"Rhythmic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of some high festival! Picture to yourself above the altar, where commonly the tabernacle shines, a Dove suspended from a golden crozier, its wings outspread amid clouds of incense; then a whole army of monks deploying in a solemn rhythmic march, and the Abbot standing, on his brow a mitre thickly set with jewels, his green and white ivory crozier in his hand, his train carried by a lay-brother when he moves, while the gold of many copes blazes in the light of the tapers, and ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... together through the garden door into the open moor, swinging along in rhythmic stride, side by side, smiling faintly as dreamers smile when something imperceptible to the waking ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... somewhat uncritically, been contrasted. Unquestionably, however, the elder poet showed a consummate and continuous mastery of his art altogether beyond the intermittent expressional power of Browning in his most rhythmic emotion at any time of his life. To affirm that there is more intellectual fibre, what Rossetti called fundamental brain-work, in the product of the younger poet, would be beside the mark. The insistence on the supremacy of Browning over all poets since Shakspere because he has the highest "message" ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... the combined strength of several men, such as the beating in of foundations, or the lifting of a great beam, was accompanied by the sound of the weirdest rhythmic chant, sustained for hours if ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... creates the intense desire for tobacco to the habitue has not been quite decided, but probably it is a combination of the irritation in the throat, especially in inhalers; of the desire for the rhythmic puffing which is a general cerebral and circulatory stimulant; for the increased vasomotor tension which many a patient feels the need of; for the narcotic, sedative, quieting effect on his brain or nerves; for the alluring comfort of watching the smoke curl into the air or for the quiet, ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... jockey, led his companions by many yards. He seemed to be getting the range of Ladd, or else he shot high, for his bullets did not strike up the dust behind Sol. Gale was ready to shoot. Blanco Sol pounded by, his rapid, rhythmic hoofbeats plainly to be heard. He was ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... had seen pictures complete, rhythmic pictures of streets and crowds, pleasantly blurred and in motion. Now he saw them as if life was in a state of continual pause—an arrested cinematograph; grotesquely detailed and with the meaning of motion out of it. A picture waiting something to set ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... two mouth harps were scarcely heard above the rhythmic stamping of feet, the loud chant of the caller, who swung Mary Hope clear of the floor whenever he put his arm ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... jars upon the harmony of body, soul, and spirit. Confident, but entirely unassuming; serious, but without sadness; joyous, but not to mirthfulness; eager, but without haste; she moves steadily forward with steps timed to the rhythmic music of the spheres. The child is no burden, but a part of her very being. The two are one in love, thought, and purpose. Sharing the secret of his sacred calling, the mother bears her son forth ...
— The Madonna in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line. Independently of the well-known causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,—I think I may venture to say there is,—a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo" which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the movement of ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... down into a soft rhythmic beating that was like a song. After all, life was made up of love and work, and love ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... very complaints uttered in chorus partake of the quality of defiant song. To walk is one thing, to march albeit with sore feet and aching back is another and more triumphant. It is 'Hail! Hail! the gang's all here'—it matters not what the words signify, provided they have a rhythmic swing, and impart a choral sense of collective unity. * * * Every late afternoon," he continues, "the flag is lowered, and the band plays 'The Star Spangled Banner.' Men in ranks are ordered to attention. Men and officers ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... the morning after arrival. The battery men spent most of the time about town. It was strange to observe the peasantry hobbling along in their wooden shoes, the flopping of the loose footwear at the heels beating a rhythmic clap, clap ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... of these calculations the rhythmic cadences began to reassert themselves. He stood still, as if rooted to the spot, with fixed gaze. After a while his hands involuntarily found their way to the table drawer, from which he pulled out a much-used copy-book. He dropped into a chair with the same fixed look, humming softly to himself ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... emotions, however, was considered as a legitimate method of reaching the soul. The Egyptians were passionately fond of ceremonial display. Their huge temples, painted as they were with the most brilliant colours, formed the setting of processions and ceremonies in which music, rhythmic motion, and colour were brought to a point of excellence. In honour of some of the gods dances were conducted; while celebrations, such as the fantastic Feast of Lamps, were held on the anniversaries of religious events. In these gorgeously spectacular ceremonies there was no place for ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... difference between the Living Equilibrium of Alternate Rhythmic Pulsation (the whole Pulsation Doctrine) and the dead equilibrium of merely running down to a dead level. The former implies the Doctrine of the Return, the Upward Arc compensating the Downward Arc—The deadness of the latter results from the absence of any such ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... about her and thought how lovely her first party had been. She would never forget it. The room re-echoed to laughter and jest. Beautiful young eyes sparkled and shone. From the pavilion outside came the lilt of the fiddle and the rhythmic steps ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a mine of melody, surpassed in wealth only by Schubert, and that only because there are more of Schubert's. In originality of harmony and modulation he has only six equals. Bach, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Wagner and Liszt. In rhythmic invention and combination he is inexhaustible, and as orchestrator he ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... lips were slightly parted. Her eyelids drooped. Her breast rose and fell in a slow, rhythmic heave. Otherwise she was motionless and faintly smiling, as if she were given up to some blissful languor. And the man spoke on, caressing her imprisoned hand, stroking it, looking at her with the glow of ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... silence would come the rhythmic thud of a horse's feet and a loud hail. The Ammons settlement was a day-and-night institution. With a loud knock on the door would come the identification, "It's Alberts!" Or Kimball, or Pinchot—real estate agents. "I've got a man here who wants to pay ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... spectator's mind for the impressions that are to follow. Several of the leading motives appear in this Vorspiel and must be appreciated to be understood. First we have the "Blaubartmotiv" (Bluebeard Motive). This is a theme whose giant march gives us in rhythmic thunders the ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Marshal of the District of Columbia during Lincoln's time in Washington, accompanied the President everywhere. He was a good singer, and, when Lincoln was in one of his melancholy moods, would "fire a few rhythmic shots" at the President to cheer the latter. Lincoln keenly relished nonsense in the shape of witty or comic ditties. A parody of "A Life on the Ocean Wave" ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... each week a Law of Nature compels us to move to and fro with a rhythmic motion of more than usual violence, which continues for the time you would take to count a hundred and one. In the midst of this choral dance, at the fifty-first pulsation, the inhabitants of the Universe pause in full career, and each individual sends forth his ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... dimly show spaces between them, and the ferns to give way to lower, thick-set shrubs, which in turn yielded to a velvety moss, with long quiet intervals of netted and tangled grasses. The regular fall of the horses' feet became a mere rhythmic throbbing. Then suddenly a single hoof rang out sharply on stone, and the first ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... combined with other than first species, the dotted half followed by a quarter-note (a), or two eighth-notes (b), is good. Also, a rhythmic figure, as at c, where a half-note occupies the second and third quarters, may ...
— A Treatise on Simple Counterpoint in Forty Lessons • Friedrich J. Lehmann
... white, but listened still, for he knew that he should hear another clock striking in a few seconds. As the strokes followed each other, his heart beat like a fulling-hammer, giving a succession of quick blows, and pausing to repeat the rhythmic tattoo more loudly and painfully than before. Ten—eleven—twelve—there was no mistake. The day was over. It was midnight, and no one had come. ...
— A Cigarette-Maker's Romance • F. Marion Crawford
... of the Southern Cross began to lift to the long heave of the ever restless Atlantic. She slid over the shoulder of one big wave and into the trough of another with a steady rhythmic glide that spoke well for her seaworthy qualities. Frank, snugly out of the nipping wind in the shelter of the gasolene drums, was silent for several minutes musing over the adventurous voyage on which they were setting out. Thus ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the choral trains Fresh from palms and Cuba's canes. Best gems of Nature's cabinet, With dews of tropic morning wet, Beloved of children, bards and Spring, O birds, your perfect virtues bring, Your song, your forms, your rhythmic flight, Your manners for the heart's delight; Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof, Here weave your chamber weather-proof, Forgive our harms, and condescend To man, as to a lubber friend, And, generous, teach his awkward race Courage ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... though all the sense was beaten out of me, I was alive enough to hear the savage yells of disappointed rage behind us; these and the spitting crackle of a dozen rifles fired at random in the darkness. But afterward all sounds, save the rhythmic dip and drip of Jennifer's paddle, faded on the sense of hearing till, as it would seem, this gentle monody of dipping blade and tinkling drops became a crooning lullaby to blot out all the years that lay between, and make me once again a little child sinking ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... hall together; He smiles in her lifted eyes; Like waves of that mighty river, The strains of the "Danube" rise. They float on its rhythmic measure Like leaves on a summer-stream; And here, in this scene of pleasure, I ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... characterized by clearness, simplicity, and force. He was not a mystic; his thoughts and emotions are not obscured in voluble melody. To him poetry is more than rhythmic harmony. Beneath his delicate imagery and rhythmical sweetness are poured treasures of thought and truth. In diction he belongs to the school of Wordsworth; his language is not strained or farfetched, but such as is natural to cultured men in a state of emotion. ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... and then the stamp of heavy footsteps could be heard drawing nearer. This was nothing less than a patrol consisting of about a hundred men. From this confused mass escaped whisperings and the dull clanking of iron; and, moving away with a rhythmic swing, it ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... in amazement, and she had the floor to herself. This was what she wanted, and she immediately commenced to dance wildly and furiously, as though she was possessed, rolling her big eyes and laughing to show the white teeth. Gradually she quieted down to a smooth, rhythmic motion, slowly swaying from side to side, sometimes whirling around, but with feet always flat on the floor, often turning on her heels. All the time her arms were extended and her fingers snapping, and snapping also were the black eyes. She was the personification ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... artistic presentation." There seems to be no true contrast here. "The primary concern of the artist must be with his vehicle of expression"—no—not the primary concern. Since the critic adds—(for a poet) "this vehicle is language emotioned to the white heat of rhythmic music by impassioned thought or sensation." Exactly—"thought" it may be. Now part of this same "thought" in Browning is the message. And therefore it is part of his "primary concern". "It is with presentment," says Mr. Sharp, "that the artist has fundamentally to concern ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... cried he, with a laugh, "Thus should the poets frame my epitaph, Above whose mouldering dust it will be said, 'Blessed be Allah that the hound is dead!'" Out rang a rhythmic revel as he spake From joyous bulbuls in the poplar brake, Hailing the night's first blossom in the sky. And now, with failing foot, he drew anigh The orchard-garden where his home was hid Pomegranate shade ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the troops in an endless chain have been passing on the highroad before the chateau. The air was full of mingled sounds, as, for example, the singing of the soldiers in the distance, which sounds like the droning of bees far away and always heralds an advance of troops; the rhythmic shuffling of feet, the thud of horses' hoofs, the chugging of autos which carry the superior officers, and the heavy wheels of the gun carriages with their clanking chains. Their order, equipment and discipline are admirable ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... his final opinion in these words: "In the volumes of Browning I maintain that we find so many instances of profound insight into verbal harmonies, such singular strength of poetic grouping, and such a marvelous grasp of the rhythmic properties of the English language that we must assign to him a rank second to no English ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... as he dropped, wet and out of breath, into the cabin; and "Gee!" remarked a very pale L'Olonnois in return, gamely as he could. And Mrs. Daniver's moans went rhythmic with the pound of the ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... did your model of politeness, Dr. Johnson! Not one line of all that nauseating scientific stuff shall you read to me. Here is a volume of poems of the 'Female Poets'; do be agreeable for once in your life, and select me some sweet little rhythmic gem of Mrs. Browning, or Mrs. Norton, ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... and doing, gives one the spirit of youth. In the solitaire's song one feels all the freshness and the promise of spring. The song seems to be born of ages of freedom beneath peaceful skies, of the rhythm of the universe, of a mingling of the melody of winds and waters and of all rhythmic sounds that murmur and echo out of doors and of every song that Nature sings in the wild gardens of the world. I am sure I have never been more thoroughly wide awake and hopeful than when listening to the ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... "Ward! Ward! Ward!" and then his hearing seemed drowned. The whole mass of students and spectators rose as one, and the deafening stamp of feet only equalled the roar of voices. But now the volume of sound was regular and rhythmic. It was like the approach of a terrible army. For minutes, while the umpire held play suspended, the Wayne supporters in hoarse and stamping tumult came into their own again. It was a wild burst of applause, and as ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... various canonic parts may enter, as, for instance, in the stretto of a fugue. Again, if the answering part enters on an unaccented beat where the leader began on the accent, there will be artistic value in the resulting difference of rhythmic expression. This is the device known as per arsin et thesin. All these devices are, in skilful hands, quite definite in their effect upon the ear, and their expressive power is undoubtedly due to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... sunlight that had no warmth in it, while the peaks beyond them shone with a silvery lustre against the cloudless blue. It was a day to set the blood stirring and rouse the vigour of the strong, and Alton felt the effect of it as he lay listening to the rhythmic humming of the saws. The sound spoke of activity, and raising himself a trifle in his chair he glanced at his partner with a faint sparkle in ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... point of anchorage, then shoot out the body with lightning-like rapidity, and bring it down like a hammer on some point of the decomposition. It rests here for a second or two, and repeats the process; and this is taking place by what seems almost like rhythmic movement all over the rotting tissue. The results are scarcely visible in the mass. But if a group of these organisms be watched, attached to a small particle of the fermenting tissue, it will be seen to gradually diminish, and at length ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... nestled unseen, past the Italian frontier, past the bight of Ventimiglia, to where the Capo di Bordighera stood faintly outlined between sea and sky. There was not a solitary sail on the whole expanse of the Mediterranean. A line of white, curving at rhythmic intervals along a small patch of sandy beach, showed that there was a gentle swell upon the sea, but its surface was mirror-like. A lovelier scene there is not in the world, and it was at its very loveliest. I took the ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... family gathering, not merely because most of the dancers knew one another, but because "all Israel are brothers"—and sisters. They danced very buoyantly, not boisterously; the square dances symmetrically executed, every performer knowing his part; the waltzing full of rhythmic grace. When the music was popular they accompanied it on their voices. After supper their heels grew lighter, and the laughter and gossip louder, but never beyond the bounds of decorum. A few Dutch dancers tried to introduce the more gymnastic methods in vogue in their own clubs, where ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... veins stood out like discolored whip-cord; their faces were the shade of raw beef, steaming with sweat; their eyes protruded with the strain that set their jaws like vises; their chests heaved and shrank like bellows; their backs curved, straightened, and bent again in rhythmic unison as tiring to the eye as the swinging ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... cry. Heaven rang with it as well as hell. Space was filled with that rhythmic tumult. Chaos and empty Nox had a new discord added to their elemental throes. Another memorial was drafted below, showing that unless the missing coin was restored to its owner hell would have to close its doors. There ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... a door which fronted a canal The boy halted. A dim tree-shaded spot. The water lapped the stones in musical And rhythmic tappings, and a galliot Slumbered at anchor with no light aboard. The boy knocked twice, and steps approached. A flame Winked through the keyhole, then a key was turned, And through the open door Max went toward Another door, whence sound of voices came. He entered a ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... little procession moved gravely and silently up from the bridge to the cabin, their silence was in no way conspicuous, for the whole air throbbed with the rising and falling shriek of the saws, the trampling of the falls, and the obscurely rhythmic rush of the torrent around the island base. They were presently joined by Susan, shambling on her ungainly legs, wagging her big ears, and stretching out her long, ugly, flexible, overhanging nose to sniff inquiringly at the Boy's ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... her side Adelaide was too well-bred for the one part, and too wise for the other, to clutch prematurely at the prize she had willed should be hers. Her actions must be like her gestures, graceful, rhythmic, rather slow than hurried, and bearing the stamp of purpose and deliberation. When Edgar should make his offer, as she knew he would, she would ask for time to reflect and make up her mind. This would be doing the thing properly and with due regard to her own ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... The rhythmic beating of the heart, synchronous with respiration and the circulation of the blood, are sufficient illustrations. But even this concerns the vehicle, not the driver; the instrument, not the player upon this "harp of a ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... characteristic choice is still possible among her literary material, and this third volume of her verses is put forth in response to the repeated wish of the admirers of her peculiar genius. Much of Emily Dickinson's prose was rhythmic, —even rhymed, though frequently not ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... be hard put to it without an effort of the will to follow a closely reasoned chain of argument: if he does manage to do so he is always certain to miss a link here and there: but in the intervals of rhythmic movement ideas crop up and mental images come floating to the surface: the regular movements of the body send them flying upwards like sparks under the smith's bellows. The thought of the people! It is just smoke and fire, a shower of glittering ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... in the ears that bent over them? Mechanical time-beats say something, always. They force in and in upon the soul its own pulses of thought, or memory, or purpose; of imagination or desire. They weld and consolidate our moods, our elements. Twenty miles of musing to the rhythmic throbbings of a railroad train, who does not know how it can shape and deepen and confirm whatever one has started ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... of the crew began hoisting the foresail to dry. He heard the rhythmic squeak of the halliards through the sheaves, and the scrape of the ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... sigh in the wind's low sigh, Or wail in the tempest's roar,— That sing in the brooklets that wander by, Or sob along ocean's shore;— I hear them ever, yet may not stay, To list to the rhythmic strain; And the unvoiced melodies die away, Never ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... come to their rescue. Time passed and Taylor drifted abreast of Grenfell and finally drifted past him. Then, in the far distance, Grenfell glimpsed the flash of an oar. The flash was repeated with rhythmic regularity. The outlines of a boat came into view. The men shouted the good news to each other. Help ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... sudden start, Thronged blinding: then the veil would rend and part! The husk of vision would in twain be cleft! Thy hidden soul in naked beauty left, I should behold thee, Nature, as thou art! O poet Jesus! at thy holy feet I should have lien, sainted with listening; My pulses answering ever, in rhythmic beat, The stroke of each triumphant melody's wing, Creating, as it moved, my being sweet; My soul thy harp, ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... bidarka now passed steadily and swiftly on toward the great bulk of the whale, which lay plainly visible not more than a quarter of a mile away. As the other boats came on in squadron close behind, Rob could hear a sort of low, rhythmic humming, as though all the natives were joining in an incantation. It was his privilege to see one of the native hunts for the whale in all its original features—something which few white men have ever seen. The strange excitement of the scene, ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... golden as the apples of Hesperides. He heard again the rhythmic sound of the sea and the plashing of the fountain near at hand, and noted the rose petals which the breeze had shaken from the bushes to the path where they stood; filling the soft night air with their fragrance, and she, with the white moonlight in her face and the pink rose in ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... neighbourhood. He contracted no friendships and had no confidants. He seldom slept in the same place twice in succession, and though he was wanted by the police, he was not found. In appearance he did not lack distinction of an ominous sort; the slow, rhythmic, perfectly controlled mechanism of his tail, as he impressively walked abroad, was incomparably sinister. This stately and dangerous walk of his, his long, vibrant whiskers, his scars, his yellow eye, so ice-cold, ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... varnished spokes, and listened absently to the rhythmic "click-clump" of trotting horses, with its accompanying ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... warm stars; June with its new, deep foliage and its fragrant grass and trees and flowers; June with a mocking bird singing through the night to its brooding mate; June came with its poets leaning out of windows into the night hearing love songs in the rhythmic whisper of lagging feet strolling under the shade of elms. And under cover of a June night, breathing in the sensuous meaning of the time like a charmed potion, Judge Van Dorn, who personated justice to twenty-five thousand people, went forth ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... immense laboratory. He made his way through the myriad strange machines, a weird collection of xylophones, gongs, stone slabs cut in peculiar patterns to produce odd rhythmic sounds, electrical apparatus of all sorts. Near Phillips was a plate some feet square, of heavy metal, raised from the floor on poles of a different substance. About the ceiling were studs thickly set of the same sort of metal as ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... through which he looked into the upper heaven of all: thereby he saw what it is to create. He was a born mechanician. A revolving wheel would set him to dreaming, and still him to that lethargy of mind which is an involuntary sharing in the things that are. He could lose himself in the life of rhythmic motion; and when he discovered rusted springs, or cogs unprepared to fulfill their purpose, he fell upon them with the ardor of a worshiper, and tried to set them right. Amelia thought he should have invented something, and he confessed that he had invented many things, but somehow ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... in nature is rhythmic. I need not trouble my readers with the evidences of a fact which is well known in science, but will refer them to the lucid demonstration in Herbert Spencer's First ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... unless in the game, and that was the game, so it was as it should be. Right in the middle of it, the strains of "Sunday Afternoon," all East Side children's favorite, burst forth, and out of the seeming confusion came rhythmic order as the whole body of children moved, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... as ill a compliment as to say of a piece of poetry that it was really prose. The music of prose and of poetry are essentially different. They do not affect the ear in the same way. The one is akin to song, the other to speech. Give to prose the recurring cadences, the measure, and the rhythmic march of verse, and it becomes bad prose without becoming good poetry.[15] So, in fairness to Dickens, one is bound, as far as one can, to forget Horne's misapplied praise. But even thus, and looking ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... wild waltz melody Flowed rhythmic forth. The nobodies paraded. And thro' my dream went pulsing fast and free: Her ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the cake, with Jule on it, heaving up and down with the mighty rhythmic motion of the surging torrent; and all ran along down the banks, to come nearer. The boy stood in the very jaws of death. Beneath, the cataract roared and hurled up white ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... who should have lived in a palace despoiled. There was a fearful amount of concession in it, but what you kept had a rare intensity. You were perpetually throwing over the cargo to save the ship, but what a motion you gave her when you made her ride the waves—a motion as rhythmic as the dance of a goddess! Wayworth took long London walks and thought of these things—London poured into his ears the mighty hum of its suggestion. His imagination glowed and melted down material, his intentions multiplied ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... has to obey special rules of construction. Of these, perhaps the most apparent is the carefully marked antithesis between characters in different clauses of a sentence, which results in a kind of parallelism or rhythmic balance. This parallelism is a noticeable feature in ordinary poetical composition, and may be well illustrated by the following ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... kind of rhythm of the English which makes it very easy to set to music. Some of it can be sung, though for some of it only the thunder is the right accompaniment. But it is not simply in the balance of phrases that the musical element appears. Sometimes it is in a natural but rhythmic consecution of ideas. The 35th chapter of Isaiah, for example, is not poetic in the Hebrew, yet it is remarkably musical in the English. Read it aloud from ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... benefit of which the publications are made. Not content with a by-ear approximation only of the folk-song, Mrs. Burlin gave especial care to the notation of every nuance of Negro singing—organic and rhythmic. The changing nuance syncopations that give such expressive accent to the different solo verses sung by the Negro "leader" have all been caught and put upon paper. Doctor Talcott Williams, of the New York School of Journalism, says that the example of this reverent ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... ever. But in the dead of night my sisters were awakened by slight sounds, the cause of which they could not conjecture, which proceeded from an uninhabited room next theirs, where Zamore was usually put to bed on an old arm-chair. It sounded like a rhythmic tread, made more sonorous by the silence of night. They at first supposed that the mice were romping round, but the sound of steps and leaps on the flooring was too loud for that. The bravest of my sisters rose, partly opened the door, and ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... historical books attention may be particularly called to the Song of Deborah and Barak, in which there are several important and elucidatory corrections, and in which the rhythmic arrangement will be felt to bear force and impressiveness both to reader and to hearer. In the remaining Books changes will be found fewer in number and less striking; but occasionally, as for example in 1 Kings xx. 27, we come across changes that startle us ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... that changed from line to line and not the poetic emotion governing it, and to say that he ought to have made the metrical and rhythmic form of the first line in itself suggest heat: of the second, rough weather: of the third, work: of the fourth, wages: and of the fifth and sixth the death of golden lads and girls and of chimney-sweepers respectively, all things manifestly very different ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater
... unruffled serenity was still undisturbed although the rhythmic beat of oars behind them was growing nearer and nearer, and the creaking of the leather in the row-locks could ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... your bed without a pillow. See that every muscle is relaxed. Now breathe slowly, filling the lungs comfortably full of fresh air; hold this as long as you can without straining yourself; then exhale slowly. Exhale in an easy, rhythmic way. Breathe this way for five minutes, letting the Divine Breath flow through you, which will cleanse and rejuvenate every cell of ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... akin to an opera than to a play it had, as its basis, music. For the drama had developed out of the lyric ode, and retained throughout what was at first its only element, the dance and song of a mimetic chorus. By this centre of rhythmic motion and pregnant melody the burden of the tale was caught up and echoed and echoed again, as the living globe divided into spheres of answering song, the clear and precise significance of the plot, never obscure to the head, being thus brought ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the companionway and went below, while the mate continued, "Stand by to let go your topsail halliards and man the gear. Sharper with the mizzen sheets and unbend those clew lines and garnets... stow the clews in a harbor furl." At a rhythmic shout the bunts of the three topsails ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Bromley's finger and read the card of instructions. They began perfecting the poetic character of the notice, giving it still more of a rhythmic twist and jingle; arrived at the Tribune office, W. C. Wyckoff, scientific editor, and Moses P. Handy lent intellectual and poetic assistance, with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... generation, of which Theodore de Banville was the most brilliant representative, and which proceeded far more from Gautier than from Hugo or De Musset, pushed verbal and rhythmic virtuosity to the limit and perhaps beyond. Then great or ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... seems wholly and utterly dead and gone. I cannot even conceive that I ever used, solemnly and gravely, to write about imaginary people, their jests and epigrams, their sorrows and cares. Life and Art! I used to suppose that it was all a softly moulded, rhythmic, sonorous affair, strophe and antistrophe; but the griefs and sorrows of art are so much nearer each other, like major and minor keys, than the griefs and sorrows of life. In art, the musician smiles and sighs alternately, but his sighing is a balanced, ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... thin blue shirt harmonized with the warm yellow of the corn and the color of his sunburnt skin. The thin material showed the fine modeling of his figure as his body followed the sweep of the gleaming scythe. The forward stoop and recovery were marked by a rhythmic grace, and the crackle of the oat-stalks hinted at his strength. His face was calm and Grace saw his mind dwelt upon his work. He looked honest, clean, and virile, but she turned her head and struggled with a poignant sense ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... finds our poor array Like drift upon a barren shore, Perchance we gaze on it and say With vigor, "We will roam no more." But when the year its course hath run, And May completes the rhythmic span, Again, I wot, we'll call upon ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with a strong instinct for plastic as opposed to merely picturesque effect, had worked upon the same line. Donatello revelled in the rhythmic dance and stationary grace of children. Luca Signorelli initiated the plan of treating complex ornament by means of the mere human body; and for this reason, in order to define the position of Michelangelo in Italian ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... was thronged by entwined couples who, under the rhythmic domination of the music, glided and revolved in the elaborate pattern of a mazurka. With their rapt gaze, and their rigid bodies floating smoothly over a hidden mechanism of flying feet, they seemed to be the victims of some enchantment, of which the ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... awry, Sang impolitely, as though by himself, Drowning with his bellowing the nightingale's cry: "Back through a hundred, hundred years Hear the waves as they climb the piers, Hear the howl of the silver seas, Hear the thunder. Hear the gongs of holy China How the waves and tunes combine In a rhythmic clashing wonder, Incantation old and fine: 'Dragons, dragons, Chinese dragons, Red fire-crackers, and green fire-crackers, And dragons, ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Thirdly, the stressed syllable of each word is strongly marked, and verse exists as strongly and regularly accentual as in English or German. This is seen in the numerous poems written to be sung to an air already existing. The accents in these pieces fall with the rhythmic beat the English ear is accustomed to and which it so misses on first acquaintance with French verse. A second consequence of this stronger stress is that verse is written without rhyme; the entire Poem of the Rhone is written ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Behind the body, I suppose there bends Old Pheres in his hoary impotence; And women-wailers, in a corner crouch —Four, beautiful as you four—yes, indeed!— Close, each to other, agonizing all, As fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy, To two contending opposite. There strains The might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match, —Death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like The envenomed substance that exudes some dew Whereby the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... people, if you will walk the deck of a ship late at night. Your fellow-passengers are abed, the watch, if watch there be, is invisible, the steady throbbing movement of the screw resolves itself into a pleasing rhythmic melody. So far as the senses can tell, the world is your closet, a silent pleasaunce for your waking dreams. The coast-line has no lights, nor is any other vessel passing over the waters within range of eye or glass. The hosts of heaven ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... finds a feeling of effort. They have always been obliged to throw in something that need not have been said, some words inserted under compulsion, to bring the rhyme about. Mr. Davidson declares that the true glory of free untrammelled poetry shines out in the rhythmic periods of blank verse. That there may be some truth, or at least some convenience, in this theory of the poetic art, the modern poet may not be concerned to deny; for, as we have already said, rhymes will not withstand incessant and familiar usage; they become commonplaces, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... flicker. The oil was apparently exhausted. I was about to rise to fill it again, when my eyes fell upon the door, and I saw the graveyard key, which I had hung there, moving slowly back and forth with a rhythmic swing. Just as its motion seemed about to die away, it would receive a gentle push as from an unseen hand, and would swing back and forth more than ever. I stood there with open mouth and staring eyes, ice-cold chills ran down my back, and drops of perspiration stood out on my forehead. Finally, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... Boat" Crane again gains his effects by keeping down the tone where another writer might have attempted "fine writing" and have been lost. In it perhaps is most strikingly evident the poetic cadences of his prose: its rhythmic, monotonous flow is the flow of the gray water that laps at the sides of the boat, that rises and recedes in cruel waves, "like little pointed rocks." It is a desolate picture, and the tale is one of ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... to a rhythmic, cadenced chant that was almost a song. Her face became rapt and introspective as she rocked slowly from side to side. The rhythm was familiar and then he recognized it—the unintelligible music ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... its farthest end into a pale little dash of moonlight. The lanterns which the Filipinos hang out ol their front windows in lieu of street lamps burned spectrally, because they were clogged with lamp black. And the brooding and hush of night were disturbed only by the rhythmic footfalls, or by the occasional slap of a wave against the bridge rests, or by a long shrill police whistle which told that the municipal police were awake and complying with the regulation to blow their whistles at stated intervals ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... first rosy light, lifted their gleaming, glory-crowned spires heavenward; the cascades chanted in thunderous, yet rhythmic tones, their unceasing anthem of praise, their snow-white spray ascending skyward, like clouds of incense, while the little flowers, clinging to rock and ledge and mountain-side, turned their sweet ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... amongst his treasures until he found the blue of the ocean and the tough inner pith of an underground tree; these, with other things, were cast into the furnace, and afterwards beaten with his hammer. As the rhythmic strokes fell, the women sang a song which was like the voice of a strong, steady wind. Then when this work was finished, the smith drew forth a little ship, which was carefully placed on one side. The third time the dwarf ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... on its hinges when she opened it. That sound, too, echoed and re-echoed in rhythmic pulsations that beat painfully upon her ears, but, after she was once inside, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... or straddling gait with the hind legs and some difficulty in turning or in lying down and rising, the act causing a groan. The frequent passage of urine in driblets, its continuous escape in drops, the sudden arrest of the flow when in full stream, the rhythmic contraction of the muscles under the anus without any flow resulting, the swelling of the sheath, the collection of hard, gritty masses on the hair surrounding the orifice of the sheath, the occurrence of dropsies in the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... attention, for though a man of the cities would probably have heard nothing but the wailing of the wind, he caught a faint rhythmic drumming which might have been made by a galloping horse. It ceased, and he surmised, probably correctly, that it was trooper Payne returning. It was, however, his business to watch the forking of the trail, and when he could only hear the thrashing ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... this was obviously the first thing to decide, and various definitions were given, none of which proved satisfactory. Denis Malster's definition which was: "Fine thoughts expressed in rhythmic order, and sometimes rhymed," was rejected by ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Rhythmic Action of the Heart. To maintain a steady flow of blood throughout the body the action of the heart must be regular and methodical. The heart does not contract as a whole. The two auricles contract at the same time, and this is ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... on my way, and half a mile from the station I observed ahead of me, in the road, a crowd of people moving along with a curious, as it seemed rhythmic, step. I overtook this crowd—and what ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... trying, as would seem, and this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the original. This may be a great point; much perhaps has been lost in the Translation here. Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the Earth; ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... of herb—what crop are you likely to have of it? Suppose, instead of this volunteer marching and countermarching, you were to do a little volunteer ploughing and counter-ploughing? It is more difficult to do it straight: the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for merely rhythmic footsteps. Golden cups, also, given for good ploughing, would be more suitable in colour: (ruby glass, for the wine which "giveth his colour" on the ground, might be fitter for the rifle prize in ladies' hands). Or, conceive a little ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the sweeps going down and rising, the turn of the buckets, the gushing of the pots was so rhythmic that the men who caused it might be thought automatons. No one of them spoke to his neighbor, no man changed place or looked about him; he merely bent and rose in one single method from daylight until evening, from ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus |
