"Harp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hung from an improvised canopy amid flowers and fruits. Comfortable seats with rugs and cushions for the women had been provided by Ibarra. Even the paddles and oars were decorated, while in the more profusely decorated banka were a harp, guitars, accordions, and a trumpet made from a carabao horn. In the other banka fires burned on the clay kalanes for preparing refreshments of tea, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... you harp on my age so?... If I am old enough to be your father, it doesn't follow that I'm too old ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... to prepare for death. She was cut off "in her sins." But her murderer had three weeks to prepare for his freehold in New Jerusalem. He qualified himself for a place with the sore-legged Lazarus. He dwells in the presence of the Lamb. He drinks of the river of life. He twangs his hallelujah harp and blows his hallelujah trumpet. Maybe he looks over the battlements and sees Kate Dennis in Hades. The murderer in heaven, and the victim in hell! Nay more. It has been held that the bliss of the saved will be heightened by witnessing the tortures of the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... not condescend to any such subterfuges. She sat quite still doing nothing, looking very much as she had looked for the last forty years. Her harp stood on one side of the fireplace, and Miss Roberta's guitar hung by a faded blue ribbon from a ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... of T'ai and Ch'in And Wei and Cheng1 Gladden the feasters, and old songs are sung: The "Rider's Song" that once Fu-hsi, the ancient monarch, made; And the harp-songs of Ch'u. Then after prelude from the flutes of Chao The ballad-singer's voice rises alone. O Soul come back to ...
— More Translations from the Chinese • Various
... had been a barrister, and added legal lore to Mr. Besant's varied and accurate literary equipment. The brilliant series of novels that followed includes 'Ready-Money Morti-boy,' 'My Little Girl,' 'With Harp and Crown,' 'The Golden Butterfly,' 'The Seamy Side,' and 'The Chaplain of the Fleet.' The latter story, that of an innocent young country girl left to the guardianship of her uncle, chaplain of the Fleet prison, by the death of her father, is delicately and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... of Anna Seward, her sister Sarah, and herself. It was originally placed in the north transept, but is now in the north aisle of the nave. There is a representation of the poetess mourning her relations, while her harp hangs, neglected, on ...
— Anna Seward - and Classic Lichfield • Stapleton Martin
... inventor. di vi'sor, a term in Arithmetic. lin'e a ment, a feature. lin'i ment, an ointment. def'er ence, respect. prin'ci pal, chief dif'fer ence, variation. prin'ci ple, rule of action. in gen'u ous, open; free. li'ar, one who tells lies. in gen'ious, having skill. lyre, a kind of harp. ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... laws?' In the first place, there were laws about music, and the music was of various kinds: there was one kind which consisted of hymns, another of lamentations; there was also the paean and the dithyramb, and the so-called 'laws' (nomoi) or strains, which were played upon the harp. The regulation of such matters was not left to the whistling and clapping of the crowd; there was silence while the judges decided, and the boys, and the audience in general, were kept in order by raps of a stick. But after a while there arose a new race of poets, men of genius certainly, however ...
— Laws • Plato
... nigh To Pallas' ear, lest others should his words Witness, the blue-eyed Goddess thus bespake. My inmate and my friend! far from my lips Be ev'ry word that might displease thine ear! The song—the harp,—what can they less than charm 200 These wantons? who the bread unpurchased eat Of one whose bones on yonder continent Lie mould'ring, drench'd by all the show'rs of heaven, Or roll at random in the billowy deep. Ah! ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... gentleness, bowed, and closed it upon me. As I stood near the threshold, the last low tones of some plaintive and soothing melody, sung in a tone much more subdued than that of common conversation, died faintly away to the vibrating of a chord of the harp; and a youthful figure, bathed in a misty light from the window recess, rose, and moving silently across the room, without once casting her eyes upon myself, disappeared through a door parallel to the one by ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... a little with the bow, and oh! strange and dreadful was the music that came from its string beneath the touch of his gloved fingers. It sang like a harp and wailed like a woman, so fearfully indeed that the lad Day, who all this while stood by aghast, stopped his ears with his fingers, and Hugh groaned. Then this awful archer swiftly set ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... from the cathedral organ and harp, and one may hear music of every type, from the solemn, stately harmonies of the German choral, the crashing thunders of Bach's fugues and Passion music, to the light oratorios, and duets and solos ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... band of his nose-guard snapped harshly as he plucked at it, playing a song of hatred on that hard little harp. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... from that shame, and clothed you and gave you a home? Was it not I who gave you a name and procured you consideration and respect by making you my singer and companion, and allowing you to play upon the harp at my improvisations? How has not all Rome admired you when you sang the canzones I wrote for you, thereby procuring you honor and respectability, and making you a popular man from a low beggar? Go, you cannot leave me, for you are my creature, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... the flag of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant and the Montserratian coat of arms centered in the outer half of the flag; the coat of arms features a woman standing beside a yellow harp with her ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... With his rude fingers dash you on the face, And double-dye your coral lips with blood? Hath he not torn those gold wires from your head, Wherewith Apollo would have strung his harp, And kept them to play music to the gods? Hath he not beat you, and with his rude fists Upon that crimson temperature of your cheeks Laid a lead colour with ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... platform behind the reredos; between them stands an oak altar, the gift of A. N. Welby Pugin in 1831. Above the altar in the central compartment Jesse lies asleep, on the left hand David plays upon his harp, on the right sits Solomon deeply meditating. Above Jesse we have in one carving an amalgamated representation of the birth of Christ and the visit of the Wise Men. On the left hand sits the Virgin Mary with her Child, fully clothed in a long garment, not wrapped ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... with that, he lays his response, 'Thy face, Lord, will I seek.' The completeness and swiftness of his answer could not be more vividly expressed. To hear was to obey: as soon as God's merciful call sounded, the Psalmist's heart responded, like a harp-string thrilled into music by the vibration of another tuned to the same note. Without hesitation, and in entire correspondence with the call, was his response. So swiftly, completely, resolutely should we respond to God's voice, and our ready 'I will' should ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... restaurants or the theater, and I know not what else. He could sing (a very fair baritone), play the piano, cornet, flute, banjo, mandolin and guitar, but always insisted that his favorite instruments were the jews'-harp, the French harp (mouth organ) and a comb with a piece of paper over it, against which he would blow with fierce energy, making the most outrageous sounds, until stopped. At any "party" he was always talking, jumping about, dancing, cooking something—fudge, ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... a lay brother, a tender of cattle at the Abbey of Whitby under the Abbess Hilda who founded it. Until somewhat spent in years he had never learnt any poems. Therefore at a feast, when all sang in turn, so soon as he saw the harp coming near him, he would rise and leave the table and go home. Once when he had gone thus from the feast to the stables, where he had night-charge of the beasts, as he yielded himself to sleep One stood over him ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... neighbourhood of Bremen and Muenster, translated into the old Norse language, and no doubt somewhat modified by the influence of Scandinavian legends on the mind of the translator. In its present form it is not a poem but a prose work, and though the flow of the ballad and the twang of the minstrel's harp still often make themselves felt even through the dull Latin translation of Johan Peringskiold, there are many chapters of absolutely unredeemed prose, full of genealogical details and the marches of armies, as dry as any history, though ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... like living in the scenes of a theatre—there was no talk but of love. All that everyone said or did referred to the great passion. The house was in the hands of decorators; the aroma of all kinds of delicious things to eat was in the air. There was a constant tinkling of the piano and harp. Snatches of song, ripples of laughter, young voices calling through the house and garden, light footsteps going everywhere, the flutter of pink and blue and white dresses, the snowy ribbons and massed ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of these taverns was unusually large and convenient. I entered, as a stranger, to look around me: and was instantly struck by the notes of the deepest-toned bass voice I had ever heard—accompanied by some rapidly executed passages upon the harp. These ceased—and the softer strains of a young female voice succeeded. Yonder was a master singer[1]—as I deemed him—somewhat stooping from age; with white hairs, but with a countenance strongly characteristic of intellectual energy of some kind. He was sitting ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... creation around, the slight, frail temple for God's praise drew me to its welcome and peaceful embrace. As I approached it, the tolling of the bell struck on my ear in a touch of gladder tidings than I had received from all the melody of the great wind-harp of the trees, with all the soft accord of the tossing billows. Stroke after stroke, distinctly falling, seemed to bring to me the echoes of a million holy telegraphic towers all over the surface of the globe; ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various
... platter dripping in her hand, her eyes fixed; and so strong was the compulsion of her vision that to Caroline, vibrant as a wind harp to such suggestion, the splash of the water in the tin was the very tinkle of Undine's mystic stream and Kuehleborn, that wicked uncle-brook dashed in cold floods over the belated knight in the ...
— While Caroline Was Growing • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... court to amuse the company, were a despised race because of their ribaldry, obscenity, cowardice, and unabashed self-debasement; and their newfangled dances and piping were loathsome to the old court-poets, who accepted the harp alone as an instrument ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... tall and majestic; her walk and gestures were imperative and commanding. Sophia's form was slight and sylph-like; her every movement was characterized by exquisite modesty and grace, and her voice had all the liquid melody of the Aeolean harp. ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... would be glad enough to get you! Why, there is that fine young fellow, that midshipman staying here! Why couldn't you fancy him, now? And lots of others! Let alone taking up with a man older and uglier than your own fath—I mean, than the parson! You've no call to hang your harp on a willow tree, on account of the likes ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... himself to have reached entire perfection in the matter of killing otters. Various individuals have probably developed the power of turning somersets, of picking pockets, of playing on the piano, jew's-harp, banjo, and penny trumpet, of mental calculation in arithmetic, of insinuating evil about their neighbors without directly asserting anything, to a measure as great as is possible to man. Long practice ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... the Bible as history, and it is the greatest of all histories, the stringed instrument is of very ancient date. It is recorded that the ambassadors who came to the court of Saul played upon their nebels, and that David, the sweet singer of Israel, wooed the king from his sadness by singing to his harp. We must go back to the civilization of ancient Egypt, more than five hundred years before that morning nearly two thousand years ago when, it is written, the angelic choir chanted above the historic manger the glorious message, "Peace on ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... his own mother died in travail with him, they do say, who has a little house, beyond that lump of a mountain, above all the others, we see by daylight; he has been in England, and is a strange one for music. He owes (owns, possesses,) a beautiful harp—beautiful! The Lord knows, some do say, that's all he owes in the world, so (except) his coracle and the salmon he takes, and what young people do give him at weddings and biddings, where he goes to play: and what's that to keep a wife? Poor Davy Telynwr! Yet, by my soul, we all say ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... point. The ancient seat of the Counts of W. was really very gloomy; in fact it created a sinister, uncomfortable feeling. The walls, which were crumbling away here and there, and which were covered with dark ivy; the round towers, which harbored jackdaws, owls, and hawks; the AEolian harp, which complained and sighed and wept in the wind; the stones in the castle yard, which were overgrown with grass; the cloisters, in which every footstep re-echoed; the great ancestral portraits which hung on the walls, coated as it were with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... he'll say that it's cut either too short or too long. Then he'll insist, while all the billions wait, on draping the shroud in the finest Greek or Roman toga style, before he marches up to his place on the golden cloud and receives his harp." ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... kettle, or the frying-pan, or gridiron, would be wanted. They rubbed their eyes grievously, and spun round three times, if time had brought or left them the power so to spin; and they pulled an Irish halfpenny, with the harp on, from their pockets, and moistened it with saliva—which in English means spat on it—and then threw it into the pocket on the other side of body. But none of these accredited appeals to heaven put a speck upon the sea where the boats ought to have been, or cast upon the clouds ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... world that moves from light to dark, from heat to cold, from summer to winter. On the crest to-day, the hero is in the trough to-morrow. Moses, yesterday a deserted slave child, to-day adopted by a king's daughter; David, but yesterday a shepherd boy with his harp, and to-day dwelling in the King's palace; men yesterday possessed of plenty, to-day passing into penury—these illustrate the extremes of life. These contrasts are as striking as those we find on the sunny ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... party passed down two narrow corridors. The first was empty, but at the head of the second stood a peasant sentry, who started off at the sight of them, yelling loudly to his comrades. "Stop him, or we are undone!" cried Du Guesclin, and had started to run, when Aylward's great war-bow twanged like a harp-string, and the man fell forward upon his face, with twitching limbs and clutching fingers. Within five paces of where he lay a narrow and little-used door led out into the bailey. From beyond it came such a Babel of hooting and screaming, horrible oaths and yet more horrible ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... verge of a precipitous rock on the south-east corner of the town. Its walls are triangular in shape, being said to resemble a Welsh harp; they are fifteen feet thick, and are strengthened by twenty-one towers. The most striking portion is Queen Eleanor's Tower; the most curious is the Fragment Tower. Two centuries ago some of the inhabitants, searching for slate, undermined it, when a portion fell, leaving a perfect ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... bards. In the year 1568, a session was held at Caerwys by the special command of Queen Elizabeth, and regular degrees in vocal and instrumental music were conferred on fifty-five minstrels. The prize (a silver harp) was adjudged by the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... of rhyme; Tales of the framing of all things and the entering in of time From the halls of the outer heaven; so near they knew the door. Wherefore uprose a sea-king, and his hands that loved the oar Now dealt with the rippling harp-gold, and he sang of the shaping of earth, And how the stars were lighted, and where the winds had birth, And the gleam of the first of summers on the yet untrodden grass. But e'en as men's hearts were hearkening some heard the thunder pass O'er the cloudless noontide heaven; ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... the drawling quality of his voice which sounded as mellow as though someone had struck a chord upon a harp, surprised them out of an ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... Bragi was born in the stalactite-hung cave where Odin had won Gunlod's affections, the dwarfs presented him with a magical golden harp, and, setting him on one of their own vessels, they sent him out into the wide world. As the boat gently passed out of subterranean darkness, and floated over the threshold of Nain, the realm of the dwarf of death, Bragi, the fair and immaculate young ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... symbolism was explained to her. "That globe on which the figure of Hope sits," Miss Heath had said, "is meant to represent the world. Hope is blindfolded in order more effectually to shut out the sights which might distract her. See the harp in her hand, observe her rapt attitude— she is listening to melody— she hears, she rejoices, and yet the harp out of which she makes music only possesses one string— all the rest are broken." Miss ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... them were beginning to assume other forms besides the religious. Facts having like implications might be cited from the histories of later times and peoples; as the practices of our own early minstrels, who sang to the harp heroic narratives versified by themselves to music of their own composition: thus uniting the now separate offices of poet, composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist. But, without further illustration, the common origin and gradual differentiation of Dancing, Poetry, ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... appeal to him on the best means of devising grates, curing smoky chimneys, warming their houses, and obtaining fast colours. I can speak from experience of his teaching me how to make a dulcimer, and improve a Jew's harp." ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... our common father and mother, Adam and Eve; yet we are not told that Noah (he was six hundred years old when he went into the Ark) and his family were savages. In the 4th chapter, 21st verse of Genesis, of Jubal-Cain, we learn that "He was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ"; and in the following verse, Tubal-Cain is described as "An instructor of every artificer ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... again. There was a feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. They lay with their hearts in the grip of an intense anguish. The wind came through the tree fiercer and fiercer. All the chords of the great harp hummed, whistled, and shrieked. And then came the horror of the sudden silence, silence everywhere, outside and downstairs. What was it? Was it a silence of blood? ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... and unstable character, and was moved to ardent vows of repentance; but, alone with Maud, her confidante and admirer, she was wont to cast a kindly glamour of romance over her own delinquencies. "It's my heart," she would sigh pathetically. "My heart is so sensitive. It's like an Aeolian harp, Maud, upon which every passing breeze plays its melody. I'm a creature of sensibility!" And she rolled her fine eyes to the ceiling, the while Maud snorted, being afflicted with adenoids, and wrinkled her brows in the effort to put her fingers on the weak spot in ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold The boy stood on the burning deck The breaking waves dashed high The bride cam' out o' the byre The deil cam' fiddlin' thro' the toun The feathered songster chanticleer The fountains mingle with the river The glories of our blood and state The harp that once through Tara's halls The King sits in Dunfermline town The laird o' Cockpen, he's proud an' he 's great The lawns were dry in Euston park The minstrel boy to the war is gone There be none of Beauty's daughters There came to the beach a poor exile ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... here in solitude listening to the music of one of Nature's mighty harp-strings. Her grand symphonies peal forth through the endless ages of the universe, now in the tumultuous whirl of busy life, now in the stiffening coldness of death, as in Chopin's Funeral March; and we—we ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... the porch, beginning, 'Praise me not,'" I whispered: and her sweet and plaintive tone Rose, low and tender, as if she had caught From some sad passing breeze, and made her own, The echo of the wind-harp's sighing strain, Or the soft ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to all parts of the world, 100 Wherever in song I sought to tell Where I knew under heavens the noblest of queens, Golden-adorned, giving forth treasures. Then in company with Scilling, in clear ringing voice 'Fore our beloved lord I uplifted my song; 105 Loudly the harp in harmony sounded; Then many men with minds discerning Spoke of our lay in unsparing praise, That they never had heard a nobler song. Then I roamed through all the realm of the Goths; 110 Unceasing I sought the surest of friends, The ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... vanquishment, come, O Desire, Desire! Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of love! Make of my heart an Israfel burning above, A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer! Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... THE HARP, a tavern near Drury Lane, was a favourite resort of the Elder KEAN, and in 1841 had a club-room divided into four wards: Gin Ward, Poverty Ward, Insanity Ward, and Suicide Ward, the walls of which were appropriately illustrated, and by no mean hand. The others ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... was a feast miles away. The players seemed to enjoy it as much as the listeners, and they would keep at it for hours at a time, as long as their bodily strength lasted. Girls from six years of age learn to play the harp almost by instinct, and college girls quickly learn the piano. There are no native composers—they are but imitators. There is an absence of sentimental feeling in the execution of set music (which is all foreign), and this is the only ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... find a great inclination towards her Majesty, joined notwithstanding with a kind of coldness. They allege that matters of such importance are to be maturely and thoroughly pondered, while some of them harp upon the old string, as if her Majesty, for the security of her own estate, was to have the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon it. "Or even," said he, "if you was helped to knocking her up a new chain for the front door,—or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws for general use,—or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork when she took her muffins,—or a gridiron when she ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... tell you there is no such thing as damnation. It's a bogey invented by priests to enchain mankind. But if there is and if that muddle-headed old gentleman you call God really exists and if he's a just God, why then let him damn me and let him give you your harp and your halo while I burn for both. Essie, my mad foolish frightened Essie, can't you understand that if you give me up for this God of yours you'll drive me to murder. If I must marry you to hold you, why then I'll kill that cursed wife of mine. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... is a "harp of a thousand strings," which are intended to harmonize. If one of them is out of tune, it is likely to cause discord throughout, while to tune up one helps the ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... rejection of the doctrine of inspiration in that elevated sense which it is the glory of the American church to entertain, there were great numbers who had become as captivated with Schleiermacher's word, feeling, as if it had been a harp-note from heaven. The people had thought so little about their own hearts within the last half century that they seemed to have forgotten their stewardship of the treasure. The whole land had been converted into a colossal thinking machine. And when the German ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... hull. Our canvas was now dragging at the spars and sheets like so many teams of cart-horses, the delicate blue shadows coming and going upon the cream- white surfaces as the ship rolled with the regularity of a swinging pendulum. Every inch of our running gear was as taut as a harp-string, and through it the wind piped and sang as though the whole ship had been one gigantic musical instrument; while over all arched the blue dome of an absolutely cloudless sky, in the very zenith of which blazed ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... c. The harp has always been considered one of the most pleasing and perfect of musical instruments. Here the skilled performer has absolutely free scope for his genius, because his fingers can pluck the strings at will and hence regulate the overtones, and his ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... surrounded the Temple. Great gusts of wind came roaring through the pine-trees of the grove, rushed onwards, striking the sacred pile, shrieking and crying with many-sounding voices around the marble pillars, until the mighty Temple was as a great harp on which the storm-winds played a solemn ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... physical exercise. In England I did the roughest sort of farmwork. I'm stronger than I look. I think I'd rather play one of those rat-tat-tat instruments than—than a harp in New Jerusalem." ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... face as it changed in phosphorescent light. The features lifted themselves with firm nobility, expressing an archangel's beauty. Sainte-Helene's lips parted, and above the patter of the reciting Recollet the watchers were startled by one note like the sigh of a wind-harp. ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the aged Phoenix, carefully instructed by Nestor—set forth on their embassy. As they neared the tents of the Myrmidons their ears were struck by the notes of a silver harp touched by Achilles to solace him in his loneliness. His friend Patroclus sat beside him in silence. Achilles and Patroclus greeted the messengers warmly, mingled the pure wine, and spread a feast for them. This over, Ulysses, ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... jaunting-cars. I don't know just exactly what they are, but Ireland has all there are, anyway. They've a lot of great actors, and a few singers, and there never was a sweeter poet than one of theirs. You should hear my father recite 'Dear Harp of My Country.' He does it ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... "What dost thou see in thy beloved but a band of musicians in an armed camp?"[36] Through suffering, your life has in truth become a battle-field, and there must be a band of musicians, so you shall be the little harp of Jesus. But no concert is complete without singing, and if Jesus plays, must not Celine make melody with her voice? When the music is plaintive, she will sing the songs of exile; when the music is gay, she will lilt the airs of her Heavenly ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... think how dull a wedding feast would be without any music, for my father has no players. Therefore, dear friend, ride off, I entreat you, through thrice nine lands, to the thirtieth kingdom, in the domain of the deathless Kashtshei, and win from him the Self-playing Harp; it plays all tunes so wonderfully that every one is bound to listen to it, and it is beyond price: this ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... Mr. Delville's arm, the envied object of many a young heart there; and when seated at the harp, her clear, unaffected voice rose in strains of thrilling melody. General Delville was at her side, listening with earnest attention, and turning the leaves of her music with all the grace of a more ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... together. And Roxana, with an approving nod from her brother, arose and crossed the tent where hung a simple harp. ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, "Good! and ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... near, but no school. Yet Josephine learned to read and write. She sang with the negroes and danced and swam and played leap-frog. When she was nine years old, her aunt told her she must not play leap-frog any more, but she should learn to embroider and to play the harp and read poetry. Then she would grow up and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... hung upon her hands Heavy with burdened love. The music hushed. Deep in the mystery of her steady eyes Lingered the secret of the world, and then Laughter and light came dancing from her smile. Her fingers fluttered on the harp of love, And every chord uttered itself again Within some dusky heart. The earth was still. The warm night air was strong with heavy scent Of oil upon the dancers and the flowers That decked their breasts and hair. Malua's soul Fainted beneath the load of so much love, And ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... oblong sala with a banquette running all round it. Upon this the dancers seated themselves, drew out their husk cigarettes, chatted, and smoked, during the intervals of the dance. In one corner half a dozen sons of Orpheus twanged away upon harp, guitar, and bandolin; occasionally helping out the music with a shrill half-Indian chant. In another angle of the apartment, puros, and Taos whisky were dealt out to the thirsty mountaineers, who made the sala ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... populous towns were sculptur'd there; In one were marriage pomp and revelry. And brides, in gay procession, through the streets With blazing torches from their chambers borne, While frequent rose the hymeneal song. Youths whirl'd around in joyous dance, with sound Of flute and harp; and, standing at their doors, Admiring ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... adventure that I have told you, has come the Lay that minstrels chant to harp and viol—fair is that song and ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... protection. You will comprehend that—after that—she has not escaped with impunity. Some little strings snapped in the harp. She is touchee, here," said he, resting one finger lightly upon his forehead,—"but 'tis all for the best, sans doute. She is quiet, peaceable,—and she does not remember. She sits in my house, working, and the bird sings ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... Asloeg and was the daughter of King Sigurd Fafnisbane, of Germany. Soon after she was born enemies of her father killed him and her mother and all of his race they could find. Her life was saved by Heimer, foster-father to her mother, who to get her away from the murderers had a large harp made with a hollow frame, in which he hid the child and all ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... men. John M'Dougall, master. Bound to London. British. Cargo: 254 chaldrons of coals [nearly 300 tons], a box of stuffed birds, and six spars, produce of this province. One box and one trunk, household furniture and a harp, all British, and seven passengers.' The fare was fixed at L20, ...
— All Afloat - A Chronicle of Craft and Waterways • William Wood
... plays my old harp as it lists. It has its HIGH NOTES, its LOW NOTES, its heavy notes—and its faltering notes, in the end it is all the same to me provided the emotion comes, but I can find nothing in myself. It ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... editor of the evening paper, whose angelic status not even a bald head and an absence of wings and harp could conceal, had definitely informed her that the man who had conducted the column hitherto having resigned, the post of Heloise Milton, official adviser to readers troubled with affairs of the heart, was hers; and he looked to her ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... meanwhile come into the room, went up to the harp, which stood in a corner, and in taking off the cover ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... each drawing received enthusiastic backing from the neighborhood, each according to the nationality of the hero. Thus Phidias standing high on his scaffold as he finished the heroic head of Athene; the young David dreamily playing his harp as he tended his father's sheep at Bethlehem; St. Francis washing the feet of the leper; the young slave Patrick guiding his master through the bogs of Ireland, which he later rid of their dangers; the poet Hans Sachs cobbling shoes; Jeanne d'Arc dropping her ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... would think a small music warehouse, a miniature tobacco shop, or branch depot of foreign grammars and dictionaries were before you. Every kind of musical instrument seems to have met with a companion in this tiny apartment. Here are a violin, violoncello, horn, and cornopean; there an old Welsh harp and unstrung guitar. On this shelf are pipes of all sorts and sizes, forms, and nations—the straight English, the short German, and the long Turkish; on that are cigar-boxes, snuff-boxes, and tobacco-boxes of various kinds and appearances. Scattered about the room are play-books without ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... music breathes from his wings as he passes. This is caused by the action of the wind upon some finely-split bamboo twigs arched over the kite without touching the paper, and which thus become a true olian harp. Sometimes a kite of this kind is sent up at night, bearing a small lighted lantern of talc; and the sleepers awakened, called to their balconies by the unearthly music, gaze after the familiar apparition not ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... sheet-lightning, suddenly revealing hills, domes, and castles in the clouds, then as suddenly dispelling the illusion. As he looked more closely, he found that, as with linked hands they glided round, their gossamer wings moving through the air waked up a melody like that of the Eolian harp; while a few, standing apart, made silvery music by shaking instruments, which looked like spikes of bell-shaped flowers, and deeper tones were evolved from larger, single bells, struck with rays of light. As ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... this kind breeds extremists and is therefore harmful to the public, which pays for all the mistakes made. It is very easy to lose one's mental balance and to begin to play on a harp with but one string. We have a large army of Christian Scientists. If it were not for the way in which physicians of the past mistreated the body and neglected the mind, this sect would not exist. The doctors, with their awful doses of nauseous and destructive drugs, went to one ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... neighbourhood of a dump of shells by the roadside at the same moment as a Hun gunner dropped a shell right on the dump. The result was that both these Officers began to soar skywards, as if off for their "harp and wings divine," but eventually found themselves on mother earth once more, the Commanding Officer badly shaken and cut about the face, the strap of his tin hat broken by the force of the explosion, and Pynsent Elliott finding ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... condescends to indulge a joke, it is not to be passed over like that of a poor relation. "Yes, yes," muttered the old man, as he stooped and picked up a pin, adding it to a row of similarly acquired pins which gave the left lapel of his threadbare coat the appearance of a miniature harp, "I shall make a ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the stairway softly, oh, so softly, that led to her door. Shadows from out of the unlighted hall danced about me, and the sounds of music—harp music—pleased me with a strain of ...
— A Few Short Sketches • Douglass Sherley
... train for Chester, where we arrived in due season, and soon found ourselves comfortably established at the Grosvenor Arms Hotel. A large basket of Surrey primroses was brought by Mr. Rathbone to my companion. I had set before me at the hotel a very handsome floral harp, which my friend's friend had offered me as a tribute. It made melody in my ears as sweet as those hyacinths of Shelley's, the music of ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the town to miss, and they promptly renamed the house as the Goose and Gridiron, which recalls the facetious landlord who, on gaining possession of premises once used as a music-house, chose for his sign a goose stroking the bars of a gridiron and inscribed beneath, "The Swan and Harp." It is an interesting note in the history of the St. Paul's Churchyard house that early in the eighteenth century, on the revival of Freemasonry in England, the Grand ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the darkness of the locker beneath the forecastle, he was more fortunate than he could reasonably have expected to be, for as he crawled over the rusty links he felt a shackle. It appeared to be of the usual harp-pattern with a cottered pin, and he called out sharply to the Siwash, who presently flung him an iron bar and a big spike. Then he struck one of the two or three sulphur matches he had carefully treasured, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the departing lady. It had been a difficult task for him to obey my instructions, as he maintained that it was against all operatic custom for the singer not to address such an important passage straight to the public from the footlights. When in the course of the performance he seized his harp to begin the song, there was a cry from the audience, 'Ah! il prend encore sa harpe,' upon which there was a universal outburst of laughter followed by fresh whistling, so prolonged, that at last Morelli decided boldly ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... the festival air in "Romeo." Oh! the solo of the clarionets, the beloved women, with the harp accompaniment! Something enrapturing, something white as snow which ascends! The festival bursts upon you, like a picture by Paul Veronese, with the tumultuous magnificence of the "Marriage of Cana"; and then the love-song ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... seen seldom rivalled by the cleverest actresses; and I thought what a face and form were wasted here to make profit for one knave and sport for some fifty fools. As she accompanied herself on the harp, and touched its strings with a grace and expression which made amends for a certain want of tuition, I could not help fancying her in a drawing-room, surrounded by admirers, making many a heart ache with her arch smile and winning ways. Without being positively beautiful, she had ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... of black wood, sat the chief. Some females, evidently the ladies of his family, were seated on piles of sheepskins, and were plying their distaffs; while an aged man was seated on the end of the dais with a harp of quaint form on his knee; his fingers touched a last chord as Archie entered, and he had evidently been playing while the ladies worked. Near him on the dais was a fire composed of wood embers, which were replenished from time to time with fresh glowing pieces of charcoal taken from the fire at ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... a great stillness fell upon the company. Each man, seeing that the king listened, listened also, and the harper sat with his harp between his arms, and his finger silent ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... was of English yew, six feet two inches high, and thick in proportion; and Martin, broad-chested, with arms all iron and cord, and used to the bow from infancy, could draw a three-foot arrow to the head, and, when it flew, the eye could scarce follow it, and the bowstring twanged as musical as a harp. This bow had laid many a stout soldier low in the wars of the Hoecks and Cabbel-jaws. In those days a battlefield was not a cloud of smoke; the combatants were few, but the deaths many—for they saw what they were about; and fewer bloodless arrows flew than bloodless ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... of the harp-player on the tomb of King Antuf contains an allusion to these ruined palaces: "The gods [kings] who were of yore, and who repose in their tombs, mummies and manes, all buried alike in their pyramids, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... king, on mist! They hear the songs of Ullin: he strikes the half-viewless harp. He raises the feeble voice. The lesser heroes, with a thousand meteors, light the airy hall. Malvina rises in the midst; a blush is on her cheek. She beholds the unknown faces of her fathers. She turns aside ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... afterward did him credit by making a great figure in the world. The famous Hercules was one, and so was Achilles, and Philoctetes likewise, and AEsculapius, who acquired immense repute as a doctor. The good Chiron taught his pupils how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other branches of education in which the lads of those days used to be instructed instead ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... fabulous to an ordinary drinking man. He never let it interfere with his work, he generally drank at night and on Sundays. Every night, as soon as his chores were done, he began to drink. While he was able to sit up he would play on his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills with his jackknife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... the track of sin, add to their mourning experience; and with many of God's best beloved, one tear is scarce dried when another is ready to flow! Mourners! rejoice! When the reaping time comes, the weeping time ends! When the white robe and the golden harp are bestowed, every remnant of the sackcloth attire is removed. The moment the pilgrim, whose forehead is here furrowed with woe, bathes it in the crystal river of life,—that moment the pangs of a lifetime of sorrow are eternally forgotten! Reader! ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... inside, and admitting of two amusing queries,—Whether the persons that ordered the building of it, or those that inhabit it, were the maddest? and, whether the name and thing be not as disagreeable as harp and harrow." By another—the no less facetious Ned Ward—it was termed, "A costly college for a crack-brained society, raised in a mad age, when the chiefs of the city were in a great danger of losing their senses, and so contrived it the more noble for their own reception; or they would never ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... against the broad trunk of some giant of the forest. With uncovered head, he muses in silence; he senses a vague feeling of awe for this magnificent specimen of matured life in the vegetable world. With every sense attuned to the overtones and undertones, produced by the vibrations of nature's harp; he catches the rythmic song of the sappy currents, as they swiftly fly to feed the swelling cells, where the building energy of their tiny hearts of protoplasm, ceaselessly changes the elements of soil and sunlight, into the woody ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... was sinking in the sea He seized his harp, which he at times could string, And strike, albeit with untaught melody, When deemed he no strange ear was listening: And now his fingers o'er it he did fling, And tuned his farewell in the dim twilight; While flew the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... gymnastics; and the same who judge of the gymnastic contests of men, shall judge of horses; but in music there shall be one set of judges of solo singing, and of imitation—I mean of rhapsodists, players on the harp, the flute and the like, and another who shall judge of choral song. First of all, we must choose directors for the choruses of boys, and men, and maidens, whom they shall follow in the amusement of the dance, and for our other musical arrangements;—one director will be enough for the choruses, ...
