"Lute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... large, and the pictures being in more presentable condition than usual, I enjoyed them more than I generally do; particularly a Virgin and Child by Vandyke, where two angels are singing and playing, one on a lute and the other on a violin, to remind the holy infant of the strains he used to hear in heaven. It is one of the few pictures that there is really any pleasure in looking at. There were several paintings by Titian, mostly of a voluptuous character, but not very charming; also two or more by ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in Palma de Mallorca, a young nobleman, a poet, a skilled player on the lute had stood tiptoe for attainment before the high-born and very stately lady he had courted through many moonlight nights, when her eye had chilled his quivering love suddenly and she had pulled open her bodice with both hands and shown him her breasts, ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... the door that led to the room beyond, Gian Maria caught for a moment the accents of an exquisite male voice singing a love-song to the accompaniment of a lute. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... crying out, ran to assist Alcibiades. When he began to study, he obeyed all his other masters fairly well, but refused to learn upon the flute, as a thing unbecoming a free citizen; saying that to play upon the lute or the harp does not in any way disfigure a man's body or face, but one is hardly to be known by his most intimate friends, when playing on the flute. Besides, one who plays on the harp may speak or sing at the same time; but the use of ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... friend whose only duty on earth is to puff him for a long while in certain society, and then present him at their houses as a rare bird and a man of exquisite conversation, and thereupon, just as the musical man sings and the player on the lute touches his lute before the persons to whom he has been puffed, Cydias, after coughing, pulling up his wristband, extending his hand and opening his fingers, gravely spouts his quintessentiated ideas ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... said Allen, like an Ottoman, bowing over his broad, bovine forehead, and breathing the words out like a lute; "it is he—Ethan Allen, the soldier; now, since ladies' eyes visit ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... for her complexion— Cloe, Cloe, Cloe, here, I have her, Cloe, the Daughter of a Country Gentleman; Her age upon fifteen: now her complexion, A lovely brown; here 'tis; eyes black and rolling, The body neatly built: she strikes a Lute well, Sings most inticingly, these helps consider'd, Her maiden-head will amount to some three hundred, Or three hundred and fifty Crowns, 'twill bear it handsomly. Her Father's poor, some little share deducted, To buy him a hunting Nag; I, 'twill ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - The Humourous Lieutenant • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... you. I never sung it before." "With all my heart," said Abou Hassan, taking the glass, "and, as commander of the faithful, I command you to sing it; for I am persuaded that so beautiful a lady cannot compose a song which does not abound with wit and pleasantry." The lady took a lute, and tuning it to her voice, sung with so much justness, grace, and expression, that Abou Hassan was in perfect ecstasy all the time, and was so much delighted, that he ordered her to sing it again, and was as much charmed ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... heaven and on the springing spray Buoyant with birds that sing to welcome May And April in those eyes that mourn for thee: "This is my singing month; my hawthorn tree Burgeons once more," we seemed to hear thee say, "This is my singing month: my fingers stray Over the lute. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... 'oppin'," he concluded rapturously. "A tidy way o' gettin' two or three pounds together an' fixin' up for winter. The only thing I don't like"—and here was the rift within the lute—"is paddin' the ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... sound was never sweeter, The voice so nearly mute, As beauty, dying, loses Her hold upon the lute; And like the harmonies that touch And blend with those above, Forever must an echo wake The heart ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... that Robert was good last night. He told me he had been defending Swedenborg and the spirits, which suggested to me some notion of superhuman virtue on his part. Yes; love him. He is my right 'glory'; and the 'lute and harp' would go for nothing beside him, even if 'Athenaeums' ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... fair Damascus, as the day grew late, Passed Kafur homeward through St. Thomas' gate Betwixt the pleasure-gardens where he heard Vie with the lute the twilight-wakened bird. But song touched not his heavy heart, nor yet The lovely lines of gold and violet, A guerdon left by the departing sun To grace the brow of Anti-Lebanon. Upon his soul a crushing burden weighed, And to his eyes the swiftly-gathering ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... invention but warmly upheld the lute and viol. He explained that the lute was once considered difficult to play because it had too few strings, only ten to fourteen, while at the time of his writing it had sixteen to twenty-six. He makes the statement that he never spent more than a shilling ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, Have found the fame your shores refuse; Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds which echo further west Than your ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... submarines in the Dardanelles, had simply been the victim of a "leak"; but so serious was this little "rift within the lute" that its author, Lieut.-Commander Holbrook, R.N., was awarded a V.C. for his splendid deed of daring—a very different kind of act from the German bombardment of undefended towns on our East Coast, which caused our First Lord of the Admiralty to write to the Mayor of Scarborough—and his words ...
— The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914 • Various
... when joy should brighten o'er the land, This sullen gloom in Judah's captive band? Ye sons of Judah, why the lute unstrung? Or why those harps on yonder willows hung? 80 Come, take the lyre, and pour the strain along, The day demands it; sing us Sion's song. Dismiss your griefs, and join our warbling choir, For who like you can wake ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... has never died out in central and southern Italy. One of the most celebrated in the sixteenth century, named Silvio Antoniano, at the age of eleven could sing to the accompaniment of his lute on any argument proposed to him, the poetry being as graceful and pleasing as the music. One day, while sitting at a state banquet in the Palazzo di Venezia, Giovanni Angelo de' Medici, one of the cardinals present, asked him if he could improvise "on the praises of the clock," the sound ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... make their graves so in antiquity [1].' 'Confucius mourned for his mother the regular period of three years,— three years nominally, but in fact only twenty-seven months. Five days after the mourning was expired, he played on his lute, but could not sing. It required other five days before he could accompany an instrument with his voice [2]. Some writers have represented Confucius as teaching his disciples important lessons from the manner in which he buried his mother, and having a design to ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... displeasure. The sun, then setting, shone full on his countenance as he looked round; and that countenance was one that might have haunted the nymphs of Delos; the face of Apollo, not as the hero, but the shepherd—not of the bow, but of the lute—not the Python-slayer, but the young dreamer by shady places—he whom the sculptor has portrayed leaning idly against the tree—the boy-god whose home is yet on earth, and to whom the Oracle and the Spheres are ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo - Were ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... Japanese tradition, in the fifth year of the Emperor Korei (286 B.C.), the earth opened in the province of Omi, near Kioto, and Lake Biwa, sixty miles long by about eighteen broad, was formed in the shape of a Biwa, or four-stringed lute, from which it takes its name. At the same time, to compensate for the depression of the earth, but at a distance of over three hundred miles from the lake, rose Fuji-Yama, the last eruption of which was in the year 1707. The last great earthquake at Yedo took place ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... again on the road, La Mothe's saddle-bags fastened on his led horse. He himself followed at the hour named by the King, but on foot, a knapsack strapped across his shoulders and on it a lute in open advertisement of his new trade. His sword was with his saddle-bags, but was no loss, so free from danger were the roads under the iron persuasion of the justice of the King. Nor were travellers numerous. Only twice was he passed, once by a courier riding post to Valmy, and once by ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... little clock, that it was no wonder that she did not perceive the entrance of her two visitors. Her fair cheek rested on her white arm, and her white arm on the cushion of a great chair in which she sat, pleasantly supported by sweet thoughts and swan's down; a lute was at her side, and a book of prayers lay under the table (for piety is always modest). Like the amorous Alexander, she sighed and looked (at the clock)—and sighed for ten minutes or more, when she softly breathed ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and entertaining to his friends in the evening, even when it was perceived that with difficulty he kept his eyes open; and then seemed to go to rest with no other purpose than the refreshing and enabling him with more vigour and chearfulness to sing his morning hymn, as he then used to do to his lute before he put on his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... world with imaged grace and light. The lyre was his, and his the breathing might Of the immortal marble, his the play Of diamond-pointed thought and golden tongue. Go seek the sunshine race. Ye find to-day A broken column and a lute unstrung. ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... The lute is sounding in a chamber bright With a high festival; on every side, Soft in the gleamy blaze of mellowed light, Fair women smile, and dancers graceful glide; And words still sweeter than a serenade Are breathed with guarded voice and speaking eyes, By ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... that the Lord Giovanni was oftener at the Palace than at the Castle, and during that summer Pesaro was given over to such merrymaking as it had never known before. There was endless lute-thrumming and recitation of verses by a score of parasite poets whom the Lord Giovanni encouraged, posing now as a patron of letters; there were balls and masques and comedies beyond number, and ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... The only rifts in our lute, Jack, have been little threads of jealousy that have ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... the spell which drove the evil spirit from the mind of the King of Israel," thought the sad and terrified wife; "music hath often power to soothe the darkness of the soul;" and she tuned her lute, and brought forth the softest of its tones. At length her charm was successful; Lord Greville slept; and while she watched with all the intense anxiety of alarmed affection, the unquiet slumbers which distorted one of the finest countenances that sculptor or painter ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... earth, all the hospitalities of kind and loving parents, all the sincerity and loveliness of sisters, and the benevolent devotion of brothers, who have surrounded her with every comfort; she will forsake them all, quit the harmony and sweet sound of the lute and the harp, and throw herself upon the affections of some devoted admirer, in whom she fondly hopes to find more than she has left behind, which is not often realized by many. Truth and virtue all combined! How deserving our admiration and love! Ah cruel would it be in ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... the deep organ join The long resounding voice, oft breaking clear, At solemn pauses, through the swelling base; And, as each mingling flame increases each, In one united ardour rise to Heaven. Or if you rather choose the rural shade, And find a fane in every sacred grove, There let the shepherd's lute, the virgin's lay, The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre, Still sing the God of Seasons as they roll. For me, when I forget the darling theme, Whether the blossom blows, the Summer ray Russets the plain, inspiring ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... complete, I know that," says Mr. Desmond still full of unholy enjoyment. "I lack 'bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair;' but if you will wait a moment I will run back to Coole and get the nearest thing ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... Respighi's "Suite of Four Songs and Dances of the Sixteenth Century" for the lute (transcribed for orchestra) given by the Symphony Society, ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... headquarters of the Fifth Cavalry for some time. We remained there for ten days, fitting out for a new expedition to the Republican river country, and were reinforced by three companies of the celebrated Pawnee Indian scouts, commanded by Major Frank North; his officers being Captain Lute North, brother of the Major, Captain Cushing, his brother-in-law, Captain Morse, and Lieutenants Beecher, Matthews and Kislandberry. General Carr recommended at this time to General Augur, who was in command of the Department, that I be made chief of scouts ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... re-inspire The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? He who of those delights can judge, and spare To interpose them oft, ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... laid down his lute to weep, And sighed, "She sings for me." But Colin slept a careless sleep Beneath ...
— Love Songs • Sara Teasdale
... this—was in the olden Time long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, And sparkling evermore, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... music. These fits are not the consequence of violent or contending passions: they grow not out of sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or hatred, or despair. For in the hour of affliction the tones of our fellow-creatures are ravishing as the most delicate lute; and in the flush moment of joy where is the smiler who loves not a witness to his revelry or a listener to his good fortune? Fear makes us feel our humanity, and then we fly to men, and Hope is the parent ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... struck his lute and sang, Till the shields and lances rang: How for Christ and Holy Land Fought the Lion Heart and Hand,— How the craft of Leopold Trapped him in a castle old,— How one balmy morn in May, Singing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... From the highest to the humblest, they have all drunk from those silver springs. Shepherds and herdsmen and woodsmen have been the masters of the mighty—their strains have, like the voice of a solitary lute, inspired a power of sadness into the hearts of great poets that gave their genius to be prevalent over all tears, or with a power of sublimity that gave it dominion over all terror, like the sound of a trumpet. "The ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... tune my lute to love, Ere storms disturb the tranquil hour, For her who strives my truth to prove, My only pride, and beauty's flower; But who will ne'er my pain remove, Who knows and triumphs in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Accursed dwell, O Thracian, went thy silver song! Grim Minos, with unconscious tears, Melts into mercy as he hears— The serpents in Megara's hair, Kiss, as they wreathe enamour'd there; All harmless rests the madding thong;— From the torn breast the Vulture mute Flies, scared before the charmed lute— Lull'd into sighing from their roar The dark waves woo the listening shore— Listening the Thracian's silver song!— Love ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... draymen too, have legs, and staring legs, shapely enough. But what are they? not the modulated instrument we mean—simply legs for leg-work, dumb as the brutes. Our cavalier's is the poetic leg, a portent, a valiance. He has it as Cicero had a tongue. It is a lute to scatter songs to his mistress; a rapier, is she obdurate. In sooth a leg with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... speak your wishes, and the nymphs of the Tay are as favourable as the fair ones upon the shore. Hark! it is a lute." ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... few things could add to the pleasure of life more than this. There are, to my knowledge, gifted people now alive who have no other vice than this of restlessness, and seemingly no other curse in their lives to make them unhappy: but that is enough; it is "the little rift within the lute." Restlessness makes them hapless men ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... brought up; and for cause it is so necessary for him, I do not only cause him to read it over, but also to practise the precepts of the same. After this he exerciseth his hand in writing one or two hours, and readeth upon Fabyan's Chronicle as long. The residue of the day he doth spend upon the lute and virginals. When he rideth, as he doth very oft, I tell him by the way some history of the Romans or the Greeks, which I cause him to rehearse again in a tale. For his recreation he useth to hawk and hunt and shoot in his long bow, which frameth and succeedeth so well with him that he seemeth ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... bearing torches, in search of Vittoria and her brothers. Marcello escaped, having fled the house under suspicion of the murder of one of his own followers. Flaminio, the innocent and young, was playing on his lute and singing Miserere in the great hall of the palace. The murderers surprised him with a shot from one of their harquebuses. He ran, wounded in the shoulder, to his sister's room. She, it is said, was telling her beads before retiring ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Recollection of my Morning's Debate with my Husband, which made me feel sad; and then, Mrs. Mildred, seeminge anxious to make me forget her Unmannerliness, commenced, "Can you paint?"—"Can you sing?"—"Can you play the Lute?"—and, at the last, "What can you do?" I mighte have sayd I coulde comb out my Curls smoother than she coulde hers, but did not. Other Guests came in, and talked so much agaynst Prelacy and the Right divine of Kings that I woulde fain we ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... faire dans cette galere?" expression, it was necessary to be one of the Mr. Lutes or Miss Nedra Jennings Nuncheons, of Stephen French Whitman's "Predestined," who were regular habitues of "Benedetto's," under which name Gonfarone's was thinly disguised. Mr. Lute wrote a quatrain once every three months for the "Mauve Monthly," and Miss Nuncheon, tall and thin, with a mop of orange-coloured hair, contributed somewhere stories about the "smart set," "a society existing far off amid the glamour of opera-boxes, conservatories full of orchids, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... was a certayn plowmans son of the contrey of the age of xvi yeres, that neuer coming moche amonge company but alway went to plough and husbandry. On a tyme this yonge lad went to a weddyng with his fader, where he se one lute[78] vpon a lute; and whan he came home at nyght his moder asked hym, what sporte he had at weddynge. This lad answeryd and sayd: by my trouth, moder, quod he, there was one that brought a gose in his armes and tykled her so vpon the neck, that she crekyd the sweetlyest ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... and seating himself by his side, fell to filling and giving him to drink[FN9] and entertaining him with discourse. And when they had drunk their sufficiency the host called for a slave-girl like a branch of Ban who took a lute and sang to it ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... marvellous relation to exist between harmonious sounds and the operations of nature. Harmony was esteemed the panacea, or universal remedy, in mental and even bodily affections; in the tones of the lute were found medical recipes in almost all diseases. Upon one occasion, in the presence of the grand vizier, Alfarabi, accompanying his voice with an instrument, is related to have roused a large assembly to an extreme pitch of joyful excitement, from which he moved them to grief and tears, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of this game which the dolls could vary indefinitely. The dwarfs also gave concerts and taught her to play the lute, the viola, the theorbo, the ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... than Bartoli's Tuscan to cover a page with!—yet, yet the pity of it! Le Jeune, the Phoenix, and Rossini who directed his letters to his mother as 'mother of the famous composer'—and Henry Lawes, and Dowland's Lute, ah me! ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... the road, gipsy-heart, thou and I! 'Tis the mad piper, Spring, who is leading; 'Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through the brain, irresistibly pleading; Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman, light-footed, lute-throated and fleet, We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer's song; let ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... the songs of Cashmire's vale, The rose, the lute, and the nightingale, From flow'rs, whose odours were too divine; From gems of beauty whose souls were mine; From floating eyes, that could wound, yet bless, In their warm, dark, deep, voluptuousness; I'm come, in young iv'ry breasts to lie, Betray'd like Love, by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 334 Saturday, October 4, 1828 • Various
... was filled with music, some of it very beautiful and all of it played by very famous people. A sweet singer came with his lute and sang to the King of all the princesses and queens that had listened to his tunes. But at the end the King was still weak and sorrowful. A harpist from a far country came and played music that sounded like the mighty wind on high mountain ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... near-sighted, yet with an eye of fierceness and fire; her face wrinkled by the hands of care and evil passions still more than by Time, with a big man's voice, whose harshness made those in the next room tremble; yet feminine in her tastes, skilful with her needle, fond of embroidery work, striking the lute with a touch remarkable for its science and feeling, speaking many languages, including Latin, with fluency and grace; most feminine, too, in her constitutional sufferings, hysterical of habit, shedding floods of tears daily at Philip's coldness, undisguised infidelity, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... says he, "we had cold cheer, such as herrings and biscuit, for it was Lent." Arriving at Paris, the bishop caused him to be carefully instructed in all the requisite accomplishments of a page,—the French tongue, dancing, fencing, and playing on the lute: and after nine years spent under his protection, Melvil passed into the service of the constable Montmorenci, by whose interest he obtained a pension from the king of France. Whilst in this situation, he was dispatched on a secret mission to Scotland, to learn ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... cedar or blackthorn, can harbour its singing-bird; and few are the homes in which, from nooks least suspected, there starts not a music. Is it quite true that, "non avium citharaeque cantus somnum reducent"? Would not even Damocles himself have forgotten the sword, if the lute-player had chanced on the notes ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gan awayward for to wrien;* *turn aside Him thought his woeful hearte burst in two. His bow he bent, and set therein a flo,* *arrow And in his ire he hath his wife slain; This is th' effect, there is no more to sayn. For sorrow of which he brake his minstrelsy, Both harp and lute, gitern* and psaltery; *guitar And eke he brake his arrows and his bow; And after that thus spake he to ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the black-eyed Brides of Paradise. And after a while in came other ten damsels, bearing in their hands lutes and divers instruments of mirth and music; and these, having saluted the two guests, sat down and fell to tuning their lute-strings. Then they rose and standing before them, played and sang and recited verses: and indeed each one of them was a seduction to the servants of the Lord. Whilst they were thus busied there entered other ten damsels like unto them, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... occasion," thus the one replied, "And now let all our tuneful skill be tried. "Whilst the gay courtiers quaff the smiling bowl, "And wine's strong fumes inspire the madden'd soul, "Where all around is merriment, be mine "To strike the lute, and praise the power ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... myrtle-bowers, That breathe a gale of fragrance round, I charm the fairy-footed hours With my lov'd lute's romantic sound; Or crowns of living laurel weave, For those that win the ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... he said. 'We got some more fightin' scouts down from the north, and we're keepin' our eyes skinned. But you know as well as I do, sir, that it's never an ab-so-lute certainty. If the Hun sent over a squadron we might beat 'em all down but one, and that one might do the trick. It's a matter of luck. The Hun's got the wind up all right in the air just now and I don't blame the poor devil. I'm inclined to think we haven't had the pick of his ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... and what is not is largely a matter of opinion. Instrumental music has been to some a rock of offense, exciting the spirit, through the sense of hearing, to wrong thoughts—through "the lascivious pleasing of a lute." Others think dancing wicked, while a few allow square dances, but condemn the waltz. Some sects allow pipe-organ music, but draw the line at the violin; while others, still, employ a whole orchestra in their religious service. Some there may be who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... to dine with Luigi del Riccio in company with Donate Giannotti and Antonio Petrejo. "If I were to do so, as all of you are adorned with talents and agreeable graces, each of you would take from me a portion of myself, and so would the dancer, and so would the lute-player, if men with distinguished gifts in those arts were present. Each person would filch away a part of me, and instead of being refreshed and restored to health and gladness, as you said, I should be utterly ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... cold mountain's rim. I could hear voices, and the murmurs of the sleeping men and the groans of the wounded. The scene closed. There was space and light, and a gorgeous figure, stiff with the splendour of his robes, talked in a dark garden with his lady. Their voices murmured, a lute was played, some one sang, and through the thread of it all I saw that moment when, packed together on our cart, we hung for an instant on the top of the hill and looked back to a country that had suddenly crackled ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... indolent repose; And in some fit of weariness, if he, When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch'd Even from the blazing chariot of the sun A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, And filled the illumined ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... in hopes Miss Rasmith might have told you. Well, it is simply this, and you will see that I'm not quite the universal favorite she's been making you fancy me. There is a rift in my lute, a schism in my little society, which is so little that I could not have supposed there was enough of it to break in two. There are some who think their lecturer—for that's what I amount to—ought to be an older, if not a graver man. They ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Fai. Orpheus, with his lute, made trees, And the mountain tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing, To his musick, plants and flowers Ever spring, as sun and showers There had made a lasting spring. [During this ...
— A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare (1763) • William Shakespeare
... consequences of peace and warre, they called Poets Heroick, whereof Homer was chief and most auncient among the Greeks, Virgill among the Latines. Others who more delighted to write songs or ballads of pleasure, to be song with the voice, and to the harpe, lute, or citheron & such other musical instruments, they were called melodious Poets [melici] or by a more common name Lirique Poets, of which sort was Pindarus, Anacreon and Callimachus with others among the Greeks: Horace and Catullus among the Latines. There were an other ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... heavy King, who had been a great scholar, dreaded to read in Latin now, for it brought the language of the Mass into his mind; he had been a composer of music and a skilful player on the lute, but no music and no voices could any more ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... for joy four things all told * The harp and lute, the flute and flageolet; And be they companied with scents four fold * Rose, myrtle, anemone and violet Nor please all eight an four thou wouldst withold * Good wine and youth ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... dresses of various colours were standing each according to her rank, with hands respectfully joined. Some were reading plays and beautiful poems, others danced and others performed with glittering fingers and flashing arms on various instruments —the ivory lute, the ebony pipe and the silver kettledrum. In short, all the means and appliances of pleasure and enjoyment were there; and any description of the appearance of the apartments, which were the wonder ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... to a rift in the lute (a little matter of expert accounting on a joint operation), the firm of Macnooder and the Tennessee Shad had been dissolved and each financier had assumed an independent and belligerent attitude. The Shad had a certain adroit and devious imagination, but the practical ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... she is dead to him, to all; Her lute hangs silent on the wall, And on the stairs, and at the door, Her fairy ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... What will you do, supposing the talk turns on gladiators, or horses, or prize-fighters, or (what is worse) on persons, condemning this and that, approving the other? Or suppose a man sneers and jeers or shows a malignant temper? Has any among us the skill of the lute-player, who knows at the first touch which strings are out of tune and sets the instrument right: has any of you such power as Socrates had, in all his intercourse with men, of winning them over to his own convictions? ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... is a soft and a delicate thing; Ah! the heart is a lute with a thrilling string; A spirit that floats on ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... England after Edward III. had conquered France: they were used by those who had no arms, and if their names ended in Ton, as Hatton, Boulton, Luton, Grafton, Middleton, Seton, Norton, their signs or devices would be a Hat and a tun, aBoult and a tun, aLute and a tun, etc., which had no reference to their names, for all names ending in Ton signifieth town, from whence they took their names." Even in England, therefore, the merchant's trade device was the direct source of the Printer's Mark, which it antedated by over a century. It will be convenient, ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... days in Florida, where the outdoor girls enjoyed themselves to the utmost. Had it not been for one little rift in the lute, their pleasure and happiness would have been complete—and that rift was the absence of Will. Grace seemed to feel it more keenly as day passed day and no ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... courtier Leonardo was elegant and full of amusing devices. He sang, accompanying himself on a silver lute, which he had had fashioned in imitation of a horse's skull. After he attached himself to the court of the Duke of Milan, his gift of invention was constantly called into use, and one of the surprises he ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... nama probably goes back to ancient superstitions which regarded a man's name as containing his true being but in Buddhist terminology it is merely a technical expression for mental states collectively. Buddhaghosa observes that name-and-form are like the playing of a lute which does not come from any store of sound and when it ceases does not go to form a ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... Coach tells me ab-so-lute-lee, you are our only hope. The hope of Sunrise, tomorrow. You've got the beef, the wind, the speed, the head, and the will. Oh, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... there in the light On flower-soft fields, ye blest immortal Spirits. Radiant godlike zephyrs Touch you as gently As the hand of a master might Touch the awed lute-string. Free of fate as the slumbering Infant, breathe the divine ones. Guarded well In the firm-sheathed bud Blooms eternal Each happy soul; And their rapture-lit eyes Shine with a tranquil Unchanging lustre. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of all the colonists, particularly the military, as he certainly intended to have redressed all abuses, and to have rewarded us according to our merits. He was of a gay disposition, and fond of music; and it is said that his attendants, while his illness was at the height, brought a lute player into his apartment, in hopes of soothing his distress. While a favourite air was playing, he was said to have beat time with perfect accuracy, and expired just when the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... horse, once evidently a beauty, was between the shafts. As Andy lifted himself to the seat beside Ripley, the latter made a peculiar, purring: "Z-rr-rp, Lute!" ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... the handsome Abencerrage had come to keep the tryst which cost his head, and thirty-five others as noble. There, at the top of that shaded flight of stone steps, whose balustrades were jewelled with running water, Prince Ahmed had sat to play his lute. From that arcaded balcony Zorayda had looked when love was young, and Boabdil still the lover. In the mirrors of the water-patio Galiana had bent to her own image and asked, "Am ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... appearance in the nick of time, seem too rich in coincidences: still, as the Dormont case and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur. A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown's flageolet. It is a modest instrument; but what was he to play upon,—a lute, a concertina, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... rider after rider in the tourney, the young monarch combined with this bodily lordliness a largeness and versatility of mind which was to be the special characteristic of the age that had begun. His fine voice, his love of music, his skill on lute or organ, the taste for poetry that made him delight in Surrey's verse, the taste for art which made him delight in Holbein's canvas, left room for tendencies of a more practical sort, for dabbling in medicine, or for a real ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... dreaming one. The vision of the ancient world rose before him; virgin forests and plains and mighty rivers and mountains; the ancient temples of the Nile and the Ganges, Hellas' fanes and Druidic monoliths and sacred groves, and voices of strange peoples mingled with the soft notes of reed and lute. ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... duty does not always make one happy—and she felt the joy of her home-coming was already marred; for, with a person of Audrey's temperament, there is no complete enjoyment if she were not in thorough harmony with everyone. One false note, one 'little rift within the lute,' and the whole melody is spoiled. So Audrey's gaiety seemed all quenched that afternoon, and though her old friend testified the liveliest satisfaction at the sight of her, and Priscilla could not make enough of her, she was conscious that, as far as her own pleasure was ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... paced to the gentle music of the lute and clavichord, a schottische succeeded to the martial ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... contemplate him, Coppee belongs to the group commonly called "Parnassiens"—not the Romantic School, the sentimental lyric effusion of Lamartine, Hugo, or De Musset! When the poetical lute was laid aside by the triad of 1830, it was taken up by men of quite different stamp, of even opposed tendencies. Observation of exterior matters was now greatly adhered to in poetry; it became especially descriptive and scientific; the aim of every poet was now to render most exactly, even ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... on them fascinating, although somewhat monotonous in the end, repetitions being continually effected. Then there is the harp with five strings, if I remember right, and the more complicated sort of lute with twenty-five strings, the kossiul; a large guitar, and a smaller one; the kanyako being also in frequent use. Most of these instruments are played by women; the flutes, however, are ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Talbot; nay, look up to him. Salisbury, cheer thy spirit with this comfort, Thou shalt not die whiles— He beckons with his hand and smiles on me, As who should say 'When I am dead and gone, Remember to avenge me on the French.' Plantagenet, I will; and like thee, Nero, Play on the lute, beholding the towns burn; Wretched shall France be ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... stairs come a fluting dwarf and an effeminate-looking slave playing a lute, preceded by others with lights; then SHALNASSAR, leaning on GUeLISTANE; finally a eunuch with a whip stuck in his belt. GUeLISTANE frees herself and comes forward, seeming to search the floor for something; the others come forward also. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... part. And there are emotions of which the body may be yet more eloquent than the face; there was the figure of Watts's "Hope" drooping over as she drooped, not more lissom and speaking than her own; just then it caught my eye, and on the spot it was as though the lute's last string of that sweet masterpiece had ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... was too marked not to provoke frequent comment, and whenever it was alluded to in her hearing, her spine stiffened and her head went up. It was quite evident to her family that the rift in the lute was serious, and strange to say, it was her father, who might have been expected to hail the signs, who was most concerned to see them. He expostulated with her when she spoke bitterly of Billy's son, as once he had been so ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... the chamber, and putting a tambourine into the cauzee's hands, led him out and began to play a merry tune upon her lute, to which the affrighted magistrate danced with a thousand antics and grimaces like an old baboon, beating time with the tambourine, to the great delight of the husband, who every now and then jeeringly cried out, "Really wife, if I did not know this fellow was a buffoon, I should ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... a lamentable confession, for that said, gravity fled away; and Electra fetched out a lute from a low cupboard in the arbour, and while she played Julia sang to a sober little melody I seemed to know ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... Put by the lute. Song and singing soon are over As the airy shades that hover In among the purple clover. I have done— Put by the lute. Once I sang as early thrushes Sing among the dewy bushes; Now I'm mute. I am like a weary linnet, For my throat has no song in it; I have ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds; for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post, when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it—purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case; bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three half-pence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching; and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel; I knew, by that piece of service, the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... set up for individualists. The Novel in its treatment of personality began to teach that the stone thrown into the water makes circles to the uttermost bounds of the lake; that the little rift within the lute makes the whole music mute; that we are all members of the one body. This germinal principle was at root a profoundly true and noble one; it serves to distinguish modern fiction philosophically from all that is earlier, and it led the late Sidney Lanier, in the well-known ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... great as to throw him into a burning fever; and in the violence of the fit he made two couplets of a song upon the object with which he was transported. He had no sooner done this than he raised himself from his bed, took his lute, and accompanied it with his voice in an air so tender and affecting that he expired in ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... can no man see the towers of Doubting Castle, for the green trees and the hedges white with May. This life is not wholly vile, as some of thy friends declare (Thou, who makest thy pilgrims dance to the lute, knowest better); and, for myself, I own that I love such mirth as does not make men ashamed to look upon each other next morning. Let him that bears a heavy heart for his ill-deeds turn him to better, but not mourn as though the sun were taken out ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... that we're still crippled—we women—by the long years in which nothing was expected of us but to sit in ivy-mantled casements and work embroidery while our lords went out to fight, or thrummed the lute ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Be it right or wrong, these men among Believe me, if all those endearing young charms Bird of the wilderness Blame not my Lute! for he must sound Blow, blow, thou winter wind Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear Break, break, break Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride But are ye sure ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... then a pause for a minute, then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, and again a pause. Then he is silent for six or eight minutes, and then another toll, and so on. Acteon would stop in mid-chase, Maria would defer her evening song, and Orpheus himself would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel and romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white campanero. He is never seen to feed with the other cotingas, nor is it known in what part of Guiana he ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... To this Horizon is my Phoebus bound, His Godlike acts, and his temptations fierce, And former sufferings other where are found; Loud o're the rest Cremona's Trump doth sound; Me softer airs befit, and softer strings Of Lute, or Viol still, more ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... the time that she was seated with us, I had heard her voice, our eyes had held each other again, and I saw a carnation flush bloom suddenly in her cheek as our hands touched. She brought with her a curious old instrument, like a lute with many strings, and upon this she struck chords to the song she sang, "The Wronged Love of Great Laird Gregory," the melody of which seems ever to be with me; and yesterday, when I heard Nancy crooning ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Her silent glee communicated itself to the other two, who watched impatiently for the happy news that was about to gladden their hearts. Some of the company now asked Undine for a song. She seemed to be prepared with one, and sent for her lute, to which ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... account to his master of the death of poor Abram Slender is very touching. Slender dies from mere love of sweet Ann Page; "Master Abram is dead; gone, your worship. A' sang his soul and body quite away. A' turned like the latter end of a lover's lute." ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... plaster-casts, gigantic hands and feet, broken-nosed masks of the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Hercules Farnese, and other foreigners of distinction. Upon the chimney-piece were displayed a pair of foils, a lute, a skull, an antique German drinking-mug, and several very modern empty bottles. In the middle of the room stood two large easels, a divan, a round table, and three or four chairs; while the floor was thickly strewn with empty color-tubes, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... women and their gowns, the old silver, the rare glass, and the flowers. They were probably refreshed by the exquisite taste of the little banquet that might recall the first reflection of their youth. Morally there was a rift within the lute among the guests, for Molly betrayed that Adela had got on her nerves. Lady Sophia Snaggs poured easy conversation on the troubled waters, but at last the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... down with them without the curtain; and I enquired concerning them and behold they were his brethren.[FN43] he set before them what they needed of wine and dessert, and they ceased not to press the damsel to sing, till she called for the lute and tuning it, intoned ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... her eyes; She blushed; and blushing plunged into the wave. Now brazen chariots thunder through each street, And neighing steeds paw proudly from delay. While o'er the palace breathes the dulcimer, Lute, and aspiring harp, and lisping reed; Loud rush the trumpets bursting through the throng And urge the high-shouldered vulgar; now are heard Curses and quarrels and constricted blows, Threats and defiance and ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... Ivan fled from the room, jumped on his horse, and galloped away back. Meantime the mouse kept running over the strings of the lute. They twanged, and the sister never guessed that her brother was off. When she had sharpened her teeth she burst into the room. Lo and behold! not a soul was there, nothing but the mouse bolting into its hole! The witch waxed wroth, ground ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Triumph of Death. With wonderful realization of character and situation he painted the prosperous of the world, the dapper youths and damsels seated with dogs and falcons beneath the orchard trees, amusing themselves with Decameronian tales and sound of lute and psaltery, unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their withered limbs, see and implore Death, and ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... themselves with singing musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme, as it best pleased them. In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play the lute, the spinet, the harp, the German flute, the flute with nine holes, the violin, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, he betook himself to his principal study for three hours together, or more, as well to repeat his matutinal lectures as to proceed in the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... forth upon the loggia, accompanying the noble improvisatrice with lute and rhythmic posture; the night deepened and the stars came out, and still her hearers listened breathlessly, as in moments of emotion the chant leaped wildly to meet the urgency of her thought, or deepened in melting tenderness to its pathos; for such was the intensity of Margherita's emotion ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... winding stair and came into the upper hall. It was in darkness, but up the wide staircase streamed the perfumed light of many myrtle candles, and with it laughter, and the sound of a man's voice singing to a lute. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... noght forthi, so as thei myhte, Thei made hem yongly to the sihte: Bot yit herde I no pipe there To make noise in mannes Ere, Bot the Musette I myhte knowe, For olde men which souneth lowe, With Harpe and Lute and with Citole. The hovedance and the Carole, 2680 In such a wise as love hath bede, A softe pas thei dance and trede; And with the wommen otherwhile With sobre chier among thei smyle, For laghtre was ther non on hyh. And natheles ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... astonished her parents by her musical gifts and by her talent as an improvvisatrice. She composed, when only ten years of age, some really excellent canzone and, more than this, she set them to her own tunes for the lute and pipe, and ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... cake served with sweet wine and snow; the snow most certainly I shall charge to your account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots, gourds, onions, and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard a comedian, or the reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you had liked, all three, such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies and Spanish dancing girls at some other house were more to your taste. I shall have my revenge of you, depend upon it, but I won't say how. Indeed, it ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... in the middle of the room, till at last Sadie went up to her and begged her to sit down, as she also had her part to play. At these words Amina fetched a lute from a case of yellow satin and gave it to Sadie, who sang several songs to its accompaniment. When she was tired she said to Amina, "My sister, I can do no more; come, I pray you, and take ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... in Science, Things simply agreeable, or disagreeable, are of the first Sort, all the World may judge alike of these, for example the most Ignorant in Musick, perceives very well, when a Player on the Lute strikes one String for another, because he judges by his Sense, and that Sense is the Rule; in such occasions, we may therefore very well say, that all that pleases is good, because that which is Good doth please, or that which is Evil never fails to displease; for neither the Passions, nor ...
— The Preface to Aristotle's Art of Poetry • Andre Dacier
... and leave the lute, And leave the volume on the shelf, To follow him, unquestioning, mute, If 'twere ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... Burbank, or like Theodore N. Vail, or like Colonel Goethals, picking up a little isthmus like Panama, a string between two continents, playing on it as if it were a harp; or like Edward Ripley playing with the Santa Fe Railroad for all the world like Homer with a lute, all his seven thousand men, all his workmen, all their wives and their children, all the cities along the line striking up and joining in the chorus or like Carborundum Acheson, backed up by his little Niagara Falls oiling the wheels of a world, weaving diamonds ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... writer fancifully attributed the invention of string instruments to the finding of a "dead horse head." Here, of course, would be found a complete resonance-chamber and possibly some dried and stretched sinews—quite sufficient to suggest lute-like instruments to men of genius such as must have formed a much larger proportion of the world's population in prehistoric times than is the case to-day; for brilliant as our great men of art and science are, there are few who can be called originators ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... to feel nor to hear, nor to see, a pared away beard, a beaten down, disordered, gutted beard. May the Italian sickness deliver me from this vile joker with a squashed nose, fiery nose, frozen nose, nose without religion, nose dry as a lute table, pale nose, nose without a soul, nose which is nothing but a shadow; nose which sees not, nose wrinkled like the leaf of a vine; nose that I hate, old nose, nose full of mud—dead nose. Where had my eyes been to attach myself to truffle nose, to this old hulk that no longer knows his way? ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... Homer, On Seeing the Elgin Marbles, On a Picture of Leander, Lamia, and the beautiful Ode on a Grecian Urn. But Keats's art was retrospective and eclectic, the blossom of a double root; and "golden-tongued Romance with serene lute" had her part in him, as well as the classics. In his seventeenth year he {263} had read the Faery Queene, and from Spenser he went on to a study of Chaucer, Shakspere, and Milton. Then he took up Italian and read Ariosto. The influence of these studies is ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... and lately, these Many dainty mistresses: Stately Julia, prime of all: Sappho next, a principal: Smooth Anthea for a skin White, and heaven-like crystalline: Sweet Electra, and the choice Myrrha for the lute and voice: Next Corinna, for her wit, And the graceful use of it: With Perilla: all are gone; Only Herrick's left alone For to number sorrow by ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... did not understand him, nor was I able to learn anything about the state of things when I first reached the house of my relatives, for my brother-in-law had been sent into the town as special constable. It was only on his return home, lute in the afternoon, that I heard what had taken place in one hotel at Chemnitz while I had been resting in another inn. Heubner, Bakunin, and the man called Martin, whom I have mentioned already, had, it ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... voice make every bosom thrill, As it pour'd forth the light or plaintive lay; And once these fingers, with superior skill, Upon the lute ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... fields at night were white with moonflowers, when a glorious harvest was assured, and all beasts and birds and insects were garrulous of love and love's delight—upon May- day, in short—was disclosed a terrible rift within poor Jasperson's lute. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... would appreciate the excellence of arms, if not the warrior? The excellence of a horse, if not the cavalier? The excellence of a lute, if not the player? Paganini, as pope, would have canonized Stradivarius, the maker of those wonderful violins, which the great artist plays so admirably. Therefore, as I have the presumption of playing admirably with millions, I would canonize my uncle, that heroic martyr of avarice, if distributive ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue |
