"Chanting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bath what Pollyooly believed to be poetry; and it is improbable that an observant child of twelve, who had passed the seven standards at Muttle Deeping school, could have been mistaken in a matter of that kind. At any rate his chanting was rhythmical. The habit may have borne witness to the goodness of his conscience, or it may not (it may merely have been a by-product of an excellent digestion), but that morning it seemed to her that he chanted more loudly and with a finer gusto ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... time to time why Don Jorge had not arrived. And messengers must have come running to Don Jorge, telling him the service was at the point of beginning, and he must have waved them away with a grave gesture of a long white hand, while in his mind the distant sound of chanting, the jingle of the silver bit of his roan horse stamping nervously where he was tied to a twined Moorish column, memories of cavalcades filing with braying of trumpets and flutter of crimson damask ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... Psalm-chanting came the shaven monks, within the camp of dread; Amidst his warriors, Norman Rou stood taller by the head. Out spoke the Frank Archbishop then, a priest devout and sage, "When peace and plenty wait thy word, what need of war and rage? Why waste a land as ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... boarding-schools, generally with a book in his hand, and perhaps another just peering from the orifice of a capacious back pocket; and at a certain season of the year he might be seen, dressed in white, before the altar of a certain small popish chapel, chanting from the breviary in very intelligible Latin, or perhaps reading from the desk in utterly unintelligible English. Such was my preceptor in the French and Italian tongues. "Exul sacerdos; vone banished esprit. I came into England twenty-five ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... sat in meditation before the sacred wall of the stone face, chanting the songs to the clouds and the yellow birds of the sun color, watching the pictured rock until the lines moved when his body swayed to the chant, and a living thing seemed before him—the accumulated faiths of all the devotees in that place ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... fallen on thy turban, and it is burning." The master straightway tore off his turban and cast it on the ground, and saw that it was burning. He blew out the fire on this side and on that, and took it in his hand, and said to the boy, "What time for chanting is this? Everything is good in its own place," and he ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston
... had felt just as she did now after her lover had for the first time clasped her to his heart, when, as night came on, she had sat by his side on the marble bench, while the Christian procession passed. She had taken the chanting train for the wandering souls of the dead and—how strange! No—she was not mistaken. She heard at this moment the selfsame strain which they had then sung so joyfully, in spite of its solemn mode. She did know ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... their labors with song, the burden of which, "Guadiana, Guadiana," fell often on the ear, while the sun-beams bleached the linen spread out on the banks of the stream, and tanned the faces of the industrious choir chanting its praise. ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... ink, wake us to life and beauty. How much longer are we to lie here, dusty in death? We have waited so patiently—have pity on us, raise us up from our silent tomb, and we will fly abroad through the whole earth, chanting your glory; yea, the world shall be filled to eternity with the echoes of our music and the splendour of ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... And broken, spent, He would call himself impertinent; Presumptuous; a tradesman; a nothing; driven To madness by the sight of Heaven. At other times he would take the things He had made, and winding them on strings, Hang garlands before her, and burn perfumes, Chanting strangely, while the fumes Wreathed and blotted the shadow face, As with a cloudy, nacreous lace. There were days when he wooed as a lover, sighed In tenderness, spoke to his bride, Urged her to patience, said his skill Should break the spell. A man's ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... glimpses of quaint villages clinging to the mountain-sides, and of ancient castles commanding beautiful views across fertile valleys. At one time they saw the roofs of a great stone monastery, hidden away among olive trees. They heard the music of its bells and caught faint echoes of the chanting of the monks. It was then that they remembered that it was ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... own dun that was given them, and it is a good place they had there, and a troop of young men, and great troops of horses and of greyhounds; and they had three sorts of music that comely kings liked to be listening to, the music of harps and of lutes, and the chanting of Trogain's son; and there were three great sounds, the tramping on the green, and the uproar of racing, and the lowing of cattle; and three other sounds, the grunting of good pigs with the fat ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... had been permitted to enter. Outside in the streets surged crowds of fur-capped people as far as the eye could reach, waving red banners and revolutionary emblems. Now and again a roar of voices chanting the Marseillaise would sweep back and forth over the throngs. Within the station the walls were banked with flowers and festooned with red bunting and inscriptions addressed to the returning heroine. However, this incident occurred later, already a ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... horses of the Sidhe, and with purple heather; and besides the tireless turf-laden donkeys, there were men in white and women in crimson flannel going towards the village. One woman sitting in a donkey-cart was chanting a song in Irish about a voyage across the sea; and when someone asked her if she was to try for a prize at the Feis, the Irish festival going on in the village, she only answered that she was 'lonesome after ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... somehow, with you; when twenty years are wasted, maybe," she answered sadly. "There's the first bell! I haven't a word yet of my rhetoric lesson," opening her book and chanting, "'Man, thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.' Are you going to Professor Simpson's class?" shutting it again. "I know the new dance"; and she began to execute it on the walk. The door of a house opposite ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... down and drew up from the water a small crystal, that burned through the darkness with a blue fire, and gave it to Noodle. 'Now I am your king, however far from you!' said Noodle. And they answered, chanting: ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... before thee, since thou didst first tune the instrument by the Holy Spirit, and then didst choose the psalm of praise to be played thereon." Most solemn and suggestive words these have always seemed: "The Father seeketh such to worship him." Amid all the repetition of forms and the chanting of liturgies, how earnestly the Most High searches after the spiritual worshiper, with a heart inwardly retired before God, with a spirit so sensitive to the hidden motions of the Holy Ghost that when the ...
— The Ministry of the Spirit • A. J. Gordon
... San Rocco. The funeral train is of ten or twenty facchini, wearing tunics of white, with caps and capes of red, and bearing the society's long, gilded candlesticks of wood with lighted tapers. Priests follow them chanting prayers, and then comes the bier,—with a gilt crown lying on the coffin, if the dead be a babe, to indicate the triumph of innocence. Formerly, hired mourners attended, and a candle, weighing a pound, was given to any one who chose to carry it in ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... be consecrated in solemn procession. The chimes pealed out quick and joyously, and soon a burst of banners and a cloud of incense issued from the great gate. All the pilgrims—nearly two thousand in number—thronged around the double line of chanting monks, and it was found necessary to inclose the latter in a hollow square, formed by a linked chain of hands. As the morning sun shone on the bare-headed multitude, the beauty of their unshorn hair struck me like a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... it spends itself upon the quiet bosom of the waters below; the love-sick birds that woo our beauteous nature in this, her bewitching costume, with their rich and rarest warblings, vie with one another in chanting from their ruffled throats their little tales of ecstasy and love, all teach us clearly, that out in the busy world there is no witchery ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... chief." When he heard his sentence, Leatherlips ate a hearty dinner, dressed himself in his finest clothes, painted his face, and at the hour fixed for his death walked from his lodge to his grave, chanting his death song while he went. Then as he knelt in prayer beside the shallow pit, one of ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... where I am staying, have still their complement of monks—in this temple, I am told, some three to four hundred. But neither here nor anywhere have I seen anything that suggests vitality in the religion. I entered one of the temples yesterday at dusk and watched the monks chanting and processing round a shrine from which loomed in the shadow a gigantic bronze-gold Buddha. They began to giggle like children at the entrance of the foreigner and never took their eyes off us. Later, individual monks came running round the shrines, beating a gong as ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... said, just loud enough to hear over the chanting of the dealers and the excited chatter of the dice players. Billy ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... church there is a sound of music. The roar of the wind, the roar of the camels, mingles with the chanting and drowns it. He cannot hear it any more. It is as if the desert is angry and wishes to kill the music. In the church your life ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... the gates of Antioch were thrown open, and the army marched forth in solemn and imposing procession. At the head walked the priests, bearing aloft the holy lance, and chanting, "Let the Lord arise and let His enemies be scattered." The army followed in twelve divisions, each led by one of the princes in such state as he could muster. Godfrey had given away his all and rode a horse borrowed from the rich Raymond. Many of the soldiers were without ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... was sitting in his place at church, at vesper service; his courtiers were about him, in their bright garments, and he himself was dressed in his royal robes. The choir was chanting the Latin service, and as the beautiful voices swelled louder, the king noticed one particular verse which seemed to be repeated again and again. He turned to a learned clerk at his side and asked what those words meant, for he ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... not have heard; I never heard him speak evil of any man." Take him when stricken down by an assassin, hear him say: "Let no man harm him; let the law take its course; good-bye to all; God's will be done," and in his last conscious moments chanting "Nearer my God to Thee," and you have one of the most touching stories of this old world. All honor to our martyred ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... the Meaning of the Word PROSODY? A. It is a Word borrowed from the Greek; which, in Latin, is rendered Accentus, and in English Accent. "Q. What do you mean by Accent? A. Accent originally signified a Modulation of the Voice, or chanting to a musical Instrument; but is now generally used to signify Due Pronunciatian, i.e. the pronouncing [of] a syllable according to its Quantity, (whether it be long or short,) with a stronger Force or Stress of Voice than the other ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... corner a long-suffering piano was taking cruel punishment at the hands of a flashily dressed, sharp-faced man of horsey type. Flanking him, two young women of the world, with that insouciance which appertains—in Limehouse—to sweet sixteen, were chanting shrilly to his accompaniment: both more than comfortably drunk. In the middle of the room assorted lawbreakers gathered round a table were playing fan-tan at the top of their lungs. At smaller tables men ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... office in all the confusion of those nights, with its dark corners hidden in shadow, where slept tired fighters weary of the fray, and its brightly-lighted patches, under the lamps, where the work of the night was being carried on. Some dozen voices, more or less musical, are chanting Anarchist war-songs, and the Inno di Caserio and the Marseillaise ring out through the open windows to the dormant or drunken denizens of Lysander Grove. The Reincarnation is patiently turning the wheel of the printing machine, and rolling out ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... with strips of gilded paper. Clouds of blue fragrant incense rolled up toward the roof from swinging censers, and the deep intonation of the gorgeously attired priest contrasted strangely with the high soprano chanting of the choir. The service of the Greek Church is more impressive, if possible, than that of the Romish; but as it is conducted in the old Slavonic language, it is almost wholly unintelligible. The priest is ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the right place, but the Coptic women began to talk to him and asked questions about me all the time I was looking down on the strange scene below. I believe they celebrate the ancient mysteries still. The clashing of cymbals, the chanting, a humming unlike any sound I ever heard, the strange yellow copes covered with stranger devices—it was wunderlich. At the end everyone went away, and I went down and took off my shoes to go and look at the church. ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... began early, about 5 P. M., and were indefinitely prolonged; for cigars are not supposed to interfere with the proper appreciation of Madeira, and the revelers here cherish the honest old English custom of chanting over their liquor. Closing my eyes now, so as to shut out the dingy drab walls of this my prison-chamber, I can call up one of those cheery scenes quite distinctly: I can hear the "Chief's" voice close at my ear, trolling forth the traditional ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... close against him during his moment of chanting, but, in the first moments that succeeded she felt the restless movement of the hand that held the finger-marked hog-pamphlet and caught the swift though involuntary flash of his eye to the clock on his desk that marked 11:25. Again she tried to hold him, although, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... but within all is firm and solid. The interior is vast, and nowhere softened by decoration, but the space is reduced by the huge bulk of the choir in the center of it; as we entered a fine echo mounted to the cathedral roof from the chanting and intoning within. When the service ended a tall figure in scarlet crossed rapidly toward the sacristy. It was of such imposing presence that we resolved at once it must be the figure of a cardinal, or of an archbishop at the least. But it proved to be one of the sacristans, and when we followed ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... The praying, chanting, and prostrating are at their height when the violet-robed figure of a bishop is caught sight of, tripping down a side-path leading from the town. Blessing any who chance to meet him on the way, chatting pleasantly with his companion, a portly gentleman wearing the red ribbon of the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... still open at eleven o'clock glistened with light. Up the road, at the butcher's just below the Plough public-house, a small crowd lingered, turning over scraps of meat, while the butcher himself, chanting "Lovely, lovely, lovely!" in a kind of ecstasy, plunged again into a fresh piece of meat the attractive legend, "Oh, mother, look! Three ha'pence a pound!" Just over the way, at the Supply Stores, ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Choral service, solemn chanting, Echoing round cathedrals holy— Can aught else on earth be wanting In heav'n's bliss to plunge us wholly? Let us great Cecilia honour In the praise we give unto them, And the merit ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Stewart had turned into a devil. He fired his gun at the padre's feet. He pushed me into a bench. Again he shot—right before my face. I—I nearly fainted. But I heard him cursing the padre—heard the padre praying or chanting—I didn't know what. Stewart tried to make me say things in Spanish. All at once he asked my name. I told him. He jerked at my veil. I took it off. Then he threw his gun down—pushed the padre out of the door. That was ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... the street. Four men of different ages are kneeling in the mud before a Madonna, whining out prayers. Presently, fifteen or twenty others come upon you, chanting a canticle to the glory of Mary. Perhaps you think they are yielding to a natural inspiration, and freely working out their salvation. I thought so myself, till I was told that they were paid fifteen-pence for thus edifying the bystanders. This comedy in ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... thought, that he had nothing to apprehend, the boy resumed his task, chanting, as he plied his knife with redoubled assiduity, the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Hindustan. The chants are really prayers to God for rain, for forgiveness of sins and for absolution from ingratitude for former bounties. One with a strong voice sings the recitative, and then the chorus breaks in with the words "Order, O Lord, the rain-cloud of thy mercy!" Thus chanting the company wanders from street to street till midnight and continues the practice nightly ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... voices strikes their ears, and through the street pass old men chanting, followed and answered by a troop of ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... to one side of me, with eyes on the old hag's and my hand held between her two, Maga began chanting in English. The fact that her voice was musical and low where the bag's had been high-pitched and rasping heightened ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... we described, and his low chanting of the negro woodcutter's chant. He knew that any who answered it must have lived the life he once lived in Louisiana, for he had never heard it since he had left there, nor any there hum it except those who knew the negroes ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... Familiarity with celestial personages was detestable to her, and she did her duty of saluting them in a courtly and reverent fashion. Westminster Abbey was her favourite church, with its dim light and shadowy distances; there in a carven stall, with choristers chanting in solemn rhythm, with the many-coloured glories of the painted windows repeating themselves on upspringing arch and clustering pillars, with the rich harmonies of the pealing organ throbbing up against screen ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... straight at me; and O old woman! it was not I that talked, nor my party. We were noiseless as mice. It was that woman over there in a Gothic bonnet, with a bunch of roses under the roof as big as a cabbage. Presently the great doors opened, and a procession of nuns marched in chanting their gibberish. Of course they wore the disguise of those abominable caps, with gray, uncouth dresses, the skirts taken up in front and pinned behind, after the manner of washerwomen. Yet there were faces among them on which the eye loved to linger,—some not too young for their years, some furtive ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... general thing the human race has a stupid hatred of trees. They embrace every chance to cut them down. They have no idea of their fitness for anything but firewood or fruit bearing. But a great cathedral elm, with shadowy aisles of boughs, its choir of whispering winds and chanting birds, its hush and solemnity and majestic grandeur, actually conquers the dull human race and asserts its leave to be in a manner to which all hearts respond; and so the great elms of New England have got to be regarded with a sort of pride as among her very few crown jewels, and the Pitkin ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... magnificent of all. It presents Christ in glory, thus suggesting the "Te Deum." Jesus sits enthroned with the angels and archangels, prophets, apostles and martyrs of the church in all ages bending in adoration before Him, while the heavenly choir are waving palms and chanting music in honor of Heaven's King. The smaller windows under the roof show the hierarchy of heaven indicating by music and dances the joy of the celestial world at the scenes of the Incarnation depicted below. Upon a bright, sunny day ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... Convent, two and two, The Prior chanting at their head, The monks went forth to shrive the sick, And give the hungry grave its dead,— Only Jerome, he went not forth, But hiding in his dusty nook, "Let come what will, I must illume The last ten pages of my Book!" He drew his stool before the desk, ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... lovingly of all he read. It is a poem I do not pretend to understand in detail, but I do feel its drift, and I can never read out its stately music, or even read it silently, without hearing his sonorous chanting. Many of his poems are like this poem in that you must content yourself with their general drift and not insist on understanding their every phrase. I suppose to the initiate mystic they are more definite, but I doubt whether ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... letter the effect of the "Orlando" on the people:—"There is no man of learning, no mechanic, no lad, no girl, no old man, who is satisfied to read the 'Orlando Furioso' once. This poem serves as the solace of the traveller, who fatigued on his journey deceives his lassitude by chanting some octaves of this poem. You may hear them sing these stanzas in the streets and in the fields every day." One would have expected that Ariosto would have been the favourite of the people, and Tasso of the critics. But in Venice the gondoliers, and others, sing passages which ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and more perfect parts of his music reach me; and through the general chorus of wrens and warblers I detect this sound rising pure and serene, as if a spirit from some remote height were slowly chanting a divine accompaniment. This song appeals to the sentiment of the beautiful in me, and suggests a serene religious beatitude as no other sound in nature does. It is perhaps more of an evening ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... the temple stands at the foot of a mountain, that we might well have believed we approached an altar devoted to the elder worship: through the open doorway and between the columns of the portico we could see the priests moving to and fro, and the voice of their chanting came out to us like the sound of hymns to some of the deities long disowned; and I remembered how Padre L—— had said to me in Venice, "Our blessed saints are only the old gods baptized and christened anew." Within as without, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... of sound such as I could hardly have believed possible. Who will say then that our dear France has lost her Faith? Who can believe it? Every one of these men joined in singing the hymn, and not one of them seemed ignorant of the Latin words. It was a magnificent choir, under a lofty vault, chanting with the fervour of absolute sincerity. There was not one discordant note, not one voice out of tune, to ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... suddenly across the court, the rich tone of some temple bell telling the twelfth hour. Instantly the witchcraft ends, like the wonder of some dream broken by a sound; the chanting ceases; the round dissolves in an outburst of happy laughter, and chatting, and softly-voweled callings of flower-names which are names of girls, and farewell cries of "Sayonara!" as dancers and ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... roads like a thing of life, and he lay back in the cushioned seats and closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the machinery, imagining what life might be for him, if he could rest like this when he was worn from overwork. It was like some great adventure in music, like a minstrel's chanting of heroic deeds; it was Nature with all her pageantry unrolled in a panorama before his eyes. And meantime Miss Lewis was chattering on about the play and its prospects; and about other plays and their prospects; and about the people at ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the race, whose skin was like the flower Of the spring dogwood, blasting his old sight; And that beholding them amidst his haunts, He called on Hah-wen-ne-yo to bear off His spirit to the happy hunting-grounds. Shrouding his face within his deer-skin robe, And chanting the low death-song of his tribe, He then with trembling footsteps left the hut And sought the hill-top; here he sat him down With his back placed within this hollowed tree, And fixing his dull eye upon the scene Of woods below him, rocked with guttural chant The livelong day, whilst plyed the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... drama opens with Brabantio flopping his dainties on the iron, chanting to himself a lyric in praise of their tender juices. Presently Othello enters and when Brabantio's back is turned he makes love to Desdemona—a handsome fellow, this Othello, with the manner of a hero and curled moustachios. Exit Othello to a nine o'clock, Ladd on Confusions. ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... of it, in that way, lies almost at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the original. This may be a great point; much perhaps has been lost in the Translation here. Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and meter, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and doting over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... rather than encounter this moving multitude; but at length I found my way to the Santa Croce, which presented a very different scene. The service was over; and a few persons were walking up and down the aisles, or kneeling at different altars. In a chapel on the other side of the cloisters, they were chanting the Via Crucis; and the blended voices swelled and floated round, then died away, then rose again, and at length sunk into silence. The evening was closing fast, the shadows of the heavy pillars grew darker and darker, the tapers round the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... the carriage, and the old hags, at the word of command from the old garrison rat, begin chanting: 'The Glory of our Lord in Zion the tongue of man cannot express. . .' A pretty scene, ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... investigate in detail the food and water supply. A hasty round of the schooner convinced him that she had at least a month's supply of food and water. Only one thought surged through his mind, and that was the awful necessity for haste. The anchor came in with a rush, the Kanaka boys chanting a song that sounded to Neils like a funeral dirge, and Neils went below and turned the gasoline engines wide open. The Maggie II swung around and with a long streak of opalescent foam trailing behind her swung down the ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... Eight young ladies of the most considerable families of the island, dressed in white, and bearing palms in their hands, supported the pall of their amiable companion, which was strewed with flowers. They were followed by a band of children chanting hymns, and by the governor, his field officers, all the principal inhabitants of the island, and an immense ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... pretty national dances are at last introduced; though these are never seen to such advantage as when the peasants perform them on a Saturday or Sunday evening to the monotonous strain of a viola, the musician himself taking part in the complicated dance, and all the men chanting the refrain. Nevertheless they add to the gayety of our genteel entertainment, and you may stay at the party as long as you have patience,—if till four in the morning, so much the better for your popularity; for, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... back to the hotel. People were holding umbrellas over their heads and plodding through the dust with seeming unconcern. At one corner a street singer was warbling, stopping frequently to cough the lava dust from his throat or shake it from his beloved mandolin. A procession of peasants passed, chanting slowly and solemnly a religious hymn. At the head of the column was borne aloft a gilded statuette of the Virgin, and although Uncle John did not know it, these simple folks were trusting in the sacred image to avert further ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... sun has not yet appeared above the hills, but the mist is rising gradually. The bell of the church in front of my window is tolling;—it ceases; and the pealing of the organ, with the chanting of the priests, comes distinct and clear upon my ear, as the notes of the bugle over the still water, from some dashing frigate in the Sound, beating off at sunset. How solemn and how beautiful is this early prayer! The sun is rising, the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... to find one's self among the historic places subsides; yet how often, as our horses' hoofs rang on the slippery stones, my thoughts went suddenly back to the scene when Saint Gregory passed over, chanting litanies, at the head of the whole populace, who formed one vast penitential procession, and saw the avenging angel alight on the mausoleum of Adrian and sheath his sword in sign that the plague was stayed; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... were so profound and overpowering that the noise of the streets outside, or of the stream of visitors, or of the workmen engaged on the statuary, made no impression. They were all belittled, lost, like the humming of flies. Even the afternoon services, the chanting, and the tremendous organ, were no interruption, and left me just as much alone as ever. They only served to set off the ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... grinned when they heard them, like a pair of augurs. If we conceive five or six Shakespearean comedies filled from end to end with ancient Pistols hallooing to "pampered jades of Asia," and Dr. Caiuses chanting of "a thousand vagrom posies," we may form some idea of Aristophanes's handling of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... was broad daylight, and all was quiet within, while without the birds were chanting their morning melodies. At first she could scarcely believe that the scene she had passed through was not the distempered imaginings of some frightful dream. But there, on the blood-stained floor beneath ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Stapleton if he got leave from a master. "But you said that Mr Merevale did not give you leave," said he. "Friend of my youth," I replied courteously, "you are perfectly correct. As always. Mr Merevale did not give me leave, but," I added suavely, "Mr Dacre did." And I came away, chanting hymns of triumph in a mellow baritone, and leaving him in a dead faint on the sofa. And the Bargee, who was present during the conflict, swiftly and silently vanished away, his morale considerably shattered. And that, my gentle Welch,' concluded ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... arise, The ground she trod on, kist her heele likewise. Tread where she would, faire Thisbe could not misse, For euery grasse would rob her of a kisse. And more the boughs wold bend, for ioy to meet her And chanting birds, ...
— Seven Minor Epics of the English Renaissance (1596-1624) • Dunstan Gale
... the cult of certain divinities, especially Dionysos and Apollo. By the term choral song we are not to understand anything resembling our singing of a chorus in parts. There was no part-singing in Greece, but merely a singing, or rather chanting, of national and patriotic songs in unison, accompanied by ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... will never believe what we shall have to tell her. Glass windows and hangings to sleeping chambers! I do not like it I am sure we shall never be able to sleep, closed up from the free air of heaven in this way: I shall be always waking, and fancying I am in the chapel at home, hearing Father Lucas chanting his matins. Besides, my father would blame me for letting you be made as tender as a Frank. I'll have out this precious window, ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... H.G. Wells, with his retorts, his experiments about him, his pots and kettles of humanity in a great stew of steam, half-hopeful, half-dismayed, mixing up his great, new, queer messes of human nature; and (when I could look up again) G.K. Chesterton, divinely swearing, chanting, gloriously contradicting, rolled lustily through the wide, sunny spaces of His Own Mind; and Bernard Shaw (all civilization trooping by), the eternal boy, on the eternal curbstone of the world, threw stones; and the Bishop of Birmingham ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... his city to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Over Granada, high against the bright sky, rose and floated the banners. Cannon, the big lombards, roared. Mars' music crashed out, then the trumpets ceased their crying and instead spread a mighty chanting. Te Deum Laudamus! ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... Tarwater camp-cooked and packed and sang. He blew across Chilcoot Pass, above timberline, in the first swirl of autumn snow. Those below, without firewood, on the bitter rim of Crater Lake, heard from the driving obscurity above them a weird voice chanting: ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced,—in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours,—but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... account of the wedding, with the church "banked with flowers," and the bridal couple preceded by choristers, chanting, he was as interested as if it had been his brother's marriage. He tried to picture Alice Yorke in her bridesmaid's dress, "with the old lace draped over it and the rosebuds festooned ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... three genuflections, and kisses it. All the clergy who are present take off their shoes, prostrate themselves, worship and kiss the cross in the order of their dignity. All the officers of the church, and all the people, follow in the same manner to adore it, while solemn music and chanting attends and completes the ceremony.' Thus a wooden board, made into the shape of a cross by some joiner, receives Divine honours. Talk not of heathen idols. Who can wonder that honest John Bunyan felt indignation, and exclaimed, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... raucous din breaks upon the waiting multitude, and immediately a responsive murmur rises from ten thousand voices. Those who hear know the meaning of the discordant noise. The "med'cine" men of the tribe are approaching, chanting airs which accord with their "med'cine," and serve at the same time to herald the coming of the great Sioux chief, Little ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of Northumbria rose. If Edward, the descendant of Cerdic, had been little to them, William, the descendant of Rollo, was still less. That French-speaking knights should expel them from their homes, French-chanting monks from their convents, because Edward had promised the crown of England to William, his foreign cousin, or because Harold Godwinsson of Wessex had sworn on the relics of all the saints to be William's man, was contrary to their common-sense ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... shed upon his page, and it is his habit to borrow mediaeval and Catholic imagery from his favorite Middle Ages, even when writing of American subjects. To him the clouds are hooded friars, that "tell their beads in drops of rain;" the midnight winds blowing through woods and mountain passes are chanting solemn masses for the repose of the dying year, and the strain ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... in a chafing dish, and put it at her feet; she then took a reed pen, some ink from a small bottle, and a pair of scissors, and wrote down several characters on a paper, singing, or rather chanting, words which were not intelligible to her young companion. Amine then threw frankincense and coriander seed into the chafing dish, which threw out a strong aromatic smoke; and desiring Pedro to sit down by her on a small stool, ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the trees came the sound of voices, a procession of monks chanting psalms. In the very neighbourhood of Apollo's temple a tomb had been built in honour of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... Paedagogia, Agricola's Elementa Pietatis, etc. The Brunswick Liturgy of 1528, drafted by Bugenhagen, prescribed that on Saturday evening and early on Sunday morning the chief parts of the Catechism be read in Latin in the churches "on both galleries, slowly, without chanting (sine tono), alternately (ummeschicht)." The Wittenberg Liturgy provided: "Before the early sermon on Sundays or on festival-days the boys in the choir, on both sides, shall read the entire Catechism in Latin, verse by verse, without ornamental ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... creeping over his eyes, but he was aware that the Eye had suddenly gone out. And out of the dark the priest was chanting. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... art with him) and Pickle is sewing on a button, and they all are talking, while elsewhere, chiefly in the street, the men are making up their packs for the morning's work that is sure to require them. And now comes in Bannister, chanting "Soupy, soupy, soupy!" It is time ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... the mountain, Up from the fountain, Ever it cometh, bright, sparkling and clear, From the Creator, our pathway to cheer. Nobly appearing, O'er cliffs careering, Pouring impetuously on to the sea, Chanting, unceasing, the song of the free. See how it flashes As onward it dashes Over the pebbly bed of the brook, Singing in every sequestered nook. Now gently falling, As if 't were calling Spirits of beauty from forest and dell To welcome it on to grotto and cell. Beauteous and bright ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... wheezy accordion in a Chinese cafe, and the howling of a dog, either struck by man or worsted in a fight. Where the more numerous lights of the one street shone red against the black background of forest, a drunken half-breed was chanting in half-Cree, half-French, the chorus of the caribou song. He heard the distant snapping of a whip, the yelping response of huskies, and a moment later a sledge and six dogs passed him so close that he was compelled to ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... the days of gentlemen adventurers in no-man's-land, in a word, to the workings of the great fur trading companies. Theirs were the trappers and runners, the Coureurs des Bois and Bois-Brules, who traversed the immense solitudes of the pathless west; theirs, the brigades of gay voyageurs chanting hilarious refrains in unison with the rhythmic sweep of paddle blades and following unknown streams until they had explored from St. Lawrence to MacKenzie River; and theirs, the merry lads of the north, blazing a track through the wilderness and leaving from Atlantic ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... say you spied on the camp?" Jack interrupted the sonorous, almost chanting flow of ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer
... moment of her departure approached, she expressed a wish to receive the last offices of religion; and a messenger was sent to a neighbouring monastery of Jesuits to request the attendance of a priest. One of the brotherhood soon after entered the little cell, and the nuns, who were chanting around her bed, retired at ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... ardent eyes on all sides cast delirious glances upon her, but her own eyes were always for One only, one whom she held by the hand. For she was leading the dance in some tempestuous orgy to the music of chanting voices, and the dance she led circled about a great and awful Figure on a throne, brooding over the scene through lurid vapours, while innumerable other wild faces and forms crowded furiously about her in the dance. But the one ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... cathedral, was always in the shadow thrown by that vast edifice, on which time had cast its dingy mantle, marked its furrows, and shed its chill humidity, its lichen, mosses, and rank herbs. The darkened dwelling was wrapped in silence, broken only by the bells, by the chanting of the offices heard through the windows of the church, by the call of the jackdaws nesting in the belfries. The region is a desert of stones, a solitude with a character of its own, an arid spot, which could only be inhabited ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... little birds do fall asleep again; For the deep silence of high golden noons; Silence of gloamings and the setting sun; Silence of moonlit nights and patterned glades; Silence of stars, magnificently still, Yet ever chanting their Creator's skill; For that high silence of Thine Open House, Dim-branching roof and lofty-pillared aisle, Where burdened hearts find rest in Thee awhile; Silence of friendship, telling more than words; Silence of hearts, close-knitting heart to heart Silence of joys too wonderful for words; ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... protracted eulogy and untiring reminiscence of person, habits, work, and success, that, after the decease of William H. Prescott, kept the great wave of current topics parted for weeks—as if another Red Sea were divided, and the spirit of the historian, lingering to the chanting of solemn requiems, should pass over it dry-shod! For the great historian this was indeed no excess of honor, because grand human natures are worthy of all our praises; but was there not a painful want of respect and requital to the equally ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... strange creatures. At times they are a quarter of a mile ahead. Soft echoes of their coarse chanting came down the confines of the gully, after the rapid had been passed, and in rounding a rocky promontory mid-stream, one would catch sight of them bending their bodies in pulling steadily against the current of the river. Occasionally one of these poor fellows slips; ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... late afternoon and the bottom lay below the sunshine steeped in a still transparent light, where every tint had its own pure value. The air was growing cool after a noon of blistering heat and from an unseen backwater frogs had already begun a hoarse, tentative chanting. ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... great, dim magnificence of the state chamber where he lay, and with the low, soft chanting of the chapel choir from afar echoing through the incensed air, she bent her haughty head down over his couch, and the marriage ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... 1840.—New Year's Day! The birth of the young year is ushered in by no remarkable signs of festivity. More ringing of bells, more chanting of mass, gayer dresses amongst the peasants in the streets, and more carriages passing along, and the ladies within rather more dressed than apparently they usually are, when they do not intend to pay visits. ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... magic prime, We needs must weep its early death. How pleasant from thy towers the chime Of bells, and sweet the incense breath That rose while we, who kept thy faith, Chanting our creed, and chanting bore Our offerings to ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... me on his knees; and in a low and whispering voice informed me they were at vespers. The stillness and gloom of the building—the last rays of the sun scarcely penetrating through its windows—the deep tones of the monks chanting the responses, which occasionally broke the silence, filled me with reverential emotions which I felt unwilling to disturb: it was necessary however to present my letter of introduction, and Frere ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... some such object, in his hand, and putting both hands behind his back, the friend began to bob his head and shoulders up and down in an idiotic fashion, at the same time chanting in a sing-song monotone, "Ho yo, yo ho, hi ya yoho!" for a considerable length of time, while Mozwa staked his blanket, a fine thick green one, purchased at Great Bear Lake. We forget the friend's stake, but it was probably supposed to be ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... them. I'm thinking that the Wastrel was one day a celebrated professional; and the women were partly the cause of his fall. Women! He is always chanting the praise of some discovery; sometimes it will be a native, often a white woman out of the stews. So it will be wise for Mrs. Spurlock to keep to the bungalow until the rogue goes back to Copeley's. Queer world. For every Eden, there will be a serpent; for every sheepfold, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... sound of music breaks in on the evening stillness, the sound of an organ responding to the touch of skilled fingers and blended with it the tones of women's voices. The nuns in a neighboring convent are chanting the evening office. The sound recalls the chapel at Saint Zita's, the orchard, the nuns, dear kind Reverend Mother. What peaceful, happy hours those were? Has she ever known real happiness since she quitted the quiet convent ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... attention to the beating of the big drum which was going on so briskly on the Teutonic Parnassus? At all events, there was no echo of such a noise in the "chambers of imagery" which contained Mr. Gordon Bottomley, or in Mr. W.H. Davies' wandering "songs of joy," or on "the great hills and solemn chanting seas" where Mr. John Drinkwater waited for the advent of beauty. And the guns of August 1914 found Mr. W.W. Gibson encompassed by "one dim, blue infinity of starry peace." There is a sort of German Georgian Poetry in existence; in time to come a comparison ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... and fleshy realities (as in dramatic works), but not when it combined with elder forms of eternal abstractions. Hence, he did not read, and did not like Shakspeare; the music was here too rapid and life-like: but he sympathized profoundly with the solemn cathedral chanting of Milton. An appeal to his sympathies which exacted quick changes in those sympathies he could not meet, but a more stationary key of solemnity he could. Indeed, this difference is illustrated daily. A long list can ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... but of all the grand region round about it; and Holmes's drawings, accompanying Dutton's report, are wonderfully good. Surely faithful and loving skill can go no further in putting the multitudinous decorated forms on paper. But the colors, the living, rejoicing colors, chanting morning and evening in chorus to heaven! Whose brush or pencil, however lovingly inspired, can give us these? And if paint is of no effect, what hope lies in pen-work? Only this: some may be incited by it to go and ...
— The Grand Canon of the Colorado • John Muir
... roadster swept up alongside, motor chanting triumphantly, running-board level with the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... least most of them were. I sat facing a triangular-shaped square, which was flanked on one of its faces by a row of shuttered private houses and on another by the principal church of the town, a fifteenth-century structure with outdoor shrines snuggled up under its eaves. Except for the chanting of the nuns and the braggadocio booming of a big cock-pigeon, which had flown down from the church tower to forage for spilt grain almost under my feet, the place was quiet. It was so quiet that when a little column of men turned into the head of the street which wound past the front ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... threw herself upon it, shrieking and tearing her hair, and could only be removed by main force: several other females, relatives of the deceased, were also assembled in a group hard by, and evinced all the external symptoms of extreme grief, chanting the death-song in a most lugubrious tone, the tears streaming down their cheeks, and beating their breasts. The men, however, even the brothers of the deceased, showed no emotion whatever, and as soon as the rites were ended, moved off the ground, ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... seeking remedies against the so-called "dust nuisance," which at times renders walking in our streets a penance, it may not be amiss to call to mind an ancient spell for the removal of particles of dust or cinders from the eyes. This consisted in chanting the ninety-first psalm thrice over water, which was then used as a ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... Porthos, "if I am not mistaken, we are going to have a representation now, for I think I heard something like chanting." ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... expressed their readiness to expend their lives in the important undertaking with which he had entrusted them. They then, mounting their horses, and accompanied by numerous nobles and gentlemen, as well as by a procession of priests and monks, with tapers in their hands, chanting a litany, to which a great concourse of people uttered responses, rode down to the harbour. The King went with them in his barge as they joined their several ships, bestowing on them his blessing, and earnestly praying that ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... born 1850, 322 Utah St., San Antonio, Texas. Eyesight is so poor someone must lead him to the store or to church. William kneels at his bedside each evening at five and says his prayers. In this ceremony he spends a half hour or more chanting one Negro spiritual ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... among them, and they greedily devoured it. Then the one who, judging from a certain deference paid him by the others, might be the chief, or leader, seated himself on a stone and sang in a singular kind of monotonous, chanting tone. The words, as interpreted by the gestures and expressions, seemed to be an improvisation concerning the strangers they had found upon the beach, and were evidently addressed to them. There was something curious in the character of this Fuegian song. Rather recitative than singing, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... On looking into the darkness they saw a sight like unto two full-moons, or huge targets, with some monstrous figure (unreadable in the MS.) between them. They thought this was nothing but two eyes, and that nowise narrow of face might he be who bore such torches. Next they heard a chanting of a monstrous kind and in a big voice. A lay there was sung of twelve staves, with the final ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... have fallen into a deep, lethargic sleep, for he never heard the distant strains of the organ and the melodious chanting of gruff voices. The strange, unquiet melody hovered over him in the little cell, following him as he glided away from earth upon the blessed wings of sleep, ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman |
