"Chord" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these strange devices—not even the names. But our rule commands us to labour; there can be no harm therefore, in turning this winch—or in placing this steel-headed piece of wood opposite to the chord, (suiting his actions to his words,) nor see I aught uncanonical in adjusting the lever thus, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... through the veined web of its delicate resistance—round the hollow stem and across the fluffy breadth of it—with a humming music as of wind among the telegraph wires, only infinitely sweet and far away. There were several notes in it, a chord—the music that accompanies all flying things, even a butterfly or settling leaf, and ever fills the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the heart 'tis he alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord—its various tone, Each spring—its various bias. Then at the balance let's be mute; We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of self that, trembling, pass'd ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... swirled up by a stray gust, the "coo-whoo-a" of the white owl, the bark of the raccoon, and, at intervals, the dismal howling of wolves. These are the nocturnal voices of the winter forest. They are savage sounds; yet there is a chord in my bosom that vibrates under their influence, and my spirit is tinged with romance ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... strangely silent. Not one of the guests had ever before known the depth of sympathy in the old Bishop till now. Every chord in the nature of each man vibrated to ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... the eyes which met his touched a chord of memory long suppressed. So Kitty had looked when he met her for the first time after her flight with O'Guire; so she had looked the last time he had seen her when she had pleaded for mercy to her dying parents and he had taunted her and mocked her till she turned and left ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... her going to the very last chord, she too full of wonder and uncertainty to protest; and then he led her straight through the room to where Mrs. Raleigh stood, surrounded by the usual crowd of subalterns, muttered an excuse, and ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... some other cause, I saw nothing that was grand, but enough that was beautiful and pleasing. The more pretentious and elaborate specimens of architecture, like the Palace of the Tuileries or the Palais Royal, are truly superb, but they as truly do not touch that deeper chord whose awakening we call ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... as the Neck spoke the sun sank, and he fell upon his face. And when the young man lifted the robe, behold there was nothing under it but the harp, across which there swept such a wild and piteous chord that all the strings burst as if with ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... then appears, and presents him with a pair of white kid gloves. The illustrious conductor, having taken some time to thrust them upon a very large and red hand, leisurely takes up his baton, rises, grins upon the expectant musicians, lifts his arm, and—the first chord is struck! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... this arrangement the more feasible did it seem to me; indeed, I saw no reason why the depression of a number of keys at the tuning fork end of the circuit should not be followed by the audible production of a full chord from the piano in the distant city, each tuning fork affecting at the receiving end that string of the piano with which it was in unison. At this time the interest which I felt in electricity led ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... once where they will come upon the secret of their own sensations, she ran down to the tree and peered on tiptoe at the embedded volume. On a blank page stood pencilled: "This is the last fruit of the tree. Come not to gather more." There was no meaning for her in that sentimental chord but she must have got some glimpse of a meaning; for now, as in an agony, her lips fashioned the words: "If I forget his face I may as well die;" and she wandered on, striving more and more vainly to call up his features. The—"Does he think of me?" and—"What am I to him?"—such timorous ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... peculiarity of hers that her voice never dropped at the close of her talk, as with most people; on the contrary, it rose and always ended, as it were, in the broken seventh chord. She always talked up, never down, to people. The melody of her sentences resembled that of the child when it says: "Can't I, father?" There was something beseeching in her tones, and it was well-nigh impossible to ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... heap recompense on recompense, until, in their passionate delight, the last ducat, the last watch, ring, and even horse, has been bestowed. The gypsies of Hungary conclude all pieces ending in the minor key by substituting the major chord for the minor chord; for instance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... of this stele, or headstone, commences a series of separate stones, irregular in size and shape, but forming an arc, the chord of which varies from twenty to twenty-six feet; so that the whole figure somewhat resembles the bow and shank of ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... boy brought the bow home across the shivering strings, and, as if ears could be thirsty as a drunkard's throat, he drank his fill of the 'cello's deep, full-membered chord. The air was heavy with the resonance of marching feet, ghostly feet marching and marching down upon him in slow, inexorable crescendo as the tides ebbed later among the sedges on the marsh and the moon grew big. And above the ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... line in one direction requires to be stopped in a marked and distinct manner when it has run its course, and we find a similarly felt necessity in regard to musical form. The repetition so common at the close of a piece of music of the same chord several times in succession is exactly analogous to the repetition of cross lines at the necking of a Doric column to stop the vertical lines of the fluting, or to the strongly marked horizontal lines of a cornice which form the termination ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... Phyllis's sudden whim to render a very charming and touching program, ending with the Chopin "Berceuse." The music died away in a hushed chord, and Leslie, who had been gazing out at the ocean during its rendering, was astonished when she looked around to see the visitor furtively wiping away a ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... flashes and overtones of scarlet, reflecting with subtle accuracy the tumult in his own mind. Not a sound was in the air, not a whisper nor sign of human habitation. Vaguely, uneasiness grew in his mind as he entered the shuttle station. Suddenly, the music caught him, a long, low chord of indescribable beauty, rising and falling in the wind, a ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... thumbed a chord or two, then set his guitar down softly. For a time he looked out into the valley swimming in a silvery light, and under its spell the longing in him ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... had never been far from any one of them. He admits that their poet-philosophers had risen to a lofty apprehension of "the Fatherhood of God," for they had taught that "we are all his offspring;" and he seems to have felt that in asserting the common brotherhood of our race, he would strike a chord of sympathy in the loftiest school of Gentile philosophy. He thus "recognized the Spirit of God brooding over the face of heathenism, and fructifying the spiritual element in the heart even of the natural man. He feels that in these human principles there were some faint adumbrations of ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... [5] possibilities of Spirit. He established health and har- mony, the perfection of mind and body, as the reality of man; while discord, as seen in disease and death, was to him the opposite of man, hence the unreality; even as in Science a chord is manifestly the reality of music, and [10] discord the unreality. This rule of harmony must be ac- cepted as true ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... a bit of a twinkle in the corners of those cold gray eyes that told Cuthbert the other was not wholly a man of iron—there was another vein to his character not often seen by his fellows, but which could be played upon by touching the right chord, if one but knew what ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... love. There was something in the old man's mournful tone and glance when it rested upon him, that answered strangely and sadly to the spirit-voice breathing in his own bold breast. It seemed to touch that chord indefinably, yet felt by the vibration of every nerve which followed. He roused himself, however, and ere they joined the morning meal, there was a brighter smile on the lip and heart of Agnes than had rested there ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the traditional wildness of the great tragedienne would have found a chord of sympathy in the avalanche or in the fierce torrent breaking over the rocks. Rousseau's hysteria and wild assaults on the conventions of Society and literature have been traced to the mountains. Lord Morley emphasizes that Rousseau "required torrents, rocks, dark ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... Board of War, who wrote to say that he had succeeded in getting the military intendant of Mienchu transferred to a post in the province of Kwangsi, and that the departure of this noxious official would mean the release of the colonel, as he alone was the colonel's accuser. This news added one more chord of joy which had been making harmony in Jasmine's heart for some hours, and readily she agreed with Tu that they should set off ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... It was a new era in her existence. Herself, by this time, an artist, she could forget her griefs, and enter with her whole soul into the beauties of the art she now heard practiced in perfection for the first time. To music a chord responded in her breast which vibrated powerfully. During the performances she was at one moment pale and trembling, tears rushing into her eyes; at another, she was ready to throw herself at the feet ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... however, feeling sure of his own skill, and ran at full speed to the point where the animal had lain down to watch him pass. From this point he followed the trail just far enough to catch its curve. Then he left it and ran in a straight line shrewdly calculated to form the chord to his quarry's section of a circle. His plan was to intercept and pick up the trail again about three quarters of a mile further on. In nine cases out of ten his calculation would have worked out as he wished; but in ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a night I saw the Pleiades, rising through the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid. Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest Nature's rule! Cursed be the gold that gilds the straiten'd forehead of a fool! Comfort? Comfort scorn'd of devils! this is truth the ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... State, and among them three invitations from widely separated cities, all based upon the newspaper reports of his Ophir speech. It seemed to be plainly evident that the "campaign-of-education" idea was striking a popular chord, and the proponent of the idea saw what a miraculous opportunity was offering for the railroad if only the "powers" that Gantry had refused to name were broad enough and high-minded enough to ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... brought about the very last thing he intended with his music—stopped the flirtation's immediate progress. Maga seemed to take to Fred's unchastened harmony with all the wildness that possessed her. Some chord he struck, or likelier, some abandoned succession of them touched off her magazine of poetry. And ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... one-inch nipple, in such a manner that a pipe introduced would pass, not on a line with the radius, but about half way between the axis of the four-inch pipe and its walls; in other words, it would be on a line with a chord of the circle. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... merely the poet, and not the lover, who speaks in most of Horace's love verses, there can never be any doubt that the poems to his friends come direct from his heart. They glow with feeling. To whatever chord they are attuned, sad, or solemn, or joyous, they are always delightful; consummate in their grace of expression, while they have all the warmth and easy flow of spontaneous emotion. Take, for example, the following (Odes, II. 7). Pompeius Varus, a ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... would not be did he, like Cadmus' soldiers, spring full grown from the earth. Man is the brain, woman the heart of the human race. She is the color and fragrance of the flower, the bright bow in the black o'erhanging firmament of life, the sweet chord that makes complete the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Mr. Thomas brought forward Beethoven's Mass in D, the great "Missa Solemnis." In the first movement, "Kyrie," of this work Beethoven has created an effect of surpassing beauty in the successive introduction of the solo voices. At the outset there is a crashing chord from all the forces, including the full organ. The thundering sound ceases abruptly, leaving the solo tenor voice sustaining a tone seemingly in midair. Another loud crash projects the solo contralto voice, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... mind, and now and then she would read a page of some book that told of the best Friend. At first because it was written by the dear pastor at home it commanded her attention, and finally because some dormant chord in her heart had been touched, she allowed Elizabeth to speak of these things. But it was not until they had been away from home for three months, and she had been growing daily weaker and weaker, that she allowed Elizabeth to ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... touched the first responsive chord. She looked down into his expectant face, feeling that she could not bear to disappoint him, yet unwilling to make a promise ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... wings of one dove, Than tones or colours in chord, We are one—and safe, and for ever, my love, Two thoughts in the ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... midst of all this bustle, Willie moped and pined. He had the same chord of delicacy running through his mind that made his body feeble and weak. He kept out of the way, and was apparently occupied in whittling and carving uncouth heads on hazel-sticks in an out-house. But he positively avoided Michael, and shrunk away even from Susan. She ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to be walking in a better world than ours; then, by some strange freak of the imagination, I fell to thinking of the poverty and sorrow, and breaking hearts all about us, until the music seemed to change to a minor chord; and away back of all other sounds I seemed to hear the sob and moan of the dying and broken-hearted. Perhaps some new chord had been touched in my own heart that had never before responded to human things; ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... list, and to the instinctive applause of the popular voice. Even with these humbler hands to build up his monument, the great master of music has a perpetual possession within the hearts of men, that the poet and the painter may well envy. Every chord in the human frame that answers to his strains, every tear that rises at the bidding of his cadences, every sob that struggles for an outlet at his touches of despairing tenderness, or at the thunders of his massive ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... made these obliging remarks, though uttered so as only to be heard by the poet as a murmur of uncertain import. He understood, however, that he produced no enthusiasm, and collected himself to touch another chord ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... intelligence, but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption. Will you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word can save you? What fascination is it that can take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is there no chord in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left, to which I can appeal against ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... a black brook which dropped from stone to stone beneath the shadow of our Rattlesnake Rocks, the air seemed at first as silent above me as the earth below. The buzz of summer sounds had not begun. Sometimes a bee hummed by with a long swift thrill like a chord of music; sometimes a breeze came resounding up the forest like an approaching locomotive, and then died utterly away. Then, at length, a Veery's delicious note rose in a fountain of liquid melody from beneath me; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... was something more in it all than the gratification of mere fun and laughter, more even than the rarer pleasure that underlies the outbreak of all forms of genuine humor. Another chord had been struck. Over and above the lively painting of manners which at first had been so attractive, there was something that left deeper mark. Genial and irrepressible enjoyment, affectionate heartiness of tone, unrestrained exuberance of mirth, these are not more delightful than they ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... heavy compound levers were used; the lighter rods were bent by the device shown in Fig. 212. The assembling of the trusses was accomplished as shown by Fig. 213, using the steel framework of the erection shed as a staging. Across the horizontals of the framework were placed two false temporary top chord bars marked to the stirrup spacing of the truss being assembled. On these bars, at the spaces marked, were suspended stirrups with their lower ends hooked. The lower chord bars were then suspended in the stirrup hooks and the whole ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... playing until you drop from weariness," she announced ecstatically, when the last wailing, sobbing, soothing chord had died away; and the other ladies murmured, "How delightful!" and ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of your life touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity. These thoughts and motives within you, stir the pulses of a deathless spirit. Act not, then, as mere creatures of this life, who, for a little while, are to walk the valleys and the hills, to enjoy the sunshine and to breathe ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Judah's sky, That voice o'er Bethlehem's palmy glen! The lamp far sages hailed on high, The tones that thrilled the shepherd men: Glory to God in loftiest heaven! Thus angels smote the echoing chord; Glad tidings unto man forgiven, Peace from the presence ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... did," replied B. One year later a third penitent was going off, and upon the clergyman saying, "Bless me, is it possible? Did you write 'Junius'?" he replied, "Ah, worshipful sir, you touch a painful chord in my remembrances—I now wish I had not. Alas! reverend sir, I did." Now, you see,' went on my friend, 'so many men at the New Drop, as you may say, having with tears and groans taxed themselves with "Junius" as the climax of their offences, one begins to think that perhaps all men wrote ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... said eagerly, for he had touched a chord which set me thinking—I mean trying to think; "that trouble hanging over us. There was some trouble, ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... his shoulders. "All the first matter should be removed except for the spinal chord and the ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... irregular semi-circular shape—a deep narrow stream forming the chord, and afterwards cleaving its way through the otherwise unbroken forest. In the convexity of the arc, at that point most remote from the water, stands the cabin—a log "shanty" with "clapboard" roof—on one side flanked by a rude horse-shed, on the other by ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... As the flame died from the western sky and the shadows crept down from the trees, the bonfire was set alight. As the flame leaped high the soft strains of the orchestra died away. Then suddenly, clear, full and strong, a chord sounded forth, another, and then another. A hush fell upon the chattering, laughing crowd. Then as they caught the strain men lolling upon the ground sprang to their feet; lads stood ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... sarcasms, terrible in their denunciations, ineffably beautiful in their pathos—addresses that recalled the most glorious as well as the saddest memories of Irish history, and presented brilliant vistas of the future—addresses that touched to its fullest and most delicious vibration every chord of the Irish heart—here they were being sped over the land in an unfailing and ever welcome supply. The peasant read them to his family by the fireside when his hard day's work was done, and the fisherman, as he steered his boat homeward, reckoned as not ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... xviii.). For a criticism of Demos and Thyrza in juxtaposition with Besant's Children of Gibeon, see Miss Sichel on 'Philanthropic Novelists' (Murray's Magazine, iii. 506-518). Gissing saw deeper than to 'cease his music on a merry chord.'] ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... will often operate in turning the heart God-ward. The sense of being thrown in entire dependence upon God can be the God-given turning-point in a man's life and an end to his godlessness. But need will never provide the lasting religious motive which sets the chord of what is noblest in men vibrating within them. The peculiar glory of the Christian religion is that it provides that motive—it is the motive of God's need. He wants us, for He ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... is profound,' replied Walstein, 'and you have struck upon a sympathetic chord. But what am I to do? ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... Constabulary, playing in front of their barracks in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, on Friday evenings, sometimes include the tune in their programme, but when I heard them it was led up to and preceded by "St. Patrick's Day in the Mornin'," to which it was conjoined by one intervening chord. A Castlereagh ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... Clytie could be more constant than I to him who strikes the chord that is responsive ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... stretched out over splendid downs, beyond which lay a narrow glittering strip of grey sea. "There is the sea," announced Brigit, perfunctorily. It was not intrinsically beautiful, the scene, but as some chord in the human breast almost invariably vibrates in response to a view of salt water, this point was considered, at Kingsmead, to be a particularly important one, and as the motor flew on Brigit Mead wondered how many hundred times she had brought people there with the same ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... depths, a chord of fear seemed to have been struck in her as well—the fear of stony faces, drooped lids, and stretched, pointing fingers. For that night she started up, with a cry, from dreaming that not Annie Johns but she was being expelled; that an army of spear-like first fingers was marching ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... touched in him, as it always did, a latent chord of inclination. It would have meant nothing to him to discover that his nearness made her more brilliant, but this glimpse of a twilight mood to which he alone had the clue seemed once more to set him in ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... sobbing — Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heard Than half wing-openings of the sleeping bird, Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred. Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo! Every least ripple of the strings' song-flow Died to a level with each level bow And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced so, As a brook beneath his curving bank doth go To linger in the sacred dark and green Where many boughs the still pool overlean And many leaves make shadow with their sheen. But presently A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly Upon the bosom of that harmony, And sailed ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... this volume; and let them judge for themselves. Let them compare, again, the opening sentences of the Four Gospels, or of the Acts of the Apostles, with the words with which Reginald begins this life of St. Godric. "By the touch of the Holy Spirit's finger the chord of the harmonic human heart resounds melodiously. For when the vein of the heart is touched by the grace of the Holy Spirit, forthwith, by the permirific sweetness of the harmony, an exceeding operation of sacred virtue is perceived more ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... not forgotten—that the reunion of their souls must be in heaven, and only there: hope most precious! Then came the Amen. In that no joy, no tears, nor sadness, nor regrets, but a return to God. The last chord that sounded was grave, solemn, terrible. The musician revealed the nun in the garb of her vocation; and as the thunder of the basses rolled away, causing the hearer to shudder through his whole being, she seemed to sink into the tomb from which for a brief ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells; The chord alone that breaks at night Its tale of ruin tells. Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show that ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... moment their conversation was interrupted. Eustace Hignett, pulling himself together with a painful effort, raised his hands and struck a crashing chord, and, as he did so, there appeared through the door at the far end of the saloon a figure at the sight of which the entire audience started convulsively with the feeling that a worse thing had befallen them than ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... and the ratio of lift to drift is therefore the same as that of the cosine to the sine of the angle of incidence. But in curved surfaces a very remarkable situation is found. The pressure, instead of being uniformly normal to the chord of the arc, is usually inclined considerably in front of the perpendicular. The result is that the lift is greater and the drift less than if the pressure were normal. Lilienthal was the first to discover this exceedingly important fact, which is fully set forth in his book, Bird Flight the Basis ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... the waist-belt. Once a singer started up the strains of "Little Mary," but this was unanimously vetoed as coming too near home. Then from absence of a better inspiration, we commenced to roar "Home, Sweet Home," which I think struck just as responsive a chord, but the sentiment of which made ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... sight of the harmony of blended and mingling, yet always individual, and never confused colors, and notwithstanding his knowledge of optics, and of how the supreme unity of the light was secerned into its decreed chord, the imaginative faith of the troubled poet should so work in him as to lift his head for a moment above the waters of that other flood that threatened to overwhelm his microcosm, and the bow should seem ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... in this scene which peculiarly affected Apaecides; and, in truth, it is difficult to conceive a ceremony more appropriate to the religion of benevolence, more appealing to the household and everyday affections, striking a more sensitive chord ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... tender chord is struck at last, when Margaret, appealing to Henry, exclaims, "God send I were such a woman as might go with my bairns in mine arms. I trow I should not be long fra you!" Nor is it possible to feel aught but sympathy for her, when she allows herself to be stormed ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... a right to treat Montaigne as we please, even though that right includes the privilege of not reading every word of the famous Essays, and of only reverting—in our light return to them—to those aspects and qualities which strike an answering chord in ourselves. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... They weary of their own power. Tyranny palls. Mrs. Harrington was longing to be thwarted by some one stronger than herself. The FitzHenrys even in their boyhood had, by their sturdy independence, their simple, seamanlike self-assertion, touched some chord in this lone woman's heart which would ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... a-cuttin' en grindin' thoo dat stick er timber, en moanin', en groanin,' en sweekin', kyars my 'memb'ance back ter ole times, en 'min's me er po' Sandy." The pathetic intonation with which he lengthened out the "po' Sandy" touched a responsive chord in our ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... figure, the buttons perpendicular to it. Then the measuring wedge is introduced until a stoppage occurs through the contact of the buttons with the sides of the tube. Finally, their distance apart is read on the scale. Such distance apart will be the measure of a diameter or a chord of the tube's section, according as the buttons have been kept in the diametral plane or moved out of it. In order that the operator shall not be obliged to watch the position of the line of calibrating ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold against thee. I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; but now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet, Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation—take again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds —struggle with the civilized world and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground—let the night-OWL send forth its screams from the stubborn oak—let the sea sport upon the beach, and the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to what condition of calamity they were subjected; in every situation they seemed to shed some new and unexpected charm upon the eyes of those who looked upon her. The mother, we said on glancing at her, paused—but the chord of love and sorrow had been touched, and poor Mave, unable any longer to restrain her feelings, burst out into tears, and wept aloud on heading the name and sufferings of her lover. Her father looked at her, and his brow got sad; but there was no longer the darkness of resentment ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... as hate is of hate, and Mr. Blaney, stopping abruptly in the middle of the long last note, and in doing so changing the word, with ludicrous result, from a song to a spoken one, screeched aloud, ere she could strike the first chord, ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... was still. No light shone upon the tuneful beaks. Like Theseus, I picked my way along, guided by an Ariadne's thread. My Ariadne was a slumbering orchestra deftly spinning out a thick proboscis-chord of such stuff as dreams are made of. Taking this web in my ear, I safely traversed the labyrinth, and meandered at last into pen No. 1. In placing my foot on the edge of the under-world crib, I unwittingly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... same Time that these Buboes appeared, severals towards the Decline of this Fever complained of a Pain all along the Spermatic Chord; and soon after a Swelling of the Testicle appeared[22]. However, this Complaint was not peculiar to those who had the Fever; for others recovering from Fluxes, and other Disorders, were likewise affected with such Swellings. I did not observe any Symptom of this ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... WINE HORN appears again beneath the lamp. He strikes a loud chord; then as SEELCHEN moves towards that sound the lamp goes out; there is again only blue shadow; but the couples have disappeared into the Inn, and the doorway ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Divine service at Rampart, and on Maundy Thursday, after four miles upon the river, we took the portage of eleven miles that cuts a chord to the arc of the greatest bend of the river within the Ramparts and so saves nine miles. Three miles more took us to the deserted cabin at the site of the abandoned coal-mine opposite the mouth of the Mike Hess River, here confluent with the Yukon, and in that cabin we spent the ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... of the deserted two on Cod Lead must have appealed to the commander. He was profane about it, and talked about elephants and men who owned them in a way that struck an answering chord in the Cap'n's breast. But he finally gave orders for the embarkation of Imogene, and after much more profanity and more slurs which Hiram was obliged to listen to meekly, the task was accomplished, and the cutter proceeded on her way along coast ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Scott's poetry is patriotism, the passion of place. In his metrical romances the rush of the narrative and the vivid, picturesque beauty of the descriptions are indeed exciting to the imagination; but it is only when the chord of national feeling is touched that the verse grows lyrical, that the heart is reached, and that tears come into the reader's eyes, as they must have done into the poet's. A dozen such passages occur at once to the memory; the last stand of the Scottish nobles around their ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... night and day Were mingled in the eastern Heaven: Throbbing with unheard melody Shook Lyra all its star-chord seven: When dusk shrunk cold, and light trod shy, And dawn's grey eyes were troubled grey; And souls went palely up the ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... I do now. I feel instinctively that we are not kindred spirits; that the mysterious chord of sympathy which vibrates in the heart of a girl with the first tone of the voice of the man she is destined to love, does not exist between us. Oh, indeed, indeed, Mr Gresham, although I adore Frederic Harrison as a thinker, as much ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... persecution of the prison was lifted from him, all the joyous gaiety and fun of his nature bubbled up irresistibly. There was no contradiction in this complexity. A man can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions and impulses without confusion. At this time the dominant chord in Oscar was pity ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... 9-mile point. Here, there was a long lateral flexure with a shift of 4 inches eastward. Half-a-mile farther, the fish-plates were broken and the rails parted 8-1/2 inches. A little beyond the 10-mile point, an embankment 15 feet high was pushed 4-1/2 feet eastward along a chord of 150 feet. At the 12-mile point and beyond, fish-plates were broken, lines were bent and the joints opened; the road-bed was cut by a series of cracks, one of which was 21 inches wide, while the ...
— A Study of Recent Earthquakes • Charles Davison
... classical numbers may promise themselves much gratification from the muse of Brooks, while the many-stringed harp of his lady, the Norna of the Courier Harp, which none but she can touch, has a chord ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... sights and sounds of a hay-field which seems to touch the same chord in one as Lowell's lines in the "Lay of Sir ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... to Sir James, who was so much touched by this chivalrous incident that he spared the remainder of the garrison, and gave them provisions and money to return in safety to Clifford [Footnote: The wild adventures at the Perilous Castle derive a most affecting interest from the chord they never failed to touch in the heart of "The Last Minstrel." Seen by him when a schoolboy, the Dale of Douglas, the ruin of the castle, and the tombs at St. Bride's, aided to form his spirit of romance; the Douglas ballad lore rang ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... the pigeons, a flock of wild geese went by, harrowing the sky northward. The geese strike a deeper chord than the pigeons. Level and straight they go as fate to its mark. I cannot tell what emotions these migrating birds awaken in me,—the geese especially. One seldom sees more than a flock or two in a season, and what a spring token it is! ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... for Paul was so profound and quiet, that she did not know its depth or strength. As she had not believed that parting from him would be painful until the event had taught her, so even now she did not know how intertwined with every chord and fibre of her heart and how identical with her life, was her love for Paul. She was occupied by a more enthusiastic devotion to her "brother," as ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... these, by some mysterious bond of union, the organic globules are seen to arrange themselves into two nearly parallel rows. We may then say that the keel of the animal is laid down, and in it we have the first rudiments of a backbone and a continuous spinal chord. But during the progress and completion of this first organic process no changes have been observed assimilating the nascent embryo to any of the inferior animals. The next series of changes in the germinal membrane are of two kinds—in one the nervous system, the organs of ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous
... the word is spoken— Mourn, for the knell hath knoll'd— The master chord is broken, And the master's hand is cold! Romance hath lost her minstrel, No more his magic strain Shall throw a sweeter spell around, The legends ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various
... of the corvine family, with the exception of the rook, who always tries his best to be an honest, useful citizen; but it is not precisely the same. They may be regarded as bad hats generally In the bird community, and on this very account—"I'm sorry to say," to quote Mr. Pecksniff—they touch a chord in us; and the daw being the genial rascal in feathers par excellence is naturally the ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... was the fact that from that day the Russian flag (minus the Crown) flew from the flagpost over every big station we passed, and on all public buildings. The Russians are extremely emotional, and I had managed to strike the right chord the first time. ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... and the spirit of his murdered wife beckoned him to follow her to perdition. A mighty and crushing weight oppressed him; blood gushed from the pores of his skin; his eyes almost leaped from their sockets, and his brain seemed swimming in molten lead. At length Death came, and snapped asunder the chord of his existence; the soul of the murderer was in the presence ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... the coombe were hung with beeches sheathed now in tenderest green; while from out of the emptiness beneath, the insistent and melancholy cry of lambs seemed to make the shadows quiver and touched a chord of wistfulness in the heart ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... the schoolmistress.—Yes, frightened me. They made me feel as if there might be constituted a creature with such a chord in her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she but spoke, he would leave all and follow her, though it were into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to keep our wits is, that there are so few natural chords between others' ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Taylor's neglect and unkindness during the past year, had in some measure chilled her first feelings for him. She now, however, looked upon herself as the most afflicted of human beings; the death of her baby had indeed touched the keenest chord in her bosom—she wept over ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... has just come into his sphere of creative power. When he is thoroughly satisfied that he can produce the effect at will, he abandons it for something newer and a little higher. The boy who discovers, without being told, that the dominant chord, followed by the tonic, produces a certain musical effect, is doing something that for him is on a par with Wagner's searching the piano for those marvellous effects of his that are ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... she whispered, and pressed the chord again, rapturously listening to the vibrations as they died away in the quiet room. Then she tiptoed out and closed the door ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... was no time for the indulgence of sentiment; she knew that duty must be done, even though every chord of her heart quivered with agony. After much consideration and earnest prayer, she had concluded to let him go, and the thought of sending him away from her, and all he loved, among entire strangers, was what made her so sorrowful. She strove ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous
... and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his cordial wine, Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,— If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... up a lively air, a la banjo, and in exact imitation of a minstrel, rendered "Gwine to Get a Home, Bymeby." And the thunders of encore that came from the outside listeners, showed how surely he had touched upon a pleasant chord. He followed that with several modern serio-comic songs, all of which were received ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... incapable of that sweet and liquid eloquence of the soul, which would perhaps have stood the fairest chance of seducing Mr. Falkland for a moment to forget his anguish. He exhorted his host to rouse up his spirit, and defy the foul fiend; but the tone of his exhortations found no sympathetic chord in the mind of my patron. He had not the skill to carry conviction to an understanding so well fortified in error. In a word, after a thousand efforts of kindness to his entertainer, he drew off his forces, growling and dissatisfied with his own impotence, rather than angry ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... must be noted in his favour that hypocrisy was wanting in his unlovely character. Amongst other atrocities which Las Casas brought to his attention was the death of seven thousand Indian children within three months, on which he dwelt, hoping to touch some humane chord in the Bishop. He was deceived. "Look what an ignorant fool you are!" exclaimed his lordship. "What is this to me or what to the King?" This rough answer goaded his patience beyond control and Las Casas shouted in reply: "That all these souls perish is nothing to ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... was the power of contagious sympathy. Every wise man and good citizen ought to be aware of the existence and operation of this power. There seems indeed to be a constitutional, original, sympathy in our nature. When men act in a crowd, their heartstrings are prone to vibrate in unison. Whatever chord of passion is struck in one breast, the same will ring forth its wild note through the whole mass. This principle shows itself particularly in seasons of excitement, and its power rises in proportion to the ardor and zeal of those ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... away down here in this old southern State, as she stands nearing the border land of another world, recompensed the great pioneer for much that she had borne when life was young and audiences, as she said, less sympathetic. Mrs. Merrick's remarks, also, touched a deep chord and roused the audience to a ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... toward Kirkwood. He had, indeed, taken a seat that gave him a particular view that he fancied and his eyes wandered from her hands to her lovely, high-bred face. No one spoke between the numbers, or until Rose, sitting quiet a moment at the end, while the last chord died away, found her own particular seat by the ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... Zion" is an historical romance. It re-tells a chapter in the life of the Jewish people at the time of the prophet Isaiah. The poet could not exercise any choice as to his subject—it was forced upon him inevitably. In order to be sure of touching a responsive chord in his people, it was necessary to carry the action twenty-five centuries back. A Jewish novel based on contemporaneous life would have been incongruous both with truth and with the spirit ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... is the most descriptive, and true, and touching scene of a Christian man's experience that can be found in any language. Burns knew how to touch the tender chord of a human heart. "An honest man's the noblest work of God." "They rest from their labor and their works do ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... together at Littlemore instrumental trios written by the Cardinal himself, and which Father Bowles once told us were "most pleasing." What has become of them?[38] On our showing the Father in 1869 an original song to his words "The Haven,"[39] he pointed to the second chord, exclaiming, "Ah, a diminished seventh!" We had no notion at that time what perpetrated iniquity that might be, but two years later he wrote: "Every beginner deals in diminished sevenths. At least, I did as a boy. I first learnt the chord from the overture to ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis
... followed them with his eyes; suddenly he leaped up, and a wild thought burned in his breast. But with an effort he checked himself, grasped his violin, and struck a wailing chord of lament. Then he laid his ear close to the instrument, as if he were listening to some living voice hidden there within, ran warily with the bow over the strings, and warbled, and caroled, and sang with maddening glee, and still with a shivering undercurrent of woe. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... trefoils in gold, and the card-board should be large enough to leave a space of at least three inches between the illuminated border and the frame, which should be a wide band of dull gilding or pale-colored wood, with a tiny line of black to relieve it. The ornament should, if possible, chord in some way with the picture. Thus a photograph of a Madonna might have the annunciation-lilies and passion-flowers ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various
... to Zelter on the Palestrina music as heard in the Sistine chapel, says that nothing could exceed the effect of the blending of the voices, the prolonged tones gradually merging from one note and chord to another, softly swelling, decreasing, at last dying out. "They understand," he writes, "how to bring out and place each trait in the most delicate light, without giving it undue prominence; ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... is devoid of all real rhythmical life; it may have the metre of poetry, but it has not often got its music, nor can there be any true delicacy in the ear that tolerates such rhymes as 'chord' and 'abroad.' Even the claim that Mr. Sharp puts forward for him, that his muse takes her impressions directly from nature and owes nothing to books, cannot be sustained for a moment. Wordsworth is a great poet, but bad echoes of Wordsworth ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Crash—it is the bushes breaking, as the first foam-flecked, wearied horse hardly rises to his leap, and yet crushes safely through, opening a way, which is quickly widened by the straggling troop behind. Ha! down the lane from the hill dashes another squadron that has eroded the chord of the arc and comes in fresher. Ay, and a third is entering at the bottom there, one by one, over the brook. Woods, field, and paths, but just before an empty solitude, are alive with men and horses. Up yonder, along the ridge, gallops another troop ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... boy or young man of thoughtful mind does the glorious adventure appeal and make its lessons obvious. By way of refreshing the memory of those who were once familiar with the myth, but who, in the practical school of experience, have lost the chord of their adventure-loving days; and also for those, perchance, who are not acquainted with the tale, a brief sketch ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... farther down the passage encouraged him to place his fingers on the handle, but a crashing chord from an unseen piano made him remove them swiftly. He roamed on, and a few minutes later the process of elimination had brought him to what was technically his own private library—a large, soothing room full of old books, of which his father ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... not a voluntary contribution, but a tax. Nothing is unforced and spontaneous. There is a want of elasticity and motion. The story does not "give an echo to the seat where love is throned." The heart does not answer of itself like a chord in music. The fancy does not run on before the writer with breathless expectation, but is dragged along with an infinite number of pins and wheels, like those with which the Lilliputians dragged Gulliver pinioned to the royal palace.—Sir Charles Grandison is a coxcomb. What sort of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... blurred the lights on the ancient altar, and the muffled roll of an organ broke into sonorous waves, like reverberations of far-away thunder; and why was it, tell me, that the universal glory thrilled me only as a sensuous chord of color, but in the dark corner consecrated to the worship of our God, my soul expanded, as if a holy finger touched it, and I fell on my knees, and prayed? Each of us comes into this world dowered with the behest to make desperate war against that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in this visit of the departed guid-man, and, having touched a chord which was extremely sensitive and not easily put to rest after having been made to vibrate, old Mrs Cameron entertained her with a sweet and prolix account of the last illness, death, and burial of the said guid-man, with the tears swelling ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... Doc. From what our Musical Critic has seen of the score, he is able to wink his eye wisely but not too well, and to hint that as Mr. Guppy says, "There are chords"; and to make these chords in combination, the strings are admirably fitted. There is one chord (will it be recognised as belonging to Box?) which— But, as Sir ARTHUR says, "Where will be the surprise, if your Musical Critic tells everything beforehand?" He is right, quite right, and, thank goodness, he is quite well, and not ; but the Composer is in the playfullest of humours, and laughs ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... at last Payne decreed that he should have his own way and stay out. "It will do him no harm, and may cool his peppery blood some!" had been the keeper's decision. So the door was left open, and Last Bull entered or refrained, according to his whim. It was noticed, however,—and this struck a chord of answering sympathy in the plainsman's imaginative temperament,—that, though on ordinary nights he might come in and stay with the herd under shelter, on nights of driving storm, if the tempest blew from the west or northwest, Last Bull was sure ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... upon each syllable: "Roos-cyoo the Poor-oosh-oong!" At unexpected intervals two male voices, evidently belonging to men who had contracted the habit of holding tin in their mouths, joined the lady in a thorough search for the Lost Chord. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... answer from that hand. The musicians still played; then silence fell upon them, too, and the gay sounds died down, as scattered coals are extinguished by water. The pipe became mute, and the ringing tympanum and the murmuring dulcimer; and as though a chord were broken, as though song itself were dying, the zither echoed a trembling broken sound. Then all ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... hours before its time. Nothing stirred, not a vocal chord of hungry, puzzled, frightened chicken or cow. The whole region seemed to have caught its breath, to be smothered under a pall of stillness, unbroken except for some occasional distant earthquake of thunder from the inverted Switzerland of cloud that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... latest offspring of the womb of time. Our earth hangs well-nigh silent now, amid the chorus of her sister orbs, and not till past and present move harmoniously together will music once more vibrate on this long silent chord in the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organization, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... telepathy, the sympathetic chord, and so on, and so on, good honest words to describe that which no one understands, and which caused the girl sitting on a prosaic bed in a prosaic hotel to smile suddenly as she sat ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... quickly and stepped towards the window, an involuntary movement of agitation. He had touched a chord. But even as she reached the window and glanced down to the hot, dusty street, she heard a loud voice below, a reckless, ribald sort of voice, calling to some one to, "Come and have ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... answered, there was no hint in his finely modulated tones of any chord having been touched in his breast, save the legitimate one of respectful appreciation of a woman who fulfilled the expectation of one alive to what ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... into which I meant to take my companion), and now melt you into grief and pity, or mystify you with witchcraft, or put you into a state of lofty triumph like a conqueror. The phrase of smiting the chord— ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... little awkward last time, because something had gone wrong with the keys of the piano. They stuck down, and I had to get Wilfred to sit underneath and keep poking them up as fast as I played on them, or else half the notes wouldn't sound; and it seemed so queer to only get part of a chord, and to miss the middle of a run. It quite put me out. I suppose it was the damp that caused it. We must get a tuner to come ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... her for a subject, she was happier in her choice than the lady who had suggested the Progress of Error. 8he bade him take the sofa on which she was reclining, and which, sofas being then uncommon, was a more striking and suggestive object than it would be now. The right chord was struck; the subject was accepted; and The Sofa grew into The Task; the title of the song reminding us that it was "commanded by the fair." As Paradise Lost is to militant Puritanism, so is The Task to the religious movement of its author's time. To its character as the poem ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... not know what I was playing, Or what I was dreaming then; But I struck one chord of music, Like the sound of a ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... suited to the trials of a minister's life. But finding that Henry was firm in his opinion that this sound general principle did not in the least apply to this particular case, the professor proceeded to touch the tenderest chord in the young man's heart. He told him that it would be ungenerous, and in some sense dishonorable, for him to take a woman delicately brought up into the poverty and trial incident to a minister's life. If you understood, sir, ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... Has he no hope of Heaven? Does he not rejoice with us in the happy prospect of getting there when the silver chord shall be loosened, and the golden bowl broken ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp chord; and with a thread of voice so hushed as to be scarcely audible, slid softly into a long cadenza. At the same moment he threw his head backwards, and the light fell full upon the handsome, effeminate face, with its ashy pallor and big, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... right chord. It was not obtrusive, it had no hint of pity; it was simply that one who had been hurt fully understood the hurt of another. Ralph ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... down with a bang on to the final chord of his rhapsody. There was just a hint in that triumphant harmony that the seventh had been struck along with the octave by the thumb of the left hand; but the general effect of splendid noise emerged clearly enough. ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... the horizontal girder is almost exclusively subjected to vertical loading forces. Investigation of the internal stresses, which balance the external forces, shows that most of the material should be arranged in a top flange, boom or chord, subjected to compression, and a bottom flange or chord, subjected to tension. (See STRENGTH OF MATERIALS.) Connecting the flanges is a vertical web which may be a solid plate or a system of bracing bars. In ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... not know when the memorizing takes place. The music is before me on the piano; I forget to turn the pages, and thus find I know the piece. In playing with orchestra I know the parts of all instruments, unless it be just a simple chord accompaniment; it would not interest me to play with orchestra and not know the music in this way. On one occasion I was engaged to play the Sgambatti concerto, which I had not played for some time. I tried it over ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... this with one of his subtle, insinuating changes of tone that were always so effective. Musicians will understand when I say it was like a change from the common chord in the minor to the dominant in the major. It was partly from force of habit, partly because he really wished to ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and I. We would sit together of an evening and listen to the inner melodies of the spirit, which one hears only in leisure moments when the words of some loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul that until then had been silent. But in college there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. One goes to college to learn, it seems, not to think. When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves the dearest pleasures—solitude, books and imagination—outside with the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... love with the old lady at first sight. There are very few old people to be seen in India, and the dignity and pathos of her appearance touched a tender chord. He admired her fine white hair and handsome features, all furrowed with the countless little lines of time. And she wore such stiff brocades and silks, such beautiful old lace, and the funniest brooches, with pictures in ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... been in constant feud; We've changed hard blows enough. You fought—alone— For a sublime ideal; I as one Among the money-grubbing multitude. And yet it seemed as if a chord united Us two, as if a thousand thoughts that lay Deep in my own youth's memory benighted Had started at your bidding into day. Yes, I amaze you. But this hair grey-sprinkled Once fluttered brown in spring-time, and this brow, Which daily occupation moistens now With sweat of labour, ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... to chiefs and ladies bright The harp of Tara swells: The chord alone that breaks at night, Its tale of ruin tells. Thus freedom now so seldom wakes, The only throb she gives Is when some heart indignant breaks, To show ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various
... bass, great chords grew up, succeeding each other in a simple modulation, rising then with the blare of trumpets and the simultaneous crash of mixtures, fifteenths and coupled pedals to a deafening peal, then subsiding quickly again and terminating in one long sustained common chord. And now, as the celebrant bowed at the lowest step before the high altar, the voices of the innumerable congregation joined the harmony of the organ, ringing up to the groined roof in an ancient Slavonic melody, melancholy and beautiful, and rendered yet more unlike all other music by the undefinable ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... paints a portrait of a wrinkled old woman's face, and the world regards and worships. Or all discords have been flung together pell-mell, resolution of them has been deferred perpetually, perhaps even denied altogether, chord of B major has been struck with C major, works have closed upon the leading note or the dominant seventh, symphonies have been composed to be played in the dark, or to be accompanied by a magic-lantern's efforts, operas been produced which are merely carnage and a row—and at the ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... ecstasy of the elbow that pressed against hers, and the ecstasy of her child's voice still trilling on the black silence, Lilly was conscious of movement. The gray silhouette marching down the aisle of gloom. A group up about the piano. Another chord struck out. Zoe's voice skipping ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... day I do not know whether she meant to give a genuine warning, or to strike a chord that should ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... him. The first to ride past was Herbert Mabyn. His livid face was alight with triumph; and he carried a new Winchester slung over his back. An ill-favoured breed youth followed; his face struck a chord in Garth's memory; but so hard is it to distinguish alien faces that for the moment he could not place him. Next there came six packhorses, laden with food and camp outfit, and driven by the next rider, a breed ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... allegorical style, the quaint and grotesque imagery in which Dante delighted, must have touched an answering chord in the hearts of scholars like Philip Sidney ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... the means to this end, the instruments, the living members, are the Nationalities, in which all the varieties of the human race have their fairest bloom, their most precious flower. What the tones are in the musical chord they are in humanity, eternal variety in eternal harmony and concord. It is impossible to conceive Humanity without them; it would then be unity without variety, consequently no proper unity at all, a mere lifeness oneness. States are of human creation, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... leafy avenue without the churchyard wall, and the brawl of the stream beyond. The twilight lay heavy over the church, heaviest of all over the distant organ gallery, where Weldon could barely make out a single figure moving towards the bench. There was a rattle of stops, a tentative chord or two and then a few notes of this or that melody, as if the player, albeit a musician, found himself continually thwarted by the darkness and the absence ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller |
