"Lute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appreciate the excellence of arms, if not the warrior? The excellence of a horse, if not the cavalier? The excellence of a lute, if not the player? Paganini, as pope, would have canonized Stradivarius, the maker of those wonderful violins, which the great artist plays so admirably. Therefore, as I have the presumption of playing admirably with millions, I would canonize ...
— A Cardinal Sin • Eugene Sue
... the nobility of nature. But, though poor, he was well educated, and was a master of the scholastic philosophy and of all the learning of his age. Like Luther, he was passionately fond of music, and played the lute, the harp, the violin, the flute and the dulcimer. There was no more joyous spirit in all Switzerland than his. Every one loved his society, and honored his attainments, and admired his genius. Like Luther and Erasmus, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... the science of alchymy, that he was at once recognised as only second to the great Geber himself. One of the doctors present inquired whether a man who knew so many sciences was acquainted with music? Alfarabi made no reply, but merely requested that a lute should be brought him. The lute was brought; and he played such ravishing and tender melodies, that all the court were melted into tears. He then changed his theme, and played airs so sprightly, that he set the grave philosophers, Sultan and all, dancing as fast ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... then another toll, and then a pause again, and then a toll, and again a pause. Then he is silent for six or eight minutes, and then another toll, and so on. Acteon would stop in mid-chase, Maria would defer her evening song, and Orpheus himself would drop his lute to listen to him, so sweet, so novel and romantic is the toll of the pretty snow-white campanero. He is never seen to feed with the other cotingas, nor is it known in what part of Guiana he makes ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... that she was seated with us, I had heard her voice, our eyes had held each other again, and I saw a carnation flush bloom suddenly in her cheek as our hands touched. She brought with her a curious old instrument, like a lute with many strings, and upon this she struck chords to the song she sang, "The Wronged Love of Great Laird Gregory," the melody of which seems ever to be with me; and yesterday, when I heard Nancy crooning it to herself, ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... birds in a cloud fly up From their sweet feeding in the fruit; The droning of the bees and flies Rises gradual as a lute; Is it for fear the birds are ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... whose leading attribute was, that he could survive more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took the field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the London Graphic, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I discerned a slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers, which showed his bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his capacity of affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas, whom he thought too familiar. ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... murdered man, defaced "with a broad wound," he says, "that makes my hand now shake to write of it." He learned to dance, and was "like to make a dancer." He learned to sing, and walked about Gray's Inn Fields "humming to myself (which is now my constant practice) the trillo." He learned to play the lute, the flute, the flageolet, and the theorbo, and it was not the fault of his intention if he did not learn the harpsichord or the spinet. He learned to compose songs, and burned to give forth "a scheme and theory of music not yet ever made in the world." When he heard "a fellow ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... satisfied that either he had not heard the prisoner's tale or had rejected it utterly. For he took his seat in the gayest spirits, and laughed and talked with the stranger throughout the meal. And afterwards, having fetched an old lute which had been his mother's, he sat and watched her fit new strings to it, rallying her over her tangle. But when she had it tuned and, touching it softly, began the first of those murmuring heathenish songs to which I have since listened ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... eight of them went, bearing torches, in search of Vittoria and her brothers. Marcello escaped, having fled the house under suspicion of the murder of one of his own followers. Flaminio, the innocent and young, was playing on his lute and singing Miserere in the great hall of the palace. The murderers surprised him with a shot from one of their harquebuses. He ran, wounded in the shoulder, to his sister's room. She, it is said, was telling her beads before retiring for the night. When three of the assassins entered, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... contemporaneously with the rise of Dante, there had flourished a legion of poets of greater or less ability, but all more or less characterised by affectation, foolishness, and moral blindness: singers of the falsetto school, with ballads to their mistress's eyebrow, sonnets to their lady's lute, and general songs of a fiddlestick; peevish men for the most part, as is the way of all fleshly and affected beings; men so ignorant of human subjects and materials as to be driven in their sheer bankruptcy of mind to raise Hope, Love, Fear, Rage (everything but Charity) into human ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... stop, occlude; conclude, finish, end, terminate; inclose, encompass, confine, environ; grapple, clinch; lute, calk. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... effectually assistant, first to plough and break up that barbarous Nation by Conquest, and then to sow it with seeds of civility when by King James made Lord Deputy of Ireland.' The 'good laws and Provisions' made by former Governors were 'like good lessons set for a Lute out of tune, useless untill the Instrument was fitted for them.' Sir Arthur established new and wider circuits for Justices of Assize, with the most excellent results, for, 'like good Planets in their several spheres, they carried ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... ten City Commissioners (Astynomi), of whom five hold office in Piraeus and five in the city. Their duty is to see that female flute- and harp- and lute-players are not hired at more than two drachmas, and if more than one person is anxious to hire the same girl, they cast lots and hire her out to the person to whom the lot falls. They also provide that no collector of sewage shall shoot any ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... this game which the dolls could vary indefinitely. The dwarfs also gave concerts and taught her to play the lute, the viola, the theorbo, the lyre, and various ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... and rapture-bound The while her sisters sing; From voice and lute there floats around A golden confluence of sound, Spreading in fairy ring; And with a beautiful grace and glow Her head ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... soul full of unused treasures of emotion, and pure, clear depths of passion that as yet slumbered unstirred. If her heart was a lute, its highest and lowest chords had never been sounded hitherto. This also she was aware of, and she knew what their music would be like when ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... delicate sheaths of meaning within meaning, which must be opened slowly, petal by petal, as we seek the heart of a flower, and the spirit-like, distant breathings of his lute, familiar with the secrets of shores distant and enchanted, a sense can only be gained by reading him a great deal; and we wish "Bells and Pomegranates" might be brought within the reach of all who have time and soul to wait and ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... fair Be it right or wrong, these men among Believe me, if all those endearing young charms Bird of the wilderness Blame not my Lute! for he must sound Blow, blow, thou winter wind Blow high, blow low, let tempests tear Break, break, break Busk ye, busk ye, my bonny bonny bride But are ye sure ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... tradition, in the fifth year of the Emperor Korei (286 B.C.), the earth opened in the province of Omi, near Kioto, and Lake Biwa, sixty miles long by about eighteen broad, was formed in the shape of a Biwa, or four-stringed lute, from which it takes its name. At the same time, to compensate for the depression of the earth, but at a distance of over three hundred miles from the lake, rose Fuji-Yama, the last eruption of which was in ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... the steed shall be red-roan, And the lover shall be noble, With an eye that takes the breath,— And the lute he plays upon Shall strike ladies into trouble, As his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... passion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control? Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelay, Which do but mar the secret of the whole. ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... young Nun kneels at the altar, but turns to her lover who plays upon a lute. Death meantime, as a hideous old hag, extinguishes the ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... on Nanking Road, and had been designed by an old court poet of long ago. The tiny ivory spokes were fretted like ivy-twigs in the North, but on the leaves of silk was painted a love-story of the South. There was a tea-house, with a maiden playing a lute, and the words of the song, fantastic black ideographs, floated off to the ears of her lover. Foh-Kyung spread out its leaves in the sun, and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... he announced, "leaves Devonport for Kiel on Thursday next. And here, in another part of the paper, is the little rift in the lute, Listen!— ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fixed his eyes upon them. They both plainly heard every word that Scheich Ibrahim said to the fair Persian. "Is there any thing, my charming lady, wanting to render the pleasure of the evening more complete?" "Nothing but a lute," replied the fair Persian, "and methinks, if you could get me one, all would be well." "Can you play upon it?" said Scheich Ibrahim. "Fetch me one," replied the fair Persian, "and you shall hear ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... Sonnet; Critic, you have frown'd, Mindless of its just honours: with this key Shakespeare unlock'd his heart; the melody Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch's wound; A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; With it Camoeens sooth'd an exile's grief; The Sonnet glitter'd a gay myrtle leaf Amid the cypress with which Dante crown'd His visionary brow; a glow-worm lamp, It cheer'd mild Spenser, call'd from Faery-land ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... and romance knows no limits when dealing with the subject. The lives of the Man and the Dog are found to be ever intertwined. Yet is there always this besides—the rift in the lute and the familiar refrain, that the life of the dog shall be short, and that Man shall go on his way with his head bent, till such time as he shall become rich once more in the love of a new-found friend—if ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... physiologist, would very probably obtain the desired production of mutually more or less infertile breeds from a common stock in a comparatively few years; but still, as the case stands at present, this little 'rift within the lute' is not to be disguised or overlooked."—(Westminster ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... skilful bard ye view In the form of maiden-catcher too; For he no city enters e'er, Without effecting wonders there. However coy may be each maid, However the women seem afraid, Yet all will love-sick be ere long To sound of magic lute and song. ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... everything that Korinna had especially cared for. Her bird hung in the same place; her lap-dog was sleeping in a basket, on the cushion which Berenike had embroidered for her child. Melissa had to admire the dead girl's lute, and her first piece of weaving, and the elegant loom of ebony and ivory in which she had woven it. And Berenike repeated to the girl the verses which Korinna had composed, in imitation of Catullus, on the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... lute-string, giving forth sweet sounds in its perfection; there are none so discordant ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 5. Am'ply, fully. O-pin'ion, judgment, belief. 9. Ab'so-lute-ly, wholly, entirely. 11. Re-sent', to consider as an injury. Con'scious-ness, inward feeling, knowledge of what ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... pretends neither to feel nor to hear, nor to see, a pared away beard, a beaten down, disordered, gutted beard. May the Italian sickness deliver me from this vile joker with a squashed nose, fiery nose, frozen nose, nose without religion, nose dry as a lute table, pale nose, nose without a soul, nose which is nothing but a shadow; nose which sees not, nose wrinkled like the leaf of a vine; nose that I hate, old nose, nose full of mud—dead nose. Where had my eyes been to attach myself to truffle ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... the long cries to Allah of the Moslem boatmen and the clear music of an 'ood or lute; the deep note of the native drums had been silenced. It had given way to the song of an Arab tenor. The music of the 'ood, whose seven double strings, made of lamb's gut, are played with a slip of a vulture's feather, ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... dei Medici. That last Name brought up the Recollection of my Morning's Debate with my Husband, which made me feel sad; and then, Mrs. Mildred, seeminge anxious to make me forget her Unmannerliness, commenced, "Can you paint?"—"Can you sing?"—"Can you play the Lute?"—and, at the last, "What can you do?" I mighte have sayd I coulde comb out my Curls smoother than she coulde hers, but did not. Other Guests came in, and talked so much agaynst Prelacy and the Right divine ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... Arthur;[53] and when he was king his minstrels formed an indispensable part of his retinue, whether he went on progress through his kingdom, or crossed the seas on errands of peace or war.[54] He became an expert performer on the lute, the organ and the harpsichord, and all the cares of State could not divert him from practising on those instruments both day (p. 025) and night. He sent all over England in search of singing men and boys for the chapel royal, ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... him and ushered him into a large dining-hall, where the table had been forsaken in favour of a lesser table placed in the ample window, round which sat assembled some six or eight persons, with fruit, wine, and conserves before them, a few little dogs at their feet or on their laps, and a lute lying on the knee of one of the young gentlemen. Sir Francis presented the young Lord de Ribaumont, their expected guest, to Lady Walsingham, from whom he received a cordial welcome, and her two little daughter, Frances and Elizabeth, ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... My lute doth troll the longings of my heart; Deep-rooted there Are forms so fair Whose mem'ry of my ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... reaching out from the rough block of marble; here a sweet face seemed like Pygmalion's statue, coming into life. In the centre of the studio was the "Siren Fountain," executed for Lady Marion Alford. A siren sits in the upper basin and sings to the music of her lute. Three little cupids sit on dolphins, and listen ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... fair as the sea-flower, close to thee growing, How light was thy heart till love's witchery came! Like the wind of the South, o'er a summer lute blowing, And hushed all its music, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... lute to love, Ere storms disturb the tranquil hour, For her who strives my truth to prove, My only pride, and beauty's flower; But who will ne'er my pain remove, Who knows and triumphs in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... "And as a lute and harp, accordant strung With many strings, a dulcet tinkling make To him by whom the notes are not distinguished, So from the lights that there to me appeared Upgathered through the cross a melody, Which rapt me, not distinguishing the hymn." ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... the wings awaiting their cue and watching the graceful dancing of a nimble dryad who, beset by a cruel satyr, changed speedily into the tuneful Apollo, vanquished the surprised satyr, and then sang to the accompaniment of his own lute the high-sounding praises of the great and ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit with retributions called on the other side of the grave offences that walk upon this; and once even the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said—"one of whom I know, and the others too surely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... in the high, strident voice of Lute Perkins. He took a deep breath of fresh, clean air, and looked about him. After the hot, dusty room, the grove, with its green foliage, through which the moonlight filtered, looked invitingly cool. He sauntered forward, climbed ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... adoration of any other woman. And all this helped to make a master-poet of me. Eh, why not, when such monstrous passions spoke through me—as if some implacable god elected to play godlike music on a mountebank's lute? And I made admirable plays. Why not, when there was no tragedy more poignant than mine?—and where in any comedy was any figure one-half so ludicrous as mine? Ah, yes, Fate gained her ends, ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... adverse, found them happy and hopeful. No. 1, who had been a mechanic, proposed to increase his earnings by mending bicycles. No. 2 was an agriculturist pure and simple, and showed me his fowls and pigs with pride. Here, however, I found a little rift within the rural lute, for on asking him how his wife liked the life he replied after a little hesitation, 'Not very well, sir: you see, she has been accustomed ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... instead of fond and unseemly ballads. 1579." In 1599 there appeared a very ambitious work in folio form, so arranged that four persons might sing from it, and bearing the title: "The Psalms of David in Metre, the Plain song being the common Tune, to be sung and played upon the Lute, Orpharion, Citterne, or Bass-viol, severally or together; the singing Part to be either Tenor or Treble to the instrument, according to the Nature of the Voice, or for Four Voices; with Ten Short Tunes in the end, to which, for the most part, all ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... related to the fortunes of Armine, all pointed him out as a friend alike to be cherished and to be valued. Under his auspices the garden of the fair Constance soon flourished: his taste guided her pencil, and his voice accompanied her lute. Sir Ratcliffe, too, thoroughly enjoyed his society: Glastonbury was with him the only link, in life, between the present and the past. They talked over old times together; and sorrowful recollections lost half their bitterness, from the tenderness of his sympathetic reminiscences. Sir Ratcliffe, ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... Memoirs appear to have been composed in this retreat. Marguerite amused herself likewise, in this solitude, in composing verses, and there are specimens still remaining of her poetry. These compositions she often set to music, and sang them herself, accompanying her voice with the lute, on which she played to perfection. Great part of her time was spent in the perusal of the Bible and books of piety, together with the works of the best authors she could procure. Brantome assures us that Marguerite spoke the Latin tongue with purity and elegance; and it appears, from her ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... lusty, dancing and singing as the night before; and when the high glasses and goblets were caroused one to another, Dr. Faustus began to play them some pretty feats, insomuch that round about the hall was heard most pleasant music, and that in sundry places: in this corner a lute, in another a cornet, in another a cittern, clarigols, harp, hornpipe, in fine, all manner of music was heard there in that instant; whereat all the glasses and goblets, cups, and pots, dishes, and all that stood upon the board began to dance. Then Dr. ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... With desperate thoughts and bold intent, Towards the shades below he went; For thither his fair love was fled, And he must have her from the dead. There in such lines, as did well suit With sad airs and a lover's lute, And in the richest language dress'd That could be thought on or express'd, Did he complain; whatever grief Or art or love—which is the chief, And all ennobles—could lay out, In well-tun'd woes he ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... admirable, con- venient, and secure depository for the savings of the industrial classes and of others. Its value to the thrifty and timid investor is incalculable, for here he may rest satisfied that he has abso- lute security, and the system is so hedged about with safeguards that it is difficult to discover any means by which loss can be sustained. The interest allowed is not high, but reasonable enough when the perfect