"Clangour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believers, and all the passion that is a sham fails to find one fool to buy it; when all the priests and politicians clap in vain together the brazen cymbals of their tongues, because their listeners will not hearken to brass clangour, nor accept it for the music of the spheres; when all the creeds, that feast and fatten upon the cowardice and selfishness of men, are driven out of hearth and home, and mart and temple, as impostors that ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... onrush of cloud hurtling across the heavens, with dazzle of lightning and clangour of thunder—had long since rolled up from India's coastline to her utmost hills; bringing new forms of torment to the patient plains; filling mountain and valley and water-courses innumerable with ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... House, youthful nights at Coster and Bial's music-hall, an insanely extravagant dinner at Sherry's on his thirtieth birthday, a difficulty once with an emissary of Pinkerton, the incredible plague of flies in summer. And during all those racing years of clangour and success in New York, the life of Bursley, self-sufficient and self-contained, had preserved its monotonous and slow stolidity. Bursley had become a museum to him; he entered it as he might have entered ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... deafened with the din of the great Kurkahs and Drums, and the Earth shook at the clangour of the Trumpets and Clarions. The shafts began to fall like the rain-drops of spring, and blood flowed till the field looked like the Oxus." (J. A. S. ser. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... genial gales the frozen air unbind, The screaming legions wheel, and mount the wind. Far in the sky they form their long array, And land and ocean stretch'd immense survey, Deep, deep beneath; and triumphing in pride, With clouds and winds commixed, innumerous ride; 'Tis wild obstreperous clangour all, and heaven Whirls, in tempestuous undulation driven. Nor less the alarm that shook the world below, Where marched in pomp of war the embattled foe; Where mannikins with haughty step advance, And grasp the shield, and couch the quivering lance; To right and left the lengthening lines ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... singing had ceased; there was no sound of music, and the bells had left off their clangour; while in place there came a low, dull, murmurous roar as of surf beating upon some rocky coast, a strange mingling of voices, hurrying foot-steps, indescribable, indistinct, and yet apparently expressive of excitement and the ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... colossal grandeur of the machinery employed; the appalling power of the forces called into action; the startling chiaro scuro of the furnaces; the Herculean activity of the 3500 "hands;" the dread pyrotechnic displays; the constant din and clangour—pshaw! the thing is beyond conception. "Why then," you will say, "attempt description?" Because, reader, of two evils we always choose the less. Description is better than nothing. If you cannot go and see and hear for yourself, there is ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... voice heard upon the present occasion than the whole line was in motion. A wild cry of joy from the advancing batallions rent the air, and was then lost in the shrill clangour of the bagpipes, as the sound of these, in their turn, was partially drowned by the heavy tread of so many men put at once into motion. The banners glittered and shook as they moved forward, and the horse hastened to occupy their station ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... a vulgar bull-terrier barking at a noble, sad-faced staghound. His foolish arguments against infidelity, drawn from Paley's Natural Theology, and tracts about the inspiration of the Bible, touched the sore-hearted unbelief of the man no nearer than the clangour of negro kettles affects the eclipse of the sun. Falconer stood watching his opportunity. Nor was the eager disputant long in affording him one. Socratic fashion, Falconer asked him a question, and was answered; followed ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... at once and ring the bell just outside his door." As the child departed to make the clangour, so much more delightful to his own ears than to those for whom it was ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... have gone farther than to see all Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey condensed in Rosicrucian fashion into a vial. In the Campo Santo they listened to a musical mass for the dead. In the Duomo they heard the Friar preach. And early in the morning their dreams were scattered by the harmonious clangour of the church bells. "I never was happy before in my life," wrote Mrs Browning. Her husband relieved her of all housekeeping anxieties. At two o'clock came a light dinner—perhaps thrushes and chianti—from the trattoria; at six appeared coffee and milk-rolls; at nine, when the pine-fire blazed, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the "Sweet-sounding," Sahadev on his Called"Gem-bedecked," and Kasi's Prince on his. Sikhandi on his car, Dhrishtadyumn, Virata, Satyaki the Unsubdued, Drupada, with his sons, (O Lord of Earth!) Long-armed Subhadra's children, all blew loud, So that the clangour shook their foemen's hearts, With quaking earth and ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... of the battle, wedged in the heart of the Shield-ring. He heard the shouts of the enemy, and the clangour of blows, and the sharp intake of breath, but chiefly he heard the beating of his own heart. The ring swayed and moved as it gave before the onset or pressed to an attack of its own, and Biorn found himself stumbling over the dead. "I am Biorn, and my father is King," he repeated to himself, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... balls had struck the bell with a resounding din the whole square was in commotion. A miracle was evidently in progress or the campanile was bewitched. People began to run hither and thither; all the soldiers forming the escort gaped open-mouthed at the steeple as the clangour continued. As soon as the last shot had been fired I looked down into the square and saw all this, and I saw that the prisoners were attempting to escape, and in more than one instance had succeeded, for the soldiers began to scatter in pursuit, and the country people ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... of grating chains and rush of air Awoke the sleeping page From frightful dreams. A voice he heard. Alas! 'twas fierce with rage, While on his sight there flashed the fitful gleams Of warders' arms. In haste they clangour down the stair. ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... laureate laurels, or bays, or palms, In these red, Radical, revelling, riotous times, They should be the true bard's, though mid-age calms His revolutionary fierce rolling rhymes, Fulfilled with clamour and clangour and storm of—psalms ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... green common, with the soldiers about it; Shooter's Hill, with its out-look over Kent and down the valley of the Thames; the river busy with shipping, and the royal craft loading and unloading their armaments at the dockyard wharves. He liked the clangour of the Arsenal smithy where he had first learned his art, and all the busy industry of the place. It was natural, therefore, that, being proud of his early connection with Woolwich, he should wish to lie ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... was rising Count Hannibal had said no more than the truth. A new mob had a minute before burst from the eastward into the Rue St. Honore; and the roar of its thousand voices swelled louder than the importunate clangour of the bells. Behind its moving masses the dawn of a new day—Sunday, the 24th of August, the feast of St. Bartholomew—was breaking over the Bastille, as if to aid the crowd in its cruel work. The gabled streets, the lanes, and gothic courts, the stifling wynds, where the work awaited ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... position, while listening to the inspiriting clangour of the trumpets, the clattering of arms, and the trampling and neighing of steeds, Madame Bonaventure could scrutinize the deportment of each knight as he issued from the lofty arch of the Holbein Gate, and rode slowly past her. She had ample time to count the number of his attendants before he ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... they reach thee in their anger: Fire and smoke and hellish clangour Are around thee, thou world's wonder! Death is in thy walls and under. Now the meeting steel first clashes, Downward then the ladder crashes, 90 With its iron load all gleaming, Lying at its foot blaspheming! Up again! for every warrior Slain, another climbs the barrier. Thicker grows ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... clarion sounds, With rapid clangour hurried far: Each echoing dell the note resounds— But when return the sons of war! Thou, born of stern necessity, Dull peace! the desert yields to thee, And ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... as the dark, inchoate eyes turned to him, there passed through Gerald's bowels a burning stroke of revolt, that seemed to resound through his whole being, threatening to break his mind with its clangour, and making ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... thunder that strikes dumb the sea's own chimes, Began the bellowing of the bull-voiced mimes, Terrible; firs bowed down as briars or palms Even at the breathless blast as of a breeze Fulfilled with clamour and clangour and storms of psalms; Red hands rent up the roots of old-world trees, Thick flames of torches tossed as tumbling seas Made mad the moonless and infuriate air That, ravening, revelled in the riotous hair And raiment ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the trailing fragrance of arbutus hung over wet hollows along the hills; and at night, high in the starlight, the thrilling clangour of wild geese rang out—the truest sky-music of the North among all the magic folk-songs ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... bell a second time, on this occasion with an irritable force that produced clangour enough, one would have thought, to awaken the dead. It served, at all events, to arouse the living, for presently heavy