"Song and dance" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... having the heart to roast them, and so lose the broth. One round of whisky-and-water was all the drink to which his shilling entitled the guest. If he wanted more he had to pay for it. There was much revelry, with song and dance, that no stranger could have thought those stiff-limbed weavers capable of; and the more they shouted and whirled through the barn, the more their host smiled and rubbed his hands. He presided at the bar improvised for the occasion, and if ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... what the races politically feeble have still most to contribute— but what appears to be the happy prospect for the races politically feeble? And so the afternoon waned, among the mellow marbles and the pleasant folk—-the purple wine flowed, the golden light faded, song and dance grew free and circulation slightly embarrassed. But the great impression remained and finally was exquisite. It was all purple wine, all art and song, and nobody a grain the worse. It was fireworks and conversation— the former, in the piazzetta, were to come later; ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... on a different point. When all had arrived there were hundreds and hundreds assembled, and many and varied were the nightly corrobborees, each tribe trying to excel the other in the fancifulness of their painted get-up, and the novelty of their newest song and dance. By day there was much hunting and feasting, by night much dancing and singing; pledges of friendship exchanged, a dillibag for a boomerang, and so on; young daughters given to old warriors, old women given to young men, unborn girls promised to old men, babies in arms promised ...
— Australian Legendary Tales - Folklore of the Noongahburrahs as told to the Piccaninnies • K. Langloh Parker
... in time," she went on hurriedly—"in time to warn you that McGinty was givin' you a song and dance." ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... Thought of peril, thought of fire; Men rejoice not in their sons — Daughters are their sole desire. In the gorgeous palaces, Piercing the grey skies above, Music on the languid breeze Draws the dreaming world to love. Song and dance and hands that sway The passion of a thousand lyres Ever through the live-long day, And the monarch never tires. Sudden comes the answer curt, Loud the fish-skin war-drums roar; Cease the plaintive "rainbow skirt": Death ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... mistaken," she said. "I had a husband before you married me. He's my husband still. He's doing a song and dance act in a variety theatre in Chicago. I'm sorry about all this, Mr. Morrow. I ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... in brooding anguish, floating up from the river valley came the music of a banjo in a negro cabin, mingled with vulgar shout and song and dance. A verse of the ribald senseless lay of the player echoed above the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... Spain song and dance form an important part of the festivities of Yule-tide, which lasts two weeks, although the laboring class observe but two days of pleasure. At the palace the King holds a reception on New Year's, not for the public generally, but ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... Macbeth was abbreviated, but otherwise the alterations in the blank-verse speeches were comparatively slight. Additional songs were provided for the Witches, together with much capering in the air. Music was specially written by Matthew Locke. The liberal introduction of song and dance rendered the piece, in Pepys's strange phrase, "a most excellent play for variety." He saw D'Avenant's version of it no less than eight times, with ever-increasing enjoyment. He generously praised the clever combination of "a deep tragedy with a divertissement." ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Perieres, Borus, who with dower Enrich'd, and made her openly his bride. Warlike Eudorus led the second band. Him Polymela, graceful in the dance, And daughter beautiful of Phylas, bore, 215 A mother unsuspected of a child. Her worshiping the golden-shafted Queen Diana, in full choir, with song and dance, The valiant Argicide[6] beheld and loved. Ascending with her to an upper room, 220 All-bounteous Mercury[7] clandestine there Embraced her, who a noble son produced Eudorus, swift to run, and bold in fight. No sooner Ilithya, arbitress Of pangs puerperal, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Behechio, invited the Deputy Governor to a state entertainment, on which occasion he was received with great ceremony. As he approached the king's dwelling, the royal wives, thirty in number, carrying branches of palm in their hands, came forth to greet the guest with song and dance. These matrons were succeeded by a train of virgins. The first wore aprons of cotton, the last were arrayed only in the innocence of nature, their hair flowing long and freely about their shoulders ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... formal announcement to the chorus of the fall of Troy; describes the course of the signal-fire from beacon to beacon as it sped, and pictures in imagination the scenes even then taking place in the doomed city. On her withdrawal the chorus break once more into song and dance. To the music of a solemn hymn they point the moral of the fall of Troy, the certain doom of violence and fraud descended upon Paris and his House. Once more the vivid pictures flash from the night of woe—Helen in her fatal beauty stepping lightly to her doom, ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... "they have to put in parts, I suppose, to catch everybody. Instead of a song and dance, they ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... same old song and dance?" inquired Dr. Rosencrans in deep disgust. "We'll send out a professional beggar to the different churches of the state, and then sit back and wait for the money to ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... halts for a whole scene to allow the actor to regale his public with the poet's views on the sins of society, economic topics of the day, or topics of the by-gone days in Athens, and the like. The resemblance to the interpolated song and dance of musical comedy is most striking. The comparison is the more apt, as about two-thirds of the illustrative scenes referred to in the next paragraph are in canticum. It is a pity that the comic chorus had disappeared, or the picture were complete. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... But as the discussion of this subject belongs more intelligently to the era following the Nara, we confine ourselves here to noting that even the religious fanatic Shomu is recorded as having repaired to the Shujaku gate of the palace to witness a performance of song and dance (utagaki) in which 240 persons, men and women, took part; and that, in the same year (734), 230 members of six great uji performed similarly, all robed in blue garments fastened in front with long ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... d'Estrade, and Madame d'Angevilliers. The theater opened with a piece de circonstance, by Dufresny the poet, entitled Le Mariage fait et rompu, in allusion to the marriage of Madame de Pompadour with M. d'Etioles. The little troupe commenced with comedy, but soon descended to opera and ballet. In song and dance, as well as in the representation of the passions, Madame de Pompadour was the only actress of real talent. In the characters of peasant-girls she was unsurpassed; but her chef d'oeuvre was the part of Collette in Rousseau's Devin de Village, which she played with a naivete and tenderness ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... maids who've met to fleet In song and dance this evening's hours, Far happier now the bosoms beat Than when they last adorned these bowers; For tidings of glad sound had come, At break of day from the far isles— Tidings like breath of life to some— That Zea's sons would soon wing home, Crowded with the light of Victory's ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... result of listening to the telling of fairy tales, appears in its most varied form of artistic expression in free play and dramatization. It is here that the child finds a need for the expression of all his skill in song and dance, construction, language, and art, for here he finds a use for ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... festivity; but, accustomed to this glorious spectacle, they scarcely deigned to glance at it. 'Let us leave the souls of the dead to their ball-play with the heads of the walruses,' they thought in their superstition, and they turned their whole attention to the song and dance. In the midst of the circle, and divested of his furry cloak, stood a Greenlander, with a small pipe, and he played and sang a song about catching the seal, and the chorus around chimed in with, 'Eia, Eia, Ah.' And in their ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... they have been stringing poor Simon along and today they give him a song and dance about some bird name Joe in the regt. that was here ahead of us that got a collection of souvenirs that makes Simon's look rotten and they said the guy's pals called him Souvenir Joe on acct. of him haveing such a fine collection. So Brady says to ...
— The Real Dope • Ring Lardner
... asked, "you look as excited as if the Statue of Liberty had paid us a visit and was now doing a song and dance ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... visitations, the decay or proscription of ancient pleasures, easily incline him to be sad; and sadness detaches him from life. The melancholy of the Hawaiian and the emptiness of his new life are striking; and the remark is yet more apposite to the Marquesas. In Samoa, on the other hand, perpetual song and dance, perpetual games, journeys, and pleasures, make an animated and a smiling picture of the island life. And the Samoans are to-day the gayest and the best entertained inhabitants of our planet. The importance of this can scarcely ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... deep ingulft, his place Ordaind without redemption, without end. So spake th' Omnipotent, and with his words All seemd well pleas'd, all seem'd, but were not all. That day, as other solem dayes, they spent In song and dance about the sacred Hill, Mystical dance, which yonder starrie Spheare 620 Of Planets and of fixt in all her Wheeles Resembles nearest, mazes intricate, Eccentric, intervolv'd, yet regular Then most, when most irregular ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... conversed with freaks and monsters of all sorts upon terms of friendly confidence. He reported their different theories of themselves to his family with the same simple-hearted interest that he criticised the song and dance artists of the vaudeville theatres. He became an innocent but by no means uncritical connoisseur of their attractions, and he surprised with the constancy and variety of his experience in them a gentleman who sat next him one night. Boyne thought him a person ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... the importance and independence achieved by one of the elements consorted in a work by nature composite, led the way to a revolution having for its object a restoration of something like the ancient drama. In this ancient drama and its precursor, the dithyrambic song and dance, is found a union of words and music which scientific investigation proves to be not only entirely natural but inevitable. In a general way most people are in the habit of speaking of music as the language of the emotions. The elements which enter into vocal music (of necessity ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... child, and let who will be graceful, Do whizzy whirls whenever you've the chance; And so make life, death and that grand old staircase One song and dance. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... spake to Telemachus: 'Thy guest bringeth thee no shame as he sitteth in thy halls, for I missed not the mark nor spent much time in the stringing. My strength is yet whole within me. But now it is time to make a banquet for the Achaeans in the light of day and then season it with song and dance, which are the crown of revelry.' So speaking he nodded, and his son took a sword and a spear and stood by him clad ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... different towns and villages of Cornwall. He quoted the Padstow Hobby-horse, the Towednack Cuckoo-feast, the Madron Dipping Day, the Troy May-dragon, and proved that the custom of ushering in the summer with song and dance and some symbolical rite of purgation was well-nigh universal throughout Cornwall. He followed the custom overseas, to Brittany, Hungary, the Black Forest, Moldavia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, the Caucasus. . . . He wound up by sardonically congratulating ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... life-guard man. Of all these persons, not one is apt to be made melancholy; they are neither peevish nor quarrelsome; they are more contented with their lot than the caliph in the midst of his court; they are always gay, ready to dance and to sing, and have each of them their peculiar song and dance, with which they divert the city of Bagdad: but what I esteem most in them is, that they are no great talkers, no more than your slave that has now the honour to speak to you. Here, sir, that is the song and dance of Zantout, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... were required. No true method had been taught, with the result that 'frivolity of style, shallow thoughts, and disorderly structure' prevailed; orators imitated the rhythms of the stage and actually made it their boast that their speeches would form fitting accompaniments to song and dance. It became a common saying that 'our orators speak voluptuously, while our actors dance eloquently'.[72] Poetical colour was demanded of the orator, rhetorical colour of the poet. The literary and rhetorical stages of education ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... back at no great distance, out upon the prairie. At first I thought it was the echo, but Springer, a half-breed Indian, assured me what I had heard was the cry of other Indians. To satisfy myself, I bade the Indians repeat the song and dance, and this time, sure enough, when it was ended the whoop was answered quite near the ranch. I went inside, lest my uniform should be seen, and telling Springer to continue the dance, I went to a back window and looked out, in the direction ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... her first-horn's breath; Come when the blessed seals That close the pestilence are broke, And crowded cities wail its stroke; Come in consumption's ghastly form, The earthquake shock, the ocean storm; Come when the heart beats high and warm With banquet-song and dance and wine; And thou art terrible—the tear, The groan, the knell, the pall, the bier, And all we know or dream or fear Of ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... Beginnings of Poetry, by Professor Francis B. Gummere, especially chap. v. The beginning of the whole subject is to be found in the universal and innate practices of accompanying manual or bodily labour by a rhythmic chant or song, and of festal song and dance.] ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... he won't spiel anything to the cops about this row. He's an ex-soldier, a Captain, and he's nuts on the girl. That's why he dipped into this mess—trying to save her—see? Maybe he won't be so keen now, after the song and dance she gave him up stairs. I'm half inclined to think the guy will drop out entirely, damn glad to get off alive, now he believes she is as rotten as the rest of us. But I ain't sure—maybe he is the kind that sticks. That's why I don't take any chances ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish |
