"Lilting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... evermore I 'm whistling or lilting what you sung, Your smile is always in my heart, your name beside my tongue; But you 've as many sweethearts as you 'd count on both your hands, And for myself there 's not a thumb or little ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... the deepening surges of the wind That scurried round our cot. I slept: and waked What time the summer storm, that rose and fell In sullen gusts, flew by; and slept again, And dreamed a glad return. When morning broke A glorious day begun. The storm was gone: The sparkling waves toyed with the lilting breeze; The merry sun shone bright; and all the blue Was decked with tiny flecks of feathery white. A gladsome morn! But ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... There came a lilting of music on a breeze. They were dancing, somewhere. The tango "coaxed her feet." Her body ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... sunken gardens ahead of them a band was playing, and a cluster of little lights about the bandstand showed a crowd of people down below dancing on the grass. These little lights, these bobbing black heads and the lilting music, this little inflamed Centre of throbbing sounds and ruddy illumination, made the dome of the moonlit world about it seem very vast and cool and silent. Our visitors began to realize that Bath could be very beautiful. They went to ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... place of lilting violins and merry tongues, hammers clattered and saws rasped; the servants were boarding up the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... her silk and lace, With gems on her bosom and smiles on her face, And hot-house blossoms in her hair, While her fan kept time to the swaying rhyme Of the lilting opera air. ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tale I tell, Steer through the South Pacific swell; Go where the branching coral hives Unending strife of endless lives, Where, leagued about the 'wildered boat, The rainbow jellies fill and float; And, lilting where the laver lingers, The starfish trips on all her fingers; Where, 'neath his myriad spines ashock, The sea-egg ripples down the rock; An orange wonder daily guessed, From darkness where the cuttles rest, Moored o'er the darker ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... voice, rich in overtones, quavering, weird, cadenced, throbbing with the sufferings of a race. Or perhaps that well-developed sense of humor which has, for more than a century, made ancestral sorrows bearable finds fuller expression in the lilting turn of a note than in the flashes of wit which abundantly enliven the pages of this volume. There is one lyric in particular which, in evident sincerity of feeling, simple and unaffected grace, and regularity ...
— Negro Folk Rhymes - Wise and Otherwise: With a Study • Thomas W. Talley
... the water, under the roots of a tree, close to a ford where Mr. Jackal always came to drink. By and by, sure enough, he came lilting along in a self-satisfied way, and went right into the water for a good long draught. Whereupon Miss Crocodile seized him by the right leg, and held on. He guessed at once what had happened, and called out, 'Oh! my heart's adored! I'm drowning! I'm drowning! If you ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... "There," said Polly, lilting him up, "there he goes! now—one, two, three!" and little Dick was spun in so merrily that the tears changed into ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... is na this a joyous day, a' Nature's breathing forth, In gladness an' in loveliness owre a' the wide, wide earth? The linties they are lilting love, on ilka bush an' tree, Oh! may such joy be ever felt, my Bess, by ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the familiar landscape with a stranger's and an artist's interest. Catherine took a sly look at him, expressing small admiration. She then turned her attention to seeking out objects of amusement for herself, and tripped merrily on, lilting a tune to supply the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... call as promptly as her coachman. Galling to his pride though it was, he was even forced to go a shopping with her; and the elegant Cleveland, who once thought it degrading to carry an umbrella, might be seen loaded with bandboxes, or nonchalantly lilting bundles of cashmere shawls. The only difference between Mrs. Cleveland's husband and her footman was that he received wages; but then the footman could leave when he chose, and there the parallel ended. Jack's habits had to submit to a rigid and inexorable ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... discussing the merits of the candidates, predicting the result of the election, or giving an occasional cheer for their respective parties, with the twirl of a stick or the throwing up of a hat; while from the houses on both sides of the street the scraping of fiddles, and the lilting of ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... rude wintry win' Idly raves round our dwelling, And the roar of the linn On the night breeze is swelling; So merrily we 'll sing, As the storm rattles o'er us, Till the dear sheiling ring Wi' the light lilting chorus. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Of violets and roses, passing sweet; Of throbbing heart-songs, tuned to lilting measures; Of fervent verse—with somewhat halting feet; Of every dainty Valentine that's fashioned You've had a rather goodly share each year; So will you take, in place of love-impassioned Epistles, something quieter, my dear? Three words I'll send—that is, if they're enough To take ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... monarch seriously, but the lilting melody pleased everybody except "Mr. Wood." The "Oh, Oh's" and "Ah, Ah's" of the chorus apparently stirred him to speech. He strolled from a corner of the saloon to the side of Gray, the American engineer, and said, with a ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... power. It was worn and thin, but she had the exquisite lilting note of the Highland maids at their milking or of the fisher folk at the mending of their nets. Clear and sweet and with a penetrating pathos indescribable, the voice rose and fell in all the quaint turns and quavers and cadences that a tune takes ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... in view. If the jack was there, he made no sign, and at length my sportsman's eagerness began to flag, and my eye roamed across the meadows to the church spire, under the shadow of which life as I could never know it was lilting merrily northwards. Here I was and here I should remain, like a cabbage, till Death pulled ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... we'll let 'em think we're coming along, as innocent as Mary's little lamb, so I'll let their ray stay on us. It's too thin to carry anything, and if they thicken it up much I've got an axe set to chop it off." Seaton whistled a merry lilting refrain as his fingers played over the ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... still for many minutes after Alice had gone, and shut her eyes. In a quick series of moving pictures she saw thousands of little lights and swaying people and clashing colors, and caught snatches of lilting music and laughter. She was tired, and something that seemed like a hand pressed her forehead tightly, but the near-by sound of incessant traffic sent her blood spinning, and she opened her eyes and gave a little ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... a song just then that had a lilting chorus. It told of 'Rollo, the Apollo, the King of the Swells.' So the Corps named their new member Rollo. How wonderful he was with his pride of bearing, and the insolent way of him. He moved like an Olympian through the herd of shabby little ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... education and refinement. A tantalizing thing to meet a disembodied voice like that, a low laugh, a mystery! The lady might have a face like a dried prune! (Only he knew that she hadn't!) Voices were not to be relied upon. Take that "hello-girl," for instance; she had had the softest lilting voice over the wire, then when he got a look at her she hadn't been a day under forty-five and her face——! Certainly it hadn't been the fairest that e'er the sun shone on! (Only in this case he knew it must be different!) He was a hopeless fool if ever there was one! The best thing ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... with the camp, neither setting forth the slightest earthly claim to be regarded as 'elevated poesie,' yet both remarkably sing-able, and probably destined to become broadly popular. Of these, 'Bully Boy Billy,' is set to a lilting 'devil may care' Low-Dutch camp tune—one of the kind which 'sings itself,' and is well adapted to a roaring chorus. From the same we find a lyric detailing the loss of a briarwood pipe stolen in a raid, which the grieving 'sojer' trusts (as we most sincerely do with him) may be found ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... souls romantic Are out of date as an old wife's rune. Britain is doomed as Plato's Republic—" When in at the door came a lilting tune! ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... sing—how oft in glee Came a truant boy like me, Who loved to lean and listen to your lilting melody, Till the gurgle and refrain Of your music in his brain Wrought a happiness as keen to ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... pearl. Far down the harbour was frosted with a dawning moonlight. The air was full of exquisite sounds—sleepy robin whistles, wonderful, mournful, soft murmurs of wind in the twilit trees, rustle of aspen poplars talking in silvery whispers and shaking their dainty, heart-shaped leaves, lilting young laughter from the windows of rooms where the girls were making ready for the dance. The world was steeped in maddening loveliness of sound and colour. He would think only of these things and of the deep, subtle joy they gave him. "Anyhow, no one will ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Piccolomini, or the first part of Wallenstein, and Wallenstein, are introduced in the original manuscript by a prelude in one act, entitled Wallenstein's camp. This is written in rhyme, and in nine syllable verse, in the same lilting metre (if that expression may be permitted) with the second eclogue of Spencer's Shepherd's Calendar. This prelude possesses a sort of broad humour, and is not deficient in character, but to have translated it into prose, or into any other metre ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... her fellows. Her eyes filled with a happily triumphant light and her thought a lilting song. "I have been telling you from the first touch that it was the Masters. It is the Masters! The Masters are returning to us Omans and ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... of the naval brigades at Vieux Dieu and accompanied them to the trenches north of Lierre. As they tramped down the tree-bordered, cobble-paved high road, we heard, for the first time in Belgium, the lilting refrain of that music-hall ballad which had become ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... from the people of 'Great' Russia on the north. They live in the same neat, thatched and whitewashed cottages. They have the same gayly colored national costumes still in wear, and the same fairy tales, the same merry lilting songs, so different from the melancholy strains of northern folk music. Almost the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... of kine, my darling, Nor any lilting sweeter Thine ear can know, than is their low, And the music ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... to repeat, that will strike the auditor on listening to this primitive music will be its lack of melody. The voice goes wavering and lilting along like a canoe on ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... lilting silvery. She tottered up, clinging to me. She stared. She released me, and to my gladly questing gaze her face was very white, her eyes struggling for comprehension, like those of one awakened from ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... will be another o' your freens," said he. "There's many a lilting laugh hidden in the ears o' this old tree, for here it was the cailleachs cam' tae spin in the long summer forenights, when everybody left their hames and took their beasts tae the hill for the summer. There were no dykes or hedges in those days, and the beasts had to be ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... So shall ye do weel; But and ben she'll guide the house, I'se get milk and meal. Ye'se get lilting while she sits With her rock ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... curtained windows, in one procession, to stare at the wailing, marching men of the other, and to shrink back hastily from the sight of the coffin. Tangled it would seem inextricably with streams of traffic, surging both ways, moved the "ships of the desert," loaded with emerald-green bersim; long, lilting necks, and calm, mysterious eyes of camels high above the cloaked heads of striding Bedouins, heads of defiant Arab prisoners, chained and handcuffed to each other; heads of blue-eyed water buffaloes, and heads of ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... ago we were here," said Chayne. The little square was thronged, the hotels and houses were bright with lights, and from here and from there music floated out upon the air, the light and lilting melodies of the day. "Sylvia, you see the cafe down the street there ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... them like a thousand gems Dinah's eyes were burning and smarting with the brightness. And still that tender waltz-music ran lilting through her brain, drifting as it were through the mist of ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... jars on their heads were coming home with water from the well. Suddenly I came out on an open plaza with trees from which the last leaves were falling through the greenish sunset light. The place was filled with the lilting music of a grind-organ and with a crunch of steps on the gravel as people danced. There were soldiers and servant-girls, and red-cheeked apprentice-boys with their sweethearts, and respectable shop-keepers, and their wives with mantillas over ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... would sneak back to the Grange, and creep quietly up to his tiny bare room in the roof—not supperless, indeed, motherly Mrs. Moore had seen to that. And there he would lie awake and listen with a fierce contempt as his father, hours later, lurched into the kitchen below, lilting liquorishly: ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... of her the orchestra was lilting a gay waltz, silver clattered over the white napery of the dining-room, men and women laughed and chattered and flirted; men wrote telegrams, making appointments for the morrow at early hours, and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... flowers were out along the Bois, the leaves were overhead, And I saw a regiment of the line that swung in blue and red; The youth of things, the joy of things, they made my heart to beat, And the quick-step lilting and the tramp of feet! Flic flac, flic flac, the tramping of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... ones—had a vague remembrance of an Uncle David who had brought them toys and sweetmeats in a dim past). Aunt Vivie and Mummie used to get up the most amusing Suffrage meetings in the long, narrow garden behind the house; or they combined forces with Lady Maud Parry, and spoke in lilting contralto or mezzo-soprano (with the compliant tenor or baritone of here and there a captive man) across the two gardens. Or somehow they commandeered the Square Garden on the pretext of a vast ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... I shut fast my doors And hide myself? Must I wear up the rags Of mortal perished beauty and be old? Or is there power left upon my mouth Like colour, and lilting of ruin in my eyes? Am I still rare enough to be your mate? Then why must I shame at feasts and bear myself In shy ungainly ways, made flushed and conscious By squat numb gestures of my shapeless head— Ay, and its wagging ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... I'm whistling or lilting what you sung, Your smile is always in my heart, your name beside my tongue; But you've as many sweethearts as you'd count on both your hands, And for myself there's not a thumb or little ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... as people go to physicians to have their blood examined. In the bright summer evenings long processions could be seen winding like a varicolored serpent among the gray trees. Swords flashed, banners flew, troubadours sang snatches of little lilting airs like the rise and dip of birds' wings, and beautiful ladies jingled the golden bridles of ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... into a lilting one-step. Miss Vost arched her eyebrows. Peter arose, and they glided off. It developed that Miss Vost was well qualified. There was divineness in her youthful grace; she put her heart into the dance. It seemed probable to Peter Moore that she put ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... roundness where his honest cheeks Played to the rippling gladness of his mouth! In childhood rambles, it was mostly he She chose for partner, spite of blandishment; And to her winsome ways he would forego His pompous surveillance of wine and plate, To guard her, lilting, where the summer lay On honeyed murmuring limes, and under elms, August with knotted centuries of strength And rooks sonorous in their shadowy heights. By thymy slopes, foot-deep in sward they roved, ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... lucent sun-smitten water. The ground-lark sways on a frond above you; the stonechat lights for an instant, utters his cracking cry, and is off with a whisk; you have fair, quiet, and sweet rest, and you start up ready to jog along again. You come to a slow clear stream that winds seaward, lilting to itself in low whispered cadences. Over some broad shallow pool paven with brown stones the little trout fly hither and thither, making a weft and woof of dark streaks as they travel; the minnows poise themselves, and shiver and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... apparent in the group of lyrics which deal with the less complete divisions of love. An almost oppressive intensity of womanhood pulses in A Woman's Last Word, In a Year, and Any Wife to Any Husband: the first, with its depth of self-abasement and its cloying lilting melody, trembles, exquisite as it is, on the verge of the "sentimental." There is a rarer, subtler pathos in Two in the Campagna. The outward scene finds its way to his senses, and its images make a language for his mood, or else they break sharply across it and sting it to a cry. He feels ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... general entertainment, and in spite of fierce denials even the least accomplished were compelled to perform. It brought out quite unexpected talent. Peachy, who had always declared her music "wasn't up to anything," charmed the company by lilting darkie melodies or pathetic Indian songs, Captain Preston remembered conjuring tricks which he had learned in India, Mr. Roper proved a genius at relating short stories, and Mrs. Cameron could recite old ballads with the fervor of a medieval minstrel. The walls of the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... orchestra?' he demanded when the applause had subsided, and the orchestra, one mouth-organ strong, promptly struck up a lilting music-hall ditty. From that he slid into 'My Little Grey Home,' with a very liberal measure of time to the long-drawn notes especially. The song was caught up and ran down the trench in full chorus. When it finished the orchestra was just on the point of starting ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... was only by degrees that out of this absolute essence of sheer sound distinctions of rhythm and pitch began to appear, and to assume definite musical form. The theme at first was pastoral and sweet, suggestive of rustling grasses and murmuring reeds, interwoven with which was an exquisite lilting tune, the song of the souls as they sped down the river. But one by one other elements crept into the strain; it increased in volume and variety of tone, in complexity of rhythm and tune, till it grew at length into a symphony so ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... and a dignity which might scarcely have been expected from the composer of 'La Sonnambula.' We may smile now at the trio between Pollio and his two victims, in which the extremes of fury and indignation are expressed by a lilting tune in 9-8 time, but it is impossible to deny the truth and beauty of Norma's farewell to her children, and in several other scenes there are evidences of real dramatic feeling, if not of the power to express it. It is important to remember, in discussing the ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... hours. He could be heard all over the house. Miriam had never seen him, but she noticed that great haste was always made to get a pupil to the saal and that he taught impatiently. He shouted and corrected and mimicked. Only Millie's singing, apparently, he left untouched. You could hear her lilting away through her little high songs as serenely as she did ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... stately compliance. Undulating across the studio, she returned with a mandolin—not the one I remembered, but a pretty bit of workmanship in inlaid wood. Bending above this, she relieved the wait by merry, lilting tunes like the music of a bobolink, while Kitty fidgetted in and out, the puckers in her forehead ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... floated on the air the music of the shingle, hundreds of pebbles pattering with liquid footsteps down the sand. Peals of laughter, the continuous bass roar of the men, an occasional uncertain soprano lilting of the women, came from the group. The ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... guitars, and sat in a corner playing their rapid tunes, while all danced on the dusty brick floor of the little parlour. No strange women were invited, only men; the young bloods from the big village on the lake, the wild men from above. They danced the slow, trailing, lilting polka-waltz round and round the small room, the guitars and mandolines twanging rapidly, the dust rising from the soft bricks. There were only the two English women: so men danced with men, as the Italians love to do. They love even ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... along silently one day a dainty white gull came lilting through the air and was greeted with cries of joy by the weary drivers. More than one of them could "smell the salt water." In imagination they saw this bird following the steamer up the Stikeen to the first ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... keep their feet still, though they knew that was the proper thing to do! Claude, however, found his little legs swinging in time, being careful not to let them touch the floor, and Nettie's bright head and busy hands kept up a sort of lilting movement, both children requiring some outlet ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... The lilting witchery, the unrest Of winged dreams, is in our breast; But ever dear Fulfilment's eyes Gaze otherward. The long-sought prize, My lute, must to the gods belong. The dream is lovelier than ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... it bore the agreeable, captivating label of Vienna; and immense sums were being made out of it in all the capitals of the world. George did not hope for immortal strains, but he anticipated a distinguished, lilting gaiety, and in the 'book' a witty and cosmopolitan flavour that would lift the thing high above such English musical comedies as he had seen. It was impossible that a work of so universal and prodigious a vogue should not have ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... came, and the rest of the household had gone to their usual avocations, that any real sleep came to her. The twins were singing when she awoke at noon; indeed, they almost always were singing: but this morning it was a lilting baby song about "The sun is always shining, somewhere, somewhere", and Katherine took heart as she listened, then rose and dressed in great haste, for it was years since she had remained in bed so late in the day, and she ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... grief left her old—and then Came love and made her young again As though some newer, gentler Spring Should start dead roses blossoming; Old roses that have lain full long In some forgotten book of song, Brought from their darkness to be one With lilting winds and rain and sun; And as they too might bring away From that dim volume where they lay Some lyric hint, some song's perfume To add its beauty to their bloom, So love awakes her heart that lies Shrouded in fragrant ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison
... reels up the sky, the mists are gone, And overhead the lilting bird of dawn Has spread, adoring-wise, as for a prayer, Those wondrous wings of his, Which never yet were symbols of despair! It is the feathery foeman of the night Who shakes adown the air Song-scented trills and ...
— The Song of the Flag - A National Ode • Eric Mackay
... to which Mr. Browning refers, is the water of the well or fount, at the bottom of which, as Suetonius declared, the dice thrown by Tiberius, and their numbers, were still visible. The little air which concludes the post-script reflects the careless or "lilting" mood in which Mr. Browning had thrown the "fancy dice" which cast themselves into the form of ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr |
