"Chanting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an island consecrated to music from the days of Orpheus, and we can imagine the lovers singing together and Achilles solacing his loneliness by chanting to Patroclus the praises of ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... Tahn-te had sat in meditation before the sacred wall of the stone face, chanting the songs to the clouds and the yellow birds of the sun color, watching the pictured rock until the lines moved when his body swayed to the chant, and a living thing seemed before him—the accumulated faiths of all the devotees in that place since ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... down upon the pillow, breathing the calm breath of deep, refreshing slumber. Tims still crouched upon the bed, chanting her monotonous song and contemplating her work. At length she slipped off, conscious of pins-and-needles in her legs, and as she withdrew, Milly with a sudden motion stretched her body out in the white bed, as straight and still almost as that of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... a bench before the stable door, our backs against the wall, which, was still hot from the sun's rays. The locusts were chanting their monotonous song in a great sycamore which covered us with its branches. Over the tops of the houses the full moon, which had just appeared, rose gently in the heavens. The night seemed all the more beautiful because the day ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... so they attributed their misfortunes to the anger of the old gods and decided to stamp out this new and dangerous religion. It had taken a strong hold on one of their villages, Awatobi, even to the extent of replacing some of the old ceremonies with the new singing and chanting and praying. And so Awatobi was destroyed by representatives from all the other villages. Entering the sleeping village just before dawn, they pulled up the ladders from the underground kivas where all the men of the village were known to be ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... staid, patient-like, for two or three hours more after dark to see what the Ingins was going to do, as while we sot round our little fire of buffalo-chips, smoking our pipes, we could still hear the red devils a howling and chanting, while they picked up their dead laying ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... one, as the chant proceeded, through her strange magnetic power, her listeners saw a knight step forth from the circle and drop to his knees, swearing fealty to the King and the Lord of Iblin, until all were kneeling. Then the chanting voices hushed and the rapid motions ceased: and under that spell they saw, as in a vision, luminous in the darkness, the kneeling knights of that early court of Cyprus, and in their midst, the gray-haired Joan of Iblin and the boyish monarch, in his young, rosy strength—a ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... our beauty, our picture," Agafyushka began chanting with sugary sweetness. "Our precious jewel! The people, the people that have come to-day to look at our queen. Lord have mercy upon us! Generals, and officers and gentlemen. . . . I kept looking out of window and counting and counting till I gave ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Virginia, the 1st Maryland, the 3d Tennessee, the 8th and 2d South Carolina, the 18th and 28th Virginia, and Hampton's and Cary's legions charged. The First Brigade came down upon the guns for the third time, and held them. Stuart, standing in his stirrups and chanting his commands, rounded the base of the hill, and completed ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... piety, all this is studiously dispensed with, and the body appears clad in the habit of some religious order, to which the deceased was especially addicted during life. In this manner the procession begins to move after sunset, preceded by a tall silver cross, beadles, &c.; friars, priests, &c. chanting the De Profundis through the principal streets to the church where it is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... your side of the question. As for me—well, every time I remember that popeyed unctuous fat party they called the 'Judge' chanting Conway's innocent childhood, with that big, lonesome kid standing there in the doorway listening and trying to understand, I begin to sizzle. It is time that Conway was licked—and ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... opposite the temple of Apollo, with their prows facing the enemy, prepared to defend themselves in case the Peloponnesians should sail inshore against them. After a while the Peloponnesians came up, chanting the paean for their victory as they sailed on; the single Athenian ship remaining being chased by a Leucadian far ahead of the rest. But there happened to be a merchantman lying at anchor in the roadstead, which the Athenian ship found time to sail round, ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... the central below me were working away in silent haste. All the exhausts were opened wide, the compressed air hissed from the tanks—the diving vents were chanting in all ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... when the chanting ceased and the last notes of the organ, mingling with the vibrations of the loud "A-men" as it issued from the strong chests of the intoning clergy, sent a murmuring echo through the distant arches, and the ...
— Maitre Cornelius • Honore de Balzac
... before at the head of his clan to disturb the serenity which, in spite of himself, was now softening his heart. He did not linger long, but led his horse a little within the woods, and entered the church. The gray-headed priest at the altar was solemnly chanting, from the beautiful liturgy of the Church, as he knelt down on the hard aisle, and the branching ceiling seemed to catch and repeat the notes. Through the stained window, where was pictured in unfading colors many a scene suggesting ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... excess of pietistic zeal. Unlike their ilk of India, they do not practice self-torture for long periods, but only upon a certain day in each year. Then, stripped to the waist, these poor zealots go chanting a dolorous strain, and beating themselves unsparingly upon the back with the sharp-spined cactus, or soap-weed, until they are a revolting sight to look upon. Often they sink from the exhaustion of long-sustained suffering and loss of blood. One of the ceremonies among these peculiar ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... things happen much too quick; Up jump the Boches, rifles thump and click, You stagger, and the whole scene fades away: Even good Christians don't like passing straight From Tipperary or their Hymn of Hate To Alleluiah-chanting, and the chime Of golden harps ... and ... I'm not well to-day ... It's ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... to play an anthem of Handel's while we were in the chapel: I wished for you, my dear Sneyd, particularly at that moment! Your friend took us up the hundred stairs to the roof, where he was delighted with the sound of the organ and the chanting voices rising from the choir below. My father was absorbed in the mechanical wonders of the roof: that stone roof, of which Sir Christopher Wren said, "Show me how the first stone was laid, and I will show you how ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... shrine the lady sought, and there In mute appeal for what she lack'd she knelt, Not knowing what she lack'd; but finding peace Steal o'er her soul there as she faintly heard The slow and solemn chanting of the priests, The mild monotony of murmured prayers, And hush of pauses when she seemed to feel The heart she deem'd so hard was melting fast, And listen'd to a voice within her say— "Love is not vain! Love all things and rejoice!" ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... after chanting in "Leaves of Grass" the songs of the body and existence, to then compose a further, equally needed volume, based on those convictions of perpetuity and conservation which, enveloping all precedents, make ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... church. In the church there is a sound of music. The roar of the wind, the roar of the camels, mingles with the chanting and drowns it. He cannot hear it any more. It is as if the desert is angry and wishes to kill the music. In the ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... was now an amnesty, and such prisoners as remained unexecuted for Wyatt's conspiracy were released from the Tower on the 18th of January. On the 25th a hundred and sixty priests walked in procession through the London streets, chanting litanies, with eight bishops walking after them, and Bonner carrying the host. On the 28th the cardinal issued his first general instructions. The bishops were directed to call together their clergy in every diocese in England, and to inform them of the benevolent ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... of a nun, For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd, To live a barren sister all your life, Chanting faint hymns to the cold, fruitless moon?' Give me some more sherry. Of course you must come. No use being shy—a pretty creatur' like you! And you said you liked the play," ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... a grab for his sister's arm, but she eluded him skilfully and darted after Katy, chanting maliciously: "Get it yourself—get ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... scouring the hills to the north, and one was suddenly thrown on no man's land. Batteries ashore and destroyers opened fire. Shells whirred up from below, screamed overhead and burst beyond the rise. The jabbering rose into an impassioned chanting to Allah. The searchlight switched off, the shells fell less frequently, the Oriental obligato fell away in a diminuendo of pathetic cries and a staccato of terrified jabbering. ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... march till we came in sight of that hermitage, and then we went up to it and passed the day in buying and selling, as is the wont of merchants. As soon as day had departed our sight and night was come to darken light, we repaired to the cell wherein was the dungeon, and we heard the holy man, after chanting some verses of the Koran, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... somehow, with you; when twenty years are wasted, maybe," she answered sadly. "There's the first bell! I haven't a word yet of my rhetoric lesson," opening her book and chanting, "'Man, thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear.' Are you going to Professor Simpson's class?" shutting it again. "I know the new dance"; and she began to execute it on the walk. The door of a house ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... innumerable little familiar home-sounds came to Kate's ears; the crackling of a log in the fire, a negro voice out of doors calling "Soo-i, soo-i," to the pigs, Big Liza in the distant kitchen chanting a revival hymn while she washed the dishes. Her eyes in that one moment took in, as do the eyes of a drowning person, every detail of her surroundings; the sturdy masculine furniture covered incongruously with its wedding cretonne, the piano ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... Gregorian song as he had arranged it in his "Antiphonary." And he bade them go singing among the people. And Augustine entered Kent bearing a silver cross and a banner with the image of Christ painted on it, while a long train of choristers walked behind him chanting the Kyrie Eleison. In this way they came to the court of AEthelberht, who assigned them Canterbury as an abode; and they entered Canterbury with similar pomp, and as they passed through the gates they sang this petition: "Lord, we beseech Thee to keep Thy wrath away from this ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... had undergone Diksha and were frugal in fare and possessed of cleansed souls, took up their residence there. Large numbers of Valakhilyas and many that were observant of the vow of Sanyasa also, used to dwell there. The asylum, in consequence of all this, resounded with the chanting of the Vedas and the sacred Mantras uttered by its inhabitants. Once upon a time a Sudra endued with compassion for all creatures, ventured to come into that asylum. Arrived at that retreat, he was duly honoured by all the ascetics. Beholding ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... eyes and parted lips, against the wall of the structure, where the harps and guitars played on with mad speed in an incessant roll of thunder. Hundreds of hands clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at once would sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love song, with a dying fall. A red flower, flung with a good aim from somewhere in the crowd, struck the resplendent Capataz on ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... pail of water on her head, with both dimpled arms thrown up, in ancient classic Caryatides attitude; and, pausing a moment beside the spring, stood fronting the great golden dawn—watching for the first level ray of the coming sun, and chanting the prayer of Habakkuk. Behind her in silent grandeur towered the huge outline of Lookout Mountain, shrouded at summit in gray mist; while centre and base showed dense masses of foliage, dim and purplish in the distance—a stern cowled monk of the Cumberland brotherhood. Low hills clustered ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... voice of choral song Floats upon the breeze along, Chanting clear, in solemn lays,— "Man ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... left the meeting, who were vociferously chanting, by way of grace, previous to the attack on the "roast geese," the characteristic anthem of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... so that to 'Silvio' no faith is broken. A casuistical reason indeed; but good enough for the purpose. No attempt is made to clear Amarilli of the compromising evidence on which she had been condemned, but the pair have the favour of the gods, and the chorus makes no difficulty of chanting the virtue ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... Army of the Potomac by Gen. McClellan on account of the abolition sentiments expressed in its songs. The general was apparently unable to interpret the handwriting on the wall, as long before the war was ended the entire army was enthusiastically chanting that beautiful melody to the king ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... doctor-boy on trial, came the spirits of the dead who corroboreed round him, chanting songs full of sacred lore as regards the art of healing, and instructions how, when he needed it, he could call ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... chambers! I do not like it I am sure we shall never be able to sleep, closed up from the free air of heaven in this way: I shall be always waking, and fancying I am in the chapel at home, hearing Father Lucas chanting his matins. Besides, my father would blame me for letting you be made as tender as a Frank. I'll have out this ...
— The Little Duke - Richard the Fearless • Charlotte M. Yonge
... new character, he practised some religious mummeries; he was seen worshipping the rising and setting sun. He made a prayer-book with rude drawings of the sun, moon, and stars, to which he added some gibberish prose and verse, written in his invented character, muttering or chanting it, as the humour took him. His custom of eating raw flesh seemed to assist his deception more than the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... he pondered and watched her, it seemed as if he sat in church at home listening to the choir-boys chanting. She reminded him of those boys, or their voices, rather. The same sexless quality was there. In the body of her she was woman; in the mind of her she had not grown up. She had not been exposed to ripening influences of that sort. She had had ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... prostrate there before the hills, like pilgrims come at last to their journey's end. The silence of the landscape was broken by the even rhythm of the strokes of the oar; it seemed to find a voice for the place, in monotonous cadences like the chanting of monks. The Marquis was surprised to find visitors to this usually lonely part of the lake; and as he mused, he watched the people seated in the boat, and recognized in the stern the elderly lady who had spoken so harshly to him ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... before the Government intervened. From Spain, Holland, Russia had come in other names. In Dusseldorf eighteen men and boys, surprised at their singing of Prime in the church of Saint Laurence, had been cast down one by one into the city-sewer, each chanting as ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... had fallen by the bullet—while no voice of Fabian was heard to make reply. A profound and frightful silence followed the last shot, which was broken only by the voice of the mock-bird, who appeared imperfectly to imitate the words that had been spoken, and then commenced chanting a plaintive song—as if mourning the death of those who had fallen ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... monarchy, while the royal family went through the gallery to the chapel, half the soldiers of the National Guard exclaimed, "Long live the King!" and the other half, "No; no King! Down with the veto!" and on that day at vespers the choristers preconcerted to use loud and threatening emphasis when chanting the words, "Deposuit potentes de sede," in the "Magnificat." Incensed at such an irreverent proceeding, the royalists in their turn thrice exclaimed, "Et reginam," after the "Domine salvum fac ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... king was sitting in his place at church, at vesper service; his courtiers were about him, in their bright garments, and he himself was dressed in his royal robes. The choir was chanting the Latin service, and as the beautiful voices swelled louder, the king noticed one particular verse which seemed to be repeated again and again. He turned to a learned clerk at his side and asked what those words meant, for he ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... about the middle of the fourth century and raised to his bishopric in A.D. 374. Very early he saw and appreciated the popular effect of musical sounds, and what an evangelical instrument a chorus of chanting voices could be in preaching the Christian faith; and he introduced the responsive singing of psalms and sacred cantos in the worship of the church. "A grand thing is that singing, and nothing can stand before it," he said, when the critics of his time complained that his innovation ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... he had left. In the distance a bird called sleepily from one of the fortress turrets and was answered by some creature Kennon couldn't identify. A murmur of blended sound came from the valley below, punctuated by high-pitched laughter. Someone was singing, or perhaps chanting would be a better description. The melody was strange and the words unrecognizable. The thin whine of an atomotor in the fortress's generating plant slowly built up to a keening undertone that blended into the pattern of ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... church: I believe, to state it more fairly, he had "dropped in,"—the only recognized means of access to such a service. He claimed that the music that he had heard there was music, and that (outside of his profession) the chanting and intoning could not ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... father, and Hugo too. As he let the pages of the book slip by under his thumb, he stopped, and with a very good French accent, quite different from Hilda's memory of Miss Miranda's, murmured in a sort of chanting—"Dieu qui ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... should reveal the camp, while with the drum throb they began to catch, at first faintly and then more clearly, the monotonous chant "Hai-yai-kai-yai, Hai-yai-kai-yai," that ever accompanies the Indian dance. Suddenly the drums ceased altogether and with it the chanting, and then there arose upon the night silence a low moaning cry that gradually rose into a long-drawn penetrating wail, almost a scream, made ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... human race has a stupid hatred of trees. They embrace every chance to cut them down. They have no idea of their fitness for anything but firewood or fruit bearing. But a great cathedral elm, with shadowy aisles of boughs, its choir of whispering winds and chanting birds, its hush and solemnity and majestic grandeur, actually conquers the dull human race and asserts its leave to be in a manner to which all hearts respond; and so the great elms of New England have got to be regarded with a sort of pride as among her very few ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sees me, he who sees me, stands on the middle of the earth. [The human figure symbolizes Ki/tshi Man/id[-o]; the magic lines cross his body, while his legs rest upon the outline of the Mid[-e]/wig[^a]n. His realm, the sky, reaches from the zenith to the earth, and he beholds the Mid[-e]/ while chanting and conducting ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... choir. In alternating numbers the solemn, supplicating chant was led by either row of priests. In a way it reminded one of the Gregorian chant one often hears in Catholic churches, but in this Buddhist chanting there was that curious Oriental strain of semi-tones that gave a strange and peculiar ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... said this, she dropped one of my hands, and raising her right arm, made several passes over my head, then resting her hand again upon it, she began chanting another low song: ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... To this confraternity belonged Michelangelo, among other famous men whose names stand on the rolls to this day; and doubtless the great master, hooded in black and unrecognizable among the rest, and chanting the penitential psalms in the voice that could speak so sharply, must have spent dark hours in gloomy prisons, from midnight to dawn, beside pale-faced men who were not to see the sun go down again; and in the morning, he must ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... moved once round the course, Then to the palace, as a fitter place For beauty's contest than the open plain; The singers chanting a triumphal hymn, While many instruments, deep toned and shrill, And all the ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... The Society of Jesus was not to be a contemplative order seeking only the salvation of its own members. Its energies were not to be confined to any particular channel. No extraordinary fasts or austerities were imposed, nor was the solemn chanting of the office or the use of a particular dress insisted upon. The society was to work "for the greater glory of God" in whatever way the circumstances demanded. On one thing only did St. Ignatius lay peculiar emphasis, and that was the absolute necessity of obedience to superiors ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... calling upon the other to match him. If the latter is holding his stick in the wrong hand, he loses; and so the game goes on. Two sets of drummers are playing continuously and all the while there is much chanting. In this simple wise they gamble away their belongings, even to their clothing, and, sometimes, their wives. When the wives are at stake, however, they have the privilege of taking a ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... a pair of lovers as Manuel held back the long locks blowing in the wind, while Babie tied her hat, still chanting the burthen of the tender song she had caught so soon. A voiceless sigh stirred the ruddy leaves on Pauline's bosom as she turned away, but Gilbert embodied it in words, "They are happier ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... bombing—rifles going off—balls whistling—one man groaning with a broken leg—another shouting because he couldn't find the way to his hole, and a third equally vociferous because he has tumbled into one—this man swearing—an other praying—a party of bacchanals chanting various ditties to different time and tune, or rather minus both. Here is one man grumbling because he has brought his wife with him, another ditto because he has left his behind, or sold her for an ounce of gold or a bottle of rum. ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... Damaris' grave voice—which had taken on a chanting cadence, at once novel and singularly pleasing to the young man's ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... on my arm, and let me lead thee to thy rest;' and Saronia heard the chanting of the morning hymn, and felt she had reached her goal—the dearest ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... of the love and joy which have been in the world and may be again floated up to Vanno's imagination like the chanting of mermaids heard under the sea. He felt that, if he should meet his Giulietta now, he would believe in her, and his belief would make her worthy of itself, if she were not already worthy. "May the wings of our souls never fail us," he said aloud, ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... shone fitfully ahead, while the chanting of the priests, winding in and out after the holy symbol, fell upon the ear. And the young girl gazed with pity as the remains of the Marquis de Ligne, her ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... describes Nin-ki-gal on her throne scattering over the earth the 'Seeds of Life and Death,' and chanting her responses to the Sibyl, and to the prayers of the shapes kneeling around her, the dead gods and the souls of all the sons of men. And I often wonder whether my ancestress, Fenella Stanley, had any traditional knowledge of the Queen of Death when she had her portrait painted as the ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... woolen blankets a little closer around you. The tent is closed, but through the little cracks you can see that all is still dark. In a few moments a faint grayness steals into the air, and off in the half darkness you hear the Somali gunbearers chanting their morning prayers—soft, musical, and soothing. Then there are more voices murmuring in the air and the camp slowly awakens to life. Some one is heard chopping wood, and by that time day breaks with ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... priests knelt before it, and chanted a portion of the service, and then returned to the procession, which continued its march up the street; the flowers and bits of colored paper filling the air before it, and the people still reverently bowing down to the host. The solemn and impressive chanting of the priests kindled the pious enthusiasm of the multitude, and as the line passed the cafes and estaminets, or smoking houses, the pipe, the drink, and the gay jest were abandoned, to pay homage to the faith of ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... storms, walked heavily, swinging his long arms and looking into the day's face as if he would try another fall with Death yet. Priests and acolytes, tapers, banners, vestments and a great silver Crucifix, they drifted by, chanting the dirge for Simonetta; and she, as if for a sacrifice, lifted up on her silken bed, lay couched like a white flower edged ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... simple hearts of children, must rise from the almost melancholy, somewhat religious mood, into which they had been cast. As Iberville, with Sainte-Helene and Perrot, sat watching the canoes that followed, with voyageurs erect in bow and stern, a voice in the next canoe, with a half-chanting modulation, began a song of the wild-life. Voice after voice slowly took it up, until it ran along the whole procession. A verse was sung, then a chorus altogether, then a refrain of one verse which was sung by each boat in succession to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... caught up by the cliffs of the Tyuonyi, echoes and re-echoes, a prolonged howl dying out in a wail. Men's voices, hoarse and untrained, are now heard chanting in rhythmic and monotonous chorus. They approach slowly, moving with measured regularity; and now strange figures begin to emerge from the passage-way, and as they file into the court-yard the chant grows louder and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... seemed to cry to him. "We are dead drops of ink, wake us to life and beauty. How much longer are we to lie here, dusty in death? We have waited so patiently—have pity on us, raise us up from our silent tomb, and we will fly abroad through the whole earth, chanting your glory; yea, the world shall be filled to eternity with the echoes of our music and the splendour of ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... gaily into the sunshine. From a long way off, he discerned the brazen tones of a band, the chanting of priests and townspeople, shrill voices of women. The pageant came in sight—winding its way through the multitudes under the beflagged arches of greenery, while a rain of flowers descended from windows ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... me, O auspicious King, that when Nur al-Din heard the voice singing these verses he said in himself, "Verily this be the Lady Miriam chanting without hesitation or doubt or suspicion of one from without.[FN1] Would Heaven I knew an my thought be true and if it be indeed she herself or other self!" And regrets redoubled upon him and he bemoaned himself ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... a man chanting a ballad in the street about a recent murder, in a voice that had innumerable cracks in it, and was most lugubrious. The other day I saw a man who was reading in a loud voice what seemed to be an account of the late riots and loss of life in Wigan. He walked slowly along the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... saw that my fears of her being duped by mock philanthropy were vain. Lord Mowbray was soon tired of his colloquy with the priest, and returned to us, talking of the Hebrew chanting at some synagogue in town which he had lately visited; and which, he said, was the finest thing he had ever heard. A Jewish festival was in a few days to be celebrated, and I determined, I said, to ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... Metropolitan of the Church reverently made an incision in the ice, and took out a little water in a sacred golden cup bearing strange devices. The firing of guns accompanied these solemn acts in all their stages, and wherever the grave procession moved, it always did so with measured tread, chanting sacred verses to the old, old Deity of our race, and surrounded with all the pomp of war; whilst at intervals, peals of Christian bells and the booming of near and distant guns added to the solemnity of this water pageant. After the filling of the ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... the custom of my contemporaries to belaud themselves in this prolegomenaical ritual (some saying in a few words that they supplied a want, others boasting in a hundred that they were too grand to do any such thing, but most of them baritoning their apologies and chanting their excuses till one knew that their pride was toppling over)—since, I say, it seemed a necessity to extol one's work, I wrote simply on the lintel of my diary, Praise of this Book, so as to end the matter at ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... once more mazed, the blossoms shaking from their brows; till Hautia, glided near; arms lustrous as rainbows: chanting ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... out into the street. Four men of different ages are kneeling in the mud before a Madonna, whining out prayers. Presently, fifteen or twenty others come upon you, chanting a canticle to the glory of Mary. Perhaps you think they are yielding to a natural inspiration, and freely working out their salvation. I thought so myself, till I was told that they were paid fifteen-pence for thus edifying the bystanders. This comedy ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... journey was clambering over the hot rocks when the mountains were reached, and the travellers did at last lose their resolute cheerfulness, and had just sat down in the shade to have a good cry, when they suddenly heard the sound of singing. Not exactly singing; rather a melancholy droning, or chanting, as of a dirge. Listening intently, they ...
— The Flamp, The Ameliorator, and The Schoolboy's Apprentice • E. V. Lucas
... the greeting of the rising sun on the temple-servants; Pentaur required that the younger ones at least should take part in chanting the morning hymn, and himself led the choir. They had trafficked with the offerings laid on the altar of the Goddess; the new master repressed this abuse, as well as the extortions of which they were guilty towards ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... thy banks so gayly green, May num'rous herds and flocks be seen, And lasses chanting o'er the pail, And shepherds piping in the dale, And ancient faith that knows no guile, And industry imbrown'd with toil, And hearts resolv'd, and hands prepar'd, The blessings ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... chanting round the corpse the attendants dig a shallow grave, into which it is thrown with little ceremony, and covered up with stones and earth. Fires are now lighted, and dogs and pigs are slaughtered and roasted, and these being placed ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... banners are waving, They are chanting a hymn divine; 'Tis at Koeln is that procession, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... by the harper at a feast or anniversary in remembrance of the deceased patriarch Neferhetep, who is represented sitting with his sister and wife Rennu-m-ast-neh, his son Ptahmes and his daughter Ta-Khat standing by their side, while the harper before them is chanting. The poet addresses his speech as well to the dead as to the living, assuming in his fiction the former to be yet alive. The room of the tomb, on the walls of which such texts were inscribed, may be thought a kind of chapel ...
— Egyptian Literature
... was unconscious of the music. If it was to the evening's nightingale she listened or to the twittering of the inferior songstresses of the grove who lifted up their voices when the queen was silent she could hardly have said; the melody her heart was chanting triumphantly drowned ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... approaching over the water. As it draws near, it is seen to be an angel. His wings form the sails to a boat which comes to the shore, freighted with more than a hundred souls on their way to Purgatory. They are chanting the Easter Psalm In exitu Israel; at the sign of the cross made by the angel they come ashore, and begin by inquiring the way of Virgil. While he is explaining that he is no less strange to the country than they are, some of them perceive that Dante is a living man, and all crowd around him. ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... incongruous traits. His favourite morsel was the human hand, of which he speaks to-day with an ill-favoured lustfulness. And when he said good-bye to Mrs. Stevenson, holding her hand, viewing her with tearful eyes, and chanting his farewell improvisation in the falsetto of Marquesan high society, he wrote upon her mind a sentimental impression which I try ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Blessed Sacrament, which was given, by Rev. Mr. Fraser, of the Seminary, who had previously read a solemn form of "Reparation" in the name of all present, and in which all joined. The Tantum Ergo and other hymns were sung by the nuns, and after the chanting of the CXVI. Psalm, the relic was venerated, each one devoutly kissing it, during which the choir of nuns sang the Crux fidelis. Altogether the ceremony was a very impressive one, as was evidenced by the solemn, subdued ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... on the other hand, that he put no faith whatever in "imponderables," hence Gray's reference to morale, on that day of their first meeting, had amused him. Morale, indeed! As if a man of his tough fiber could be affected by the mere chanting of a Hymn of Hate! He considered himself the captain of his soul, and the antics of a malicious enemy, the wild waving of false danger signals, instead of distracting a resolute mariner, would merely cause him ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... intercourse, and the purification rites and prayers for three days in the house set apart, while the women, who might not come close to their men in this fateful hour, stood throughout the night till dawn chanting before the door. Another poetic touch the author gives us, from the Cherokee—or Cheerake as he spells it—explaining that the root, chee-ra, means fire. A Cherokee never extinguished fire save on the occasion of a death, when he thrust a burning torch into the water and said, ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... two nations—Sachem and Sagamore, Iroquois and Algonquin, with the tall lodge-poles of the pines confirming it, and the pale ghost-flowers on the moss fulfilling it, and the stars coming one by one to nail our lodge door with silver nails, and the night winds, enchanted, chanting the Karenna of ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... hearth Blazed sprightly, and, afar diffused, the scent Of smooth-split cedar and of cypress-wood Odorous, burning cheered the happy isle. She, busied at the loom and plying fast Her golden shuttle, with melodious voice Sat chanting there; a grove on either side, Alder and poplar, and the redolent branch Wide-spread of cypress, skirted dark the cave Where many a bird of broadest pinion built Secure her nest, the owl, the kite, and daw, Long-tongued frequenters of the sandy shores. A garden vine luxuriant on all sides ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... worship they were accustomed to hear sung or recited the praises of those who had died for Christ and truth; men of whom the world was not worthy, and who, beautiful with the crown of martyrdom, were now of that glorious company who, in the presence of God, were chanting the praises of God and the Lamb. Who was not ready to die, if it were so ordained, if by such death truth could be transmitted to other ages? What was it to die to-day rather than to-morrow—for that was all—or this year rather ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... called Sprugg, and thither he had resolved to go. By noontide he had walked eight miles, and come to a green place where men were shooting at targets, the tall thick grass all around them; and a little way farther off was a train of people chanting and bearing crosses and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... of the somewhat scanty congregation were directed to him as he stood chanting in his clear, sweet musical voice the Psalms for the ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... The men frequently indulge a great degree of indolence at the expense of the women, who are compelled to sit in their canoe, exposed to the fervour of a mid-day sun, hour after hour, chanting their little song, and inviting the fish beneath them to take their bait; for without a sufficient quantity to make a meal for their tyrants, who are lying asleep at their ease, they would meet but a rude reception on their landing.—COLLINS' Account ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... Dupper rose to his feet and suggested that the city be called Phoenix, because, he explained, the Phoenix was a bird of beautiful plumage and exceptional voice, which lived for five hundred years and then, after chanting its death-song, prepared a charnel-house for itself and was cremated, after which a new and glorified bird arose from the ashes to live a magnificent existence forever. When Dupper finished his suggestion and explanation the meeting ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... in the tones that they saddened as well as delighted. How the heart can melt out at the finger-points when touching the keys of a sweetly-toned instrument! It is thrown to the air, and in its plaint makes sweet music of its melancholy. Like harmonious spirits chanting in their invisibility, making vocal the very atmosphere, it died away as though going to a great distance, and stillness was in the whole house. He stole gently to the door. There seated was Alice; her elbow on her instrument, and her brow upon her hand. The bell rang for dinner. The repast is ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... car interrupted the chanting, and, with an absent-minded glance over her shoulder, she stepped to the side of the road to ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... discreditable usage, which had already appeared among the Cardinals, attained its height. In the Carnival of 1491, they sent one another chariots full of splendid masks, of singers, and of buffoons, chanting scandalous verses. They were accompanied by men on horseback. Apart from the Carnival, the Romans seem to have been the first to discover the effect of a great procession by torchlight. When Pius II came back from the Congress of Mantua in 1459, the people waited ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... "attended Divine service." Familiarity with celestial personages was detestable to her, and she did her duty of saluting them in a courtly and reverent fashion. Westminster Abbey was her favourite church, with its dim light and shadowy distances; there in a carven stall, with choristers chanting in solemn rhythm, with the many-coloured glories of the painted windows repeating themselves on upspringing arch and clustering pillars, with the rich harmonies of the pealing organ throbbing up against screen and monument, with the ashes of the mighty dead around, and all the stately ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... laughter swimming in thine eye, That told youth's heart-felt revelry; And motion changeful as the wing Of swallow waken'd by the spring; With accents blithe as voice of May, Chanting glad Nature's roundelay; Circled by joy like planet bright That smiles 'mid wreaths of dewy light, Thy image such, in former time, When thou, just entering on thy prime, And woman's sense in thee combined Gently with childhood's simplest mind, First taught'st ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... trees; they, too, are fond of me, and come as near as they can; they would all come down close to me if they could. They love me like the rest, because I am so happy, and never cease my chanting. If I am broken to pieces against a stone, I do not mind in the least; I laugh just the same, and even louder. When I come over the hatch, I dash myself to fragments; and sometimes a rainbow comes and stays ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... attention to the beating of the big drum which was going on so briskly on the Teutonic Parnassus? At all events, there was no echo of such a noise in the "chambers of imagery" which contained Mr. Gordon Bottomley, or in Mr. W.H. Davies' wandering "songs of joy," or on "the great hills and solemn chanting seas" where Mr. John Drinkwater waited for the advent of beauty. And the guns of August 1914 found Mr. W.W. Gibson encompassed by "one dim, blue infinity of starry peace." There is a sort of German Georgian Poetry in existence; in time ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... powerful writer, and the most popular hero in Bohemia. At first he was nothing more than a child of his times. He was born on July 6th, 1369, in a humble cottage at Husinec, in South Bohemia; earned coppers in his youth, like Luther, by chanting hymns; studied at Prague University; and entered the ministry, not because he wanted to do good, but because he wanted to enjoy a comfortable living. He began, of course, as an orthodox Catholic. He was Rector first ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... and towering roof, the pillars that sprang to it everywhere like huge forest trees aspiring to the skies, the solemn shadows pierced by lines of light from the high-cut windows, the golden glory of the altars, the sounds of chanting, the sepulchres of the dead—a sense of all these things rushed in upon her, overpowering her and stamping the picture of them ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... little distance, in the grove or garden at the south, the quick rattle of the drum told of the evolutions of infantry. At length the horsemen rode slowly away to the southward, and our attention was drawn to certain groups of Italians in the interior, who were slowly marching and chanting. We entered, and were witnesses of a strange, impressive ceremony. It is among the traditions of Rome that a great number of the early Christians were compelled by their heathen persecutors to fight and die here as gladiators as a punishment for their ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... hands—which are raised almost level with his face, and reverently covered by his vestments—he bears a gemmed vessel containing the Host, to be laid by-and-by on the altar of the Holy Countenance. All the church-bells are now ringing furiously. Cannons fire, and military bands drown the low hum of the chanting. Every head is uncovered—many, specially women, are prostrate ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Road, horse-omnibuses rattled by and the shops that were still open at eleven o'clock glistened with light. Up the road, at the butcher's just below the Plough public-house, a small crowd lingered, turning over scraps of meat, while the butcher himself, chanting "Lovely, lovely, lovely!" in a kind of ecstasy, plunged again into a fresh piece of meat the attractive legend, "Oh, mother, look! Three ha'pence a pound!" Just over the way, at the Supply Stores, they had begun to roll down the heavy shutter, hiding the bright windows, and leaving only a narrow ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... Apollo and the Python at Delphi, and one in Crete recounting the saving of the new-born Zeus by the Curetes. In the chorus sung in honour of Dionysus the ancient Greek drama had its birth. From that of the winter festival, consisting of the [Greek komos] or band of revellers, chanting the "phallic songs," with ribald dialogue between the leader and his band, sprang "comedy," while from the dithyrambic chorus of the spring festival came "tragedy." For the history of the chorus in Greek drama, with the gradual subordination of the lyrical to ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... imitation gold and silver money to be burnt at the grave and so wafted to the next world for use of the departed spirit, tablets embossed with golden Chinese characters, and lanterns of varied size and shape are carried in advance by an army of riffraff. A band of priests chanting, or playing weird dirges on instruments much resembling bagpipes in sound, immediately precedes the catafalque, an immense edifice from ten to fifteen feet in height, containing the coffin and covered with beautiful hangings of embroidered silk, and which is carried ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... on the stones. And so it remains to all time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced,—in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours,—but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... claritate tua Felices ignes horum malahoth!" Thus chanting saw I turn that substance bright With fourfold lustre to its orb again, Revolving; and the rest unto their dance With it mov'd also; and like swiftest sparks, In sudden distance from my sight ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... mountain from Rieha, turned round its eastern corner, and in one hour from Rieha, reached the village of Kefr Lata [Arabic]. We were hospitably received at the house of the Sheikh of Kefr Lata, although his women only were at home. A wondering story-teller amused us in the evening with chanting the Bedouin history of the Beni Helal. Kefr Lata belongs to Ibn Szeyaf, one of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... extremes of happiness or pain. Here is where it may be seen, cheek to cheek, now in all the shivering ecstacies of intense rapture, or again moping carelessly along, with pale brow and flashing eye, sometimes writhing in the agony of undying attachment, or chanting its mad lay of hope and love in a spirit of fearful happiness more affecting than either misery ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... through the dust with seeming unconcern. At one corner a street singer was warbling, stopping frequently to cough the lava dust from his throat or shake it from his beloved mandolin. A procession of peasants passed, chanting slowly and solemnly a religious hymn. At the head of the column was borne aloft a gilded statuette of the Virgin, and although Uncle John did not know it, these simple folks were trusting in the sacred image to avert further disaster from the ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... voice ringing through the night, chanting in a tone of singular sweetness words of which each syllable comes through my open window like a wavelet of flute-sound. My Japanese servant, who speaks a little English. has told me what they ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... their feet. Some six or seven girls, well-rouged on the lips and cheeks, with large black circles around their eyes to increase their brilliance, displayed white arms, fingers covered with diamonds, round and shapely limbs. While they were chanting the Norman phrase "Allez, marchez! Allez, marchez!" they smiled at their different admirers in the reserved seats with such openness that Don Custodio, after looking toward Pepay's box to assure himself that she was not doing the same thing with some other admirer, set down in his note-book ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... steadily. Outside there was the occasional cry of some animal in alarm or pain, or calling to its mate, and the intermittent sounds of the Malay and Dyak servants. Presently one of the men began a queer chanting song, in which the others joined at intervals. After this it would seem that they turned in for the night, for no further sound came from their direction, and the whispering stillness ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... and neat in its manners and an untiring singer, morning, noon, and night his rapid chanting being heard, sometimes loud and sometimes hardly audible, as if he were becoming quite exhausted by his musical efforts. He mounts the highest tops of a large tree and sings for half an hour together. The song is not one ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... was borrowed from the mysteries of Apis, it is probable that the dancing was copied from that of the Egyptians on those occasions." Again, in Greece the like relation is everywhere seen: the original type being there, as probably in other cases, a simultaneous chanting and mimetic representation of the life and adventures of the hero or the god. The Spartan dances were accompanied by hymns and songs; and in general the Greeks had "no festivals or religious assemblies but what were accompanied with songs and dances"—both ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... desire to mingle his voice with the singer's, but he knew his throat to be harsh and stiff from chanting Latin phrases. He knew not whither the tune would lead, and yet, when she sang, he followed, realizing gladly that she voiced the familiar music of his soul. He was moved to seek her out and to talk with her, until he remembered ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... making three genuflections, and kisses it. All the clergy who are present take off their shoes, prostrate themselves, worship and kiss the cross in the order of their dignity. All the officers of the church, and all the people, follow in the same manner to adore it, while solemn music and chanting attends and completes the ceremony.' Thus a wooden board, made into the shape of a cross by some joiner, receives Divine honours. Talk not of heathen idols. Who can wonder that honest John Bunyan felt indignation, and exclaimed, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... sound lulled, and softened and softened, until it was as the murmur of a distant swarm of bees. A procession of monks wound along through an old street, chanting, as they walked. In his dream he glided in among them and bore his part in the burden of their song. He entered with the long train under a low arch, and presently he was kneeling in a narrow cell before an image of the Blessed Maiden holding ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the field, helping with the hay,' said she, in her calm, pleasant voice. I had heard her as I came near the house softly chanting some hymn-tune, and the peacefulness of that seemed to be brooding over ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell |
