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Pastoral   /pˈæstərəl/   Listen
Pastoral

adjective
1.
Of or relating to a pastor.  "A pastoral letter"
2.
Relating to shepherds or herdsmen or devoted to raising sheep or cattle.  Synonym: bucolic.  "Pastoral land" , "A pastoral economy"
3.
(used with regard to idealized country life) idyllically rustic.  Synonyms: arcadian, bucolic.  "A pleasant bucolic scene" , "Charming in its pastoral setting" , "Rustic tranquility"






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"Pastoral" Quotes from Famous Books



... way, unless we have seen the Egyptian prairies so many times before that they pall on us before we reach the Mississippi bluff opposite St. Louis. Till we strike the prairie, our course is among bold, well-timbered hills, which now and then we are obliged to tunnel, and by the side of charming pastoral streams whose green bottom-land is shaded by noble plane-trees and cotton-woods. Certain passages in the scenery between Cincinnati and Vincennes are beautiful as a dream of fairy-land. Every few miles we continue to meet freight-trains laden with all the well-known products of the Western ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... by artist, the charming declivities of Richmond gained a new name from Henry VII, and its bosky shades once saw a kingly Edward, a Henry, and a mighty Elizabeth drop the scepter of Great Britain from the palsied hand of Death. Its little parish church to-day hides the ashes of the pensive pastoral poet Thomson, and the bones of the great actor Kean. But, Anstruther's active mind was only dwelling in the present, as Miss Mildred nodded in the carriage. He saw again the simple wedding of the morning, and heard once more those touching ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... they might never experience the forms and trammels, the restlessness and changes, the worries, the necessities or benefits, of progressing civilization. Their quarrel had been with the abuses and blunders of one Government; but a narrow experience moved them to mistrust all but their own pastoral patriarchal way, moulded on the records of the Bible, and to regard the evidences of progress as warnings of coming oppression and curtailment of liberty, and a departure from the simple and ideal way. The abuses from which they suffered are no more; the methods which were unjust ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... throws its joyous light on the carefully polished floor; nothing can be more cheerful than the old fashioned chintz hangings and curtains with red Chinese figures upon a white ground, and the panels over the door painted with pastoral scenes in the style of Watteau. A clock of Sevres china, and rosewood furniture inlaid with green—quaint and portly furniture, twisted into all sorts of grotesque shapes—complete the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... smoke my pipe, and say, "Ah! That's Buggin's work. I remember him well; he worked for Rhodes.... Hullo! Here's Simpson at it again; since when did they buy him?..." And so forth. I lead my pastoral life, happy in the general world about me, and I serve, as sauce to such healthy meat, the piquant wickedness of the town; nor do I ever note a cowardice, a lie, a bribery, or a breach of trust, a surrender in the field, or a new Peerage, but I remember that my newspaper could not add these refining ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... Pine is a tree that harmonizes with all situations, rude and cultivated, level and abrupt. On the side of the mountain it adds grandeur to the declivity, and gives a look of sweeter tranquillity to the green pastoral meadow. It yields a darker frown to the projecting cliff, and a more awful uncertainty to the mountain-pass or the hollow ravine. Amid desolate scenery it spreads a cheerfulness that detracts nothing from its power ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... power to elevate them at all. Take the average Zulu warrior, and it will be found that, in his natural state, his vices are largely counter-balanced by his good qualities. In times of peace he is a simple, pastoral man, leading a good-humoured easy life with his wives and his cattle, perfectly indolent and perfectly happy. He is a kind husband and a kinder father; he never disowns his poor relations; his hospitality is extended alike to white and black; he is open in his dealings and faithful to ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... is to be noted "A Pastoral—To his Excellency George Thomas, Esq., formerly Governor of Pennsylvania, and now General of the Leeward Islands." This poem was written in 1744, on the occasion of the death of Alexander Pope, by "one of the first encouragers of this magazine." The Governor saw the ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... possess, went by the head of our street, and might, perhaps, be available to one skilled in calculating the movements of comets; while two minutes' walk would take us into a wood so wild and thick that no roof was visible through the trees. We learned, like innocent pastoral people of the golden age, to know the several voices of the cows pastured in the vacant lots, and, like engine-drivers of the iron age, to distinguish the different whistles of the locomotives passing on the neighboring railroad. The trains ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... his chapel, and taught by the members of his congregation, and these led to the first organization of a district visitors' society, one of the earliest attempts of the slowly reviving English Church to show her laity how to minister to the poor under pastoral direction. ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... have not lived in a desolate country like that about the Muir Pike, where sheep are paramount and every other man engaged in the profession pastoral, can barely imagine the sensation aroused. In market place, tavern, or cottage, the subject of conversation was always the latest sheep-murder ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... translated "Divine Offspring," but in later times lost all signification, being corrupted into TAMMUZ. In some Accadian hymns he is invoked as "the Shepherd, the lord Dumuzi, the lover of Ishtar." Well could a nomadic and pastoral people poetically liken the sun to a shepherd, whose flocks were the fleecy clouds as they speed across the vast plains of heaven or the bright, innumerable stars. This comparison, as pretty as it is natural, kept its hold in all ages and nations ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... sometimes whole nights, at his desk. His garden, also, was tilled by his own hand; he had a right of pasturage upon the mountains for a few sheep and a couple of cows, which required his attendance; with this pastoral occupation he joined the labours of husbandry upon a small scale, renting two or three acres in addition to his own, less than one acre of glebe; and the humblest drudgery which the cultivation of these fields required was performed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various

... not then men, who from the ease and leisure of pastoral life, under a mild heaven, had studied science, and cultivated the arts; they were men who had descended from a cold northern climate, where nature did little to supply their wants, where hunger and cold could not be avoided but by industry and exertion; where, in one word, ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... had accomplished his errand he set his face towards the vicarage, for he made up his mind suddenly that he would call on the Middletons, and perhaps on Mrs. Cheyne. The latter was a duty that he owed to his pastoral conscience; but there was no need for him to go to the Middletons'. Nevertheless, the father and daughter were his most intimate friends, and on all occasions he was sure of Miss Middleton's sympathy. They lived at Brooklyn,—a low white house a little below the vicarage. It ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... of plenty of rich and clever people, didn't you? Don't be cross, millionaire—I don't mean any harm. It's just my little joke—man, think of the holy text up over your bed!" And he would spread out his arms with a pastoral dignity, as if in blessing, and recite with unction, "Little ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... was the sacristy, a place from which the pilgrims of humble rank were excluded, but where those of wealth and high station were allowed to gaze at a great array of silken vestments and golden candlesticks, and also the Martyr's pearwood pastoral staff with its black horn crook, and his cloak and bloodstained kerchief. Here also was a chest "cased with black leather, and opened with the utmost reverence on bended knees, containing scraps and rags of linen with which (the story must be told throughout) the saint ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... of character is hardly akin to the simple, matter-of-fact style of Sanehat, and seems more in keeping with the emotional style of the Doomed Prince. If we attribute the earlier part to the opening of the XVIIIth Dynasty—the age of the pastoral scenes of the tombs of El Kab, which are the latest instances of such sculptures in Egypt—we shall probably be nearest ...
— Egyptian Tales, Second Series - Translated from the Papyri • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... that the religious might in that way learn of the opportunity presented to them to go to employ their talents in the new world. Our father vicar-general attended to that with the so holy zeal that he was known to possess. His pastoral letter was filled with the flames of divine love; for he inspired the souls of the religious in such a manner that, in a few days, he had the signatures of more than fifty of them. At that same time his Reverence received a paper from the convent of San Carlos de Turin (which belongs to our Recollect ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various

... are the works of Homer, we are not to suppose them the only masterpieces in Greek literature. Certainly the three great dramatists cannot be omitted, all so great, yet so unlike. These three, together with two pastoral poets, one lyric poet, and the greatest of prose poets, are vividly pictured by Mrs. Browning in the glowing stanzas of ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... the praises of a country life, but acknowledged that he quite agreed with him in disliking, pastorals—excepting always that beautiful drama, "The Gentle Shepherd." Mr. Percy said, that, in his opinion, a life purely pastoral must, if it could be realized, prove as insufferably tiresome in reality, as it usually is found to be in fiction. He hated Delias and shepherdesses, and declared that he should soon grow tired of any companion with whom he had no other ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... Christian worshippers, usually noted for their harmony. But for the last six months, trouble had been brewing between the congregation and the pastor. The Rev. Elisha Edwards had come to them two years before, and he had given good satisfaction as to preaching and pastoral work. Only one thing had displeased his congregation in him, and that was his tendency to moments of meditative abstraction in the pulpit. However much fire he might have displayed before a brother minister arose to speak, and however much he might display in the exhortation ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... sixteenth century. Looking toward the north, the eye traverses the fertile and beautiful valley of the Derwent, with the quiet little villages of Pilsley, Hassop, and Baslow, consisting of groups of cottages and quiet homesteads, speaking of pastoral life in its most favorable aspect. The eye, following the direction of the stream, is carried over the village of Calver, beyond which the rocks of Stony Middleton converge and shut in the prospect, with their gates of stone; amid distant trees, the village of Eyam, celebrated for its mournful ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... in character, religion and government. There were to be seen the depressed Briton from London; the hardy Gael from the Highlands of Scotland; the solemn Moravian from Herrnhut; the phlegmatic German from Salzburg in Bavaria; the reflecting Swiss from the mountainous and pastoral Grisons; the mercurial peasant from sunny Italy, and ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... have been neither astronomical nor agricultural but pastoral, being determined by the times when cattle are driven to ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... and ordered the militia to muster. They grumbled and hesitated, for they remembered the failures of La Barre. The governor issued a proclamation, and the bishop a pastoral mandate. There were sermons, prayers, and exhortations in all the churches. A revulsion of popular feeling followed; and the people, says Denonville, "made ready for the march with extraordinary animation." The church showered blessings on them as they went, ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... artists named as representative of this period one must not forget to add Mr. Birket Foster, who devoted many of his felicitous studies of English pastoral life to the adornment of children's books. But speaking broadly of the period from the Queen's Accession to 1865, except that the subjects are of a sort supposed to appeal to young minds, their conception differs in no way ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White

... spirit, Ishmael. Ah, brighter, and sweeter and dearer than all things in my life, is the memory of that pastoral poem of my boyish love. It is the one oasis in ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... figures of men and women in his Garland Makers, and Pastoral, some wrought in that single note of colour which the earlier Florentines loved, others with all the varied richness and glow of the Venetian school, show what great results may be brought about by a youth spent in Italian cities. And finally I must notice the works contributed to this Gallery ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... the establishment, was never off duty. We used to be very happy, and not altogether irrational, in these little skeleton parties. My new friend was a gentle, tasteful boy, fond of poetry, and a writer of soft, simple verses in the old-fashioned pastoral vein, which he never showed to any one save myself; and we learned to love one another all the more, from the circumstance that I was of a somewhat bold, self-relying temperament, and he of a clinging, timid one. Two of the stanzas of a little pastoral, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... into Molly's willing ears legends from the old heroic days of Switzerland, before it became the happy haven of hotel-keepers. From the car we could note the characteristics of the Cantons which had entered into the famous bond; pastoral and leafy Unterwalden, with green fields and orchards; Schwyz, also green and fertile; but Uri (the cold, highland partner in this great alliance), a country of towering mountains and savage rocks. Molly wanted to get a boat, and row across to the ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... disappear from the delightful eye. The painting and embellishment of this front are most masterly, and reflect the highest honour on the artists by whom they were executed; and the whole view is terminated with fountains, waterfalls, shepherds, shepherdesses, and other peasants, as pastoral sports and rural employment, and by a little church, the dial of which points out truly and distinctly ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport

... of a character peculiarly adapted to the severe exigencies of their day. They stood as iron men in an iron age. However rude in other social features, the early settlers, as they worked their way to the frontier, demanded the soothing influences of pastoral care, and the first institution reared in the forest was the pulpit, the next the school-house. The pastors were settled for life, and minister and people abode in communion, with little change but that of age. In ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... here, Miss Zell," said he, giving her a bit of pastoral counsel before going back to his work, "don't you keep lookin' at your heart, and seein' how it feels, or you'll get discouraged. See dis rose agin? It don't look at itself. It jes looks up at de sun. So you look straight at Jesus, and your ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as those poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge. How happy should I have been to have had a kingdom only for the pleasure of being driven from it, and living disguised in an humble vale! As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... oath," and vowed that he would never return from the seat of war or enter his capital without the heads of the rebellious chiefs. The Ashantee army shared the desperate feelings of their leader; and a war was begun, which for cruelty and carnage has no equal in the annals of the world's history. Pastoral communities, hamlets, villages, and towns were swept by the red waves of remorseless warfare. There was no mercy in battle: there were no prisoners taken by day, save to be spared for a painful death at nightfall. Their groans, mingling with the shouts of the victors, made the darkness ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams

... groups and marble figures that beautified the walks and bowers of Versailles were conceived by the gifted Lebrun. Among his designs were the Four Seasons, the Four Quarters of the Globe, the Four Kinds of Poetry (Heroic, Satiric, Lyric and Pastoral), the Four Periods of the Day (Morning, Noon, Twilight, Night), the Four Elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), the Four Temperaments (Phlegmatic, Melancholy, Coleric and Sanguine). Mythological figures, vases ornamented with bas-reliefs of Louis XIV and ...
— The Story of Versailles • Francis Loring Payne

... his time, too, in those early days of his ministry was devoted to pastoral calls, not the formal ministerial call where the children tiptoe in, awed and silent, because the "minister is there." Children hailed his coming with delight, the family greeted him as an old, old friend before whom all ceremony ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... the countess, "that the power of a man's intellect ought to be the measure of his ambition; and I imagined that one so wise as to make himself, at first, the poor man's lawyer, would have in his heart less humble and less pastoral aspirations." ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac

... rival the Sicilian bard: he has written with greater splendour of diction, and elevation of sentiment: but as the magnificence of his performances was more, the simplicity was less; and, perhaps, where he excels Theocritus, he sometimes obtains his superiority by deviating from the pastoral character, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... circumstances, I suppose.... But,' added De Stancy simply, 'Willy, I—don't want to marry, you know. I have lately thought that some day we may be able to live together, you and I: go off to America or New Zealand, where we are not known, and there lead a quiet, pastoral life, defying social rules ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... pervade the entire mass of salmon along our universal shores, should in any way depend upon so casual an occurrence as an onslaught by seals and porpoises, or that fear rather than love should force them to seek the "pastoral melancholy" of the upper streams and tributaries. That seals are destructive to salmon, and all other fishes which frequent our shores or enter our estuaries, is undoubted; but we have no proof beyond ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... can RAPHAEL'S touch impart Those finer features of the feeling heart, Those tend'rer tints that shun the careless eye, And in the world's contagious climate die? She left the cave, nor mark'd the stranger there; Her pastoral beauty, and her artless air Had breath'd a soft enchantment o'er his soul! In every nerve he felt her blest controul! What pure and white-wing'd agents of the sky, Who rule the springs of sacred sympathy, Inform congenial spirits when they meet? Sweet is their office, as ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... as quiet and placid as a New England pastoral scene, and only the towering mountains, snow-clad even as late as this in the fall, suggest that we are in the far-away wilds of the ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... hot in summer to go after wild pigs. That was our winter's amusement, and very good sport it afforded us, besides the pleasure of knowing that we were really doing good service to the pastoral interest, by ridding the hills around us of almost the only enemies which the sheep have. If the squatter goes to look after his mob of ewes and lambs in the sheltered slopes at the back of his run, he ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... and subject permitted, it would be pleasant to portray the romantic life of those pastoral days. Arcadian conditions were then more nearly attained than perhaps at any other time in the world's history. The picturesque, easy, idle, pleasant, fiery, aristocratic life has been elsewhere so well depicted that it has taken on the quality of rosy legend. Nobody did any ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... its hot internal source, this fountain gushes up; no sluggish Lethe-stream is here, dull, forgetful, and forgotten; but liker to the burning waves of Phlegethon, mingling at times (though its fire is still unquenched), with the pastoral rills of Tempe, and the River ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... a sapling. Then, carefully parting the branches, I saw this," waving her small hand that I might see it, but still not looking at me. "The sun was just setting; away down in yonder field the sorrel was as fire in its rays; a catbird was reciting a merry pastoral in the thicket beyond; two goats stood high on a bank, like satyrs guarding the place. You see why ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various

... naked and covered him up, 'How, then, did you get in when all the doors were locked?' 'We can get in,' she said, 'even if the doors are locked.' Then the priest took her into the chancel of the church, locked the door, and gave her a sound thrashing with the pastoral staff, calling out 'Out with you, lady witch.' But as she could not, he sent her home, saying 'See now how foolish you are to believe ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... (with a few verbal alterations made by him in MS.) in his "Collected Works." No. 2, "A Marriage of St. Katherine, by the same." A similar observation. No. 3, "A Dance of Nymphs, by Andrea Mantegna," was republished by Rossetti, with some verbal alterations. No. 4, "A Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione"—the like. The alterations here are of considerable moment. Rossetti, in a published letter of October 8, 1849, referred to the Giorgione picture as follows: "A Pastoral—at least, a kind of Pastoral—by Giorgione, which is so intensely ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... private strife seethed and strengthened around them, they could as completely forget the stormy outward world, in themselves; they could think as serenely of tranquil love; the kiss could be given as passionately and returned as tenderly, as if the lot of their existence had been cast in the pastoral days of the shepherd poets, and the future of their duties and enjoyments was securely awaiting them in a ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... notwithstanding the goddess he had left in Mantua, with the beautiful Lucrezia Bendidio, who does not seem, however, to have loved in return; for she became the wife of a Macchiavelli. Among his rivals was Guarini, who afterwards emulated him in pastoral poetry, and who accused him on this occasion of courting ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt

... pastoral land—a place where one would naturally locate a charming idyl or bucolic love-story!" he said one evening, to Surgeon Paul Denslow, after descanting at length upon the beauties of the country which they were "redeeming" from the hands of ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... spital, but could never find anybody to speak unto; whereupon they returned a little back, and took occasion to pass above the aforesaid hospital to try what intelligence they could come by in those parts. In which resolution riding on, and by chance in a pastoral lodge or shepherd's cottage near to Coudray hitting upon the five pilgrims, they carried them way-bound and manacled, as if they had been spies, for all the exclamations, adjurations, and requests that they could make. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... entirely different. The bees wheel and circle around individually, the whole swarm revolves—if I remember right, Burroughs has well described it (as what has he not?). [Footnote: Yes; I looked it up. See the "Pastoral Bees" in "Locusts and Wild Honey."] But the snow will not change its direction while drifting in a wind that blows straight ahead. Its direction is from first to last the resultant of the direction of the wind and that of the pull of gravity, into which there enters besides only ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove

... fixed the seasons of worship in Canaan. Minor festivals were fixed by the appearance of the new moon, or by the regular return of the seventh day (it is doubtful if the Sabbath was observed in the wilderness, it is connected with agriculture, and is scarcely compatible with pastoral life); greater ones by the epochs of the year, such as harvest and vintage. The worship connected with agriculture in the early world is of a noisy and frantic order; and where gods are worshipped who are connected with fertility, it is apt, as we saw, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... some too near-sighted, some too far-sighted. Ministers as a rule are not heavy tax-payers. Many of them do not want to vote and do not use the vote they have. A preacher has not time to vote. It might lead him to neglect his pastoral duties. Political feeling often runs high and if he voted it might make quarrels in the church. The minister has a potent indirect influence. He would be contaminated by the corruption of politics. He is ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... social evolution. It begins with the Indian and the hunter; it goes on to tell of the disintegration of savagery by the entrance of the trader, the pathfinder of civilization; we read the annals of the pastoral stage in ranch life; the exploitation of the soil by the raising of unrotated crops of corn and wheat in sparsely settled farming communities; the intensive culture of the denser farm settlement; and finally the manufacturing organization with city ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner

... during my walking south from thence, I had noted that what the Spaniards did had a strange affinity to the work of Flanders. The two districts differ altogether save in the human character of those who inhabit them: the one is pastoral, full of deep meadows and perpetual woods, of minerals and of coal for modern energy, of harbours and good tidal rivers for the industry of the Middle Ages; the other is a desert land, far up in the sky, with an air like a knife, and a complete ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... as can be inferred from the remains that have been examined, the same race seems to have inhabited these dwellings from their commencement to their end. There is no appearance of invasion from without; all seems continuous. Probably his race came in early time from the East, and were a pastoral people, with flocks, herds, and domestic animals, and built their peculiar habitations to protect themselves from human enemies. Certainly the arrangements were well fitted for the purpose in those days, when the club and the spear were almost the only weapons of offense. Dr. Keller, who ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various

... make two statements in regard to this. In the first place, if he does not believe in the resurrection of the body, he has no right to say it, because the House of Bishops, representing the whole Church of the United states, in an authoritative pastoral letter issued within three years, declares that fixity of interpretation is of the essence of the creeds. No man, then, is at liberty to change the interpretation ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage

... encumber the descending levels of the Stratford-on-Avon Canal, and they kept Sam busy. In the intervals the boat glided deeper and deeper into a green pastoral country, parcelled out with hedgerows and lines of elms, behind which here and there lay a village half hidden—a grey tower and a few red-tiled roofs visible between the trees. Cattle dotted the near pastures, till away behind the trees—for ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... an immense deal to enhance the beauties of the dwelling. The scenery around was pastoral and beautiful—what it wanted in grandeur it more than made up with the picturesque view to be seen from all sides of the house. The lodge was situated on a rising hillock and fronted the river, from which it was not more than a hundred yards distant. To the north of the ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival

... poetry of life had entered. "O for a live face," he thought; and at times he had a memory of Lady Flora; and at times he would study the living gallery before him with despair, and would see himself go on to waste his days in that joyless pastoral place, and death come to him, and his grave be dug under the rowans, and the Spirit of the Earth laugh out in a thunder-peal ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... troubles and disturbances only known to them by hearsay, as they would be described by the pilgrims tarrying with them on their way to the Insolvent Shrine; with the Arbour above, and the Lodge below; they would glide down the stream of time, in pastoral domestic happiness. Young John drew tears from his eyes by finishing the picture with a tombstone in the adjoining churchyard, close against the prison wall, bearing the following touching inscription: 'Sacred to the Memory Of JOHN CHIVERY, Sixty years Turnkey, and fifty years Head Turnkey, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... that river comes the range of hills which Captain Grey has called Gairdner's Range, and which is supposed to be the northern termination of the Darling Range; if so it is very probable that, by keeping on the east side of the Darling Range a continuation of pastoral country might be found all the way to Moresby's Flat-topped Range. In coming to our anchorage this morning we passed the opening of another river, that which is laid down in Captain King's charts as the largest. From what we saw of it I do not think that much water can issue from ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... devote three-quarters of their energies to keeping a congregation together, the other quarter to doing them good. They accomplish the first, sometimes by patient, persistent, assiduous, unwearying pastoral labor, sometimes by achieving a public reputation, sometimes by the doubtful expedient of sensational advertisements of paradoxical topics. But in whatever way they do it the hardest part of their work, a part, country parsons know next to nothing of, is to get and keep a congregation. ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... Julius, laughing, "provided you can manage with the old women's cats. I should find such companions rather awkward in pastoral visits." ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the state of society, it will undoubtedly be inquired, in which the defeat of a handful of men could result in such a despotism? We have already glanced at the people of La Rioja,—at their dreamy, Oriental character, at their pastoral pursuits. A community of herdsmen, scattered over an extensive territory, and deprived at one blow of the two great families to whom they had been accustomed to look up, with infantine submission, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... a growling dog to intimate that I was trespassing. All was open—gracious-looking—pastoral. The sward beneath my feet was velvet-like in elasticity, and the scarce visible path I followed through it led promptly to the open kitchen door. From within I heard a woman singing some old ballad in an undertone, while at the threshold a trim, white-spurred ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley

... every species of lay investiture. [Sidenote: and their consequences.] The prosecution of his plans soon brought him into a violent dispute with the weak and wicked Emperor Henry IV., who was as eager to secure the right of bestowing upon Bishops the ring and pastoral staff, as well as of their sole appointment, and thus reduce them to the state of mere secular vassals, as Gregory was by the same means to secure their ecclesiastical obedience to the see of Rome, and ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... was so long without a prelate as has been seen by experience—it has appeared very expedient to appoint for him, with the future succession a coadjutor, of the requisite qualifications, age, and vigor, so that he can fulfil the obligations of a prelate, and attend to the pastoral ministration. It is recommended that he he given, for his fitting support, a third part of the income of the archbishopric, besides the occasional fees [ovenciones] and its visitation—it being understood ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVII, 1609-1616 • Various

... earth had put on for her working-days, mindful that the richly wooded hills were looking down upon her picturesque attire. There was something peculiarly congenial to the thoughtful soul of the cultured lady in the quiet pastoral beauty of the extensive scene; and still more in the sense of serene elevation above the whole, seeing it all dwindle into small proportions, as the wisdom of age calmly surveys the remote panorama ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... power of the older minstrels. Alike in mirth and tenderness, Sir Alexander Boswell was exquisitely happy. Tannahill gave forth strains of bewitching sweetness; Hogg, whose ballads abound with supernatural imagery, evinced in song the utmost pastoral simplicity; Motherwell was a master of the plaintive; Robert Nicoll rejoiced in rural loves. Among living song-writers, Charles Mackay holds the first place in general estimation—his songs glow with patriotic sentiment, and are redolent in beauties; in pastoral scenes, Henry Scott ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... This pastoral scene lasted long enough to be sketched, but was ended abruptly. My eye caught a movement on the hilltop whence all the Bears had come, and out stalked a very large Blackbear with a tiny cub. It was Grumpy ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton

... operations by means of public Companies, but, as a matter of fact, few names can be mentioned of men who mine extensively single handed. Yet, risky as it is, mining can hardly be said to be more subject to unpreventable vicissitudes than, say, pastoral pursuits, in which private individuals risk, and often lose or make, enormous sums ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... therefore continually either shaving it off altogether, or else fashioning it after the most whimsical designs. No people in the world are so proud and headstrong as the negroes, whether they be pastoral or agriculturalists. With them, as with the rest of the world, "familiarity breeds contempt"; hospitality lives only one day; for though proud of a rich or white visitor—and they implore him to stop, that they ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Karroo somebody remarked that a Cape newspaper had suggested that our yeomen should ultimately settle in the country and continue their pastoral life in the veldt-farms of South Africa. Evidently the journalist who wrote this article imagines that our gallant yeomen were all tillers of the soil. Even if they were, few Englishmen will care to exchange the ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... something of the making of students; and he hoped to see college fellowships filled more and more by such men, and the life of a college fellow more and more recognised as that of a man to whom learning, and especially sacred learning, was his call and sufficient object, as pastoral or educational work might be the call of others. Where fellowships were not to be had, he encouraged such men to stay up in Oxford; he took them into his own house; later, he tried a kind of hall to receive them. And by way of beginning at once, and giving them something to ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... church and but little thought was given to religious education and training by the church. The minister christened the babies, married the young people and buried the dead, but otherwise, with numerous preaching services, he was unable to do much pastoral work. A large proportion of the rural churches were located in the open country and like the district school were largely neighborhood churches, for bad roads and horse-drawn vehicles made it difficult for people to go over two or three ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... true-lovers' knot, and every sort and kind of ornamentation; sometimes even a little verse, or posy, as it was called in olden time. One tea-caddy at a recent wedding bore the following almost obsolete rhyme, which Corydon might have sent to Phyllis in pastoral times: ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood

... with any considerable responsibility resting upon it was the sermon preached as a candidate for a pastoral call in the Reformed Church at Belleville, N.J. I was about to graduate from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and wanted a Gospel field in which to work. I had already written to my brother John, a missionary at Amoy, China, telling him that I expected ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... theretofore unknown objects, the necessity for naming which so exercised their tongues that gradually their bark took on a different quality and became susceptible of more complicated sounds. Then, with the dawning of the Pastoral Age, food in a gregarious community became a matter of more especial importance. When a man barked at his wife for a cocoanut and she handed him a baby or a bowl of soup or an evening paper it became necessary, in order to minimise ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... but not unmelodious singing of an unseen charcoal-burner, or the plaintive note of the little goat-herd's rustic pipe, accompanied by the musical jingling of his goat-bells;—for a moment we try to fancy ourselves in the pastoral Italy of Theocritus, where nymphs and shepherds, peasants and dryads, lived together on terms of amity in the woods. But soon the chestnut trees appear stunted, and the groves become less thick, and we finally gain the last zone, the desolate expanse of naked rock and dark lava deposits ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan

... somewhat divided bands of Protestant Christians; to wake up a host of Luthers, Calvins, Cranmers, and Wesleys; to bind together "the heretics condemned in a mass." The very latest thing I have seen is the "Pastoral Letter" of the Bishops of the Province of St. Louis, just issued. That ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... livery stood close behind him resting his master's helmet in the bend of his arm. So lapped in mail, so menacing in carriage, Simone might have seemed some truculent effigy of the god Mars suddenly appearing from the riven earth in a pastoral ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... and fiction are so carefully woven together in this Story of Kennett, that you will sometimes be at a loss to disentangle them. The lovely pastoral landscapes which I know by heart, have been copied, field for field and tree for tree, and these you will immediately recognize. Many of you will have no difficulty in detecting the originals of Sandy Flash and Deb. Smith; a few will remember the noble horse ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... addressing his king and sovereign with all sincerity and frankness; and he can say no less to your Majesty than that it is impossible for one bishop alone to visit and confirm his people, and to discharge his other pastoral duties, in all the numerous and intricate islands of Visayas, which have been in his charge until the present—especially in the so distant Marianas Islands, which have no communication with Cebu. Those islands ought to be assigned to the archbishopric of Manila, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... Aroukeen branching off there. He took the easterly route and we the westerly, and we were soon out of sight. Our way still lay through desert-hills, but with vegetation frequently. There was talk of the small oasis of Janet to our left; and we indulged in some pastoral reflections on the life of contemplative ease and primitive simplicity which would be indulged in in ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... Russia had so quietly waited and looked when the helpless and hopeless orgie of 1789 began. The Past from which he emerged, the Future which he evoked, both loom larger than human in the shadow of that colossal figure. What a silly tinkle, as of pastoral bells in some Rousseau's Devin du Village, have the 'principles of 1789,' when the stage rings again with the stern accents of the conqueror, hectoring the senators of the free and imperial city of Augsburg, for ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... unhappiness. In early life he had been captivated by a young lady adapted to be both the muse and the wife of the poet, and their mutual sensibility lasted for some years. It lasted until she died. It was in parting from her that he first sketched his "Pastoral Ballad." SHENSTONE had the fortitude to refuse marriage. His spirit could not endure that she should participate in that life of self-privations to which he was doomed; but his heart was not locked up in the ice of celibacy, and his plaintive ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... villages and hamlets, and were governed, like the Israelites under the Judges, by independent chieftains, none of whom attained the rank and power of kings until about one hundred years before the birth of Cyrus. These pastoral and hunting people, frugal from necessity, brave from exposure, industrious from the difficulty of subsisting in a dry and barren country, for the most sort were just such a race as furnished a noble material for the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord

... mountains were, for the most part, clothed with pines, sometimes an abrupt opening presented a perspective of only barren rocks, with a cataract flashing from their summit among broken cliffs, till its waters, reaching the bottom, foamed along with unceasing fury; and sometimes pastoral scenes exhibited their 'green delights' in the narrow vales, smiling amid surrounding horror. There herds and flocks of goats and sheep, browsing under the shade of hanging woods, and the shepherd's little cabin, reared on the margin ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... petty details, in the incessant drudgery of a poor farmer's household, with no companions or any sympathy—for the family of a hard-working New-England farmer are not the Chloes and Clarissas of pastoral poetry, nor the cowboys Corydons—with no opportunity of retirement and cultivation, for reading and studying—which is always voted 'stuff' under such circumstances—the light suddenly quenches out of life, what ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... illustrate why Browning was not read of old but is now read, has to do with historical criticism. There arose, some time ago, as part of the scientific and critical movement of the last forty years, a desire to know and record accurately the early life of peoples, pastoral, agricultural and in towns, and the beginning of their arts and knowledges; and not only their origins, but the whole history of their development. A close, critical investigation was made of the origins of each people; accurate knowledge, derived from contemporary documents, of their life, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... to fill his eloquent silences; and so I left. As the car gathered speed, plunging into the pastoral solitudes, I looked back. The last sight I had of Domremy was a grey little garden, made sacred by the centuries, and an American soldier standing with a French child in his arms, her golden hair lying ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... Gregory, surnamed the Great. He was born in 540, and died in 604. He designed the conversion of the Saxons. He was a great author, though he was ignorant of Greek. We will here notice three of his works—the "Commentary on Job," the "Pastoral Care," and ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle

... supreme factor to whose charge the whole flock of his subjects is commuted, and consequently that it is by his authority that all other pastors are made and have power to teach and perform all other pastoral offices, it followeth also that it is from the civil sovereign that all other pastors derive their right of teaching, preaching and other functions pertaining to that office, and that they are but his ministers in the same way as the magistrates of towns, judges in Court ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... here under the inexorable spaces of the sky, a deep distaste of his own life took possession of him. He felt like giving it all up. He thought of the infinite tragedy of these lives which the world loves to call "peaceful and pastoral." HIS mind went out in the aim to help them. What could he do to make life better worth living? Nothing. They must live and die practically as ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... trip over the Gordon-Bennett course, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin now recommends the motor-car for pastoral visits. This will be no new thing. For years past some people have looked on the motor-car in the light of ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... beaten track of travel, and having no mines or large agricultural tracts in its vicinity to stimulate trade, had dreamed away the years since American occupation, and still retained much of the flavour of the pastoral days of Spanish California. It is true that at the cascarone[12] balls—at which the entire population, irrespective of age or worldly position, dressed in silks or in flannel shirts, as the case might be, still ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... he will have no command. However, I set him at ease as to what would take place. I flattered him with a picture of private life, the pleasures of the country, and the charms of Malmaison; and I left him with his head full of pastoral dreams. In a word, I am very well satisfied with my day's work. Good-night, Bourrienne; we shall see what will ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... then, that one nation desires to subjugate another at all? Sometimes the object has simply been space—the pressure of population upon the extent of ground. Pastoral and nomad hordes, like the "Barbarians" and Tartars, have had that object, but, as a rule, it has ended in their own absorption. The motives of the Roman Empire were strangely mixed. Plunder certainly came ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... This romantic pastoral is most instructive as to the high position which women really held among the people whose religious history is the foundation of our own, and still further substantiates our claim that the Bible does not teach ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... of the Zulu is well understood. They are a pastoral, but not a nomadic people, possessing large kraals or towns. They practise agriculture, and they had, till quite recently, a centralised government and a large army, somewhat on the German system. They appear to have no regular class of priests, and supernatural power is owned by the chiefs and ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang

... the tribe for ever, to keep the territory of each distinct, to discourage the creation of a landowning class, with its consequent landless class, to prevent the extremes of poverty and wealth, and to perpetuate a diffused, and nearly uniform, modest wellbeing amongst a pastoral and agricultural community, and to keep all in mind that the land was 'not to be sold for ever, for it is Mine,' saith ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... Gentle Shepherd, in the Scottish dialect, as the best pastoral that had ever been written; not only abounding with beautiful rural imagery, and just and pleasing sentiments, but being a real picture of manners; and I offered to teach Dr. Johnson to understand it. 'No, Sir (said he,) I won't learn it. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... use, held in her hands above her head. But, more singular still, a few paces before her a large goat, with its neck roughly wreathed with flowers and vines, was taking ungainly bounds and leaps in imitation of its companion. The wild background of the Sierras, the pastoral hollow, the incongruousness of the figures, and the vivid color of the girl's red flannel petticoat showing beneath her calico skirt, that had been pinned around her waist, made a striking picture, which by this time had attracted all eyes. ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... The epistle to the Hebrews and the first epistle of Peter, as well as the Pastoral epistles belong to the Pauline circle; they are of the greatest value because they shew that certain fundamental features of Pauline theology took effect afterwards in an original way, or received independent parallels, and because they ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... along the pastures beneath; and after winding through the village of Boidou, loses itself in a narrow pass amongst the cliffs and precipices which rise above the cultivated slopes, and frame in this happy pastoral region. All the plain was in sunshine, the sky blue, and the heights illuminated, except one rugged peak with spires of rock, shaped not unlike the views I have seen of Sinai, and wrapped, like that sacred mount, in clouds and ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... practically, of the dairy, but that it was an inexhaustible source of the sweetest milk and butter, and, indirectly, of the richest custards and syllabubs. The flock of sheep that now and then came in sight, running over the hill-side, were to them only an image of pastoral beauty, and a soft link with the beauty of the past. The two children took the very cream of country life. The books they had left were read with greater eagerness than ever. When the weather was "too lovely to stay in the house," Shakespeare, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... in heaven the sovereign light Of sunlike Shakespeare, and the fiery night Whose stars were watched of Webster; and beneath, The twin-souled brethren of the single wreath, Grown in kings' gardens, plucked from pastoral heath, Wrought with all flowers for all ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... part, he told us he had as good as five pounds in his pocket. With that to cheer us we played our tragedy of "The Broken Heart" very merrily, and after that, changing our dresses in a twinkling, Jack Dawson, disguised as a wild man, and Moll as a wood nymph, came on to the stage to dance a pastoral, whilst I, in the fashion of a satyr, stood on one side plying the fiddle to their footing. Then, all being done, Jack thanks the company for their indulgence, and bids ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... Orientalist, who would produce a contemporary lexicon of Persian, must not only read up all the diaries and journals of Teheran and the vocabularies of Yezd and Herat, he must go further a-field. He should make himself familiar with the speech of the Iliyat or wandering pastoral tribes and master a host of cognate tongues whose chiefs are Armenian (Old and New), Caucasian, a modern Babel, Kurdish, Luri (Bakhtiyari), Balochki and Pukhtu or Afghan, besides the direct descendants of the Zend, the Pehlevi, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... banks of the White Nile, their territory extending on the west bank from Kaka in the north, to Lake No in the south, on the east bank from Fashoda to Taufikia, and some 35 miles up the Sohat river. Numbering some 40,000 in all, they are a pastoral people, their wealth consisting in flocks and herds, grain and millet. The King resides at Fashoda, and is regarded with extreme reverence, as being a re-incarnation of Nyakang, the semi-divine hero who settled ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston

... way of slow pacing down steep hills, which they afterward found had been acquired in leading sad trains of mourners to the modest graveyards, wherein rest the earthly remains of the peaceful dwellers in this pastoral vale. The first four or five miles of road were excellent, but the last one or two so rough and stony, that they were quite willing to walk. On top of the mountain stands a little inn, commanding a magnificent view in several directions. As they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... nature of this immense wilderness of the far West; which apparently defies cultivation and the habitation of civilized life. Some portion of it, along the rivers, may partially be subdued by agriculture, others may form vast pastoral tracts like those of the East; but it is to be feared that a great part of it will form a lawless interval between the abodes of civilized man, like the wastes of the ocean or the deserts of Arabia, and, like them, be subject to the depredations of the ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... who love nature and the primitive so well as to believe that Providence made a mistake in permitting men to pass beyond the pastoral stage. ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... flail-like force; sleek bards that ripple Like shallow pools—who pose and pant, And vaguely smudge or softly stipple,— These have not brain or heart to sing As Biglow sang, our quaint Hosea, Whose "Sunthin in the Pastoral line," Full primed with picture and idea, Lives, with "The Courtin'," unforgot, And worth whole volumes of sham-Shen-stone. Yes, you could catch, as prigs may not, Pure women's speech and valiant men's tone. Zekle and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various

... which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest; and a just apprehension, lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations. The Huns of Attila may, without injustice, be compared to the Moguls and Tartars, before their primitive manners were changed by religion ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... all the parts of this delightful pastoral had been in unison with its many innocent scenes and sweet lyric intermixtures, it had been a poem fit to vie with Comus or the Arcadia, to have been put into the hands of boys and virgins, to have made matter for young dreams, like the loves of Hermia and Lysander. But a spot is on the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... be given to the coachman was to drive to the village of Hendon, on the north-western side of London, and to trust to inquiries for the rest of the way. Between Hendon and Willesden, there are pastoral solitudes within an hour's drive of Oxford Street—wooded lanes and wild-flowers, farms and cornfields, still unprofaned by the devastating brickwork of the builder of modern times. Following winding ways, under shadowing trees, the coachman made his last inquiry at a roadside public-house. ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins

... and in every season the heavy rainfall at the period when the grain is coming to maturity, are serious drawbacks to agriculture in this district. On the whole, it may be said that Queensland is far more adapted to be a pastoral ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey

... finished as a delicate ivory carving that mood of restful, sunny, impersonal optimism which is the essence of most of his musical creations. It is like some finely wrought Greek idyl, the apotheosis of the pastoral, perfect in detail, without apparent effort, gently, tenderly emotional, without a trace of passionate intensity or restless agitation, innocent and depending, as a mere babe. It is the mood of a bright, cloudless day on the upland pastures, where ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... who does not detect the seriousness under the lightness misreads Herrick. Nearly all true poets have been wholesome and joyous singers. A pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms. In his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled. His limitations are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the sunshine. Neither in his thought nor in his utterance is there any complexity; both are as pellucid as a woodland pond, ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... request of their minister, were meeting to re-examine the purpose of the church. Not all of the group had arrived as yet, and the minister of the congregation, Mr. Gates, had been detained in his office by an emergency call upon his pastoral care. ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe

... farther is the Ponte Alto, 2740 ft.; where the road crosses the Golo and enters the pastoral country of the Niolo; now called the canton of Calacuccia, comprehending the villages of Albertacce, ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black

... written a better boy's book than La Roche aux Mouettes, deservedly well known to English readers in translation: and whether he did or did not enter into designed competition with his quondam companion on the theme of Pastoral berquinade, I do not myself think that Catherine is much below La Petite Fadette or La Mare au Diable. He was a very considerable master of the short story; you cannot have much better things of the kind than Le Jour sans ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... It was this inborn pastoral gift, just as real as the literary or artistic gifts, and containing the same potentialities of genius as they which was leading him to feel a deep anxiety about the Barnes's menage. It seemed to him necessary ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... life among his flock, if he could do so with a good conscience, saying how wretched a thing it was to hold office with an uneasy conscience. He knew the anxieties incident to the faithful discharge of the pastoral office, and said, that he would be the most wretched man on earth if to them were added the reproaches of a guilty conscience. His desire was not in the very least to appear to depart from his previous mode ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt

... times- -such as were customary amongst all the ministers of the denomination. It was not pleasant to be outbid in his own department, especially by one who was not a communicant, and to be obliged, when he went on a pastoral visit to a house in which Mrs. Butts happened to be, to sit still and hear her, regardless of the minister's presence, conclude a short mystical monologue with ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... Chatterton's, who, in consequence of his tender years and ignorance, was placed, for inspiration and intuitive knowledge, on a higher pedestal than Jeremiah. The position of the controversialists which has been accepted amounts to this:—that a child at the age of twelve years wrote the pastoral "Elinoure and Juga," which is marked by finer pathos than anything that proceeded from the passionate soul of Burns: that when a few months or so older this child wrote "Aella," which displays an energy equal, if not superior to Spencer's, and about the same time the "Tournament," which breathes ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... Our pastoral captain. Forth he came, As one that answers to his name; Nor dreamed how high his charge, His work ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... MISS MACPHERSON,—Various ministerial and pastoral occupations, since my return home, have prevented me from carrying out my intention of putting into shape my impressions and thoughts about Canada and your work. If the Lord will, I shall do so at no great distance of time. Meanwhile, allow ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe

... in royal habit dressed, With starry diadem upon his head, And o'er his shoulders an imperial vest Worn upon holidays.—The king displayed A sceptre, pastoral shape, with hooked crest: In a rich jacket too was he arrayed, Given by the inhabitants of Sericane, And Ganymede held up ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... Pastoral Letter from the Clergy of the Church of Scotland in the Canadas to their Presbyterian Brethren" issued in 1828, they say:—"We did, in the year 1820, petition His Majesty's Government for protection and support to our Church, and claimed, by what we believe to be our constitutional rights, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... heard the song of the field sparrow? If you have lived in a pastoral country with broad upland pastures, you could hardly have missed him. Wilson, I believe, calls him the grass finch, and was evidently unacquainted with his powers of song. The two white lateral quills in his tail, and his habit of running and skulking a few yards in advance ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... I passed into Arabia, where I saw a nation at once pastoral and warlike; who live without any settled habitation; whose only wealth is their flocks and herds; and who have yet carried on, through all ages, an hereditary war with all mankind, though they neither covet nor envy ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... Daily, they constitute the trunk of the great Slavonic national tree, from which have branched so many of the Slav people, at the head of whom now stands the powerful Russian empire. From prehistoric time they were celebrated as a peaceful, industrious people, fond of agricultural and pastoral life. The immigration has been from the agricultural class, and at first settlement was made in the mining regions of Pennsylvania. Farming had its inherited attractions, however, and there are hundreds of Slovak farmers in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Ohio; while in ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose

... in France that the king was a prisoner in the hands of the Saracens, the utmost excitement prevailed throughout the land; and suddenly among the pastoral population appeared a man bearing a letter, to which he pretended ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... certain times, however, a loud trumpet is blown in the evening, and the girls are then allowed to go away into the bush to mix freely with the young men. In ancient Peru (according to an account derived from a pastoral letter of Archbishop Villagomez of Lima), in December, when the fruit of the paltay is ripe, a festival was held, preceded by a five days' fast. During the festival, which lasted six days and six nights, men and women met together in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... skeletons of prehistoric beasts, many steel frames twisted by the flames were scattered over the plains. The brick chimneys of the factories were either levelled to the ground or, pierced with the round holes made by shells, were standing up like giant pastoral ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... the Scriptures into Burmese is a work for which Burmah is indebted to Dr. Judson For many years this devoted servant of Christ employed on this great work every moment he could spare from pastoral labor; and there is something truly sublime in the record he has left of the completion of it, in his Journal under date of Jan. 31, 1834: "Thanks be to god, I can now say, I have attained! I have knelt down before ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... stop or pastoral song May hope, chaste Eve, to soothe thy modest ear, Like thy own solemn springs ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... majestic concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterance of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained; and the far reaching ridges of pastoral mountain succeed each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters from some far off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces and the ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... thou art passed, and at its bound Hollow and sere we cry, yet win no sound But the dark muttering of the forest maze We may not tread, nor pierce with any gaze; And hardly love dare whisper thou hast found That restful moonlit slope of pastoral ground Set in dark dingles ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne

... of his existence—D'Artagnan, we repeat, had absolutely nothing whatever to do, amidst these brilliant butterflies of fashion. After following the king during two whole days at Fontainebleau, and critically observing the various pastoral fancies and heroi-comic transformations of his sovereign, the musketeer felt that he needed something more than this to satisfy the cravings of his nature. At every moment assailed by people asking him, "How do you think this costume suits me, Monsieur d'Artagnan?" he would reply ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... which, by having two little wheeles fastened to the axle-tree, is said to make it go with half the ease and more than another cart; but we did not see the trial made. To the King's playhouse, and saw "The Faithful Shepherdess," [A dramatic pastoral, by J. Fletcher.] that I might hear the French eunuch sing; which I did to my great content; though I do admire his action as much as his singing, being both beyond all I ever ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... a monk chanced to pass by and stopped in surprise to find a ball going on. A score of goats were executing lively pirouettes like a ladies' chain, while the buck solemnly balance-ed, and the herder went through the figures of an eccentric pastoral dance. ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... has so imbedded his stories in Nature as has James Lane Allen; and among English novels one recalls only Mr. Hardy's three classics of pastoral England, and among French novelists George Sand and Pierre Loti. Nature furnishes the background of many charming American stories, and finds delicate or effective remembrance in the hands of writers like Miss Jewett and Miss Murfree; but in Mr. Allen's romances Nature is ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company

... of poems on several occasions. ... To which is added a pastoral, entitled, The fond shepherdess. Dedicated to Mr. Congreve. By Mrs. Sarah Fyge Egerton. London, to be sold by ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges

... or the frolics at the tavern. These led him to turn from the roaring glees of the club, to listen to the harp of his cousin Jane; and from the rustic triumph of "throwing sledge," to a stroll with his flute along the pastoral banks ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... parsonage which had just been vacated by his predecessor, Mr. Quincy. A week earlier he had entered upon his ministry at Savannah, being met by so large and attentive an audience that he was much encouraged, and began with zeal to perform his pastoral duties. He was the third Rector of the Savannah Parish, the Rev. Henry Herbert having been the first, and he preached in a rude chapel built on the lot reserved for a house of worship in the original plan of Savannah,—the site of the ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... of independent tribes in the valley of the White Nile. They are essentially a pastoral people, passionately devoted to the care of their numerous herds of oxen, though they also keep sheep and goats, and the women cultivate small quantities of millet and sesame. For their crops and above all for their pastures they depend on the regularity of the rains: in ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... incarcerated in Bedford Gaol, his imprisonment lasting for twelve years. There he wrote his immortal "Pilgrim's Progress." Released under the Act of Indulgence, he resumed his ministry, and ultimately his pastoral charge in Bedford. He took fever when on a visit to London, and died on August 31, 1688. The "Holy War" is considered by critics even superior to the "Pilgrim," inasmuch as it betrays a finer literary ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... English drama was Warton, whose fancy responded to the fascination of the fairy-like magnificence and lyrical spirit of the Masque. Warton had the taste to give a specimen from "The Inner Temple Mask by William Browne," the pastoral poet, whose Address to Sleep, he observed, "reminds us of some favourite touches in Milton's Comus, to which it perhaps gave birth." Yet even Warton was deficient in that sort of research which only can discover the true nature of these ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... priest, as we now know them, did not yet exist. Still, the pastoral ministry, that intimate familiarity of souls, not bound by ties of blood, had already been established. This latter has ever been the special gift of Jesus, and a kind of heritage from him. Jesus had often said that to everyone he was more than a father and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... priest in Assyria will be out of all measure in Mexico or Minnesota, and I doubt not that one doing fairly well in Minnesota would by similar methods set things sadly astray in Leinster or Bavaria. The Saviour prescribed timeliness in pastoral caring. The master of a house, He said, "bringeth forth out of his treasury new things and old," as there is demand for one kind or the other. The apostles of nations, from Paul before the Areopagus to Patrick upon the summit of Tara, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... An oddly pastoral kind of office it was, and one that would never have answered in England. It stood in a neat back yard, fenced off from a pretty flower-garden. Goats browsed in the doorway, and a cow was within half-a-dozen ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... just rising into favor. He there renewed a former intimacy with the poet Spenser, who, like himself, had been rewarded with a grant of land out of forfeited estates, and then resided at Kilcolman Castle. Spenser has celebrated the return of his friend in the beautiful pastoral, "Colin Clout's come home again;" and in that, and various passages of his works, has made honorable mention of the highly poetic spirit which enabled the "Shepherd of the Ocean," as he is there denominated, to appreciate the merit of the "Fairy Queen," and led him to promote ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various



Words linked to "Pastoral" :   literary work, musical composition, eclogue, piece of music, shepherd, pastor, composition, opus, piece, rural, arcadian, letter, literary composition, missive



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