— Laws • Plato
... How Sir Tristram was sent into France, and had one to govern him named Gouvernail, and how he learned to harp, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... great should be his fame, When he had left his wife in hell And birds, and beasts could tame. Yet venturing then with scoffing rhimes The women to incense, Resenting heroines of those times Soon punished his offence. And as the Hebrus roll'd his skull, And Harp besmeared with blood, They clashing as the waves grew full Still harmoniz'd the flood. But you our follies gently treat, And spin so fine the thread, You need not fear his awkward fate, The lock won't cost ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... seats, on which the aged moss had kindly essayed to spread itself instead of cushions. On one of the stone benches sat the musicians, whose strains had enticed our wild couple thitherward. They proved to be a vagrant band, such as Rome, and all Italy, abounds with; comprising a harp, a flute, and a violin, which, though greatly the worse for wear, the performers had skill enough to provoke and modulate into tolerable harmony. It chanced to be a feast-day; and, instead of playing in the sun-scorched piazzas of the city, or beneath the ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the three entered the church together. "I—I played the—I tried to play—" Fortunately he checked himself; he had been about to offer the information that he had failed to master the jews'-harp in his boyhood. "No, I'm not a musician," ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... the shower of missiles ceased at once, and Barton was immediately surrounded by as attentive and breathlessly expectant an audience as artist could desire. Taking his stand upon a moss-covered fragment of rock, he drew an enormous Jew's-harp from his pocket, and handed it to me, gravely requesting me to 'accompany' him upon it, while he sang. Then, after clearing his throat, with quite a professional air, he commenced 'Hail Columbia,' and as he had a full, ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... tongue's use is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up, Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony; Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue, Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips, ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... thing that amused us. We were talking about Lady Morgan. "When she first came to London," said Lord Holland, "I remember that she carried a little Irish harp about with her wherever she went." Others denied this. I mentioned what she says in her Book of the Boudoir. There she relates how she went one evening to Lady—'s with her little Irish harp, and how strange everybody thought it. "I see nothing ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... at St. Cecilia's, so beautiful that Alice felt uncomfortable, and thought that it was perilously "high." At this Mrs. Winnie laughed, offering to take her to an afternoon service around the corner, where they had a full orchestra, and a harp, and opera music, and incense and genuflexions and confessionals. There were people, it seemed, who like to thrill themselves by dallying with the wickedness of "Romanism"; somewhat as a small boy tries to ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Jessica Venning to begin with, but the doctor had rechristened her Sophia—was grown by this time into a young lady of seventeen, pretty and graceful. She could play upon the harp and paint in water-colours, and her needlework was a picture, but not half so pretty a picture as her face. She came from Devonshire, from the edge of the moors behind Newton Abbot, where the folks have complexions ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... roar of the wires. But then the oaks are not connected with the distance, where there might be wind; and they don't ROAR in a gale, only sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go above or below a certain pitch,—like a big harp with all the strings the same. I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the wind's voice telephoned to them, so to speak, through ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... silver cord! the harp unstrung! And kindred hearts with grief and anguish wrung, For a beloved one from the earth hath flown Leaving his ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... it sang in the pine-tops, it sang like a humming harp; The smell of the sun on the bracken was wonderful sweet and sharp. As sharp as the piney needles, as sweet as the gods were good, For the wind it sung of the old gods, as I came through the wood! It sung how long ago the Romans made a road, And the gods came ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various
... eternity. All that is greatest in king or kaiser exists in the poorest of his subjects; and the elements out of which the most delicate and even saintly womanhood is made exist in the commonest woman who walks the streets. The harp of human nature is there with all its strings complete; and it will not refuse its music to him who has the courage to take it up and boldly strike the strings. The great preacher is he who, wherever he is speaking, among high or low, goes straight ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... have a President, let him sing like McAdoo, or like Luther Burbank, or like Theodore N. Vail, or like Colonel Goethals, picking up a little isthmus like Panama, a string between two continents, playing on it as if it were a harp; or like Edward Ripley playing with the Santa Fe Railroad for all the world like Homer with a lute, all his seven thousand men, all his workmen, all their wives and their children, all the cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or like Carborundum Acheson, ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... recall to mind the stillest summer hours, in which the grasshopper sings over the mulleins, and there is a valor in that time the bare memory of which is armor that can laugh at any blow of fortune. For our lifetime the strains of a harp are heard to swell and die alternately, and death is but "the pause when ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... if we consider the essence of this teaching, we shall have no difficulty now in understanding why Mr. Meredith's hopes harp so persistently on the 'young generations,' why our duty to them is to him 'the cry of the conscience of life,' or why, as he ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... with interesting specimens in almost every branch of the fine arts. Here are statues, casts from the frieze of the Parthenon, pictures, prints, books, and minerals; four pianofortes of different sizes, and an excellent harp. All this to study does Desdemona (that's me) seriously incline; and the more I study the more I want to know and to see. In short, I am crazy to travel in Greece! The danger is that some good-for-nothing bashaw ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... time, as they traveled they had talked and sung hymns together, like Pilgrim and his friends, and Joe's voice was the loudest and sweetest among them; but now he hanged his harp upon the willows, and could sing the Lord's ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... identical practices. In the books by Messrs. Reid, Maurer and Turneaure, and Taylor and Thompson, he will find retaining walls illustrated, which are almost identical with Fig. 2 at a. Mr. Mensch says that the proposed design of a retaining wall would be difficult and expensive to install. The harp-like reinforcement could be put together on the ground, and raised to place and held with a couple of braces. Compare this with the difficulty, expense and uncertainty of placing and holding in place 20 or 30 separate rods. The Fink ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... communication. There is an instance, however, of musical sounds produced by marine animals, which seems to show an appreciation of harmony. In one of the lakes of Ceylon, Sir Emerson Tennent heard soft musical sounds, like the first faint notes of the aeolian harp or the faint vibrations of a wineglass when its rim is rubbed by a wet finger. This curious harmony is supposed to be produced by a species of testaceous mollusk. A similar intonation is heard at times along the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... when published was read with much interest, it was not nearly so popular as Me cal Mouri. This last-mentioned poem, his first published work, touched the harp of sadness; while his Charivari displayed the playfulness of joy. Thus, at the beginning of his career, Jasmin revealed himself as a poet in two very different styles; in one, touching the springs of grief, and ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... Selwyn, the Penns, the Onslows, Douglases, Mackinsys, Keenes, Lady Mount-Edgcumbe, all stay, and Some of them meet every evening. The Boufflers too are constantly invited, and the Comtesse Emilie sometimes carries her harp, on which they say she plays better than Orpheus; but as I never heard him on earth, nor chez Proserpine, I do not pretend to decide. Lord Fitzwilliam(718) has been here too; but was in the utmost danger of being lost on Saturday night, in a violent storm between ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to draw out the character of Dorothea, and nowhere does the method of George Eliot show to greater advantage than in probing the motives of this fine, strong, conscientious, blundering young woman, whose voice "was like the voice of a soul that once lived in an AEolian harp." She had a theoretic cast of mind. She was "enamored of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing what seemed to her to have those aspects." The awful divine had those aspects, and she embraced him. "Certainly ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... she answered, bending a little towards him while a sudden glory illumined her features. Her voice, which was vibrant as a harp, had captured the wistful magic of the spring—the softness of the winds, the sweetness of flowers, the mellow murmuring of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... need to tell aught of that feast, until the meat was done and the tables were cleared for the most pleasant part of the evening, when the servants, whether men or women, sat down at their tables also, and the harp went round, with the cups, and men sang in turn or told tales, each as he was best able to amuse the rest. There was a little bustle while this clearance went on, and men changed their seats to be nearer friends and the like, for the careful state ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... gone before him, and he was to model a colossal statue of Francesco, the first duke. As for Leonardo himself he came not as an artist at all, or careful of the fame of one; but as a player on the harp, a strange harp of silver of his own construction, shaped in some curious likeness to a horse's skull. The capricious spirit of Ludovico was susceptible to the charm of music, and Leonardo's nature had a kind of spell in it. Fascination is always the word descriptive of ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... body of men who during the Middle Ages wandered from place to place, especially from court to court, singing their own compositions to the harp for accompaniment. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... me a long, uneven sigh, like the throbbing of a broken harp-string,—and when I turned round again, no trace of the nymphs remained.... The broad forest gleamed green as before, and only in spots, athwart the close network of the branches, could tufts of something white be seen melting away. Whether these were the tunics of the nymphs, or a vapour was ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... up an instrument and fingered it. It seemed like the harp, but it was not much larger than a guitar. The chords were very sweet, very deep and melodious. She was a skilled musician; even in her distress Cora could not fail to ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... depth by the tragedy of his homeless nation. [3] A cruel disease cut short the poet's life in 1852, at the age of twenty-four. A small collection of lyrical poems, published after his death under the title Kinnor bat Zion ("The Harp of the Daughter of Zion"), exhibited even more brilliantly the wealth of creative energy which was hidden in the soul of this prematurely cut-off youth, who on the brink of the grave sang so touchingly of love, beauty, and the pure joys ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... was itself a remedy better than the potable gold and the dissolved pearls that comforted the praecordia of mediaeval monarchs. Did a patient, alarmed without cause, need encouragement, it carried the sunshine of hope into his heart and put all his whims to flight, as David's harp cleared the haunted chamber of the sullen king. Had the hour come, not for encouragement, but for sympathy, his face, his voice, his manner all showed it, because his heart felt it. So gentle was he, so thoughtful, so calm, so absorbed in the case before ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that tongue (for which no atavistic knowledge really served me), he said he would put it into English, and he did so. It was then not rhymed at both ends or in the middle, but it was rhymed quite enough, and if it had not the harp-like sweetness of the original, it was still such a musical stanza that I shall always be sorry to have lost it. What I can never lose the impression of is the wide-spread literary lore of the common Welsh people which the incident suggested. I could not fancy even a Boston ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... But when—instead of beginning with the sonorous "Then an herald cried aloud, To you it is commanded, O people, nations and languages"—when she wholly omitted any reference to "the sound of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick"—and essayed to tell the story in broad Gloucestershire and her own bald words, the disappointed children fell upon her and thumped her rudely upon the back; declaring her story to be "kutcha" and she, herself, a budmash. Which, ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... chords, played lightly a delicate movement, and then broke into an Irish air, "The Harp that once through Tara's Halls." From one Irish melody to another her light fingers wandered. She played with perfect correctness—with fire, with spirit. Soon she forgot herself. When she stopped, tears ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... seventy-two me'tres, whereas the south-western numbered only sixty. The spade showed a substratum of thick old wall, untrimmed granite, and other hard materials. Further down were various shells, especially bnitiers ( Tridacna gigantea) the harp (here called "Sirinbz"), and the pearl-oyster; sheep-bones and palm charcoal; pottery admirably "cooked," as the Bedawin remarked; and glass of surprising thinness, iridized by damp to rainbow hues. This, possibly the remains of lachrymatories, was very different from the modern bottle-green, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... charming poetess must be like an AEolian harp, that every sighing wind awakes to music, but to grave and chastened melody, the full charm of which can only be truly appreciated by those who have sorrowed, and who look beyond this earth for ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... written by a large number of the leading Unitarian ministers, and edited by Dr. Miles, the secretary of the Association; Clarke's Christian Doctrine of Prayer; Thomas T. Stone's The Rod and the Staff, a transcendentalist presentation of Christianity as a spiritual life; The Harp and the Cross, a selection of religious poetry, edited by Stephen G. Bulfinch; Sears's Athanasia, or Foregleams of Immortality; and Seven Stormy Sundays, a volume of original sermons by well-known ministers, with devotional services, ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke |
