"Harp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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
... 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
... thy head up; within thee, too, Rises a mighty vault of blue, Wherein are harp tones ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... 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
... "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 ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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
... 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 ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... 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 |
