"Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moulting season, still less that a day would come when I should envy the ducks their domestic ease and the unthinking tranquillity of their lives. A little boy may be excused for not realising that Hans Andersen's story is only the prelude to a sadder story that he had not the heart ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... of 1777-8 upon the bleak hill-sides of Valley Forge. Dancing assemblies, theatrical entertainments, and various gaieties marked the advent of the British in Philadelphia, all of which formed a fitting prelude to the full-blown glories of the Meschianza, which burst upon the admiring inhabitants on ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... organist with vaguely melodious hints foreshadows in his prelude the musical motifs which he means to vary and elaborate in his fugue, so Kielland lightly touched in these "Novelettes" the themes which in his later works he has struck with a fuller volume and power. What he gave in this little book was a light sketch of his mental ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... among the players falling wholly on Goldsmith, for the manager seems to have withdrawn in despair; while all the Johnson confraternity were determined to do what they could for Goldsmith on the opening night. That was the 15th of March, 1773. His friends invited the author to dinner as a prelude to the play; Dr. Johnson was in the chair; there was plenty of gaiety. But this means of keeping up the anxious author's spirits was not very successful. Goldsmith's mouth, we are told by Reynolds, became so parched "from the agitation of his mind, that he was unable to swallow a single ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... Valentine an artful story, as a prelude to draw his secret from him, saying that Valentine knew he wished to match his daughter with Thurio, but that she was stubborn and disobedient to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the prelude soft; And so it chanc'd, for many a door was wide, From hurry to and fro. Soon, up aloft, 30 The silver, snarling trumpets 'gan to chide: The level chambers, ready with their pride, Were glowing to receive a thousand ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... yellow mountains of the over thrust's eastern edge, including two afternoons among the fighting trout of Kennedy Creek and Slide Lake, and two nights in camp among the wild bare arroyos of the Algonkian invasion of the prairie—an interesting prelude to the fulness of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... bed at once. A doctor was sent for, and found him suffering from heart disease, which had already reached an advanced stage. In spite of every attention the patient became rapidly worse. He would not infrequently fall into fits of unconsciousness, which were the prelude to a state of coma in which he would ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... said was a friend of yours—he is my friend now too, and I have learned to sing some of his songs. I am going to sing one now." She seemed to have no timidity at all, but stood quietly, with a half smile, while a young man with a Russian name played a strange minor prelude. Then she sang, her voice a wonderful contralto, cold at times, and again lit up with gleams of passion. The music itself was fitful, now full of joy, now tender, and ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... grew strong enough to walk, he went with her across to the native pastor's house, where together they stood up before the Rev. Tavita Singua and were married. This was the prelude to another and more binding ceremony before the American Consul in Apia, whither they both went in a canoe borrowed from Faalelei. The official books were withdrawn from the safe and the thirty-six Americans in Samoa were increased by two new ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... came to a hamlet which had always been one of his favourite resorts, so peacefully it lay amid the exquisite rural landscape. The cottages were all closed and silent; hark for the reason! From the old church sounded an organ prelude, then the voice of the congregation, joining in one of the ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... immediately produced a political change in the shape of the proclamation of the regency of the future King Frederick, and the granting of a constitution. This event filled me with such enthusiasm that I composed a political overture, the prelude of which depicted dark oppression in the midst of which a strain was at last heard under which, to make my meaning clearer, I wrote the words Friedrich und Freiheil; this strain was intended to develop gradually and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was the complete and harmonious embodiment. Of this procession we have still in the frieze of the Parthenon a marble transcript. There we may see the life of ancient Athens moving in stone, from the first mounting of their horses by isolated youths, like the slow and dropping prelude of a symphony, on to the thronged and trampling ranks of cavalry, past the antique chariots reminiscent of Homeric war, and the marching band of flutes and zithers, by lines of men and maidens bearing sacrificial urns, by the garlanded sheep and oxen destined ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... with him, indoors and out of doors. She weaned him from the embittering brawl of politics, and warded away the sourness and despair, which, at one time, seriously threatened to possess him. In the "Prelude," he ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... have forbid your coming into this country; they are under no control, but, in open defiance of the Gerad, do and act just as they like: indeed, every head man is a Gerad here, and those who are strongest carry the day." This was the prelude to another farce; presently the men came of whom Husayn Hadji spoke, and, surrounding my camp, boisterously demanded to know what I was doing in their country against their orders. A violent altercation then ensued. They must ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... of the wind in the forest swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent. The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses, the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mountain of self-knowledge, said the Victorine mystics, is the necessary prelude to all illumination. Only at its summit do we discover, as Dante did, the beginning of the pathway to Reality. It is a lonely and an arduous excursion, a sufficient test of courage and sincerity: for ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... cannot tell a man what to do to become an orator, I can tell him a few things not to do. There should be no introduction to an oration. The orator should commence with his subject. There should be no prelude, no flourish, no apology, no explanation. He should say nothing about himself. Like a sculptor, he stands by his block of stone. Every stroke is for a purpose. As he works the form begins to appear. When ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... accordance with the continual practice of the German armies, pillaging is only a prelude to incendiarism, the sub-officer Hermann Levith (160th Regiment of Infantry, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... teaspoonful of vinegar, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce and the juice of one small lime. Lay the tripe in this sauce as soon as it is removed from the fire. Serve with buttered toast. An excellent prelude to this dish is ...
— Joe Tilden's Recipes for Epicures • Joe Tilden
... where shall we find an example so impressive as Abraham Lincoln, whose career might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... and torture was forced into doing great exploits. Moreover, Romulus's greatest achievement was the slaying of one man, the despot of Alba, whereas Skeiron, Sinis, Prokrustes, and Korynetes were merely the accompaniments and prelude to the greater actions of Theseus, and by slaying them he freed Greece from terrible scourges, before those whom he saved even knew who he was. He also might have sailed peacefully over the sea to Athens, and had no trouble with those brigands, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... "This is, indeed, the reason why I begged you to alter the order of the questions." The public astonishment had reached its height. There was no longer any deceit or bravado in the manner of the accused. The audience felt that a startling revelation was to follow this ominous prelude. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and not a State. Douglas then made this "mammoth moneyed corporation" the scapegoat for all that had happened in Kansas. The Missouri Blue Lodges were defensive organizations, called into existence by the fear that the "abolitionizing" of Kansas was the prelude to a warfare upon slavery in Missouri. The violence and bloodshed in Kansas were "the natural and inevitable consequences of such extraordinary systems ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... prelude of the toil that waits The nascent glories of his infant states, Columbus mourn'd the slain. A numerous crowd, Half of each host, had bought their fame with blood; From the whole hill he saw the lifestream pour, And sloping pathways trod with tracks of gore. Here, glorious Warren, thy cold earth ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... outside, which were many, were gazing with silent wonder at it, and in the second moment, all the rest had joined them in their confused contemplation. But the third moment witnessed a drastic change in their behavior, for their initial bewilderment wore off and suddenly, with a united prelude of the drawing in of a breath, they all began speaking at once, resulting in a clamorous din that lasted for a few moments, before things hushed again and we could hear a few individual voices discussing ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... sea, including in his fire area the whole of the trenches we had taken from him from Umbrella Hill to Sheikh Hasan. Many observers of this bombardment by all the Turks' guns of heavy, medium, and small calibre declared it was the prelude not of an attack but of a retirement, and that the Turks were loosing off a lot of the ammunition they knew they could not carry away. They were probably right, though the enemy made no sign of ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... only by the crack and rustle of the fire. Then, into the silence, crept the first dew-clear notes of Chopin's F Sharp Major Nocturne. The liquid beauty of the last bars had scarcely died away, when the unseen piano gave forth, tragically exultant, the glorious chords of the Twentieth Prelude—climbing higher and higher in a mournful triumph of minor chords and sinking at last into the final solemn splendor of the closing measures. The old gentleman turned on the piano-stool to find Kirk weeping passionately and silently into the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... been casting earth's kingdoms into new moulds, and have still destructive work to do. The 'once more' began when Jesus came, but the final 'shaking' lies in front still. Every smaller revolution in thought or sweeping away of institutions is a prelude to that great 'shaking' when everything will go except the kingdom that cannot be moved. Its result shall be that the treasures of the nations shall be poured at His feet who is 'worthy to receive riches,' even as other prophecies have foretold that 'men shall bring unto ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... pity, of trials undergone in common. And as she knew that she was always in demand in society because of her talent, because of the artistic entertainment she furnished at select parties, being always ready to lay her long gloves and her fan on the piano, as a prelude to some portion of her rich repertory, she labored constantly, passed her afternoons turning over new music, selecting by preference melancholy and complicated pieces, the modern music which is no longer content to be an art but is becoming a science, and is much better ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... moment death disentangled them from the world. "This little one in her shroud," he said, "is an eloquent sermon. She passed through the dark valley without fear; and sits, like Mary, at the feet of our Saviour." Of this life, he said: "It is but an imperfect prelude to the next." Of death: "It is only a brief sleep: some sunny morning we shall wake up with the child Bell, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the lightening of the pressure, the slight recoil, which could only be a prelude to another assault upon his last stronghold. He clutched his three facts to him as a shield, groping for others which might have afforded a weapon ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... "khir" according to the taste of his customers. Hardly has dessert ended when an elderly Mahomedan in shabby garb falls out of the group and clearing his throat to attract attention commences to recite a flowery prelude in verse. He is the "Dastan-Shah," own brother (professionally) of the "Sammar" or story-teller of Arabia and the "Shayir" of Persia and Cairo: and his stories, which he delivers in a quaint sing-song fashion, richly interspersed with quotations from the poets of Persia, are usually ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... this last mission for those we love and esteem. I realized for a moment the difficult task and during the reading of the scriptures the battle was raging within me. When the moment came and the organ began the prelude, I arose as in a dream, and casting my eyes away from the beloved form, I began in a low voice the beautiful song (by Felix Marti) "By the River." As I sang I forgot all earthly sorrow and directed my thought above the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... cats heard fighting was propitious only during the first watch of the night; if heard later in the night it was known as 'Kali ki mauj' or 'Kali's temper,' and threatened evil, and if during the daytime as 'Dhamoni [707] ki mauj,' and was a prelude of great misfortune; while if the cats fell from a height while fighting it was worst of all. The above shows that the cat was also the animal of Kali and is a point in favour of her derivation from the tiger; and on this hypothesis the importance of the omen of the cat is explained. If they ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... Such prelude spoken to the gods in full, To you I turn, and to the hidden thing Whereof ye spake but now: and in that thought I am as you, and what ye say, say I. For few are they who have such inborn grace, As to look up with love, and envy not, When stands another on the height of weal. Deep ...
— The House of Atreus • AEschylus
... was a Phantom of delight," they were less remarkable than those of the two preceding, and the three following years. Wordsworth's poetical activity in 1804 is not recorded, however, in Lyrical Ballads or Sonnets, but in 'The Prelude', much of which was thought out, and afterwards dictated to Dorothy or Mary Wordsworth, on the terrace walk of Lancrigg during that year; while the 'Ode, Intimations of Immortality' was altered and added to, although it did not receive its final form ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... find my heart so full of grief and indignation that I must beg pardon not to finish the last part of my discourse, that I may drop a tear as the prelude to so ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... from the rout of Trasimene. Silius succeeds in making one of the noblest stories in history lifeless and dull. The narration opens with the description of a melodramatic struggle between Regulus and a monstrous serpent in Africa, scarcely an harmonious prelude for the simple and solemn climax of the hero's life, his return to his home to fix 'the Senate's wavering will', his departure unmoved to Carthaginian captivity, with the certainty of death and torture before him. Silius treats this tragic episode simply and severely; there ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... that April day, whose events form my prelude, to give me remembrance of the handsome telegraph boy. The next time I saw him, which was near midnight in July—the place Hyde ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... case of Don Juan; and in all the revelation made has resembled rather an escapade or a partial confession than a systematic and slowly-consolidated life. The mere circumstances, too, of life have been more regarded than the inner current of life itself. We class the 'Prelude' at once with Sartor Resartus—although the latter wants the poetic form—as the two most interesting and faithful records of the individual experience of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... automobile industry in wonder over its expansion, and with admiration for the men behind it. Clear-cut youth, fresh vigor, compelling action galvanize it. Yet what seems to be a miracle at the end of less than ten years of growth may only be the prelude ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... big plans was the prelude to nothing! Yet it was by no means a farce when enacted. Philip fully intended to make this crusade the crowning event of his life, and his proceedings immediately after the great fete were all to further that end. To obtain allies abroad, to ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... same anxiety for the same end expressed by Mrs Morgan in the regions below, threw no great obstacles in the way. After the doctor had taken his departure, Mrs Bellingham cleared her throat several times. Mr Bellingham knew the prelude of old, and ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... on fire was to bring fair weather for our journey.- We collected our horses readily and set out at an early hour this morning. one of our guides complained of being unwell, a symptom which I did not much like as such complaints with an indian is generally the prelude to his abandoning any enterprize with which he is not well pleased. we left them at our encampment and they promised to pursue us in a few hours. at 11 A.M. we arrived at the branch of hungary creek where we found R. & J. Feilds. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... and Miss Nora, they could not understand why the breaking of half-a-dozen hearts should not be the prelude to every marriage. That, they said with much conviction, was always the case in America, and a girl was thought all the more of who had ...
— Jacqueline, v2 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Gulam Nohiuddin has resigned his Honorary Magistrateship, I hope that both these patriots will not consider that they have done their last duty by their acts of renunciation, but I hope they will regard their acts as a prelude to acts of greater purpose and greater energy and I hope they will take in hand the work of educating the electorate in their districts regarding boycott of councils. I have said elsewhere that never for another century will India be faced with a conjunction of events that faces it to-day. The cloud ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... light breaking into a vault a few notes of prelude were struck upon the piano in the parlor below, and a sweet voice, softened by ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... time to get its pace on before it is pounced upon by the more active hawk, but it must be aloft, traveling from point to point, probably from the fish-stream to the heronry. Thus to catch the bird on passage was the prelude of all good sport. The object to which the Prince had pointed was but a black dot in the southern sky, but his strained eyes had not deceived him, and both Bishop and King agreed that it was indeed a heron, which grew larger every instant as it flew ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... commonly advance on any subject is at any rate a defence against the worst pests of society. On the other hand, the ingenuous confession that she really knows nothing about it can be turned by a smile into a prelude to the most engaging conversation, and into an implied flattery of the neatest kind to the favored being whose superiority is acknowledged. Ignorance, in fact, of this winsome order is one of the stock ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... having thrown his lot into the urn among the rest, took his turn, and entered, attended by the prefects of the pretorian cohorts bearing his harp, and followed by the military tribunes, and several of his intimate friends. After he had taken his station, and made the usual prelude, he commanded Cluvius Rufus, a man of consular rank, to proclaim in the theatre, that he intended to sing the story of Niobe. This he accordingly did, and continued it until nearly ten o'clock, but deferred the disposal of the crown, and the remaining part of the solemnity, until the next ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... l'attention, le crime n'est comparativement rien. Mais lorsque nous voyons representer ces choses, les actes sont comparativement tout, et les mobiles ne sont plus rien. L'emotion sublime ou nous sommes entraines par ces images de nuit et d'horreur qu'exprime Macbeth; ce solennel prelude ou il s'oublie jusqu'a ce que l'horloge sonne l'heure qui doit l'appeler au meurtre de Duncan; lorsque nous ne lisons plus cela dans un livre, lorsque nous avons abandonne ce poste avantageux de l'abstraction ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... have a creepy feeling that he won't come back!" cried Harry. "He may at this moment be past human aid, Tom, and that may be but the prelude ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... in the waters, offered a sacrifice to the gods, casting some portions of the victim into the lake, and before leaving carved his own image on the surface of a commanding rock. On his homeward march he received tribute from Gilzan. This expedition was but the prelude of further successes. After a few weeks' repose at Nineveh, he again set out to make his authority felt in the western portions ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... a prelude. Now for old Maguire and his horse. Some years ago, in the interior of Ohio, there did live an old Irish jintleman, who not only had a fine estate, but likewise a saw-mill, and as fine an old black ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... mean? I said; the prelude or what? Do you not know that all this is but the prelude to the actual strain which we have to learn? For you surely would not regard the skilled ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the harbour, but fell harmlessly in the sea. The aeroplane then went home. Three days later, on the 24th, a single aeroplane again dropped a bomb, this time on English soil near Dover. This was the prelude to a formidable series of air raids, which, however, were not made in strength till well on ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... again, was stormy. We stayed quietly under shelter, preparing for our real journey after so much prelude. The Isaac Newton's steam-whistle had sent up the curtain; the overture had followed with strains Der-Frei-schutzy in the Adirondacks, pastoral in the valleys of Vermont and New Hampshire, funebral and andante in the fogs of Mollychunkamug; now it was to end in an allegretto gallopade, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... eleven years of age when his father died. During his minority he was nurtured in learning and piety[51] by his mother, Blanche of Castile, whose devotion to her son, and firm and wise regency were a fitting prelude to the reign of a saintly king. Even after he attained his majority, St. Louis always sought his mother's counsel and was ever respectful and submissive to her will. When the news of her death reached him in the Holy Land, he went to his oratory, fell on his knees before the altar, submissive ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... therefore without control, or very nearly. No doubt he came to Carthage with a strong desire to increase his knowledge and get renown, but still more athirst for love and the emotions of sentiment. The love-prelude was deliriously prolonged for him. He was at that time so overwhelmed by it, that it is the first thing he thinks of when he relates his years at Carthage. "To love and be loved" seems to him, as to his dear Alexandrine poets, the single object of life. Yet he was not ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... story-telling was in order. This cattle-buyer with us lived in Kansas City and gave us several good ones. He told us of an attempted robbery of a bank which had occurred a few days before in a western town. As a prelude to the tale, he gave us the ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams
... Boucherie was so complete a hieroglyph. Thus, the Roman abbey, the philosophers' church, the Gothic art, Saxon art, the heavy, round pillar, which recalls Gregory VII., the hermetic symbolism, with which Nicolas Flamel played the prelude to Luther, papal unity, schism, Saint-Germain des Pres, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie,—all are mingled, combined, amalgamated in Notre-Dame. This central mother church is, among the ancient churches of Paris, a sort of chimera; it has the head of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... alack! the ravisher— He leaps from boat to beach, he draweth near! Away, thou plunderer accurst! Death seize thee first, Or e'er thou touch me—off! God, hear our cry, Our maiden agony! Ah, ah, the touch, the prelude of my shame. Alas, my maiden fame! O sister, sister, to the altar cling, For he that seizeth me, Grim is his wrath and stern, by land as on the sea. Guard us, O king! [Enter the HERALD ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... experiment, as I interpret it, is not opposed to the theory of these echoes which I have ventured to enunciate. But, as I have indicated, not only to see but to vary such an experiment is a necessary prelude to grasping ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... loathsome operatic brood which it spawned, Not matched by the composer or his imitators since, Mascagni's account of how it came to be written, et seq.—Verga's story, et seq.—Story and libretto compared, The Siciliano, The Easter hymn, Analysis of the opera, et seq.—The prelude, Lola's stornello, The intermezzo, "They have killed ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... instead of being committed to a common jail, would be sent to the asylum at South Boston, and there taught a trade; and in the course of time he would be bound apprentice to some respectable master. Thus, his detection in this offence, instead of being the prelude to a life of infamy and a miserable death, would lead, there was a reasonable hope, to his being reclaimed from vice, and becoming a ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the early outbreak, the latter are soon forgotten; if they herald a new birth of power, they are fixed in the memory of a world which, however slow and cold, loves to feel the fresh impulse of the awakening human spirit. The wild days at Weimar were the prelude to a long life of sustained energy and of the highest productivity; "The Robbers" was soon distanced and eclipsed by the noble works of one of the noblest of modern spirits; and to the extravagance of the ardent French Romanticists ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... accustomed to Mrs. Delarayne's occasional affectation of valetudinarian peevishness, alleged ill-health as a fact. As a rule it was the prelude to the request for a favour on a grand scale, and being a man of very great wealth, and therefore somewhat tight-fisted, he was always rendered unusually solemn by ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... the clamouring bells! they seemed to know that he was listening at the door, and to proclaim it in a crowd of voices to all the town! Would they never be still? They ceased at last, and then the silence was so new and terrible that it seemed the prelude ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... my withered cheeks lose their ashen hue, and burn again with the hot, tumultuous blood of youth and shame. But I may as well tell it with all the resolution a man summons before plunging into an icy bath at midwinter. It came, the unexpected prelude to one long, sweet song. It ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... back from evening service. The clock in the belfry of the Svyatogorsky Monastery pealed out its soft melodious chimes by way of prelude and then struck twelve. The great courtyard of the monastery stretched out at the foot of the Holy Mountains on the banks of the Donets, and, enclosed by the high hostel buildings as by a wall, seemed now ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... gets him with his back to the wall. He vanishes in the shining cloud of a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more. His intellectual sensibility and his elemental soul make for mystifications. As if he knew ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... and waving and crossing a pair of umbrellas in a thousand invisible patterns. But this political announcement or advertisement, though more intelligent than our own, had, as I could readily believe, another side to it. I was told that it was often a prelude to ordinary festivals, such as weddings; and no doubt it remains from some ancient ritual dance of a religious character. But I could imagine that it might sometimes seem to a more rational taste to have too religious a ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... many of their comrades lay dead beside them, they had lost their accustomed leaders, shrapnel and heavy shell were bursting among them, and when the cry for bombs and bombers was given, it must have seemed to many to be but the prelude to disaster, the vain cry for further and useless sacrifice. What is it then that stops the individual from hanging back, from letting others lead, from justifying himself to himself by continuing to fire in comparative safety at longer ranges? Who would ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... later became, suffered its first outbreak in that early century. The persecutions of the Jews by the Visigothic kings of Spain and the Bishops Avitus of Clermont and Agobard in France (sixth to the ninth century) were the prelude to the more systematic and the more bloody cruelties of subsequent days. The insignificant numbers of the European Jews and the insecurity of their condition stood in the way of forming an intellectual centre of their own. They ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... these people commenced that long series of losses and troubles to which their conduct formed the prelude. They were to live in the little shanty that we had just left, and work the farm. Moodie was to find them the land, the use of his implements and cattle, and all the seed for the crops; and to share with them the returns. Besides this, they unfortunately were allowed ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... possible, to surprise their enemies; and, in the second, to endeavour to alarm and confound them. This latter is doubtless partly the purpose of the song and dance, which form with them the constant prelude to the assault, although these vehement expressions of passion operate also powerfully as excitements to their own sanguinary valour and contempt ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... remembered how at that very moment two swallows shot by the open window, uttering their eager little note; the room swam with him, and he thought he was going to reel and fall. For a moment he saw nothing and knew nothing, except that he had reached the end of the short prelude on the lute, and that he must find voice to sing for his liberty and Ortensia's, if not for ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... fallen into his old habits while they were away. The Major and Glenarvan exchanged smiling glances, and Paganel burst out laughing, and protested on his honor that he would never be caught tripping again once more during the whole voyage. After this prelude, he gave an amusing recital of his disastrous mistake in learning Spanish, and his profound study of Camoens. "After all," he added, "it's an ill wind that blows nobody good, and ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... elevation of the pulpit, agitated the people and inspired it, in all the horror of a constitutional and schismatic priesthood, with hatred of the government which protected it. This was not actually persecution or civil war, but the sure prelude ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... a pretty prelude to a wedding festival. They were all at their wit's end. While the doctor scratched their arms, they discussed the situation, excitedly and with desperation. Jean was the first to stop chattering and ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... the active operation of different minds, facts are observed, examined, and the precise conditions of their appearance determined. All such work in science is the prelude to other work; and the efforts of Boyle and Hooke cleared the way for the optical career of Newton. He conquered the difficulty which Hooke had found insuperable, and determined by accurate measurements ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... become extinct — to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, appears to me much the same as to admit that sickness in the individual is the prelude to death — to feel no surprise at sickness — but when the sick man dies to wonder, and to believe that he ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... come. I hoard it as a sugar-plum for Holmes.' He laugh'd, and I, tho' sleepy, like a horse That hears the corn-bin open, prick'd my ears; 45 For I remember'd Everard's college fame When we were Freshmen: then at my request He brought it; and the poet little urged, But with some prelude of disparagement, Read, mouthing out his hollow oes and aes, 50 Deep-chested music, and to ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... and at night, huddling his greasy tatters about him, he would crawl into some miserable lair of leaves and refuse, where, dirty, cold, and hungry, he passed, in broken ghost-haunted slumbers, a wretched night as a prelude to another wretched day. Such was the only human being deemed fit to associate at arm's length with one who had paid the last offices of respect and friendship to the dead. And when, the dismal term of his seclusion being over, the mourner was about to mix with his fellows ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... worm,' was alone callous to the prelude of the forthcoming song. (37) Let him live on in remorse and self-contempt. (38) Neither should we weep that Adonais has 'fled far from these carrion-kites that scream below.' His spirit flows back to its fountain, a portion of the Eternal. (39) Indeed, he is ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... rising tide. What had happened in one part of the world might happen in another, for the Stuart policy was the same. It aimed not at securing toleration but at asserting unchecked supremacy. Its demand for an inch was the prelude to its seizing an ell, and so our forefathers understood it. Sir Edmund's formal demand for the Old South Meeting-House was flatly refused, but on Good Friday, 1687, the sexton was frightened into opening it, and thenceforward Episcopal ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... these two examinations was unquestionably very great in spreading consternation and bewilderment far and wide; but they were only the prelude to the work, to that end, arranged for the day. The public mind was worked to red heat, and now was the moment to strike the blow that would fix an impression deep and irremovable upon it. It was Thursday, Lecture-day; and the ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... observation; and was never more apparent than in the present narrative. Every aera of Johnson's life is fixed by his writings. In 1744, he published the life of Savage; and then projected a new edition of Shakespeare. As a prelude to that design, he published, in 1745, Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with remarks on sir Thomas Hanmer's edition; to which were prefixed, Proposals for a new Edition of Shakespeare, with a specimen. Of this pamphlet, Warburton, in the preface to Shakespeare, has given ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... not due to any conscious discontent with my life and work in Dursley. I must suppose it was the beginning of that restless temperamental itch which all through life has made me regard everything I did as no more than the necessary prelude to some more or less vague thing I meant presently to do, which should be much better worth doing. A praiseworthy doctrine I have heard it called. It may be. But I would like to be able to warn all and sundry who cultivate or inculcate it in this ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... purpose. He is not to be placed with the professional litterateurs of his country, Boston novelists, New York poets and the like. He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... gold into the greens: the night-dews gleamed upon the firs and grasses, while a luminous haze dimmed the dark glint of the waters to pearly gray, softened the grimness of the mountain-faces and wrapped them—sea and mountains, as soul and body in a vision of mystery, a prelude to the blaze of golden glory that was suddenly outpoured on land ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... occupied by the Russian fleet at that moment. No sooner was the message decoded and its purport made known than mutual congratulations were exchanged; for even as the fall of 203 Metre Hill into the hands of our soldiers had been the prelude to the surrender of Port Arthur, so now the fact of the Russian fleet being in square 203 on the chart was accepted as an ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... closely through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove obliquely downward, like the pelting streaks of rain in a summer shower. Had this music any message for ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... took a lute from which there pulsing came A lively prelude, fashioning the way In which her voice should wander. 'T was a lay More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild Than Dryope's lone lulling of her ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... correlative duties; the impeachment of Warren Hastings showed that we had scruples about treating India simply as a place where 'nabobs' are to accumulate fortunes; and the slave-trade suggested questions of conscience which at the end of the period were to prelude an ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... the Reverend Mr. Arnold shrank into the furthest corner of Surgeon-Major Livingstone's box, and knew all the misery of outrage. Pilate and the slave-maidens, Pilate's fat wife and an unspeakably comic centurion, offered as yet hardly more than a prelude, but the monstrosity of the whole performance was already projected upon Arnold's suffering imagination. This, then, was what Patullo had done with it. But what other, he asked himself in quiet anger, ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... desperation, he pressed the flute to his lips and blew again, if anything, more feebly; but the sound of the notes seemed to send a thrill through his nerves, and the next came deep, rich-toned, and pure, as he ran through a prelude, from which he imperceptibly glided into a sweet old Irish melody. He played it with such earnestness and feeling that his hearers were electrified, and the applause came again loudly, amidst which he dashed off into a series of variations, bright, sad, martial, and wailing, till, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... are frightened by this outburst, which is no more than a prelude to bargaining. The women extol and Salam decries the goods on offer; both praise Allah. Salam assures them that the country of the "Ingliz" would be ruined if its inhabitants had to pay the prices they ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... obey her commands. He took a small harp in his hand, and sate down in the vacant chair next to Sir Bryan de Bareilles. The rest of the company composed themselves to listen; and, after a short prelude, Lorimer, in a fine manly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... of experiment and change. Assuredly the nights had their charm, whether they were spent by some great camp-fire on the winding Lachlan, in the darkness of a pine forest in British Columbia, or on the fo'c'sle-head of a ship upon the sea; and yet the night was the night, the prelude to sleep, and not to activity, the chief joy ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... life the chief record is to be found in "The Prelude." He did not distinguish himself as a scholar, and if his life had any incidents, they were of that interior kind which rarely appear in biography, though they may be of controlling influence upon the life. He speaks of reading Chaucer, Spenser, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... grieves Low overhead, Above grey mosses whispering of leaves Fallen and dead. And through the lonely night sweeps their refrain Like Chopin's prelude, sobbing 'neath ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... proved to be the prelude to an attempted storm. At 5 a.m. there was a big bombardment of the front line trenches, and the Turks made a gesture of defiance. The gesture did not go beyond fixing bayonets and shouting "Allah!" and the only result has been to render Suvla more ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... way, or to contradict his accusers or their witnesses, Pilate having naturally no idea that the prisoner conceives himself as going through an inevitable process of torment, death, and burial as a prelude to resurrection. Before the high priest he has also been silent except that when the priest asks him is he the Christ, the Son of God, he replies that they shall all see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... proposed was itself of vast importance, and was, moreover, but a prelude to things still more far-reaching. But, critical as it was, Maxwell was prepared for it. During the later years of his friend Hallin's life the two men had constantly discussed the industrial consequences of democracy with ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... birth has no tendency to prelude the favour of God. In this respect, he "seeth not as a man seeth," but, in the past dispensations of his mercy, appears to have preferred the lowly as objects of high and distinguishing manifestations. This is the case in the Christian era, and to the present ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... success of the army under the command of General Wayne, whether we regard it as a proof of the perseverance, prowess, and superiority of our troops, or as a happy presage to our military operations against the hostile Indians, and as a probable prelude to the establishment of a lasting peace upon terms of candor, equity, and good neighborhood. We receive it with the greater pleasure as it increases the probability of sooner restoring a part of the public resources to the desirable object ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... he was about to turn back when a strange sound suddenly arrested his steps. It was a concert of voice and instruments, which in this lost solitude seemed to him like a dream, or a miracle. The music was good-even excellent. He recognized a prelude of Bach, arranged by Gounod. Robinson Crusoe, on discovering the footprint in the sand, was not more astonished than Camors at finding in this desert so lively a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the programme, as arranged by the Committee, the first number is a prelude by the President and the last a hymn by the Society. The Committee evidently intended to begin and end with music. What particular solo they expect me to perform I am somewhat uncertain. But the truth is you have already had a part of the music and you will have the rest when I am ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... his army to receive the assault of General McClellan. Jackson, marching with his customary promptness, joined him with a portion of the detached force on the next day (September 16th), and almost immediately those thunders which prelude the great struggles ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... hurry; but I was thinking how I could best begin without startling you. But I may as well get it out without any prelude. Miss Challoner, to Mrs. Williams I am only Mr. Dancy; but my real ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... or more, as has been said, passed before the curtain rose again, but the snarling trumpets of the orchestra played a fitting prelude. Cynthia's feelings and Cynthia's life need not be gone into during this interval knowing her character, they may well be imagined. They were trying enough, but Brampton had no means of guessing them. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... auspicious prelude to each ensuing season. You have this day to declare yourself head of a nation. 'And now, O Lord, my God, thou hast made thy servant ruler over the people. Give unto him an understanding heart, that he may know how to go out and come in before this great people; that he may discern between ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... the time that you will go to India all this prelude will have vanished, you will rattle through in a train-de-luxe from Calais, by way of Baku or Constantinople; you will have none of this effect of a deliberate sullen approach across limitless miles of sea. But that is how I went to India. ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... wheresoever My vision strays—o'er sky, and sea, and river— Sleeps, like a happy child, In slumber undefiled, A premonition of sublimer days, When war and warlike lays At length shall cease, Before a grand Apocalypse of Peace, Vouchsafed in mercy to all human kind— A prelude and a prophecy combined! ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... this volume is the mere prelude of a mind growing in power, we have in it the promise of a fine poet.... In 'The Wandering Soul,' the verse describing Socrates has that highest note of critical poetry, that in it epigram becomes vivid with life, and life reveals ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... years of the reign of King Charles I., when already there were signs of those disorders which were the prelude to the Great Rebellion, one of the most prominent gentlemen at his majesty's court ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... it was hard for them to appear unconscious of it. A great crowd was slowly filling the room and an orchestra in a balcony on the left of the dais began to make delightful music on instruments the strangers had never before seen. After an entrancing prelude a sound of singing was heard, and far up in a grand dome, lighted like the one the captives had just admired over the central court of the palace, they saw a bevy of maidens, robed in white, moving about in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... the ladies know;— I have my doubts. No matter,—here we go! What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech. 'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings;— Prologues in metre are to other pros As worsted ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... with some alterations; but the walk down from the statues into Erewhon is reminiscent of the Leventina Valley in the Canton Ticino. The great chords, which are like the music moaned by the statues are from the prelude to the first of Handel's Trois Lecons; he used ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... the silent, brooding forest witnessed a like gathering, nor its dark mysterious depths re-echoed with such unfamiliar sounds. But that camp-fire scene was merely a prelude to the tide of progress already setting, when unnamed rivers, hidden lakes, crouching valleys, lofty hills, and secret woodland depths would know those sounds, and ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... I can see or hear each separate incident in its detail, can indeed see or hear little else. So much in this place do men live by pain that my friendship with you, in the way through which I am forced to remember it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise, nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the while been a real symphony of sorrow, passing through its rhythmically linked movements ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... no further opposition, and commenced the prelude. The emperor leaned back his head, and closed his eyes, as he was accustomed to do, when listening attentively. Reclining among the purple-velvet cushions of his luxurious arm-chair, Leopold presented a handsome picture of imperial comeliness. His fine figure ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... Pronunciation of Proper Names Prologue Act First Act Second Prelude to Act Third Act Third Prelude to Act Fourth Act Fourth Act Fifth Prelude to Act Sixth Act Sixth ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... his name in history; but his hard-earned success was but the prelude of a harder task. Herculean labors lay before him, if he would realize the schemes with which his brain was pregnant. Bent on accomplishing them, he retraced his course, and urged his canoes upward against the muddy current. The party were famished. They had ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... petticoat and shift, whilst my thighs were, by an instinct of nature, unfolded to their best; and my desires had so thoroughly destroyed all modesty in me, that even their being now naked and all laid open to him, was part of the prelude that pleasure deepened my blushes at, more than same. But when his hand, and touches, naturally attracted to their center, made me feel all their wantonness and warmth in, and round it, oh! how immensely different a sense of things, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... "Without further prelude, I shall now introduce to your notice each one of my figures, beginning, as usual, with the ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... specious amiability. It was not long before he detected a patronizing tone that stirred his gall and confirmed him in his bitter Republicanism, a phase of opinion through which many a would-be patrician passes by way of prelude to his ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... as may be imagined, their destruction was hailed with a ringing cheer by the besiegers. The artillerymen in the fort, however, apparently anticipating an attack in force of which this explosion was but the prelude, were on the alert at once; and, soon after sunrise, they began to pour in a heavy rain of fire on the German works, which the conflagration of the buildings and removal of intervening obstacles now clearly disclosed. ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in the comeliness of manhood. At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse, and breath that grew fainter and fainter, except when a long, deep, and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... scenes in Hastinapur, an ancient and vanished city, formerly situated about sixty miles north-east of the modern Delhi. The Ganges has washed away even the ruins of this the metropolis of King Bharat's dominions. The poem opens with a "sacrifice of snakes," but this is a prelude, connected merely by a curious legend with the real beginning. That beginning is reached when the five sons of "King Pandu the Pale" and the five sons of "King Dhritarashtra the Blind," both of them descendants ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... piano stood open. Karen went to it and, standing over it, played softly the dearly loved notes of the prelude in D flat. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... prelude. Marguerite sat still to be baited, like a hare which has no covert. The instrument being heavy for the dwarf, she propped it by resting one foot on the abutting foundation of the powder-house, and all through her recital made the mandolin's effects ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the Jacobins stood for Anarchy. War was declared between the two. The Girondins arraigned Marat and Robespierre for complicity in the September massacres, and thereby precipitated their own fall. The triumphant acquittal of Marat was the prelude to the ruin of the Girondins, and the proscription of twenty-nine deputies followed at once as the first step. These fled into the country, hoping to raise an army that should yet save France, and several of the fugitives made their way to Caen. Thence by ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... a few bars of a prelude, as if to get himself into harmony with the recollection of what he had heard the master play, and then began a lively melody, in which he seemed as usual to pour out his soul. Long before he reached the end of it, Mary had ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... would be the most glorious act of his life. No one could imagine, from the calm and subdued conversation, and the quiet appetite with which these distinguished men partook of the entertainment, that this was their last repast, and but the prelude to a violent death. But when the cloth was removed, and the fruits, the wines, and the flowers alone remained, the conversation became animated, gay, and at times rose to hilarity. Several of the youngest men of the party, in sallies of wit and outbursts ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott |
