"Rhythmic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its own poetic and rhythmic capacities. Actual experiment and public taste have declared their verdict against hexameter verse in English. The genius of the Northern languages refuses this old heroic measure, which the Latins borrowed ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... rose to his feet and commenced to walk away; but he halted sharply and drew into the shadow, signing to Spurling to keep quiet. From very far away, borne on the stillness of the night, they could hear the rhythmic beat of ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Once on the other side, he resumed his frantic racing—pounding along in the mountain trail, his course clearly defined, hurtling madly straight toward town. With the fence safely cleared, and the way ahead free of vehicles, Helen regained much of her composure. Settling calmly to the rhythmic movement, she permitted the horse free rein. Once she reached back to gather up her hair, but the motion of the horse forbade this. So she fell to watching his splendid energy, finding herself quite calm and collected again, ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... light. The thrilling effect always to be gained on the stage by the simple expedient of a great number of people doing the same thing in the same way at the same moment, was seen in "The Cup," when the stage was covered with a crowd of women who raised their arms above their heads with a large, rhythmic, sweeping movement and then bowed to the goddess with the regularity ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... its hinges when she opened it. That sound, too, echoed and re-echoed in rhythmic pulsations that beat painfully upon her ears, but, after she was once inside, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... His workmen were sleek negro slaves. Herds of fat cattle grazed on the hills. A flock of a thousand sheep were nipping the fresh sweet grass in the valley. They passed a big flour mill, whose lazy wheel swung in rhythmic unison with the laughing waters of the creek that watered the rich valley. The monks were vowed to poverty and self-denial. But their Order was rich in slaves and land, in mills and herds and flocks and ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... hands, they tramped toward the board-walk. The crunch of their feet in the sand was the rhythmic spell of a magician, which she broke ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... aim of the dance was to express sentiment, passion, and action by means of gestures. It soon developed into highest artistic beauty, combined with the rhythmic grace peculiar to the Greeks. Like the gymnastic and agonistic arts, the dance retained its original purity as long as public morality prevailed in Greece: its connection with religious worship preserved it from neglect. Gradually, however, here also mechanical virtuosity ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... is always telling tales on him. The "Scotch snap" is a constant rhythmic device, the old scale and the old Scottish cadences seem to be native to his heart. Perhaps one might find some kinship between MacDowell and the contemporary Glasgow school of painters, that clique so isolated, so daring, and yet ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... martyrdom of training, gathered from the four winds, was now here, to do its feat, and be paid for it. Regardless of expense, indeed! The purse of Fortunatus seemed to have opened itself, and the divine art of Musical Sound and Rhythmic Motion was welcomed with an explosion of all the magnificences which the other arts, fine and coarse, could achieve. For you are to think of some Rossini or Bellini in the rear of it, too; to say nothing of the Stanfields, and hosts of scene-painters, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... some long space of time, all horror and death, during which men fought and heaved and swayed, sometimes beaten back a few feet, then recovering themselves, regaining the lost ground, and pressing on, till in regular rhythmic pulsation rank after rank of warriors tramped on, opening out as they reached the group of dead and wounded men whose core was the spear-slain horse. But in fact it was but a matter of minutes before the pressure ceased as the ranks passed on and a big, ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... hydrocyanic, and chromic acids, acetate of strychnine, and vapour of ether, are poisonous to Drosera, [[page 225]] it is remarkable that Dr. Ransom (' Philosoph. Transact.' 1867, p. 480), who used much stronger solutions of these substances than I did, states "that the rhythmic contractility of the yolk (of the ova of the pike) is not materially influenced by any of the poisons used, which did not act chemically, with the exception of chloroform and carbonic acid." I find it stated by several writers ...
— Insectivorous Plants • Charles Darwin
... tall figure suddenly loomed in view of the crowd. With one impulse they leaped to their feet, and shout after shout shook the building. The orchestra was playing "Hail to the Chief!" but nobody heard it. They saw the Chief! They were crying their own welcome in music that came from the rhythmic beat of human hearts. ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... emphatically in quite a number of her Lays. This adventure chanced in Brittany, and in remembrance thereof the Bretons made a Lay, which I heard sung by the minstrel to the music of his rote. Marie's part consisted in reshaping this ancient material in her own rhythmic and coloured words. Scholars tell us that the essence of her stories is of Celtic rather than of Breton origin. It may be so; though to the lay mind this is not a matter of great importance one way or the other; but ...
— French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France • Marie de France
... veins stood out like discolored whip-cord; their faces were the shade of raw beef, steaming with sweat; their eyes protruded with the strain that set their jaws like vises; their chests heaved and shrank like bellows; their backs curved, straightened, and bent again in rhythmic unison as tiring to the eye as the swinging of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... days before menstruation we know that sex high tide is beginning for that is when the blood pressure goes up. As this rise of blood pressure is probably controlled by the posterior pituitary, we have a clue to the reason for the rhythmic variations in the rate of production of its secretion by the ovary. For, since menstruation is so closely connected with the phases of the moon and the tides, the rhythmicity of the posterior pituitary may be traced to the days ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... more precious than sight of London in any of the streets admitting coloured cloud-scenes; the cunning of the sun's hand so speaks to us. And if haply down an alley some olive mechanic of street-organs has quickened little children's legs to rhythmic footing, they strike on thoughts braver than pastoral. Victor Radnor, lover of the country though he was, would have been the first to say it. He would indeed have said it too emphatically. Open London as a theme, to a citizen of London ardent for the clear air ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the girl's rhythmic gait lulled to semi-somnolence, made no objection, and their rapture began afresh. They now went on more slowly, fearing the moment when they would have to retrace their steps. So long as they walked onward, they felt as though they were advancing to the eternity ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... as is its tone, is made to turn and double fantastically, almost playfully, in many of the lines. The croak of the raven is taken up and moulded into rhyme by a nimble, if not a mocking spirit; and, fascinating as is the rhythmic movement of the verse, it appears like the dancing of the daughter of Herodias. This looks incongruous; and so do the words of the fool which Shakspeare has intermingled with the agonies and imprecations of Lear. In the tragedy, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... Her lips were slightly parted. Her eyelids drooped. Her breast rose and fell in a slow, rhythmic heave. Otherwise she was motionless and faintly smiling, as if she were given up to some blissful languor. And the man spoke on, caressing her imprisoned hand, stroking it, looking at her with the glow of conquest in his ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... prose, under whose touch words became as living things; Flaubert, who believed there was one and one only best word with which to express a given thought; De Quincey, who exercised a weird-like power over words; Ruskin, whose rhythmic prose enchanted the ear; Keats, who brooded over phrases like a lover; Newman, of pure and melodious style; Stevenson, forever in quest of the scrupulously precise word; Tennyson, graceful and exquisite as the limpid stream; Emerson, of trenchant and epigrammatic style; Webster, whose virile ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... at rehearsals, this exceptional man fascinated both musicians and singers to such an extent that the production attracted quite an unusual amount of attention. Very characteristic was the energy with which he insisted on exceptionally sharp rhythmic accents; through his association with the Berlin orchestra he had acquired the habit of marking the note that he wished to be brought out with the word diese (this), which at first was quite incomprehensible to me. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... gravitation extends, say, ten or fifteen miles outward—but that gravitation must be rhythmic. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... the pleasure, I have all the work He was asleep, for he knew not remorse In work alone man rests from grief Kind of sporting energy, a defiant spurt Meaning what one says, so necessary to keep dogs virtuous Private grudge against Time Rhythmic nothingness Such were only embroideries of Fate Suddenly he sat down to make sure of his own legs Unholy interest in thus dealing with the lives of my fellow men Why, then, fear death, which is but night? ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... the rhythmic beating of the pulse to the systole and diastole of the heart, and we note a similar alternation in the contraction and relaxation of all our muscles. Breathing is alternately inspiration and expiration. Sensation itself is by beats, and falls into rhythm. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... were strangely silent, Kootanie having given over his ripping oaths, strangely quiet as they lay with no movement apparent beyond the ceaseless rhythmic striking of George's arm. Even those blows ceased in a moment as George's hand went hurriedly to the wrist at his breast. The thumb at his throat had sunk until the place where it crooked at the joint was lost; George's face from red ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... lifted. Jarvo gave a sharp command, and all four of the men broke into a rhythmic chant. Jarvo, leading the way, sprang immediately upon the first foothold, where none seemed to be, and without pause to the next. So perfectly were the men trained that it was as if but one set of muscles were inspiring the movements made to the beat of that monotonous ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... much as an eyelash. The periods of stillness were generally shorter, but I frequently counted seventeen, eighteen, or twenty before there was a movement. I noticed, too, that the gestures had a rhythmic progression. Sara Bernhardt would keep her hands clasped over, let us say, her right breast for some time, and then move them to the other side, perhaps, lowering her chin till it touched her hands, and then, after another long stillness, she would unclasp ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... practical strength of body and mind had come that rugged poetical sense, which touches all who live the life of mountain and prairie. She showed it in her speech; it had a measured cadence. She expressed it in her body; it had a free and rhythmic movement. And not Jen alone, but many another dweller on the prairie, looked upon it with a superstitious reverence akin to worship. A blizzard could not quench it. A gale of wind only fed its strength. A rain-storm made a mist about it, in which it was enshrined like a god. Peter ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... windows and doors were open to let the cool night wind blow in. Vandeloup sat on the verandah with McIntosh smoking cigarettes and listening to Madame, who was playing Mendelssohn's 'In a Gondola', that dreamy melody full of the swing and rhythmic movement of the waves. Then to please old Archie she played 'Auld Lang Syne'—that tender caressing air which is one of the most pathetic and heart-stirring melodies in the world. Archie leaned forward with bowed head as ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... petal. So the passion lies In this tranced flowery being which is ours Like to a hidden wound; yet softly dyes With dolorous beauty all the stuff of life, Each dream and vision and desire subduing With muted pulses, that great counter-strife Of soul with its own rhythmic pangs imbuing. Deny it and disdain it. Lo! there beat Red stigmata in heart ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... individual baby, combining in large numbers, becomes a deep monotone, like the waves of the sea, a sort of violoncello accompaniment to all their holiday performances. It was rather trying to me at first to have my glowing periods punctuated with a rhythmic wail from all sides of the hall; but as soon as I saw that it did not distract my hearers, I simply raised my voice, and, with a little added vehemence, fairly rivaled the babies. Commenting on this trial, to one ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... greatness by its bulk and not by its vital link with the infinite, judges his activity by its movement and not by the repose of perfection—the repose which is in the starry heavens, in the ever-flowing rhythmic dance of creation. ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... the wire, arrived with a great wheezing and snorting, which finally settled to a rhythmic gasping of the air pump, while a few boxes of store supplies were being dumped unceremoniously upon the platform. Miss Georgie was freight agent as well as many other things, and she went out and stood bareheaded in the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... hearts of thankfulness, we bear Of the great common burden our full share, Let none upbraid us that the waves entice Thy sea-dipped pencil, or some quaint device, Rhythmic and sweet, beguiles my pen away From the sharp strifes and sorrows of to-day. Thus, while the east-wind keen from Labrador Sings in the leafless elms, and from the shore Of the great sea comes the monotonous roar Of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... where man has never come. The discovery gave him pleasure out of proportion to its importance, and he paced back and forth in a silence that no longer chafed. Lydia walked very well, and kept his step with rhythmic unison, as if they were walking to music together. "That's the time in her pulses," he thought, and then he said, "Then you don't have a great deal of social excitement, I suppose,—dancing, and that kind of thing? Though perhaps ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... all possibilities seemed within his reach. "His verses were listened to," said The Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates' Journal, "with rapt attention." It was just the sort of thing, half poetry, half rhythmic rhetoric, which was sure to reach the hearts and minds of youth. His voice, too, was of beautiful tenor quality, and exquisitely used. When he sat down people crowded to praise him and even men of great distinction in life flattered him with extravagant ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... on the levee you'll know that sound, the rhythmic song of the stevedores heaving cotton-bales, and the steady thump, thump, of the machine compressing them within the ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... months thereafter a shadow brooded over our snug little lodgings in the Piazza, Poli. "It is not a severe attack," my father wrote at the beginning, "yet it is attended by fits of exceeding discomfort, occasional comatoseness, and even delirium to the extent of making the poor child talk in rhythmic measure, like a tragic heroine—as if the fever lifted her feet off the earth; the fever being seldom dangerous, but is liable to recur on slight occasion hereafter." But, as it turned out, Una's attack was of the worst kind, and she sank and sank, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... other and her hands were laid palm to palm as her body swayed backward and forward in rhythmic movement. "They go out in the woods and cut cart-loads of holly and mistletoe and pine and Christmas-trees, and dress the house, and the fires roar up all the chimneys, and ...
— The Man in Lonely Land • Kate Langley Bosher
... its simplest sense, is measured motion; but by various natural extensions of meaning the word has come to be used almost as a synonym of regularity of variation. Whatever changes or alternates according to a recognizable system is said to be rhythmic, to possess rhythm. In this sense, rhythm is one of the universal principles of nature. We find it in the stripes of the zebra, the indentation of leaves, the series of teeth or of crystals, the ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... shoemaker's shop, his pipe in his hand, Choulette was making rhythmic gestures, and appeared to be reciting verses. The Florentine cobbler listened with a kind smile. He was a little, bald man, and represented one of the types familiar to Flemish painters. On a table, among wooden lasts, nails, leather, and wax, a basilic ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... and on any mild misty morning, standing on the mound within the moat I would listen to the sounds from the wide open plain, and they were sounds of spring—the constant drumming and rhythmic cries of the spur-wing lapwings engaged in their social meetings and "dances," and the song of the pipit soaring high up and pouring out its thick prolonged strains as it slowly floated ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... not tell him, and he rowed on and on through the dark water with only the rhythmic splashing of the oars to fill the silence ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... whistling hum as the air rushed through the cordage mesh. In a sudden tropical gale every taut strand of my hamaca has seemed a separate, melodious, orchestral note, while I was buffeted to and fro, marking time to some rhythmic and reckless tune of the wind playing fortissimo on the woven strings about me. The climax of this musical outburst was not without a mild element of danger—sufficient to create that enviable state of mind wherein the sense ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... voice changed to a rhythmic, cadenced chant that was almost a song. Her face became rapt and introspective as she rocked slowly from side to side. The rhythm was familiar and then he recognized it—the unintelligible music he had often heard coming from the barracks late at night ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... All that is in man, his mysteries of soul, his thoughts and emotions—deep, wise, holy, loving, touching, and fearful,—or in the world, beautiful, vast, ponderous, gloomy, and awful, moved with rhythmic harmonious utterance—that is Poetry. All that is of man—his triumphs, glory, power, and passions; or of the world—its sunshine and clouds, its plains, hills or valleys, its wind-swept mountains and snowy Alps, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... phrase of each sentence, like an air or a recitative in music, should be so artfully compounded out of long and short, out of accented and unaccented, as to gratify the sensual ear. And of this the ear is the sole judge. It is impossible to lay down laws. Even in our accentual and rhythmic language no analysis can find the secret of the beauty of a verse; how much less, then, of those phrases, such as prose is built of, which obey no law but to be lawless and yet to please? The little that we know of verse (and for my part I owe it all to my friend Professor Fleeming Jenkin) is, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... It was like the regular and rhythmic beat of a great machine. File after file, column after column, I watched the troops pass by. Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! On they went, and on, and on; all in perfect time and step; tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! It reminded me of that haunting passage that tells us that ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the mellow breeze The rhythmic movement of the maidens' toil; Before them on the sand a snowy sheet Lay spread,—the tapa cloth; tutunga trees Yield them their inner bark, and lightly then The maidens tap the fibres till they join, Made firm with scented gums and bright with dyes, To ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... Only the rhythmic cadence of the saddles broke the silence as they swung to the movement of the horses. Sometimes they looked at each other, and then they smiled, ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... be modified by existing circumstances, and yet they have laws and definite elements to distinguish them from all others. These forces, however, while they are distinct in their peculiar manifestations, and take effect through special qualities, quantities, and rhythmic movements, are all fused together in the infinite and eternal unity which constitutes the life of the universe. Neither here nor in my former work is there any question of that most difficult problem, the individual personality ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... the other combinations, but hiatus is preferable even with the above combinations, in a syllable on which the rhythmical accent falls (see under Rhythmic Accent). ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... dreamer rather than that of a warrior and oppressor; Asiatic, handsome, not insensitive, not cruel, but subtle, aristocratic, and refined. I could imagine it bending above the little serpents of the sistrum as they lifted their melodious voices to bid Typhon depart, or watching the dancing women's rhythmic movements, or smiling half kindly, half with irony, upon the lovelorn maiden who made ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... firesides, he found the living originals for his Prince Hals, his Orlandos, his Antonios, his Portias, his Isabellas. The closer personal acquaintance which we can form with the English of the age of Elizabeth, the more we are satisfied that Shakespeare's great poetry is no more than the rhythmic echo of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... admonition, "Take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak, for it is not ye that speak but the spirit of the Father that speaketh in you." Thus it is that, while the sermons usually lack the blandishments of fine rhetoric and the rhythmic ease arising from oratorical ability, they seldom fail in deep ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... there not more than half a minute peering in the direction from whence came the rhythmic bang of the anvil,—at no great distance, he was convinced,—when some one spoke suddenly at his elbow. He whirled and found himself ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... open his camphor-drenched uniform case—left behind with Lance—and unearth the familiar khaki of Kohat and Mespot days; to ride out with his men in the cool of early morning to the gardens at the far end of Lahore. The familiar words of commands, the rhythmic clatter of hoofs, were music in his ears. A thousand pities he was not free to join the Indian Army. But, in any case, there was Rose. There would always be Rose now. And he had an inkling that their angle of vision was by no ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... rhythmic utterance, and motionless in silence the godlike heroes bowed their heads as they hearkened to the ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... same time another conversation was going on in the rear room of a small printing shop in the heart of the city. It went on to the accompaniment of the rhythmic throb of the presses, and while two printers, in their shirt sleeves, kept guard both at the ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... requiring the combined strength of several men, such as the beating in of foundations, or the lifting of a great beam, was accompanied by the sound of the weirdest rhythmic chant, sustained for hours ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... aesthetically attractive. Yet in spite of the personal tribute, Selma preferred the evenings when she herself was the elocutionist. She enjoyed the sound of her own voice, and she enjoyed the emotions which her utterance of the rhythmic stanzas set coursing through her brain. It was obvious to her that Wilbur was captivated by her reading, and she delighted in giving herself up to the spirit of the text with the reservations appropriate to an enlightened but virtuous ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... dust cloud moved, a tarnishing spot on the afternoon's hard brightness. This spot was the one point of energy in the universal torpor. From it came the rhythmic beat of flying hoofs and the jingle of harness. It was the Rocky Bar stage, up from Shilo through Plymouth, across the Mother Lode and then in a steep, straining grade on to Antelope and Rocky Bar, camps nestling in the mountain gorges. It ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... often seems careless in technique. Most of his pieces are scrappy and have the air of runic rimes, or little oracular "voicings"—as they say at Concord—in rhythmic shape, of single thoughts on "Worship," "Character," "Heroism," "Art," "Politics," "Culture," etc. The content is the important thing, and the form is too frequently awkward or bald. Sometimes, indeed, in the clear-obscure of Emerson's poetry the deep wisdom of the thought finds its most natural ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... dishes, and was sitting on the stool, leaning back against the wall, already becoming sleepy, listening to the rhythmic pulsation of the engines at low speed, when the door opened again, and the guard stood revealed before me in the glare ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... the staccato beat of a motor near by, striking up abruptly out of the swish of rushing waters. In his ignorance, he decided that it was a boat from the ship going to the rescue of the daring deserters, and calmly waited for the engines of the mighty Doraine to cease their rhythmic ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... felt a slight desire to laugh at the Cree's odd chanting and the grotesque movement of his hands and arms, like two pump handles in slow and rhythmic action, as he kept time. This desire did not come to him again during the day. He remembered, long years ago, hearing his mother sing those old hymns in his boyhood home. He could see the ancient melodeon with its yellow keys, and the ragged hymn ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... springs lie directly above the Geysirs, in openings separated by a barrier of rock—which, however, rise nowhere above the level of the ground. Their waters boil very gently, with an equable and almost rhythmic flow. The charm of these springs lies in their wonderful transparency and clearness. All the prominent points and corners, the varied outlines of the cavities, and the different recesses, can be distinguished far within the depths, until ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... gallop in the face of a terrific fire, were unlimbered, and were soon hurling common shell and shrapnel at the enemy at a lively rate, striking the emplacements, batteries, and entrenchments with the rhythmic regularity ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... amount of concession in it, but what you kept had a rare intensity. You were perpetually throwing over the cargo to save the ship, but what a motion you gave her when you made her ride the waves—a motion as rhythmic as the dance of a goddess! Wayworth took long London walks and thought of these things—London poured into his ears the mighty hum of its suggestion. His imagination glowed and melted down material, his intentions multiplied and made the air a golden haze. He saw not only the thing he ...
— Nona Vincent • Henry James
... more appreciative than the wild pine-barren, that surely had never been waked by rhythmic sound since the birthday of Time. Falcon pricked his ears, and champed his bit cheerily, as he mended his pace without warning of spur. As for myself—the pure, earnest Saxon diction proved a more efficient "comforter" than "the many-colored scarf round my neck, wrought by the same kind ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... was quiet Glen ventured to open the closet door and peep out. It was dark now but there were lights in the hall. After a long time they were extinguished and the building seemed deserted. The last late worker departed. The elevator ceased its rhythmic motion. ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... was running, slowly, to a rhythmic beat. He speeded it up, threw off the brake, put the gears in the "low," and slipped in the clutch. Over the bridge in the halted procession of traffic he steered his course—a man bereft of his comrade and his driver and with a motor-car ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... broad front. As the blue river sweeps along, the rows of polished bayonets, rising and falling with the swinging tread of the men, are like interminable ranks of foam-crested waves rolling in upon the shore. The imposing mass, with its rhythmic movement, gives the impression of a single organism. One forgets to look for the individuals in it, forgets that there are individuals. Even those who have brothers, sons, lovers there, for a moment almost forget them in the impression of a mighty whole. The mind ...
— An Echo Of Antietam - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... her and thought how lovely her first party had been. She would never forget it. The room re-echoed to laughter and jest. Beautiful young eyes sparkled and shone. From the pavilion outside came the lilt of the fiddle and the rhythmic steps of ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Out and in they flew, supple and silent, quick as lightning playing in the heavens; they zig-zagged and shot this way and that, tying and untying themselves, darting out and doubling back, advancing and retiring in rhythmic action, graceful and easy, powerful and inevitable. Bending and rising, the swaying bodies gleamed and glistened with greasy dust and sweat, catching the gleams from the lamps and reflecting them in every streaming pore. Straining and tearing, the muscles, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... chapters first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the original. This may be a great point; much perhaps has been lost in the Translation here. Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... explained Veronica. "I thought at first it was mine. Oh, wouldn't there have been a talk about it, if it had been! Oh my! wouldn't there have been a row!" She settled down to a steady rhythmic dance, suggestive of a Greek chorus expressing satisfaction ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... little short of the incredible that any human being at all worthy of the name could be so infinitely fussy over trifles, could wear himself to shreds over framing a bit of repartee, could spend a tortured morning, reducing to the limits of a rhythmic paragraph the illimitable glories of the earth and sky. And the ways by which he sought to carry out his achievement! These baffled any comprehension born of ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... forth, so that at last there were, perhaps, two score of them upon his body and limbs. At the same time, some other person entered the room by the lift, behind Graham. The tailor set moving a mechanism that initiated a faint-sounding rhythmic movement of parts in the machine, and in another moment he was knocking up the levers and Graham was released. The tailor replaced his cloak of black, and the man with the flaxen beard proffered him a little glass of some ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... him, yellow as gold, perching here and there on the old furniture, frolicking in corners, at times gliding along the ground like a strip of ribbon. It was a slow deliberate march, the approach of a fond mistress stretching her golden limbs, drawing nigh to the alcove with rhythmic motion, with voluptuous lingering, which roused intense desire. At length, towards two o'clock, the sheet of sunlight left the last armchair, climbed along the coverlet, and spread over the bed like loosened locks of hair. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... they passed, the irrelevant violence of tongues, the broken, half-comprehensible tumult was smitten and divided by a wave of rhythmic sound. It pushed aside the cries of the sweetmeat sellers, and mounted above the cracked bell that proclaimed the continual auction of Kristo Dass and Friend, dealers in the second-hand. In its vivid familiarity it seemed ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... bed. The great mud-bank, all that black acreage of slime and sea-weed, the eager, struggling band of toiling fish wives, all was gone; it was all as if it had not been—would never be again. The water hissed along the beach; it broke in rhythmic, sonorous measure against the parapet. Surely there had never been any beds, or any mussels, or any toiling fish-wives; or if there had, it was all a world that the sea had washed up, and then as quietly, as ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... I think of those long mornings Which my thought goes far to seek, When, betwixt the folio's turnings, Solemn flowed the rhythmic Greek. Past the pane, the mountain spreading, Swept the sheep-bell's tinkling noise, While a girlish voice was reading,— Somewhat low for [Greek: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... is of a rhythmic character, and consists of a slow and a rapid movement. Physiological nystagmus can be induced by stimulating the movement of the endolymph in the semicircular canals, by syringing the ear with hot and cold water (caloric test), by rotating the individual (rotation test), and by the galvanic ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... suppose that, because I am a woman and in this Temple, I am going to speak ill of men; but since we want something fresh, we are going through the rhythmic steps of the round dance ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... poetic idea ("Poetische Idee") underlying his various works. And the biographer adds: "This term (i.e. poetic idea) belongs to Beethoven's epoch, and was used by him as frequently as was, for example, the expression 'poetic contents' by others—in opposition to works which only offer an harmonic and rhythmic play of tones. Writers on aesthetics of our day declaim against the latter term; with good reason, if it refer to programme-music; without reason, if they extend their negation to all Beethoven's ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... the hour that maid and boy must part; A glow unwonted, tinged with dusky red Winona's conscious face as home she sped; And to the song exultant in her heart, Beat her light moccasins with rhythmic tread. But at the summit of a little hill, Along whose base the village lay outspread, A sudden sense of some impending ill Smote the sweet fever in her veins with chill. The lake she skirted, on whose mailed breast Rode like a shield the moon from out the west, She neared ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... eating. Now and again the women would screech insults over their heads at the white; and once the corporal threw an empty bottle at him, evoking a gale of applause. The women began the belly dance, crooning while the men accompanied with the rhythmic grunt, which ever leads ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... wondrous whole? With careless hand when round her spindle, Nature Winds the interminable thread of life; When 'mid the clash of Being every creature Mingles in harsh inextricable strife; Who deals their course unvaried till it falleth, In rhythmic flow to music's measur'd tone? Each solitary note whose genius calleth, To swell the mighty choir in unison? Who in the raging storm sees passion low'ring? Or flush of earnest thought in evening's glow? Who every blossom in sweet spring-time flowering ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... rhythmic chant, and gradually the air darkened, but with the mild dimness of a summer twilight, through which sparks could be seen flickering like fire-flies about the reclining prince. The hush grew deeper; but in the stillness Odo became aware of some unseen influence ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... and went on deck without a word. As soon as she was alone Mrs. Travers pressed her hands to her temples, a gesture of distress which relieved her by its sincerity. The measured footsteps of two men came to her plainly from the deck, rhythmic and double with a suggestion of tranquil and friendly intercourse. She distinguished particularly the footfalls of the man whose life's orbit was most remote from her own. And yet the orbits had cut! ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... did old Marmaduke sleep, was the question she was asking herself. She could see that the large hands folded across his stomach rose and fell with steady rhythmic ease. Then she saw a fly—a huge, buzzing, bluebottle fly—settle for a moment on the round, bald pate of the innkeeper, and still the sleeper did not stir. Surely if a fly could not waken ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... dear in nature's face, In all this fascinating grace, In falling stars that cheat me,— In these white gleams that finely glance, In all this silent rhythmic dance? ... Hans ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... grew grave and assumed an impressive aspect, and at once all faces sobered in sympathy and took on a look of wondering and expectant interest. Now he began in a low but distinct voice the opening verses of The Rose. As he breathed the rhythmic measures forth, and one gracious line after another fell upon those enchanted ears in that deep hush, one could catch, on every hand, half-audible ejaculations of "How ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... half," from the man below, a tall, lean fellow, casting the sounding-pole. With a rhythmic nonchalance he plants the long black and white staff at the ship's side, draws it up dripping, plunges it down again, draws it up, and sends it down hour after hour. He never seems to tire; he never seems to see ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... enhanced by a succession and variety of portals, niches and arcades of Spanish and Italian origin of great beauty. The simple dignity of the plain travertine wall surfaces is heightened by tile-covered cornices terminated by pavilions. A rich foreground of rhythmic planting of trees, shrubbery and flowers, emphasizes the unity of the eight palaces, the corporate purposes of which have been so successfully interpreted by Architects ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... horizon like an inverted giant monolith, there sounded behind them the remote pad, pad of rapid hoofs muffled by dust. It was the very dead hour of night, when even nature is steeped in the quiet of a child's sleep, and the rhythmic beat broke the stillness like the throbbing ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... of the referee's whistle—and the game was on. The first half was a see-saw up and down the field. Near the end of the half Raleigh was within twenty yards of the Sanford line. Shouts of "Score! Score! Score!" went up from the Raleigh rooters, rhythmic, insistent. "Hold 'em! Hold 'em! Fight! Fight! Fight!" the Sanford cheering section pleaded, almost sobbing the words. A forward pass skilfully completed netted Raleigh sixteen yards. "Fight! ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... sounds which are musical, and others that are raucous and mere noise. The difference lies in the fact that harsh sounds are compounded of irregular vibrations, while the essence of Music is that its waves are rhythmic and follow each other in ordered swing. Rhythm is thus the primary manifestation of Music: but equally so it is the basic characteristic of everything in life. We learn that in Nature there is nothing still ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... laughter. These festive sounds came from the back veranda. She entered the dining-room, and from its obscurity looked out on a curious scene. The veranda was lighted by a lamp suspended from one of its pillars. In a corner sat Nathan; serious, dignified, scraping out a monotonous but rhythmic minor strain to which two young negroes from the lower quarters—famous dancers—were keeping time in marvelous shuffling and pigeon-wings; twisting their supple joints into astonishing contortions and the sweat rolling ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... the hall on the corner? To-night as I walked down street I heard the sound of music, And the rhythmic beat and beat, In time to the pulsing measure Of ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... explain this we must have recourse to what I have already said about waves. The heart and the lungs are the two centres of automatic rhythmic movement in the body, and each projects its own series of vibrations into the etheric envelope. Those projected by the lungs are estimated to be three times the length of those projected by the heart, while those projected by the heart are three times as rapid as those ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... cadence of the music came to her, soft-stringed and sleepy; she could hear the shuffle of dancing feet. Laughter rippled with the rhythmic thrum of the ship, voices rose and fell beyond the lighted windows, and as the old captain looked at her, there was something in her face which he ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... marry and follow And breaking waves in a rhythmic dance ensue; And all your thought fly free as the wings of the swallow, Whose arrowy ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... confession, if it be honest, must ever be a profoundly interesting document. Boriskoff, the Pole, did not hold these people spellbound by the vigor of his denunciation or the rhythmic chant of his anger. He had begun in a quiet voice, welcoming the news from Warsaw and the account of the assassination of the Deputy Governor Lebinsky. From that he passed to the old question, why does authority remain in any city at all? This London ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... newspaper by the ingenious celestial; it was embellished with plumes from a feather duster. A toy drum was suspended from his neck; the hilt of a play-time saber showed at his belt. The Chinaman carried a flag and both were marching in rhythmic step, which taxed the long legs of Po Lun severely ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... traps might wreak on any passing through the gorge below. Rather, doubtless, the memory of those sinister sentinels gave him a sense of safety, on which his serenity was founded. In his lap was a banjo which he thrummed vigorously, with rhythmic precision, if no greater musical art, and head and body and feet, all gave emphasis to the movement. At intervals, his raucous voice rumbled a snatch of song. It was evident that the moonshiner was mellow from draughts of ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... consciousness that something very much out of the ordinary course of things was happening. The first thing to impress itself upon his slowly awakening senses was the fact that the bed upon which he was lying was in motion, a gentle, easy, rhythmic, swaying motion, unlike any movement that he had ever before experienced. Yet the bed seemed to be the same as that upon which he had retired to rest upon the preceding night, so far as he could judge; the mattress had the old familiar feel, and—yes, ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... again to where the twin rails converged, and for a moment the rhythmic beat of the wheels over the joints held sway. Rather surprised, Phil stole a glance at the virile face that was turned so steadfastly away and recalled an item of gossip he had once overheard somewhere—that Mrs. Waring was the real reason Benjamin ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... with swashing petticoats and a flutter of ribbons, and Paul waited in the corridor below. On the waxed floor of the salon Annette's feet still moved to a rhythmic, half-dancing walk, and her bird-like voice ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... judgment as to what it was or whence it had come. They all agreed that it was a divine gift bestowed from Heaven. They then explained to him a piece of holy teaching and bade him if he could, 65 to turn that into rhythmic verse. When he received the instruction of the learned men, he departed for his house. In the morning he returned and delivered the passage assigned him, turned into ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various |
