"Lilting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... A flurried station-master and his staff were receiving the official party. Suddenly someone started the revival hymn, "Shall We Gather at the River?" It was taken up vigorously by the thirty or forty young men who had followed the coffin, and their voices, rising and falling in a familiar lilting melody, filled the station: ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... original, or its defiance of strict metrical law. The normal line is one of four accents: but when this is said, it is almost impossible to arrive at any further generalisation. There is a certain lilting melody in many passages, and the whole play has not unfairly been said to possess the charm of a northern summer night, in which the glimmer of twilight gives place only to the gleam of morning. But ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen
... 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 Garden Party, at which every one talked ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... that was lithe and slender and oddly boyish came out to him. A voice that had in it sweet, lilting notes, like the voice of a laughing ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the private life of my neighbour birds. I heard them wake each other; I saw them make their toilets; and from the town far below my terraced garden the sound of bells came up—church bells, bells of mules and horses beginning work, while their masters sang coplas with a lilting Moorish wail. ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... melody changed to a glad little lilting measure, as sweet as love itself. The sun was coming out again and the birds began to sing. There was the trill of a canary with the sun on its cage. There was the song of the thrush, the mocking-bird and the meadow ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... in the house that evening, and I went down another way; for the sound of their lilting and laughing was but din in my ears. I passed Mary Strathsay, as I left my room; she had escaped a moment from below, had set the casement wide in the upper hall, and was walking feverishly to and fro, her arms folded, her dress blowing about her: she'll often do the same in her white ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... "There," said Polly, lilting him up, "there he goes! now—one, two, three!" and little Dick was spun in so merrily that the tears ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... lilting at our yowe-milking, Lasses a-lilting before the dawn of day; But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning— The Flowers of the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After" (1886), "Demeter and Other Poems" (1889), and "The Death of Oenone, Akbar's Dream, and Other Poems," in the year of the Poet's death (1892). In these various volumes there is much admirable work and many tuneful lyrics in the old charming, lilting strain, with not a few serious, thoughtful, stately pieces of verse, "the after-glow," as Stedman phrases it, "of a still radiant genius.... His after-song," continues this fine critic, "does not wreak itself upon the master passions of love and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... 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 I, ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, when the whole house rings, from garret to cellar, with the cries of children teething, or in the hooping-cough, the little linnet sits silent on his perch, a moping bunch of feathers, and then falls down dead, when his lilting life might have been saved by the simplest medicinal food skilfully administered. Surely if we have physicians to attend our treadmills, and regulate the diet and day's work of merciless ruffians, we should not suffer our innocent and useful prisoners thus to die unattended. ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... my peaceful and orderly family. I ask for my sisterno answer. I call, I shoutI invoke my inmates by more names than the Romans gave to their deitiesat length Jenny, whose shrill voice I have heard this half-hour lilting in the Tartarean regions of the kitchen, condescends to hear me and reply, but without coming up stairs, so the conversation must be continued at the top of my lungs. "Here he again began to hollow aloud"Jenny, ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and sometimes with a fierce eagerness that almost frightened the boy; and sometimes he frowned, and said under his breath, "Tut, tut, that will not do!" but oftener he laughed without a sound, nodding his head in time to the lilting tune, and seeming vastly pleased with Nick, the singing, and last, but ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... them 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 Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... '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 ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... Mediterranean ports, and there she took up with the fiddler. He was a Chevalier or something, and could look a woman through and through. What money he had was made, the Lord knows where, not out of fiddling, I'll be bound, for his was no music to set the tongue lilting. He'd been in the Pacific a while, they say, and was a Jack-of-all-trades in America. That's how he came across these islands, you may imagine—slap in the sea-way to Yokohama as they are. There's been ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... little flame that needed only time to destroy an arena of gladiators. Curving, pearly nails with flecks of white in them, a light low laugh, a sweet low voice! Perhaps this was her charm, a sort of samosen tone—low lilting minors that have to do with ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... the girl in response, and the curious lilting note in her voice made him turn his head and glance at her in sudden suspicion. Had she really hurt herself, or was she merely indulging some hereditary streak of buffoonery at his expense? It struck him that she ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... retreating with a faint hiss. Afterwards 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 girls were reciting ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... away the lilting waltz-music was quickening to a finish. In a few moments more their privacy would be ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... 