security and the facili- ties ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... cast down and silent? Why are those rare and priceless pearls, his words, shut up so tightly between those gorgeous oyster-shells, his lips?" But to this he made no reply. Thinking further to divert him, she brought her lute into the chamber and stood before him, and sang the song and danced the dance of Ben Kotton, which is called Ibrahim's Daughter, but she could not lift the veil of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... renders me the most anxious miserable Man on Earth. My Wife, who was the only Child and darling Care of an indulgent Mother, employ'd her early Years in learning all those Accomplishments we generally understand by good Breeding and polite Education. She sings, dances, plays on the Lute and Harpsicord, paints prettily, is a perfect Mistress of the French Tongue, and has made a considerable Progress in Italian. She is besides excellently skill'd in all domestick Sciences, as Preserving, Pickling, Pastry, making Wines of Fruits of our own Growth, Embroydering, and Needleworks ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... wander there in the light On flower-soft fields, ye blest immortal Spirits. Radiant godlike zephyrs Touch you as gently As the hand of a master might Touch the awed lute-string. Free of fate as the slumbering Infant, breathe the divine ones. Guarded well In the firm-sheathed bud Blooms eternal Each happy soul; And their rapture-lit eyes Shine with a tranquil Unchanging lustre. But we, 'tis our portion, We never may be at ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... philosophy? Not harsh, and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... a Lute, and her haire downe singing. Ofelia How should I your true loue know From another man? By his cockle hatte, and his staffe, And his sandall shoone. [H1] White his shrowde as mountaine snowe, Larded with sweete flowers, That bewept to the graue did not goe With true ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... what was said by the king, in Japanese. The women were at first somewhat bashful, but the king desired them to be frolicsome. They sung several songs, and played on certain instruments, one of which resembled our lute, being bellied like it, but longer in the neck, and fretted like ours, but had only four gut strings. They fingered with their left hands, as is done with us, and very nimbly; but they struck the strings with a piece of ivory ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... happy as of yore, or driving off in separate cabs to take refuge in the bosoms of their separate families? Darsie opined that all would seem the same on the surface, but darkly hinted at the little rift within the lute, and somehow after that night the glamour seemed to have departed from this honeymoon pair, and the fair seeming was ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... answer this character, it being soon apparent of what manner of gentleness she was composed, for her music-master rushed into the room to complain that the gentle Katharine, his pupil, had broken his head with her lute, for presuming to find fault with her performance; which, when Petruchio heard, he said: 'It is a brave wench; I love her more than ever, and long to have some chat with her'; and hurrying the old gentleman for a positive answer, he said: 'My business is in haste, signior Baptista, I cannot ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... striven to say So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell; Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, What the still night suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered is from other worlds, It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though I ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... certainly I shall charge to your account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots, gourds, onions, and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard a comedian, or the reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you had liked, all three, such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies and Spanish dancing girls at some other house were more to your taste. I shall have my revenge of you, depend upon it, but I won't say how. Indeed, it was not kind thus to mortify your friend—I had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... though there be no path untrod By that immortal race— Who walked with Nature, as with God, And saw her, face to face— No living truth by them unsung— No thought that hath not found a tongue In some strong lyre of olden time; Must every tuneful lute be still That may not give a world the thrill Of ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... a card was brought to her rooms. For the next two weeks she had a true and unavoidable friend in Lucerne. It would appear that Mrs. Rowe-Martin had not been apprised of the rift in the Wrandall lute. She had no reason to consider the exclusive Miss Castleton as anything but the most desirable of companions. Mrs. Rowe-Martin was not long in finding out (though how she did it, heaven knows!), that Lord Murgatroyd's ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... the rising waves that fall In snowie fleeces; dearest, shall I catch the wanton Fawns, or Flyes, Whose woven wings the Summer dyes Of many colours? get thee fruit? Or steal from Heaven old Orpheus Lute? All these I'le venture for, and more, To do her service all ...
— The Faithful Shepherdess - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10). • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Great-Name Possessor binds the sleeping Kami's hair to the rafters of the house, places a huge rock at the entrance, seizes Susanoo's life-preserving sword and life-preserving bow and arrows as also his sacred lute,* and taking Princess Forward on his back, flees. The lute brushes against a tree, and its sound rouses Susanoo. But before he can disentangle his hair from the rafters, the fugitives reach the confines of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... melancholy lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... princely pomp, or churchman's pride! On this bold brow, a lordly tower; In that soft vale, a lady's bower; On yonder meadow, far away, The turrets of a cloister gray; 285 How blithely might the bugle-horn Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn! How sweet, at eve, the lover's lute Chime, when the groves were still and mute! And when the midnight moon should lave 290 Her forehead in the silver wave, How solemn on the ear would come The holy matin's distant hum, While the deep peal's commanding tone Should wake, in yonder islet lone, 295 A sainted ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... his lute-made trees, And the mountain-tops that freeze, Bow themselves when he did sing To his music, plants and flowers Ever sprung, as sun and showers There had ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... me; grimed with smears, I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years - My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream. Yea, faileth now even dream The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist; Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist, Are yielding; cords of all too weak account For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed. Ah! is Thy love indeed ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... you think that you were in a monk's cell or in some great dame's bower? Hunt under the table, man; sure, you will find her lute and needlework. Whose portrait is that, think you?" and he ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... radiance of her eyes,—they were the heaven's own color,—when I see light clouds floating together half gray, half tinted by the sun, they seem to me to resemble the soft and noiseless garb she wore,—the birds sing, only to recall to me the lute-like sweetness of her voice,—and at night, when I behold the millions upon millions of stars that are worlds, peopled as they must be with thousands of wonderful living creatures, perhaps as spiritually composed as she, I sometimes find it hard, that out of all the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... it for divine. Not the miserable or the vitious levities of music, which serve but to unman the soul, to wake the dormant sensualities of the heart, and far from lifting the spirit to the skies, but sink it to the centre. Not what Shakspeare calls "the lascivious pleasing of a lute" for fools "to caper to in a lady's chamber," but harmony, such as befits the creature to pour forth at the altar of the Creator; the sublime raptures of Handel; the divine strains of Haydn, and the majestic compositions of Purcel, Pergolesse, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... recreated themselves with singing musically, in four or five parts, or upon a set theme or ground at random, as it best pleased them. In matter of musical instruments, he learned to play upon the lute, the virginals, the harp, the Almain flute with nine holes, the viol, and the sackbut. This hour thus spent, and digestion finished, he did purge his body of natural excrements, then betook himself to his ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... the gallantest man, the politest lover, and the completest gentleman of his time.' And as to Wyat, his friend Surrey most amiably testifies of him, that his person was majestic and beautiful, his visage 'stern and mild;' that he sung, and played the lute with remarkable sweetness; spoke foreign languages with grace and fluency, and possessed an inexhaustible fund of wit. And see what a high commendation is passed upon these illustrious friends: 'They were ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... queen, who making thyself once mine, Hast made me sevenfold thine; I own thee guide Of my devotions, mine ambition's lodestar, The Saint whose shrine I serve with lance and lute; If thou wilt have a ruler, let him be, Through thee, the ruler of thy slave. ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... lyrist of Lesbos, lived chiefly at the court of Periander, Corinth; returning in a ship from a musical contest in Sicily laden with prizes, the sailors plotted to kill him, when he begged permission to play one strain on his lute, which being conceded, dolphins crowded round the ship, whereupon he leapt over the bulwarks, was received on the back of one of them, and carried to Corinth, arriving there before the sailors, who, on their ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... wise the service which he had vowed to his dead mistress. But henceforth, wherever he roved, over valley or forest or heath, or whether he sailed upon the waves of the sea, the like appearances met him. Once he found a lute lying in a wood, and drove a wolf away from it, and when sounds burst from the lute without its being touched a fair child rose up from it, as of old Aslauga herself had done. At another time he would see goats clambering among the highest cliffs by the sea-shore, and it was ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... herself chiefly to songs. Like Mlle. van Rennes, she is a native of Utrecht. Her works include many songs and vocal duets, of which "Meidoorn," a collection of children's songs, deserves especial mention. She wrote the words and music for a child's operetta, "Three Little Lute Players," which was performed three times and ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... our still dwelling-place wraps night's dusky mantle about her, Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning, Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death's mystery open. If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern, Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... elegant and full of amusing devices. He sang, accompanying himself on a silver lute, which he had had fashioned in imitation of a horse's skull. After he attached himself to the court of the Duke of Milan, his gift of invention was constantly called into use, and one of the surprises he had in store for the Duke's guests was a great ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... may be leather scrap, hoof shavings, or horn shavings, slightly burned and pulverized, which may be mixed with an equal quantity of pulverized charcoal. Pack the pieces to be casehardened in the iron box so as not to touch each other or the box. Put an iron cover on the box and lute with clay. Heat gradually in a furnace to a full red, keep at an even temperature for from 2 to 4 hours, raise the heat to a cherry red during the last hour, then remove the cover and take out the pieces and plunge endwise vertically in water ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... that part. And there are emotions of which the body may be yet more eloquent than the face; there was the figure of Watts's "Hope" drooping over as she drooped, not more lissom and speaking than her own; just then it caught my eye, and on the spot it was as though the lute's last string of that sweet masterpiece had ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... Austria, the Emperor's natural daughter. Francesco Guicciardini, the first statesman and historian of his age, had undertaken his defence, and was ready to support him by advice and countenance in the conduct of his government. Within the lute of this prosperity, however, there was one little rift. For some months past he had closely attached to his person a certain kinsman, Lorenzo de' Medici, who was descended in the fourth generation from Lorenzo, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... a soft and a delicate thing; Ah! the heart is a lute with a thrilling string; A spirit that floats on ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... was conveyed back to Edinburgh with every show of respect, attended by the triumphant lords, who despised his milder virtues, his preferences and tastes, not one of whom could manage either pencil or lute, who cared for none of these things—while his strained eyes could still see nothing but the vision against the daylight, the impromptu gibbet of the high-arched bridge over the Border stream, where his familiar friends had been strung up with every sign of infamy. He had to contain within ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... shall know repair; the riven lute shall sound once more; But who shall mend the clay of man, the stolen breath ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... ladies in the women's apartments more inclined to have him. Anyhow she must try her best to secure his stopping with his young master, and to this end she ordered him some fine clothes and gave him a finely bedizened lute; for since he came to Kabul they had found out that he could play ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... perceived that with difficulty he kept his eyes open; and then seemed to go to rest with no other purpose than the refreshing and enabling him with more vigour and chearfulness to sing his morning hymn, as he then used to do to his lute before he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... bid you follow the footing of them that have gone before you. Old-aged experience goeth beyond the fine- witted philosopher, but I give the experience of many ages. Lastly, if he make the songbook, I put the learner's hand to the lute; and if he be the ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... who at seventeen had turned the head of Henri IV, and escaped the fatal influence of that imperious sovereign's infatuation by his timely, or untimely, death. Fair and brilliant, the best singer of her time, skilled also in playing the lute, and gifted with a special dramatic talent, she was always a favorite, much loved by her friends and much sung by the poets. Her proud and impetuous character, her frank and original manners, together with her luxuriance of blonde hair, gained ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... up the terrace, turning absently toward the direction whence came the voice. Zanetto with a lute on his shoulder, and dragging his cloak up the steep, enters with a ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni
... on a chair, she told Mary Seyton to take it, to see, she said, if she could recall her old talent. In reality the queen was one of the best musicians of the time, and played admirably, says Brantome, on the lute and viol d'amour, an instrument much resembling ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... quickening soul, and all That I beheld respired with inward meaning. 135 Add that whate'er of Terror or of Love Or Beauty, Nature's daily face put on From transitory passion, unto this I was as sensitive as waters are To the sky's influence in a kindred mood 140 Of passion; was obedient as a lute That waits upon the touches of the wind. Unknown, unthought of, yet I was most rich— I had a world about me—'twas my own; I made it, for it only lived to me, 145 And to the God who sees into the heart. Such sympathies, though rarely, were betrayed By outward gestures ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... seem unfair to over-emphasize the voluptuary in Mr. Pepys, but it is Mr. Pepys, the promiscuous amourist; stringing his lute (God forgive him!) on a Sunday, that is the outstanding figure in the Diary. Mr. Pepys attracts us, however, in a host of other aspects—Mr. Pepys whose nose his jealous wife attacked with the red-hot tongs as he lay ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... challenge the birds in music; and a nightingale took up the challenge. For a time the contest was uncertain; but then the youth, "in a rapture," played so cunningly that the bird, despairing, "down dropped upon his lute, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... he struck his lute and sang, Till the shields and lances rang: How for Christ and Holy Land Fought the Lion Heart and Hand,— How the craft of Leopold Trapped him in a castle old,— How one balmy morn in May, Singing to beguile the day, In his tower, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... that the step-mother would be unkind to the children. She might be a horror and beat them (l. 307). And when Admetus has made a thrilling answer about eternal sorrow, and the silencing of lyre and lute, and the statue who shall be his only bride, Alcestis earnestly calls the attention of witnesses to the fact that he has sworn not to marry again. She is not an artist like Admetus. There is poetry in her, ...
— Alcestis • Euripides
... loom, and leave the lute, And leave the volume on the shelf, To follow him, unquestioning, mute, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... long ago) And every gentle air that dallied, In that sweet day, Along the ramparts plumed and pallid, A winged odor went away. III. Wanderers in that happy valley Through two luminous windows saw Spirits moving musically To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne, where sitting (Porphyrogene!) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler of the realm was seen. IV. And all with pearl and ruby glowing Was the fair palace door, Through which came ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... silver-embroidered gauze robe, which covered her beautiful limbs like a cloud. In her hair sparkled two diamonds, like two stars fallen from heaven, and more glowing still were her eyes, which tenderly rested upon Rizzio. Leaning upon her elbow, she inclined toward Rizzio, who, lute in hand, was looking up to her with a countenance expressive of the deepest love. It was a glorious picture, this young and charming couple, in their bliss of love; and never, in the course of this century, have I forgotten this exquisite picture—never have its bright ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... leave loneness. I said, Not alone My loneness is, but Spartan's fashion, To teach by painting drunkards, doth not last Now; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste; No more can princes' courts, though there be few Better pictures of vice, teach me virtue. He, like to a high-stretch'd lute-string, squeakt, O, Sir! 'Tis sweet to talk of kings! At Westminster, Said I, the man that keeps the Abbey-tombs, And for his price doth, with who ever comes, Of all our Harrys and our Edwards talk, From king to king, and all their kin ...
— English Satires • Various
... Enter Beatrice and Fidelio. Fidelio strums his lute softly throughout the next conversation, up to the words "and cease to ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... characteristic Vandyck, in black satin, against a curtained archway. Then there were Kauffmann nymphs garlanding the altar of Love; a Veronese supper, all sheeny textures, pearl-woven heads and marble architecture; and a Watteau group of lute-playing comedians, lounging by a fountain ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... Fanshawe, Mr. Secretary Nicholas, the famous Dr. Harvey, arm-in-arm with my lord Falkland (whose boots were splash'd with mud, he having ridden over from his house at Great Tew), and many such, all mix'd in this incredible tag-rag. Mistress Fanshawe, as I remember, was playing on a lute, which she carried always slung about her shoulders: and close beside her, a fellow impudently puffing his specific against the morbus campestris, which already ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch |
