"Dirge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you're whistling?" asked Lialia, gaily, as she came across the garden. "It's like a dirge ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... a dirge,— A dirge for myriad chances dead; In grief your mournful accents merge: Sing, sing the girls ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... star. So he went backwards holding it forth; and as the Leper pressed upon him, he touched him with the star; and at that the Leper cried aloud, and ran within the house; and there came forth a waft of doleful music like a dirge for the dead. ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... man hath first begun with his praise (for if he be proud you shall much better please him with a commendation than with a dirge) then, after favour won therewith, a man may little by little insinuate the doubt of such revelations—not at first as though it were for any doubt of his, but of some other man's, that men in some other places talk of. And peradventure it shall not miscontent him to say that great ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More
... grief, which is expressed by loud wailings, with beating of their breast and tearing their dishevelled hair. While professional wailers are rare, nevertheless friends and relatives congregate and add volume to the dirge of sorrow. The leading women mourners will often express in weird chant and appropriate words their praises of the virtues and the beauties of the departed ones. The men of the household mourn in silence, ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... dog shall bear it company; Small bathing boys shall feel its clammy prod, And think some jellyfish has fled the surge; And so 'twill win to where the tribe of cod In its own ooze intones a fitting dirge, And after that some false and impious fish Will likely have it for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... the North wind through the top of the ancient pines was no melancholy dirge of the dying summer, but a hymn of peace and restful ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... putting an end to him at once,' said Miss Gwynne, 'and I think we had better play his funeral dirge. Lady Mary, will you give us 'The Dead March in Saul,' or something appropriate? Never mind, Netta; I daresay cousin Howel will turn out a great man by-and-by;' this last clause was whispered to Netta, whilst the young hostess went towards a grand piano that stood invitingly open, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... hands their knell is rung; By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall a while repair, To dwell ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... another way, and sent a message to my Lord Shrewsbury, who knew me at court. As I waited in the courtyard, the musicians there were playing 'The Witches' Dirge,' as is done at the burnings—and all to mock at my queen! At last a halberdier was sent to bring ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... please me; but when the waiter was taken away to the kitchen, I found all the bird on the plate. This morning, just before daylight, I heard her playing a wild, mournful thing on the piano, that sounded like a dirge or a wail; and Ruth says when she went into the parlor to open the blinds, she found her praying, and thinks she was on her knees for an hour. Please God! sometimes I wish she was in heaven with my mother, for she will never see any peace ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... sacred earth afford thee room, Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb, Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be drest, And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast. Here shall the morn her earliest tears bestow— Here the first roses of the year shall blow; While angels with their silver ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... accession of tone, was changing the music from its proper quality to a harmony more infinite and awful. It was still low and indeterminate and sweet, but had unaccountably and strangely swelled into a gentle and sombre dirge, incommunicably mournful, and filled with a dark significance that touched him in his depth of rest with a secret tremor and awe. As he listened, rapt and vaguely wondering, the sense of his tranced ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... I complain, in piteous strain, Grief-laden, tear-evoking, shrill; Ah woe is me! woe! woe! Dirge-like it sounds; mine own death-trill I pour, yet breathing vital air. Hear, hill-crowned Apia, hear my prayer! Full well, O land, My voice barbaric thou canst understand; While oft with rendings I assail My byssine vesture ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... deeds It buries, and the earthquake dread Whose distant thunder shook the Medes? What gulf, what river has not seen Those sights of sorrow? nay, what sea Has Daunian carnage yet left green? What coast from Roman blood is free? But pause, gay Muse, nor leave your play Another Cean dirge to sing; With me to Venus' bower away, And there ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... great gateway is forever tolling its knell, and some mournful train is forever wending its slow way under the beautiful trees. Yet the sunlight falls brightly, the birds sing their sweetest over the new-made graves, the wind sighs its dirge through the tall trees, and the "sad sea waves" blend with it all their solemn undertone ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... grave alone was peace. So she lay through the long, sweet, summer night, and the mill-stream sung her dirge. ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... temperament, I suppose," he resumed. "To-night this ravishing scene of beauty and splendor makes me sad at heart, I know not why. It seems too brilliant, too dazzling. I would as soon go home and compose a dirge as anything." ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... avenue on his way home, a young girl passed him, walking very briskly. She paused for a moment just ahead of him to give some money to a poor woman who, doubled up on the pavement in a black shawl, was grinding out from a wheezy little organ a thin, dirge-like strain. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... Praxinoe! That first-rate singer, the Argive woman's daughter, is going to sing the Adonis hymn. She is the same who was chosen to sing the dirge last year. We are sure to have something first rate from her. She is going through her airs and ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... hawser strained and groaned, chocks and bitts crooned their song of stress, the wind whistled its dirge, while out from the breakers ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... on Time's remotest age, Ten thousand years, ten thousand times told o'er; Still, still with thee my onward course I urge; And now no longer hear the surge Of Time's light billows breaking on the shore Of distant earth; no more the solemn dirge— Requiem of worlds, when such are numbered o'er— Steals by: still thou art on ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... each St. Clair was buried there, With candle, with book, and with knell; But the sea caves rung, and the wild winds sung, The dirge of lovely Rosabelle." ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... rattle, they rush to the battle, (Each man in the clan a base coward disdains), They die in their glory, the trenches are gory With red blood, with shed blood of gallant McLeans. Afar on the heather, where hame folk foregather, The pibroch is wailing a dirge for the slain, The women are weeping, their lane vigils keeping, Sair, sair, are the hearts ...
— War Rhymes • Abner Cosens
... which have well nigh supplanted them. Neglect—desolation is engraven on all around, and even the little wicket, as it swings slowly to and fro, seems to say, "All gone! go-ne!" The wind, how meaningly it steals through the deserted rooms, as though breathing a funereal dirge over the departed! How "eloquent of wo" is that sound! Now swelling forth, as it were, in wild and uncontrollable grief, and now sinking exhaustedly into a low and touching mournfulness which seems almost human! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... the street outside, a half-frozen clarinetist was sending up a mournful carol from the mouth of his reed. Somewhere in the distance a high-voiced child was singing. And the wind played a dirge as it marched past the windows ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... o'er him the leaves of the forest, The fays of the wild chant the dirge of his rest; And thou, little brook, still the sleeper deplorest, And moistens the heath-bell that ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... such a blow,[215] was overwhelmed with discouragement. But Catharine de' Medici displayed little emotion. "Very well!" she quietly remarked, "then we shall pray to God in French."[216] But the truth was soon known, and the dirge and the miserere were rapidly replaced by the loud te deum and by jubilant processions in honor of the signal success ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... loathsome, and malodorous bodies were hustled into the carts with all possible speed. Then once more the melancholy cortege took its way adown the dark, deserted street, the yellow glare of links falling on the ghastly burden they accompanied, the dirge-like call of the bellman sounding on the ears of the living like a summons from the dead. And so, receiving additional freight upon its way, the cart proceeded to one of the great pits dug in the parish churchyards ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... standstill: two or three dogs lay on the soft green lawn fast asleep, an old gardener smoking his pipe and sitting on the edge of a wheelbarrow seemed following their example; and birds and insects only kept up a monotonous and drowsy dirge. ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... are done here by slaves in chains, who perform a kind of plaintive melancholy dirge in recitative, to sooth their unavailing toil, which, with the accompanyment of the clanking of their irons, is the real voice of wo, and attunes the soul to sympathy and compassion, more than the most elaborate piece ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... pathetic. She would sit for hours singing or rather mourning out a kind of dirge over herself: "Yesterday I was a woman, now I am a horror, a thing all people run from. Yesterday they would eat with me, now they spit on me. Yesterday they would talk to me with a sweet mouth, now they greet me only with curses and execrations. They have smashed my basin, they have ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... be breaking the promise that our visit to the exhibition is not to involve us in a description of all its wonders, if we walk up-stairs and look into the Tunisian Cafe, attracted by the well-known drumming and the moaning dirge which Easterns call music. Tunis is best seen out of Tunis, for the broidered gold and bright-coloured slippers can then be enjoyed without those horrible scenes of filth—dead camels, open sewers, and maimed beggars which encase the shabby mud walls I have seen ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... bird, that by the rocky cliffs of the sea, halcyon,[144] dost chant thy mournful elegy, a sound well understood by the skilled, namely, that thou art ever bemoaning thine husband in song, I, a wingless bird, compare my dirge with thine, longing for the assemblies[145] of the Greeks, longing for Lucina, who dwells along the Cynthian height, and near the palm[146] with its luxuriant foliage, and the rich-springing laurel, and the holy shoot of the deep ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... bards! A pleasant quip! No manufactured gloom to dim that far light! Of dirge's luxury deprive my lip? So suns might say there shall be no ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 29, 1892 • Various
... the measured tramp of the jury advancing, and filing into their box, had the mournful, measured beat as of pall bearers, keeping step to a dismal dirge; and when the foreman laid upon the table the fatal brass unicorn, the muffled sound seemed ominous as the grating of a coffin lowered upon the cross bars of a gaping grave. As the roll was called, each man rose, and answered in a low but distinct tone. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... sight, and for some time none spake. The solemn dirge continued, interrupted only by the stifled ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... injured man, and drawing himself up to his full height, as if it were a matter with which Heaven should be acquainted at the earliest possible opportunity, he indulged, as we before said, in the melancholy consolation of a whistled death-dirge, occasionally interrupted by a long-drawn interlude half sigh, half snuffle of his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... knew him, and they laid him by his bride; Down the aisle and o'er the threshold they were carried, side by side; While the organ played a dirge that no man ever heard before, And then softly sank to ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... defying Caesar, while the unconquerable spirit of Cato of Utica flashed from every feature; and he closed the grand appeal with the solemn words, 'or give me death!' which sounded with the awful cadence of a hero's dirge, fearless of death, and victorious in death; and he suited the action to the word by a blow upon the left breast with the right hand, which seemed to drive the ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... Patronymic Parliament Dormitory Demented Presumptuous Indent Dandelion Trident Indenture Contemporary Disseminate Annoy Odium Desolate Impugn Efflorescent Arbor vitae Consider Constellation Disaster Suburb Address Dirigible Dirge Indirectly Desperate Inoperative Benevolent Voluntary Offend Enumerate Dilapidate Request Exquisite Exonerate Approximate Insinuate Resurgence Insurrection Rapture Exasperate Complacent Dimension Commensurate Preclude Cloister Turnpike Travesty Atone Incarnate Charnal Etiquette Rejuvenate ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... northern latitude, and in addition to this, a violent storm was coming on. The wind blew in fitful gusts, howling and sighing among the huge trees with which the house was surrounded, and then dying away with a melancholy, dirge-like moan. The old tree rubbed their leafless branches against the window panes, and the fowls which had roosted there for the night, were fain to clap their wings, and make prodigious efforts to preserve their equilibrium. Mr. Cleveland grew moody and restless, ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke's grand dirge over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Bob, with the pack on his back, had as respectful an ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... dirge-like air went on, but the player did not turn his head, playing away with grave importance, and giving himself a gentle inclination now and then to make up for the sharp twitches caused by the ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... a herd of horses. But supposing they were animals gathered by the father and brother, rode on. When near the center a mighty wail smote their ears. Some of the Indians had been killed by the Smiths, and the women were wailing a funeral dirge. One who has never heard that wail cannot imagine ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... the assembly here, With marble brow, and close-shut eye, And pallid lip,—while o'er her bier, The dirge was chanted mournfully. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... a quality that was almost ponderable, it was unpleasant to eye and nostril, he tasted and breathed the smoke that was shot through it, and he felt a sickening of the soul. He heard a wind moaning through the forest, and it was to him a dirge, the lament of ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... much colder than before, darker, too, no moon now, only the silver stars; it makes one shiver. Nature seemed to lie stark and stiff and dead, and that accursed craake her dirge. All tended to shivering and gloom. Yet a great ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... the service, the firing-party in their places, six on either side of the grave, would fire three volleys into the air, while the band breathed a solemn dirge. ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... the room a blindly-glimm'ring gleam The dying embers scatter, far remote From Mirth's mad shouts, that thro' th' illumin'd roof Resound with festive echo, let me sit, Blest with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge. . . . O come then, Melancholy, queen of thought! O come with saintly look, and steadfast step, From forth thy cave embower'd with mournful yew, Where ever to the curfeu's solemn sound List'ning thou sitt'st, and with thy cypress bind Thy votary's hair, and seal ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... great Pacific, surge! Though the mariners hear, with prophetical fear, In thy surging their deathly dirge. Still, surge, ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... scorn, or transient curse, Unknown alike to honour and remorse. Behold the leering belle, caress'd by all, Adorn each private feast and public ball, 140 Where peers attentive listen and adore, And not one matron shuns the titled whore. At Peter's obsequies[5] I sung no dirge; Nor has my satire yet supplied a scourge For the vile tribes of usurers and bites, Who sneak at Jonathan's, and swear at White's. Each low pursuit, and slighter folly, bred Within the selfish heart and hollow head, Thrives uncontroll'd, and blossoms ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... This comes out most often as a note of warning; like the motif of Ortrud in the opera of "Lohengrin," it mingles ominously in every chorus of Hellenic enterprise or paean of Hellenic victory, and finally swells into a national dirge at the Turkish conquest of the peninsula. It comes out in the legendary history of the Argonautic Expedition and the Trojan War; in the arrival of Phoenician Cadmus and Phrygian Pelops in Grecian lands; in the appearance of ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... go to the street indicated, and they had hardly secured a good place before they heard martial music, playing a solemn dirge. ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... up the mansion, spread the festive board; Welcome the gay, the noble, and the fair! Through the bright hall in joyous concert poured, Let mirth and music sound the dirge of care! But ask thou not if happiness be there, If the loud laugh disguise convulsive throe, Or if the brow the heart's true livery wear; Lift not the festal mask!—enough to know No scene of mortal life but teems with mortal ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... she reached the sandy margin, Reached the cold and dismal sea-shore, Sat upon the rock of sorrow, Sat alone in cold and darkness, Listened only to the music Of the winds and rolling billows, Singing all the dirge of Aino. All that night the weary maiden Wept and wandered on the border Through the sand and sea-washed pebbles. As the day dawns, looking round her, She beholds three water-maidens, On a headland jutting seaward, Water-maidens ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... caves that none of the men dared enter—vast, gloomy tunnels into the mountain through which the chill wind whistled like a dirge. Yet the caverns were warmer than the wind, and not bad camping-places if we could have persuaded the boys ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Mr Clarke tells of the constant and active interest Mr Stevenson took in the missionaries and their work, often aiding them by his advice and fine insight into the character of the natives; and a translation follows of a dirge by one of the chiefs, so fine that we must ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... of the wandering musicians who had, at the open grave, played as a dirge, or, rather, as a ringing hymn of resurrection and deliverance, the chant of the fatherland-that dark girl to whom he had said: "Bring me this jewel, and come and live in peace with the Zilahs"—was the mother of this beautiful, fascinating creature, whose every word, since he had first ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... possession of me, a heavy weight to settle down upon my spirits. I played on dreamily, until suddenly I was stopped by a cry from Constance, 'Do for pity's sake stop that wail, Hilda; one would think you were playing our funeral dirge!' ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... wind and heaving surge, A fevered foot and a running sore, The siren's shriek for a funeral dirge, And a hobble to death on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... the ripples on the stream—when, from one of the white dwellings on the beach in whose casement a light was yet burning, came a low, sad strain of sorrow. I had heard that sound once before, and knew now it was the wail of Irish grief. Strange that mournful dirge of Erin sounded in that distant land. Grace knew the language of her country, and ere the "keen" had died upon the breeze, ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... your heart on your halfpenny,[1] or are you saying a dirge for your father's soul? ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... Mirabelle wailed, "And one grows by the knife. I shall grow in my soul In that awful strife. Let me go, let me grow," Was the theme of her dirge; "Let the sobbiest of ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... could not be guessed. With eyes fixed on the marble tomb of her first husband, the woman tremblingly awaited the solution of the mystery, until the door was darkened by something that made her catch her breath—a funeral. The organ began a solemn dirge as a black-cloaked cortege came through the aisle, and it was with amazement that the bride discovered it to be formed of her oldest friends,—bent, withered; paired, man and woman, as in mockery—while ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... half-formed scarf from her hand; and listened, without daring to draw her breath, to the deep-toned lamentations. She thought that she had never before heard the dirge of her country so piercing, so thrillingly awful. Her head fell on the armor and scarf. "Sweet lady," sighed she to herself, "who is it that dares thus invade thy duties? But my gratitude-gratitude to the once-loved lord, will ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... his face as he glared, first, on the noisy mourners, and then looked down on the white face on the pillow. At the fireplace sat his honour, buried in thought, and not heeding the talk of the jovial priest who sat and stirred his cup beside him. There, too, among the crowd of dirge- singing, laughing, whisky-drinking neighbours, I could see the ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... summer hours Make to my heart a dirge-like sound, The spring's sweet boughs of bridal flowers Lie bright across a smooth-heaped mound. What care I that I sing to-day Where sound not the old plaintive hymns, And where the mountains hide away The sunset maple's ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... flying Over the sullen waves; A dirge on the night winds sighing Up from the cold sea caves Where sea-nymphs white arms lifting Wreaths for a pall entwine For a still white face is drifting On the wave-crest—blossom ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... with a moaning of wind instruments punctuated by the roll of drums, the band struck into a dirge. The procession moved. And all of a sudden Sammy found that Scalawag was marking time just as he had been taught to do in the circus ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... 100 yds. away at the moment when the pressure upon the ship was at its climax. They walked a little way towards us, halted, and after a few ordinary calls proceeded to utter weird cries that sounded like a dirge for the ship. None of us had ever before heard the emperors utter any other than the most simple calls or cries, and the effect of this concerted ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... moan, The dirge's melancholy monotone, The measured march, the drooping flags, attest A great man's progress to his place of rest. Along broad avenues himself decreed To serve his fellow men's disputed need— Past parks he raped ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... the finished product and the purpose it will serve depends upon the arrangement of the raw materials, which is subject to the constructor's design. Building materials may be formed to prison or palace; notes may be arranged as fanfare or funeral dirge; words may be indited to inspire passion or peace, all according to the will of the designer. So also the majestic rhythm of the Word of God has wrought the primal substance: arche, into the multitudinous forms which comprise the phenomenal world, ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... fifty men and women. They seated themselves in ranks in one of the courtyards of the pa, stripped to the waist. An old chieftainess, who moved along the ranks with regular steps, brandishing an ornamental spear in time to her movements, now recited the first verse of a song in a monotonous, dirge-like measure. This was joined in by the others, who also kept time by quivering their hands and arms, nodding their heads and bending their bodies in accordance with each ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... naught in the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled, But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world? The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and voices of ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... name in oblivion—I am dead to my kindred, dead to the world; the caves of ocean are yawning for the body of the pirate-chief, and there will he sleep with the howling ocean and the shrieking storm to sing his requiem and his dirge. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... be compared to that which would be felt, if we should detach the songs of the artificial drama from their original impulse and feeling, (for instance, the willow dirge of Desdemona, and the fantastic moans of Ophelia,) and produce them in a parlor. Not but that these lyrics have a universal fitness, and a value which no time can change or circumstance diminish; but as we are looking at them simply ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... easy to be seen that terror and confusion filled it. Whimpering, white-faced women and wailing bairns ran hither and thither blindly. Somewhere in the back part of the house the bagpipes were soughing a dismal kind of dirge. Fierce-eyed men with mops of shock hair were gathered into groups of cursing clansmen. Through them all I pushed my way ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... fifth paddle with which to steer, but he soon found that the blacks could manage the canoe perfectly well without his assistance. The heat was so great on the water that we were all thankful to avoid any unnecessary exertion. The blacks as they paddled sang a low monotonous song, more like a dirge. What it was about we could not tell. By looking back we saw that we had got some distance from the land, although we appeared not to have approached nearer the opposite shore, which still remained as indistinct as before. ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... regard it as merely fantastic to believe that the Dejection, that dirge of infinite pathos over the grave of creative imagination, might, but for the fatal decree which had by that time gone forth against Coleridge's health and happiness, have been but the cradle-cry of ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... properly. When she should have been performing that routine duty, her eolian piano at home was half the time turned into a banjo or a harp, tinkling a serenade, or into an organ, playing some ponderous old anthem or sobbing out some dirge of a broken heart. These were all well enough, in their way, but they were not studying the piano. As a result, she could produce all those effects upon the instrument, that no one else would ever have thought of attempting; the only penalty being, that what any one else could have ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... procession bearing lighted tapers and carrying biers, upon which they placed the inanimate forms of the warriors. Slowly they paced about, chanting in low tones, and constantly accompanied by the funeral dirge of the musicians. ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... and clearing the whirlpools where hidden reefs threatened destruction. There were sharp turns and angles too, where the yellow water roared into fretful and vehement menace. With night-fall the heights seemed to draw in and huddle close and the dirge of flood and wind mounted into a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... of the Senor. He listlessly began to turn over the papers on the table. Presently he paused. He had taken up a sheet of paper on which Senor Perkins had evidently been essaying some composition in verse. It seemed to have been of a lugubrious character. The titular line at the top of the page, "Dirge," had been crossed out for the substituted "In ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... soule-ales, called also dirge-ales, and heathenish rioting at bride-ales." (HARRISON, Description of ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... little church upon the windy height Is grey as sky or sea. But there hath he that woke the sleepless Love Slept through these fifty years, There is the grave that has been wept above With more than mortal tears. And far below I hear the Channel sweep And all his waves complain, As Hallam's dirge through all the years must keep Its ...
— Grass of Parnassus • Andrew Lang
... sees me, God, who took my heart And drowned it in life's surge. In all your wide warm earth I have no part— A light song overcomes me like a dirge. Could Love's great harmony The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose, Not weigh me down? am I a wife to choose? Look in ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... watched the tempest, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, "William, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!" As I said these words, I perceived in the gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning illuminated the ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... we did. Then the diligence caught up with them. From a distance I saw in a pool of moonlight on the yellow road the black irregular mass of the convoy. Then I heard a weary dirge; the wretches were singing. One, in a sad and gutteral voice, gave the couplet, which trailed dismally through the depths ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... Shakespeare, and Milton scarcely mention it. It holds almost no place in the poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but, at the close of the eighteenth century, it has the good luck to be uprooted by Burns's plough, and he at once sings its dirge and its beauties; and then the flower at once becomes a celebrity. Wordsworth sings of it in many a beautiful verse; and I think it is scarcely too much to say that since his time not an English poet has ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... course they urge, A passing bell, a solemn dirge; Hoarse ravens join the strain. They see a coffin on a bier, A priest and mourners too appear, Slow moving ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... exultation, like a huge volcano's roar! There they stand, the batter'd columns, underneath the murky sky, In the hush of desperation, not to conquer but to die. Hark! the bagpipe's fitful wailing—not the pibroch loud and shrill, That, with hope of bloody banquet, lured the ravens from the hill— But a dirge both low and solemn, fit for ears of dying men, Marshall'd for their latest battle, never more to fight again. Madness—madness! Why this shrinking? Were we less inured to war When our reapers swept the harvest from the field of red Dunbar? Fetch ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... are passages of pure cantilena in this poem, where sense is absolutely swallowed up in sound, and words become the mere vehicle for rhythmic melody. Of this verbal music the dirge of the nymphs for Adonis and the threnos of Venus afford excellent examples (xix. pp. 358-361). Note ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... morning a long account from my uncle of a ball given by Lady Collingwood at Newcastle, where 450 people sat down to supper. Unfortunately the Mayor instead of giving Lord Collingwood's health, gave The Memory of Lord Nelson, with a solemn dirge, which so affected Lady Collingwood that she fainted, and was obliged to leave the room. She had not heard from Lord Collingwood for some time which made it the ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... something, she could not for a moment remember what. Then it came to her. Of course!—Leslie's wedding. They had discussed precedence and pews just that way. Music, too. Hendrick was making a note of music—Alice's favourite dirge was to be played, and "Come Ye Disconsolate" which had been sung at Theodore's funeral, thirteen years ago, and at his father's, seven years before that, was to be sung by ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... sad harp's wild complaint, Mother of shadows! as to thee he pours The broken strain, and plaintively deplores The fall of Druid fame! Hark! murmurs faint Breathe on the wavy air! and now more loud Swells the deep dirge; accustomed to complain Of holy rites unpaid, and of the crowd Whose ceaseless steps the sacred haunts profane. O'er the wild plain the hurrying tempest flies, And, mid the storm unheard, the song of ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... gold and silver he had with him; and when they were in mid Aegean, the sailors rose against him. As I was swimming alongside, I heard all that went on. 'Since your minds are made up,' says Arion, 'at least let me get my mantle on, and sing my own dirge; and then I will throw myself into the sea of my own accord.'—The sailors agreed. He threw his minstrel's cloak about him, and sang a most sweet melody; and then he let himself drop into the water, never doubting but that ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... hath befallen, the night and the blight of your sin Sweeps like a shroud o'er the faces and limbs that were gladsome therein; And the dirge of the dead breaketh forth, and the faces of all men are wet, And the walls are besprinkled with blood, and the ghosts in the gateway are met, Ghosts in the court and the gateway are gathered, Hell opens her lips, And the sun in his splendour is shrouded, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... matter of his own music were not very definite. In 1903, when he had finished all that he was to write, he expressed a preference for the "Dirge" from the "Indian" suite above anything that he had composed. "Of all my music," he confessed at this time, "the 'Dirge' in the 'Indian' suite pleases me most. It affects me deeply and did when I was writing it. In it an Indian woman laments the death of her son; but to me, as ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... dismissed the work as it bordered on fatigue. My passions, when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till they got vent in rhyme; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet! None of the rhymes of those days are in print, except "Winter, a Dirge," the eldest of my printed pieces; "The Death of Poor Maillie," "John Barleycorn," and Songs First, Second, and Third. Song Second was the ebullition of that passion which ended the forementioned ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... too dear! My words are few, And shortly none will hear my failing voice, But the same language with more full appeal Shall hail thee. Many are the sons of song Whom thou hast heard upon thy native plains, Worthy to sing of thee; the hour is come; Take we our seats and let the dirge begin. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... should like to stick his fingers in his ears, but he dared not,—as if he should like to rush down the stairs, but he could not. For the old man fixed him with his eyes, and, keeping his head turned towards his prisoner, began to march up and down the broken stone floor, and blew so wild a dirge that in a few moments it ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... rerum natura that the QUEEN'S Most Excellent Majesty, being constitutionally partial to poetry, should desire to have constant private supply from respectable tip-top genius, to be kept snug on Royal premises and ready at momentary notice to oblige with song or dirge, according as High Jinks or Dolorousness are the ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... through a wood on a rough winter day, and hear the storm howling among the leafless trees, exalted the poet's thoughts. "In such a season," he said, "just after a train of misfortunes, I composed Winter, a Dirge."] ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... bounded o'er each scene Where cisterns had so lately been: Away in frantic haste he sprung, And sought to cool his burning tongue. He howled, and to his famished cry The dreary echoes gave reply; And owlet's dirge, through shadows dim, Rolled back in sad ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... through the crevices between the shingles, and the cracks in the walls, and behold the stars gleaming from the unfathomable spaces. He wondered how far they were away. He listened to the wind chanting a solemn dirge, filling his soul with longings for he knew not what. He thought over his grandfather's stories, and the words he had spoken about courage, truth, and honor, till a shingle clattering in the wind took up the refrain, and seemed to say, Truth and honor,—truth ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... setting sun had now departed. The last tones of the dirge had died away. Everything was still and deserted, as if there ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... swelling surge, And underflowing tidal-urge, Shall grind to dust these lethal spirits And chant in triumph their sounding dirge. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... wide-open ears of Jacob his father's words sounded like a doom, giving an awful finish to the dirge-like effect of the whole announcement. His face had been gathering a wondering incredulous sorrow at the notion of Mordecai's going away: he was unable to imagine the change as anything lasting; but at the mention of "hard times for Jacob" there was no further suspense of feeling, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... swan in her watery nest Begins the sad dirge of her certain ending: 'Few words,' quoth she, 'shall fit the trespass best, Where no excuse can give the fault amending: In me more woes than words are now depending; And my laments would be drawn out too long, To tell them all with one poor ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... hoping still, a fresh outbreak of the malady occurred. He, poor soul, weary of his existence, put an end to his sufferings: he was found lifeless in the New River. Lucy Aikin quotes a Dirge found among her aunt's ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... it and became more and more intolerably arch, Alice became more and more severe. She purified the accompaniment from all taint of the young lady's intentions. It grew graver and graver. It was a hymn, a solemn chant, a dirge. The dirge of the last hope of the young ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... up the trail over the mesa to the north. Their high notes of a song came back to him,—one of those wailing chants of a score of verses dear to the Mexican heart. In any other place he would have deemed it a funeral dirge with variations, but with Indian women at sunrise ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the priests, to the number of about one hundred and fifty, clad in white robes and turbans edged with turquoise blue, filed out through the portals of the building, walking with slow and measured steps, and playing a kind of dirge upon their queer-looking musical instruments, of which the most numerous consisted of long curved trumpets formed of a kind of terra-cotta. Zorah, the high priest, marched in the van bearing aloft a pole surmounted ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... the nave they buried the lad Godwin, with chant and dirge; and when the funeral was done Hereward went up toward the high altar, and bade Winter and Gwenoch come with him. And there he knelt, and vowed a vow to God and St. Guthlac and the Lady Torfrida his true love, never to leave ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... far among old Ireland's mountains I hear the breezes sing a sad dirge, low, Wild, and yet soft, with tears from many fountains And murmuring riven ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... wrought her will, And stood by Balder lying on his bier. And at his head and feet she station'd Scalds Who in their lives were famous for their song; These o'er the corpse intoned a plaintive strain, A dirge—and Nanna and her train replied. And far into the night they wail'd their dirge. But when their souls were satisfied with wail, They went, and laid them down, and Nanna went Into an upper chamber, and lay down; And Frea seal'd her tired ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... intended to bridge over the gap between the nominal shepherds and the real poets, viewed as inspired singers: for this purpose he has adopted a bold verbal expedient, but not I think an efficient one. It may be noticed that the 'uncouth swain' who is represented in Lycidas as singing the dirge (in other words, Milton himself) is spoken of as having a mantle—it is a 'mantle blue' (see the ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... 'A Hebrew Dirge, chaunted in the Great Synagogue, St. James's Place, Aldgate, on the day of the Funeral of her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte. By Hyman Hurwitz, Master of the Hebrew Academy, Highgate: with a Translation in English Verse, by S. T. Coleridge, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... although I am past my sportive days, the sound of a street organ, if any, would inflame me to a fox-trot. Even a surly tune—if the handle be quickened—comes from the box with a brisk seduction. If a dirge once got inside, it would fret until it came out ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus: 'Go where glory waits thee.' It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... unaccountable reason—could I escape, before he touched me on the shoulder with one of his icy cold hands, and then commenced playing. Up and down the floor he paced, backwards and forwards, never taking his hateful glance off my face and ever piping the same dismal dirge. At last, unable to stand the strain of it any longer, and convinced he was a madman, bent on murdering me—for who but a lunatic would behave in such a way?—I gave way to a violent fit of hysterics, and fainted. Now ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... death of the Emperor Inkyo (A.D. 453), the Korean Court sent eighty musicians robed in black, who marched in procession to the Yamato palace, playing and singing a dirge as they went." ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... on and on he went, Till he attained the forest's verge, The garish day was well-nigh spent, Birds had already raised its dirge. Oh what a scene! How sweet and calm! It soothed at once his wounded pride, And on his spirit shed a balm That ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... had made ten of these by nightfall. The remaining fifteen were the most difficult. In the open spaces the snow was belly-deep and soft. Frequently he plunged through drifts in which for a few moments he was buried. Three times during the early part of the night Baree heard the savage dirge of the wolves. Once it was a wild paean of triumph as the hunters pulled down their kill less than half a mile away in the deep forest. But the voice no longer called to him. It was repellent—a voice of hatred and of treachery. Each time that ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... were moving across the roofs or winging through the air. The sad sound of their flapping wings rose and fell like a solemn dirge. Most of them were appareled all in white, like his captors; but others had markings of red or blue or yellow slashed across ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... wistful through your soul I go. With silver-tinkling feet I penetrate Sealed chambers, and a puissant incense throw Upon the smouldering braziers, love and hate: And chaunt the grieved verses of a dirge For dying gods, remembering flutes and shawms: With perverse moods I trouble you, and urge The sense to beauty. Give me some sweet alms, Some reverie, some pang of a damasked sword, Some poignant moment yet unparalleled In my dream-broidered chronicles, some chord ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... that Miss Oliver said once, when they were coming home in the darkness and heard a dog howl, "When a dog cries like that the Angel of Death is passing." Rilla listened with a curdling fear at her heart. It was Dog Monday—she felt sure of it. Whose dirge was he howling—to whose spirit was he sending that ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and I repaired to my stateroom, very moved by this scene. All day long I was aquiver with gruesome forebodings. That night I slept poorly, and between my fitful dreams, I thought I heard a distant moaning, like a funeral dirge. Was it a prayer for the dead, murmured in that ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... roses well, Mademoiselle," said she; "in three days I shall be here for a bouquet, and in less than thrice three days I promise you there shall be a dirge sung for ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... said Binnie, "and I would fain have converse with the Wuffle. That 'gilded subaltern' bit was ringing in my head like a dirge the other night when I was wearily trudging the seven kilometres from St. Denis camp because there was no one to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... I am done. Fidelio, play me a dirge To put me in good spirits. Merry music Is sure to make ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... were over; the azure of the sky had changed to a dead grey; the moon was appearing just over the trees; the water of the Gombe was like a silver belt; hoarse frogs bellowed their notes loudly by the margin of the creek; the fish-eagles uttered their dirge-like cries as they were perched high on the tallest tree; elands snorted their warning to the herds in the forest; stealthy forms of the carnivora stole through the dark woods outside of our camp. Within the high inclosure of bush and thorn, which we had raised around our camp, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... and sullen roar of the ocean, as it breaks in sheets of foam on the rock-bound coast—the fitful cry of curlew, as it wings over them its solitary way—or the occasional low moaning of the wind, as, stealing through amidst the rocks, it seems to pour forth a mournful dirge for the shades of departed greatness:—when we look on a scene like this, we have before our gaze all that is known of these men of the olden time. Their blood-stained rites, their solemn mysteries, are forgotten; but their simple temples still stand imperishable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... pastoral life, for example, then yields the forms of art which hold either the simple innocence of happy earthly love, as in Daphnis and Chloe, or the natural grief of elegy made beautiful, as in Bion's dirge, or the shepherding of Christ in his church on earth, as in many an English poet; the imagery has unclothed itself of actuality and shows ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... her eyes to the man beside her; her whole being vibrated with the menace of a dirge, and in the roar of traffic around her she divined the imprisoned thunder of the organ pealing for ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... devoted sons of the motherland, the Kundu and the Chakravarti zamindars. If only, say they, the country had a few more of such staunch patriots, the mills of Manchester would have, had to sound their own dirge to the tune of ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... stood amidst the poisonous dog-mercury, under the hanging ivy and the hart's-tongue ferns, watching the stream glitter on the edge of everlasting darkness, and listening to its death-dirge, I pictured awful shadows issuing from the infernal passage and seizing the terror-stricken ghost of the guilty horseman, of whom I had ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... indignation against crime; let the Devil color it with personal passion, and you have a mighty race of true and tender-hearted men living for centuries in such bloody feud that every note and word of their national songs is a dirge, and every rock of their hills is a gravestone. Take the love of beauty, and power of imagination, which are the source of every true achievement in art; let the Devil touch them with sensuality, and they are stronger than the sword or ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... the mysterious solemnity which ever broods over the ocean, Felix slowly repeated that dirge of Tennyson's, "Break, break, break!" and when he commenced the last verse, Edna's voice, low and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... Before the door a circle was formed by about twenty women, all in their best clothes, sitting on the ground, and swaying their bodies to and fro, while they sung in chorus the wild dirge already mentioned, the words of which I could not make out; in the centre of the circle sat four men playing on gumbies, or the long drum formerly described, while a fifth stood behind them, with a conch—shell, which he kept sounding at intervals. Other three ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... we change at once the moral and artistic atmosphere. The lyrical element, except for one most lovely dirge, is absent. Imagery and description are alike sternly excluded. Instead of soaring to the empyrean, our feet are firmly planted on the earth. In exchange for radiant visions of future perfection, we are brought into the sphere of dreadful passions—all ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds |
