"Miserere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The drawings need not be elaborate or labored, provided they make clear the points they were intended to record. Thus Fig. 46 is a sketch which is meant as a memorandum of a lively representation of birds, taken from an old Miserere seat. Fig. 47 was done for sake of the rich effect of an inscription on the plain side of a beam, and also for the peculiar and interesting section to which the beam had been cut. Fig. 48, again, for sake of the arrangement of the little panels on a plain surface, ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... had a horse for their ensign in war; thus it is that the Ottoman ordinances are, I believe, to this day dated from "the imperial stirrup," and the display of horsetails at the gate of the palace is the Ottoman signal of war. Thus too, as the Catholic ritual measures intervals by "a Miserere," and St Ignatius in his Exercises by "a Pater Noster," so the Turcomans and the Usbeks speak familiarly of the time of a gallop. But as to houses, on the other hand, the Tartars contemptuously called them the sepulchres of the living, and, when abroad, could hardly be persuaded ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... in any sense, but he had written his friend a long letter on the day after Gemma's suicide, and he had asked for her prayers then. "Fausto told me how you knelt there in the street beside the dead Odalisque and said the Pater-noster and the Miserere. Perhaps you will do as much for me one day. Your prayers should help the soul that is freed now from the burden of the flesh. I cannot complain of flesh myself, but my bones weigh and I shall be glad to be rid of them. Come and see me ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... away, And yet linger by the margin, Staring idly on the spray. But, without, the maddening tumult Waxes ever more and more, And the crowd of wailing women Gather round the Council door. Every dusky spire is ringing With a dull and hollow knell, And the Miserere's singing To the tolling of the bell. Through the streets the burghers hurry, Spreading terror as they go; And the rampart's thronged with watchers For the coming of the foe. From each mountain-top a pillar Streams into the torpid air, Bearing ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... county). The most interesting features are (1) indications of a gallery over the S. porch (intended to be used by choristers on Palm Sunday); (2) holy water stoup within S. door; (3) curious 13th-cent. stone reading-desk or pulpit in S. wall; (4) "Miserere" seats in the choir, with their quaint carvings (attributed to the 14th cent.); (5) Jacobean oak pulpit; (6) Norm. font; (7) sanctus bell-cot; (8) fine 15th-cent. tomb (with French epitaph) of "Rycharde Persyvale"; (9) piscina in ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... death, with black torches, and a large black standard with crosses, bones, and death's heads. After the car were trailed ten black standards; and as they walked, the whole company sang in unison, with trembling voices, that Psalm of David that is called the Miserere. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... met a concourse of souls who had suffered violent death, chanting the Miserere, who perceiving Dante to be living, sent messages to their friends on earth. Among these were Giacopo del Cassero and Buonconte di Montefeltro, son of Dante's friend, Guido di Montefeltro, who fell in the battle ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... the organ floated out of the church like a summons. I was not averse, liking the theatre so well, to sit out an act or two of the play, but I could never rightly make out the nature of the service I beheld. Four or five priests and as many choristers were singing Miserere before the high altar when I went in. There was no congregation but a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pavement. After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ceiling, the other end being attached to a windlass, by turning which he could be hoisted, into the air, and dropped again, either slowly or with a jerk, as ordered by the judge. The suspension generally lasted during the recital of a Pater Noster, an Ave Maria, or a Miserere; if the accused persisted in his denial, it was doubled. This second degree, the last of the ordinary torture, was put in practice when the crime appeared reasonably probable but was not ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... rather their gaiety that we do not dare to imitate. We should be rather surprised if a chorister suddenly began singing "Bill Bailey" in church. Yet that would be only doing in music what the mediaevals did in sculpture. They put into a Miserere seat the very scenes that we put into a music hall song: comic domestic scenes similar to the spilling of the beer and the hanging out of the washing. But though the gaiety of Gothic is one of its features, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... paths where the night wind sighed a miserere in the cedars, and things of the dark scurried away with furtive noises, or flapped ill-omened black wings overhead. In a corner shaded by cypresses was the Hynds vault, a venerable affair with a slate roof. Outside, in an inclosed space were some marble-covered graves and in a corner the ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... confessour, in the holy tyme of Lente, enioyned his penytente to saye dayly for his penaunce this prayer: Agnus Dei miserere mei, whiche was as moche to saye in englysshe as the Lambe of God haue mercye vpon me. This penytente acceptynge his penaunce departed, and that tyme twelfe monthe after came agayne to be confessed of the same confessoure, ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... pint of tea, add the yolks of two fresh eggs; then beat them up with as much fine sugar as is sufficient to sweeten the tea, and stir well together. The water must remain no longer upon the tea than while you can chant the Miserere psalm ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... in front of the church there is almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its centre the Austrian bands play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes,—the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them,—a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed and listless, lie basking in the sun like lizards; ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... performance of which I might still hope to expiate my sins. He then, in the plainest terms, advised me to have recourse to the discipline of flagellation, every Friday, using the cat-o'-nine-tails on my bare shoulders for the length of time that it would take to repeat a Miserere. In conclusion, he informed me that the nuns of Anticaille would probably lend me the necessary instrument of flagellation; but, if they made any difficulty about it, he was benevolently ready to furnish me with a new and special ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... scarce worth computation; Some souls were lost, whose owners had turned back To save their bodies frequent flagellation; And some preferred the songs of birds, alack! To Latin matins and their souls' salvation, And thought their own wild whoopings were less dreary Than Father Pedro's droning miserere. ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... head which is racked by this hallucination, and troubled? My God! have pity on me. I did not ask for this dreadful fate; it is Thou that hast sent it to me. Why dost Thou punish me? Oh, my God, have pity on me! Miserere mei, Domine. ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... spoke the truth. For, God or no God, there is a Might against which we cannot stand, and woe be unto those that lift their little wills against the will of Nature. When two love, they must belong to each other; when one loves, Miserere. ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... we saw, has shot himself at Verdun; and over Europe, mortals are going in for afternoon sermon. But at Paris, all steeples are clangouring not for sermon; the alarm-gun booming from minute to minute; Champ-de-Mars and Fatherland's Altar boiling with desperate terror-courage: what a miserere going up to Heaven from this once Capital of the Most Christian King! The Legislative sits in alternate awe and effervescence; Vergniaud proposing that Twelve shall go and dig personally on Montmartre; which is decreed ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... 265).—The words "Tu autem, Domine, miserere nostri," "But Thou, O Lord! have mercy upon us," were originally a form of prayer used by the preacher at the end of his discourse, as a supplication for pardon for any sinful pride or vainglory, into which he might have been betrayed ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 77, April 19, 1851 • Various
... Tours and Orleans, so far as appears, there was no subscription—to speak in modern terms,—no cry among the burghers to gather their crowns for her redemption—not a word, not an effort, only a barefooted procession, a mass, a Miserere, which had no issue. France stood silent to see what would come of it; and her scholars and divines swarmed towards Rouen to make sure that nothing but harm should come of it to the ignorant country lass, who had set up such pretences ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... sed non improbus vixi. Incertus morior, sed inturbatus. Humanum est nescire & errare. Christum adveneror, Deo confido Omnipotenti, benevolentissimo. Ens Entium miserere mihi.' ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... the persons claiming the benefit of clergy were obliged to read a verse in a Latin manuscript psalter: this saving them from the gallows, was termed their neck verse: it was the first verse of the fiftyfirst psalm, Miserere mei,&c. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al. |