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 august, so solemn, and so profound, ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... little curious about the nature of the place to which he had ordered this man to drive him, he leaned forward a little and asked the broad-faced Irishman, who was lilting a merry tune to himself as ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... knight sate on the brae, The broom grows bonny, the broom grows fair; And by there came lilting a lady so gay, And we daurna gang down to the broom ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... started it. By chance, the record left on the machine had been that of the latest tango, and as she listened to the pulsing, languorous strains, Willa commenced half-unconsciously to sway in rhythm with its lilting harmony. ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... 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 ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... 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 ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... at her mother with a lilting squeal of joy, and Ethel's eyes opened and narrowed with a cold and appraising scrutiny. Her hands twisted together in her lap; she seemed to be weighing and balancing. At length, with a little brooding cry, she caught the baby in ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... off my Beautiful dwelt, By the Murray streams in the West; — Lightly lilting a gay love-song Rode Bannerman of the Dandenong, With a ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... that the voyageurs coming and going might cross themselves as they passed her spire; drowsy peace but for the chapel chimes ringing . . . ringing . . . ringing . . . morning . . . noon . . . and night . . . lilting and singing and calling all New France to prayers. As the last canoe glided up the river, and sunset silence fell on Montreal, there knelt before the dimly lighted altars of the chapels, shadow figures—Maisonneuve praying for his mission; D'Ailleboust, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... and gentlemen, pleased to see you,' said Mrs. MacAlister in her lilting Gaelic; 'eh, but it's been a weary business since you were here ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... it?" cried the Cornal. "Oh! I kent it fine. 'The Rover' was her mother's trump card. I never gave a curse for a tune, but she had a way of lilting ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... are cheerful, melodious and sweet; we hear them sung and whistled all day upon the street. Some lilting ragtime ditty that's rollicking and gay will gain the public favor and hold it—for a day. But when the day is ended, and we are tired and worn, and more than half persuaded that man was made to mourn, how soothing then the music our fathers ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... Perchance a minute more will see the brood Of the shaggy forest god, and on his lip Will rest the rushes he is wont to play. His train in woven baskets bear ripe fruit And weave a dance with ropes of gray acorns, So light their touch the grasses scarcely sway As they the measure tread to the lilting flute. Alas! 't is ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... he could not speak plain. He stood only this high, Sahib, from the bottom of this truck, but he knew all our troopers by name—every one.... And he went to England, and he became a young man, and back he came, lilting a little in his walk, and cracking his finger-joints—back to his own regiment and to me. He had not forgotten either our speech or our customs. He was a Sikh at heart, Sahib. He was rich, open-handed, just, a friend of poor troopers, keen- eyed, jestful, and careless. I ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... seemed ready finished and, as it were, presentable for use, and was full of ducks, tigers, mastodons, waddling hippopotamuses, lilting deer, strong-smelling herbs, angry lions, frowsy snakes, cracked glaciers, regular waterfalls, coloured sunsets, and the rest, it suddenly came into the head of the youngest of these strong Makers of the World (the youngest, who had been sat upon and ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... applause was great and hearty, because he had spoken with fervor and well. His head was singing, and he was confused a little, after an effort that had induced emotion. Moreover, the band had begun to play again some swaying, lilting dance tune, and his pulses beat to its measure. But he did lean forward, in spite of his manners, and caught Willet's approving look, for which he was very glad. He received the compliments of the lady ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... lilting little song called "I Love My Jean." And I knew that in a moment my cue would be given, and I would hear the music of that song beginning. I was as cold as if I had been in an icy street, although it was hot. I thought of the two thousand people who were waiting for me beyond ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... 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 stops ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith |
