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Matins

noun
1.
The first canonical hour; at daybreak.  Synonym: morning prayer.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Matins" Quotes from Famous Books



... to prayer, at the matins' call, Morning foul or fair; Such prayer as from lifeless lips may fall— Words, but hardly prayer; Vainly trying the thoughts to raise, Which, in the sunshine, would burst ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald

... appear upon their somewhat barren horizon as a new and interesting duty, and the small additional income she also represented would be almost nominal compensation for the care she would receive. They were excellent persons of the kind that talk about matins and vespers, and attend both. They helped little charities and gave little teas, and wrote little notes, and made deprecating allowance for the eccentricities of their titled or moneyed acquaintances. They ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan

... 1392 the Corpus Christi Gild endowed a priest there to sing mass for the good estate of Richard II, Anne his queen, and the whole realm of England, to be called St. Mary's priest. The indenture sets forth that "he is to be at Divine service on Sundays and double Feasts in the chancel and at Matins, Hours, Masses, Evensong, Compline and other offices used in the said church and also daily at Salve in our Lady's Chapel unless hindered by reasonable cause." The records of the Dissolution of the Chantries ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse

... antipodes scissors thanks spectacles vespers victuals matins nuptials oats obsequies premises ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell

... full-blown periods recur, To see the birth of day's transparent moon Far from cramped walls may fading afternoon Find me expectant on some rising lawn; Often depressed in dewy grass at dawn, Me, from sweet slumber underneath green boughs, Ere the stars flee may forest matins rouse, Afoot when the great sun in amber floods Pours horizontal through the steaming woods And windless fumes from early chimneys start And many a cock-crow cheers the traveller's heart Eager for aught the coming day afford In hills untopped and valleys unexplored. Give me the white road into ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... excuse; but by this time I had perceived that his solicitude was not wholly unselfish. He muttered something about 'charity' as he filled a glass for me, notwithstanding my refusal; then vanished with the bottle. He had promised to wake me at two o'clock for matins. ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... gone forth the chorales of all the churches in Spain and America. Poor plain song! it has long been dead. You see for yourself, Gabriel, who comes to the Cathedral at the hour of the choir? No one, absolutely no one. The matins are recited, and all the offices are intoned in the midst of perfect solitude. The people who still believe know nothing of the liturgy; they do not prize it and have forgotten all about it; they are only attracted by the novenas, the triduos and retreats, ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... and Shelluhs, with whom el hassua is generally used, urge its salubrity, by reporting that a physician alighted in a strange country, and when he arose in the morning, after performing his matins, he seated himself with some of the inhabitants, and, conversing, asked them how they lived, and with what food they broke their fast? "With el hassua," was the reply: "Then," rejoined Esculapius, (Salam u alikume,) "Peace be with you; for if you eat el hassua in ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... tempt thee to receive Thy early meal, or thy officious maids, The toilet placed, shall urge thee to perform The important work. Me other joys invite, The horn sonorous calls, the pack awaked Their matins chant, nor brook my long delay. 90 My courser hears their voice; see there with ears And tail erect, neighing he paws the ground; Fierce rapture kindles in his reddening eyes, And boils in every vein. As captive boys Cowed by ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... his brother, who slept beside him, declared that his sleep that night was as quiet as usual. The next morning he rose, as was his habit, at six o'clock, took his breviary in his hand, and went out with the intention of attending matins at the church of Sainte-Croix. He had hardly put his foot over the threshold before Lagrange, in the presence of Memin, Mignon, and the other conspirators, who had come out to gloat over the sight, arrested him in the name of the king. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... day of the Assumption, when mass and matins were said, the heralds blew their trumpets and sounded for the tourney. Anon came out the knights of the castle and the knights of King ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles

... away at their matins in several places in the woods, but I was leaving them farther and farther in my wake—the only wake of mine that I wanted them to attend. Once more it was the struggle with the forest; once more the difficulty of keeping ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... devotional exercises, self-mortification, fasting, and prayer, and a constant attendance at matins, vespers, and on all the services of the Church, "that, being refreshed and satisfied with heavenly food, instructed and stablished with heavenly precepts, after the consummation of the divine mysteries," none might be afraid ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... From matins to vespers the friendly strife raged fiercely, and against the four champions of Nantes four foreign knights especially pitted themselves. Two of these were of Hainault, and the other two were Flemings. The two companies charged each other so desperately that the horses of all eight men ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... unchanged,—the wan beams of the early clay falling cross his features intensified their waxen stillness and pallor,—the awful majesty of death was on him,—the pathetic helplessness and perishableness of Body without Spirit. Presently the monastery bell began to ring for matins, and as its clear chime struck through the deep silence, the door opened, and Heliobas, accompanied by another monk, whose gentle countenance and fine, soft eyes betokened the serenity of his disposition, entered the apartment. Together ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... nothing great befell, but in the grey dawn of May the twenty-third I was held awake by clatter of horsemen riding down the street under the window of my chamber. And after matins came Father Francois, his face very joyful, with the tidings that the Maid, and a company of some three hundred lances of hers, had ridden in from Crepy-en- Valois, she making her profit of the ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... afterwards for a time abandoned them, or rather, it may be said that a timid disposition made him conceal them. He taught his brethren that true religion was very different from what it was vulgarly supposed to be; that it did not consist in chanting matins and vespers, or in performing any of those acts of bodily service in which their time was occupied, and that if they desired to have the approbation of God, it behoved them to have recourse to the Scriptures to know His mind. After a few years a still more decided change took place in ...
— The Last Look - A Tale of the Spanish Inquisition • W.H.G. Kingston

... days afterwards that the earl, as, according to custom, Anne knelt to him for his morning blessing in the oratory where the Christian baron at matins and vespers offered up his simple worship, drew her forth into the ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... fast all the year round, abstain from meat, fast in Lent and on many other days which are peculiar to them, rise from their first sleep, from one to three o'clock in the morning, to read their breviary and chant matins, sleep in all seasons between serge sheets and on straw, make no use of the bath, never light a fire, scourge themselves every Friday, observe the rule of silence, speak to each other only during the recreation hours, which are very brief, and wear drugget chemises for six months in the ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... able to get out by the front door, of which she had not the key, she had the courage and strength to break open a small door which had been blocked up with stones and wood, and she repaired to the church, where Francis and his brethren, who were saying their matins, received her with great solemnity, bearing lighted tapers in their hands. They cut off her hair before the altar, and after she had taken off her ornaments with the help of the females who accompanied ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... to Destiny Of being made to rise before the dawn. "The cocks their matins have not sung," said he, "Ere I am up and gone. And all for what? To market herbs, it seems. Fine cause, indeed, to interrupt my dreams!" Fate, moved by such a prayer, Sent him a currier's load to bear, Whose hides so heavy and ill-scented were, They almost choked the foolish ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine

... ready, as I feared too much indulgence might not be advisable. Now, one morning, after having been out early, I determined to give up fishing for the rest of the day to please Kitty. On my way home—remember, it was before eight o'clock—I met her betaking herself to what she calls "matins." Now, I like a girl to be good and strict, and all that sort of thing. But imagine going to church at eight ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... 11th, 1676, he was surprised by the jailer refusing to receive his linen to be washed—Sunday being washing-day in the 'holy house.' While perplexing himself to think what that could mean, the cathedral bells rang for vespers, and then, contrary to custom, rang again for matins. He could only account for that second novelty by supposing that an auto would be celebrated the next day. They brought him supper, which he refused, and, contrary to their wont at all other times, they did not insist on his taking it, but carried it away. ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson

... horologe which calls us at the hour when the Bride of God[1] rises to sing matins to her Bridegroom that he may love her, in which the one part draws and urges the other, sounding ting! ting! with such sweet note that the well-disposed spirit swells with love, so saw I the glorious wheel move, and render voice to voice in concord ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri

... When matins were done and they came out of the church, there was seen in the churchyard a great square stone, in the midst of which was an anvil of steel, a foot high, with a fair sword naked at the point sticking through it. Written in gold about the sword were letters that read thus: "Whoso pulleth ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler

... taking their tone from the abbess, vied with each other in attentions to Paulina. But, whilst acknowledging their kindness, she continued to shrink from all general intercourse with the society about her. Her attendance was constant at the matins and at vespers; not unfrequently even at the midnight service; but dejection was too rooted in her heart, to allow her any disposition to enter into the amusements or mixed society which the convent at ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... have been as rich as you are beautiful to-morrow, without fail, if I had not promised my dear mother to accompany her to the midnight Mass to-night. The favorable hour falls just at the first stroke of Matins." ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various

... "Veni, Sancte Spiritus," is given below. He himself was a chorister; and there was no kingly service that he seemed to love so well. We are told that it was his custom to go to the church of St. Denis, and in his royal robes, with his crown upon his head, to direct the choir at matins and vespers, and join in the singing. Few kings have left a better legacy to the Christian church than his own hymn, which, after nearly a thousand years, is still an influence in ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... am no longer alone now; I am busy from morning until night, helping to regulate the movements of the community. There is not an hour in the day when I do not see my boy maker. We have established sympathies in common; I call him to prayers, to his meals, to his matins, and to his rest. Many a time, when he finds me alone, he gives me some spiritual reading, or says aloud some prayers. Every time I strike, he breathes an aspiration of love and thanksgiving. In short, we have found our glorious mission ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... another: from one room to another, as it were. Bok had not read the book for years, but here was the subconscious self supplying the material for him in his moment of greatest need. Then he remembered that just before leaving home he had heard sung at matins, after the prayer for the President, a beautiful song called "Passing Souls." He had asked the rector for a copy of it; and, wondering why, he had put it in his wallet that he carried with him. He took it out now and holding the hand of the boy ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... All I can say is, if this soloist was a mountain song-sparrow, he reproduced exactly the trills of his half-brothers of the East.[7] On the morning of my departure from Buena Vista another song-sparrow sang his matins, in loud, clear tones among the bushes of a stream that flowed through the town, ringing quite a number of changes in his tune, all of them familiar to my ear from long acquaintance with the eastern forms of ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... the wishes of my daughter at a time when she was under the influence of a strong nervous emotion; and, besides, he had agreed with Princess Juliana that the poor child should quit the church at the hour of matins to take a little repose, and prepare for ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... Mercy, made way for the Virgin, the mother of God. Buddhism was beaten with its own weapons. Its own artillery was turned against it. Nearly all the Christian churches were native temples, sprinkled and purified. The same bell, whose boom had so often quivered the air announcing the orisons and matins of paganism, was again blessed and sprinkled, and called the same hearers to mass and confession; the same lavatory that fronted the temple served for holy water or baptismal font; the same censer that swung before Amida could be refilled to waft ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... sacristy; and throuble enough we have to keep him quiet. He gave up the confusion of roses, and took to punch; and faith, it isn't hymns nor paslams [psalms] he's singing all night. And they had me there, mixing materials and singing songs, till I heard the bell for matins; and what between the punch and the prayers, I ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... Merely this. When matins came to be said, there was a place vacant in the first rank of boarders. When breakfast was served, there remained a coffee-cup unclaimed. When the housemaid made the beds, she found in one, a bolster laid lengthwise, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... and a comfortable bed Would not do me any harm, 555 All of it of cedar-wood, A harpsichord hung at its head: So do I find a monk's life good. I would lie and take my rest And sleep on far into the day 560 So that I could not my matins say For noise of the whistling and the singing Of shepherdesses' songs clear ringing. On partridge would I sup and dine, Of stockfish should my luncheon be 565 And of wine the very best. And the Judge's daughter should ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... bearings. Before him was borne the royal standard, which was ornamented with gold and splendid colours. An account of the memorable battle of Azincourt, or Agincourt, fought on the 25th of October, 1415, is thus related by Mr. Turner:— "At dawn the King of England had matins and the mass chaunted in his army. He stationed all the horses and baggage in the village, under such small guard as he could spare, having resolved to fight the battle on foot. He sagaciously perceived that his only chance of victory ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare

... music of the bell till the matins were done, and then they began to sing the low, ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... to custom. Also if there is any cloistered person who has begun his week of being hebdomadary, and falls into such sickness that he cannot celebrate the same, the cantor is to say or celebrate three masses. The cantor is to lead all the monks of the choir at matins, high mass, vespers, and on all other occasions. On days when there is a processional duplex feast, he is to write down the order of the office; that is to say, those who are to say the invitatory, {60} the lessons, the epistle of the gospel {61} and those who are to wear copes ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... whereat he, unaccustomed to such great-minded treatment, retired to bed, a hater of his kind. Harriet and Caroline went next. The Countess said she would wait up for Evan, but hearing that his hours of return were about the chimes of matins, she cried exultingly: 'Darling Papa all over!' and departed likewise. Mrs. Mel, when she had mixed Old Tom's third glass, wished the brothers good night, and they were left to exchange what sentiments they thought proper for the occasion. The Countess had certainly, disappointed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Bibliotheque] sans nulle difficulte; chacun la voit einsin et en extrait ce qu'il vent; et est ouverte quasi tous les matins, et si fus conduit partout, et convie par un jantilhomme ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark

... marriage vows were said the year had not given to the smiling earth. Clear and softly blue as the eye of childhood bent the summer sky above them. There was not a cloud in all the tranquil heavens to give suggestion of dreary days to come or to wave a sign of warning. The blithe birds sung their matins amid the branches that hung their leafy drapery around and above Irene's windows, in seeming echoes to the songs love was singing in her heart. Nature put on the loveliest attire in all her ample wardrobe, and decked herself ...
— After the Storm • T. S. Arthur

... watched the earth's awakening, seeing in it what her own should be. The sun was not yet visible above the hills, but the sky was ready for his coming, with the soft flush of color dawn gives only to her royal lover. Birds were chanting matins as if all the jubilance of their short lives must be poured out at once. Flowers stirred and brightened like children after sleep. A balmy wind came whispering from the wood, bringing the aroma of pines, the cool breath of damp nooks, ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... galleries, stellar hallways, stellar windows, stellar domes. How our departed friends must pity us shut up in these cramped apartments, tired if we walk fifteen miles, when they some morning, by one stroke of wing, can make circuit of the whole stellar system and be back in time for matins! Perhaps yonder twinkling constellation is the residence of the martyrs; that group of twelve luminaries is the celestial home of the Apostles. Perhaps that steep of light is the dwelling-place of angels cherubic, seraphic, archangelic. A mansion with as many rooms as worlds, ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... themselves all to death—they got out of their beds almost flay'd alive—every body thought saint Antony had visited them for probation with his fire—they had never once, in short, shut their eyes the whole night long from vespers to matins. ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... Flemings. In less than two years they rose in furious revolt. The insurrection began at Bruges, May 18, 1302, when over three thousand Frenchmen in that city were massacred by the insurgents. This massacre was called the "Bruges Matins." Such an outrage upon the French crown could not but bring upon the Flemings all the forces that Philip was able to muster. The two leading actions of the ensuing war—that at Courtrai, known as the "Battle of the Spurs," on account of the number of gilt spurs ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... heart, finding its morning anew in the life of a little child. For the morning and the evening are wondrously alike. In summer especially, the sun-bathed mountains, the pendant dewdrop, the melodious silences—all these belong so much to both alike that I find it hard to distinguish the matins and the vespers of ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... America early in June, tired out with the breathless business of living, and find ourselves in our old-world house and garden. We fall asleep to the accompaniment of the tiny piping of the little people in bur garden. We awake to the matins of the birds. We breakfast on the stone terrace, with boughs of trees and clouds for our roof, and as we look out over the masses of blue flowers and the smooth green tapis vert, over the arched trelliage with its fountains and its marbles, the great trees back ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... have passed have left but few of them here. A large Bible bound in plain brown leather was the highest prize; Prayer Books, equally unornamented, New Testaments, and Psalters, being books containing only the Psalms and Matins and Evensong, were also given, and were then, perhaps, more highly valued than the dainty little coloured books every one now likes to have for Sunday. Then there were frocks, coarse straw bonnets, and sometimes pocket handkerchiefs, for these were not by any means such ...
— Old Times at Otterbourne • Charlotte M. Yonge

... answered, "Yes, sir, some'at about the innards of a pig." He generally resided there. Mr. Marsh remained curate of Hursley and was presented to the living of Baddesley. All this time Otterbourne had only one Sunday service, alternately matins or evensong, and the church bell was rung as soon as the clergyman could be espied riding down the lane. Old customs so far survived that the congregation turned to the east in the Creed, always stood up, if not sooner, when "Alleluia" occurred at the end ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... became an important church. It was constituted both as a royal chapel and as a musical college, and endowed with the rich temporalities of Coldingham Abbey. This chapel was the scene of the penitence of James IV., who, after the victory at Sauchie, "daily passed to the Chapel Royal, and heard matins and evening song: in the which every day the chaplains prayed for the King's grace, deploring and lamenting the death of his father: which moved the King, in Stirling, to repentance, that he happened to be counselled to come against his father ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... the shores of the lake. Toda however was not able to remove it, so he presented it to the monks at Miidera. With great labor it was brought to the hill-top and hung in this belfry where it rung out daily matins and orisons, filling the lake and hill sides ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... a sudden, floating through the window, the sweet slow chiming of the matins bell from the monastery below. Almost it seemed as though the soft delicate air through which it passed, the exquisite beauty of the sloping landscape and old garden over which it traveled, had had a rarefying influence upon the sound itself, and had mellowed ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... substituting for their music the harsh clatter of wooden rattles. See R. Chambers, The Book of Days (London and Edinburgh, 1886), i, 412 sq. According to another account the church bells are silent from midnight on the Wednesday preceding Maundy Thursday till matins on Easter Day. See W. Smith and S. Cheetham, Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (London, 1875-1880), ii. 1161, referring to Ordo Roman. ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... circle of ladies sitting around her, none of whom I knew. They were all very civil, only I was astonished at the way the mistress of the house mentioned my name every time she spoke to me: "Madame Waddington, etes-vous allee a l'Opera hier soir," "Madame Waddington, vous montez a cheval tous les matins, je crois," "Monsieur Waddington va tous les vendredis a l'Institut, il me semble," etc. I was rather surprised and said to W. when I got home, "How curious it is, that way of saying one's name all ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... more competent in all matters, and to being ignorant of none, he had just learned the Latin tongue; when there came upon him a reason for further hastening his departure. For one Holy Thursday, on which day matins are chanted in the evening, one of his disciples, a young Aretine, being in church, made a blaze of sparks and flames with a lighted candle-end and some resin, at the moment when the "darkness," as they call it, was in progress; and the boy was reproved by some priests, and even struck. Seeing ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... a splendid panorama, gilt by the setting sun: in the chapel too, I descended into a miserable dungeon communicating with a monk's stall, where doubtless some self-immured penitent had wasted life away, only coming to the light for matins, and only relieved from solitary imprisonment by midnight mass. This has been discovered but very lately in repairing the chapel: it was walled up, and contained a skeleton. As a matter of course, this old castle contains ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... his favourite subject, "and if this were the only abuse! But bells now rust from inactivity. The metal is no longer hammer-hardened and is not vibrant. Formerly these magnificent auxiliaries of the ritual sang without cease. The canonical hours were sounded, Matins and Laudes before daybreak, Prime at dawn, Tierce at nine o'clock, Sexte at noon, Nones at three, and then Vespers and Compline. Now we announce the curate's mass, ring three angeluses, morning, noon, and evening, occasionally a Salute, and on certain ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... Silence of grey tors crouching in the mist; Silence of deep woods' mystic cloistered calm; Silence of wide seas basking in the sun; Silence of white peaks soaring to the blue; Silence of dawnings, when, their matins sung, The little birds do fall asleep again; For the deep silence of high golden noons; Silence of gloamings and the setting sun; Silence of moonlit nights and patterned glades; Silence of stars, magnificently still, Yet ever chanting their Creator's skill; For that high silence of Thine Open ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham

... old Nun, who conducted him through a long and winding passage, "that thou mayst bring comfort to the sick sister: she has pined for thee grievously since matins." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... were empty as the mourning of which they formed a part. The parish priest sat with his acolyte, who held a crucifix before his eyes so that his thoughts might not wander. He took snuff and said his Matins for to-morrow. ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... so that her eyes could dwell upon the green-leaved alder and maple, the drooping spruce bows, the vastness of those forests of somber fir where the deer lurked in the shadows and where the birds sang vespers and matins when dusk fell and dawn came again. There were meadow larks warbling now on stumps that dotted the floor of the Big Bend, and above the voices of those yellow-breasted singers and the watery murmuring of the river there arose now and then the shrill, ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... sad willows that liv'd by a stream, Which the sun has suck'd up into vapor and steam. Ah, look at the laundress, before you begrudge— Her hard daily bread to that laudable drudge— When chanticleer singeth his earliest matins, She slips her amphibious feet in her pattens, And beginneth her toil while the morn is still gray, As if she was washing the night into day— Not with sleeker or rosier fingers Aurora Beginneth to scatter the dewdrops before her; Not Venus that rose from ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... holy night of Sunday, having performed the divine offices of matins, returning to my bed to sleep, a voice most terrible came to my ear; 'Charles! thy spirit shall now issue from thy body; thou shalt go and behold the judgments of God; they shall serve thee only as presages, and thy ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... was abbot towards the close of the eleventh century, received the announcement one day that a stranger monk had knocked at the gate and claimed to be one of the brethren of that cloister. His story was that he had sung matins that morning with the rest of the brotherhood; and when they came to the verse of the 90th Psalm where it is said: "A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday," he had fallen into deep meditation, and continued sitting in the choir when the others had ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... his eye, and cocking his head on one side, then up he hopped to his old place on the cardinal's chair. Never after this did he indulge in thievish tricks, but became so devout, so constant at feast and chapel, so well-behaved at matins and vespers, that when he died he died in the odor of sanctity, and was canonized, his name being changed to that of Jim Crow.—Barham, Ingoldsby Legends ("Jackdaw of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... Scots, I took boat at Orleans, the Mr. of Ogilvy wt James his man, as also Danglebern accompanieng me to the boat. I left Salt[77] Orleans and sett up for Blois. In the boat among others were 3 of the order of Charite (as they call it) who beginning to sing their redicoulous matins, perceiving that I concurred not wt them, they immediatly suspected me for a Haeretick. One of them put me in mind of honest James Douy not only for his wisage but also for his zeall and ardeur he showed to have me converted and brought back to the mother ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... the glory of the summer stars had paled and faded and departed from the lightening skies. Behind the hills dawn, in its cloak of unearthly colors, was beginning to fill the cup of heaven, and the multitude of small birds, waking from their slumbers, unwinged their heads and started to utter their matins like honest choristers. The world that had been all black and silver, like the panoply on a knightly catafalque, was now flooded with a gray clearness in which all things showed strange, as if one dreamed of them rather than ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... most austere existence of any nuns. They scarcely taste flesh; they rise at two in the morning to sing Matins and Lauds, night and day, summer and winter, they take turns before the taper of reparation, and before the altar. It need not be said," continued the abbe after a pause, "that woman is stronger and braver than man; no male ascetic could ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... her what she is to do during my absence. I shall be with you in good time. And back he went to Burgos, and my Cid and his company pricked on. The cocks were crowing amain, and the day began to break, when the good Campeador reached St. Pedro's. The Abbot Don Sisebuto was saying matins, and Doa Ximena and five of her ladies of good lineage were with him, praying to God and St. Peter to help my Cid. And when he called at the gate and they knew his voice, God, what a joyful man was the Abbot Don ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... of clemency supreme," the beginning of a hymn, sung at Matins, containing a prayer ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... grieves me,' said Robin, 'And does my heart much woe; That I may not no solemn day To mass nor matins go. ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick

... 1285, at the solicitation of Quivil, the Bishop of Exeter, Edward I. visited Exeter to enquire into the circumstances relating to the assassination of Walter Lichdale, a precentor of the cathedral, who had been killed one day when returning from matins. The murderer made his escape during the night and could not be found. The Mayor, Alfred Dunport, who had held the office on eight occasions, and the porter of the Southgate, were both tried and ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews

... bright. The bells of Penshurst church were chiming for matins, when Mary Gifford, leading her boy by the hand, stood with Lucy under the elm tree by the timbered houses by the lych gate, returning the kindly greetings of many neighbours ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall

... at last it also summoned the priest-led Indians and 'habitans' across hundreds of miles of winter and of wilderness to reclaim it from that desecration,—this fateful bell still hangs in the church-tower of St. Regis, and has invited to matins and vespers for nearly two centuries the children of those who fought so pitilessly and dared and endured so much for it. Our friends would fair have heard it as they passed, hoping for some mournful note of history in its sound; but it hung silent over the silent hamlet, which, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... Christmas night. It caused me some trouble and much suffering to see that they sent for me because they thought there was some good in me; I, knowing myself to be so wicked, could not bear it. I commended myself earnestly to God, and during Matins, or the greater part of them, was lost in a profound trance. Our Lord told me I must go without fail, and give no heed to the opinions of people, for they were few who would not be rash in their counsel; and though I should have troubles, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... to rise betimes in the morning, put on his clothes, wash his hands, and then go to the church and hear the matins and morning mass. Thereafter he went to the Thing-meeting, to bring people to agreement with each other, or to talk of one or the other matter that appeared to him necessary. He invited to him great and small who were known to be men of understanding. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson

... humble fare as they had, she laid herself in her clothes beside them in their bed. She slept not, however; for her own evil plight and that of Pietro, for whom she knew not how to augur aught but evil, kept her sighing and weeping all night long. And towards matins she heard a great noise as of men that marched; so up she got and hied her into a large courtyard that was in rear of the cottage, and part of which was covered with a great heap of hay, which she espying, hid herself therein, that, if the men ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... nor the spotless ermine of the judiciary. He lived and moved and had his being in the sanctuary of the hills, the high altar-stairs of the mountains, the sublime silences of the stately pines—where birds sung their matins and the "stars became tapers tall"; where the zitkadanto—the blue bird—uttered its ravishing notes. He sought the kat-yi-mo—the "enchanted mesa"—as the place of prayer, the hour in which to register his oath. On the wide extended plain, ...
— The Vanishing Race • Dr. Joseph Kossuth Dixon

... especially was he aware of the fact that the Church was urging nothing but the so-called self-elected works, such as "running to the convent, singing, reading, playing the organ, saying the mass, praying matins, vespers, and other hours, founding and ornamenting churches, altars, convents, gathering chimes, jewels, vestments, gems and treasures, going to Rome and to the saints, curtsying and bowing the knees, praying the rosary and ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... later there was a quiet wedding at the Springs. The beautiful church on the mountain-side had been decorated for the occasion, and at an early hour, while yet the robins were singing their matins, the little wedding-party gathered about the altar where John Darrell Britton and Kate Underwood plighted their troth for life. Above the jubilant bird-songs, above the low, subdued tones of the organ, the words of the grand old marriage ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... account for it without a miracle. Daily some incident of his story is read aloud, or spoken of, or preached upon. In quaint beautiful forms it lives in light in the long chapel windows; and in the summer matins his figure, lighted up in splendour, gleams down on them as they pray, or streams in mysterious shadowy tints along the pavement, clad, as it seems, in soft celestial glory, and shining as he shines in heaven. Alas, alas, where is ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... our Lord Jesus Christ; he had, moreover, a special devotion to the Blessed Mary Magdalene, for he was born on Her Feast Day, wherefore he often said the Mass for Her Feast, or humbly asked another to say it for him. About a month before his death a certain Brother had this vision after Matins: it seemed to him that the Brothers were singing the Vigil in the choir, and that a corpse was there. And after the Vigil the door of the choir was opened, and certain Lay Brothers of our household came into the choir and stood round the corpse; amongst these were seen two ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis

... rode, the fog receded slowly. He left the chaparral and rode by green marshes cut with sloughs and stained with vivid patches of orange. The frogs in the tules chanted their hoarse matins. Through brush-covered plains once more, with sparsely wooded hills in the distance, and again the tules, the marsh, the patches of orange. He rode through a field of mustard; the pale yellow petals brushed his dark face, the delicate green leaves won his eyes from the hot glare ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... prayer-book Matins is an accumulation and abridgment of Matins, Lauds, and Prime; our Evensong of Vespers and Compline. Terce, Sext, and Nones, which consisted mainly of portions of Psalm 119, with varying Versicles and Collects, are unrepresented in ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... small church where the parishioners met every Sunday, it had been the custom for some time past for an earnest and well-known member of the congregation, who had an appreciation for the sound of his own voice, to read the lessons at Matins and at Evensong. This duty, combined with that of warden, was fulfilled by Mr. Windle, an ardent church-goer, a staunch, if somewhat narrow-visioned Christian, and a man rigid in his adherence to ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... a chapter from Apuleius (XI, 20), is the principal text we have in connection with the ritual of those Isis matins. (De Abstin., ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... an empty and deserted city, with only a few Poles and the lowest classes of Jews still left. Warsaw is a famous city, full of ancient palaces, tastefully, adorned shops, finely built streets, and fourscore church towers where the bells are accustomed to ring melodiously for matins and vespers. In the Ujazdowske Avenue one comes to the most charming building in all Warsaw, the Lazienki Palace, with its delicious gardens mirrored in a lovely lake. It is a ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... father, and most prolific in self-propagation. The lady did, it is true, once signalize her displeasure against our little brother, for reprimanding her in that she would go hunting a-mornings instead of attending matins. She cut short the thread of his eloquence by sportively drawing her bow-string and loosing an arrow over his head; he waddled off with singular speed, and was in much awe of her for many months. I thought he had forgotten it: but let that pass. In truth, she would have had little of her lover's ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock

... we go by jingo ring, By jingo ring, by jingo ring, Here we go by jingo ring, And round about Mary matins sing. ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright

... alarm-note. This domestic bird may be considered, therefore, a nocturnal songster, if his crowing can be called a song; though it is remarkable that we seldom hear it during evening twilight. The Cock sings his matins, but not his vespers; he crows at the earliest dawn of day, and at midnight upon the rising of the moon, and whenever he is awakened by artificial light. Many singing-birds are accustomed to prolong ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... it also, as he sat in the hall, his head bowed upon his hands, while great tears rolled over his cheeks and dropped unheeded on the floor; and, as the feathered choristers without sweetly chirped their tuneful matins, his grateful heart responded with reverent joy—"Glory ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... nice, clean old man, but he dropped his h's, and that was where he spoiled himself—or perhaps it was just this that threw me off my guard, for I had always heard that the Prince of Darkness was a perfect gentleman. He whispered to me that in the winter the monks of St. Bernard sometimes say matins overnight. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler

... Though still the lark-voiced matins ring The world has known so long; The wood-thrush of the West shall sing Earth's ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Recollect Friars here Their matins recited o'er, And glided with noiseless, sandalled feet O'er the chapel's sacred floor; Again, at the close of day they met, Amid clouds of incense dim And the softened, rays of tapers' blaze, To sing ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... I will willingly endeavor to add the melodramatic accompaniment to Felix Dahn's poem. ["Die Mette von Marienburg" [The Matins of Marienburg] Liszt's intention remained, alas, unfulfilled.] This short work will only require a few hours but I can seldom get any free hours for working...All sorts of interruptions ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... charming, but that I ought to have gone to the hall-door when I courted you; as I should have done, dearest, only I wanted to be sure of you first. He was all kindness, and will marry us quietly at nine o'clock to-morrow, just after Matins, when there will be nobody about to stare at us; and he has promised to say nothing about our marriage until we give him leave to make the ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... wood-fire in it set apart for that purpose; with a grim monk, in a high black sugar-loaf hat with a great knob at the top of it, carving the dishes. At five o'clock in the morning the chapel bell rang in the dismallest way for matins: and I, lying in bed close to the chapel, and being awakened by the solemn organ and the chaunting, thought for a moment I had died in the night and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... him and went away. After a while up came a Nazarene,[FN503] the Sultan's broker who, much bemused with liquor, was purposing for the Hammam bath as his drunkenness whispered in his ear, "Verily the call to matins[FN504] is nigh." He came plodding along and staggering about till he drew near the Hunchback and squatted down to make water[FN505] over against him; when he happened to glance around and saw a man standing against the wall. Now some person had snatched ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... At matins, at vespers, at the simple board, at the nightly hymn, she will be missed from their train. Her empty cell will recall her to their eyes; her dust will be profaned by no stranger's footstep, and though taken away she still seems ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... were rolling, rising, vanishing; The woodlands glistened with their jewelled crowns; Far off the mellow bells began to ring For matins in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... is different," he answered. "But there are a great many Catholics in the county—some on your ranch. And so few come to the Mission. At High Mass on Sundays, there are a few—Mexicans and Spaniards from Guadalajara mostly; but weekdays, for matins, vespers, and the like, I often say the offices to an empty church—'the voice of one crying in the wilderness.' You Americans are not good churchmen. Sundays ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... strength. Abbeys there were, and abbey windows,—'like Moorish temples of the Hindoos,' that exercised even princely power both in Touraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; yet many enough to spread a network or awning of ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... windows closed. Then he heard the blessed abbots or others jumping about, drinking, enjoying themselves, love-making, singing Alleluia and applauding the music with which they were being regaled. The kitchen performed miracles, the Offices said were fine rich pots-full, the Matins sweet little hams, the Vespers luscious mouthful, and the Lauhes delicate sweetmeats, and after their little carouses, these brave priests were silent, their pages diced upon the stairs, their mules stamped restively in the streets; everything went ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... me, Dear, in the morns far away, When the birds of the spring sang the matins of May, And the songs that you sang to me then were as sweet As the whispers the daisies lisped low ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller

... my informant," said Morley. "This morn, the very morn I arrived in London, I learnt how your matins were now spent. Yes!" he added in a tone of mournful anguish, "I passed the gate of the ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... in the jewelled hedges, with the larks at their matins overhead, and the tethered cows nuzzling out the dainty morning grasses, and watching the intruders speculatively till they passed out of ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham

... forgetting everything else as he drank in the beauty of that great stretch of quivering blue, while in his ears sounded words which he had almost forgotten—words which had fallen on heedless ears at matins or vespers—and which never had held any meaning for him before: 'And before the throne was a sea ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman

... Aurora throws her fair Fresh-quilted colours through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew bespangling herb and tree: Each flower has wept, and bow'd toward the east, Above an hour since; yet you are not drest; Nay, not so much as out of bed; When all the birds have matins said, And sung their thankful hymns; 'tis sin, Nay, profanation, to keep in; When as a thousand virgins on this day, Spring sooner than the lark, to fetch ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... sound of a bell. On peering from the hay he found the time had advanced to full day; the sun was shining brightly. The bell was that of the 'faire chappell' on the green outside the gatehouse, and it was calling to matins. Presently the priest crossed the green to a little side-door in the chancel, and then from the gateway of the mansion emerged the household, the tall man whom Roger had seen with his sister on the previous night, ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... Their wants were supplied by the barest necessaries in the shape of lodging and furniture. From early morning, three A.M., to night, they were occupied in works of piety, charity, or industry. They met in the chapel after their private devotions to say matins and lauds, a service which occupied about an hour and a half, after which they kissed the earth in token of a common lowliness, and sought each his own room for a time. The round of devotion thus commenced was continued with a steady uniformity,—Prime at half-past six; Tierces ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... gone I stood still in the road, waiting. I distinguished a lintel of elms, a wall of wild roses; I heard a brave little bird twittering impatient matins, and the sound of nearing footsteps in the road. And then a voice in ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale

... their congenial powers, that, while they join In breaking up a long-continued frost, 40 Bring with them vernal promises, the hope Of active days urged on by flying hours,— Days of sweet leisure, taxed with patient thought Abstruse, nor wanting punctual service high, Matins and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... in the high air, with the sun, his helper, the light, his minister, the blessed soft airs, his journeymen, what time the workaday noise of the city rose and the sound of matins and vespers was in his ears, through the long warm days worked ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... undisturbed August night, rousing sudden fear for himself, precipitates the event, and as if in delirium he is driven forth on the scent of human blood. He had always hunted like a madman. It was thus "the matins of Paris" began, in which not religious zealots only assisted, but the thieves, the wanton, the unemployed, the reckless children, les enfants massacreurs like those seen dragging an insulted dead body to the Seine, greed or malice or the desire for swift settlement of some ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... Then come matins, which one has to sit through, of course: the only good matter being the chants. I can sing out, and I do. Then come the sermon, which is unto me sore weariness, and I gape through it as I best may. Dear heart, what matter is it to ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt

... longer beheld the Vision, but heard only a sound as of a great multitude crying, 'Alleluia'; and suddenly the winds came about him again, and lo! he found himself in bed in the dormitory, and it was midnight, for the bell was ringing to Matins; and he rose and went down with the rest; but when the Brethren left the choir, Brother Ambrose stayed fast in his place, hearing and seeing nothing because of the Vision of God; and at Lauds they found him and told ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... company. For twenty hours those men, in their tropical kit, endured the enemy's sniping and machine-gun firing, and the bitter cold and hunger and misery, hearing in the early morning the wind-borne chimes of the chapel bell in Kubeibeh calling the brothers to matins, until dawn found many of them unable to speak. During the night a squadron patrol of Hyderabad Lancers rode across the hills from the 75th Division into our lines, a truly wonderful feat across unknown country held by the enemy. At dawn ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison

... mine and thine, the baneful source of lawsuits and animosities among men, were banished from their cells. They rose at the first crowing of the cock, that is, at midnight, being called up by the superior; and after the morning hymns and psalms, that is, matins and lauds, all remained in their private cells, where they read the holy scriptures, and some copied books. All met in the church at the canonical hours of tierce, sext, none, and vespers, but returned to their cells, none being allowed ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... know; the signal-fire, and the galley floating below by the coast, half hidden by the great rock—for that also I saw from my turret—thanks be to the Madonna for lifting the mortal dulness! And I left sleep for better things that night; for it was well-nigh the hour of matins when the galley ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... on Sundays and on great festivals, the singers themselves being invisible behind a curtain in the organ gallery. Mendelssohn found their vespers charming, though his critical ear detected many blemishes in the playing and singing. I visited the church one day. As it is shut after matins, I was admitted at a side door by one of the nuns, who previously inspected me through the wicket, and was left alone, the door being locked behind me. The interior is severely simple and grand, preserving the original pointed architecture inclining ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... but he performed many attendances beyond the required minimum at the college chapel. Morning after morning he dragged himself from his bed and hurried across the dusky quadrangle to take his part in the mutilated matins with which the college authorities see fit to usher in the day. He even went to hear the sermons delivered on Friday afternoons, homilies so painful that the preachers themselves recognise an extraordinary merit ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... the chapel of the monastery of Las Huelgas, near the old city of Burgos, and there, having placed his arms piously upon the altar, he passed the night alone, "bestowing himself in orisons and prayers." When the daybreak came, he confessed to a priest, heard matins, and then went to rest and prepare himself for the final scene. When he was at length brought back to the chapel, there was a most imposing company awaiting him, composed of all the knights of Castile and many others from far distant countries who had come to wage war against the Moors; ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... said Ailsa. "But none the less, Elspeth is a most wise soothsayer, and you are unwise if you heed not her warning. And now I mind me that on this very day, as I was returning from matins, a great ship of twelve banks of oars came in from the west through Kilbrannan Sound, and it let anchor in Scalpsie Bay. As I looked upon that ship three tall warriors were brought ashore in a small boat, and, landing, they walked along ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... the peasantry, and of the common inhabitants of cities. Not much better was that of the nobles. William of Malmesbury, speaking of the degraded manners of the Anglo-Saxons, says: "Their nobles, devoted to gluttony and voluptuousness, never visited the church, but the matins and the mass were read over to them by a hurrying priest in their bedchambers, before they rose, themselves not listening. The common people were a prey to the more powerful; their property was seized, their bodies dragged away to distant countries; their maidens ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... morning choir shall sing Its matins from the branches high, And every minstrel-voice of spring, That trills beneath the April sky, Shall greet her with its ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... chief present use is as a picnic-ground for tourists. Not far away are the ruins of the priory, which was founded at the same time as the castle. A dismantled gate-house with some rather extensive foundations are all that remain. In a little church near by the matins and the curfew are still tolled, one of the bells used having belonged to the priory. Few English ruins have more romance attached to them than those of Kenilworth, for the graphic pen of the best story-teller of Britain has interwoven them into one of his best romances, and has thus ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook

... Penelope's wooers; you know the other part of the verse, which the echo will better tell you than I can. They sleep till noon and have their mercenary Levite come to their bedside, where he chops over his matins before they are half up. Then to breakfast, which is scarce done but dinner stays for them. From thence they go to dice, tables, cards, or entertain themselves with jesters, fools, gambols, and horse tricks. In the meantime they have one or two beverages, and then supper, and after ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... "My matins," the priest answered, smiling down into the curiously eager face that with the fresh unlined beauty of young manhood was upturned to his. "Good morning." He lifted his hat and walked rapidly away without waiting for any ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller

... belong to the age, which is inaccessible to the progress of reason, and over which the atrocity of fanaticism preserves its empire, like certain diseases which attack only the vilest populace." The best monks are the worst, and those who sing "Pervigilium Veneris" in place of matins are less dangerous than such as reason, preach, and plot. And in another place he says that "a religious order should not a part of history." But it is well to notice that Voltaire's hatred of Catholicism and of Catholic monks is not founded on a preference for any ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... even in the most minute point.[33] He was moreover directed to prepare for the use of the brothers short tables respecting the times mentioned in the capitulary for the various offices of the church, to make notes upon the matins, the mass, and upon the different orders.[34] In fact, the monkish amanuensis was expected to undertake all those matters which required care and learning combined. He wrote the letters of the monastery, and often ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... by his feeling for Berenice. It was with a most painful shock, therefore, that he one day received from the Father the information that Miss Morison had returned to Boston. He met the Father Superior in the hall one morning after matins, and although it was a silent hour ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates

... may be a fit foil to the fiery and headlong dispositions of our dangerous neighbours, just as restless waves are best opposed by steadfast rocks.—Hark, sir, I hear Wilkin Flammock's step ascending the turret-stair, as deliberately as ever monk mounted to matins." ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... any deliberate thought, to the Cathedral as to the place that would most readily soothe and comfort him. Always when things went wrong he crossed over to the Cathedral and walked about there. Matins were just concluded and people were coming out of the great West door. He went in by the Saint Margaret door, crossed through the Vestry where Rogers, who had been taking the service, was disrobing, and climbed the little crooked stairs into the Lucifer Room. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... goods (property), grounds (dregs), letters (literature), manners (behavior), matins (morning service); morals (character), remains (dead body), spectacles (glasses), ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... the lake the lingering morn! How sweet at eve the lover's lute Chime when the groves were still and mute! And when the midnight moon should lave Her forehead in the silver wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy matins' distant hum, While the deep peal's commanding tone Should wake, in yonder islet lone, A sainted hermit from his cell, To drop a bead with every knell! And bugle, lute, and bell, and all, Should each bewildered stranger call To friendly feast and ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... praised, all are well! They are just going in to matins. You come in good time, my sisters! But who is she whom you bring with you?" inquired the old nun, nodding toward Salome, even while she detached a great key from her girdle, and unlocked the door, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth

... I shall overhaul his principles: for that's what my commission says: else my name's not le Harnois: damn!"—With which emphatic monosyllable, ascending in a growl from the bottom of the companion ladder, Captain le Harnois concluded his matins on the deck of the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... life, with open woods and meadows and rivers and game in plenty." In this Earthly Paradise the priests passed the winter, holding services three times a week—"a winter that ought to be worth ten years of any other kind of life" Dollier calculated, counting up masses and vespers and matins. Sometimes when the snow lay deep and the weird voices of the wind hallooed with bugle sound through the lonely forest, the priests listening inside fancied that they heard "the hunting of Arthur,"—unearthly huntsmen coursing the air ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... shall ring the sacring bell, Keep your hours, and tell your knell, Rise at midnight at your matins, Read your Psalter, sing your latins, And when your blood shall kindle pleasure, Scourge your self in ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare

... one day as a lady suitor who sought a lodging in the house. I established myself there for a week, under the name of the Comtesse de Clagny, and I saw, with my own eyes, a King's daughter reduced to singing matins. Her air of nobility and dignity struck me with admiration and moved me to tears. I thought of her four sisters, dead at such an early age, and deplored the cruelty of Fate, which had spared her in her childhood to kill ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... thereby ransomed and placed at our disposal to use as we will. We find the theory well worked out in the current attitude of Christians toward the observance of the Lord's Day. It appears to be held that an attendance at Mass or Matins is a sufficient recognition of the interests of religion and that the rest of the day may be regarded, not as the Lord's Day, but as man's—as a day of unlimited amusement and self-indulgence. The notion of consecration is abandoned. ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... As the bell rings for matins. I make for the market Before the cathedral. I know that the gates Of the Governor's courtyard 90 Are there. It is dark still, The square is quite empty; In front of the courtyard A sentinel paces: 'Pray tell me, good man, ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov

... matins, hats and the opera to Daphne, but appeared to be absent, and occasionally smiled at the ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson

... said Hatteras, "I hear them every night and at matins and at vespers. There was a Jesuit monastery here two hundred years ago. The bells remain and some of the clothes." He touched his coat as he spoke. "The Fans still ring the bells from habit. Just think of it! ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason

... no longer an instant of repose. By day they did nothing but ascend and descend the steps which led to the chapel; at night, in addition to complines and matins, they were further obliged to leap twenty times out of their beds and prostrate themselves on the floor of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... breasts, then to their necks, and they threw back their heads so as to lift their mouths a little higher. The people laughed aloud, calling out to them that the time for drinking had come, as with the monks at matins, and that they would have enough for the rest of their days. Then the water entered the mouth and nose of the three who were lowest; their throats gurgled as when bottles are filled, and the people applauded, saying that the drunkards swallowed too fast and were ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... of the times, and is still entire. The description of the first meeting of Laura and Petrarch is perhaps the best, because the most simple and unlaboured part of his works.—"It was on one of the lovely mornings of the spring of the year, the morning of April 6th, 1327, that being at matins in the convent of St. Claire, I first beheld my Laura. Her robe was green embroidered with violets. Her features, her air, her deportment, announced something which did not belong to mortal. Her figure was graceful beyond the imagination ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... earliest war-days—the days before we had "Tramp, tramp," and "Marching through Georgia" (which we never did have in Virginia), and even lackadaisical "When this crew-el war is o-ver," are the matins of the soldiers of ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... will not? Great in faith, and strong Against the grief of circumstance Wert thou, and yet unheard. What if Thou pleadest still, and seest me drive Thro' utter dark a fullsailed skiff, Unpiloted i' the echoing dance Of reboant whirlwinds, stooping low Unto the death, not sunk! I know At matins and at evensong, That thou, if thou were yet alive, In deep and daily prayers wouldst strive To reconcile me with thy God. Albeit, my hope is gray, and cold At heart, thou wouldest murmur still— "Bring this lamb back ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... take up Brother Leonard's time in this way. She went a long time, for her, without confession; at last she sent a line to Leonard asking him when it would be convenient to him to confess her. Leonard wrote back to say that he received penitents in the chapel for two hours after matins every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... the church, if he were either priest or deacon, finished the work, being assisted by two other religious men, who were in the same orders, and by a lay brother, particularly appointed for that business. These four monks, when matins were ended, washed their faces and hands. The three first of them put on albes; one of them washed the meal with pure, clean water, and the other two baked the hosts in the iron moulds. So great was the veneration and respect, say their historians, the monks of Cluni ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various

... zealots of the party prided themselves on shouting it out to a circle of excited hearers during the service of mass, and accompanied their reading with violent expositions. Protestant maidens took the new English primer to church with them and studied it ostentatiously during matins. Insult passed into open violence when the bishops' courts were invaded and broken up by Protestant mobs; and law and public opinion were outraged at once when priests who favored the new doctrines began openly to bring ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... Returning to his native city, he won so high a repute in the art of composing pictures by arranging together a countless number of little differently coloured cubes of glass, he could not supply all the demands addressed to him for works of the sort, and all day and every day, from matins to vespers, he was busy, mounted on a scaffold in some Church or other, depicting the dead Christ, or Christ in His glory, the Patriarchs and Prophets, or the history of Job or of Noah. And as he was likewise keen to paint in fresco, with pounded colours, in the manner ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... daybreak, when the moon was setting, they were awakened by the wonderful singing of a bird, and they rose for matins and strove not to listen, but so strangely sweet was the sound in the keen moonlight morning that they could not forbear. The moon set, and still in the dark sang the bird, and the grey light came, and the bird ceased; and when it was white day they saw that all the ground and every stalk of bracken ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton

... about the garden. If it was wet, she read Roman history, and perhaps she may have learnt something of housekeeping from the prioress, who saw that all was kept in order. The abbess said carefully the short prayers appointed for certain hours of the day, and heard matins every morning at four and evensong every afternoon. After this was over, she did as she was bidden by her superior, the abbot of Citeaux, and took all her nuns for a solemn walk on the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... ease the latch of the lowly door of the hut, and we found, indeed, no saint at matins or prime, but only the priest of St. Apolline, curled on his wood settle in honest slumber, ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar



Words linked to "Matins" :   canonical hour, morning prayer



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