"Prelude" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... curiously fashioned chains of copper to the posts; we observed them painting their faces and bodies in hideous stripes of red and black. It was a scene of fearful import, for we knew but too well that it was the prelude to the torture. What were my companions' reflections I knew not, for they spoke but little. But the set and stern expression that showed itself on every face, told me plainly that they fully realized the terrible drama in which they were to be the principal actors. The appearance ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... Neither has he overlooked the irony which the subject naturally suggested: the great lord, who is driven by idleness and ennui to deceive a poor drunkard, can make no better use of his situation than the latter, who every moment relapses into his vulgar habits. The last half of this prelude, that in which the tinker, in his new state, again drinks himself out of his senses, and is transformed in his sleep into his former condition, is from some accident or other, lost. It ought to have followed at the end of the larger piece. The ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... are extremely beautiful, particularly the tenth. They form a sort of prelude to the love-story itself, which begins in our selections with the thirteenth. Not finding the realization of his ideal in art, the poet turns to love. This passion reaches its culminating point in the twenty-ninth selection, and with the thirtieth misunderstanding, dissatisfaction, ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... moment's warning. There was something in this state of preparation at once solemn and exciting. That we should obtain possession of a place so important as Baltimore without fighting was not to be expected; and, therefore, this arming and this bustle seemed in fact to be the prelude to a battle. But no man of the smallest reflection can look forward to the chance of a sudden and violent death without experiencing sensations very different from those which he experiences under any other circumstances. When the battle ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... side door, and carefully bolted it. Then he resumed his seat, and, resting his ponderous, seamy jaw upon the flat of his hand, waited for her to begin. He was used to all sorts of devices as a prelude to requests for office or emolument, and his expression betokened little interest or expectation. Had not the serious character of the communication she was about to make rendered coquetry at the moment distasteful to Mrs. Carey, she ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... show you the 'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to improvise. Now what do you suppose she answered? A brigade ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... and eyes of violet, That are filled up as with a sudden fear— A storm's prelude upon the expectant mere. Yet deep behind ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... eagerness; it opened, and gave egress to a staid matron, of high stature, and sharp countenance; I would have pledged my existence on her shrewishness from the first moment I beheld her. When I had placed a chair for her, and reseated myself, this prelude to my ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... uncertain and politics are utterly vain." It is a sad commentary for such a man to have made on such a career, but it fitly represents Mr. Webster's feelings as the end of life approached. His last years were not his most fortunate, and still less his best years. Domestic sorrows had been the prelude to a change of policy, which had aroused a bitter opposition, and to the pangs of disappointed ambition. A sense of mistake and failure hung heavily upon his spirits, and the cry of "vanity, vanity, all is vanity," came readily to his lips. There is an infinite ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... This kind of prelude and formula was familiar to him. It was usually followed by, "Promise me that you will never swear again," or, "that you will go straight home and wash your face," or some other irrelevant personality. But nobody with that sort of eyes had ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... and redeem and restore, snatch Saul, the mistake, Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now,—and bid him awake from the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find himself set clear and safe in new light and new life,—a new harmony yet to be ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... formed a lake beneath the castle walls. On the surface of the lake were little boats, painted and gilt, so pretty and dainty that the princess challenged the ambassadors to a voyage. None hesitated to do so, for they thought it was all a gay pastime, and a merry prelude to the marriage festivities. But no sooner had they embarked than boats, fountains, and lake vanished, and the frogs were frogs ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... the people to alter or abolish it and institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Here was the prelude to the historic drama of democracy—a challenge to every form of government and every privilege not founded ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... perch at the back, and, incommoded by his sister's box, he sat there, clasping the handrail. A few shufflings of his feet and rearrangements of his body told of his discomfort, and on his face there was the knowledge that this was but the prelude to worse things. Mildred Caniper did not look back nor wave a hand, but Uncle Alfred's unfortunate position necessitated a direct view of his young relatives. Three times he lifted his hat, and at last the cart swung into the road and ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... at Covent-Garden theatre, but was performed only a few nights. It was imprudently ushered in by a prelude, in which the author treated the newspaper editors as a set ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... evening walk at the setting of the sun by the side of the wooded river, under shadow of the old gateways and churches, it was not very hard to realize how the love of nature and of art grew up in the mind of the young student, and how this city of the past proved a fitting prelude to a noble life-work which set as its goal the revival of what was best and most ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... list'ning to my escort's warning voice, "Look that from me thou part not." Straight I heard Voices, and each one seem'd to pray for peace, And for compassion, to the Lamb of God That taketh sins away. Their prelude still Was "Agnus Dei," and through all the choir, One voice, one measure ran, that perfect seem'd The concord of their song. "Are these I hear Spirits, O master?" I exclaim'd; and he: "Thou aim'st aright: these loose ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... maneuvering by laying us directly in the trough of the sea,—planting the boat a little crosswise, however, so as to prevent an untoward swell from riding over her side and thus filling her,—and the instant he saw an advancing breaker beginning to fracture, as a prelude to its downfall and destruction, he boldly sped us, when the thing was at all practicable, straight in the teeth of the gap, and as it proceeded to widen, we shot through it, with the surf leaping and tossing on either hand ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... unspiritual; at the Christian era we find it to be a mark of the most genuine piety that one should be "waiting for the redemption of Israel." At this period the national hope was occupied with the figure of a Messiah, a God-sent Deliverer, whose coming was to be the prelude to the establishment of the divine kingdom. We learn from the Gospels what various ideas were entertained by the Jews of the first century about this "coming one," and how little Jesus Christ was felt to ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... years of age when his father died. During his minority he was nurtured in learning and piety[51] by his mother, Blanche of Castile, whose devotion to her son, and firm and wise regency were a fitting prelude to the reign of a saintly king. Even after he attained his majority, St. Louis always sought his mother's counsel and was ever respectful and submissive to her will. When the news of her death reached him in the Holy Land, he went to his oratory, fell on his knees ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... and it. If you choose to murder each other that is your affair: I can't help it. But where music is concerned,—hands off! I will not suffer you to debase the loveliness of the world by heaping up in the same basket things holy and things shameful, by giving, as you do at present, the prelude to Parsifal between a fantasia on the Daughter of the Regiment and a saxophone quartette, or an adagio of Beethoven between a cakewalk and the rubbish of Leoncavallo. You boast of being a musical people. You pretend to love music. What sort of music do you love? Good or bad? You applaud both ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... finding it! A second day this was repeated; but his manifest disturbance of mind, and his long pondering with the bonnet in hand, as if almost alarmed, seemed to touch another chord in her heart—that chord of pity which is so often the prelude of love, that finer pity that grieves to wound anything nobler or tenderer than ourselves. Next day, when he came to his accustomed place of prayer, a little card was pinned against the tree just where he knelt, and on it these words: "She who stole away your bonnet is ashamed of what she ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... for them to appear unconscious of it. A great crowd was slowly filling the room and an orchestra in a balcony on the left of the dais began to make delightful music on instruments the strangers had never before seen. After an entrancing prelude a sound of singing was heard, and far up in a grand dome, lighted like the one the captives had just admired over the central court of the palace, they saw a bevy of maidens, robed in white, moving about in ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... "it is the prelude to 'L'Arlesienne' that they should play for you and me. Yes, I ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... which have been cited by Cullere, is the fear of stealing objects in view, and is often the prelude of kleptomania. The latter disease has gained notoriety in this country, and nearly every large store has agents to watch the apparently growing number of kleptomaniacs. These unfortunate persons, not seldom from the highest classes of society, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... a harmless look on the Printed Page, but when pulled at the Psychological turn of the Road, they become the Funeral Knell of Bachelor Freedom and a Prelude to cutting the String on ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... woods. Those green-coated musicians, the frogs, make holiday in the neighbouring marshes. They, too, belong to the orchestra of Nature; whose vast theatre is again opened, though the doors have been so long bolted with icicles, and the scenery hung with snow and frost, like cobwebs. This is the prelude, which announces the rising of the broad green curtain. Already the grass shoots forth. The waters leap with thrilling pulse through the veins of the earth; the sap through the veins of the plants and trees; and the ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... involves a previous creation of powers, spirits or the shades of men; these lead to the belief in independent spirits of various origin, which people the heavens and all parts of the world. Hence arose the belief in transmigration, the necessary prelude to the theory of the incarnation, which was ultimately constituted by fetishism. The comparative study of languages shows that including the Aryan and Semitic races, the belief in spirits was developed in all peoples, and in all of them we also find a belief ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... prelude, the person who had sung and danced recovers his breath and spirits a little, and begins his harangue in praise of the maker of the feast. He flatters him greatly, in attributing to him a thousand good qualities he never had, and appeals to all the company for the truth of what ...
— An Account Of The Customs And Manners Of The Micmakis And Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent On The Government Of Cape-Breton • Antoine Simon Maillard
... McClellan in a position where he will have neither partner nor censor in his plans and movements. The graceful and appropriate manner in which the old veteran leaves the field, which age and infirmity will no longer allow him to command, is but a fitting prelude to the military rule of one upon whose brow the dew of youth still rests, and who brings to his responsible task the highest qualities, combined with a veneration for the noble virtues and an emulation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... of 1826, closing the life of one of the longest parliaments in modern times, was the prelude to a very eventful year. The general election brought into prominence the two burning questions of catholic relief and the corn laws, and unseated for the moment Brougham, Cobbett, Hunt, and Lord John Russell, but it produced ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Bedewed Alaciel's cheeks, her looks spoke fears; The ardent flame which she'd so long concealed; Burst forth in sighs, and all its warmth revealed; While such emotion Hispal's eyes expressed, That more than words his anxious wish confessed. These tender scenes were followed by a kiss, The prelude sweet of soft enchanting bliss; But whether taken, or by choice bestowed, Alike 'twas clear, their heaving ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... was the prelude to the strangest coincidence of my life. When I awoke the next morning, I found that the big sea had not come and that the sun was shining. My head full of the romance of wrecks and piracy, I climbed the hill behind the Tiare Hotel to ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... A terrific prelude to the attack was made by the German artillery, which concentrated a furious shrapnel fire upon the French position. At this point the trenches of the Germans were only seventy yards from the French, and ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... nothing left for it but that the young Earl should himself face the difficulty, and be introduced to the girl at the lodging in Wyndham Street. But, as a prelude to this, a meeting was arranged at Mr. Flick's chambers between the Countess and her proposed son-in-law. That the Earl should go to his own attorney's chambers was all in rule. While he was there the Countess came,—which was not in rule, and almost induced the ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... vaguely melodious hints foreshadows in his prelude the musical motifs which he means to vary and elaborate in his fugue, so Kielland lightly touched in these "Novelettes" the themes which in his later works he has struck with a fuller volume and power. What he gave in this little book was a light sketch of his mental ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... just been waged the exploits of Bulgarian arms had attracted the widest attention in Europe. Public opinion in most of the capitals of the world assigned the future hegemony of the Balkan Peninsula to the Bulgarian nation. But all this fair-seeming prospect was the prelude to one of the greatest national ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... Renaissance. It was thus that the necessary milieu was prepared. The organization of the five great nations, and the levelling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still evolving in the establishment of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... diamonds. The order of St. Andrew and the George on his breast were adorned with the same jewels: "he glittered," as an eye-witness observed, "all over like the star which they tell you appeared at his nativity." But all this display, and the feigned kindness of his reception, were but the prelude to a heartless abandonment of his cause on the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... Why, I never dances to but one tune," and Jake started the first line of "Oh, plantation gals, can't you look at a body," while Bacchus was giving a prelude of scrapes and twangs. Jake made a circle of somersets, and come down on his head, with his heels in the air, going through flourishes that would have astonished an uninitiated observer. As it was, Jake's audience were in a high condition of enjoyment. They were in a constant state ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... have endeavoured to show that the public betrothal or formal 'troth-plight' which was at the time a common prelude to a wedding carried with it all the privileges of marriage. But neither Shakespeare's detailed description of a betrothal {23} nor of the solemn verbal contract that ordinarily preceded marriage lends the contention much support. Moreover, the whole circumstances of the case render it highly improbable ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... graceful performers. The music stirred him a good deal; he had also been introduced to one or two young persons as Mr. Hopkins, the poet, and he began to feel a kind of excitement, such as was often the prelude of a lyric burst from his pen. Others might have wealth and beauty, he thought to himself, but what were these to the gift of genius? In fifty years the wealth of these people would have passed into other hands. In fifty years all these beauties would be dead, or wrinkled and double-wrinkled ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... from the arm of Ione, still cast round her, as if that soft embrace embarrassed; and placing her light and graceful instrument on her knee, after a short prelude, she ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... remember Mr. Gough's famous story of the orator who, with a great flourish of rhetoric as prelude, announced to his audience the startling fact that there was a "gre—at difference in people?" On the strength of this original statement, it has been supposed that there were a variety of tastes to be suited in selecting for the readers of "Gypsy Breynton" the most entertaining passages of this ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the prelude to one of the most stirring periods in the history of the war—the first great De Wet hunt. It is beside the purport of this volume to discuss the advantages of British infantry pursuing mounted Boers. It has often been maintained that the result of such an apparently ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... said she, "we're now upon the Common, where no ear can hear what passes between us. I ax have you spirit to keep your sister Ellen from shame and sorrow?" The young man started, and became strongly excited at such a serious prelude to what she was ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... which she loved best—the calm that lay upon the sea at dawn, or the calm that was the prelude to the night. Silvery were these dawns of the summer days. Here and there the waters gleamed like the scales of some lovely fish. Mysterious lights, like those in the breast of the opal, shone in the breast of the sea, stirred, surely travelled as if endowed with life, then sank away ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... the mere prelude of a mind growing in power, we have in it the promise of a fine poet.... In 'The Wandering Soul,' the verse describing Socrates has that highest note of critical poetry, that in it epigram becomes vivid with life, and life reveals its inherent paradox. It would be difficult to ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... story he had a different attitude toward the whole cycle of legends from that of Tennyson, who had lately been reviving the legends for the pleasure of English-reading people. The exuberance of the poet as he carols of June in the prelude to Part First is an expression of the joyous spring which was in the veins of the young American, glad in the sense of freedom and hope. As Tennyson threw into his retelling of Arthurian romance a moral sense, so Lowell, also a moralist in his poetic apprehension, made a ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the kirks, and the beautiful memorial windows of stained glass were not for the purpose of looking out, he did not see a dramatic incident that occurred in the kirkyard after three o'clock in the afternoon. The prelude to it really began with the report of the timegun at one. Bobby had insisted upon being let out of the lodge kitchen, and had spent the morning near Auld Jock's grave and in nosing about neighboring slabs and thorn bushes. When the time-gun boomed he ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... from this impulse, for the purpose to "tell the world" that my vision of America is startlingly different from what I have read about America is identical with that break with the past which has again and again been prelude to a new era. I do not wish to discuss the alleged new era. Like the younger generation, it has been discussed too much and is becoming evidently self-conscious. But if the autobiographical novel is to be regarded as its literary herald (and they are all ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... aimless and agitated displacements, had served only to isolate the pair and give them (at least to the young man's fancy) a deeper feeling of communion, and their days there had been like some musical prelude, where the instruments, breathing low, seem to hold back the waves of sound ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... worm,' was alone callous to the prelude of the forthcoming song. (37) Let him live on in remorse and self-contempt. (38) Neither should we weep that Adonais has 'fled far from these carrion-kites that scream below.' His spirit flows back to its fountain, a portion of the Eternal. (39) Indeed, he is not dead nor sleeping, but 'has awakened ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... Stockgrowers' Association was, contrary to what might have been expected from its prelude, a thoroughly dignified affair. Roosevelt was, as one of the other stockmen later declared, "rather inclined to listen and take the advice of older men"; but it was significant that he was, nevertheless, elected ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... another. "He not only sets it, but carries it along. He has fine wenches at his beck and call." 'Twas evident 'twas but the beginning of revelry; a sort of bacchanalian prelude to what might come later. No sooner was this dance finished than another began. Some lithe creature came forth to dance, in bright scarlet, the passacaglia. The glasses were refilled and the noise became more boisterous; ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... offer. He was no longer watching Maude. The dancing had ceased, and the floor had cleared. The orchestra had already commenced the prelude to a vaudeville turn, and the drop curtain ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... desired to speak with them apart. After they had been talking some little time, the people were greatly surprised to see Sir Charles stand motionless and his bride cry and faint away in the stranger's arms. This seeming grief, however, was only a prelude to a flood of joy which immediately succeeded; for you must know, gentle reader, that this gentleman, so richly dressed and bedizened with lace, was that identical little boy whom you before saw in the sailor's habit; in short, it was little Tom Two-Shoes, Mrs. Margery's brother, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... creations, but mainly the product of a judicious eclecticism. Sir William Hamilton was a vast polyhistor long before he could be called a philosopher, or even thought himself one. Researches the most persistent in nearly every department of letters were with him the indispensable prelude to his subsequent triumphs. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... object was to make it as easy as possible for him to come with me. As long as there was no clash between us there was no object in my seeing him; it was only when the clash came or was imminent that I had to see him. A series of breakfasts was always the prelude to some active warfare.[*] In every instance I substantially carried my point, although in some cases not in exactly the way in which I ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... too frivolous—who held that the best course for the Government would be to withdraw from Ireland for the time being and leave Ulster and the Rest to come to an agreement of their own, either with or without a bloody prelude. And there were other critics—not much more frivolous—who replied that, if we walked out of Ireland and left Ulster and the Rest to come to terms, they might get to understand one another to such good purpose that we should never have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... fortnight I shall be so hurried, that I shall scarce know what I say. I sit here writing to you, and receiving all the town, who flock to this house; Sir Robert has already had three levees this morning, and the rooms still overflowing-they overflow up to me. You will think this the prelude to some victory! On the contrary, when you receive this, there will be no longer a Sir Robert Walpole: you must know him for the future by the title of Earl of Orford. That other envied name expires next week with his ministry! Preparatory to this ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... In the prelude to the "Wayside Inn," with how consummate a skill the poet graces his modern line with the shadowy charm of ancient verse, by the mere mention of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the town we saw neither any of our troops nor those of the enemy, and heard no firing. Although there was complete absence of the usual prelude to battle, still the apprehension came over us that something serious in that line was not very remote, either in time or place. The commanders of both armies were conscious of the importance of the impending contest, which perhaps explains the extreme caution ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... of Vincennes was to be a prelude to taking Detroit. In both 1779 and 1780 he planned marches to the center of British western power. Neither time could he bring off a coordinated attack. The frontier was under too heavy pressure from the Ohio Indians led by Tory Henry Bird and the infamous renegade, Simon Girty. ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... whose sympathies I knew were broad as the lap of nature, I at last went with my desire and perplexities. A sketch of my country's condition was the inevitable prelude. I gave it without once alluding to the presence of Man. She listened quietly and attentively. Her own land lay like a charming picture before her. I spoke of its peaceful happiness, its perfected refinement, its universal wealth, and paramount to all its other blessings, ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... delaying only to close the door (and to see that it latched) began with a foreword which was followed by a preface and then by a prelude, but he had hardly reached the main introduction when Mr. Starkweather put up his hand. "To make a long story short, Mix—how much ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... no mood to stand on the rights of a strict Mohammedan, and he accepted both of her conditions. The first he never meant to abide by, but the second she took care he should observe, and, as a prelude to that public life which she intended to live by his side, she insisted on a ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Verona, Alaric himself barely escaping capture. Stilicho, however, permitted him—some historians say, bribed him—to withdraw to Illyricum, and he was made prefect of Western Illyricum by Honorius. Such is the prelude, followed in history by the amazing exploits of Alaric's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... form for the memory to dwell on, an undying association with the "Tancredi," as beautiful, instructive, and joy-giving as the "Divino Amore" of Raphael, the exquisite onyx heads in the "Cabinet of Gems," or that divine prelude the Englishman was at that moment pouring out from his piano in a neighboring palazzo, in a flood of harmony as golden and rich as the wine of Capri, every note of which, we know, had been a life-drop wrung from the proud, breaking heart of Chopin, when ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... unceasing; ophelimon is apo tou ophellein—that which gives increase: this word, which is Homeric, is of foreign origin. Blaberon is to blamton or boulomenon aptein tou rou—that which injures or seeks to bind the stream. The proper word would be boulapteroun, but this is too much of a mouthful—like a prelude on the flute in honour of Athene. The word zemiodes is difficult; great changes, as I was saying, have been made in words, and even a small change will alter their meaning very much. The word deon is one of these disguised words. You know that according to the old pronunciation, which is especially ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... that when a war is determined on in Ashantee, solemn ceremonies precede it. Among other things, the bones of the king's mother are laved with human blood. As a prelude to the war, the king ordains an onslaught upon his own metropolis, as if to excite ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... of it would have been a prelude to the opening of his heart to her, at the same time that it vindicated his dear and honoured master, as he called Dr. Shrapnel. To speak, without the explanation of his previous reticence which this letter would afford, seemed useless: even the desire ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his elbows on it, leant over it, and looked back at the still and beautiful scene, in all the white mystery of moonlight, enhanced by the white-blossomed trees and the soft outlines of slumbering sheep. One of the birds, in a bush close to them, began prolonging its drawn-in notes in a continuous prelude, then breaking forth into a varied complex warbling, so wondrous that there was no moving till ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his back to the wall. He vanishes in the shining cloud of a witty abstraction when cornered. His prose is full of winged neologisms, his poetry heavy with the metaphysics of ennui. Remy de Gourmont speaks of his magnificent work as the prelude to an oratorio achieved in silence. Laforgue, himself, called it an intermezzo, and in truth it is little more. His intellectual sensibility and his elemental soul make for mystifications. As if he knew the frailness of his tenure on life, he sought azure and elliptical routes. He would have ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... light? For this, our education in music and gymnastic is wholly inadequate. We must proceed first to the science of numbers, then of geometry, then of astronomy. And after astronomy, there is the sister science of abstract harmonics—not of audible sounds. All of which are but the prelude to the ultimate supreme science of dialectic, which carries the intelligence to the contemplation of the idea of the good, the ultimate goal. And here to attempt further explanation would be ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... he approached the place he says: "In the avenue leading to the house, the spreading trees just opening into leaf, with spring flowers around and beneath—yellow cowslips and blue forget-me-nots—and the song of birds in the branches overhead, seemed a fitting prelude to all that followed. Shortly after I was seated in the ante-room, the poet's son appeared, and, as his father was engaged, he said, 'Come and see my mother.' We went into the drawing-room, where ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... effects have their origin in Beethoven. His method of using the violins and flutes in the highest register in prolonged notes, as in the Lohengrin Prelude, and in general when portraying celestial music, are obtained from this source. The Mass in D gives several instances where this idea is presented, not by harp (the customary way), but as Wagner has done in Lohengrin, by the violins and wood-winds in the highest ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... before last have been, luckily for us, uncommon. Thursday evening a strong northerly wind started with some drift, and this increased during the night until it blew over forty miles an hour, the temperature being -22 deg.. A strong wind from the north is rare, and generally is the prelude of a blizzard. This northerly wind fell towards morning, and the day was calm and clear, the temperature falling until it was -33 deg. at 4 P.M. The barometer had been abnormally low during the day, being only 28.24 ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... as single phrase, repeated. It ends, usually, with a strong perfect cadence on the tonic chord of the original key, or of some related key (that is, one whose signature closely resembles that of the original key). An introductory phrase, or independent prelude, may ...
— Lessons in Music Form - A Manual of Analysis of All the Structural Factors and - Designs Employed in Musical Composition • Percy Goetschius
... the part of the doctor and the nurse might have kept him alive long enough to permit his case to be recorded by virtue of his having escaped alive from the operating table, as one of those exasperatingly smug things known to the profession as a "successful operation,"—sardonic prelude to ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... their attitude has constituted old Jolyon's 'home' the psychological moment of the family history, made it the prelude of their drama. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at the time. Miss Savage was so much impressed by the narrative power displayed in Erewhon that she urged Butler to write a novel, and we shall probably not be far wrong in regarding the biography of John Pickard Owen as Butler's trial trip in the art of fiction—a prelude to The Way of All Flesh, ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... "admire" his Envoy that he had just finished for the Salon. Sabine received him graciously, and promised him somewhat stiffly that she would do so. She tapped impatiently with her fan upon her fingers as the orchestra began to play the prelude to the fourth act. It was quite certain that Lissac had failed ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... Rules for Pronunciation of Proper Names Prologue Act First Act Second Prelude to Act Third Act Third Prelude to Act Fourth Act Fourth Act Fifth Prelude to Act Sixth ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... in afternoon tea at the Hotel Semiramis, near the entrance to the bridge. We lingered on for the sunset, which first appeared as a flaming ball of fire, succeeded by myriad shades of rainbow hues, these fading into softer tints and later into those more delicate tones that prelude the twilight. Then silence seemed to brood over the wonderful river, ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... same thing said by another man in another key. 'Because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.' The prelude to the assertion makes all the difference. Here is the warranted confidence of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... went to sleep. And they were not long in ascertaining the truth. The expected storm had set in, with that low, deep commotion of the elements, and that slowly gathering impetus, which, as may often be noted at the commencement of great storms, was but the too certain prelude of its increase and duration. The fine snow was sifting down apace to the already whitened ground, and the rising wind, even in their mountain-hemmed nook, was whirling in fierce and fitful eddies about their camp, and shrilly ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... about an hour, when the sky suddenly darkened, the wind rose and the thunder rolled in prelude to the storm. ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Provost of Merchants, with his Four Echevins (Scabins, Assessors), could not prevent it; such was the force of public opinion. He, with his Echevins, and the Six-and-Twenty Town-Councillors, all appointed from Above, may well sit silent there, in their long gowns; and consider, with awed eye, what prelude this is of convulsion coming from Below, and how themselves shall ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... last became friends "so far as outside appearances went," as a chronicler of the time phrased it. The fundamental difference of interests and standpoint could be glossed over by no facile compromise, and the calm of the next six years was only the prelude to a storm destined to end the policy that had regulated the relations of the two courts from the days of the peace of 1259 to those of the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... into the shanty suspended the conversation for a moment only, and then General Sherman, without prelude, rehearsed his plans for moving his army, pointing out with every detail how he would come up through the Carolinas to join the troops besieging Petersburg and Richmond, and intimating that my cavalry, after striking the Southside and Danville railroads, could join him with ease. I ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... respondent was compelled to give an answer inconsistent with the first, thus showing that the definition was too narrow or too wide, or defective in some essential condition. [Footnote: Grote, part ii. ch. 68.] The respondent then amended his answer; but this was a prelude to other questions, which could only be answered in ways inconsistent with the amendment; and the respondent, after many attempts to disentangle himself, was obliged to plead guilty to his inconsistencies, with an admission that he could make no satisfactory ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... With this prelude, Mr Meagles went through the narrative; the established narrative, which has become tiresome; the matter-of-course narrative which we all know by heart. How, after interminable attendance and correspondence, after infinite impertinences, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... hissing of shells in the streets we awoke to a sense of what was real. In the blackness of the early morning it was hard to connect the booming of cannon with reality. The shells were falling and bursting in rapid succession. It was the inauguration of a nerve-ordeal; the prelude to a terrible day; the beginning of a bombardment ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... of poetry, with all faith in himself, and slowly but surely bringing round his admirers to the same conclusion; he began his career in literature by publishing along with Coleridge "Lyrical Ballads"; finished his "Prelude" in 1806, and produced his "Excursion" in 1814, after which, from his home at Rydal Mount, there issued a long succession of miscellaneous pieces; he succeeded Southey as poet-laureate in 1843; he is emphatically the poet of external ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... beautiful girl that was responsive; no indication of the sweet surrender that doubly endears, and which makes such irresistible appeals for protection and sensitive understanding to a man worthy of the name; and what evidences of confusion she betrayed were rather those which commonly prelude the execution of unwelcome resolution; a suggestion of a lurking disposition to readmit the Peri into Paradise, restrained by a knowledge ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... she put on her mackintosh, it was very wet and misty, got out her car, and lit her lamps, her face was still fretful and her mind disturbed. For now, as she looked back on it, Beaumaroy's conversation with her at Old Place seemed just a prelude to this summons, and meant to prepare her for it. Perhaps that too was pardonable diplomacy, and no reference to it could be expected in a letter which she was at liberty to show to Dr. Irechester. She wondered, uncomfortably, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... were long closeted together, and at the proper, ceremonious hour for visitors they repaired to the house of Capulet, who did not hide his sense of the honor done him by the prince. With scarcely any prelude Hamlet unfolded the motive of his visit, and was listened to with rapt attention by old Capulet, who inwardly blessed his stars that he had not given his daughter's hand to the County Paris, as he was on the point of doing. The ladies were not visible on this occasion; the fatigues ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... silent wonder at it, and in the second moment, all the rest had joined them in their confused contemplation. But the third moment witnessed a drastic change in their behavior, for their initial bewilderment wore off and suddenly, with a united prelude of the drawing in of a breath, they all began speaking at once, resulting in a clamorous din that lasted for a few moments, before things hushed again and we could hear a few individual voices discussing loudly. Though we couldn't make out their exact words, they ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... is our Lord of us! How gracious is He to us! What blessed provision doth He make for us! If pilgrims are attacked by Giant Grim, and terrified with the sight of lions, they may be sure that it is only a prelude to some sweet enjoyment of their Lord's love, and that they are near to some asylum, some sanctuary of rest, peace, and comfort. Some bitter generally precedes the sweet, and makes ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... down during the conversation. Now, Somerled took a step toward the door. "I'm obliged to you for receiving me, madam," he said as a prelude to departure. ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in that plea. I could even see it myself then and there, but I was so great a fool I smiled and spoke fairly to the young man although I could have wrung his neck with rage. There was a little stir and a passing whisper in the crowd as she stood waiting for the prelude. Then she sang the ballad of Auld Robin Grey—not better than I had heard her sing it before, but so charmingly there were murmurs of delight going far and wide in the audience when she had finished. Then she sang the fine melody of 'Angels ever Bright ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... him; but occasionally, sitting by the fire here when a storm was heavy outside, for the coming of storms was always the prelude of these moods in him, he would begin to mutter to himself, and to talk to his dog of days long gone; of men and women he had once hated or loved, or who loved or hated him—God knows which—and of deeds he had once done, but which were now ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... exasperated by insults showered upon him by the inhabitants, but the story cannot go far to excuse the massacre which followed the capture of the town. After more than a century of peace, the first important act of war was marked by a brutality which was a fitting prelude to more than two centuries of fierce and bloody fighting. On Edward's policy of "Thorough," as exemplified at Berwick, must rest, to some extent, the responsibility for the unnecessary ferocity which distinguished the Scottish War of Independence. ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... thing you can do is to get back to town," he said kindly to that young man; "you need a little sleep. It is not a pleasant prelude to your marriage. By the way, that is to-morrow, is it not?" ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... birds when they fly up yonder, in the direction of the angels, must hear such words. There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity, all the positiveness of which Marius was capable. It was what is said in the bower, a prelude to what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical effusion, strophe and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperboles of cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged in a bouquet and exhaling a celestial perfume, an ineffable twitter ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a beginning. The work of John the Baptist comes first, but one mightier than he must follow. The voice of one crying in the wilderness is but the prelude of that larger revelation which is made upon the mountain top. To bring home to men the obligations of the law, and to show them wherein they are failing to obey it, is the first duty of the church in the present crisis; but it is the gospel with which ...
— The Church and Modern Life • Washington Gladden
... remained in peace for a few years, till the Austrian Government drove them out. The same fate overtook the inmates of many monasteries and convents at Bruges in the reign of Joseph II., whose reforming zeal led to that revolt of the Austrian Netherlands which was the prelude to the invasion of Flanders by the army of ...
— Bruges and West Flanders • George W. T. Omond
... prelude introduce us? I am thinking of Harry Warrington, Esquire, in his lodgings in Bond Street, London, and of the life which he and many of the young bucks of fashion led in those times, and how I can no more ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... skirt of them (skirt always veiled in Cossacks, and producing skirmishes as you marched past),—we did mention Hordt's capture; [Supra, vol. x. p. 315.] not much hoping that readers could remember it in such a press of things more memorable. It was in, or as prelude to, one of those skirmishes (one of the earliest, and a rather sharp one, "at Trebatsch," in Frankfurt-Lieberose Country, "4th September, 1759"), that Hordt had his misfortune: he had been out reconnoitring, with an Orderly or two, before the skirmish began, was suddenly "surrounded ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the gorse was in bud, and the stonechats, which had vanished during the cold weather, were back among the boulders, darting from stone to stone in short, jerky flight, with that sharp, jarring cry which is the prelude to their sweeter spring note. The moorland air at 8 a.m. was so fresh and pure and exhilarating that it seemed to blow away all the cobwebs, and Gwen often felt inclined to dance along the path for sheer joy of the sun and the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... looked at her, and set down the half-finished cup without opening her lips. If the speech had come from any other than Wark, it would have been easy to believe it merely the prelude to complaint of a fellow-servant or plea for a rise in wages. But if Wark objected to a fellow-servant, her own view of the matter had always been that the other one should go. Her mistress knew quite well ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse and breath that grew fainter and fainter except when a long, deep and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... prelude I will now give a condensed survey of the historical facts relating to the origin of new horticultural varieties. An ample description has been given recently by Korshinsky, a Russian writer, who has brought together considerable historical ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... meantime, had brought the strings into some order, and after a short prelude, asked his host whether he would choose a "sirvente" in the language of "oc", or a "lai" in the language of "oui", or a "virelai", or a ballad ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... began she heard, clear above the murmur within, the roar of the crowds outside, who still demanded their God. Then, with a crash, the huge organ awoke, pierced by the cry of the trumpets and the maddening throb of drums. There was no delicate prelude here, no slow stirring of life rising through labyrinths of mystery to the climax of sight—here rather was full-orbed day, the high noon of knowledge and power, the dayspring from on high, dawning in mid-heaven. Her heart quickened to meet it, and her reviving confidence, still ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... should not pass before we should add stronger bolts to our windows and doors. For a week he continued to be in a peculiar state of restlessness, peering continually out of the windows, and ceasing to take the short walk which had usually been the prelude to his dinner. From his manner it struck me that he was in mortal dread of something or somebody, but when I questioned him upon the point he became so offensive that I was compelled to drop the subject. Gradually, as time passed, his fears appeared ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... three," that being the number of the square on the chart occupied by the Russian fleet at that moment. No sooner was the message decoded and its purport made known than mutual congratulations were exchanged; for even as the fall of 203 Metre Hill into the hands of our soldiers had been the prelude to the surrender of Port Arthur, so now the fact of the Russian fleet being in square 203 on the chart was accepted as an ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... each accent to my bosom suit, My heart unhushed—although my lips were mute! 370 Oh! many a night on this lone couch reclined, My dreaming fear with storms hath winged the wind, And deemed the breath that faintly fanned thy sail The murmuring prelude of the ruder gale; Though soft—it seemed the low prophetic dirge, That mourned thee floating on the savage surge: Still would I rise to rouse the beacon fire, Lest spies less true should let the blaze expire; ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... indulgent brethren, without examining the merits of the cause, presumed their innocence, allowed their claims, and imputed the severity of their judge to the partial malice of religious persecution. [138] These present hardships, intolerable as they might appear, were represented as a slight prelude of the impending calamities. The Christians considered Julian as a cruel and crafty tyrant; who suspended the execution of his revenge till he should return victorious from the Persian war. They expected, that as soon ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... dreams; And universal nature, wheresoever My vision strays—o'er sky, and sea, and river— Sleeps, like a happy child, In slumber undefiled, A premonition of sublimer days, When war and warlike lays At length shall cease, Before a grand Apocalypse of Peace, Vouchsafed in mercy to all human kind— A prelude ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... embodiment. Of this procession we have still in the frieze of the Parthenon a marble transcript. There we may see the life of ancient Athens moving in stone, from the first mounting of their horses by isolated youths, like the slow and dropping prelude of a symphony, on to the thronged and trampling ranks of cavalry, past the antique chariots reminiscent of Homeric war, and the marching band of flutes and zithers, by lines of men and maidens bearing sacrificial ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... and that he harboured a deep and rooted resentment against herself. She recoiled, without well knowing why, before the ferocious passions of her kinsman, and was convinced that she had nothing to hope from his implacable temper. But her alarm was the prelude of firmness, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... prefatory advertisement to the first edition of The Prelude, published in 1850, it is stated that that work was intended to be introductory to The Recluse: and that The Recluse, if completed, would have consisted of three parts. The second part is The Excursion. The third part was only planned; but the first book of the first part was left ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... Living—for the Dear Poet, for the Beloved Mother! The linking of their names together, under this Spray of Kentucky Pine—culled by a hand most loving—is like unto finding the other half of a broken Chord, in some Prelude Elusive: for James Whitcomb Riley, deeply endeared himself, to the Dear Lady Here, while he and her son were a long while away, on their Reading Tour. Out of sheer Kindliness, out of Goodness of Heart, he often wrote to her, delightful Letters of Good Cheer, filled with a charming ...
— A Spray of Kentucky Pine • George Douglass Sherley
... more particularly what Chopin played. He mentions three mazurkas in A flat major, B major, and A minor; three studies in A flat major, F minor, and C minor; the Ballade in A flat major; four nocturnes, one of which was that in F sharp minor; a prelude in D flat; and an impromptu in G (G flat major?). Maurice Bourges's account is not altogether free from strictures. He finds Chopin's ornamentations always novel, but sometimes mannered (manierees). ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... at last and happy be, O lucky Bridegroom and your Bride, To celebrate your Nuptials I've prepar'd A Rural Dance, and Magick Harmony, To serve for Prelude to ...
— Amadigi di Gaula - Amadis of Gaul • Nicola Francesco Haym
... ended, for the time, on the evening of the thirteenth of August, in the following manner, when my adventures, of which my life, ever since my audience with our Most Holy Lord the Pope, had been but a prelude, properly began—those adventures for whose sake I have begun this transcript from my diary, and this adventure was pre-shadowed, as I think now, by one or ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... Prodigal Son,' 1565; and 'La Commedia Spirituale dell' Anima' ('The Spiritual Comedy of the Soul'), printed at Siena, without date, in which there are near thirty personifications, besides Saint Paul, Saint John Chrysostom, two little boys who repeat a kind of prelude, and the announcing angel, who always speaks the prologue in these old mysteries. He is called l'angelo che nunzia, and his figure is almost always given in a wooden cut on the title-page of printed copies. Here, among the interlocutors, we ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... the King in reply was not heard, but those habituated to read his countenance in its very faint varieties of expression, might have seen that it conveyed reproof; and its purport soon became practically known, when a lugubrious prelude was heard from a quarter of the hall, in which sate certain ghost-like musicians in white robes—white as winding-sheets; and forthwith a dolorous and dirgelike voice chaunted a long and most tedious recital of the miracles and ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an illustration more impressive than in Abraham Lincoln, whose life, career, and death might be chanted by a Greek chorus as at once the prelude and the epilogue of the most imperial theme of modern times? Born as lowly as the Son of God, in a hovel; of what real parentage we know not, reared in penury, squalor, with no gleam of light, nor fair surrounding; a young manhood vexed by weird dreams and ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... said was a friend of yours—he is my friend now too, and I have learned to sing some of his songs. I am going to sing one now." She seemed to have no timidity at all, but stood quietly, with a half smile, while a young man with a Russian name played a strange minor prelude. Then she sang, her voice a wonderful contralto, cold at times, and again lit up with gleams of passion. The music itself was fitful, now full of joy, now tender, ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... only natural that in time of peace a brave knight like Acton should turn his thoughts from war to love-making, and therefore I shall make no excuse for relating a little experience of his which must be introduced as a prelude to the account of the formation of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... in his mind, when, first one and then another, with every variety of pace and voice—one deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz—the clocks began to strike the hour ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... new." I ask'd again, "Why on this day the forum's strife should end Only in part."—"The cause," said he, "I will explain; attend. The young year's starting day I made but partial holiday, Lest labourless begun, the year might run to the end in play; Each cunning hand on Janus' feast makes prelude to his trade, Of all the rest a timely test on New-Year's day is made." Then I, this further—"Tell me why, when I bring frankincense To Jove or any other god, with thee I still commence?" "Because of things in heaven and earth I hold the sacred key, The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... a hunter, prelude to a narrative of how a British military force, under orders for one theatre of war, was boldly diverted to another; incidentally the bearding of Moshesh; and a ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... intervened: "Perhaps you had better leave it to me. I'll settle him." Fixing his eyes on the offender, he said, sternly, "What do you mean by this, sir? Why the h—l did you not stop that chain?" This exordium was doubtless the prelude to a fit oratorical display; but the culprit, looking quietly at him, replied, simply, "How the h—l could I?" This was a shift of wind for which the admiral was unprepared. He was taken flat back, like a screaming child receiving a glass of cold water in his face. After ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... a weird prelude. Marguerite sat still to be baited, like a hare which has no covert. The instrument being heavy for the dwarf, she propped it by resting one foot on the abutting foundation of the powder-house, and all through her recital made the mandolin's effects act ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... lute from which there pulsing came A lively prelude, fashioning the way In which her voice should wander. 'T was a lay More subtle-cadenced, more forest-wild Than Dryope's lone lulling of ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... itself a principle that lifts the heaviest of the burdens that afflict labor. It can and it must be the foundation upon which any permanently successful improvement in conditions is attained. It is, therefore, a necessary prelude ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... and when Jim struck a match the colored light touched her face and dress. Except for this, the corner was somewhat dark. Amber was Evelyn's color. She struck a few chords that seemed to echo in the distance and then, glancing at Jim, began a prelude with a measured beat. His face was intent; he seemed to search for something in the music that sounded as if it were getting nearer. She wondered whether he heard the call of trumpets and horses' feet drumming in the dark. ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... of birth has no tendency to prelude the favour of God. In this respect, he "seeth not as a man seeth," but, in the past dispensations of his mercy, appears to have preferred the lowly as objects of high and distinguishing manifestations. This is the case in the Christian era, and to the present hour the ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... the war; and the treaty of peace with the United States was a prelude to treaties of peace with the Bourbon powers. Their actual gains were insignificant. France indeed won nothing in the treaties with which the war ended; Spain gained only Florida and Minorca. Nor could they feel even ...
— History of the English People, Volume VIII (of 8) - Modern England, 1760-1815 • John Richard Green
... theoretical exception to this in the fact that a violation of the rules of a demilitarized zone is equivalent to a resort to war; but this exception is more apparent than real for the violation of a demilitarized zone would be only a brief prelude to hostilities. ...
— The Geneva Protocol • David Hunter Miller
... power and prophecy of its triumph, has been uttered by Shelley, who cannot in any sense be termed a Christian poet. It is one of the choruses in "Hellas," and perhaps had he lived longer amongst us, it would have been the prelude to higher strains. Of this I am certain, that before his death the mind of that brilliant genius was rapidly changing,—that for him the cross was gathering attractions round it,—that the wall which he complained had been built up between his heart and his intellect was ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... laws of Holland at the very moment at which he was drawing the sword against his father in law for violating the fundamental laws of England. The violent subversion of one free constitution would have been a strange prelude to the violent restoration of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... began, by way of prelude, 'You must have many lovers—' when Bella checked her with ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... sent before but to prepare thy way; And, coarsely clad in Norwich drugget, came To teach the nations in thy greater name. My warbling lute, the lute I whilom strung, When to king John of Portugal I sung, Was but the prelude to that glorious day, When thou on silver Thames didst cut thy way, With well-timed oars before the royal barge, Swell'd with the pride of thy celestial charge; 40 And big with hymn, commander of an host, The like was ne'er in Epsom blankets toss'd. Methinks I see the new Arion sail, The lute still ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... of late, interest in dramatic writing, as you know, and, perhaps, occasion. And, dearest, I mean to take your advice and be quiet awhile and let my mind get used to its new medium of sight; seeing all things, as it does, through you: and then, let all I have done be the prelude and the real work begin. I felt it would be so before, and told you at the very beginning—do you remember? And you spoke of Io 'in the proem.' How ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... a kind of prelude," I resumed, "for Bottazzi apparently proved that the invisible hand of Eusapia's invisible arm could not penetrate a cage of wire mesh that covered the telegraphic key in the cabinet. 'How, then, can we consider it to be a spirit hand—an immaterial hand—when a wire-netting can ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... make his cause their own, lacks practical illustration. An attempt to arm them will save recruits and arms to Uncle Sam. Nat Turner's insurrection developed their strong faith in a day of freedom. Their wildest dreams of fancy could not have pictured a more auspicious prelude to the realization of that faith than the outbreak of the ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong |
