"Melodious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... entertain on contact with vanilla ice-cream. Jimmy, had the comparison been presented to him, would have endorsed its perfect accuracy. The wind from the sea, until now keen and bracing, had become merely infernally cold. The song of the wind in the rigging, erstwhile melodious, had turned ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and the water reflected its columns of fire. A multitude of beautiful boats furrowed this lake, which seemed on fire, manned by a swarm of Cupids, who appeared to sport with each other in the rigging. Musicians concealed on board played melodious airs; and this harmony, at once gentle and mysterious, which seemed to spring from the bosom of the waves, added still more to the magic of the picture and the charms of the illusion. To this spectacle succeeded scenes ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Danish hound, which is known to the Parisian, down to the steward's little pug-dog, which had mixed with this company. Here stood the greyhound, with his long legs, beside the turnspit. You saw all varieties, and each had its peculiar and melodious bark. A couple of peacocks, with bright outspread tails, raised at the same time a cry, which must have made an impression. The whole court-yard had a striking air of cleanliness. The grass was weeded from between the stones; all was swept and arranged in its appointed order. Before the ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... sent a resonant voice out into the stillness. The songs he sang were hymns, and he made them into a sort of imperative lullaby. Waite let his lungs and soul fill with the breath of the night; he gave himself up to the exaltation of mastering those trembling brutes. Mounting, melodious, with even and powerful swing he let his full notes fall on the air in the confidence of power, and one by one the reassured cattle would lie down again, lowing in soft contentment, and so fall asleep with noses stretched out in mute attention, till their presence ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... from the Campo Santo, and our guide ushered us into it with the air of one who had till now held in reserve his great stroke and was ready to deliver it. Yet I think he waited till we had looked at some comparatively trifling sculptures by Nicolo Pisano before he raised his voice, and uttered a melodious species of howl. While we stood in some amazement at this, the conscious structure of the dome caught the sound and prolonged it with a variety and sweetness of which I could not have dreamed. The man poured out in quick succession his musical ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... lov'st the one, and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As passing all conceit, needs no defence. Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes; And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd Whenas himself to singing he betakes. One god is god of both, as poets feign; One knight loves both, and ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... harmonised with the soft but animated expression of the whole countenance,—the dimpled mouth,—the small, clear, and even teeth,—all these now characterised Charles de Haldimar; and if to these we add a voice rich, full, and melodious, and a smile sweet and fascinating, we shall be at no loss to account for the readiness with which Sir Everard suffered his imagination to draw on the brother for those attributes he ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... Mr. Calhoun had never proclaimed his heresies; if Mr. Garrison had never published his paper; if Mr. Phillips, the Cassandra in masculine shape of our long prosperous Ilium, had never uttered his melodious prophecies; if the silver tones of Mr. Clay had still sounded in the senate-chamber to smooth the billows of contention; if the Olympian brow of Daniel Webster had been lifted from the dust to fix its awful frown on the darkening scowl of rebellion,—we might have been spared ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sarcophagus, repose The bones of Laura's lover: here repair Many familiar with his well-sung woes, The pilgrims of his genius. He arose To raise a language, and his land reclaim From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes: Watering the tree which bears his lady's name With his melodious tears, he gave himself ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... flight of stairs which led into the summer-house. Within a few paces of her I stopped. She advanced a step toward me, and laid her hand gently on my bosom. Her touch filled me with strangely united sensations of rapture and awe. After a while, she spoke in low melodious tones, which mingled in my ear with the distant murmur of the falling water, until the two sounds became one. I heard in the murmur, I heard in the voice, these words: "Remember me. Come to me." Her hand dropped from my bosom; a momentary obscurity passed like ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... the avoidance of every word, which a gentleman would not use in dignified conversation, and of every word and phrase, which none but a learned man would use; by the studied position of words and phrases, so that not only each part should be melodious in itself, but contribute to the harmony of the whole, each note referring and conducting to the melody of all the foregoing and following words of the same period or stanza; and lastly with equal labour, the greater ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Brown decided were most easy for the children to begin with; but when it was ascertained that the former was the air to "Saw My Leg Off," and the latter was identical with the "Three Black Crows," all friction was removed, and the melodious howling attracted the few remaining boys at the saloon, and brought them up in a body, led ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... said a rich, melodious, kind voice; "I wish to have a few moments' conversation with Mr. Dulan," and Dr. Keene, the principal, ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... are often so acute to distinguish, in the tales you tell them, or the songs you sing, the difference between the true art and the false, passion and jargon, Homer and Racine,—echoing back, from hearts that have not yet felt what they repeat, the melodious accents of the natural pathos. Apart from her studies, Viola was a simple, affectionate, but somewhat wayward child,—wayward, not in temper, for that was sweet and docile; but in her moods, which, as I before hinted, changed from sad to gay and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... bore her up for a while, during which she chanted scraps of old tunes, like one insensible to her own distress, or as if she were a creature natural to that element: but long it was not before her garments, heavy with the wet, pulled her in from her melodious singing to a muddy and miserable death. It was the funeral of this fair maid which her brother Laertes was celebrating, the king and queen and whole court being present, when Hamlet arrived. He knew not what all this show imported, but stood on one side, not inclining ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... ill since I saw you last, Mr. Audley," she said, in a low voice, that had the same melodious sadness as the notes of the old organ ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... circumstances has a slight tendency to breed domestic jars, especially when the portrait is burnt in front of the house of the gay deceiver whom it represents, while a powerful chorus of caterwauls, groans, and other melodious sounds bears public testimony to the opinion which his friends and neighbours entertain of his private virtues. In some villages of the Ardennes a young man of flesh and blood, dressed up in hay and straw, used to act the part of Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras), as the personification of the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... that paradisaical food. Mr. Emerson, with his sunrise smile, Ellery Channing, radiating dark light, and, very rarely, Elizabeth Hoar, with spirit voice and tread, have alone varied our days from without; but we have felt no want. My sweet, intelligent maid sings at her work, with melodious note. I do not know what is in store for me; but I know well that God is in the future, and I do not fear, or lose the precious present by anticipating possible evil. I remember Father Taylor's inspired words, "Heaven is not afar. We are like phials of water in the midst of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... denied by the critic; nor is his language censured without qualification. "Whatever be the faults of his diction, he cannot want the praise of copiousness and variety: he was master of his language in its full extent; and has selected the melodious words with such diligence, that from his book alone the Art of English Poetry might be learned."— Johnson's Life of Milton: Lives, p. 92. 24. As words abstractly considered are empty and vain, being in their nature mere signs, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and now I stand in the light, and have seen the face of the Lord, and can speak His blessed name.' And with that he burst forth into a great melodious cry, which was not like that which he had sent into the dark depths below, but mounted up like the sounding of silver trumpets and all joyful music, giving a voice to the sweet air and the fresh winds which blew about the hills of God. But the words he ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... are her clerics, melodious Erin's birds are, Gentle her youths' words are, her seniors discreet; Famed far her chieftains—goodlier are no men— Very fair her women ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... whose themes are more "ideal." And where many writers would attempt merely to simplify and sweeten verse, he endeavours to give it fuller expressiveness, to give it strength and newness. It follows that Browning's verse is not so uniformly melodious as that of many other poets. Where it seems to him necessary to sacrifice one of the two, sense or sound, he has never hesitated which to sacrifice. But while he has certainly failed in some of his works, or in some passages of them, to preserve the due balance, while he has at times ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... of heavenly mien; Near to the prisoner's couch he takes his stand, And waves, in sign of peace, his holy hand. Tall rose his stature, youth's endearing grace Adorn'd his limbs and brighten'd in his face; Loose o'er his locks the star of evening hung, And sounds melodious moved ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... Jewish features, the glorious eyes, the brilliant complexion, and the fall of long, glossy, black ringlets that veiled the proud little head; but the spell lay not in them, any more than in the perfect symmetry of her form, or the harmonious grace of her motion, or the melodious intonations ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... understood. A clear, crisp articulation holds an audience as by the spell of some irresistible power. The choice word, the correct phrase, are instruments that may reach the heart, and awake the soul if they fall upon the ear in melodious cadence; but if the utterance be harsh and discordant they fail to interest, fall upon deaf ears, and are as barren as seed sown on fallow ground. In language, nothing conduces so emphatically to the harmony of sounds as perfect phrasing—that is, the emphasizing of the relation of clause ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... Mea, who for an unknown reason endured thirst the easiest and suffered the least of all, approached, sat close to him, and, embracing his neck with her arms, said in her quiet, melodious voice. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... upon a new opera, with a Grecian subject, in which "it would undoubtedly have been shown that his genius, turning from the misty fables of the Germans to the bright and serene poetry of ancient Greece, would have drawn nearer to our musical life and feeling, which is clear and characteristically melodious." Whatever may have been his tasks it was destined they should not be achieved. "Parsifal" was his swan song. It was during the representation of this opera that his asthmatic trouble grew so intense as to necessitate his departure for Italy and regular ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... surprise the Nixy, and the divine strain should no more drift like a melodious mist through his brain; for at midsummer night the Nixy always plays the loudest, and then, if ever, is the time to learn what he felt must be the highest ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... his melodious bass voice, "I am proud of this honor." He was not sure of another word as he stood, with bagging trousers and sweat-beaded face, but he made a superhuman effort to call up his comatose wits. "I should be ungrateful were I not proud of this great demonstration." ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... without here in the porch, I hear the bell's melodious din, I hear the organ peal within, I hear the prayer, with words that scorch Like sparks from an inverted torch, I hear the sermon upon sin, With threatenings of the last account. And all, translated in the air, Reach me ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... not only by the poets, but also by the orators, and even the philosophers. O mutis quoque piscibus donatura cycni, si libeat, sonum,(306) says Horace to Melpomene. Cicero compares the excellent discourse which Crassus made in the Senate, a few days before his death, to the melodious singing of a dying swan: Illa tanquam cycnea fuit divini hominis vox et oratio. De Orat. l. iii. n. 6. And Socrates used to say, that good men ought to imitate swans, who, perceiving by a secret instinct, and a sort of divination, what advantage there is in death, die singing ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... had higher collars than the other curates, and intoned in a wonderfully melodious voice in the cathedral. And quite a number of the young ladies of Exminster, including the Bishop's second daughter, had been setting their caps at him from the moment of his arrival, so that when, by the maneuvers of Aunt Caroline Ebley, Stella found him ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... and after a prelude, the beauty of which astonished all those around the queen's person, for they had no idea that he could play in tune, sang in a clear melodious voice ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... a smile and a few kindly words, then commanding silence by a slight motion of the hand, addressed them in a clear, melodious voice, which, though not loud, could be distinctly heard by every one of ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... breathed on her eyes and cheeks. Her hand rested on the coach door near Lavretsky's hand. And he was happy; borne along in the still warmth of the night, never taking his eyes off the good young face, listening to the young voice that was melodious even in a whisper, as it spoke of simple, good things, he did not even notice that he had gone more than half-way. He did not want to wake Marya Dmitrievna, he lightly pressed Lisa's hand and said, "I think we are friends now, aren't we?" She nodded, he stopped his horse, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... proposed that we should confine ourselves to the cool retreats near the fountain of the Elephant, made also more agreeable to us than any other place by the delightful hours we had sat there listening to the melodious accents of the great Longinus. To this proposal we quickly and gladly assented. Our garments being then made to correspond to the excessive heats of the season, soothed by the noise of the falling waters, and fanned by slaves who waved to and ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... doorway a streak of red in the east heralded the coming glory of the morn. "Peep, peep," twittered a bird on the roof of the hovel. From the poplar it was answered by a more melodious phrase, a song of welcome to the radiant dawn. A moment the jester listened, his head raised to the growing splendor of the heavens, then threw himself on the earthen floor of the hut and was at ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... was so unexpected, the words themselves were so brusque, while the utterance was so gentle and melodious, that Lynde refused to credit his ears. Could he have heard aright? Before he recovered from his surprise the gentleman in black was far up the slope, his gaze again riveted on some remote ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... of St. Mary's is a large, gloomy-looking building, with a very high tower, from which one can get a magnificent view of the surrounding country. In this tower is a very melodious chime of bells, about which there is told a pretty and touching story, which I do ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... smoke there comes a partial heat; the poetic is the flame in full fervor, springing upward, illuminating, warming the heart, delighting the intellect. The imagination of the reader, quickened by illustrations so apt and original, is by their beauty tuned to its most melodious key, while by the rare play of intellectual vitality his mind is dilated. He has become mentally a richer man, enriched through the refining and enlarging of his higher sensibilities, and the ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... of Francisco was heard, and all in that wide court started at the sound—deep, full, and melodious as the evening chimes. The ears of those present had, in the profound silence, but just recovered from the harsh, deep-toned, and barbarous idiom of Hawkhurst's address, when the clear, silvery, yet manly voice of Francisco riveted their attention. ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... her yearly letter wrote that she had heard from Mrs. A. T. that the Laureate was still suffering. I judge from your Letter that he is better. . . . I never heard any of his coadjutor Sullivan's Music. Is there a Tune, or originally melodious phrase, in any of it? That is what I always missed in Mendelssohn, except in two or three of his youthful Pieces; Fingal and Midsummer Night's Dream overtures, and Meeresstille. Chorley {127} mentions ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... lovely because of its solitude. Only the gentle waving of the leaves, the long melodious note of a lonely bird, and the low whisper of the streamlet, ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... sorts of Water-Fowl, not common, though extraordinary pleasing to the Eye. The forward Spring welcom'd us with her innumerable Train of small Choristers, which inhabit those fair Banks; the Hills redoubling, and adding Sweetness to their melodious Tunes by their shrill Echoes. One side of the River is hemm'd in with mountainy Ground, the other side proving as rich a Soil to the Eye of a knowing Person with us, as any this Western World can afford. We took up our Quarters at the ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... widowed Duchess William of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, has been particularly active as a composer of songs for mezzo soprano, but none of her works, which are printed for private circulation under the initials of "A.H.M.", have been placed on public sale. Her songs, some thirty in number, are melodious and full of feeling. She seems to thoroughly understand how to bring out the meaning of the words of her composition, the melody of one of them, "Ein Duerres Blatt" furnishing a particularly striking illustration of this peculiarity; they left a very lasting impression upon ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... less wise in a sick room than Mrs. Bundle herself. He contrived to quieten instead of exciting me, and to the sound of his melodious voice reading in soothing monotone from my favourite book of the Bible—the Revelation of St. John the Divine—I finally ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... like an ambassador from heaven than a convicted murderer. He wore a black Prince Albert suit of clothes. As he reached the side of the chair he paused, and calmly looking from one to the other of the assemblage, he began to address them in a clear and melodious voice. Almost from the first utterance, his hearers became electrified by his charming manner and eloquence, and for nearly half an hour were held spellbound, while he explained the principles of Natural Law, and the vast ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... own sober suit and the creaking saddle as he rode home to Lambeth, and the icy wind that sang in the river sedges, and the wholesome smell of the horse and the touch of the coarse hair at the shoulder, talked and breathed the old Puritan common sense back to him again. That warm-painted, melodious world he had left was gaudy nonsense; and dancing was not the same as living; and Mary Corbet was not just a rainbow on the foam that would die when the sun went in; but both she and he together were human souls, redeemed by the death of the Saviour, with His work to do and no ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... arose; such a load by that simple manoeuvre had been lifted from his heart! He pushed his feet into his slippers and came whistling downstairs to lunch. He had a perfect ear, and his whistle was most melodious and sweet; the canaries in the dining-room windows awoke and joined in shrilly. His brother, standing, with sour, sarcastic face, upon the hearth, held fastidiously between finger and thumb an article which apparently it was not agreeable to ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... invited over hither in a most eager manner, beyond what a poor Wilhelmina with her old love can pretend to. Patience, my shrill Princess, Beauty of Baireuth and the world; let us hope all will come right again! My shrill Princess—who has a melodious strength like that of war-fifes, too—knows how to be patient; and veils many things, though of a highly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in her grave, melodious voice, and a young girl, almost a child, sprang from a low divan hidden in a corner. "Nadine, take off my cloak and unfasten my hair. Then you can leave me: it is late, ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... to keep his word, or else Apollonius passed the door by chance when his brother believed him far away. He heard his brother's savage outbreak of anger, he heard the clear tone of the wife's voice, still clear and melodious in spite of her excitement. He heard them both without understanding what they were saying. He was shocked. He had not imagined that the breach between them had gone so far. And he was the cause of this breach. He must do what he ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... to the serenity of the Pisgah-top, whence was seen the promised land. It, in itself, was reality; and the door-keeper who admitted you into that enchanted realm was the spirit of Germany. Not France, with its little, morbid shiverings, and its meat-market called love; not Italy, with its melodious declamations and tawdry tunes; not Russia even, with the wind of its impenetrable winters, its sense of joys snatched from its eternal frosts gave admittance there; but Germany, "deep, patient Germany," that sprang from upland hamlets, and ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Augusta threw open the sash, and received it from her timid hand with a smile, which to Mr. Mountague seemed expressive of sweet and graceful benevolence. Lady Augusta read the petition with much feeling, and her lover thought her voice never before sounded so melodious. She wrote her name eagerly at the head of a subscription. The money she gave was rather more than the occasion required; but, thought ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... all hope of an expected musical evening had to be abandoned, as she took her bed in disgust, with sore disappointment. About an hour later, not entirely unexpected, there called at her home a beloved brother, whose melodious voice in song proved to the lady better than any medicine, as he quietly sat down to the piano to sing that sweetly ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara
... that something was, call it genius, a trick of song, what you will,—it was soon crushed out of me. The world is fond of slaying its singing buds and devouring them for daily fare—one rough pressure of finger and thumb on the little melodious throats, and they are mute forever. So I found, when at last in mingled pride, hope, and fear I published my poems, seeking for them no other recompense save fair hearing and justice. They obtained neither—they were tossed carelessly by a few critics from hand ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Armoniaca a Giorgio Antoniotto). Hence we see why the Italian opera does not delight an untutored Englishman; and why those, who are unaccustomed to music, are more pleased with a tune, the second or third time they hear it, than the first. For then the same melodious train of sounds excites the melancholy, they had learned from the song; or the same vivid combination of them recalls all the mirthful ideas ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... that would have been voted brilliant had they dealt with things less extravagant than Universal Harmony and Fraternal Happiness; with verses that all admitted to be highly polished and melodious, but something too mystical in meaning for the understanding of an every-day world; with music, whereof he was conceded an ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... imagination, so that even black—a black cliff or a black rock cropping up out of the snow—becomes a mitigated joy. Your ears have been so attuned to the howling blast with interludes of dead calm and variations of rending icebergs and bellowing walrus accompaniments, that melodious harmonies have fled affrighted from your brain. As for your nose—esprit de marrow fat, extract of singed hide, essence of lamp-smoke, eau de cuisine, and de-oxygenised atmosphere of snow-hut, have often ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... the little airy melodious way she had when she was telling something particularly unhappy about herself—a sort of harpsichord bravado—"Well, you know, he's taken to fancying himself seriously ill lately, and the doctors have aided and abetted him; and so we're going to Davos Platz, or some ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... of burnished silver and bore the Royal Coat of Arms. The remaining pieces of this set were given to the Indians who settled in the Bay of Quinte district. In the year 1786 there was sent to the church a large and melodious bell. This was a presentation from the British government, and on it was stamped the arms of the ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... cheering, the frantic cheering of a vast but very remote crowd, a roaring exultation. This ended as sharply as it had begun, like a sound heard between the opening and shutting of a door. In the outer room was a noise of hurrying steps and a melodious clinking as if a loose chain was running over ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... transforms itself occasionally into such an expression of public joy, as, for instance, when the women who celebrate the Thesmophoriae in the piece that bears that name, in the midst of the most amusing drolleries, begin to chant their melodious hymn, just as in a real festival, in honour of the presiding gods. At these times we meet with such a display of sublime lyric poetry, that the passages may be transplanted into tragedy without any change or alteration whatever. There is, however, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... joked. He had a fund of stories—in some of which he pictured himself the hero—with which he was wont to relieve the tedium of the evening hours. A violin was among his effects, which he played to accompany his singing of entertaining countryside songs. Most of these were melodious, and highly descriptive. "Jack" had much music in his soul, and sang ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... is the nightingale of the psalms. It is small, of a homely feather, singing shyly out of obscurity; but, oh, it has filled the air of the whole world with melodious joy, greater than the heart can conceive! Blessed be the day on ...
— The Song of our Syrian Guest • William Allen Knight
... thy sister, when she prays, Her early Heaven, her happy views; Nor thou with shadowed hint infuse A life that leads melodious days. Her faith through form is pure as thine, Her hands are quicker unto good; O sacred be the flesh and blood, To which ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... two concerned, who alternately sing the strophes. We know the melody eventually by Rousseau, to whose songs it is printed; it has properly no melodious movement, and is a sort of medium between the canto fermo and the canto figurato; it approaches to the former by recitativical declamation, and to the latter by passages and course, by which one syllable ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... and noble!" exclaimed Glenn, as the deep and melodious intonations of Ringwood and Jowler fell upon ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... life, and more than life. To see Luigi is a happiness without which I cannot live. Luigi has revealed to me the world of sentiments. I may, perhaps, have seen faces more beautiful than his, but none has ever charmed me thus; I may have heard voices—no, no, never any so melodious! Luigi loves me; he will ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... harmed not: then day droopt; the chapel bells Called us: we left the walks; we mixt with those Six hundred maidens clad in purest white, Before two streams of light from wall to wall, While the great organ almost burst his pipes, Groaning for power, and rolling through the court A long melodious thunder to the sound Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies, The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven A blessing on her labours for ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... Sir Wilfrid waved his hand, And gently stilled the jarring band: "What ho!" he cried, "what ails your throats? Be these your most melodious notes? Forget ye that to-morrow morn Old Yule-day and its sports return,— And that your freres, from scrogg and carr,[13] From heath and wold, and fen, afar, Will come to join ye in your glee? Husband your mirth and minstrelsy, And let some goodly portion be Kept for their ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... a hare in a farrow. He was as serene as Esteban and as contented; but his comfort lay in easy possession, not in being easily possessed. Occasionally he whistled as he rode, but, like Esteban, broke now and again into a singing voice, more cheerful, I think, than melodious. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... a melodious little air, and Patty, after listening a moment, nodded her head, and ran to take ...
— Patty's Success • Carolyn Wells
... watching eyes bounded life for us! We have dreamed our dreams; we have learned the long lesson of our days; we are stepping on into the shadows. Our eyes see that ye see not; our ears hear that which ye have not considered. We read your melodious story through, but we have read other stories since, and only its haec fabula docet remains very fresh. You will be as obtuse as we are some day, young things! It is not neglect; it is not disapproval,—we simply forget. But from such forgetfulness ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... murmur high up in the air; a waft of cool breeze flitted past us laden with the scent of newly-cut wood (and who does not know that nice, clean perfume?); innumerable paroquets almost brushed us with their emerald-green wings, whilst the tamer robin or the dingy but melodious bell-bird came near to watch the intruders. The sweet clear whistle of the tui or parson-bird—so called from his glossy black suit and white wattles curling exactly where a clergy-man's bands would be,—could be heard at a distance; ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... own part, where I had seen it all before—the pink-walled villas gleaming through their shrubberies of orange and oleander, the mountains shimmering in the hazy light like so many breasts of doves, the constant presence of the melodious Italian voice. Where indeed but at the Opera when the manager has been more than usually regardless of expense? Here in the foreground was the palace of the nefarious barytone, with its banqueting-hall opening as freely on the stage as a railway buffet on the platform; beyond, the delightful ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... a charm for me, and I bid him show me these same things. So we turned a little aside into the forest, and found ourselves in a lovely glade, where the light shone so soft and golden, and where the songs of the birds sounded so sweet and melodious, that I felt as though we were stepping through an enchanted world, and well could I believe that the fairies danced around the well, sunk deep in its mossy dell, and fringed about with ferns and flowers and the ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of expression—from, the full-toned Greek and English Iambic to the plain but sparkling prose of Moliere, and from that again to the intricate harmonies of Calderon, Goethe, and Shelley; with its use of all voices, from vociferous mob to melodious daughters of Ocean, and its command of all colour, from the gloom of Medea to the splendour of Marlowe's Helen,—it is a small matter to remember the connection of work or author with the stage—how long they held it, how soon they were dispossessed, ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... attributed to these earlier labors, nor to the personal influence of its author. The favor of the public has certainly been obtained in great measure by the rare intrinsic merit of the composition, in which we find aptly chosen and melodious language, thoroughly artistic conception, life-like portraiture, and highly cultivated literary taste. We see before us a national and classic writer, not one of those mere journalists who count nowadays in Germany ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... music, both instrumental and vocal. There I heard the famous Tenducci, a thing from Italy — It looks for all the world like a man, though they say it is not. The voice, to be sure, is neither man's nor woman's; but it is more melodious than either; and it warbled so divinely, that, while I listened, I really thought ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... still a favourite, especially in Guillaume Tell, considered his crack part. Gardoni, who has now been two years on the opera boards, has replaced him in some of his characters. This young singer has a very fresh and melodious voice, great taste and feeling, but lacks power, and, it is to be feared, will share the fate of most of his predecessors, and soon succumb to the thundering orchestra of the Academie Royale.[14] As Mr. Hervey very justly observes, there is no medium for a tenor at the French opera. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Duff Salter, "nothing which I heard from your lips ever affected me except to love you. You cured me of years of suspicion, and I consented to hear again. The world grew candid to me; its sounds were melodious, its silence was sincere. It is you who are deaf. You cannot hear ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... broad Scotch that he'd never been sick at all, qualifying the oath with "except for a minute now and then." He brought a cornet-a-piston to practice on, having had three weeks' instructions on that melodious instrument; and if you could hear the horrid sounds that come! especially at heavy rolls. When I hint he is not improving, there comes a confession: "I don't feel quite right yet, you see!" But he ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... questioning look stealing over her countenance. Jinnie smiled at her and began to play. It might have been the beautiful woman opposite that brought forth the wild hill story, told in marvelous harmonies. The rapt young face gave no sign of embarrassment, for Jinnie was completely lost in her melodious task. Above the dimpled chin that hugged the brown fiddle, Theodore King could see the brooding genius of the girl, and longed to bring a passionate lovelight for himself into the glorious eyes. The intensity ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... the spur of the instant, render into articulate words, into actions that are not frantic. Fail in it, this way or that! Pragmatical Officiality, with its penalties and law-books, waits before thee; Menads storm behind. If such hewed off the melodious head of Orpheus, and hurled it into the Peneus waters, what may they not make of thee,—thee rhythmic merely, with no music but a sheepskin drum!—Maillard did not fail. Remarkable Maillard, if fame were not an accident, and History ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and flowing with water. Some of the corners where our way branched off, were so acute and narrow, that it seemed impossible for the long slender boat to turn them; but the rowers, with a low melodious cry of warning, sent it skimming on without a pause. Sometimes, the rowers of another black boat like our own, echoed the cry, and slackening their speed (as I thought we did ours) would come flitting past us like a dark ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... the black pines, the huge beeches, the waxen shrubbery round the lawns all shrouded, seemed to creep closer round the edifice to hear the sounds of revelry and learn what charms the human world when the melodious winds are still and the weather is cold, and out of doors poor thickets must shiver in ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... to her, but was uncertain as to the propriety of the act. The girl solved her difficulty, however, by choosing a chair near Patricia's, and, settling easily in it with an accustomed air of being agreeable, smiled pleasantly and spoke in a most melodious voice. ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... within the soul of a man, so that the soul speaks in its own way, each soul lifting its peculiar message. For me 'twas sweet to watch the tender shadows creep upon the western fire, to see the great gray rocks dissolve, to hear the sea's melodious whispering; but to him (it seemed) the sea spoke harshly and the night came with foreboding. In the silence and failing light of the hour, looking upon the stupendous works of the Lord, he would repeat the words of the prophet ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... clear space, of the interior church delighted me. There was no screen,—nothing between the vestibule and the altar to break the long vista; even the organ stood aside,—though it by-and-by made us aware of its presence by a melodious roar. Around the walls there were old engraved brasses, and a stone coffin, and an alabaster knight of Saint John, and an alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large as life, and in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... manner which, while entirely modest, was so natural and easy, that Mrs. Yorke was astonished. She could scarcely credit the fact that this bright-eyed young man, with his fine nose, firm chin, and melodious voice, was the same with the dusty, hot-faced, dishevelled-looking country boy to whom she had thought of offering money for a kindness ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... do. Audiences expected certain characters to be represented in a certain way and were slow to accept "new readings." Comedy, however, had more latitude than tragedy, and as comedy was Lavinia's line her winsome face and pleasing smile and her melodious voice were always welcome, and when she had a "singing" part she brought down ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... reminding me of frightened swans with expanded wings. Conspicuous among these were the two men-of-war brigs, obliquely sailing now here and then there, and ever and anon firing a gun, whose mimic thunder came with melodious resonance over the waters, whilst the many-coloured signals were continually flying and shifting. They were the hawks among the covey ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... organ yet discovered on earth, but too often, alas! thumped and banged on to such an awful extent by unsympathetic, heavy hands, as to become considerably out of tune, whereby discord occasionally reigns supreme instead of sweet melodious harmony. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... form chosen. He has an unerring ear for time and quantity; and his subordination to the laws of his metre is extraordinary in its minuteness. Of ringing lines there are many; of broadly sonorous or softly melodious ones but few; and especially (if one chooses to go into details of technic) he seems curiously without that use of the broad vowels which underlies the melody of so many great passages of English poetry. Except in the one remarkable instance of 'How we Carried the Good News from Ghent to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... little prophets of the jungle, dashing across man's path, at critical moments, to bless or to ban. In the deep jungle, which at high noon is as silent as "sunless retreats of the ocean," gay-plumaged birds are not sitting on every bough singing plaintive, melodious notes; such lovely pictures exist solely in the mind of the poet or of him who has never visited the tropics. In the thick tangle of leaves and branches overhead, the larger birds are seen with difficulty, even after considerable ...
— Folk-lore in Borneo - A Sketch • William Henry Furness
... had in his composition the material of a poet, if not the finish, the melodious intonations of the widow had seemed like the incongruous orchestration of birds in the treetops to some minor tragedy among the denizens ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... windows, the stripper girls were tuning up their voices preparatory to the late-afternoon concert, soon to begin. They hummed a few bars of one melody, then of another; and at last, Angela's voice leading, there burst upon the room in full chorus, to the rhythmic whir of the wheels, the melodious music and maudlin stanzas of ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... many symbols of the extinction or suspension of the creative faculty in Greece. The bucolic writers, who found patronage under the lettered tyrants of Sicily and Egypt, were the latest representatives of its most glorious reign. Their poetry is intensely melodious; like the odour of the tuberose, it overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness; whilst the poetry of the preceding age was as a meadow-gale of June, which mingles the fragrance of all the flowers of the field, and adds a quickening ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... with throbbing sweetness, depth of melancholy passion. The listener's spirit left its chafing, left pride and disdain, and drifted on that melodious tide to ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... alone; I will be thy companion. Quit thy friends as the dead in doom, And build to them a final tomb; Let the starred shade that nightly falls Still celebrate their funerals, And the bell of beetle and of bee Knell their melodious memory. Behind thee leave thy merchandise, Thy churches and thy charities; And leave thy peacock wit behind; Enough for thee the primal mind That flows in streams, that breathes in wind: Leave all thy pedant lore apart; God hid the whole world in thy heart. Love shuns the sage, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... and forty-five verginelle. When the carriage of the beloved Pontiff approached, this double choir of children appeared, bearing palms in their hands and singing joyous canticles of benediction but I must describe this lovely scene in the melodious language of the south. "Ciascuno di essi (says Cancellieri) recava in mano una di queste palme di color d'oro altissime e cadenti come tante vaghissime piume. Sei zitelle sostenevano de'galanti panieri di freschissimi fiori pendenti dal loro collo, con nastri bianchi e gialli, relativi ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... forty-nine other papers on different scientific subjects, including Pugilism, Base Ball, the Velocipede, Female Suffrage, and Lake Navigation; and he now awaits on invitation from Chicago to come on with his largest drum and his most melodious trumpet. He is aware of the general impression among the Children of the West that they already know every thing. He hastens to assure them that they labor under the most ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... redress injuries, and succour the distressed, and this, as a matter of course, he makes his business when he takes up the part; a knight-errant was bound to be intrepid, and so he feels bound to cast fear aside. Of all Byron's melodious nonsense about Don Quixote, the most nonsensical statement is that "'t is his virtue makes him mad!" The exact opposite is the truth; it is his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... savage in the desert dark, The monster's den exploring; The sceptre-swaying prince, who rules The nations round adoring; Nay, even the laurell'd-templed bard Dew-footed at the gloamin', Melodious wooes the world's ear, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... was Edwin. His forehead was open and ingenuous, his hair was auburn, and flowed about his shoulders in wavy ringlets. His person was not less athletic than it was beautiful. With a firm hand he grasped the boar-spear, and in pursuit he outstripped the flying fawn. His voice was strong and melodious, and whether upon the pipe or in the song, there was no shepherd daring enough to enter the lists with Edwin. But though he excelled all his competitors, in strength of body, and the accomplishments of skill, yet was not his mind rough and boisterous. ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... siren of Bosnia danced her wild dance again in the next village, and with her sweet, melodious voice urged the light-colored ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... places to her credit a taste for the beautiful. But Darwin himself distinctly states[177] that "it is not probable that she consciously deliberates; but she is most excited or attracted by the most beautiful, or melodious, or gallant males." The view here put forward, which has been developed by Prof. Groos,[178] therefore seems to have Darwin's own sanction. The phenomena are not only biological; there are psychological elements as well. One can hardly suppose that the female is unconscious ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... words they could understand, but such as they could easily pronounce. On Trinity Sunday there were several services in the large room of the house, for the church was not yet built. The Lingas sang their hymns with great energy to one of their own wild strains, but when they heard the Lundus' melodious chant they were ashamed to sing after them, and begged them to teach them. The Dyaks love music and verse. Mr. Gomes and Mr. Chambers wrote them hymns, and the Creed in verse, which they readily commit to memory and understand better than prose. Pictures ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... dark about them, and the pleasant patter, almost musical in its rhythm, kept up. Not much wind was blowing, and it, too, was melodious. Henry lay with his head on a little heap of ashes, which was covered by his under blanket, and, for the first time since he had brought the warning to Wyoming, he was free from all feeling of danger. The picture itself of the battle, the defeat, the massacre, ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and their robes unsullied, enter by this nearest and easiest gate. Borne aloft by their own native gravitation, we see the white procession of the innocent ones winding far up the cerulean height and defiling in long melodious line into heaven. ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... acutely realized sense of opposites, than in the former mode. They register less completely, it seems to me, because the departure is too sudden in the rhythmus of the artist. The art of Davies is the art of a melodious curved line. Therefore the sudden angularity is ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... was breathing in the perfumes of spring, and her eyes misty with tears rested on a bed of flowery verdure; a light breeze, keen and balmy, blew upon her burning brow and offered a grateful coolness to her damp and fevered cheeks. Distant melodious voices, refrains of well-known songs, were all that disturbed the silence of the poor little room, the solitary nest where a life was passing away in tears and repentance, a life the most brilliant and eventful of a ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had caught the fire of the future statesman in his dark eye; perhaps she had heard the ring of sublimity in the melodious voice that afterward said "Honor thy father and thy mother." Perhaps she had seen the shrewdness of the future great diplomat in his maneuvers to have his baby way, and being a bright woman she set her wits to work to defy the king, defeat his law and elude the cruel ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... him, he smiled and greeted me softly and pleasantly, in such a way that seemed contrary to his nature. Instead of being terrible and glorious like the crash of thunder or the din of waves, his voice was melodious, subtly so, like a soft summer rain affecting the dreams of a slumbering child as it falls gently on his face. There was a rhythm that ran through it, like poetry, yet not like average poetry, where the rhythm ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... "Van Diemen's Land" is associated among all nations with the idea of bondage and guilt; and, finally, because while Tasmania is a melodious and simple sound, "Van Diemen" ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... truly; but I will wager my life, Eustace, that mine are not the only ears, which have been charmed with this melodious ditty,—that I am not the first damsel who has reigned, the goddess of an hour, in this same serenade! Confess the truth, my good friend, and I ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... voice, chiming in with the melodious images that then filled the goldsmith's busy brain, impressed him so pleasantly that he turned, and saw that the damsel was holding a cow by a tether, while it was browsing the rank grass that grew upon ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... ceased to be the language of literature. On the union of the two crowns of Castile and Aragon, the dialect of the former became that of the court and of the Muses. The beautiful Provencal, once more rich and melodious than any other idiom in the Peninsula, was abandoned as a patois to the lower orders of the Catalans, who, with the language, may boast that they also have inherited the noble principles of freedom which distinguished ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... recently as the last six months. There was a scant shock of corn and many meager standing stalks. He became aware of a low, whining hum and a fragrance overpowering in its sweetness. And there round another corner of wall he came upon an orchard all pink and white in blossom and melodious with the buzz and hum ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... to-morrow; Jealousies in grim array, Ye are things of yesterday! When you marry merry maiden, Then the air with joy is laden; All the corners of the earth Ring with music sweetly played, Worry is melodious mirth, Grief is joy in masquerade; Sullen night is laughing day - All the year is ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Chasdai," says Charizi, "the Hebrew poets began to sing." We have seen that the new-Hebrew poetry was older than Chasdai, but Charizi's assertion is true. The Hebrew poets of Spain are melodious, and Kalir is only ingenious. Again, it was in Spain that Hebrew was first used for secular poetry, for love songs and ballads, for praises of nature, for the expression of all human feelings. In most of this the poets found their models in the Bible. When Jehuda Halevi sang ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... off drowsy sleep, dear companion. Let the sacred hymn gush from thy divine throat in melodious strains; roll forth in soft cadence your refreshing melodies to bewail the fate of Itys,[202] which has been the cause of so many tears to us both. Your pure notes rise through the thick leaves of the yew-tree right up to the throne of Zeus, where Phoebus listens to you, Phoebus with ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al |
