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More "Harp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the characteristics of his countrymen—susceptibility to immediate impulse—susceptibility to fleeting impressions. It was a key to many mysteries in his character when he owned his subjection to the influence of music, and in music recognised not the seraph's harp, but the siren's song. If you could have permanently fixed Victor de Mauleon in one of the good moments of his life—even now—some moment of exquisite kindness—of superb generosity—of dauntless courage—you would ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... again have I heard tell of wind-harps and the sweet music the wind coaxes out of them. The sighing and singing of the breezes through the tree-tops must be something like it, no doubt. But I never heard a wind-harp's song, and of course don't know how to make one. Perhaps, some of you know, however, and if so I shall be obliged if you will send me word, so that I can pass it on to Minnie and ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... circumstance that she began early in life to be a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... Lord, will I seek.' The completeness and swiftness of his answer could not be more vividly expressed. To hear was to obey: as soon as God's merciful call sounded, the Psalmist's heart responded, like a harp-string thrilled into music by the vibration of another tuned to the same note. Without hesitation, and in entire correspondence with the call, was his response. So swiftly, completely, resolutely should we respond to God's voice, and our ready 'I will' should answer His commandment, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... than ever, now traced back to Bonaparte the origin of every social, political, and religious evil. Such being the situation, the idea of Uncle Victor made me feel particularly uneasy. This terrible uncle had become absolutely unsufferable now that his sister was no longer there to calm him down. The harp of David was broken, and Saul was wholly delivered over to the spirit of madness. The fall of Charles X. had increased the audacity of the old Napoleonic veteran, who uttered all imaginable bravadoes. He no longer frequented our house, which had become too silent for him. But sometimes, at ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... lineage and great wealth, and Auffredy woke from his dream of happiness at once. His strains were now all gloom and sadness, and Elionore heard, with something like astonishment, the melancholy and despairing lays, to which alone he tuned the harp that all delighted to hear. Beatrix, too, whose wishes had not been consulted on a subject so important to herself, appeared quite changed from the tune the tidings first reached her; and her pale cheek and starting tears proved too plainly her aversion ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... the first speaker, and his bow twanged like a harp-string. The black man sprang high up into the air, and shot out both his arms and his legs, coming down all a-sprawl among the heather. "Right under the blade bone!" quoth the archer, sauntering forward ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... arranged on a dais, and sang national melodies; and when the performance was finished Lord Bute, with a charming smile, presented Lady Llanover with a ring. This bore on its large gem an engraving of a Welsh harp, below which was the motto in Welsh, "The language of the soul ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... the rose o'English blooms, He's broken the harp o'Irish, clowns, But Scotia's thistle will jag his thoomba, The wee, ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... to me. One of them had some wit, and scattered her epigrams right and left. These were at once hawked about in all drawing-rooms, and I had to listen to them twenty times in a single day. Another had read Montesquieu, and gave lessons in law to the oldest magistrates. A third used to play the harp execrably, but it was agreed that her arms were the most beautiful in France, and we had to endure the harsh scraping of her nails over the strings so that she might have an opportunity of removing her gloves like a coy little ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... natural that I imagined I could see its leaves and tendrils sway in the wind. The occupants of the dining-room were all ladies, and again I noted the fact that they were all blondes: beautiful, graceful, courteous, and with voices softer and sweeter than the strains of an eolian harp. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... upperhand and I am well nigh in despair, my only help lies in remembering my friend Pythagoras, that noblest among men, and his words: 'Observe a due proportion in all things, avoid excessive joy as well as complaining grief, and seek to keep thy soul in tune and harmony like a well-toned harp.'" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... West wind, to laugh like the stream, and to sing like the lark. Her hair should be made of sunshine, and her eyes should be as the sea in midsummer. She should excel in all things, in knowledge, in wit, and in skill; she should be fleet of foot, a cunning harp-player, adept at all manner of woman-like crafts, and deft with the needle and the spinning-wheel, and at the loom. Zeus himself gave her stateliness and majesty, the Lord of the Sun gave a voice as of a golden flute; Poseidon gave her the laughter of all the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... too, (the latter with a life-preserver), but they were afraid to venture out too far, on account of sharks, which were occasionally seen near the shore. At a certain season of the year there was frequently heard, near the bath-houses, a strain of music, like the Aeolian harp, which had never been satisfactorily accounted for, although many wise heads had pondered over it. Some supposed that it proceeded from a certain kind of small fish, which, in their perambulations through ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... storm of war, in '65. Some of the "boys" had heard him, in a great prayer-meeting in Washington—a city which he always spoke of as his "namesake"—at the time of the great review, say, in his strong voice, with that pathetic quaver in it: "Like as de parched an' weary traveller hangs his harp upon de winder, an' sighs for oysters in de desert, so I longs to res' my soul an' my foot in Mass'-chusetts;" and they were so delighted with him that they invited him on the spot to go home with them, and took up a collection to pay his fare; and so he was a public character. As for his occupation,—when ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin
... light and colour; and now every breath of the soft atmosphere, every gleam from the changing foliage, the light's peculiar tone, and the soft indolence of the hazy days, stole into the recesses of Diana's heart, and smote on the nerves that answered every touch with vibrations of pain. The AEolian harp that had sounded such soft harmonies a year ago, when the notes rose and fell in breathings of joy, clanged now with sharp and keen discords that Diana could scarcely bear. The time of blackberries passed without her joining the yearly party which ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... "You harp so persistently upon your desire for money," suggested Maria Dolores, "one might infer she was a commodity, to be bought and sold. You begin at the wrong end. What good would five or fifty thousand a year do you, if you had not ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... whiskers made the most pliant and elastic painting-brush; ladies would appeal to him on the best means of devising grates, curing smoky chimneys, warming their houses, and obtaining fast colours. I can speak from experience of his teaching me how to make a dulcimer, and improve a Jew's harp." ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... first generalized theory of the nature of mediaeval poetry." (History of English Poetry, Vol. I, p. 426.) Percy considered the minstrels as the authors of the compositions which they sang to the harp, and as holding a dignified social position similar to that of the Anglo-Saxon scop or the old Norse scald. This theory was vigorously attacked by Joseph Ritson in the preface of his Select Collection ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... threw myself upon it, and weariness at once began to ebb, for, the moment my head was down, the third time I heard below me many waters, playing broken airs and ethereal harmonies with the stones of their buried channels. Loveliest chaos of music-stuff the harp aquarian kept sending up to my ears! What might not a Haendel have done with that ever-recurring gurgle and bell-like drip, to the mingling and mutually ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... narrowness, as they almost exceeded belief. Col told us, that O'Kane, the famous Irish harper, was once at that gentleman's house. He could not find in his heart to give him any money, but gave him a key for a harp, which was finely ornamented with gold and silver, and with a precious stone, and was worth eighty or a hundred guineas. He did not know the value of it; and when he came to know it, he would fain have had it back; but O'Kane took care that he should ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Smith played the accompaniments for a set of familiar Irish songs—"The Harp that once through Tara's Halls," "Erin go Bragh," "Kathleen Mavourneen," "The Wearing of the Green." Dorothy led the choruses, the whole U. S. C., including Dicky, sang their best, and Edward Watkins's tenor rose so pleadingly in "Kathleen Mavourneen" ...
— Ethel Morton's Holidays • Mabell S. C. Smith
... more miserable still when it is gone!" He strung a number of copper wires at different degrees of tension between two trees, and listened to the wind as it ranged up and down on this improvised AEolian harp. It gradually ran into a regular refrain, which became more and more like words. Ayrault was puzzled, and then amazed. There could be no doubt about it. "You should be happy," it kept repeating—"you should be happy," in soft musical tones. "I know I should," ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... on the Range." Now the voice, too, was tired. The youthfulness which had impressed Drew on their initial meeting had drained from this man tonight. He was taut as if pulled harp-string tight inside. Drew knew that feeling also. But what battle had Rennie emerged from—some ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... the Queen was playing the harp in her own room when the King came in to ask her counsel how best to deal with Wayland, as he did not think it wise to put him to death, for he hoped to make some profit out of his skill. 'His heart will ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... in quivering wires of dull light. The world was strung with them like a harp, and upon them the wind played a monotonous refrain. Against the wall near Tatsu stood a light framework of wood with the silk already stretched and dried for painting. At his other hand a brush slanted sidewise from a bowl of liquid ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... making a primitive bow and fiddle (scetavaiasse); the fourth an arrangement of three wooden mallets, that are rattled together like a gigantic pair of bones (tricca-ballache); and the fifth a Jew's harp (scaccia-pensieri). A tarantella danced to the accompaniment of so weird a medley of instruments and by real peasants full of gaiety is naturally a thing altogether diverse from the stilted, though graceful and decorous ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... clear definition of reasoning. Any one who watches the working of his own mind will find that it is by no means easy to trace these sharp distinctions between various mental states, which seem so obvious when they are set out in little books on psychology. The mind of man is like a harp, all of whose strings throb together; so that emotion, impulse, inference, and the special kind of inference called reasoning, are often simultaneous and intermingled aspects of a ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... said Maggie, laughing. "The Muses were uncomfortable goddesses, I think,—obliged always to carry rolls and musical instruments about with them. If I carried a harp in this climate, you know, I must have a green baize cover for it; and I should be sure to leave ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... paradise of feeling! E'en as two flames which round each other twine— Or flood of seraph harp-tones gently stealing In one soft swell, away to ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... of welcome was over. The bards had sung their heroic songs to the accompaniment of the cruot, or harp; the fool had played his pranks, and the juggler his tricks, and the chief bard, who was expected to be familiar with "more than seven times fifty stories, great and small," had given the best from his list; and as they sat thus in the cuirmtech, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... thought of leaving Saxony on another visit to Bohemia, and especially Prague, had had quite a romantic attraction for me. The foreign nationality, the broken German of the people, the peculiar headgear of the women, the native wines, the harp-girls and musicians, and finally, the ever present signs of Catholicism, its numerous chapels and shrines, all produced on me a strangely exhilarating impression. This was probably due to my craze for everything theatrical and spectacular, as distinguished ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "That globe on which the figure of Hope sits," Miss Heath had said, "is meant to represent the world. Hope is blindfolded in order more effectually to shut out the sights which might distract her. See the harp in her hand, observe her rapt attitude— she is listening to melody— she hears, she rejoices, and yet the harp out of which she makes music only possesses one string— all the rest are broken." Miss Heath said nothing further, and Prissie scarcely took in the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... do anything to prevent it. You are original without trying to be so. You have a dreadful head of hair that is naturally curly and rebellious, your slenderness is exaggerated, you have a natural harp in your throat, and all this makes of you a creature apart, which is a crime of high treason against all that is commonplace. That is what is the matter with you physically. Now for your moral defects. You cannot hide your thoughts, ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... of my Country! in darkness I found thee, The cold chain of silence had hung o'er thee long, When proudly, my own Island Harp, I unbound thee, And gave all thy chords to light, ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... dwelling in this den— As cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy, Or in what other land they hap to be— Which drives the belly close beneath the chin: My beard turns up to heaven; my nape falls in, Fixed on my spine: my breast-bone visibly Grows like a harp: a rich embroidery Bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin. My loins into my paunch like levers grind: My buttock like a crupper bears my weight; My feet unguided wander to and fro; In front my skin grows loose and ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... sleep—dear father! in his normal condition he sleeps like a bag of corn-meal—who was there in all the house to keep those boys quiet? Nobody but me. When they organized a military company in our back yard directly under father's windows—two drums, a fish-horn, a jews-harp, a fife, and three tin pans—was there anybody but me to put a stop to it? It was on this occasion that the pet name Moolymaria, afterward corrupted into Messymaria, and finally evolved into Meddlymaria, became attached to me. To this day I do not like to think how many cries I had over it. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Don't harp on that word "alone." I know I am living alone, in a house that has four outside doors into the bargain. But you know I am not one of the "afraid" kind. I am not boasting. That is a characteristic, not a quality. One is afraid or one is not. It happens that I am not. ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich
... broken in the night and all the water lost. The sick and wounded were soon afterwards landed and carried to the principal town, called Dingenacush[368], about three miles distant from the haven, and at which place our surgeons attended them daily. Here we well refreshed ourselves, while the Irish harp sounded sweetly in our ears, and here we, who in our former extremity were in a manner half dead, had our lives as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... private; our 'immortal bard' seems to have forgotten that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were flung into the fiery furnace (made seven times hotter than usual) amidst the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music; he seems to have forgotten that it was a music and a dance-loving damsel that chose, as a recompense for her elegant performance, the bloody head of John the Baptist, brought to her in a charger; ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... with tears. No one—a clanking chain, an echoed groan somewhere; that was all. And away off in the bright world, laughing, singing, drenching flowers with wine, a young man.... One by one the lights go out in the festal house: no more of noise, or song, or harp; but in Ibarra's ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... our strength sing loud, and clear, Sing loud to God our King, To Jacobs God, that all may hear Loud acclamations ring. 2 Prepare a Hymn, prepare a Song The Timbrel hither bring The cheerfull Psaltry bring along And Harp with pleasant string. 3 Blow, as is wont, in the new Moon With Trumpets lofty sound, 10 Th'appointed time, the day wheron Our solemn Feast comes round. 4 This was a Statute giv'n of old For Israel to observe A Law of Jacobs God, to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the grass-plot just before the window," said Mr. Aubrey: the tiny voices were thrilling his very heart within him. His sensitive nature might have been compared to a delicate AEolian harp which gave forth, with the slightest breath of ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... on every side we are in imminent peril of death. Some return to us maimed of their hands; of others we hear that they are captured; of others, again, that they are slain. My tongue can no longer expound, when my spirit is weary of my life. Let no one ask me to unfold the Scriptures; for my harp is turned to mourning, and my voice to the cry of the weeper. The eye of my heart no longer keeps its watch in the discussion of mysteries; my soul droops for weariness. Study has lost its charm for me. I have forgotten to eat my bread for ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... preceding entries, there are some points that illustrate the policy on which Mr. Parris acted, and exhibit the skill and vigilance of his management. The motive that led him to harp so constantly upon "firewood" is obvious. It was to create a sympathy in his behalf, and bring opprobrium upon his opponents. But it cannot stand the test of scrutiny: for it had been expressly agreed, as I have said, that he should ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... than when her mother dispensed with her attendance at the entertainments at the house of Madame Tallien or Madame Barras, and permitted her to remain at home, to amuse herself with her books and harp in a better and more useful, if not in a more agreeable manner, than she could have done in the brilliant parlors to which her mother had repaired. Early matured in the school of experience and suffering, the girl of twelve had acquired a womanly earnestness and resolution, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... goodly shape, More fit to string and strike Apollo's lyre, Than bear the shield or wield the sword of Mars! A broken harp, suspended at his side, A faded garland, wreathed about his brow, Tell what he was, and still employ his care. With thin white hand, that trembles at its task, In vain he strives to bind the broken chords, And to their primal melody attune them;— In vain,—for to his efforts still replies ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... way they twang on their harp of a thousand strings. At breakfast, this morning, when Jack passed me the corn-bread, I said innocently, 'Why, what have we here?' 'It is manna that fell in the night,' answered Jack, with an exasperating snicker. 'You didn't know mutton, but I thought, being a Sunday-school teacher, you ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of this charming poetess must be like an AEolian harp, that every sighing wind awakes to music, but to grave and chastened melody, the full charm of which can only be truly appreciated by those who have sorrowed, and who look beyond this earth for repose. Well might ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... that a man of your taste in music, cannot play upon the Jew's harp; there are some of us here that touch it very melodiously, I can tell you. Corelli's solo of Maggie Lauder, and Pergolesi's sonata of The Carle he came o'er the Craft, are excellently adapted to that instrument; let me advise you to learn it. ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... alabaster; she is tall, well made, and of a sweet disposition; I have given her an education which would make her worthy of our master, the Sultan. She speaks Greek and Italian fluently, she sings delightfully, and accompanies herself on the harp; she can draw and embroider, and is always contented and cheerful. No living man can boast of having seen her features, and she loves me so dearly that my will is hers. My daughter is a treasure, and I offer her to you if you will consent to go for one year to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... begin at the commencement," said Tantaine. "For some days past your people have been following a certain Caroline Schimmel. A fellow of sixteen called Ambrose, a lad with a harp, was told off for this duty. He is not to be trusted. Only a night or two ago one of my men made him drunk; and fearing lest his absence might create surprise, drove him here in a cab, and left him at ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... "How thou dost harp upon sorcery!" exclaimed Ambrose. "I must tell thee the good old man's story as 'twas told to me, and then wilt thou own that he is as good a Christian as ourselves—ay, or better- -and hath little cause to ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to show your passions: I will say she is fairer than the dolphin's eye, At whom amaz'd the night-stars stand and gaze. Then will I praise her chin and cheek, and pretty hand, Long, made like Venus when she us'd the harp, When Mars was revelling in Jove's high house. Besides, my lord, I will say she hath a pace Much like to Juno in Ida[294] vale, When Argus watch'd the heifer on the mount. These words, my lord, will make her love, I am sure; If these will not, my lord, I have ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... various dishes set before him lest they should be poisoned; his cupbearers who handed him his wine, and tasted it; his chamberlains, who assisted him to bed; and his musicians, who amused him with song and harp. Besides these, the Court comprised various classes of guards, and also doorkeepers, huntsmen, grooms, cooks, and other domestic servants in great abundance, together with a vast multitude of visitors and guests, princes, nobles, captives ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... ancient march of the days of Ferdinand and Isabel,' whispered Clara; 'could you not guess its stately measures were pure old Castilian? Now mark the change—that is a Moorish serenade; is it not like the fitful breathings of an Eolian harp?' ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... tame familiarity, a perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, incapable of the quick thrills of delight and fear which play upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy child's nature, and partly by their woful lack of acquaintance with a private home, and their being therefore destitute of the sweet homebred shyness, which is like the sanctity of heaven about a mother-petted child. Their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... lungs, in spite of her time among them and similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that they were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones on the principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She thought the canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and all of them of the biggest ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... to dwell upon a subject. Have among you, my blind harpers; an expression used in throwing or shooting at random among the crowd. Harp is also the Irish expression for woman, or tail, used in tossing up in Ireland: from Hibernia, being represented with a harp on the reverse of the copper coins of that country; for which it is, in hoisting the copper, i.e. tossing up, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... gentility, and which enabled him afterwards on one occasion to boast that he could establish a better claim to the rank of noble than most of that body, since he could produce a stamped receipt for it. He married two rich widows. He next obtained the place of music-master on the harp to the daughters of Louis XV., and conducted some of their concerts. He became involved in a law-suit, which he conducted in person against some of the most renowned advocates of the day, and gained great applause for the talent he had exhibited in his pleadings. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... and go to Heaven, there to spend her days thumbing a golden harp, her hands, by force of habit, would, drop harp-strings at quarter to six, to begin laying a celestial and unspotted table-cloth for supper. Habits as deeply rooted as that must hold, even ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... friend the usurer's," said Bixiou. "His name is Vauvinet. One of the greatest mistakes made by writers who describe our manners and morals is to harp on old portraits. In these days all trades change. The grocer becomes a peer of France, artists capitalize their money, vaudevillists have incomes. A few rare beings may remain what they originally were, but professions ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... alone with Maud, her confidante and admirer, she was wont to cast a kindly glamour of romance over her own delinquencies. "It's my heart," she would sigh pathetically. "My heart is so sensitive. It's like an Aeolian harp, Maud, upon which every passing breeze plays its melody. I'm a creature of sensibility!" And she rolled her fine eyes to the ceiling, the while Maud snorted, being afflicted with adenoids, and wrinkled her brows in the effort to put her ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that had come to her lately had made her heart almost too big and tender. Since she had learned to love Channing, that always sensitive heart of hers ached and swelled with every grief or joy that passed, as a wind-harp thrills to the ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... communicants were held open by a wooden engine, while the consecrated bread was forced down their throat; the breasts of tender virgins were either burnt with red-hot egg-shells, or inhumanly compressed betweens harp and heavy boards. [154] The Novatians of Constantinople and the adjacent country, by their firm attachment to the Homoousian standard, deserved to be confounded with the Catholics themselves. Macedonius was informed, that a large district of Paphlagonia [155] was almost entirely inhabited by those ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... treasuries of the Greek temples, he declared that the man could never fail whose chest was replenished by the gods themselves. When the Delphic priests reported to him that they were afraid to send the treasures which he asked, because the harp of the god emitted a clear sound when they touched it, he returned the reply that they might now send them all the more readily, as the god evidently approved his design. Nevertheless he fondly flattered himself with the idea that he was the chosen favourite of the gods, and in an ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... activity on that part of the front. A couple of times a day a few snapping discharges would come from the seventy-fives of the battery behind the Abbey, and the woods would resound like a shaken harp as the shells passed over to explode on the crest of the hill that blocked the end of the valley where the ...
— One Man's Initiation—1917 • John Dos Passos
... essayist of his time. His poems are the fruit of Oriental mysticism and bardic fervor grafted upon the shrewd, parsimonious, New England puritanic stock. The stress and wild, uncertain melody of his poetry is like that of the wind-harp. No writing surpasses his in the extent to which it takes hold of the concrete, the real, the familiar, and none surpasses his in its elusive, mystical suggestiveness, and its cryptic character. It is Yankee wit and shrewdness on one side, and Oriental devoutness, pantheism, and symbolism on ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... interesting specimens in almost every branch of the fine arts. Here are statues, casts from the frieze of the Parthenon, pictures, prints, books, and minerals; four pianofortes of different sizes, and an excellent harp. All this to study does Desdemona (that's me) seriously incline; and the more I study the more I want to know and to see. In short, I am crazy to travel in Greece! The danger is that some good-for-nothing bashaw should seize upon me to poke me into his harem, there to bury my charms ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... Nature seemed not only to invite, but to woo him to paint marine subjects, and from that moment his vocation was decided on. Thus nature frequently instructs men of genius, and leads them on in the true path to excellence and renown. Like the AEolian harp, which waits for a breath of air to produce a sound, so they frequently wait or strive in vain, till nature strikes a sympathetic chord, that vibrates to the soul. Thus Joseph Vernet never thought of his forte till he first stood on La Viste; and after that, he was nothing but a painter ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... of London, Harp Maker to his Majesty, is just leaving me. A native of Ruhl, he was sent at an early age to England, where he is now working as an able mechanic, a sturdy man of good stature in which you would take delight; at the same time he manifests ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... the universe had never before known. But to each of us the most perfect joy will be his own consciousness, existence being then a rapture such as we never experienced. Then the bird is winged, the jewel is set in gold, the flower blooms, the harp receives all her strings, the heir is crowned. No wonder that Paul said, looking through and beyond heaven, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... the host and perpetrator of Woodchuck Inn. I introduces Andy, and we talk about a few volatile topics, such as will go around at meetings of boards of directors and old associates like us three were. Old Smoke-'em-out leads us into a kind of summer house in the yard near the gate and took up the harp of life and smote on all the chords with ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... us can tell What he had been, had Cadmus never taught The art that fixes into form the thought,— Had Plato never spoken from his cell, Or his high harp blind Homer never ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... wound which only long months of patient endurance could heal. When a mother's dust is carried out and laid in the grave, it is the light of the domestic hearth gone out; it is the sweetest string gone from the family harp; that bereavement is like the breath of winter among tender flowers; the live tree around which entwined tender creepers is torn up, and they lie entangled on the ground, disconsolate and helpless, until the Great Father of us all shall give them strength ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... little regiment of servants in these hard times!" I could easily perceive what all this tended to, but would not seem to understand him; which made it highly necessary for Mr. Savecharges to explain himself more intelligibly; to harp upon and protest he dreaded the expense of keeping a coach. And truly, for his part, he could not conceive how the pleasure resulting from such a convenience could be any way adequate to the heavy expense attending it. I now thought ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... cried Quill; "but all true at the same time. There was a mess-mate of mine in the 'Roscommon' who never paid car-hire in his life. 'Head or harp, Paddy!' he would cry. 'Two tenpennies or nothing.' 'Harp, for the honor of ould Ireland!' was the invariable response, and my friend was equally sure to make head come uppermost; and, upon my soul, they seem to know the trick ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... its ear, where its mouth had been turned before, and leans listening for the spirit-echo — the echo with a soul in it — the answering voice which out of the abyss will enter by the gate now turned to receive it. Whose will be the voice? What will be the sense? What chords on the harp of life have been struck afar off by the arrow-words of the letter? What tones will they send back to the longing, hungering ear? The mouth hath spoken, that the fainting ear may be filled by the return of its words through the ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... found in England. It is delicately and elaborately sculptured, and each of the twelve angels in the niches holds a musical instrument—a flageolet, a trumpet and two wind instruments, a tambour, a violin, an organ, a harp, bagpipes, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... portion of the Imperial Palace called the Seir-y[o]den; and upon these mattings were placed four tables of offerings to the Star-deities. Besides the customary food-offerings, there were placed upon these tables rice-wine, incense, vases of red lacquer containing flowers, a harp and flute, and a needle with five eyes, threaded with threads of five different colors. Black-lacquered oil-lamps were placed beside the tables, to illuminate the feast. In another part of the grounds a tub of water was so placed as ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... is often caused by music in the sagas, e.g. by the harp of Dagda, or by the branch carried by visitants from Elysium.[1132] Many "fairy" lullabies for producing sleep are even now extant in Ireland and the Highlands.[1133] As music forms a part of all primitive ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... citron; clocks; copper manufactures; copper or brass wire; cotton; crayons; crystal (cut and manufactured); cucumbers; fish; gauze of thread; hair, manufactures of hair or goats' wool, &c.; hams; harp-strings; hats or bonnets of straw, silk, beaver, felt, &c.; hops; iron and steel, wrought; japanned or lacquered ware; lace, made by the hand, &c.; latten-wire; lead (manufactures of); leather (manufactures of)—calashes, boots, and shoes, of all sorts; linen, or linen and cotton, viz., ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... famous presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop, as the strings are to the harp. ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake
... in which harp-playing sets off a graceful figure; spinning is almost as becoming an employment. A woman stands at the great wool-wheel, one arm extended, the other holding the thread, her head thrown back to take in all the scope of her occupation; or if it is the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... main song (in flute and English horn) beneath an ariel harmony (of overtones), while a quicker trip begins below of the same figure. And in the midst is a strange concert of low dancing strings with highest tones of harp,—strange mating of ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... the control of excessive surpluses and the speculation they bring has two enemies. There are those well meaning theorists who harp on the inherent right of every free born American to do with his land what he wants—to cultivate it well—or badly; to conserve his timber by cutting only the annual increment thereof—or to strip it clean, let fire burn the slash, and erosion complete ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... not doing anything of the sort! Why will you harp on that one string? Good heavens! Aren't you yourself the author of the sentiment that a sociologist ought to have some first-hand knowledge of the problems ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... of her exquisite poems Frances Ridley Havergal tells of a friend who was given an aeolian harp which, she was told, sent out unutterably sweet melodies. She tried to bring the music by playing upon it with her hand, but found the seven strings would yield but one tone. Keenly disappointed she turned to the letter sent before the gift and found she had not noticed the directions ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... every-day incidents of life, copied with the graphic fidelity of a Sharp, and bearing the faithful stamp of cottage grouping, which distinguished the pencil of a Morland,—in the natural paintings of Crabbe. We have Catullus stealing from his couch, to breathe a new intonation into the harp of Moore; and last of all, we have the votaress of virtue and moral feeling, the Cambrian minstrel, Mrs. Hemans, making melancholy appear ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... this a boon to the privileged few; and that without a parable he spake not to the multitude; and the pious explanation, that this was a fulfilment of Prophecy, "I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter dark sayings on the harp," persuade me that the impression of the disciples was a deep reality. And it is in entire keeping with the general narrative, which shows in him so much of mystical assumption. Strip the parables of the imagery, and you find that sometimes one thought has been dished up four or five ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... upstairs to the drawing-room, after dinner, Miss Arabella took her harp, and was on the point of favouring us with a Mozart; but her mother, recollecting that we were Presbyterians, thought it might not be agreeable, and she desisted, which I was sinful enough to regret; but my mother was so evidently alarmed at the idea of playing on the harp on a Sunday ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... holy Harp, While sang the grand celestial choir. Earth heard the awful sound, and saw The trembling of the golden wire. 'Twas thunder to the stranger ear, And to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... from below, and selecting one of hickory, with the bark still investing it, Ahab fitted the end to the socket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some fathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension. Pressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string, then eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Ahab exclaimed, "Good! ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... d' you say you was wrong in what you done? Why d' you harp an' harp 'pon that, knawin' right well you'd do the same again to-morrow? You wasn't wrong, an' the Queen's self would say the same if she knawed. 'T was to save a helpless woman you runned; an' her—Queen Victoria—wi' her big heart as can sigh for the sorrow of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... peeled with the burdens that were carried; but at last it was taken in the year 573, and so utterly destroyed, that not a trace was left of it. It had been said by Isaiah, that after seventy years Tyre should take her harp and sing again, and return for a time to her former splendour and corruption; and thus it happened, for a new Tyre arose upon a little island at some ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... hay, Sir,' entreated Lilias; 'who knows that it may not win Patrick to be the Lady Joan's devoted servant? Malcolm, your harp!' ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... you getting fitted for? To be a slop-pail to hold all the stuff that people pour into your ears, or a vase to hold sweet fragrance and flowers for the King's palace and a harp of many strings that sounds the melodies and harmonies of His love and praise? Each one of us is going to his own place. Let us get ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... evening we had music from the girls, and the voice of the harp and viol were heard in my halls once more, which have been so long deprived of mirth. It is with a mixed sensation I hear these sounds. I look on my children and am happy; and yet every now and then a pang shoots across my heart. It seems so strange that ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the flag of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant and the Montserratian coat of arms centered in the outer half of the flag; the coat of arms features a woman standing beside a yellow harp with her arm ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... who died recently at Canton, at an advanced age, leaving his vast wealth to two sons. Here is an elegy written upon his death by his brother-merchant TINGQUA, which is now being sung about Canton to a dolorous air, accompanied by the yeih-pa and the tchung, a curious sort of guitar and harp in common use. The elegy comprises a little outline, together with hints and allusions, prettily conveyed, of the principal biographical events of HOWQUA'S ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... the desert waste, The heavens and earth of every country; saw Where'er the old inspiring genii dwelt, Aught that could expand, refine the soul, Thither he went, and meditated there. He touched his harp and nations heard, entranced, As some vast river of unfailing source. Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed And ope'd new fountains in the human heart Where fancy halted, weary in her flight, In other men, his fresh as morning rose, And soared ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... aloft; The very name is lost to Sorrow, And Pain is Rapture tuned more exquisitely soft. Here the Pilgrim reposes the world-weary limb, And forgets in the shadow, cool-breathing and dim, The load he shall bear never more; Here the Mower, his sickle at rest, by the streams, Lull'd with harp-strings, reviews, in the calm of his dreams, The fields, when the harvest is o'er. Here, He, whose ears drank in the battle-roar, Whose banners stream'd upon the startled wind A thunder-storm,—before whose thunder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... would rather not tell you," said Ingram. "The fact is, the noble mountaineers of these districts have had to fall back on the Jew's harp. The ministers allow that instrument to be used—I suppose because there is a look of piety in the name. But the dancing doesn't get very mad when you have two or three young fellows playing a strathspey on a bit of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... the gardens and the stables, our young monk brought us back to the great church of the convent, where we took our places near the monks, who had mustered in full force to be present at the dancing. Presently the music arrived, an old man with a harp, and a woman with a violin; and then came the dancers, eight Indian boys with short tunics and head-dresses of feathers, and as many girls with white dresses, and garlands of flowers on their heads. The costumes were evidently ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... contains some curious sculptures. Upon the roof of the building (stable) represented in connection with the Nativity, there lies a wheel, the signification of which no one could tell me. Among other musical instruments represented in relief in this church, there are the harp, the bugle and rows ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... immortal harp! Breathe numbers warm with love while I rehearse, Delightful theme! remembering the songs Which day and night are sung before the Lamb! Thy praise, O Charity! thy labors most Divine! thy sympathy with sighs, and tears, And groans; ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... just exactly what they are, but Ireland has all there are, anyway. They've a lot of great actors, and a few singers, and there never was a sweeter poet than one of theirs. You should hear my father recite 'Dear Harp of My Country.' He does ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... not when the harp shall sound The notes we lov'd again, And gentle voices breathe around, I mingle in the strain. Oh! only think you hear me when The night breeze whispers near; In hours of thought, and quiet, then For me let ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... a mind to laugh that he was like to burst; however he contained himself and the physician, having made an end of his song, said, 'How deemedst thou thereof?' 'Certes,' answered Bruno, 'there's no Jew's harp but would lose with you, so archigothically do you caterwarble it.' Quoth Master Simone, 'I tell thee thou wouldst never have believed it, hadst thou not heard me.' 'Certes,' replied Bruno, 'you ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that slept, A living canvas is unrolled; The silent harp he might have swept Leans to his touch ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... harp on that. I'm mad about the girl. I know all you're suffering, and if I ever put on superior airs, I take ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... interesting, now! and, BOBBY, what do you think someone says about "Jack and the Beanstalk"? He says—"this tale is an allegory of the Teutonic Al-fader, the red hen representing the all-producing sun: the moneybags, the fertilising rain; and the harp, the winds." Well, I'm sure it ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... depicts the vice of the Renaissance; and the Maenads are those barbarous armies destined to lay waste the plains of Italy, inebriate with wine and blood, obeying a new lord of life on whom the poet's harp exerts no charm. But a truce to this spinning of pedantic cobwebs. Let Mercury appear, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... reproaches him for this complaining, these regrets. What, is he so soon weary of the marvels with which her love surrounds him? Discontented so soon with being a god? Has he so soon forgotten the old unhappiness? "My minstrel, up! Take your harp! Sing the praise of love, which you celebrate so gloriously that you won the Goddess of Love herself." Tannhaeuser, thus bidden, seizes the harp and warmly entones a hymn of praise to her, which from its climax of ardour, suddenly—as if his lips were tripped by ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... are the Jew's harp and the kettle-drum, and I am afraid that neither are very well suited to entertain ladies in their drawing-room," said ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... flag of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant and the Montserratian coat of arms centered in the outer half of the flag; the coat of arms features a woman standing beside a yellow harp with her ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... willingness; Discovered strongest earnestness; Was fragrant for each lightest wind; Was of its own particular kind;— Nor knew a tone of discord sharp; Breathed alway like a silver harp; And went to immortality." ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... in the music-room; Miss Crotchet at the piano, Lady Clarinda at the harp, playing and occasionally singing, at the suggestion of Mr. Trillo, portions of Matilde di Shabran. Lord Bossnowl was turning over the leaves for Miss Crotchet; the Captain was performing the same office for Lady Clarinda, but with so much more attention to ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... have been reading the Book of Daniel. Do you know what Ian is like to me? He is like some great lord—a prince or governor—in the court maybe of Belshazzar, or Darius the Mede, or Cyrus the Persian—in that hot and stately land of golden images and old rivers and the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer and all kinds of music. He must serve his tyrant—and yet Daniel, kneeling in his house, in his chamber, with the windows open toward Jerusalem, might hear a cry to hold his name in his prayers.... What strange thoughts we have ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... my lips shall praise thee, Therefore, let come what may, To the height of a solemn gladness My song shall arise to-day. Not on the drooping willow Shall I hang my harp in the land, When the Lord himself has cheered me By the touch of his ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... drawling quality of his voice which sounded as mellow as though someone had struck a chord upon a harp, surprised them out of an ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... heats, Shivering 'neath chilling dews and gusty rains, And buffeted by all the winds of heaven. Yet was this period my time of joy: My daily thoughts perpetual converse held With angels ministrant; mine ears were charmed With sweet accordance of celestial sounds, Song, harp and choir, clear ringing through the air. And visions were revealed unto mine eyes By night and day of Heaven's very courts, In shadowless, undimmed magnificence. I gave God thanks, not that He sheltered me, And ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... being, that boy soldier, a plant of early promise, bidding fair to become in after time all that is great, good, and admirable. I have read of a remarkable Welshman, of whom it was said, when the grave closed over him, that he could frame a harp, and play it; build a ship, and sail it; compose an ode, and set it to music. A brave fellow that son of Wales—but I had once a brother who could do more and better than this, but the grave has closed over him, as over the gallant Welshman of yore; there are now but ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... visited the gardens and the stables, our young monk brought us back to the great church of the convent, where we took our places near the monks, who had mustered in full force to be present at the dancing. Presently the music arrived, an old man with a harp, and a woman with a violin; and then came the dancers, eight Indian boys with short tunics and head-dresses of feathers, and as many girls with white dresses, and garlands of flowers on their heads. The costumes were evidently ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... narrowly; the spell was working now; the poet's hand was sweeping, with a gust of power, that harp of a thousand strings, the wondrous human heart! And I again pursued, in suppressed tones of heart-felt emotion, the pathetic strain that he had evoked with an ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... omnibus, and they were embarrassed to be received at their hotel with a burst of minstrelsy from a whole band of music. Isabel felt that a single stringed instrument of some timid note would have been enough; and Basil was going to express his own modest preference for a jew's-harp, when the music ceased with a sudden clash of the cymbals. But the next moment it burst out with fresh sweetness, and in alighting they perceived that another omnibus had turned the corner and was drawing up to the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hired an Italian violinist and his boy who played a harp much taller than himself and people coming from Jumpoff had brought them out. The Millers had come, with all their outfit. The AJ outfit was there to a man. The Swedes were present, sitting together in the corner by the water bucket, and the Conleys, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... see and realize that some of the mortal world's great musicians really existed, and asked to be visited by some one or more of them. When this was expressed, instantly several appeared before me, and Rubinstein stood before me playing upon an instrument like a harp at first. Then the instrument was changed and a piano appeared and he played upon it with the most delightful ease and grace of manner. While he was playing the whole atmosphere was filled with his ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... instances of his narrowness, as they almost exceeded belief. Col told us, that O'Kane, the famous Irish harper, was once at that gentleman's house. He could not find in his heart to give him any money, but gave him a key for a harp, which was finely ornamented with gold and silver, and with a precious stone, and was worth eighty or a hundred guineas. He did not know the value of it; and when he came to know it, he would fain have had it back; but O'Kane took care that he should ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... shepherd pipes, Jupiter with his thunderbolts, Apollo with his harp, and the songstress, Sappho, appeared in spirit with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, which returned to Evansville Monday afternoon and night on its annual tour. The whispering winds of the reed section, the passionate love pleadings of the cellos, mixed with the blatant fury of the trumpets, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... general considered a very ungenteel employment, and smithery little better, notwithstanding that an Orcadian poet, who wrote in Norse about eight hundred years ago, reckons the latter among nine noble arts which he possessed, naming it along with playing at chess, on the harp, and ravelling runes, or as the original has it, "treading runes"—that is, compressing them into a small compass by mingling one letter with another, even as the Turkish caligraphists ravel the Arabic letters, more especially those who ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... of battle and murder and sudden death, my lady, with Sid in his cold grave playing on a harp, angel-like. Yes!" she folded her rusty shawl tightly round her spare form and nodded, "there was Sid, looking beautiful in his coffin, and cut into a hash, as ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... brown hair"; how he "had many friends, and was a more proper man both in body and mind than most of the other men of his time, a good player at draughts, a facile writer of runes, and a reader of books, good at smith's work, ski-ing, shooting, and rowing, and as skilful at song as at the harp."[9] ...
— Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time - or, The Jarls and The Freskyns • James Gray
... indeed. He looked again at Swanhild, and hatred and loathing of her shook him. She had overcome him by her arts; that cup was drugged which he had drunk, and he was mad with grief. Yes, she had played upon his woe like a harper on a harp, and now he was ashamed—now he had betrayed his friend who loved him! Had Whitefire been to his hand at that moment, Eric had surely slain himself. But the great sword was not there, for it hung in Swanhild's bower. Eric groaned aloud, and Swanhild ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... was clever. We must add that she had in truth studied much. She spoke French, understood Italian, and read German. She played well on the harp, and moderately well on the piano. She sang, at least in good taste and in tune. Of things to be learned by reading she knew much, having really taken diligent trouble with herself. She had learned much poetry by heart, and could apply ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... done. We think greatness entailed or organized in some places or duties, in certain offices or occasions, and do not see that Paganini can extract rapture from a catgut, and Eulenstein from a jews-harp, and a nimble-fingered lad out of shreds of paper with his scissors, and Landseer out of swine, and the hero out of the pitiful habitation and company in which he was hidden. What we call obscure condition or vulgar society is that condition and society whose ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... hidden away among the hills of Galilee, the boy Jesus listened to these tales of Hebrew heroism and holiness from His mother's lips. Judas, the hammerer, fired his valiant soul from them; and, while wandering in the hill country of Judaea, David chanted, to his harp's accompaniment these legends of the childhood of his race. The Bible is hallowed by ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... wheel would land him. Interesting people visited the booth continually. Now it was a party of royal guardsmen to buy weapons,—splendid mail-clad giants who ate at King Olaf's board, slept a his hall, and fought to the death at his side. Again it was a minstrel, with a harp at his back, who stopped to rest and exchange a song for a horn of mead. Once the Queen herself, riding in a shining gilded wagon, came in and bought some of the graceful spiral bracelets. She said that Alwin's eyes were as bright ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... he sits among the other minstrels consciously like a young monarch. At the closing figure of Wolfram's rhapsodical rhetoric, the image of the fount, a shadowy smile of superiority has dawned upon his face. As the applause dies, he grasps his harp and rises to take exception to Wolfram's definition. Such a song-feast was in fact a song-debate. His words come warm and ready: "I too, Wolfram, may call myself so fortunate as to behold what you have beheld. Who is there unacquainted with that ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... because they can never be more than partially applicable; but the recollection of two simple facts of ordinary life may help to make this important branch of our subject clearer, if we are careful not to push the analogy further than it will hold good. It is well known that if one of the wires of a harp be made to vibrate vigorously, its movement will call forth sympathetic vibrations in the corresponding strings of any number of harps placed round it, if they are tuned to exactly the same pitch. It is also well known that when a large body of soldiers crosses a suspension ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... North! that moldering long hast hung On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring, And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung, Till envious ivy did around thee cling, Muffling with verdant ringlet every string— 5 O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep? Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring, Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep, Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... question, when at last we found our tongues, was, "How ever did you happen to be out in the boat in this ice?" To my astonishment they told me that the previous night four men had been away on a long headland cutting out some dead harp seals that they had killed in the fall and left to freeze up in a rough wooden store they had built there, and that as they were leaving for home, my pan of ice had drifted out clear of Hare Island, and one of them, with his keen fisherman's ...
— Adrift on an Ice-Pan • Wilfred T. Grenfell
... strike deeper than any verse of either of those writers. But there is an air of melodrama in them all. Harmonious delights of novel readers, they will not stand against the winnowing wind of deliberate criticism. They harp on the same string, without the variations of a Paganini. They are potentially endless reproductions of one phase of an ill-regulated mind—the picture of the same quasi-melancholy vengeful man, who knows no friend but a dog, and reads on the tombs of the great only "the glory and the nothing ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... all was well And great should be his fame, When he had left his wife in hell And birds, and beasts could tame. Yet venturing then with scoffing rhimes The women to incense, Resenting heroines of those times Soon punished his offence. And as the Hebrus roll'd his skull, And Harp besmeared with blood, They clashing as the waves grew full Still harmoniz'd the flood. But you our follies gently treat, And spin so fine the thread, You need not fear his awkward fate, The lock won't cost the head. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... of the bellowing sea. So the god Pan piped on his reed bird-like notes, Indra blew his thunder horn, Thor used his hammer like a drumstick, Neptune imitated on his "wreathed horn" the voice of the deep, the Celtic oak god Dagda twanged his windy wooden harp, and Angus, the Celtic god of spring and love, came through budding forest ways with a silvern harp which had strings of gold, echoing the tuneful birds, the purling streams, the whispering winds, and the rustling of scented ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... sir! exercise, especially walking, is highly beneficial to the liver, they tell me—and nothing, madam, believe me (unless it be playing the harp), can show off a pretty hand, or the delicate curves of a shapely wrist and arm to such advantage as that selfsame embroidery. But since needlework (like books and all sublunary things) is apt to grow monotonous, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... one side, "the king's head laureat, looking to the left, with this inscription, GEORGIUS, DEI GRATIA, REX. On the reverse is the figure of Ireland, represented by a woman sitting, beside her, a harp: the differences consist chiefly, in variations in the attitude of the figure, and in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... time of life. In consequence of this, when in society he was ridiculed by those who thought themselves well mannered and well educated, he was obliged to make the somewhat vulgar retort that he could not tune a lute or play upon the harp, but he could make a small and obscure state great ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... parties, at which there are a great many flowerpots and a few ices—no other refreshments. He goes about, constantly charged with extemporaneous poetry, and is always ready, like tavern dinners, on the shortest notice and the most reasonable terms. He keeps a gigantic harp in his bedroom, together with pen, ink, and paper, for fixing his ideas as they flow, a kind of profane King David, but ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... to Ireland, and when he drew nigh the coast, he called for his harp, and sitting up on his couch on the deck, played the merriest tune that was ever heard in that land. And the warders on the castle wall, hearing him, sent and told King Anguish how a ship drew near with one who harped as ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... far as eternity. All that is greatest in king or kaiser exists in the poorest of his subjects; and the elements out of which the most delicate and even saintly womanhood is made exist in the commonest woman who walks the streets. The harp of human nature is there with all its strings complete; and it will not refuse its music to him who has the courage to take it up and boldly strike the strings. The great preacher is he who, wherever he is speaking, among high or low, goes straight for those elements ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... them which are swifter than those known to us as light. So we begin to understand that the vibrations by which we see and hear are only like two tiny groups of a few strings selected from an enormous harp of practically infinite extent, and when we think how much we have been able to learn and infer from the use of those minute fragments, we see vaguely what possibilities might lie before us if we were enabled to utilize the ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... with sacred notes the hosts proceed, Though blasphemies they hear and cursed things; So with Apollo's harp Pan tunes his reed, So adders hiss where Philomela sings; Nor flying darts nor stones the Christians dreed, Nor arrows shot, nor quarries cast from slings; But with assured faith, as dreading naught, The holy work begun to end ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... unrestrained wail of this tune. There is neither peace nor resignation in it, but the very exhaustion of raving sorrow that heeds neither God nor man, but cries out, with the soulless agony of a wind-harp, its ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... her harp to the sea-shore, and sat and played; and the sea-maiden came up to listen, for sea-maidens are fonder of music than all other creatures. But when the wife saw the sea-maiden she stopped. The sea-maiden said, "Play on!" but the princess said, "No, not till I see my man again." So the sea-maiden ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... have been expected, this same Socrates kept them modest and well-behaved, not one word of praise is uttered by the accuser for all this. That is not the measure of justice elsewhere meted. Would a master of the harp or flute, would a teacher of any sort who has turned out proficient pupils, be held to account because one of them goes away to another teacher and turns out to be a failure? Or what father, if he have a son who in the society of a certain friend remains ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... in the Parnassus of Raphael. In the course of the sixteenth century, celebrities in every branch of music appeared in abundance, and Lomazzo (1584) names the three most distinguished masters of the art of singing, of the organ, the lute, the lyre, the 'viola da gamba,' the harp, the cithern, the horn, and the trumpet, and wishes that their portraits might be painted on the instruments themselves.97 Such many-sided comparative criticism would have been impossible anywhere but in Italy, although the same instruments ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... the grotesque element. We carefully studied the gargoyles round the roof, and, in spite of defacements, made out most of them—here a grinning demon with a struggling human being in its clutch—there an odd beast, part human, part pig, clothed in a kind of jacket, playing a harp—dozens of comic, hideous, heterogeneous figures in ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of playing the classics in "Ragtime," being the first person on the stage to play "Mendelssohn's Wedding March," "Oh Promise Me," "Star-Spangled Banner," etc., in syncopated rhythm or "Ragtime." He was also the first on the stage to do imitations of the harp, bagpipe, mandolin, banjo, etc., on the piano. His act was much imitated ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... white on a sun-shot ocean. Against the horizon a glint in motion. Full in the grasp of a shoving wind, Trailing her bubbles of foam behind, Singing and shouting to port she races, A flying harp, with her ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... went through her exercise to the great delight of her parents and the rage of Miss Humpleby, Sir John Humpleby's daughter, of Liphook, who expected, at least, to have stood up next after my Lady Maria. Then, after the minuets, came country dances, the music being performed by a harp, fiddle, and flageolet, perched in a little balcony, and thrumming through the evening rather feeble and melancholy tunes. Take up an old book of music, and play a few of those tunes now, and one wonders how people at any time could have ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... hand, and had a tame eagle perched on his shoulder. Near him was a very good-looking, self-satisfied fellow with long curls, who had evidently been entertaining the company with a performance on a Jew's harp. Then there was a lame old gentleman, who looked as if he would be all the better for his bath when the time came, who carried a big sledge-hammer in his hand; and another fishy sort of person, who flourished about with a three-pronged pitchfork. A very cross-looking ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... containing the hallowed blood of atonement, and the censer streaming [fn95] clouds of fragrance, in the hands of the trembling descendant of Aaron approaching the inner sanctuary of the INVISIBLE AND ALMIGHTY; three hundred sons of song, accompanied with psaltery and cymbal, and "the harp with a solemn sound," resounding the attributes of HIM WHO IS, AND EVER SHALL BE;[fn96] and hundreds of thousands of worshippers prostrating their foreheads on the pavement in awe and extacy, as the temple shines forth with the Shechinah, streaming ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... waves foaming white on the bar, We dance to the mandolin, harp, and guitar; One, two, three, waltzing we glide round the room,— Would you were bride, and ah, would I ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... to the test, Mr. Trollop. But let's drop the matter. I have had my joke and you've borne the infliction becomingly enough. It spoils a jest to harp on it after one has had one's laugh. I would much ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and to the high command God laid upon him, Markham's rebel hand Beats all in vain the harp he touched before: It yields a jingle and it yields no more. No more the strings beneath his finger-tips Sing harmonies divine. No more his lips, Touched with a living coal from sacred fires, Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires. The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak; ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... His fancy performed miraculous feats How many instruments cannot clever women play upon I ain't a speeder of matrimony Opened a wider view of the world to him, and a colder Serene presumption The Pilgrim's Scrip remarks that: Young men take joy in nothing Threats of prayer, however, that harp upon their sincerity To be passive in calamity is the province of no woman Unaccustomed to have his will thwarted Women are swift at coming to conclusions in ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger
... If you have pretty hands and arms, you may play on the harp if you play well: if they are disposed to ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... spiritual evil one nation could inflict on another was to cut off from it the story of the national soul. For not all music can be played upon any instrument, and human nature for most of us is like a harp on which can be rendered the music written for the harp but not that written for the violin. The harp strings quiver for the harp-player alone, and he who can utter his passion through the violin is silent before an unfamiliar instrument. That is why the Irish have ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... drawbacks, for that faith is as personal and vigorous now as ever it was at its origin—every motion and principle of our being moves to it like a singing harmony;—it is the breath which brings out of us, aeolian-harp-like, our most penetrating and heavenly music—the river of the water of life, which searches all our dry parts and nourishes them, causing them to spring up and bear abundantly the happy seed which shall enrich and make fat the earth to the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... of Life," the figure answered, in low, deep tones that vibrated through the empty rooms like the swept strings of a harp. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... skillfully led by Ben. Then the president invited Ed to hitch his car on and come along with them for a little trip, and talk over mining and investments, and so on, and what the outlook was in the Southwest. So Ed went with 'em and continued to hear talk of his accident. Ben would bring it up and harp back to it, and bring it forward and sandwich it in whenever the conversation had an open moment. It was either the wild thoughts Ed must of had sliding down the canon, or the preposterous constitution he had been endowed with, or the greenness of himself for not recognizing ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... and, to the children of the Square, terrifying spectacles. He is a very gloomy fellow and sings hymn-tunes, "Rock of Ages," "There is a Happy Land," and "Jerusalem the Golden." On Saturdays there is a stout, happy little man with a harp. He has white hair and looks like a retired colonel. He cannot play the harp very much, but he is quite the most popular visitor of the week, and must be very rich indeed does he receive in other squares so handsome ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... a calling. And despite the fact that he was a Moslem and I a Hindu, he had chosen me as his intimate friend, his only confidant. Thus had it come about that at times he had read to me of an evening songs of his own composing, and even on occasion had sung them to the accompaniment of a small harp, the strings of which he touched with wondrous ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... and sea-leopards, you will not see lions, nor even see leopards, but seal-lions and seal-leopards, which are very different. These are called lions and leopards because they look less like lions and leopards than anything else in the world; just as the harp seal is so called because he has a broad mark on his back, which doesn't look like a harp. Look at Toby, the Patagonian sea-lion here, who has a large pond and premises to himself. I have the greatest possible respect and esteem ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... sometimes said: "Why harp on these figures? We know them." Our answer is that the fact is ever harping in the stomach of the people, and while it continues we cannot cease to draw attention to it. And Gokhale urged that "even this ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... starry height, The Gods of Excellence to please, This hand of mine will never smite The Harp of High Serenities. Mere minstrel of the street am I, To whom a careless coin you fling; But who, beneath the bitter sky, Blue-lipped, yet insolent of eye, Can shrill a song of Spring; A song of merry mansard days, The cheery chimney-tops among; Of rolics and of roundelays When we were young . . ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... fairies, and then the queen waved her wand again, and an awning of purple silk rose over the boat, and silken awnings of various colors over the others, and the royal boat moved off from the bank followed by all the rest, and in every boat sat a harper with a golden harp, and when the queen waved her wand for the third time, the harpers struck the trembling chords, and to the sound of the delightful music the boats glided over the sunlit lake. And on they went until they approached the mouth of a gentle ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... itself a remedy better than the potable gold and the dissolved pearls that comforted the praecordia of mediaeval monarchs. Did a patient, alarmed without cause, need encouragement, it carried the sunshine of hope into his heart and put all his whims to flight, as David's harp cleared the haunted chamber of the sullen king. Had the hour come, not for encouragement, but for sympathy, his face, his voice, his manner all showed it, because his heart felt it. So gentle was he, so thoughtful, so calm, so absorbed in the case before him, ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would not repay her, in some measure, for what they took away, by flooding her with the new methods of thought, of knowledge, of scientific investigation, at least they could not destroy her old manuscripts, wipe out from her memory the old songs, snatch the immortal harp from the hands of her bards, nor silence the lips of her priests from giving vent to those bursts of impassioned eloquence which are natural to them and must out. Hence there was no tenth century of darkness for her—let us bear this in mind—light ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Josephine learned to read and write. She sang with the negroes and danced and swam and played leap-frog. When she was nine years old, her aunt told her she must not play leap-frog any more, but she should learn to embroider and to play the harp and read poetry. Then she would grow up and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... them with men like a flock—"as the holy flock, as the flock of Jerusalem in her solemn feasts; so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of men" (Ezek. 36:37, 38). How full the book of Psalms is of allusions to the solemn songs of the sanctuary with their accompaniment of psaltery and harp, trumpet and cornet, every reader understands. This subject might be expanded indefinitely, but ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... magnificence and pomp and circumstance about their every-day life; horses, carriages, invitations, theatres, operas,—all the pleasures which throng toward people with lined pockets and idle lives. Their wants were innumerable, their taste and fancy a harp of a thousand strings upon which caprice and vanity could play an endless variety of tunes. Mrs. Lenox had once enjoyed the luxuries she still coveted so ardently, yet Georgy, who had never known wealth, or even the easy-assured comforts of life, had instinctively the keener perception of the two ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Eliza, "we had a most beautiful scent wafted across the road as we were walking, and he called it 'the Ghost of the Past;' and he says that the sound of the Eolian harp is 'remorseful.'" ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... or her sister's hair, or plucking the apples from the trees and throwing them to the village children as they sauntered at the orchard gate—whose graver joys consisted in revelling in every poet that her mother permitted her to read, or making her harp resound with wild, sweet melody—whose laugh was still so unchecked and gay—that such a being could think of love, of that fervid and engrossing passion, which can turn the playful girl into a thinking woman, Mrs. Hamilton may be pardoned if she ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... infection from breathing the same air, the touch, etc., but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Aeolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... still, with sunshine and fresh balmy air. Yesterday (Saturday) directly after breakfast we went as by appointment to Mr. Childs' office; he has a beautifully fitted-up room, filled with all kinds of curiosities,—Tom Moore's harp, Washington's chair, Louis Napoleon's cup and saucer, splendid clocks of all kinds; one of them belonged to Lord Howe, which he had to leave behind him when he was "obliged to run away from the States in such a hurry!" Mr. Childs' seemed to think I must know all about this, but I am ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... daughters on couches placed under the shade of some trees. Two or three slave girls stood behind them with fans. A dalmatian bore hound lay on the ground in front of them. Another slave girl was singing, accompanying herself on an instrument resembling a small harp, while a negro stood near in readiness to start upon errands, or to fetch anything that his mistress might for the moment fancy. Lesbia half rose from her reclining position when she saw Pollio approaching, ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... Who plays the harp; he twangs an air You understand—you've met before; How many lessons did you take? Madam, you ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... reading from a book. For hours she would play, all by herself. The people passing the road and the servant girls of the house couldn't make head or tail of her music. But our folk ken nothing of the piano. The pipes, the melodeon, the fiddle, they know that—and a few ould ones have heard the harp. They couldn't tell whether it was good music or ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... leaves and tendrils sway in the wind. The occupants of the dining-room were all ladies, and again I noted the fact that they were all blondes: beautiful, graceful, courteous, and with voices softer and sweeter than the strains of an eolian harp. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... doesn't do it kase I specs ter git anoder string to my harp bime-by. I does it kase I'se kin'er sorry fer ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... suddenly pricked up his ears at the sound of the slow rumble of a wagon turning into the yard. The wagon halted, and they heard the buzzing twang of a jew's-harp, played vigorously. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... all. One, who lived on the air of sweet sounds, and who was almost always to be found seated by her harp or some other instrument, had, till the late storm, been generally merry and playful, though sometimes sad. But for a long time after that, she was often found weeping, and playing little simple airs which she had heard in childhood— backward longings, followed ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... they spread the fine and fragrant linen and brought these two together. And the heroes in their hands wielded their spears for war, lest first a host of foes should burst upon them for battle unawares, and, their heads enwreathed with leafy sprays, all in harmony, while Orpheus' harp rang clear, sang the marriage song at the entrance to the bridal chamber. Yet not in the house of Alcinous was the hero, Aeson's son, minded to complete his marriage, but in his father's hall when he had returned home to Iolcus; and such was the mind of Medea herself; but necessity led them ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... startling her bashful trust, and banishing those bewitching glances that sometimes lightened on his face, made him cautious, and restrained his eagerness; while excessive consciousness kept her cheeks dyed with blushes, and her nerves vibrating sweet, wild music, like the strings of some aeolian harp when swept by the swift ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... experience might warrant them to be. And in that young and innocent nature—with its rectitude, its enthusiasm, and its pious and cheerful tendencies—Maltravers found freshness in the desert, as the camel-driver lingering at the well. Insensibly his heart warmed again to his kind; and as the harp of David to the ear of Saul, was the soft voice that lulled remembrance and awakened hope in the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that's the notion of a man who has met the right person exactly in the beginning; or it's a woman's notion; but it isn't the notion of a man who, with a sense for beauty and sweetness, waits, like a harp for its music, out in the open where beauty and sweetness beat down upon him. Out in the open a man gets blind. Lord!" went on Steering, remembering Miss Gossamer again, and trying to explain her to himself, "how can a man help loving prettiness! ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... of the change: "Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer evidence of God's favour. Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... every nerve in her body started quivering like harp strings pulled by testing fingers. The unseen speaker knew her name!—and uttered it with a soft delicacy that made it sound more than musical. She leaned forward, extending a hand as though to touch ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... its rocky bed and go bellowing down the world. But the storms that shook it only sent its roots down and out that it might fasten itself the more firmly to the earth. For long years this old tree stood there, bowing its head in courtesy to the passing storm, while its branches were but harp strings for the music of the winds. One evening as the sun went down over the mountain's brow, not a storm cloud on the sky, a little wind went hurrying round the mountain's base, struck the great oak and down it went ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... was not a balance of truths, like the universe. It was a balance of whims; like the British Constitution. It is intensely typical of Tennyson's philosophical temper that he was almost the only Poet Laureate who was not ludicrous. It is not absurd to think of Tennyson as tuning his harp in praise of Queen Victoria: that is, it is not absurd in the same sense as Chaucer's harp hallowed by dedication to Richard II or Wordsworth's harp hallowed by dedication to George IV is absurd. Richard's court could not properly appreciate either Chaucer's daisies or his ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... the best of us, is a marvellous combination. We have nerves which sometimes vibrate like the wires of a highly-strung harp. Mental clouds at times seem to shut the sun out of the conditions of life, and dark shadows stretch across or along the pathway. Some of us have dispositions which, whilst capable of exquisite pleasure, also expose us to the most acute pain and disappointment. Then comes the temptation to charge ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... was hung with green silk, and furnished with an ebony library, ornamented with large bronze caryatides. By some significant signs, one could perceive that Mdlle. de Cardoville had sought in the fine airs some relief from sad and serious thoughts. Near an open piano, was a harp, placed before a music-stand. A little further, on a table covered with boxes of oil and water-color, were several brilliant sketches. Most of them represented Asiatic scenes, lighted by the fires of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... you! Why, there is that fine young fellow, that midshipman staying here! Why couldn't you fancy him, now? And lots of others! Let alone taking up with a man older and uglier than your own fath—I mean, than the parson! You've no call to hang your harp on a willow tree, on account of the likes ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Eadwine. Her praise has passed to all parts of the world, 100 Wherever in song I sought to tell Where I knew under heavens the noblest of queens, Golden-adorned, giving forth treasures. Then in company with Scilling, in clear ringing voice 'Fore our beloved lord I uplifted my song; 105 Loudly the harp in harmony sounded; Then many men with minds discerning Spoke of our lay in unsparing praise, That they never had heard a nobler song. Then I roamed through all the realm of the Goths; 110 Unceasing I sought the surest ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... perfume-breathing Linea, with Jenny's soulful songs! To thee will we fly with the stork and the swallow, with the unsteady seagull and the wild swan. Thy birchwood throws out its perfume so refreshing and animating, under its hanging, earnest boughs—on its white trunk shall the harp hang. Let the summer wind of the North ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... themselves a house of prayer, and where St. Patrick and St. Dunstan lay entombed; Canterbury, where Augustine, the English apostle, found a home; Malmesbury, where St. Aldhelm preached to the barbarous people, and when they tired of his sermon played to them upon his harp, and, anticipating Mr. Sankey, sang David's Psalms to the crowds that moved by him as they passed over the bridge of Avon. These venerable foundations, about whose origin a glamour of mystery had gathered, ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... said Leoline. "Ho!—Bracy, the bard, the charge be thine! Go thou with music sweet and loud And take two steeds with trappings proud; And take the youth whom thou lov'st best To bear thy harp and learn thy song, And clothe you both in solemn vest And over the mountains ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... he no minstrel, cousin, who playeth not on a harp? Maketh no man melody but he who playeth on a lute? He may be a minstrel and make melody, you know, with some other instrument—a strange-fashioned one, peradventure, that never was ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... were ever alert to befriend a man, You who were ever the first to defend a man, You who had always the money to lend a man Down on his luck and hard up for a V. Sure you'll be playing a harp in beatitude (And a quare sight you will be in that attitude) Some day, where gratitude seems but a platitude, ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... smiled above his harp, And turned his face to the naked sky, Where, blown before the wastrel wind, The thistle-down she ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... made fast to the post, the former would certainly have pulled away from them or dragged them into the river. He lashes the water into foam, and bellows with rage, while they yell with delight and excitement. The stout post is shaken, and the Manila line hums like a harp-string. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... tail as well as with his hands. It had been reported by Tommy Dare, the leading Newport authority on monkeys, that he had heard him play Brahm's "Variations on Paganini" with his paws on a piano, "Hiawatha" on a xylophone with his feet, and "Home, Sweet Home" with his tail on a harp simultaneously, in Paris a year ago, and that alongside of Jockobinski all other musical prodigies of the age ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... devour their youth. At thirteen she had composed an opera which was played every where, Le Marriage d'Antonio. A journalist, a friend of Gretry, who one day found himself in Lucile's apartment, without her being aware of it, so much was she engrossed with her harp, has related the rage and madness which transported her during her contests with inspiration, that was often rebellious. 'She wept, she sang, she struck the harp with incredible energy. She either did not see me, or took no notice of me; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... away with an hour almost! Forward, to "Section Two" of the outline, the part about the great national and Christian epic! And he began to reel off visions of the cave of Covadonga; the fantastic tree of the Reconquest "where the warrior hung up his sword, the poet his harp," and so on and so on, for everybody hung up something there; seven centuries of wars for the cross, a rather long time, believe me, gentlemen, during which Saracen impiety was expelled from Spanish soil! ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... prayer; and one passing these uplands, where they held their watch, might have heard their voices swaying on the midnight air, as they sang together the psalms of David amid the very scenes where he tuned his harp and fed his father's flocks. But people are too apt to suppose that religion lies mainly, if not exclusively, in prayers, reading the Bible, listening to sermons, and attending on sacraments; in time spent, or work done, or offerings made, ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... "Don't harp on about that miserable L60," said Dr. O'Grady, "for I won't stand it. Here I am doing the very best I can to make money for you, taking no end of trouble, and all you do is to come grumbling to me day after day about some ...
— General John Regan - 1913 • George A. Birmingham
... returning from the presence feels when he doffs respectful attitude and dress of ceremony, and subsides into old coat, familiar arm-chair, and slippers. After long-continued organ-music, the jangle of the jews-harp is felt as an exquisite relief. With the volumes on the special shelf I have spoken of, I am quite at home, and I feel somehow as if they were at home with me. And as to-day the trees bend to the blast, and the rain comes in dashes against my window, and as I have ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... of God, dear child. We are out of tune when God finds us. He puts us in tune with our great keynote Jesus, and then we are like an Aeolian harp. The west and the east winds make music through it, and the shrieking storm the sweetest music of all. But remember, little one, it is the "joy of the Lord" which is our strength. We must sit in the sunshine if ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... feeling of horror, a kind of bristling in the darkness, and a sense of blood. They lay with their hearts in the grip of an intense anguish. The wind came through the tree fiercer and fiercer. All the chords of the great harp hummed, whistled, and shrieked. And then came the horror of the sudden silence, silence everywhere, outside and downstairs. What was it? Was it a silence of blood? ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... the answering chords of his golden harp and sings of that hour when the Lord shall come in His glory; when the trees of the wood shall clap their hands; when the mountains shall flow down at His presence, the waves of the sea fling their hallelujahs ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... heart has the pine forest come so near unfolding its immemorial secret. That poet-mind was a wind-harp, and its quivering strings echoed to every message that came from the dim old woods on the "soft whispers of the twilight breeze," the flutterings of the newly awakened morn or the crash of the storm. "The Dryad of the Pine" bent "earth-yearning branches" to give him ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... was a faint twang like the thrumming of a distant harp string, and then the grave-like silence was rent smartly by the whistling hiss of an arrow, the shaft passing evenly between us and scattering the handful of fire ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... her exquisite poems Frances Ridley Havergal tells of a friend who was given an aeolian harp which, she was told, sent out unutterably sweet melodies. She tried to bring the music by playing upon it with her hand, but found the seven strings would yield but one tone. Keenly disappointed she turned to the letter sent before the gift and found she ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... the poets were Joseph Almanzi (1790-1860) and Rachel Morpurgo. [Footnote: The reader is referred to the anthology of the Italian poets of the period, published by Abraham Baruch Piperno, under the title Kol Ugab ("The Voice of the Harp", Leghorn, 1846).] Almanzi's poems were published in two collections, one entitled Higgayon be-Kinnor ("The Lyric Harp"), and Nezem Zahab ("Ornament ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... restaurants, gaming-saloons, drawing-rooms, newspaper offices and ante-chambers of Committees. The Revolution yielded her a hundred satisfactions,—novelty and amusement, smiles and pleasures, business ventures and profitable speculations. Combining political with amorous intrigue, playing the harp, drawing landscapes, singing ballads, dancing Greek dances, giving supper parties, entertaining pretty women, such as the Comtesse de Beaufort and the actress Mademoiselle Descoings, presiding all night ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... there; And round about the chamber this false morn Brought forth the day before the day was born. So Hero's ruddy cheek Hero betray'd, And her all naked to his sight display'd: Whence his admiring eyes more pleasure took Than Dis, on heaps of gold fixing his look. By this, Apollo's golden harp began To sound forth music to the ocean; Which watchful Hesperus no sooner heard, But he the bright Day-bearing car prepar'd, And ran before, as harbinger of light, And with his flaring beams mock'd ugly Night Till she, o'ercome with anguish, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... who drawled out his words in singing, like sweeowtest for sweetest, was teaching the farmer's daughter to play the organ. He offered to sing for my benefit, in an informal way, one of my national melodies; and he did. It was 'The harp that once through Tara's halls,' and—O Wilks—he sang it to a tune called Ortonville, an awful whining, jog-trot, Methodistical thing with a repeat. My client asked me privately what I thought of it, and ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... smile, and make his harp rejoice; The Norman William, and the learned Clerk, And Lion-Heart, and black-browed Edward, with His loyal queen shall rise, and ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... dead, she's singing With angel bands on high; On golden harp she's singing God's praises ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the arm of her attentive son. She would be very old but for the circumstance that she began early in life to be a belle, and age cannot stale such women. Brought up with board at her back, books on her head, to guard her complexion as if it were her fair name, to be diligent at harp practice and conscientious with the dancing-master, she is almost the last of a school that nursed but the single aim of subjugating man. To-night, at seventy-something, she is a bit of pink bisque fragility, bubbling tirelessly with reminiscence, her vivacity ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... a room like many you've seen hereabouts, with a good horse-hair sofy and the mahogany furniture nice and shiny from being varnished every spring, and over the sofy was thrown a fur rug made in lozenges of harp seal and some other fur and a dark fur border. It was real pretty—it was always wonderful to me that folks like Eskimos can make the things they do. There was some little walrus ivory carvings on ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Widow I met in the Train." Nigger ditties were often the "rage" during my boyhood, and some of them, like "Dixie-land" and "So Early in the Morning," still linger in my memory. Then, too, there were such songs as "Billy Taylor," "I'm Afloat," "I'll hang my Harp on a Willow Tree," and an inane ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... men." Upon the heads of the overcomers, Jesus with His own right hand places the crown of glory. For each there is a crown, bearing his own "new name,"(1118) and the inscription, "Holiness to the Lord." In every hand are placed the victor's palm and the shining harp. Then, as the commanding angels strike the note, every hand sweeps the harp strings with skilful touch, awaking sweet music in rich, melodious strains. Rapture unutterable thrills every heart, and each voice is raised in ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... home the association of Ireland with music as the fact that the harp is emblazoned on the national arms. Ireland, "the mother of sweet singers", as Pope writes; Ireland, "where", according to St. Columcille, "the clerics sing like the birds"; Ireland can proudly point to a musical history of over 2,000 years. The Milesians, the De Dananns, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... E'er please, when presented to view, Should cabin on brown heath, or green, Disclose aught engaging to you, Should Erin's wild harp soothe the ear When touched by such fingers as mine, Then kindly attentive draw near, And candidly ponder ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... fireplace at the same moment. She came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could through a confusion of tables, chairs and work-baskets, china, writing-desks and ink-stands, and bird-cages, and a harp. She did not speak, and as her back was now turned to both fire and candle, I could not see her face, or anything but the outline of her form, and her attitude; her form was the remains of a fine ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the country-side, but his wife consoled herself for his neglect by cultivating her musical and poetical gifts. She composed Irish songs and melodies, and gained the title of Clasagh-na-Vallagh, or Harp of the Valley. Her only son Robert inherited his father's good looks and his mother's artistic talents, and was educated by the joint efforts of the Protestant clergyman ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... her own, so far as she had wit to gather what his God was. She accepted the situation with trust, and felt responsibility shifted on to "Mister Jan's" shoulders with infinite relief. He was very wise and knew everything and loved the truth. It is desirable to harp and harp upon this ever-recurring thought: the artist's grand love for truth; because all channels of Joan's mind flowed into this lake. His sincerity begat absolute trust. And, as John Barren and his words and thoughts filled the foreground of life for her, so, correspondingly, did the affairs ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... abundant proof of a rich creative imagination. Even his everyday speech was of an astounding concreteness, and thus the various aspects of Nature assume bodily shape. Spring becomes a youth, the symphony of spring the soft tone of a harp (81); the night—a fairy woman—leans against the rocky cliff listening to the azure of the sky (79). Although the idyllic predominates, deeper tragic notes are not wanting (84, 85) nor is the full note of exuberant joy (86). But early in life Moerike realized that any overflowing measure of joy ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... Teian muse, The Hero's harp, the Lover's lute, Have found the fame your shores refuse: Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds which echo further west Than your Sires' ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... inglorious safety, at Cardiffe. The inn at Cardiffe was kept by a landlady of the name of Hoel. "Not high-born Hoel. Alas!" said Angelina to herself, when the name was screamed in her hearing by a waiter, as she walked into the inn. "Vocal no more to high-born Hoel's harp, or soft Llewellynn's lay!" A harper was sitting in the passage, and he tuned his harp to catch her attention as she passed. "A harp!—O play for me some plaintive air!" The harper followed her ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... greatest living masters introduced the harp into his works, he wrote for it just as though it were a piano—i.e., as though it were to be played upon with the thumb and four fingers. But it so happens that on that instrument the fourth finger is never used. Consequently, ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... singer of merit, a player on the harp, and a person of education. She certainly had no seraglio notions of wanting to be petted and pampered and taken care of, or she would not have assumed the office of stepmother to that big family and married a poor man. Bach never had time to make money. Very soon after their marriage Bach began ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... appear to them an emblem of no promise; an instrument of no hope; an object of indifference, of disgust, or fear. Was there ever—since the earliest actions of men which have been transmitted by affectionate tradition or recorded by faithful history, or sung to the impassioned harp of poetry—was there ever a people who presented themselves to the reason and the imagination, as under more holy influences than the dwellers upon the Southern Peninsula; as rouzed more instantaneously ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... mystic power describes Ideal hosts arranged in trains or tribes. So when the Nymph with volant finger rings Her dulcet harp, and shakes the sounding strings; As with soft voice she trills the enamour'd song, Successive notes, unwill'd, the strain prolong; 90 The transient trains ASSOCIATION steers, And sweet vibrations charm the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... one's earliest years one hears of nothing but the Caucasus, the Caucasus? Why, even our old General used to harp upon the name, with his moustache bristling, and his eyes protruding, as he did so. And the same as regards my mother, who had visited the country in the days when, as yet, the General was in command but of a company. Yes, everyone ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... from castle to palace, till he learned that a strong and almost inaccessible fortress upon the Danube was watched with peculiar strictness, as containing some state-prisoner of distinction. The minstrel took his harp, and approaching as near the castle as he durst, came so nigh the walls as to hear the melancholy captive soothing his imprisonment with music. Blondel touched his harp; the prisoner heard and was silent: ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... soul. I could remember watching just such a sunset with my lord and master beside me, and turning to say: "Don't you sometimes feel, Lover, that you were simply made for joy and rapture in moments like this? Don't you feel as though your body were a harp that could throb and sing with the happiness ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... friends and parents; the mouths of the communicants were held open by a wooden engine, while the consecrated bread was forced down their throat; the breasts of tender virgins were either burnt with red-hot egg-shells, or inhumanly compressed betweens harp and heavy boards. [154] The Novatians of Constantinople and the adjacent country, by their firm attachment to the Homoousian standard, deserved to be confounded with the Catholics themselves. Macedonius was informed, that a large district ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... was sufficiently assured of her position not to be sensitive about its recognition by others, and preferred to instil into her daughter's mind sound wholesome principles to useless and giddy accomplishments. And yet the daughter was accomplished, an excellent musician upon the piano and harp, and a vocalist of rare sweetness and perfection of execution, as well as mistress of other ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... have a genius for governing, for killing, or for curing the greatest number of men, and in the best possible manner: a man may have a genius for the fiddle, or his mission may be for the tight-rope, or the Jew's harp; or it may be a natural turn for seeking, and finding, and teaching truth, and for doing the greatest possible good to mankind; or it may be a turn equally natural for seeking, and finding, and teaching a lie, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... knife: "I KNICKED 'EM DOWN, three four!" he cried; and had himself to be taken to the doctor's and bandaged. Next day, he could not work, glory of battle swelled too high in his threadpaper breast; he had made a one-stringed harp for Austin, borrowed it, came to Fanny's room, and sang war-songs and danced a war dance in honour of his victory. And it appears, by subsequent advices, that it was a serious victory enough; four of his assailants went to hospital, and one is thought in danger. All ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Lion shall lose his strength, And the braket thistle begin to pine,— The harp shall sound sweet, sweet at length Between the eight and ...
— The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays • William B. Yeats
... here I side-step my Song-of-Solomon voluntary, for they have one thing I do miss, and that is music. I wish I had a cottage-piano or a Baby Grand or a Welte Mignon! I wish I had any kind of an old piano! I wish I had an accordion, or a German Sweet-Potato, or even a Jew's-Harp! ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... and nonsense. Wells, not condescending to show his pupils what he would supply after this as, thinks it sufficient to say, the word is "followed by an ellipsis of one or more words required to complete the construction; as, 'He was the father of all such as [] handle the harp and organ.'—Gen. 4: 21."—Wells's School Gram., 1st Ed., p. 164; 3d ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... battle-axe. As he approached the age of twenty-one, he chose his lady- love, who was older than he and who might be married, to whom he swore ever to be devoted, even though he married some one else. He also learned to rhyme, [18] to make songs, sing, dance, play the harp, and observe the ceremonials of the Church. Girls were given this instruction along with the boys, but naturally their training placed its emphasis upon household duties, service, good manners, conversational ability, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New; which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favor. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job, than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... were left unattended; and up to old age, had much of both the exigency and the charm that mark that character. She drew naturally, for she had no training, with unusual skill; and it was from her, and not from the two naval artists, that Fleeming inherited his eye and hand. She played on the harp and sang with something beyond the talent of an amateur. At the age of seventeen, she heard Pasta in Paris; flew up in a fire of youthful enthusiasm; and the next morning, all alone and without introduction, found her way into the presence of the prima donna and begged for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... turn for doctoring, and felt her pulse. It was twanging like a harp-string, at the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty a minute. Softly moving the sleeping girl to a little less cramped position, she went ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... whom we may commit this dear but perilous service. And now enough of this. The city sleeps, and it were better that we slept with it. But first, my child, bring harmony into our spirits by one of those wild, sad airs which you are accustomed to sing to me upon the harp of the Jews. It will dispose ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... can't do anything to prevent it. You are original without trying to be so. You have a dreadful head of hair that is naturally curly and rebellious, your slenderness is exaggerated, you have a natural harp in your throat, and all this makes of you a creature apart, which is a crime of high treason against all that is commonplace. That is what is the matter with you physically. Now for your moral defects. You cannot hide ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... beginning to assume other forms besides the religious. Facts having like implications might be cited from the histories of later times and peoples; as the practices of our own early minstrels, who sang to the harp heroic narratives versified by themselves to music of their own composition: thus uniting the now separate offices of poet, composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist. But, without further illustration, the common origin and gradual ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... The hymn is addressed to thee with the harp; 2 It is played with a (skilful) hand to thee! 3 The youths rejoice at thee! 4 Thy own children. 5 Thou hast rewarded their labor. 6 There is a great one adorning the land; 7 An enlightener, a buckler in front of men, 8 Quickening ...
— Egyptian Literature
... is a difficult matter. That of a minstrel would be the best passport, but I know nought of harp or other instrument. I might go as a vendor of philters and charms, a sort of half-witted chap, whose ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... he had finished his breakfast he called out to his wife, "Bring me my magic harp! I want to ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... but a short consideration will despatch them. It is not easy to guess why he addicted himself so diligently to lyrick poetry, having neither the ease and airiness of the lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode. When he lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers seem to desert him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression, nor variety of images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet such was his love of lyricks, that, having written, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... read; but all that remained to her was the vision of that poor woman who could find no refuge from her flesh and from the demons that played evil rhapsodies upon the harp-strings of ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... of temper, and to the most atrocious barbarities. Among other diabolical whims, he ordered that the city of Rome should be set on fire, which order was executed by his officers, guards, and servants. While the imperial city was in flames, he went up to the tower of Macaenas, played upon his harp, sung the song of the burning of Troy, and openly declared, "That he wished the ruin of all things before his death." Besides the noble pile, called the circus, many other palaces and houses were consumed; several thousands perished in the flames, were smothered ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... harder what he did not! He had all The orchestra at service, and could call To use, still other implements, unknown, Or only valued in his hands alone! The Lyre, whose burning inspiration came Still darting upward, sudden as the flame; The murmuring wind-harp, whose melodious sighs Seem still from hopefullest heart of love to rise, And gladden even while grieving; the wild strain That night-winds wake from reeds that breathe in pain, Though breathing still in music; and that voice, Which ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... tenderly suggested—while the Gael-strains chant themselves from the mists—"Be thy soul blest, O Carril! in the midst of thy eddying winds. O that thou wouldst come to my hall when I am alone by night! And thou dost come, my friend. I hear often thy light hand on my harp, when it hangs on the distant wall, and the feeble sound touches my ear. Why dost thou not speak to me in my grief, and tell me when I shall behold my friends? But thou passest away in thy murmuring blast; the wind whistles through the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... dining-table; then putting his hand to his throat, as if to free it from the grip of his collar, he pours out a glass of water, and drinks it of. In the street, outside the bay window, two street musicians, a harp and a violin, have taken up their stand, and after some twangs and scrapes, break into music. MORE goes towards the sound, and draws aside one curtain. After a moment, he returns to the table, and takes up the notes of the speech. He is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pretty hands and arms, you may play on the harp if you play well: if they are disposed ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... the men of mirth, a clouding over the day, and no trout swim in the river. Orpheus on the harp, he lifted up everyone out of their habits; and he that stole what Argus was watching the time he took away Io; Apollo, as we read, gave them teaching, and Daly was better ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... round the roof, and, in spite of defacements, made out most of them—here a grinning demon with a struggling human being in its clutch—there an odd beast, part human, part pig, clothed in a kind of jacket, playing a harp—dozens of comic, hideous, heterogeneous figures in ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... calling out, 'Jesus! Jesus!' The people said, 'That is not lawful! let us stone him!' But he did not desist. The things that were occurring were unheard of, astounding. Flowers, large as the sun, turned around before my eyes, and I heard a harp of gold vibrating in mid-air. The day sank to its close. My arms let go the iron bars; my strength was exhausted; and when he bore ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... several scholars who afterward did him credit by making a great figure in the world. The famous Hercules was one, and so was Achilles, and Philoctetes likewise, and AEsculapius, who acquired immense repute as a doctor. The good Chiron taught his pupils how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other branches of education in which the lads of those days used to be instructed instead of ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... perfection of rendition she added sympathetic interpretation. She was already reputed the best female performer on the lyre, the most popular instrument in ancient times. The lyre had an effect something between that of a guitar and a harp, with some of the characteristics of the modern banjo, ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... extremists and is therefore harmful to the public, which pays for all the mistakes made. It is very easy to lose one's mental balance and to begin to play on a harp with but one string. We have a large army of Christian Scientists. If it were not for the way in which physicians of the past mistreated the body and neglected the mind, this sect would not exist. The doctors, with their awful doses of nauseous and destructive drugs, went to one extreme. ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... amiabilities of nature, however, in which Dorothea found inspiration. A harp of a single string, she sang as that minstrel might who was implored to ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... light; the blue concave of high heaven was illumined by a countless host of starry meteors, and the soft note of Philomel from the grove came upon the soul-delighted ear like the sweet breathings of the Eolian harp, or the celestial cadences of that heart-subduing cherub, Stephens; when we set out on our romantic excursion. Reader, you may well start at the introduction of the plural number; but say, what ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... orchestra is scarcely more than the orchestra of Beethoven. He did not require the band of independent instrumental families demanded by Berlioz and realized by the modern men. He was content with the old, classical orchestra in which certain groups are strengthened and to which the harp, the English horn, the bass-tuba, the bass-clarinet have ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... necessary for me to harp upon the conduct of these men of God: what I want to point out is that these cruel and ignorant savages have been saddled upon the Christian religion as heroes and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... agreeable lodgings, the moment they were comfortably settled. She wondered he should be such an enemy to music and mirth. She heard no noise but of his own making: it was impossible to manage a family in dumb-shew. He might harp as long as he pleased upon her scolding; but she never scolded, except for his advantage; but he would never be satisfied, even tho'f she should sweat blood and water in his service — I have a great notion that ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... Catch, I can assure you; especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... stopping to examine the new construction. Now he is satisfied, swings the butt end of his whip against the first rod, and starts along. Jem listens eagerly. A sound fills the air as of some one playing a gigantic harp. The cow-boy stops in amazement at the effect he has produced. Recovering from his astonishment he goes a little further and again comes the sound of—a tune which seems to grow familiar to the dazed performer. Finally he starts off on ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... a children's band, - harp, cornet, and piano, - and Mrs. Alicumpaine and Mrs. Orange bustled among the children to persuade them to take partners and dance. But they were so obstinate! For quite a long time they would not be persuaded to take partners and dance. Most of the boys said, 'Thanks; much! But not at present.' ...
— Holiday Romance • Charles Dickens
... establish a better claim to the rank of noble than most of that body, since he could produce a stamped receipt for it. He married two rich widows. He next obtained the place of music-master on the harp to the daughters of Louis XV., and conducted some of their concerts. He became involved in a law-suit, which he conducted in person against some of the most renowned advocates of the day, and gained great applause for the talent he had exhibited ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... home, for that's just the way we eat at home. Or just simply take the names, the personal names that adorn the people up there, and that we also had in large numbers at home, take a name like Ingeborg,—a harp-chord of the most immaculate poesy. And then the sea—they have the Baltic up there! ... In short, I am going up there, Lisaveta. I wish to see the Baltic again, hear these names again, read those books on the spot; and I wish to stand on the terrace of ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... his wife in hell And birds, and beasts could tame. Yet venturing then with scoffing rhimes The women to incense, Resenting heroines of those times Soon punished his offence. And as the Hebrus roll'd his skull, And Harp besmeared with blood, They clashing as the waves grew full Still harmoniz'd the flood. But you our follies gently treat, And spin so fine the thread, You need not fear his awkward fate, The lock won't cost the head. Our admiration you command ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... themselves with singing musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme or ground at random, as it best pleased them. In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play upon the lute, the virginals, the harp, the Almain flute with nine holes, the viol, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, and digestion finished, he did purge his body of natural excrements, then betook himself to his principal study for three hours together, or more, as well to repeat his matutinal lectures as to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... possessed a nature that was tightly strung and vibrated like an Aeolian harp to the lightest breath of influence. He resembled, somewhat, a pot of milk on a very hot fire, rather apt to boil over with a rush; nevertheless, he possessed the power to restrain himself in a ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... heart that loves can lay itself open to this waste hubbub of noise, in which every longing and every tear of love is scoffed and mocked at by the pealing laughter of wild trumpets. The whispering of trees, the murmuring of fountains, harp-tones, and gentle song gushing forth from an overflowing bosom, are the sounds in which love abides. But this is the very thundering and shouting of hell in the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Ireland that look so sad as the Irishman in Liverpool. The desolation of Tara is cheery compared with the desolation of Belfast. I recommend Mr. Yeats and his mournful friends to turn their attention to the pathos of Belfast. I think if they hung up the harp that once in Lord Furness's factory, there would be a ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... her head and weeps, thus figuring the Night and the Rain; and, shielded by the night and watered by the rain, the bean grows up to the sky, and Jack climbs to the Ogre's land, and carries off the bags of gold, and the wonderful hen that lays a golden egg every day, and the golden harp that plays tunes by itself. It is also possible that the bean-stalk which grows from earth to heaven is a remembrance, brought by the Norsemen, of the great tree, Ygdrassil, which, in the Norse mythology, has its roots in hell and its top in heaven; ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... three classes of these public minstrels,—1, those who play such vulgar instruments as the flute and drum; 2, those who play on the ballafond, which is the marimba of Angola and South America, and on the harp; 3, those who sing the legends and battle-songs of their country, or who improvise satires or panegyrics. This last class are dreaded, though despised. They are richly rewarded in their lifetime, but after death they are not even given a decent burial. If they were buried in the ground, it ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... different towns, and prizes are given for choir singing, for which fifty to a hundred voices will assemble from one village, all the choirs joining together in some of the great choruses. Rewards are also given for knitting, for the best national costumes, for solo singing, violin and harp playing, for original poems in Welsh, and ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... on the topmost floor of which I had slept the previous night. There I had provided myself with a jar of pale tobacco mixed with rose-leaves and opium, found in a foreign house in Seymour Street, also a genuine Saloniki hookah, together with the best wines, nuts, and so on, and a gold harp of the musician Krasinski, stamped with his name, taken from his house ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... is to me no more Than an unstringed viol or a harp, Or like a cunning instrument cased up, Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony; Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue, Doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips, And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance Is made my gaoler to ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... huge fireplace at the same moment. She came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could through a confusion of tables, chairs, and work-baskets, china, writing-desks and inkstands, and birdcages, and a harp. She did not speak, and as her back was now turned to both fire and candle I could not see her face or anything but the outline of her form and her attitude. Her form was the remains of a fine form, her attitude that of a woman used to a ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... men as their hands they wring: “Bring quickly my harp with the golden string!” Belov’d of my heart, wherefore sorrowest ...
— Brown William - The Power of the Harp and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise
... her aunt Camilla was coming down the stairs by the rustling of her silk flounces along the rails of the banisters, like harp-strings; then there was a cumulative ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... would have found something else to harp on then," said Zebedee. "He was bound to ruin ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... henceforth kept in Asgard under the charge of white-haired Bragi, the son of Odin, he who plays so beautifully upon the harp that it seems to sing ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... that there is, to some extent, an admitted parallelism. "The familiar designs which served as models to the Clyde artists"—"plain cups and rings, with or without gutter channels, spirals, circles, concentric circles, semicircles, horseshoe and harp- shaped figures, etc.," occur, or a selection of them occurs, both on the disputed objects, and on the rocks of the hills. So Dr. ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... as he crossed the Plaza, some one called him. The voice made his heart leap; his whole nature responded to it like the strings of a harp to the sweep of a skilful hand. He turned quickly, and saw two young men galloping towards him. The foremost figure was his son—his beloved youngest son—whom he had just been thinking of as well out of danger, safe and happy ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... steal, Unthanked, away, to weep beside the harp, Dejected, prayerful, while the fields ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... I could have wished for something more difficult. If we had something like—well, I don't want to seem to harp on it, but say calceolarias, then quite a lot of people mightn't recognize them, and I should be able to tell them what they were. I should be able to show them the calceolarias; you can't show ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... remarkable memory, of which the Emperor often availed himself; she was also an excellent musician, played well on the harp, and sang with taste. She had perfect tact, an exquisite perception of what was suitable, the soundest, most infallible judgment imaginable, and, with a disposition always lovely, always the same, indulgent to her enemies as to her friends, ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... of the wire was under great tension, and, when cut, made a twanging sound like a broken harp or piano string. And this sound carried far in the silence of that sector. Other sectors were not so quiet, for firing was going on along both lines of trenches, though what movement was under way the Motor ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... "What made you harp upon the war, man, knowing what his opinions are?" the doctor asked vexedly, as he stumbled along the uneven stone passage towards ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... slow to understand the change in one usually so patient and submissive. She was, by turns, displeased with her sister and with her own abruptness; but, though she knew it not, her bluntness had a bracing effect. She thought she had been cross in declaring it was nonsense to harp on her going to London; but it made Margaret feel that she had been ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... close enough to hear the notes of the harp and pianoforte still sounding as gaily as ever, when the house-door was suddenly flung open for the departure of a lady and gentleman. The light from the hall-lamps fell on their faces; and showed ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... a harp that played in the wind,—now soft, now loud; now sweet, now solemn. He said that the harp played itself. The people heard the sounds, full of seeming expression, as though touched by airy fingers, and, as they could not discredit the evidence ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... murmuring sound, as of a harp-string softly plucked. A scarlet haze of light shot forth from the mouth of the black god, and the old man stepped back sharply as though struck by some invisible agent. He would have fallen, but as he crumpled, his body seemed to soften and shatter into a ...
— The Infra-Medians • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... he was in France he became the greatest hunter in the world, and he wrote many books on venery that were read and studied long after he had ceased to live. Also he became so skilful with the harp that no minstrel in the world was his equal. And ever he waxed more sturdy of frame and more beautiful of countenance, and more well-taught in all the worship of knighthood. For during that time he became so wonderfully excellent in arms that ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... Camilla's love for her fair pupil had broken her repose; she loved Rosabella as had she been her daughter, and was aware that on this interesting day depended the love-sick girl's whole future happiness. For some time Rosabella was unusually gay; she sang to her harp the most lively airs, and jested with Camilla for looking so serious and so uneasy; but when mid-day approached, her spirits began to forsake her. She quitted her instrument, and paced the chamber with unsteady steps. With every succeeding hour her heart palpitated with greater pain and violence, ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... performance. His first engagement in Liverpool was at the Theatre Royal, and a characteristic anecdote is related of the Signor in this transaction. At the Amphitheatre, Signor De Begnis, the great harp player—the husband of the fascinating Ronzi de Begnis, and who ran away with Lady Bishop, (he was the ugliest man for a Cavaliero I ever saw, being deeply pitted with the smallpox)—had been giving some concerts which ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... with sleep and the Bath, sat down to the feast. Still she saw no one: only she heard words falling here and there, and had voices alone to serve her. And the feast being ended, one entered the chamber and sang to her unseen, while another struck the chords of a harp, invisible with him who played on it. Afterwards the sound of a company singing together came to her, but still so that none were present to sight; yet it appeared that a great ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... desk at hand, and which showed talent exquisitely taught (for in this Riccabocca had been her teacher), there was nothing that spoke of the ordinary female accomplishments. No piano stood open, no harp occupied yon nook, which seemed made for one; no broidery frame, nor implements of work, betrayed the usual and graceful resources of a girl; but ranged on shelves against the wall were the best writers in English, Italian, and French; and these betokened an extent of reading, that he who wishes ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... do it kase I specs ter git anoder string to my harp bime-by. I does it kase I'se kin'er ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... in answer to BLUEBELL, who wishes to know when and by whom organs were invented: "Jubal is mentioned in Gen. iv. 21, as 'the father of all such as handle the harp and organ;' but neither the century of its invention nor the name of the inventor can be given. Hero and Vitruvius speak of a water-organ, invented or made by Ctesibius, of Alexandria, about 180 or ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... his feet. "God bless you, my lad. When I'm twanging a harp, up above, I'll be having ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... young to be thought of in this important business. He was down in the hollow with his shepherd's staff and dog and sling, playing upon his harp, and watching from afar the fire and smoke and crowds, as he kept ...
— Children of the Old Testament • Anonymous
... had a turn for doctoring, and felt her pulse. It was twanging like a harp-string, at the rate of nearly a hundred and fifty a minute. Softly moving the sleeping girl to a little less cramped position, ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... Phoenician mould; the double-eyed spear-head, formed at once for strength and lightness, might have served as the model for a sculptor in arming the hand of Minerva. Could these be the work of an uncultivated people? Impossible! The harp, too, was there, that unfailing mark of polish and social elegance. The bard and barbarism could never be coeval. But a relic was there, exciting still deeper interest—an ancient crosier, of curious workmanship, wrought in the precious metals and partly ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... things seemed to have made a month's growth since the morning. The branch that was yellow-leaved the day before dripped sap when Mowgli broke it. The mosses curled deep and warm over his feet, the young grass had no cutting edges, and all the voices of the Jungle boomed like one deep harp-string touched by the moon—the Moon of New Talk, who splashed her light full on rock and pool, slipped it between trunk and creeper, and sifted it through a million leaves. Forgetting his unhappiness, Mowgli sang aloud with ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... The harp-string gives out its note only on condition that, being touched, it vibrates, and ceases to be visible. Be you unseen, transparent, and the glory of the Lord shall shine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... souls to respond to the slightest touches of Apollo's lyre. If the heart be but attuned to harmony, it will vibrate to the simplest notes, faint though they be, as by the wafting of the evening breeze among the chords of a neglected harp, sadly hung upon the willows; it will cherish the feeblest idea, and nurture it into perfect melody. As love begets love, so does harmony beget its kind in the heart of him who can strike the keynote of nature, and listen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... herself, initiated me into a certain delicious passion, which ... I hold to be the first of human joys.... I did not well know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind her when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like an AEolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious rantann when I looked and fingered over her hand to pick out the nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualifications she sang sweetly; and 'twas ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... Bath he wrote many musical pieces—glees, anthems, chants, pieces for the harp, and an orchestral symphony. He taught a large number of pupils, and lived a hard and successful life. After fourteen hours or so spent in teaching and playing, he would retire at night to instruct his mind with a study of mathematics, optics, Italian, ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog-collar—but no dog—the handle of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had been known for many ages by the wild Arab of the desert, that there rose at times from this hill a strange, inexplicable music. As he leads his camel past in the heat of the day, a sound like the first low tones of an Aeolian harp stirs the hot breezeless air. It swells louder and louder in progressive undulations, till at length the dry baked earth seems to vibrate under foot, and the startled animal snorts and rears, and struggles to break away. According to the Arabian ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... son of Zeus, the king of the Immortals. For though he was but fifteen, he was taller by a head than any man in the island; and he was the most skilful of all in running and wrestling and boxing, and in throwing the quoit and the javelin, and in rowing with the oar, and in playing on the harp, and in all which befits a man. And he was brave and truthful, gentle and courteous, for good old Dictys had trained him well; and well it was for Perseus that he had done so. For now Danae and her son fell into great danger, and ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... came to have an existence apart from words. And both of them were beginning to assume other forms besides the religious. Facts having like implications might be cited from the histories of later times and people: as the practices of our own early minstrels, who sang to the harp heroic narratives versified by themselves to music of their own composition: thus uniting the now separate offices of poet, composer, vocalist, and instrumentalist. But, without further illustration, the common origin and ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... projecting, had as we have seen married Sarah Fricker, with whom he was now very much in love, and had begun housekeeping in a cottage at Clevedon near the Bristol Channel. The beauty of the place and his happiness there are celebrated in "The Aeolian Harp" and "Reflections on Leaving a Place of Retirement" (better known by its opening words, "Low was our pretty cot"). His next residence was in Bristol—rather a base of operations than a home, for Coleridge ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the charms of the tempter, the prayer is only on the lips, the Virgin is deaf, the angel sleeps! The breath of passion against which one struggles runs through every fibre of the heart, like a storm over the chords of an Tolian harp, and extorts from it those magic melodies to which a poor, troubled, and frightened woman listens with remorse and despair; but to which she listens, and with which at last she is intoxicated, for the allegory of Eve is an immortal myth, that repeats ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... subject. If other countries acted in a similar manner, how could the grievances of bygone centuries ever be forgotten? The Jews, cruelly treated though they were during the time of the Norman kings, do not harp on the subject in England to-day. It may be doubted whether all the religious persecutions of Europe put together were as great a disgrace to Christendom as the slave trade—in which, I am ashamed to say, England strove to obtain the pre-eminence amongst ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... have begun to harp again about men's rights. I really wish that you could see this matter as ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... doubts of the tradition, which may be valid doubts. I do not know when or where the story started; it is enough that it started somewhere and ended with me; for I only seek to write upon a hearsay, as the old balladists did. For the second case, there is a popular tale that Alfred played the harp and sang in the Danish camp; I select it because it is a popular tale, at whatever time it arose. For the third case, there is a popular tale that Alfred came in contact with a woman and cakes; I select ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... "Ah, Stella, don't harp on that," he said shame-facedly. "I was rotten, it's true. But we're all human. I couldn't see anything then only what I wanted myself. I was like a bull in a china shop. It's different now. I'm on my feet financially, ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... His harp was carved and cunning, As the Celtic craftsman makes, Graven all over with twisting shapes Like many ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... Aeschylus while we wait on the silence of Cassandra,[G] or of Shakspeare, while we listen to the wailing of Lear? Not so. The power of the masters is shown by their self-annihilation. It is commensurate with the degree in which they themselves appear not in their work. The harp of the minstrel is untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it records. Every great writer may be at once known by his guiding the mind far from himself, to the beauty which is not of his creation, and the knowledge which ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... should have done the deed, Had not sweet pleasure conquered deep despair. Have not I made blind Homer sing to me Of Alexander's love and Oenon's death? And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes With ravishing sound of his melodious harp, Made music with my Mephistophilis? Why should I die, then, or basely despair? I am resolved; Faustus shall ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... secret joy of the beloved presence. Man demands action: woman demands emotion. Friendship between two youths is martial, adventurous, a trumpet-blast or a bugle-air: friendship between two girls is poetic, contemplative, the sigh of a harp-string or the swell ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the Queen's. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies, eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking, laughed spluttering, their ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... programme according to your fancy here. Only let me beg you not to arrive later than Monday evening, so that the public may be free from anxiety, and to set my responsibility perfectly at rest in a corner of your harp- case. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... they went, to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour, with a small carpet and shining floor, to which the present daughters of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a grand piano-forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables placed in every direction. Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... think it's kind of you to harp on that. Yes, it has, if you want to know. He's positively handsome—or will be when the—when his nose heals perfectly. And I don't think that's anything one should hold against ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... Handel, whether these are executed by magician concert parts in deep and highly matured melody from artistic modulated intonations of the finely cultured human voice, or played by some fairy-fingered musician upon the trembling strings of the harp or piano, comes the charming delight we experience from the mastery of English prose, and the spell-binding wizards of song who by their art of divination through their magic wand, the pen, have transformed scenes hitherto unknown and made them as immortal as those spots of the ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... supposed, cannot be better, on account of the most beautiful order given to things by God; in which the good of the universe consists. For if any one thing were bettered, the proportion of order would be destroyed; as if one string were stretched more than it ought to be, the melody of the harp would be destroyed. Yet God could make other things, or add something to the present creation; and then there would be another and a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... also to that spot? Lady Emily was sitting by the harp which Mrs. St. John appeared to be most seriously employed in tuning: her countenance was bent downwards, and burning beneath the blushes called forth by the gaze which she felt ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... he raised his eyes to the stars. High above his head the strands of the wireless, swinging from the towering masts like the strings of a giant Aeolian harp, were swept by the wind from the ocean. To Swanson the sighing and whispering wires sang in ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... to pass in that day, and Tyre is forgotten seventy years like the days of one king. After the end of seventy years, it shall be unto Tyre according to the song of the harlot. Ver. 16. Take the harp, go about the city, forgotten harlot, make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered. Ver. 17. And it shall come to pass, after the end of seventy years, the Lord will visit Tyre, and she ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... Urania, and fit audience find, though few. But drive farr off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his Revellers, the Race Of that wilde Rout that tore the Thracian Bard In Rhodope, where Woods and Rocks had Eares To rapture, till the savage clamor dround Both Harp and Voice; nor could the Muse defend Her Son. So fail not thou, who thee implores: For thou art Heav'nlie, shee an empty dreame. Say Goddess, what ensu'd when Raphael, 40 The affable Arch-angel, had forewarn'd Adam by dire example to beware Apostasie, by what befell in Heaven To those Apostates, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... brought a white-winged harp-player Even where my lady and I lay all alone; Saying: 'Behold, this minstrel is unknown; Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here: Only my strains are to Love's dear ones, dear.' Then said I: 'Through thine hautboy's rapturous tone Unto ...
— The House of Life • Dante Gabriel Rossetti
... ready for the worst. Now was the time when a bit of scamped work by the mechanic is paid for by the life of the aeronaut. But she held together bravely. Every cord and strut was humming and vibrating like so many harp-strings, but it was glorious to see how, for all the beating and the buffeting, she was still the conqueror of Nature and the mistress of the sky. There is surely something divine in man himself that he should rise so superior to the ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... captive in some of their incursions; a circumstance not in itself impossible, but in which he believes as firmly as in holy writ. He is particularly delighted by her skill in music, which is so exquisite, that she far exceeds the best performers in this country in playing on the clairshach, or harp. It was discovered that this produced upon the disturbed spirits of Allan, in his gloomiest moods, beneficial effects, similar to those experienced by the Jewish monarch of old; and so engaging ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... He explained that love was so important that it could only be discussed lightly. He said that her hair reminded him ... he wished he could think of what, but he had such a bad memory for metaphors. It took him all his time to remember that a harp was like water and Carpentier like a Greek god. It was funny, wasn't it, to have such a weak head. He thought it came from hay fever—he always had hay fever during the third week of May. ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... specimens in almost every branch of the fine arts. Here are statues, casts from the frieze of the Parthenon, pictures, prints, books, and minerals; four pianofortes of different sizes, and an excellent harp. All this to study does Desdemona (that's me) seriously incline; and the more I study the more I want to know and to see. In short, I am crazy to travel in Greece! The danger is that some good-for-nothing bashaw should seize upon me to poke me into his harem, there to bury ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... city, has written volumes of plays, and written well, "excellent well," but he made nothing; nay, he hardly obtained that civic wreath which he fairly earned. Barker, of Philadelphia, whose muse is the most delicate and enticing, has hung up his harp, which, I dare say, is covered with dust and cobwebs; and even Harby, of Charleston, whose talents are of the finest order, and who is a bold yet chaste poet, gained but little profit and applause from ...
— She Would Be a Soldier - The Plains of Chippewa • Mordecai Manuel Noah
... Thomas smiled above his harp, And turned his face to the naked sky, Where, blown before the wastrel wind, ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... evening parties the carpet was lifted from the room set apart for dancing, and to protect the dancers from slipping the floor was chalked, usually in colors. The music was almost invariably a first and second violin, with flute and harp accompaniments. Light refreshments, such as water-ices, lemonade, negus, and small cakes were handed about on waiters between every two or three dances. The crowning glory of the entertainment, however, was ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... planters were wealthy. They numbered their slaves by thousands. Standing on the broad piazza of one of these Southern homes, one could see the rows of rough huts that made up the negro quarters, and hear faintly the sound of the banjo and rude negro melodies, mingling with the music of piano or harp within the parlor of the mansion-house. Refined by education and travel, the planters of the region about Port Royal made up a courtly society, until war burst upon them, and reduced their estates to wildernesses, and ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... wearing large and, to the children of the Square, terrifying spectacles. He is a very gloomy fellow and sings hymn-tunes, "Rock of Ages," "There is a Happy Land," and "Jerusalem the Golden." On Saturdays there is a stout, happy little man with a harp. He has white hair and looks like a retired colonel. He cannot play the harp very much, but he is quite the most popular visitor of the week, and must be very rich indeed does he receive in other squares so handsome a reward for his ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... you at last—heard twice over—and we are all thinking of playing truant and running away to the forest of Vincennes or Monceaux. That last is better, for it is nearer Paris——" But here her breathless chatter was cut short by a "Hush!" from the salon, and then we heard the strings of a harp being touched. ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... offer. Tea and further refreshments were found on the table on their return from the garden, and then one of the younger ladies went to the piano, and another took a harp, and a third a guitar, and the young officers who could sing were asked to do so, which of course they did, Paddy Desmond especially having a capital voice. Thus the evening passed pleasantly away, till ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... of the White Hand better than he loved his life, better than he loved his honour. The kingdoms of the world did not weigh with him beside the string of her shoe. He would not look at a sunset if he could see her. He would not listen to a harp if he could hear her speak, for she was the delight of ages, the gem of time, and the wonder of the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... greeting To your loved halls, where Psilas shuns the day; When the young god his Cretan nymph was meeting He taught Pan's rustic pipe this gliding lay: Soft as the dews of wine Shed in this banquet hour, The rich libation of Sound's stream divine, O reverent harp, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... accepted as great. In the execution of certain forms of emotional art it is a positive essential. Much genuine poetry has been produced under its influence. It is a sort of spiritual wind, which, rushing through the harp-strings of the soul, may make an extraordinary music. But the sounds produced depend not upon the impulse conveyed to the instrument, but on the quality and condition of the instrument itself. Without the impulse a large and various mind may lie quiescent. With the impulse ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... this, in one of the last strains of his unstrung harp, a fragment called "Souvenir des Alpes," the sad chord is touched once more: up to the end it answered faintly to certain notes. Long after their rupture and separation he said that he would have given ten years of his life to marry her had she been free; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... said Florence, "but why do you harp so about it? I have so much to think of, it is rather bothering for you to go back again and again to the same subject. The writer of that paper has not ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... an instrument and fingered it. It seemed like the harp, but it was not much larger than a guitar. The chords were very sweet, very deep and melodious. She was a skilled musician; even in her distress Cora could not fail ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... described the volumes as 'extraordinary,' adding that 'between her [Miss Barrett's] poems and the slighter lyrics of most of the sisterhood, there is all the difference which exists between the putting-on of "singing robes" for altar service, and the taking up lute or harp to enchant an indulgent circle of friends and kindred.' In the 'Examiner,'[101] John Forster declared that 'Miss Barrett is an undoubted poetess of a high and fine order as regards the first requisites of her art—imagination and expression.... ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... the North had been defeated at Bull Run, in fact, we had nothing but defeat, and it looked as though the republic was going to pieces. So we were much cast down and discouraged. At this meeting every speaker for awhile seemed as if he had hung his harp upon the willow; and it was one of the gloomiest meetings I ever attended. Finally an old man with beautiful white hair got up to speak, and his face literally shone. "Young men," he said "you ...
— The Way to God and How to Find It • Dwight Moody
... its joy; for its joy is greater than it can bear. It seems to me that it is like the woman in the Gospel, who would, or used to, call in her neighbours. [3] The admirable spirit of David, the royal prophet, must have felt in the same way, so it seems to me, when he played on the harp, singing the praises of God. I have a very great devotion to this glorious king; [4] and I wish all had it, particularly those who ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... left. These were at once hawked about in all drawing-rooms, and I had to listen to them twenty times in a single day. Another had read Montesquieu, and gave lessons in law to the oldest magistrates. A third used to play the harp execrably, but it was agreed that her arms were the most beautiful in France, and we had to endure the harsh scraping of her nails over the strings so that she might have an opportunity of removing her gloves like a coy little girl. What can I say of ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... him. Then I told the two babes that I could take care of Smith all right and that there was no need of their walking clear up to the house. After that I shut the door and we came away. If looks could kill I'd be tuning up my harp this minute. Say, if I didn't have any more nerve than those two I'd get a permit from the city to live. And all the time Smith never made a kick. I had him hypnotized. Now I'm going in and make ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... thy head up; within thee, too, Rises a mighty vault of blue, Wherein are harp tones ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... captives, who were too much amazed to say anything at first, and quickly saw the danger of any betraying comment. The troubadour marched up to Biterres, asked permission to sing, and began a doggerel ballad about one Sir Orpheus and his magic harp. The harp, as the song explained, had the power of luring pigeons, rabbits, wild geese, lambs, sucking-pigs and even fish from the stewponds, into its owner's dinner-pot, so that Orpheus never lacked for good living and became very fat. The ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... husband of Laurette Taylor and the author of plays in some of which she appears. His drama The Harp of Life has as its theme the love of two women, his mother and a courtesan, for a nineteen-year-old boy, and their willing self-sacrifice that he may go forward unbroken and unsmirched. The interesting thing, aside from the strength of the play and its vivid study of adolescence, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... eminence, and attracted a large number of students. Here, in the solitude of the forest tract, he passed his time in singing merry ballads to win the ear of the people for his more serious words, playing the harp, in teaching, and in reading the considerable library he had at hand. Bede describes him as a man "of marvellous learning both in liberal and ecclesiastical studies." Judging by his writings he was in these respects in the ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... blent Those archetypes celestial Which our endeavouring instruments recall. So heavenly flutes made murmurous plain To heavenly viols, that again - Aching with music—wailed back pain; Regals release their notes, which rise Welling, like tears from heart to eyes; And the harp thrills with thronging sighs. Horns in mellow flattering Parley with the cithern-string:- Hark!—the floating, long-drawn note ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... be a pirate, but there was only one kind o' politics on that ship and the majority was so large I thought that the vote might as well be unanimous. At first I was in favor of reform but the walkin' was that bad I had to decide between a harp and a cutlass.' ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... Waurepa A Fish-Hook Oos-skinna Don't lose it Oon est nonne it quost A Tobacco-pipe Oosquaana Intom I remember it Oonutsauka Aucummato Let it alone Tnotsaurauweek (Tout?) Sauhau Peaches Roo-ooe Yonne Walnuts Rootau-ooe Hickery Nuts Rootau Nimmia A Jew's-Harp Ooratsa Wottiyau I forget it Merrauka Northwest-Wind Hothooka ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... on the grass-plot just before the window," said Mr. Aubrey: the tiny voices were thrilling his very heart within him. His sensitive nature might have been compared to a delicate AEolian harp which gave forth, with the slightest breath ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the stage if it had been properly cultivated—sang them, too, with a look and manner that I have seen seldom rivalled by the cleverest actresses; and I thought what a face and form were wasted here to make profit for one knave and sport for some fifty fools. As she accompanied herself on the harp, and touched its strings with a grace and expression which made amends for a certain want of tuition, I could not help fancying her in a drawing-room, surrounded by admirers, making many a heart ache ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... the people and their splendid spirit—making a dreamland where even man was perfect. How she loved it! How proud she was to feel that in part it was her country. Faithfully would she serve it. Oh, Susanna West! I 'd like to shake you till your harp snapped a string. It 's like sending a baby to pick flowers on the edge of a ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... and then the tournament. Now, Wolfram's bid for favour seems to me both too literal and too long. He does what undoubtedly the minstrels of old did—freely declaims his verses, occasionally twanging his harp. He grows indeed almost fervent in his praise of the quiet life, of adoring your beloved at a safe distance and never disturbing her (nor yourself) with a word about human passion; but, for my humble part, I beg to say I always share Tannhaeuser's impatience and am glad when it is over. As ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... don't harp on that. I'm mad about the girl. I know all you're suffering, and if I ever put on superior airs, I take them ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it on my head, saying, 'I crown thee King of—' But I could not hear the rest, which was drowned by the cheering of the multitudes. And the cheering, O Shakib, was drowned by the hose of the sailors. Oh, that hose! Is it not made in the paradise you harp upon, the paradise we are coming to? Never, therefore, mention it ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... the year 976, three or four years before the battle of Tara and the accession of Malachy. When the news of his noble-hearted brother's murder was brought to Brian, at Kinkora, he was seized with the most violent grief. His favourite harp was taken down, and he sang the death-song of Mahon, recounting all the glorious actions of his life. His anger flashed out through his tears, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... course, a crown of Glory—very large, since I shall be a martyr; but I hope one will only have to wear it on Sundays, as I never could bear anything heavy on my hair; moreover, it would remind me of a Kaffir's head-ring done in gold, and I shall have had enough of Kaffirs. Then there will be the harp," she went on as her imagination took fire at the prospect of these celestial delights. "Have you ever seen a harp, Allan? I haven't except that which King David carries in the picture in the Book, which looks like a broken rimpi chair frame set up edgeways. As for playing the thing, they will have ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... come into the room, went up to the harp, which stood in a corner, and in taking off the cover made ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, etc., but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heartstrings thrill like an Aeolian harp; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan, when I looked and fingered over her little hand to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-inspiring qualities, she sung sweetly; and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... and white on a sun-shot ocean. Against the horizon a glint in motion. Full in the grasp of a shoving wind, Trailing her bubbles of foam behind, Singing and shouting to port she races, A flying harp, with her ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... always has been, and is now very much the fashion. In ten minutes, the gates were forced open—old Koop knocked down, and trod under foot till he was dead—every article of value that was portable, was secured; chairs, tables, glasses, not portable, were thrown out of the window; Wilhelmina's harp and pianoforte battered to fragments; beds, bedding, everything flew about in the air, and then the fragments of the furniture were set fire to, and in less than an hour Mynheer Krause's splendid house was burning furiously, while the mob ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... she is, Geoff! An' Mulligan's an Irishman an' mean—say, he's the meanest mutt you ever see. A Jew's mean, so's a Chink, but a mean Harp's got 'em both skinned 'way to 'Frisco an' back again! Why, Mulligan's that mean he wouldn't cough up a nickel to see the Statue o' Liberty do a Salomy dance in d' bay. So when the mazuma's shy Hermy ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... long of dear repose; The muse, whose pensive soul with anguish wrung Her early lyre for thee has trembling strung; 350 Shed the weak tear, and breath'd the powerless sigh, Which soon in cold oblivion's shade must die; Pants with the wish thy deeds may rise to fame, Bright on some living harp's immortal frame! While on the string of extasy, it pours 355 Thy future triumphs o'er ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... played the harp on Saturdays, was a friend of Mrs. Slater. "Nice little feller, that of yours, mum," he would say. "'Ad ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... selfsame fallen tree. How long he remained there is uncertain, but he was roused by the sound of music which came from the lawn before the farmhouse. Bitterly he smiled, remembering that Wallace Banks had engaged Italians with harp, violin, and flute, promising great things for dancing on a fresh-clipped lawn—a turf floor being no impediment to seventeen's dancing. Music! To see her whirling and smiling sunnily in the fat grasp of ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... streaming plumes and harness bright Dwells on the poet's maiden harp to-night; No trumpet's clamour and no battle's fire Breathes in the trembling ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... while he lived so faithful a friend, and when he was dead, so famous a poet to proclaim his actions. While he was viewing the rest of the antiquities and curiosities of the place, being told he might see Paris's harp, if he pleased, he said, he thought it not worth looking on, but he should be glad to see that of Achilles, to which he used to sing the glories and ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... that we do not feel about any other poet and essayist of his time. His poems are the fruit of Oriental mysticism and bardic fervor grafted upon the shrewd, parsimonious, New England puritanic stock. The stress and wild, uncertain melody of his poetry is like that of the wind-harp. No writing surpasses his in the extent to which it takes hold of the concrete, the real, the familiar, and none surpasses his in its elusive, mystical suggestiveness, and its cryptic character. It is Yankee wit and shrewdness on one side, and Oriental ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... and went. It was a hot summer below, where the valley widens to let in Amalon; but up in the little-sunned aisle of Box Canon it was always cool. There the pines are straight and reach their heads far into the sky, each a many-wired harp to the winds that come down from the high divide. Their music is never still; now a low, ominous rush, soft but mighty, swelling as it nears, the rush of a winged host, rising swiftly to one fearsome crescendo ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revelers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears To rapture, till the savage clamor drowned Both harp and voice, nor could the Muse defend Her son. So fail not thou, who thee implores; For thou art heavenly, she ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... remains to be told how Stephen Brice, coming to the Brewster House after the debate, found Mr. Lincoln. On his knee, in transports of delight, was a small boy, and Mr. Lincoln was serenely playing on the child's Jew's-harp. Standing beside him was a proud father who had dragged his son across two counties in a farm wagon, and who was to return on the morrow to enter this event in the family Bible. In a corner of the room were several impatient ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Pegwell Bay, Margate, and the Isle of Dogs, it is again supposed that, acting under sealed orders, they elude the enemy, and dividing their forces, make for Gravesend, Liverpool, Dundee, "The Welsh Harp" at Hendon, and Yarmouth. The problem, therefore, presented to Admiral FLYOFF, who is in command of the defending squadrons, will be, after utilising the supposed coast defences, and mining the Serpentine, to force the enemy to accept the issue of ...
— Punch, Vol. 99., July 26, 1890. • Various
... would certainly have pulled away from them or dragged them into the river. He lashes the water into foam, and bellows with rage, while they yell with delight and excitement. The stout post is shaken, and the Manila line hums like a harp-string. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... celebrated Doctor Bertier asserts that the sound of a drum gives him the colic. Certain medical men state that the notes of the trumpet quicken the pulse and induce slight perspiration. The sound of the bassoon is cold; the notes of the French horn at a distance, and of the harp, are voluptuous. The flute played softly in the middle register calms the nerves. The low notes of the piano frighten children. I once had a dog who would generally sleep on hearing music, but the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... showed. Although there had been no spoken understanding between us that Mrs. Falchion was the wife of Boyd Madras, the mind of one was the other's also. I understood exactly why he told me Boyd Madras's story: it was a warning. He was not the man to harp on things. He gave the hint, and there the matter ended, so far as he was concerned, until a time might come when he should think it his duty to refer to the subject again. Some time before, he had shown me the portrait of the girl who had promised to be his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... variety of their instruments that they had advanced from childish practice to orchestration and harmony. According to Plato, "In their possession are songs having the power to exalt and ennoble mankind." The harp is undoubtedly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... cut glass and silver. The obsequious waiters were in evening dress, the walls were covered with lofty plate-glass mirrors in carved and gilded frames, and at certain hours of the day and night an orchestra consisting of two violins and a harp discoursed ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... greater whole. And thus, provided we are true to the highest principles we have attained, we shall be safer when we look out on nature with the analogy of human agency in our mind, than when we regard its course as alien and indifferent. In other words, Nature is not merely an AEolian harp which re-echoes tones given out by the human soul—though that would be much!—but an indispensable agent in producing them. The action is reciprocal, just because man and his external world interpenetrate at every point, and are united ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... into Greece) abounds with interesting specimens in almost every branch of the fine arts. Here are statues, casts from the frieze of the Parthenon, pictures, prints, books, and minerals; four pianofortes of different sizes, and an excellent harp. All this to study does Desdemona (that's me) seriously incline; and the more I study the more I want to know and to see. In short, I am crazy to travel in Greece! The danger is that some good-for-nothing bashaw should seize upon me to poke me into ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... of the uproar reaching us in our altitude above the drawing-room flat. On New-Year's Day morning there is regularly a competition of bagpipers in the kitchen, and we could fondly imagine 'tis an Eolian Harp. In his pantry Peter practised for years on the shrill clarion, and for years on the echoing horn; yet had he thrown up both instruments in despair of perfection ere we so much as knew that he had commenced his musical studies. In the sunk ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... had the good fortune to secure one valuable ally, whose friendship stood him in good stead. She was of a rich chocolate tint, with good features, and long hair, possibly inherited from some Arab ancestor, bead-like black eyes, and a voice like a harp, but which on occasion could become a flame. Her figure was short and stocky; but more dignity was never compressed within the same number of ...
— Mam' Lyddy's Recognition - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... tired of heaven, as he lounged in the golden street; His halo was tilted sideways, and his harp lay mute at his feet; So the Master stooped in His pity, and gave him a pass to go, For the space of a moon, to the earth-world, to mix with ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... want to be an angel An' wid de angels stan' A crown upon my forehead And a harp widin ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... experience; and with many of God's best beloved, one tear is scarce dried when another is ready to flow! Mourners! rejoice! When the reaping time comes, the weeping time ends! When the white robe and the golden harp are bestowed, every remnant of the sackcloth attire is removed. The moment the pilgrim, whose forehead is here furrowed with woe, bathes it in the crystal river of life,—that moment the pangs of a ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... I Jerusalem Out of my heart let slide; Then let my fingers quite forget The warbling harp ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... the ladder and straight on. He lies between those two cloth bales." Ephraim Savage looked up with a smile playing about the corners of his grim mouth. The wind was whistling now in the rigging, and the stays of the mast were humming like two harp strings. Amos Green lounged beside the French sergeant who guarded the end of the rope ladder, while Tomlinson, the mate, stood with a bucket of water in his hand exchanging remarks in very bad French with the crew of the boat ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mother sing. The tears ran in streams down Krespel's cheeks; even Angela he had never heard sing like that. Antonia's voice was of a very remarkable and altogether peculiar timbre: at one time it was like the sighing of an Aeolian harp, at another like the warbled gush of the nightingale. It seemed as if there was not room for such notes in the human breast. Antonia, blushing with joy and happiness, sang on and on—all her most beautiful songs, B—— ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... forth its fragrance. In the middle of the garden was a fountain, the waters of which rose in a single jet from the centre, and then, as they fell back into the basin, each of their thousand drops struck upon a silver harp-string, causing the most delightful sounds to fill the air, and mingle with the songs of the birds and the perfume of the flowers. Around the great basin were silken cushions on which the Prince reclined, and the goldfish ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... mistaken as to the move being general. The troops marching through a winding and wooded defile, passed the deservedly well known Brigade of General Meagher. "Here's Ould Ireland Boys," said the little Irish Corporal, pointing, as his face glowed with pride, to the flag adorned with "The Harp of Ould Ireland, and the Shamrock so green," the emblems of the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... inmate of the family, and for the first time enjoyed the pleasures, of highly-polished society. Mrs Courtenay was an admirable performer upon the harp; Miss Emma Courtenay, her niece, was a delightful pianist; and my host himself was no mean amateur upon the flute. Our evenings would pass quickly away, in reading Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil's branches, and modulated his harp thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed in the three mystic fountains which flow fast by its roots. In an especial manner has the German branch of the Teuton kindred turned back to those old musical well-springs bubbling up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... Canadas.' Even before this, young Joseph Howe had seen what the steam-engine might do for his native province, and in 1835 he had advocated, in a series of articles in the Nova Scotian, a railway from Halifax to Windsor. Judge Haliburton was an early convert; and in 1837 he makes 'Sam Slick' harp again and again on the necessity of railways. 'A railroad from Halifax to the Bay of Fundy' is the burden of many of Sam's conversations, and its advantages are urged in his most racy dialect. But the world laughed at ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... is out here!" said the voice, which, if we were to describe it from the lover's point of view, could be likened only to the songs of birds, the musical utterance of purest flutes, or the blowing of wild winds through those grand harp-strings, the mountain pines; for there was more of poetry and passion compressed in the heart of this quiet young Quaker than we shall venture to give breath to ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... verses. 'Tis a curious joke that each one Much prefers to choose a calling Most unsuited to his nature. I thus also ride my hobby, And this hobby is the noble Muse of music who regales me. As King Saul's deep sorrow vanished At the sound of David's harp once, So with cheering sounds of music Do I banish age's inroads And the gout, my old disturber. When sometimes in tempo presto I an orchestra am leading, Oft I think I'm once more riding At the head of my brave squadrons. Right wing, charge ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... the boat the whole distance, upwards of two miles, themselves. I objected for a time; but when they told me it was the custom of the country, and, that the art of sculling was as much an accomplishment as the softer allurements of the harp, or guitar, I felt more reconciled, and fully appreciated an honour that could never be ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... lives or on those of others, than how little we assimilate from the greatest experiences; in nothing is Nature's apparent wastefulness of means more ironically impressive. A great love comes and sets one's whole being singing like a harp, fills high heaven with rainbows, and makes our dingy alleys for awhile bright as the streets of the New Jerusalem; and yet, if five years after we seek for what its incandescence has left us, we find, maybe, a newly ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... of relief broke from her. The bridge still swayed from her weight; and the cables hummed like the wires of a harp; near at hand the waterfall tumbled down through the ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... that the stories are mixtures of things that really happened and what people said about them, and we don't know just which is which. The stories are called LEGENDS. One of the prettiest legends is the story I am going to tell you about the Dagda's harp. ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... which the author, now much enfeebled, tries to smarten up and make acceptable to his spectacular heart by introducing some new properties—silver bow, golden harp, olive branch—things that can all come good in an elopement, no doubt, yet are not to be compared to an umbrella for real handiness and reliability in an excursion ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... wife, and that it emitted similar tones in the event of impending misfortunes. St. John is inclined to explain the mysterious phenomenon by a probably peculiar form of the mouth of the vessel, in passing over which the air-draught is thrown into resonant verberations, like the Aeolian harp. The vessel is generally enveloped in gold brocade, and is uncovered only when it is to be consulted; and hence, of course, it happens that it speaks only on solemn occasions. St. John states further that the Bisayans used formerly to bring ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... drops down about a thousand more feet and then hits the floor of the subterranean city and we land like a fountain pen with its point slammed into the top of a lump of clay. Bo-o-o-o-i-ing! We twang like a plucked harp string for nearly five minutes and I hit my noggin against the ...
— Operation Earthworm • Joe Archibald
... arrived. The weather has been talked over for the last time (for the present); a harp, violin, and a cornet-a-piston from the county town, influenced by the spirit of gin-and-water, are heard discoursing most eloquent music in the dining-room, which has been cleared out for the dance. Miss ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the changing scale, through the whole range of cymbal and spinet, "flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music," stand literally before me, and a strange revelation it is. Is it the same faculty which produces that grand piano of Bechstein's, and that clarion organ of Silbermann's, and that African drum dressed out with skulls, that war-trumpet ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... ardent vows of repentance; but, alone with Maud, her confidante and admirer, she was wont to cast a kindly glamour of romance over her own delinquencies. "It's my heart," she would sigh pathetically. "My heart is so sensitive. It's like an Aeolian harp, Maud, upon which every passing breeze plays its melody. I'm a creature of sensibility!" And she rolled her fine eyes to the ceiling, the while Maud snorted, being afflicted with adenoids, and wrinkled her brows in the effort to put her fingers on the weak spot in the argument, the ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... sent to school in the year 1798 to No. 22 Hans Place, to a Mrs. St. Quintin's. It seems to have been an excellent establishment. Mary learnt the harp and astronomy; her taste for literature was encouraged. The young ladies, attired as shepherdesses, were also taught to skip through many mazy movements, but she never distinguished herself as a shepherdess. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... think of death and war; because spring had come with its promise of life. There was a thrill of new vitality throughout the city. I seemed to hear the sap rising in the trees along the boulevards. Or was it only the wind plucking at invisible harp-strings, or visible telephone wires, and playing the spring ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... was mixed up in the troubles in no shape nor fashion," anyone can tell you. "He'd not foir a gun if you laid one in his hand. But just give him a fiddle! Why, Sid Hatfield is the music-makinest fellow that ever laid bow to strings. What's more he puts a harp in his mouth and plays it at the same time he's sawin' the bow. I've seen him and hear-ed him, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... was played every where, Le Marriage d'Antonio. A journalist, a friend of Gretry, who one day found himself in Lucile's apartment, without her being aware of it, so much was she engrossed with her harp, has related the rage and madness which transported her during her contests with inspiration, that was often rebellious. 'She wept, she sang, she struck the harp with incredible energy. She either did not see me, or took no notice of me; ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... of motion and of look, the smooth And swimming majesty of step and tread, The symmetry of form and feature, set The soul afloat, even like delicious airs Of flute or harp." ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... Surville, the older daughter, whose matrimonial possibilities were so much discussed, was finally unhappily married to M. Mallet. She was a good harpist, and taught the harp. She died without issue. Valentine was married, 1859, to M. Louis Duhamel, a lawyer. She had a good voice for singing and literary talent; she took charge of having Balzac's correspondence published. ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... the amiabilities of nature, however, in which Dorothea found inspiration. A harp of a single string, she sang as that minstrel might who was implored to make love ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... that from one's earliest years one hears of nothing but the Caucasus, the Caucasus? Why, even our old General used to harp upon the name, with his moustache bristling, and his eyes protruding, as he did so. And the same as regards my mother, who had visited the country in the days when, as yet, the General was in command but of a company. Yes, everyone tends hither. ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... changeling—fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp." ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... called into existence by the sweet and silvery notes of softest music stealing over the senses, and while they impart awakening thoughts of bliss and beauty, scarcely dissipating the dreamy influence of slumber! Such was my first thought, as, with closed lids, the thrilling chords of a harp broke upon my sleep and aroused me to a feeling of unutterable pleasure. I turned gently round in my chair and beheld Miss Dashwood. She was seated in a recess of an old-fashioned window; the pale yellow glow of a wintry sun at evening fell upon her beautiful ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... when he touched his harp and sang, the song sounded like the wind blowing, the sea roaring, and the trees creaking; then it grew very soft, and sounded like a trickling brook dripping on stones and running over little pebbles; and while the king and queen and all the court listened ...
— Mother Stories • Maud Lindsay
... top reigned solemn and perpetual night. The wind scarcely swayed its dense and plumy branches. It merely turned up the silvery sides of the five-fingered clusters of needles which responded with a low melancholy voice like an aeolian harp, or those minor chords composed under its shade by my friend the Flute Player of Bellingham. In the woods when the pines sing it is not these I hear but the lone tree by the Barber mansion. It was the only tree in my reach I had never climbed. I was afraid of its ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... possible that you hold the doctrine of Free Will? And are you devoid of any tincture of philosophy, that you should harp on such exploded fallacies? Chance, the blind Madonna of the Pagan, rules this terrestrial bustle; and in Chance I place my sole reliance. Chance has brought us three together; when we next separate and go forth our several ways, Chance will continually drag before our careless ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... portfolio, adorned inside with a beautiful drawing representing Love, Wit, and Valour, as described in the song. In the border that surrounds the drawing are introduced the favourite emblems of Erin, the harp, the shamrock, the mitred head of St. Patrick, together with scrolls containing each, inscribed in letters of gold, the name of some favourite melody of ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... said Simeon Harp. "It's going to be. And there ain't no need for you to dream bad dreams. You ain't doing the thing. It's me. It was me thought of it. It's me ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... having such a sudden stop put to her pleasure. She said nothing, and went on with her work. In a little while Alice asked her to hold a skein of cotton for her while she wound it. Ellen was annoyed again at the interruption; the harp-strings were jarring yet, and gave fresh discord to every touch. She had, however, no mind to let her vexation be seen; she went immediately and held the cotton, and as soon as it was done sat down again to her drawing. Before ten ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... expatiate, descant, comment, argue, persuade, plead, lecture, preach, harangue, rant, roar, spout, thunder, declaim, harp>. (With this group compare the Say group, above, and the ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... member of a great family connection cannot harp much upon the theme of matrimony without its taking wind; and it soon got buzzed about that Mr. Simon Bracebridge was actually gone to Doncaster races, with a new horse, but that he meant to return in a curricle with a lady by ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... countryside, both gentle and common. In some booths there was dancing to merry music, in others flowed ale and beer, and in others yet again sweet cakes and barley sugar were sold; and sport was going outside the booths also, where some minstrel sang ballads of the olden time, playing a second upon the harp, or where the wrestlers struggled with one another within the sawdust ring, but the people gathered most of all around a raised platform where stout fellows ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... respect and admiration by behaving himself wisely, the more afraid of him Saul was; again and again he tried to kill him; as David was sitting harmless in Saul's house, soothing the poor madman by the music of his harp, Saul tries to stab him unawares; and not content with that proceeds deliberately to hunt him down, from town to town, and wilderness to wilderness; sends soldiers after him to murder him; at last goes out after him himself with his guards. Was not all this enough ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... with throb and swing, Of a plaintive note, and long; 'Tis a note no human throat could sing, No harp with its dulcet golden string,— Nor lute, nor lyre with liquid ring, Is sweet as the ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... have God for its centre. And God, though He has devised the most infinitely complete and beautiful and costly scheme of redemption for man, will none the less fail unless the individual man wills to co-operate with Him. Man is not a piece of clay which God can fashion as He likes. He is not even a harp out of which He can get what strains He will without regard to its strings. There is in man something—a force—an energy— which must act in union with God, and with which God must act in wonderful partnership, if His ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... tendency, to any one calling or pursuit over all others. A man may have a genius for governing, for killing, or for curing the greatest number of men, and in the best possible manner: a man may have a genius for the fiddle, or his mission may be for the tight-rope, or the Jew's harp; or it may be a natural turn for seeking, and finding, and teaching truth, and for doing the greatest possible good to mankind; or it may be a turn equally natural for seeking, and finding, and teaching a lie, and doing the maximum ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... awoke in a great sweat, also a trembling was upon her; but after a while she fell to sleeping again. And then she thought she saw Christian her husband in a place of bliss, among many immortals, with a harp in his hand, standing and playing upon it before One that sat on a throne, with a rainbow about His head. She saw also as if he bowed his head, with his face to the paved work that was under the Prince's feet, saying, I heartily thank my Lord and King, for bringing of me into this place. Then shouted ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and frisky," was ever his own comment upon the descriptive adjective by which his friends distinguished him. And fine and frisky he was; fine in his appreciation of good eating, fine in his judgment of good cattle and fine in his estimate of men; frisky, too, and utterly irrepressible. "Harp's just like a young pup," his own father, the Reverend Harper Freeman, the old Methodist minister of the Maplehill circuit, used to say. "If Harp had a tail he would never do anything but play with it." On this, however, ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... silence? When the fair poetess from strange lands came among the Macleods, did she seek out this still retreat, and listen, and listen, and listen until she caught the music of this monotonous murmur, and sang it to her harp? And was it not all a song about the passing away of life, and how that summer days were for the young, and how the world was beautiful for lovers? "Oh, children!" it seemed to say, "why should you waste your lives in vain ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... merged itself in an ardent love of Nature: of hill, loch and stream—above all, of Tweed, the fairest of waters, which he lived to see a sink of pollution. After 1831 we have no more romanticism from Mr. Stoddart. The wind, blowing where it listeth, struck on him as on an AEolian harp, and "an uncertain warbling made," in the true Romantic manner. He did write a piece with the alluring name of Ajalon of the Winds, but not one line of it survives. The rest is not silence, indeed, for, in addition to his lays of trout and salmon, of Tweed and Teviot, Mr. Stoddart wrote a ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... Romans his barbaric splendor. A numerous escort, superbly clad, surrounded his ambassador; in attendance were packs of enormous hounds; and in front; went a bard, or poet, who sang, with rotte or harp in hand, the glory of Bituitus and of the Arvernian people. Disdainfully the consul received and sent back the embassy. War broke out; the Allobrogians, with the usual confidence and hastiness of all barbarians, attacked ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... advocate all sports, and exercises, and modes of life that improve the physical organism, I have no respect for bone, and nerve, and muscle in the abstract. Health is a fine harp, but I want to know what tune you are going to play on it. I have not one daisy to put on the grave of a dead pugilist or mere boat-racer, but all the garlands I can twist for the tomb of the man who serves God, though he be as physically weak as Richard Baxter, whose ailments ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... to bequeath is, I trust, thine. Thy mother came of a race more addicted to lute and harp than sword or spear. It was the worse for them in their dire need, when the stern father of him who shelters thee harried their land ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... moment Edward saw Abel approaching, swaggering along with the harp. He had never been glad to see him so far; ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... there occur in the domestic establishment the most delightful scenes of love. It is then that a woman becomes utterly pliant and like to the most brilliant of all the strings of a harp, when thrown before the fire; she rolls round you, she clasps you, she holds you tight; she defers to all your caprices; never was her conversation so full of tenderness; she lavishes her endearments upon ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... time, but she'd been at Bob to get this scroll-work done and fitted that the King might see it. I made him the picture, in an hour, all of a heat after supper—one great heaving play of dolphins and a Neptune or so reining in webby-footed sea-horses, and Arion with his harp high atop of them. It was twenty-three foot long, and maybe nine foot ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... a garden, ranged in order, each sort by itself. There they grew gaily in the sunshine, and the spray of the torrent from above; while from the cave came the sound of music, and a man's voice singing to the harp. ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... them "tales and side-splitting anecdotes," he joined the party at supper, and when the vicar and his wife rose to take their leave he pressed Mrs Berkeley's hands, and told her that her music had been as David's harp to ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Wind and of Fire, Chant only one hymn, and expire With the song's irresistible stress; Expire in their rapture and wonder, As harp-strings are broken asunder By ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... to the head of the family, who appreciated its classic simplicity. Sadako was given to understand the part which she was to play in alienating her cousin's affections from the foreigner. She was to harp on the faithlessness of men in general, and on husbands in particular, and on the importance of money values in ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... for the last half hour to the wild music of an Eolian harp. How exquisitely the tones rise and fall!—now sad, now solemn—now near, now distant. The nerves thrill, the heart softens, the imagination awakes as we listen. What if that delightful instrument be animated by a living soul, and these finely-modulated tones be but the expression of its feelings! ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... hail, every stone as big as a pigeon's egg, and in all my time I never heard a more hellish clamour. There was not a breath of air. The hail fell in straight lines, which the fierce near lightning flashed up into the appearance of giant harp strings, on which the black hand of the night was playing those heavy notes of thunder. I sat in the shelter of the companion, very anxious and alarmed, for there was powder enough in the hold to blow the ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... that of Ledeard, at the farm so called on the northern side of Lochard, and near the head of the Lake, four or five miles from Aberfoyle. It is upon a small scale, but otherwise one of the most exquisite cascades it is possible to behold. The appearance of Flora with the harp, as described, has been justly censured as too theatrical and affected for the ladylike simplicity of her character. But something may be allowed to her French education, in which point and striking effect always ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... and let it gush like a river from a hillside. He talked on and on about him, with admiration, gratitude, devotion. And Miss St. John was glad of the veil of the twilight over her face as she listened, for the boy's enthusiasm trembled through her as the wind through an AEolian harp. Poor Robert! He did not know, I say, what he was doing, and so was ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... restaurant and show had its band, brass or string,—a full array of red-faced fellows tooting through horns, or a sorry quartette, the fat woman with the harp, the lean man blowing himself out through the clarinet, the long-haired fellow with the flute, and the robust and thick-necked fiddler. Everywhere there was music; the air was full of the odor of cheese and cooking sausage; so that there ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of the French war. For some reason, unaccountable to me, said the old man, she set her heart upon Spain, and had now been domiciled in this secluded spot for a year. But she was visibly fading away. She read and wrote much, and was even more attached to her harp and her flowers than ever; yet declared that she had bid farewell to the world. The father wept as he spoke, but his were the tears of sorrow rather than of anguish. They stole quietly down his cheeks, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and yet it gave you a prevailing and unconquerable impression of gloom and lifelessness. In the House of Commons, the member addressing the assembly is like the wind which passes through an AEolian harp. You cannot utter a word which does not produce its full and immediate response. You say a thing which has the remotest approach to an absurdity in it, and the whole House laughs consumedly and immediately. You utter a phrase which excites party feeling, and at once—quick ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... and appall, The song that Bethlehem's shepherds knew!— The harp of David melting through The ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... on and lend a paw." In the hurry of hoisting, the Siamese elephant got turned upside down, and now danced gayly on his head, with the stars and stripes waving proudly over him. A green flag with a yellow harp and sprig of shamrock hung in sight of the kitchen window, and Katy, the cook, got breakfast to the tune of "St. Patrick's day in the morning." Sancho's kennel was half hidden under a rustling paper imitation of the gorgeous Spanish banner, and the scarlet sun-and-moon flag of Arabia ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... that shame, and clothed you and gave you a home? Was it not I who gave you a name and procured you consideration and respect by making you my singer and companion, and allowing you to play upon the harp at my improvisations? How has not all Rome admired you when you sang the canzones I wrote for you, thereby procuring you honor and respectability, and making you a popular man from a low beggar? Go, you cannot leave me, for you are my ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... down, laughing, at the antiquated piano, and sang him the songs he loved; then, because she owed him a great debt she sang for him "Kathleen Mavourneen," "Pretty Molly Brannigan," "The Harp That Once Thro' Tara's Halls," and "Killarney." Dan stood just outside the kitchen door, not presuming to enter, and when the last song was finished, he had tears in his piggy little eyes; so he fled with the posies, nor tarried to thank her and wish her a pleasant good-night. Neither did ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... see its leaves and tendrils sway in the wind. The occupants of the dining-room were all ladies, and again I noted the fact that they were all blondes: beautiful, graceful, courteous, and with voices softer and sweeter than the strains of an eolian harp. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... overhead, clothing the bare timbers with thickets of gayest foliage; banners and bright scarfs, caught up with trophies, hung festooned along the unpainted walls. They had made a balcony with stairs where the band was perched, the music of the artillery augmented by strings—a harp, half a dozen fiddles, cellos, bassoons, and hautboys, and there were flutes, too, and trumpets lent by the cavalry, and sufficient drums to make that fine, deep, thunderous undertone, which I love to hear, and which heats my cheeks ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... THE HARP, a tavern near Drury Lane, was a favourite resort of the Elder KEAN, and in 1841 had a club-room divided into four wards: Gin Ward, Poverty Ward, Insanity Ward, and Suicide Ward, the walls of which were appropriately illustrated, and by no mean hand. The others named ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... that moustache to mitigate its surroundings with some flowing grace. He was, indeed, no adversary to meet alone in the open field—for one who could make him in a crowd a mere string of many to his harp. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... like Marconi best to see Beneath a Macaroni tree Playing that Nocturne in F Sharp By Chopin, on a Wireless Harp. ...
— Confessions of a Caricaturist • Oliver Herford
... often characterized more dignified assemblies were absent here. There was no room for the lesser vices; there was little or no drunkenness; the gaudily dressed and painted women who presided over the wheels of fortune or performed on the harp and piano attracted no attention from those ascetic players. The man who had won ten thousand dollars and the man who had lost everything rose from the table with equal silence and imperturbability. I never witnessed any ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... silence; he senses a vague feeling of awe for this magnificent specimen of matured life in the vegetable world. With every sense attuned to the overtones and undertones, produced by the vibrations of nature's harp; he catches the rythmic song of the sappy currents, as they swiftly fly to feed the swelling cells, where the building energy of their tiny hearts of protoplasm, ceaselessly changes the elements of soil and ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... world of fleeting change and delusive appearances. It was a prolepsis of the soul, reaching upward towards its source and goal. The poet felt within him some native affinities therewith, and longed for some stirring breath of heaven to sweep the harp-strings of the soul. He invoked the inspiration of the Goddess of Song, and waited for, no doubt believed in, some "deific impulse" descending on him. And the people eagerly accepted his utterance as the teaching of the gods. They were too eager for some ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Sampo takes place. It is taken from Pohjola, whilst the owners are sung to sleep by the harp of Lemminkainen; sung to sleep, but not for so long a time as to allow the robbers to escape. They are sailing Kalevalaward, when Louki comes after them on the wings of the wind, and raises a storm. Sampo is broken, and thrown into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... Father-land, Where there are many homes. Oh! grant of all yon shining throngs Some dim and distant star, Where Judah's lost and scatter'd sons May worship from afar! When all earth's myriad harps shall meet In choral praise and prayer, Shall Zion's harp, of old so sweet, Alone be wanting there? Yet place me in the lowest seat, Though I, as now, lie there, The Christian's jest—the Christian's scorn, Still let me see and hear, From some bright mansion in the sky, Thy ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... had lived under his roof; and few real men have left such distinct characters as these fictions. And they spoke in language as sweet as it was fit. Yet his talents never seduced him into an ostentation, nor did he harp on one string. An omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. Give a man of talents a story to tell, and his partiality will presently appear. He has certain observations, opinions, topics, which have some accidental prominence, and which he disposes all to exhibit. He ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... swimming and archery, and also with the gloves; and further was as nimble as such a youth could be, his training being equal to his strength. Though his years were unripe, his richly-dowered spirit surpassed them. None was more skilful on lyre or harp; and he was cunning on the timbrel, on the lute, and in every modulation of string instruments. With his changing measures he could sway the feelings of men to what passions he would; he knew how to fill human hearts ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... of the neighbourhood came to the funeral. There was a band to lead the procession; a band of three boys, playing on a French harp, a jew's-harp, and a drum. Johnny Grey's Newfoundland dog was hitched to the little wagon that held Matches's coffin. Phil drove, sitting up solemnly in his father's best high silk hat with its band of crape. It was much too large for his head, and slipped down over his curls until the ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... on the banks of a rapid stream, at the foot of a cascade, she said that the sounds she heard came from Stromkarl. The Stromkarl has a silver harp, on which he plays wild melodies. If his favor be gained, by any present, he teaches the listener his songs. Wo, however, to the man who hears him for the ninth time. He cannot shake off the supernatural charm, and becomes a ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... comes back in music soft and sweet, And lo! the Present like a strung harp stands Waiting the sweeping of prophetic hands, To send its living music, loud and fleet, ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... dispensed, and "gave out" an appropriate hymn, in which the Supreme Being was acknowledged as the Ruler of the Seasons. This was sung, it must be confessed, by a sadly shrunken choir, stoutly supported, however, by the congregation in the body of the meeting-house, without the sound of tabret, or harp, or other musical instruments; for in those days not even the flute or grave bass-viol, those pioneers of the organ, were permitted in the Sanctuary. To the hymn succeeded a long and fervent prayer, in which ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... frequently, though this was the first time he had accompanied me to the lawn. She urged him to remain and pass the evening, or rather asked him, for he required no urging. I am sure it must have been a happy one to him. Edith played upon her harp, which had been newly strung. She seemed the very personification of one of Ossian's blue-eyed maids, with her white, rising hands, and ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... and rather awful look to the various objects. And what a strange collection it was! Broken spindle-legged chairs, rickety boxes, piles of yellow old music-books and manuscripts, and in one corner an ancient harp in a tarnished gilt frame. Poor deserted dusty old things! They had had their day in the busy world once, but that was over now, and they must stay shut up in the silent garret with no one to see them but the spiders and the children. ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... angel's trumpet, and in the watches of the night, under the star-gleam or in the fleecy moonlight, while stillness brooded over a sleeping world, the music swung back and forth like a censer through the corridors of the soul, with a sweetness that told him the strings of the harp throbbed under the touch of the fingers ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... he had provided vast quantifies of strong beer, flip, rumbo, and burnt brandy, with plenty of Barbadoes water for the ladies; and hired all the fiddles within six miles, which, with the addition of a drum, bagpipe, and Welsh harp, regaled the guests with ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... me offered a little Goldsmith information, then a woman on the other side did the same, and the old man who had recited suggested that we go over and see the alehouse "where the justly celebhrated Docther Goldsmith so often played his harp so feelin'ly." So we adjourned to The Three Jolly Pigeons—a dozen of us, including the lovers, whom ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... floor in a meridional direction. A long ridge extends some way towards the S. from the foot of the S. wall, and at some distance in the same direction lie six ill- defined white spots of doubtful nature. On the E.N.E. there is a large white marking, resembling a "Jew's harp" in shape, and farther on, towards the E., a number of very remarkable ridges. On the W. will be found many bright little craterlets. A ray from Kepler extends almost up to the ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... sailed to Ireland, and when he drew nigh the coast, he called for his harp, and sitting up on his couch on the deck, played the merriest tune that was ever heard in that land. And the warders on the castle wall, hearing him, sent and told King Anguish how a ship drew near with one who harped as none other might. Then King Anguish sent knights ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... sacred notes the hosts proceed, Though blasphemies they hear and cursed things; So with Apollo's harp Pan tunes his reed, So adders hiss where Philomela sings; Nor flying darts nor stones the Christians dreed, Nor arrows shot, nor quarries cast from slings; But with assured faith, as dreading naught, The holy work begun to end ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... the distant tugs waved dismal farewell. A chill wind had begun to harp through the cordage of the little schooner; the moan—far flung, mystic, a voice from nowhere—that presages the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Lamb shall wash him clean And him shall heavenly arms enfold, Among the saints he shall be seen Performing on a harp ...
— Poems • T. S. [Thomas Stearns] Eliot
... was not a little anxious to catch a glimpse of the mysterious creatures who had so whimsical a reason for taking an interest in him. Many and many a time he sat at the waterfall where the Nixy was said to play the harp every midsummer night, but although he sometimes imagined that he heard a vague melody trembling through the rush and roar of the water, and saw glimpses of white limbs flashing through the current, yet never did he get a ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... Cercamorte's absence, while Madonna Gemma was leaning on the parapet of the keep, there appeared at the edge of the woods a young man in light-blue tunic and hood, a small gilded harp under his arm. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... is described enthusiastically by the chroniclers of the times. "The whole city turned out before him; the poets chanted odes in his praise, the musicians filled the air with the sound of the vielle [hurdy-gurdy!], of fifes, of tambours, of the psalterion and of the harp." Another admires the richness of the garments: "It is a pleasure to see the embroideries of gold and the coats of jewelled silk sparkle on all the public places, in the streets, in the squares. Old age, the flower of life, petulant youth, all stoop under the weight ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... it is that all the nation, thus 'all that mighty heart,' through nine hundred miles of space, from Sutherlandshire by London to the myrtle climate of Cornwall, has become and is ever more becoming one infinite harp, swept by the same breeze of ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... prelude to his pleasant strains, Telemachus his head inclining nigh To Pallas' ear, lest others should his words Witness, the blue-eyed Goddess thus bespake. My inmate and my friend! far from my lips Be ev'ry word that might displease thine ear! The song—the harp,—what can they less than charm 200 These wantons? who the bread unpurchased eat Of one whose bones on yonder continent Lie mould'ring, drench'd by all the show'rs of heaven, Or roll at random in the billowy deep. Ah! could they see him once to his ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... pride and ambition of his military career, all were forgotten, and by Ruez's side he was perhaps more of a child at heart than the boy himself. How strange are our natures; how susceptible to outward influence; how attunable to harshness or to plaintive notes! We are but as the olian harp, and the winds of heaven play upon us ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... handsome pieces of mahogany, a bookcase full of books bound in old calf, a table on which are tropical fruits and cooling drinks in earthen jugs, one or two palm-trees, and Caribbean pottery on shelves. In one corner is a harp. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... about him that we do not feel about any other poet and essayist of his time. His poems are the fruit of Oriental mysticism and bardic fervor grafted upon the shrewd, parsimonious, New England puritanic stock. The stress and wild, uncertain melody of his poetry is like that of the wind-harp. No writing surpasses his in the extent to which it takes hold of the concrete, the real, the familiar, and none surpasses his in its elusive, mystical suggestiveness, and its cryptic character. It is Yankee ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... days of its publication. George Ellis playfully observed to Scott that "the personal appearance of the Minstrel who, though the Last, is by far the most charming of all minstrels, is by no means compensated by the idea of an author shorn of his picturesque beard, deprived of his harp, and writing letters to his intimate friends." The Minstrel of the Lay was but a creature of imagination; the Minstrel of "Marmion" ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... cider; citron; clocks; copper manufactures; copper or brass wire; cotton; crayons; crystal (cut and manufactured); cucumbers; fish; gauze of thread; hair, manufactures of hair or goats' wool, &c.; hams; harp-strings; hats or bonnets of straw, silk, beaver, felt, &c.; hops; iron and steel, wrought; japanned or lacquered ware; lace, made by the hand, &c.; latten-wire; lead (manufactures of); leather (manufactures of)—calashes, boots, and shoes, of all ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his art and to the high command God laid upon him, Markham's rebel hand Beats all in vain the harp he touched before: It yields a jingle and it yields no more. No more the strings beneath his finger-tips Sing harmonies divine. No more his lips, Touched with a living coal from sacred fires, Lead the sweet chorus of the golden wires. The voice is raucous and the phrases squeak; ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... with him all the time, and he let it out that the old fellow's about ready to tune up his eternal harp." ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... common father and mother, Adam and Eve; yet we are not told that Noah (he was six hundred years old when he went into the Ark) and his family were savages. In the 4th chapter, 21st verse of Genesis, of Jubal-Cain, we learn that "He was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ"; and in the following verse, Tubal-Cain is described as "An instructor of every ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... knees shot out from under him with his restless pain. His right arm was stretched from the bed in a narrow iron frame, reminding me of a hand laid along a harp to play the chords, the fingers with their swollen green flesh extended across the strings; but of this harp his fingers were the ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... was drawing to its close, the blind beggar bade the boy that waited near him fetch his harp. And, as had often before been his practice, he sang in a deep manly voice, to the boy's accompaniment on his harp. But the song that then he sang had never been heard before, nor was its exact like ever heard again; though tradition ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... admitted for Oldham, Dryden disdained to make use of himself. He did not, as has been said of Horace, wilfully untune his harp when he commenced satirist. Aware that a wound may be given more deeply with a burnished than with a rusty blade, he bestowed upon the versification of his satires the same pains which he had given to his rhyming plays ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... I advocate all sports, and exercises, and modes of life that improve the physical organism, I have no respect for bone, and nerve, and muscle in the abstract. Health is a fine harp, but I want to know what tune you are going to play on it. I have not one daisy to put on the grave of a dead pugilist or mere boat-racer, but all the garlands I can twist for the tomb of the man who serves God, though he be as physically weak as Richard Baxter, whose ailments ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... who played upon the harp and sometimes let Nina go with him on his tramps, to sing and play upon her fiddle, but oftener forced her to go alone,—they earned more so, he said) had often told her about the Santa Maria and the Gesu ...
— Dreamland • Julie M. Lippmann
... soon over, and then Bessie with trembling fingers managed, with severe self-control, to play 'Bonnie Dundee' to the end without a tear. Another note, however, she could not play, but replaced the cover of her harp in silence. Then Tom and Gem brought in from the garden all the flowers they could find, and a long wreath was made and twined around and over the two pillars ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... with a peculiar charm. The scene is truly suggestive: behind us, purpling in the night-air and silvered by the radiance from above, lie the wolds and mountains tenanted by the fiercest of savages; their shadowy mysterious forms exciting vague alarms in the traveller's breast. Sweet as the harp of David, the night- breeze and the music of the water come up from the sea; but the ripple and the rustling sound alternate with the hyena's laugh, the jackal's cry, and the wild ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... give to our beloved? The hero's heart to be unmoved, The poet's star-tuned harp, to sweep, The patriot's voice, to teach and rouse, The monarch's crown, to light the brows? 'He ...
— 'He Giveth His Beloved Sleep' • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... blacksmith of Wainola: "Nothing fine can be constructed From the bones and teeth of fishes By the skillful forger-artist, By the hands of the magician." These the words of Wainamoinen: "Something wondrous might be builded From these jaws, and teeth, and fish-bones; Might a magic harp be fashioned, Could an artist be discovered That could shape them to my wishes." But he found no fish-bone artist That could shape the harp of joyance From the relies of their feasting, From the jaw-bones of the monster, ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... rido, -a dry, dried up, barren. arma f. arms, weapon. armar arm, start. armona f. harmony, music, rhythm, concord, peace. armonioso, -a harmonious, melodious. aroma m. aroma, fragrance, scent, perfume. aromoso, -a aromatic, fragrant. arpa f. harp. arrancar tear out, pluck out, wring, wrest, tear away, take away. arrebatar bear away, catch, snatch up, attract, captivate, charm; —se grow furious, rush headlong, give way to passion. arrebolar redden. arrogancia f. arrogance. arrojar throw, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... frivolous and partly disreputable, such as singing, painting, dancing, and driving. Seneca might have argued that there was, at any rate, no great harm in such employments, and that they probably kept Nero out of worse mischief. But we respect Nero the less for his indifferent singing and harp-twanging just as we respect Louis XVI. less for making very poor locks; and, if Seneca had adopted a loftier tone with his pupil from the first, Rome might have been spared the disgraceful folly of Nero's subsequent buffooneries in the cities of Greece and the ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... did a rushing business during the evening hours, for the dance did not begin until seven. A Mexican orchestra, consisting of a violin, an Italian harp, and two guitars, had come up from Oakville to furnish the music for the occasion. Just before the dance commenced, I noticed Uncle Lance greet a late arrival, and on my inquiring of June who he might be, I learned that the man was Captain Frank Byler ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... appropriate hymn, in which the Supreme Being was acknowledged as the Ruler of the Seasons. This was sung, it must be confessed, by a sadly shrunken choir, stoutly supported, however, by the congregation in the body of the meeting-house, without the sound of tabret, or harp, or other musical instruments; for in those days not even the flute or grave bass-viol, those pioneers of the organ, were permitted in the Sanctuary. To the hymn succeeded a long and fervent prayer, in which Mr. Robinson, the minister (the term Reverend had then a slight papistical twang), after ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Scripture authority for placing these among the most honorable and sustaining parts of the fabric, near the corner-stone: for we are "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets." Isaiah with his evangelic clarion. Jeremiah with his pastoral reed of sorrows, and David with his many-voiced harp, sometimes loud in notes of triumph, and sometimes subdued to the voice of weeping, stand out with a marked individuality which becomes the more surprising, the more nearly we examine the distinctive features. They may be likened to those immense but goodly stones, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... lost some of its rigidity; sentences and periods grew rather than were built; phrases were alive, and learnt, if there were a need, to leap and bound. Verse was moulded by the feeling that inspired it; the melodies were like those of an Eolian harp, long-drawn or retracted as the wind swept or touched the strings. Symmetry was slighted; harmony was valued for its own sake and for its spiritual significance. Rich rhymes satisfied or surprised the ear, and the poet sometimes suffered through his ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... hands. It had been reported by Tommy Dare, the leading Newport authority on monkeys, that he had heard him play Brahm's "Variations on Paganini" with his paws on a piano, "Hiawatha" on a xylophone with his feet, and "Home, Sweet Home" with his tail on a harp simultaneously, in Paris a year ago, and that alongside of Jockobinski all other musical prodigies of the ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... drafts and alternative versions of well-known poems thirteen are now printed for the first time. Two versions of 'The Eolian Harp', preserved in the Library of Rugby School, and the dramatic fragment entitled 'The Triumph of Loyalty', are of especial ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... attractive. Not only did Calpurnia sympathize with the glory of her husband abroad, but she could also, like Mrs. Sheridan, add a charm to his talents at home, by setting his verses to music and singing them to her harp,—"with no instructor," adds Pliny, "but Love, who is, after all, the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... conscious of the nature of their affliction, and had even proved it by experiments upon themselves. "As to an imaginary cry," said I, "do but listen for a moment to the wind in this unnatural valley while we speak so low, and to the wild harp it makes ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the idea of playing the classics in "Ragtime," being the first person on the stage to play "Mendelssohn's Wedding March," "Oh Promise Me," "Star-Spangled Banner," etc., in syncopated rhythm or "Ragtime." He was also the first on the stage to do imitations of the harp, bagpipe, mandolin, banjo, etc., on the piano. His act was much imitated all over ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... outside, and the moisture had condensed within, so that it was not easy to see clearly; but they made out that a Creole woman was singing to a group of topers who sat by the fire in a corner of the room. She was middle-aged, but sang sweetly, and was accompanied on the harp by ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the Battalion returned next day to the caves at Ronville, where it was re-organised and re-equipped ready for further action. After four days' rest it again moved up, on the 21st April, this time to dug-outs in the trench system known as "The Harp," the Q.M. Stores remaining in Arras, where on the 22nd April Lieut. Lewis, acting Q.M., was killed by a shell. In "The Harp" fighting stores were issued, as the Battalion was to be in reserve for the attack on the 23rd April. At zero hour, just at dawn on that date, St. George's ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown
... effect was produced by giving each half line two strongly accented syllables. Each full line, therefore, had four accents, three of which (i.e. two in the first half, and one in the second) usually began with the same sound or letter. The musical effect was heightened by the harp with which the gleeman accompanied his singing.. The poetical form will be seen clearly in the following selection from the wonderfully realistic description of the fens haunted by Grendel. It will need only one or two readings aloud to show that many of these strange-looking words are ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Canterbury, I think—I fancy some part of your early Life might be condensed. But I will tell you, if you will allow me, when the time comes: and then you can but keep to your own plan, which you have good reason to think better than mine—though I am very strong in Scissors and Paste: my 'Harp and Lute.' Crabbe is under them now—as usual, once a Year. If one lived in London, or in any busy place, all this would not be perhaps: but it hurts nobody—unless you, who do hear too ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... to him, Hear, Abraham, ile lend you 5s. Will you, my blessed brother. Yes, I will; hear it is. Now we will boath of us go to the gav togeather. One gets his fiddle ready and the other the Tamareen. The harp is too heavy to carry. They go to call at the post office for a chinginargery—they boath come home ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... Maud, her confidante and admirer, she was wont to cast a kindly glamour of romance over her own delinquencies. "It's my heart," she would sigh pathetically. "My heart is so sensitive. It's like an Aeolian harp, Maud, upon which every passing breeze plays its melody. I'm a creature of sensibility!" And she rolled her fine eyes to the ceiling, the while Maud snorted, being afflicted with adenoids, and wrinkled her ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... beautiful flower-garden, while beyond were hills and woods; on the other, glass doors opened out upon a grassy lawn, shaded by large trees, and beyond, far away in the distance, rolled the blue sea; all around her she saw the evidences of a father's thoughtful love; a beautiful piano, a harp, a small work-table, well furnished with every requisite; books, drawing materials—everything to give pleasure and employment; while luxurious couches and easy-chairs invited to rest and repose. Several rare pictures, ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... alone!—awake, my soul—on high The glorious sun his thousand rays has flung Athwart the vaulted sky— Lo! there the heavens their mighty harp have strung, The gold, the silver and the crimson chord, To hymn their evening hymn unto the Lord. Hark! heard ye not that glorious burst of song, Which, touched by hands unseen, those chords sent forth, Bidding the attuned spheres the notes prolong ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... the wind that kisses my tresses? Or is it the harp of Innis thrilling my ear? Or is it the dawn on Ramore that dims ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... writes, in answer to BLUEBELL, who wishes to know when and by whom organs were invented: "Jubal is mentioned in Gen. iv. 21, as 'the father of all such as handle the harp and organ;' but neither the century of its invention nor the name of the inventor can be given. Hero and Vitruvius speak of a water-organ, invented or made by Ctesibius, of Alexandria, about 180 or 200 B.C., so that it may be inferred that other kinds of organs were then ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... there are some points that illustrate the policy on which Mr. Parris acted, and exhibit the skill and vigilance of his management. The motive that led him to harp so constantly upon "firewood" is obvious. It was to create a sympathy in his behalf, and bring opprobrium upon his opponents. But it cannot stand the test of scrutiny: for it had been expressly agreed, as I have said, that he should find his own fuel; and it cannot be supposed that his friends, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... that o'er him grow A harp is hung to catch the evening gale, That sings to him in accents soft and low, And soothes the maiden with its sorrowful wail, Who, as she sits within her greenwood bower, And listens to the teylin's solemn strain, Bethinks her, in her ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... anointed King over all Israel. There is another! David defeating the Philistines in the battle under the mulberry trees. There is one more! "Whose is this image?" It is that of David bringing the ark from Kirjath-jearim, and playing his harp and dancing before it. What a goodly array of pictures! All—all about the glories and successes of David. David paces idly through the halls, he sees the tapestries and paintings, but he regards them not, "My sin is ever before me." He sees only one picture, ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... may, what a striking picture is given of Saul, worn with passion and swept away by ungovernable impulses, 'prophesying' or 'raving' with wild gestures and uttering wilder sounds; and of David, young, calm, giving forth melodies on his harp and songs from his lips, that sought to soothe the paroxysms of fury. Browning has drawn the picture in immortal words, which all who can should read. It has been suggested that Saul did not 'cast' his ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... drinking man. He never let it interfere with his work, he generally drank at night and on Sundays. Every night, as soon as his chores were done, he began to drink. While he was able to sit up he would play on his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills with his jackknife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... and the piano with its yellow keys and its scratched case. But with her inner eyes she beheld a lovely rose-colored room, heaped with soft rugs and satin-lined chairs; fine, soft-grained woods, and a harp studded with rare jewels. ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... lungs. Her idea of lungs, in spite of her time among them and similar objects at a hospital, was what it had always been: that they were things like pink macaroni strung across a frame of bones on the principle of a lyre or harp, and producing noises. She thought the canary had unusual numbers of these pink strings, and all of them of the biggest ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... garth of rhyme; Tales of the framing of all things and the entering in of time From the halls of the outer heaven; so near they knew the door. Wherefore uprose a sea-king, and his hands that loved the oar Now dealt with the rippling harp-gold, and he sang of the shaping of earth, And how the stars were lighted, and where the winds had birth, And the gleam of the first of summers on the yet untrodden grass. But e'en as men's hearts were ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... cared for me, if you have any pity for an unhappy woman, let me in—let me speak to you," were the words I heard her say, in a voice like the wail of harp-strings. Its pathos would have been irresistible to any man, even if he had never loved her. Eagle March let Diana come in, though I heard him protesting that his friend Jim White might arrive ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... was over. The bards had sung their heroic songs to the accompaniment of the cruot, or harp; the fool had played his pranks, and the juggler his tricks, and the chief bard, who was expected to be familiar with "more than seven times fifty stories, great and small," had given the best from his list; and as they sat thus ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... a box just like a coffin, and cotton wool—we steal the cotton wool most times. We know where Fortune has got a lot of it put away. Iris does not think it quite right to steal, but the rest of us don't mind. And we have banners, and Orion plays the Jew's harp, and I beat the drum, and Iris sings, and Apollo digs the grave, and the dead 'un is put into the ground, and we all cry, or pretend to cry. Sometimes I do squeeze out a tiny tear, but I'm so incited I can't always manage it, although I'm sure I'll cry when Rub-a-Dub is ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... universe had never before known. But to each of us the most perfect joy will be his own consciousness, existence being then a rapture such as we never experienced. Then the bird is winged, the jewel is set in gold, the flower blooms, the harp receives all her strings, the heir is crowned. No wonder that Paul said, looking through and beyond heaven, "If by any means I might attain unto ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... dinner, where everybody but yourself is a member of an Amateur Dramatic Society." The present writer is not far from agreeing with B, while he has for A a respect which disguises no shadow of a sneer. Crebillon does harp far too much on one string, and that one of no pure tone: and even the individual handlings of the subject are chargeable throughout his work with longueurs, in the greater part of it with sheer tedium. It is very curious, and for us of the greatest importance, to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... A jolly crowd is boarding the 4:56 for a house-party in the suburbs. The gentleman at the right, having been educated abroad, has never learned to play the ukelele, the banjo, the jew's harp or the saxophone, and is, with the best intentions in the world, attempting to contribute his share to the gaiety of the coming evenings by bringing along his player-piano. Would you—be honest!—have recognized his action as a serious social blunder without ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... and feeling, within the circle of personal affectation and preoccupations, of social and educational interests, he abounds in ingenuity and sagacity, in fine criticisms, in exquisite touches. It is like a bee going from flower to flower, a teasing, plundering, wayward zephyr, an Aeolian harp, a ray of furtive light stealing through the leaves. Taken as a whole, there is something impalpable and immaterial about him, which I will not venture to call effeminate, but which is scarcely manly. He wants bone and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... that rustic harp, From off that rugged wall, For I must sing another song To suit the Muse's call, For she is bent to sing a poean, On this eventful year, In praise of the philanthropist Whom all his friends hold dear— The Grand Old Man of ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... He will inherit at least half of the largest royal fortune in Europe. The Infanta Eulalie is of lively manners and agreeable physiognomy. She was educated by the Countess Soriente, a lady of New England birth, and is an accomplished player on the harp and guitar. Her instructor was the gifted Cuban negress, who used to perform at Queen Isabella's concerts at ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... what human science and skill have since achieved in taming the great forces of Nature to man's hand, and harnessing them up into his service. Is not all this as if the infernal powers should be appeased and soothed by the melody and sweetness of the Orphean harp and voice? And do we not see how the very elements themselves grow happy and merry in serving man, when he by his wisdom and eloquence has once charmed them into order and concert? Man has but to learn Nature's language and obey her voice, and she clothes him with plenipotence. The mad warring ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... long before. Nothing is more interesting in tracing Virgil's genius, than to note how each fullest development of his talent subsumes and embraces those that had gone before it; how his mind energises in a continuous mould, and seems to harp with almost jealous constancy on strings it has once touched. The deeper we study him, the more clearly is this feature seen. Unlike other poets who throw off their stanzas and rise as if freed from a load, Virgil seems to carry the accumulated burden of his creations about ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... her? But there! The old gentleman's silly, so I have to take him some gingerbread.... Say, I must tell you something funny—he's the cutest young one! I gave him five cents for the missionary box, and he went and bought a jew's-harp! I had to laugh, it was so cute in him. But I declare, sometimes I don't know what I'm going to do ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... there he sat himself in sorrowful reverie upon the selfsame fallen tree. How long he remained there is uncertain, but he was roused by the sound of music which came from the lawn before the farmhouse. Bitterly he smiled, remembering that Wallace Banks had engaged Italians with harp, violin, and flute, promising great things for dancing on a fresh-clipped lawn—a turf floor being no impediment to seventeen's dancing. Music! To see her whirling and smiling sunnily in the fat grasp of that dancing bear! He would stay in this ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... Habichts Burg, Hawk's Castle. Rudolph dismounted, placed the priest on his horse and humbly, cap in hand, led it across the stream. Years after this picturesque event the priest, carefully disguised, attended the Council of Electors and at the psychological moment, produced his harp, burst into song on the subject of Rudolph, and so swayed the Electors that they offered the German crown to that modest and retiring Habsburg. I cannot believe this story of the priest among the ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... enjoying barbarian feasts of beer and hecatombs of lean kine and sheep—is supposed to have been a refined and splendid prince, dwelling in ideal "halls," (doubtless compounded out of the Dublin Bank and Rotunda,) and enjoying the finest music on a double-action harp. As a fact, there is no evidence whatever that the old Irish Pentarchy was much better than any five chieftainships of the Sandwich Islands. Even the historians who laud it in most pompous phrases, like Keatinge, give ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... shape, More fit to string and strike Apollo's lyre, Than bear the shield or wield the sword of Mars! A broken harp, suspended at his side, A faded garland, wreathed about his brow, Tell what he was, and still employ his care. With thin white hand, that trembles at its task, In vain he strives to bind the broken chords, And to their primal melody attune them;— In vain,—for to his efforts still replies A boding ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... music warehouse, a miniature tobacco shop, or branch depot of foreign grammars and dictionaries were before you. Every kind of musical instrument seems to have met with a companion in this tiny apartment. Here are a violin, violoncello, horn, and cornopean; there an old Welsh harp and unstrung guitar. On this shelf are pipes of all sorts and sizes, forms, and nations—the straight English, the short German, and the long Turkish; on that are cigar-boxes, snuff-boxes, and tobacco-boxes of various kinds and appearances. Scattered about the room are play-books without number, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... morning, as he crossed the Plaza, some one called him. The voice made his heart leap; his whole nature responded to it like the strings of a harp to the sweep of a skilful hand. He turned quickly, and saw two young men galloping towards him. The foremost figure was his son—his beloved youngest son—whom he had just been thinking of as well out ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... introduced to her. He explained that love was so important that it could only be discussed lightly. He said that her hair reminded him ... he wished he could think of what, but he had such a bad memory for metaphors. It took him all his time to remember that a harp was like water and Carpentier like a Greek god. It was funny, wasn't it, to have such a weak head. He thought it came from hay fever—he always had hay fever during the third week of May. It came entirely ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco
... mantle thee invest, Or Chiron lend thee his persuasive lyre, Or Socrates, of pedagogues the best, Teach thee the harp-strings of a youth's desire? ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus
... the most part of one room and a small kitchen: on the walls of the former the horses' saddles and harness, and the husband's working clothes, manufactured often by the delicate hands of his lady; in one corner, a harp or a piano; on the table, perhaps, a few numbers of the North American or Southern reviews, and some Washington or New York papers. A strange mixture of wild and civilized life. It is thus that our Johnsons, our Livingstons, and Ranselaers, and hundreds, ay, thousands of families, our Jeffersons ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... upon a throne, With harp of high, majestic tone, To praise the King of kings: And voice of heaven, ascending, swell, Which, while its deeper notes excel, Clear ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... consultation on the subject of our prospects. Although we both clung to the same top-sail-sheet, we were obliged to hallow to make ourselves heard, the howling of the wind through the rigging converting the hamper into a sort of tremendous Eolian Harp, while the roar of the water kept up a species of bass accompaniment to this music of the ocean. Marble was the one who had brought about this communication, and he was the ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... and when he drew nigh the coast, he called for his harp, and sitting up on his couch on the deck, played the merriest tune that was ever heard in that land. And the warders on the castle wall, hearing him, sent and told King Anguish how a ship drew near with one who harped ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... grassy desert; earth and sky here form a circle as distinct as that traced by a sweep of the compasses. The steppe presents nothing to attract notice but the long line of the telegraph posts, their wires vibrating in the breeze like the strings of a harp. The road could be distinguished from the rest of the plain only by the clouds of fine dust which rose under the wheels of the tarantass. Had it not been for this white riband, which stretched ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... out her gold and diamond repeater, and looked at it. It was long past midnight. She sighed as she remembered the pleasant evenings they had passed together, as her eye fell on the books they had read together, and on her piano and harp, now silent, and thought of all he had said and looked in those days when each ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of the blaze Gleams on volumes of old days, Written by masters of the art, Loud through whose majestic pages Rolls the melody of ages, Throb the harp-strings of the heart. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... like many you've seen hereabouts, with a good horse-hair sofy and the mahogany furniture nice and shiny from being varnished every spring, and over the sofy was thrown a fur rug made in lozenges of harp seal and some other fur and a dark fur border. It was real pretty—it was always wonderful to me that folks like Eskimos can make the things they do. There was some little walrus ivory carvings on the what-not, and on the mantel a row of pink mounted shells, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... lest the sound should be dissipated and escape before the sense is affected. Their entrances are hard and horny, and their form winding, because bodies of this kind better return and increase the sound. This appears in the harp, lute, or horn;[237] and from all tortuous and enclosed places ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... at a later period of their history. They also appear to have successfully applied it to the cure of diseases. The whole of David's power over the disorder of Saul may, without any miraculous intervention, be attributed to his skilful performance upon the harp. In 1st Samuel, c. xvi., we read that Saul's servants said unto him, "Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee: Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... so harp about Bethel. And I know that dream arose from nothing in the world but because she saw him pass the gate yesterday. Not that she thinks that it was he who did it; unfortunately, there is no room for that; but she will persist ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... if the line had not been made fast to the post, the former would certainly have pulled away from them or dragged them into the river. He lashes the water into foam, and bellows with rage, while they yell with delight and excitement. The stout post is shaken, and the Manila line hums like a harp-string. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... folly so prodigious, reproaches him for this complaining, these regrets. What, is he so soon weary of the marvels with which her love surrounds him? Discontented so soon with being a god? Has he so soon forgotten the old unhappiness? "My minstrel, up! Take your harp! Sing the praise of love, which you celebrate so gloriously that you won the Goddess of Love herself." Tannhaeuser, thus bidden, seizes the harp and warmly entones a hymn of praise to her, which from its climax of ardour, suddenly—as if his lips were tripped by the word "mortal" ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... some one sing to us: lightlier move The minutes fledged with music:' and a maid, Of those beside her, smote her harp, and sang. ...
— The Princess • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... tone, RALPHO, thou always harp'st upon. When thou at any thing would'st rail, 1075 Thou mak'st Presbytery the scale To take the height on't, and explain To what degree it is prophane Whats'ever will not with (thy what d'ye call) Thy light jump right, thou call'st synodical; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... answered Peter, 'I'll be a termagant again when she's gone; see if I won't. I'll get up an awful racking cough at night, and I'll worry that nasty Mr Martin much more than Dickory has worried him, see if I don't; and I'll sing on the stairs, and I'll whistle awful loud, and I'll buy a Jew's-harp with one of my pennies. I'll turn into a horrid boy! but I suppose you are right about Dickory, Flossy. Here, let's go back as fast as we can to that house you were so 'cute as to take the number of. I'm mis'rible, ...
— Dickory Dock • L. T. Meade
... Gridiron, which recalls the facetious landlord who, on gaining possession of premises once used as a music-house, chose for his sign a goose stroking the bars of a gridiron and inscribed beneath, "The Swan and Harp." It is an interesting note in the history of the St. Paul's Churchyard house that early in the eighteenth century, on the revival of Freemasonry in England, the Grand ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... the choicest legends of the antique world are preserved in silent enactment. On the heavenly sea the Argonautss keep nightly sail towards the Golden Fleece. There Herakles gripes the hydra's heads and sways his irresistible club; Arion with his harp rides the docile Dolphin; the Centaur's right hand clutches the Wolf; the Hare flees from the raging eye and inaudible bark of the Dog; and space crawls with the horrors ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... something still more terrible, voices which he could not interpret, a confusion of voices, which seemed to him to speak in foreign tongues. He had heard mightier storms than this whistle through the rigging, but never before had he heard the wind play on such a many-voiced harp. Each tree had its own voice; the pine did not murmur like the aspen nor the poplar like the mountain ash. Every hole had its note, every cliff's sounding echo its own ring. And the noise of the brooks and ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant and the Montserratian coat of arms centered in the outer half of the flag; the coat of arms features a woman standing beside a yellow harp with her ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... unfortunate enough to be in the neighbourhood of a dump of shells by the roadside at the same moment as a Hun gunner dropped a shell right on the dump. The result was that both these Officers began to soar skywards, as if off for their "harp and wings divine," but eventually found themselves on mother earth once more, the Commanding Officer badly shaken and cut about the face, the strap of his tin hat broken by the force of the explosion, and Pynsent Elliott finding that for some ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... branches, or packed away in shell boxes, were taken down, or brought out, and right merrily were they struck or thrummed with the ivory hashi (plectrum). The pretty maids of the Queen put on their ivory thimble-nails, and the Queen again listened to the sweet melodies on the koto, (flat harp), while down among the smaller fry of fishy retainers and the scullions of the kitchen, were heard the constant thump of the tsutsumi (shoulder-drum), the bang of the taiko (big drum), and the loud cries of the dancers ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... of dais. Here, in a carved settle of black wood, sat the chief. Some females, evidently the ladies of his family, were seated on piles of sheepskins, and were plying their distaffs; while an aged man was seated on the end of the dais with a harp of quaint form on his knee; his fingers touched a last chord as Archie entered, and he had evidently been playing while the ladies worked. Near him on the dais was a fire composed of wood embers, which ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... Germany, but also along the rocky fjords of Norway, among the Angles and Saxons in their new home across the channel, even in the distant Shetland Islands and on the snow-covered wastes of Iceland, this story was told around the fires at night and sung to the harp in the banqueting halls of kings and nobles, each people and each generation telling it in its own fashion and adding new elements of its own invention. This great geographical distribution of the legend, and the ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... news;—but did they refuse The pledge they loved so well?" "Oh no; for each cup mantling forth to the brim, Did the harp ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... that means that you are more simple, kindly, and truthful. What is more soothing and restorative than to stand quite still in field or forest and listen to the thousand mingled sounds that make up that wondrous melody which Nature is always playing on the numberless strings of her golden harp. Learn the peace which ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Kwaque rule Michael. Kwaque possessed a jews' harp, and, whenever the world of the Makambo and the servitude to the steward grew wearisome, he could transport himself to King William Island by thrusting the primitive instrument between his jaws ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... superbly gowned in their flowing sarongs, wearing their long Papuan pampooties and followed in turn by a group of instrumentalists playing on conchs, nose-flutes and a species of mouth-organ closely resembling the jew's-harp, but much larger and more penetrating in its quality. The crowds in the street were enormous; hundreds of strong women fainted, and the casualties are estimated at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... the slender form, and the sweet girl-face of our new "School Harm"! Say, boys! hev' ye heard an AEolian harp which a Zephyr's tremulous finger twangs? Wa'al, it kinder thrills ye the way I felt when I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 18, 1891 • Various
... of his perturbation, amazement held him silent. If a shining angel with harp and halo had confronted him with a proposition to rob a church, the situation could not have astonished him more. She ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
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