evadne stiff. Her soul yearned for the establishment between us of a link of appreciation. "Yum, yum," said I, and the ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke." In reply to the noble passage: "The age of chivalry is gone ...," Paine shrewdly says: "In the rhapsody of his imagination he has discovered a world of windmills, and his sorrows are that there are no ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... controverting, where—and here is the point—where any beauty has been shown. But how, where that is not the case? where the hatter is simply introduced, as God made him and as his fellow-men have miscalled him, at the crisis of a high-flown rhapsody? And what are we to say, where a man of Whitman's notable capacity for putting things in a bright, picturesque, and novel way, simply gives up the attempt, and indulges, with apparent exultation, in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... paused only to let your rhapsody have vent, though I really wish the little mistress of this home could have heard such a spontaneous tribute to her skill as a florist. You'll notice that peculiarity all through the Province. Window ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond

... the last in the iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate and light round buckler." [Footnote: Ibid., vol. ii. p. x.] We cannot guess how he found these things out, for corslets are as common in one "rhapsody" as in another when circumstances call for the mention of corslets, and are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are "bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than the Iliad. As for "the iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so much ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... to be expected that the young man entirely understood the rhapsody of Holden, though familiar with his moods. He saw, however, it had some connection with the one idea that had mastered all others, leaving them, notwithstanding, at perfect liberty, except so far as they interfered ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams

... don't see them, the loss is yours." As I spoke, away upon the terrace a grey shadow paused a moment ere it was swallowed in the brilliance of the ball-room; seeing which I did not mind the slightly superior smile that curved Mr. Selwyn's very precise moustache; after all, my rhapsody had not been altogether thrown away. As I ended, the opening bars of a waltz floated out to us. Mr. Selwyn ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol

... floor so that one goes down steps into them, tubs of large dimensions and tubs of small, and all with or without "showers," as the purchaser may prefer. Truly the warm baths so highly recommended in Count Rumford's rhapsody are to be had for the turning of one's own faucet at any moment of the day ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... of character and labour. For futile, in the arts, is whatever the sense of beauty must condemn, however well-intentioned; and frivolous is the passion that forgets the end it would attain, and becomes merely a private rhapsody, however astonishing its developments; slowly but surely it will be seen that such fireworks do not vitally concern us. The proportions of many of Michael Angelo's figures are as far removed from any possible ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore

... following account of some of the disagreeables, when taken in contrast, rather tends to overbalance the sum of the agreeables. Thus we find, that on the day subsequent to that on which John Lander had written his rhapsody on the agreeables of Badagry, the noise and jargon of their guests pursued them even in their sleep, and their dreams were disturbed by fancied palavers, which were more unpleasant and vexatious, if ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... not authorized you to suspect any part of this rhapsody to be true—I have not said you were ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper

... heart from its grief in a moment shall cease, And the soul hush its cries in the cadence of peace, And the life with the laughter of rhapsody blest Shall rejoice through the years ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... understood. But, unfortunately, the ability to comprehend a great work, as a whole, is even rarer in music than in poetry. The little taking bits of melody are all that is thought of or perceived; the great epos or rhapsody, the form and meaning of the entire composition,—which is a work of Art in no other sense than a poem is one, except that it uses, instead of speech, musical forms, of greater variety and symmetry,—are ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... accidents so frightful that they roused even clergymen and chambers of commerce to protest. A number of the "Outlook's" subscribers are New Haven "commuters", and the magazine could not fail to refer to their troubles. In the issue of Jan. 4th, 1913, three years and ten days after the Baxter rhapsody, ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... nevertheless a distinct change. McNally felt the difference and tried to throw it off, but the force of the situation grew upon him. Slowly he realized that in spite of her pretensions she was not really in sympathy either with him or with her father. He struck into a Liszt rhapsody with all ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... on his second rhapsody when he was interrupted by another high-speed entrance. It was ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... those of joy"); she omitted a clause which offered a weak motivation of Elinor's father's will (the possibility of her marrying, while hardly more than a child, one of her guardian's sons); she curtailed the extravagance of a rhapsody on the perfect happiness which Woodville and ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

... emerged. Pausing by the horse rack he surveyed the two men and boy, if not with indifference, at least with apathy. Just above his head swung the sign with its legend, "Slosson—Entertainment"; but if he were Slosson, one could take the last half of the sign either as a poetic rhapsody on the part of the painter, or the yielding to some meaningless convention, for in his person, Mr. Slosson suggested none of those qualities of brain or heart that trenched upon the lighter amenities of life. He was black-haired and ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... and by chance I was there that day. The King looked at me as at the others, but as though asking for a reply. I took good care not to open my mouth, and lowered my eyes. Cheverny, (a discreet man,) too, was not so prudent, but made a long and ill-timed rhapsody upon similar reports that had come to Copenhagen from Vienna while he was ambassador at the former place seventeen or eighteen years before. The King allowed him to say on, but did not take the bait. He appeared touched, but like a man who does not wish to seem so. It could ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... preliminary, the paths were alive, wriggling, with babies of every age, from the new-born to the children in pigtails and knickerbockers—and, lo! these were already paired and practising at courtship. The walk that Cordelia was taking was amid a fever, a delirium, of maternity—a rhapsody, a baby's opera, if one considered its noise. In that vast region no one inquired whether marriage was a failure. Nothing that is old and long-beloved and human ...
— Different Girls • Various

... like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station.... I mean to prepare the way for futurity.... I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war." This may be regarded as a boyish rhapsody; but all boys are not ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... signal for laying by all reserve, and I prostrated myself before this divinity with all the adoration of a profound devotee, and poured out such a rhapsody of love and admiration, as to leave no doubt in her mind of the tenderness of my heart, the acuteness of my wit, and the excellence of my taste. In short, the emir's widow had every reason to be satisfied with the choice she had made; and she very soon showed ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... his writings; and there can be little doubt, in spite of Condorcet's incredible account of the circumstances of its composition, that it is the expression of what was at the time a sincere feeling.[17] It is, however, rather the straining and ecstatic rhapsody of one who ardently seeks faith, than the calm and devout assurance of him who already possesses it. Vauvenargues was religious by temperament, but he could not entirely resist the intellectual influences of the period. The one fact delivered ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley

... rippled. "See how thou art shaken into thyself, man. What! No phrase of lackadaisical rapture! Why, I looked to see thee invert thine incorporate satin in an airy rhapsody—upheld and kept unruffled by some fantastical twist of thine imagination. Oh, Fancy—Fancy! Couldst not e'en sustain thy knight cap-a-pie!" and she laughed the harder as she saw her lover's face ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... we will even indulge ourselves with a short extract from one of the "Conversations with Children," reported verbatim by an apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning bit of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody, which Mr. Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy six ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of your better self, and so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the old covers and love them for all that they have meant in the past. Yes, it was the olive-green line of Scott's novels which started me on to rhapsody. They were the first books I ever owned—long, long before I could appreciate or even understand them. But at last I realized what a treasure they were. In my boyhood I read them by surreptitious candle-ends in the ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... cries to God which ends with a sort of rhapsody of pleading prayer, entitled "Sagesse," begins—and one does not feel that it is in the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... rhapsody with misgivings. With every allowance for the fervour of a lover who was also a Fairy Prince, even maternal partiality could not blind her to the fact that his description would be far less incorrect as applied to that Heritage girl ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey

... wander, my ears hear the sound Of thy waters, which plunge with a turbulent bound O'er the precipice, seething and laden with foam; My ears hear their music wherever I roam; Where the cataract's rhapsody, joyous and light, Enchants in the morning and soothes in the night; Where blend the loud thunders, sonorous and deep, With the sobs of the rain as the black heavens weep; Where the whispering zephyr, and murmuring breeze, Unite with the soft, listless sigh ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... magazine, the Dark Blue, of July 1871, may be found a characteristic review by Swinburne of Solomon's strange rhapsody, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, his only literary work, now a great rarity. This is the longest, and with one exception the most interesting, tribute to Solomon ever published. 'Since the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... the temples by sunrise, when the mistlike lambent opals bathed the bases of the tall columns salmon in the morning light! It was a rhapsody in the pale and unearthly colors of Puvis de Chavannes vitalized and made glorious with splendid sunlight; the apotheosis of mist; a vision never before seen, never to be forgotten. It was so beautiful that the memory of my ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... asking anyone to try. It may be easier really to have wit, than really, in the boldest and most enduring sense, to have imagination. But it is immeasurably easier to pretend to have imagination than to pretend to have wit. A man may indulge in a sham rhapsody, because it may be the triumph of a rhapsody to be unintelligible. But a man cannot indulge in a sham joke, because it is the ruin of a joke to be unintelligible. A man may pretend to be a poet: he can no more pretend to be a wit than he can pretend to bring rabbits out of ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... this rhapsody with growing agitation; he was standing close to Gorgo, and while the rest of the party held anxious consultation as to what could be done to follow up and capture the fugitives, he asked Gorgo in a low voice, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... possibly go on to relate the conclusion of Frank's rhapsody, but he took great pains to convince me that if there was ever a high-principled, pure-minded, much-injured individual, that exemplary character was the gentleman now walking by my side; and I was convinced, but at the same time not exactly satisfied. In thinking over the whole ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... natural beat. He recovered in a measure the generous eloquence with which he had fanned his flame at Homburg, and talked about things with something of the same passionate freshness. One day when I was laid up at the inn at Bruges with a lame foot, he came home and treated me to a rhapsody about a certain meek-faced virgin of Hans Memling, which seemed to me sounder sense than his compliments to Madame Blumenthal. He had his dull days and his sombre moods—hours of irresistible retrospect; ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James

... chosen to send young Men abroad, is, I think, of all other, that which renders them least capable of reaping those Advantages."—Locke, on Ed., p. 372. "It is a mere figment of the human imagination, a rhapsody of the transcendent unintelligible."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 120. "It contains a greater assemblage of sublime ideas, of bold and daring figures, than is perhaps any where to be met with."—Blair's Rhet., p. 162. "The order in which the two last words are ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... beauty of the sixteenth century has crept into it. Against the pink flush of dawn stands the swaying figure of the risen Christ, and below appear the heads of the two guards, looking up, surprised and joyful. It is perhaps the very earliest example of that soft and sensuous feeling, that rhapsody of sensation which was presently to sweep like a flood over the art of Venice. "What a time must the dawn of the sixteenth century have been when a man of seventy, and not the most vigorous and advanced of his age, had the ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... well the sensuous Italian strains accord with such an hour and scene! They were playing, if I remember rightly, the ever-popular Aida; other items followed later—more ambitious ones; a Hungarian rhapsody, Berlioz, a ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... is imperfect. Few of the great feats, the Big Things, have admitted names. If I attempted to catalogue Wade's achievements, this chapter might become an unintelligible rhapsody. A sheet of paper and a pen-point cannot supply the place of a sheet of ice and a skate-edge. Geometry must have its diagrams, Anatomy its corpus to carve. Skating also refuses to be spiritualized into a Science; it remains an Art, and cannot ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... powerful (almost too loud sometimes) and most persuasive; he was eloquent and impassioned, but he used little gesture or any artifice to engage attention. He commenced with a rhapsody—startling in the sudden flow of its eloquence, thrilling in its higher tones, tender and compassionate (almost to tears) in its lower passages—a ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... than a Rhapsody of tragical Adventures, which captivated the the Imagination and distracted the Heart[15]. 'Twas pleasant enough to read them, but nothing more was got by it than feeding the Mind with Chimaeras, which were often hurtful. The Youth greedily swallow'd ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various

... But at your rhapsody on the bed of carnations, I am also tempted to launch forth in praise of all pinks in general and the annual flowering garden carnation, early Marguerite, and picotee varieties in particular, especially when I think what results might be had from ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... startled from his quiescent posture, and tranquil occupation, by the growing excitement of his companion, "what has possessed you? Is it the daughter of our worthy host—is it Emily Sherwood, the nymph who haunts these woods—who has given birth to this marvellous train of reflection? to this rhapsody on the omnipresence of woman, which I certainly had never discovered, and on the misery of a snug bachelor's income, which to me is still more incomprehensible? I confess, however, it would be difficult to find a better specimen of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... portion at least, to the altogether inferior and less sentient, and upon the ground of that faculty builds the vision of its redemption! If it could be so, then how should the seeming apostle's affected rhapsody of hope be to us other than a mere puff-ball of falsest rhetoric, a special-pleading for nothing, as degrading to art as ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald

... When this pious rhapsody was concluded, he called the assembly to earnest prayer. They fell upon their knees, and dared to pray to God that He would give them strength ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach

... and second strings is as the sound of gentle rain, or of the wind stirring the pine-trees; and the sound of the third and fourth strings is as the song of birds and pheasants calling to their young. A rhapsody in praise of music follows. Would that such strains could last for ever! The ghost bewails its fate that it cannot remain to play on, but must return whence it came. The priest addresses the ghost, and asks whether the vision is indeed the spirit ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... Wednesday we expect a third she-meteor," he wrote to Richard West, July 31, 1740. "Those learned luminaries the Ladies Pomfret and Walpole[9] are to be joined by the Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. You have not been witness to the rhapsody of mystic nonsense which these two fair ones debate incessantly, and consequently cannot figure what must be the issue of this triple alliance: we have some idea of it. Only figure the coalition of prudery, debauchery, sentiment, history, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... noticing this rhapsody, 'if you breathe one word or utter one sound by which suspicion can fall on Mr. Blake, my promise is forfeited; if you stay here after to-morrow, or attempt to see me within this and next Christmas Eve, ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... pausing at their door cut short her rhapsody and sent her, the table, and Bo'sn, promptly out of doors, because when any of the sailor's old cronies called to see him, there wasn't room in "the littlest house" for all. So, from the narrow sidewalk beyond the door, the child listened ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond

... another, the brand plucked from the burning. He is designated in Mr Ivimey's History of the Baptists as the depraved Bunyan, the wicked tinker of Elstow. Mr Ryland, a man once of great note among the Dissenters, breaks out into the following rhapsody:—"No man of common sense and common integrity can deny that Bunyan was a practical atheist, a worthless contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God and goodness, a common profligate, a soul-despising, a soul-murdering, a soul-damning, thoughtless ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... of the grace of Plato; he illuminates his works with no myths or allegories; his manner is dry, sententious, familiar, without the slightest attempt at ornament. There are occasional touches of caustic humour, but nothing of emotion, still less of rhapsody. His strength lies in the vast architectonic genius by which he correlates every domain of the knowable in a single scheme, and in the extraordinary faculty for illustrative detail with which he fills the scheme in every part. He knows, and can shrewdly criticise ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... the mind, Christianity softens and sweetens it. The former makes us the objects of human admiration, the latter of Divine love. That insures us a temporal, but this an eternal happiness.—But I am afraid I tire you with my rhapsody." ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... the negroes merely followed and enlarged upon the example of some of the whites. The similarity of practices, however, did not promote a permanent mingling of the two races in the same congregations, for either would feel some restraint upon its rhapsody imposed by the presence of the other. To relieve this there developed in greater or less degree a separation of the races for purposes of worship, white ministers preaching to the blacks from time to time in plantation ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... marvelous record of the coming of the Comet. It has been repeated generation after generation, translated into all languages, commented on, criticised, but never understood. It has been regarded as a wild, unmeaning rhapsody of words, or as a premonition ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... an exhortation to hear the voice of the Lord which had just been uttered to the congregation, and after a few more sentences he sat down. Two more men followed him, and then Irving preached. His subject was 'God's love,' upon which he poured forth a mystical incomprehensible rhapsody, with extraordinary vehemence of manner and power of lungs. There was nothing like eloquence in his sermon, no musical periods to captivate the ear, no striking illustrations to charm the imagination; but there ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... conspicuous part in that ludicrous incident which Addison describes at his own expense. It was his habit, he explained, to jot down from time to time brief hints such as could be expanded into Spectator papers, and a sheetful of such hints would naturally look like a "rhapsody of nonsense" to any one save the writer himself. Such a sheet he accidentally dropped in Lloyd's one day, and before he missed it the boy of the house had it in his hand and was carrying it around in ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... though, after makin' the accompanist take two fresh starts, he's off. Some goulash rhapsody, I believe it was, by a guy whose name sounds like a sneezin' fit. But, take it from me, that sharp-faced little wisp could do things to a violin! Zowie! He could just naturally make it sing, with weeps and laughs, and moans and giggles, and groans and cusswords, all strung ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... listened to all this rhapsody very much with the air of a prince accustomed to royal service and thinking little of it, interrupted Dougal ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... graceful productions in verse, which were published anonymously, such as Lines written at Ampthill Park, in 1818; Advice to Julia, a letter in Rhyme, in which he sketched high life in London, in 1820. He also published Crockford House: a rhapsody, in 1827. Moore in his Diary has embalmed numerous examples of his satiric wit. Henry Luttrell ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... in his rhapsody. He might have stood leaning over the sill a day or a second, when a sound, persistent and murmuring, haled him back to mundane things. Intermittently, but with growing volume, from somewhere beyond the wall of black, came the echoes ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... great violence to my understanding in praising this unnatural rhapsody, I nevertheless extolled it as a production that of itself deserved immortal fame; and besought her ladyship to bless the world with the fruits of those uncommon talents Heaven had bestowed upon her. She smiled with a look ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... he said presently, breaking in on Mr. Martel's rhapsody. "Miss Eleanor's young yet. Don't you believe she will ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... Entertainment of idle People, and calculated for Persons of Education, when they are at Leisure and want Amusement; and therefore to ask Men of Business, or that have any Thing else to do, to read such an incoherent Rhapsody throughout, would be an unreasonable Request; at least, the Author himself ought to be more modest than to expect it: Yet I must beg Leave to say, that whoever has not done this, ought not to be so magisterial in his Censures, as Some ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville

... echo the last word of Abel's rhapsody, for Brother Moses had succumbed to mundane slumber, and sat nodding like a massive ghost. Forest Absalom, the silent man, and John Pease, the English member, now departed to the barn; and Mrs. Lamb led her flock to a temporary fold, leaving the founders of the "Consociate ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... on her own natural resources. Those to whom this oratory is not new, have no need of our reporting any of it; and those to whom it is a perfect mystery, boast a "state the more gracious," and are the more happy in their ignorance. None of this rhapsody, however, although teeming with blasphemy and abuse, had any effect on Garrick, and he would have remained unmoved had she not terminated in the following manner, which so excited the laughter of the collected mob, and disconcerted "the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... arbor; New-Year thrilled our hearts with its symbols and promises; and the Day of Atonement moved even the laughing children to a longing for consecration. The year, in our pious house, was an endless song in many cantos of joy, lamentation, aspiration, and rhapsody. ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... calm waters of the sacred river with the hot fumes of literary dissension and argument. I have read how they came, with their heads full of quotations and their notebooks full of impressions and hints for effective rhapsody—how they feasted on the silver trout of the Sorgue, and gathered Laura's roses to adorn their buttonholes, and stripped the consecrated laurel of its leaves to make garlands for their own dull heads, and poured forth international ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... this play a few great beauties, yet it is not without its extravagant blemishes. Every play of the same author has more or less of them. Let me give you a sample from this. Alexander, in a full crowd of courtiers, without being occasionally called or provoked to it, falls into this rhapsody of vainglory: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold

... considerably damped when I heard the charge of his lordship. With all respect for the eminent Senator who that day presided on the bench, I think he went rather too far when he designated my maiden-effort a rhapsody which could only be excused on account of the inexperience of the gentleman who uttered it. Passing from that unpleasant style of stricture, he went seriatim over all the crimes of M'Wilkin, and very distinctly indicated his opinion that a more consummate ruffian had seldom ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... seen in full play. He would begin no matter how—perhaps with a jest at some absurd adventure of his own, perhaps with the recitation, in his vibrating voice and full Scotch accent, of some snatch of poetry that was haunting him, perhaps with a rhapsody of analytic delight over some minute accident of beauty or expressiveness that had struck him in man, woman, child, or external nature. And forthwith the floodgates would be opened, and the talk would stream on in endless, never importunate, flood and variety. A hundred ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was I to find new musical works that when I was eight and a half years old I could play from memory such pieces as the B flat minor Scherzo, the A flat major Polonaise, and most of the Valses and Etudes of Chopin. I also played the Sixth Rhapsody of Liszt and the C ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... sentiment embodied in his Fool of Quality charmed Wesley and was enthusiastically admired by Kingsley. Thomson, however, best illustrates this current of sentiment. The fine 'Hymn of Nature' appended to the Seasons, is precisely in the same vein as Shaftesbury's rhapsody. The descriptions of nature are supposed to suggest the commentary embodied in the hymn. He still describes the sea and sky and mountains with the more or less intention of preaching a sermon upon them. That is the justification of the 'pure description' which Pope condemned in principle, and ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... [65] This lively lyrical rhapsody, written in April 1821, celebrates an amusing incident connected with the visit of Sir Walter Scott to the Castle of Glammis, in 1793. Sir Walter was hospitably entertained in the Castle, by Mr Peter Proctor, the factor, in the absence of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... discreetly changed the subject. She entered upon less intimate matters, and soon, sweeping off into a rhapsody over the country—its attraction for Easterners, its grip on Westerners—she was chatting with a freedom typical of the country. For by now she was interested, and for some inexplicable reason she found herself drawn to the ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... inside the trellised doorway Fashioned out of rustic wood; And she pouted as he passed her, And that pout did so beguile, That he thought it more bewitching Than another's sweetest smile. Fair as tiny dew-dipped rosebuds Were the little rounded lips; And the youth ransacked his pockets In a rhapsody of grips. Then he went and told her plainly That he'd not a farthing left, But would gladly pledge his "Albert"; So with fingers quick and deft, She unloosed his golden watch-chain— Coiled it round her own white arm, Said she'd keep it till the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... sally in their praise, that he not only broke out into a severe satire against their whole race, but gave vent to the prophetic denunciation of wrath and confusion upon their posterity. The guests being informed (or having overheard a part) of this rhapsody, instantly rose up with one accord to punish the contumely of the prophet. Kenneth, though he foretold the fate of others, did not in any manner look into that of himself; for this reason, being doubtful of debating the propriety of his prediction upon such unequal terms, he fled ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... sharp-pointed, long, slender hand, on a kind of wavy, ribbed paper. There was something strangely suggestive about the look of it,—but exactly of what, Miss Darley either could not or did not try to think. The subject of the paper was The Mountain,—the composition being a sort of descriptive rhapsody. It showed a startling familiarity with some of the savage scenery of the region. One would have said that the writer must have threaded its wildest solitudes by the light of the moon and stars as well as by day. As the teacher read on, her color changed, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... written a wild, rambling, unfinished rhapsody, called 'The Devil's Drive[102],' the notion of which I took from Porson's ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... his Majesty; "there you have talent without artifice, poetry without rhapsody, satire without bitterness, pleasantry that is always apt, great knowledge of the human heart, and perpetual raillery that yet is not devoid of delicacy and compassion. Moliere is a most charming man in every respect; I gave him a few hints for ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan

... by the board. He saw himself discredited, suspected, a skulking plotter driven into the open, a self-confessed trickster utterly at the mercy of some haphazard question that would lay bare his pretenses and cover his counterfeit rhapsody with ridicule. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

... man, the political popery of Austria. The estimate which Goethe forms of the poets of the time, of Gleim and Uz, of Gessner and Rabener, and more especially of Klopstock, Lessing, and Wieland, should be read in the original, as likewise Herder's "Rhapsody on Shakspeare." The latter contains the key to many of the secrets of that new period of literature, which was inaugurated by Goethe himself and by those who like him could dare to be classical by being true to nature and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... desk a book. It fell open at a page. As he picked it up he noted that it was a copy of the anonymous old spring rhapsody, the Pervigilium Veneris, with its ceaselessly reiterated refrain, "To-morrow he shall love who never loved before." As he fell asleep it was running through his head like a popular tune: Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... wealth.—Every gift received must be handed to the bishop of the diocese in which it was given, who must provide them himself with necessaries of life and travel. Oh!—what could they not do?... He was off in a rhapsody. ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson

... old Castile! Ola! Ola!" he chanted mysteriously at the beginning of every stanza in a rapturous and soft ecstasy, and then would shriek, as though he had been suddenly cast up on the rock. The poet of Rio Medio was rallying his crew of thieves to a rhapsody of secret and unrequited passion. Twang, ping, tinkle tinkle. He was the Capataz of the valiant Lugarenos! The true Capataz! The only Capataz. Ola! Ola! Twang, twang. But he was the slave of her charms, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... The poem called "A Rhapsody of Life's Progress," though not often noted by the critical writers on Mrs. Browning, is one full of impressive lines, with that haunting refrain ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... good poem, the "Plus haut toujours!" of Jean Allard-Meeus, a hymn of real aerial majesty. In English Major Maurice Baring's ode "In Memoriam: A.H." is equally unique, and, in its complete diversity from Allard-Meeus' rhapsody, suggests that the aeroplane has a wide field before it in the realms of imaginative writing. Major Baring's subject is the death of Auberon Herbert, Lord Lucas, who was killed on November 3rd, 1916. This distinguished young statesman and soldier had ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... that had been hers. How had she lost it? She could not say. Was it the mere piping of a flute that had reft it from her? She wanted to laugh at herself, but could not. It was too absurd, too fantastic, for everyday, prosaic existence, that rhapsody of the starlight, but to her it had been pure magic. In it she had heard the call of a man's being, seeking hers, and by every hidden chord that had vibrated in answer she knew that he had not called in vain. That was the knowledge that pierced ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell

... "By all which rhapsody," said Lord Glenvarloch, "I can only understand, as I did before, that we are going to a choice tavern, where we shall be handsomely entertained, on paying probably as handsome ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... they are but lying in the [Greek: moimeterion] (cemetery)—the sleeping place; or, as the vivid old Hebrew faith would have it, the house of the living (Bethaim). Is not this testimony for the soul's immortality worth as much as all the rhapsody written ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and even, at her particular request, to scrape a little on the violin; but she cared most for singing, and for hearing him play and talk. She never felt shy or timid with him, and one day, at the end of a long rhapsody about German music and German composers, she asked ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... paradise and on it he would be his own God. Rose did not share these feelings. She went to church each Sunday and read her Bible daily with a simple faith that defied derision. Once, when she was gone, Martin idly hunted out the Song of Solomon. His lips curled with contempt at the passionate rhapsody. He knew a thing or two, he allowed, about these wonderful Roses of Sharon and this Song of Songs. Lies, all lies, every word of it! Yet, in spite of himself, from time to time, he liked to reread it. He fancied this was because of the sardonic pleasure its superlative phrases gave him, ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... rare indeed for Miss Barfoot to be moved to rhapsody. Again Rhoda nodded, and then they laughed together, with joyous confidence in themselves ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing

... to know him; nor to watch his dainty and graceful ways as he went about the daily duties of food-hunting, singing, and driving off marauders, which occupied his hours from dawn to late evening, and left him spirit enough for many a midnight rhapsody. It was in his domestic relations that I desired to see him,—the wooing of the bride and building the nest, the training of mocking-bird babies and starting them in the world; and no loitering and dreaming in the pine grove, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... Mr. Carlyle did not suffer it. He not only retained that hand, but took the other also, and spoke, now the ice was broken, eloquent words of love. Not unmeaning phrases of rhapsody, about hearts and darts and dying for her, such as somebody else might have given utterance to, but earnest-hearted words of deep tenderness, calculated to win upon the mind's good sense, as well as upon the ear and heart; and it may be that, had her imagination not been filled ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood

... which is one of the most essential peculiarities of the dramas of Shakespeare for instance, was foreign to ancient poetry; a person unacquainted with the cycle of Greek legend would fail to discover the background and often even the ordinary meaning of every rhapsody and every tragedy. If the Roman public of this period was in some degree familiar, as the comedies of Plautus show, with the Homeric poems and the legends of Herakles, and was acquainted with at least the more generally current of the other myths,(71) ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... conclusion of the doctor's rhapsody may have been is not known; for, stamping too energetically upon the seaweed on the edge of the rock, his foot slipped, and he disappeared, with the perpendicular descent and velocity of a deep-sea lead, into ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat



Words linked to "Rhapsody" :   rhapsodise, epic poem, epic, heroic poem, epos



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