footsteps could be heard descending the stairs, and, finally, a middle-aged maidservant, whose cap had ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... smell that once learnt can never be forgotten—a smell pregnant with memories. As it invades the nostrils the doors of a dreadful past fly open. The white mist hanging over the sunken road, the clangour of beaten shell cases ringing out alarm, the whistle of the warning rockets and the noise of men choking in the ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... seek counsel of the oracle of Ammon, Lucan sometimes touches a point where he challenges comparison with his master. In these passages, without any delicacy of modulation, with a limited range of rhythm, his verse has a metallic clangour that stirs the blood like a trumpet-note. But his range of ideas is as limited as that of his rhythms; and the thought is not sustained by any basis of character. His fierce republicanism sits side by side with flattery of the ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Shooter's Hill, with its wide look-out over Kent and down the valley of the Thames; the river busy with shipping; the Dockyard wharf, with the royal craft loading and unloading their armaments. He liked the clangour of the arsenal smithy, where he had first learned his art; and all the busy industry of the place. It was natural, therefore, that being so proud of his early connection with Woolwich he should wish his remains to be laid ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... ascetic, lightning-smitten man emerging in the glory of apparent godhead;—the anguish of the Magdalen above her martyred God;—the solemn silence of Christ before the throne of Pilate;—the rushing of the wings of Seraphim, and the clangour of the trumpet that awakes the dead;—these are the soul-stirring themes that Tintoretto handles ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... and with harp, Though terrible yet mirthful in their mood, Rushed to their sport. Who mocked their hope that day? Did Angels help the just? Their falling blood, Say, leaped it up once more, each drop a man Their phalanx to replenish? Backward driven, Again that multitudinous foe returned With clangour dire; futile, again fell back Down dashed, like hailstone showers from palace halls Where princes feast secure. Astonishment Smote them at last. Through all those serried ranks, Compact so late, sudden confusions ran Like lines divergent through a film of ice Stamped on by armed ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... and, when the ticking clock hollowly boomed the hour of one, I almost leapt out of my chair, so highly strung were my nerves, and so appallingly did the sudden clangour beat upon them. Smith, like a man of stone, showed no sign. He was capable of so subduing his constitutionally high-strung temperament, at times, that temporarily he became immune from human dreads. On ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... Odes Drayton shows to the fullest extent his metrical versatility: he touches the Skeltonic metre, the long ten-syllabled line of the Sacrifice to Apollo; and ascends from the smooth and melodious rhythms of the New Year through the inspiring harp-tones of the Virginian Voyage to the clangour and swing of the Ballad of Agincourt. His grammar is possibly more distorted here than anywhere, but, as Mr. Elton says, 'these are the obstacles of any poet who uses measures of four or six syllables.' His tone throughout is rather that ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... remember that he gave any directions when he sprang, half asleep, out of the shanty. The roar of water had a different note in it, and the clangour of the iron sheet one of the men was pounding rang out harshly. A half-moon hung above the black pines, and dimly-seen men were flitting like shadows toward the waterside. They appeared to know what it was advisable to do, but they stopped just a moment ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... street of palaces, with its Moorish court-yards, its fountains and orange-trees; the women veiled like brides; the galley-slaves chained two and two; the processions of priests and friars; the everlasting clangour of bells; the babble of a strange tongue; the singular lightness and brightness of the climate—made, altogether, such a combination of wonders that we wandered about, the first day, in a kind of bewildered dream, like children at a fair. Before that week was ended, being tempted ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... his comrades, would they speak, And thus they fought; the iron clangour pierc'd The empty air, and brazen vault of Heav'n. But, from the fight withdrawn, Achilles' steeds Wept, as they heard how in the dust was laid Their charioteer, by Hector's murd'rous hand. Automedon, Diores' valiant ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... I knew how the day went, by the imperious clangour of midday and evening bells striking down upon the houses and the edge of the lake. Yet it did not occur to me to ask where these bells rang. Till at last my everyday trance was broken in upon, and I knew the ringing of the Church of ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence |
