"Chant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about six feet long, to support his steps, while in his left hand he carried a bowl formed of a gourd, and this he tapped against his stick at every stride, while he went on half shouting, half singing, a kind of chant, and turning his head, and swaying it from side ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... from the very first, and some night him and the doctor will be killed whilst asleep. One of the things we have every night in the show is an Injun dance, and Looey and I sings what the doctor calls the Siwash war chant, whirling round and round each other, and making licks at each other with our tommyhawks, and letting out sudden wild yips in the midst of that chant. That night I like to of killed Looey with that tommyhawk, I was feeling so good. If it had been a real one, instead of painted-up wood, I would ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... him grace, of summer boughs, If such an outcast be, He never heard that fleshless chant Rise solemn ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... comprehending Torpenhow"s special correspondence had waked the devil of unrest in Dick. He could hear, through the boy's nasal chant, the camels grunting in the squares behind the soldiers outside Suakin; could hear the men swearing and chaffing across the cooking pots, and could smell the acrid wood-smoke as it drifted over camp before the wind ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of these men had stumbled at the same moment, the others would have been crushed to death, but not a man stumbled. They came ashore with a slow, regular, almost dancing gait, humming a low monotonous chant, as if to enable them to step in time, and making serio-comic motions with arms and hands, until they deposited safely in a cart a weight that might ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... crowd formed in line, and, led by the little quarter-back on top of the van, they set off down the street, two men at the heads of the doctor's carriage horses, holding them in place behind the van. On went the swaying crowd and on went the swaying chant, with Martin, director of ceremonies and Dunn hurling unavailing objurgations ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... freemen, sons of high renown, Chant your loud peans, weave your civic crown; But know, the goddess you've so long adored, Tho now she scabbards your avenging sword, Calls you to vigil ance, to manlier cares, To prove in peace the men she proved in wars: Superior task! severer test of soul! Tis here bold ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... clippings." Mrs. Heeny, swooping down on her bag, drew from it a handful of newspaper cuttings, which she spread on her ample lap and proceeded to sort with a moistened forefinger. "Here," she said, holding one of the slips at arm's length; and throwing back her head she read, in a slow unpunctuated chant: '"Mrs. Henley Fairford gave another of her natty little dinners last Wednesday as usual it was smart small and exclusive and there was much gnashing of teeth among the left-outs as Madame Olga Loukowska gave some of her new steppe dances after dinner'—that's ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... that. She had the American national quality—she had 'faculty' in a supreme degree. 'Faculty—faculty,' the voices of the quartette of singers seemed to repeat, in the quick movement of a composition they rendered beautifully, while they swelled and went faster, till the thing became a joyous chant of praise, a glorification of Cousin Maria's ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... from the chant of victory which ladies of Tilling were accustomed to indulge in during cross-roughs, for she discovered in her hand another more than useless little clubby.... The silence that succeeded became tense in quality. Miss Mapp knew she had revoked ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... wheel revolved slowly above them. A loudspeaker blared the chant of the croupiers from the tables inside. Magnan and Retief moved through the crowd toward the ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... he said, listening to the droning chant that came indistinctly through the dark. "One would think they would long ago have been too drunk to stand. How some of these recruits the King sends over to us would ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... of the scene in blasts and calms, The breath of life within their palms, They rhythmic sway in choral murmur While seas and suns chant their rolling psalms. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... sentiment which had elsewhere somewhat lapsed. He especially loved to think of himself as the bard of his clan, a modern representative of those rude poets whom the Scottish chiefs once kept as a part of their household to chant the exploits of the clan. Nothing could have pleased his fancy more, therefore, than a request on the part of the lady of his chief to treat a subject of her assigning—namely, the dark mischief-making of a dwarf or goblin who had strayed from his unearthly master and attached ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... frozen with a new and splendid wonder, for their descriptive phrase was now inexact. Merton was no longer in a runaway. But only for a moment did they hesitate before taking up the new chant. ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... scream and run at the unexpected sight of a European. In the company of men they are silent, and are generally quiet and obedient. When alone the Malay is taciturn; he neither talks nor sings to himself. When several are paddling in a canoe, they occasionally chant a monotonous and plaintive song. He is cautious of giving offence to his equals. He does not quarrel easily about money matters; dislikes asking too frequently even for payment of his just debts, and will often ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... ain't the burrowin' kind of animal, and I ain't comin' in under there after yuh. Come, kitty-kitty-kitty! Come on outa there 'fore I send a charge of birdshot in after yuh!" His voice changed to a tremulous chant of rising anger. "You wall-eyed, mangy, rat-eatin' son of a gun, what have I been feedin' yuh fur all these years? You come outa there! If it wasn't for the love uh God I got in my heart, I'll fill ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... withdrew a few paces, as if he thus transferred to another all his own rights. The old pastor then, with an earnest voice and with tears in his eyes, pronounced the nuptial benediction, and gave his children a touching exhortation. A religious chant terminated the ceremonies, and the couple left the church amid the sound of horns and the firing of guns. On their return home, M. de Vermondans, after an old custom, handed each a glass of beer, which they drank at the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... broad waters of the lake the glint of something strange caught my sight. Yes, there they were! Coming with the full swing of eight paddles, swept a large North-west canoe, its Iroquois paddlers timing their strokes to an old French chant. We put into the rocky shore, and, mounting upon a crag which guarded the head of the rapid, I waved to the leading canoe as it swept along. In the centre sat a figure in uniform, with a forage-cap ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... Tom continued to chant, with pauses: 'Some streets are longer than others.... Very few streets are straight.... But we read in the Bible of the street which is called Straight.... Oxford Street is nearly straight.... A street is what you go along.... It has a road and ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... the Pyramids, declined going with us. The moon was very nearly full, and but for the honour of the thing we might have dispensed with the torch-bearers, who ran before the carriage and preceded the donkeys, after we adopted that humbler mode of locomotion. Our row across the river to the chant of the boatmen invoking the aid of a sainted dervish, and our ride through the fertile borders of the Nile, covered with crops and palm-trees, were very lovely, and, after about an hour and a half from Cairo, we emerged upon the Desert. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... occurrence of this new phenomenon. Each faculty of his soul seemed for the moment concentred in the sense of hearing, and all rushed back with the unanimous information, that the deep, wild, and prolonged chant which he now heard, was the appropriate music of one of the most solemn dirges of the Church of Rome. Why performed in such a solitude, and by what class of choristers, were questions which the terrified imagination ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... who take the lowest seats in the domestic synagogue, if they cannot have the moon by crying for it, will rush out, when they ought to be in bed, and chant, ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... tastes of the family. Old hymn and psaulm tunes were what Mrs. Armadale liked; and those generally came first; then the girls had more modern pieces, and with those Mrs. Barclay interwove an anthem or a chant now and then. Madge and Lois both had good voices and good natural taste and feeling; and Mrs. Barclay's instructions had been eagerly received. This evening Philip joined the choir; and Charity declared it was "better'n they could ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... knuckling. She knocked louder and listened. A door slammed violently at the back of the house, a distant clatter of what sounded like saucepans came from beyond, and above it all a tremulous but harsh voice bellowed industriously through an interminable chant. By the time the third verse was reached Mr. Wilks's neighbours on both sides were beating madly upon their walls and blood-curdling threats strained ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... few moments, they followed Merla through the grove, and soon a low chant, like that of an Indian song, fell upon their ears. It was a chorus of many small voices and grew louder as they swam on. Presently a big rock rose suddenly before them from the bottom of the sea, rearing its steep side far up into the ...
— The Sea Fairies • L. Frank Baum
... weep no more, Then will he wake on Congo's distant shore; Beneath his plantain's antient shade, renew The simple transports that with freedom flew; Catch the cool breeze that musky Evening blows, And quaff the palm's rich nectar as it glows; The oral tale of elder time rehearse, And chant the rude, traditionary verse; With those, the lov'd companions of his youth, When life was luxury, and friendship truth. Ah! why should Virtue fear the frowns of Fate? Hers what no wealth can win, no power create! A little world of clear and cloudless day, Nor wreck'd by storms, ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... this view that I promoted in the university chapel the simple antiphonal reading of the psalms by the whole congregation. Best of all would it be to chant the Psalter; the clergyman, with a portion of the choir, leading on one side, and the other section of the choir and the congregation at large chanting the responses. But this is, as regards most Protestant churches, a counsel ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... was not only fond of repeating quotations from the old English poets, but also verses from the old Sternhold and Hopkins hymn-book, which he had studied in the Salisbury meeting-house when a boy, and sometimes when alone he would sing, or rather chant, them in his deep voice, without a particle of melody. His favorite verses were the following translation ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... Sabbath-day pace, two by two, down the Chandni Chouk. They present an instructive comparison to the straggling groups of heathen damsels who watch them curiously as they walk past and then proceed to chant idolatrous songs, apparently in a spirit of wanton raillery at the Christian maidens and their simple, un-ornamented attire. The fair heathens of Delhi have a sort of naughty, Parisian reputation throughout the surrounding country, and so there is nothing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... a preventive measure." "It is war, inevitable war," said the populace with a fatalistic expression. And those who were going to start that very night or the following day were the most eager and enthusiastic.—"Now those who seek us are going to find us! Vive la France!" The Chant du Depart, the martial hymn of the volunteers of the first Republic, had been exhumed by the instinct of a people which seek the voice of Art in its most critical moments. The stanzas of the conservative Chenier, adapted to a music of warlike solemnity, were resounding through ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... came back and hearkened to the chanting of the cleric until matins were performed. "Let us chant our music now," said Fionnuala. So they began, and chanted a solemn, slow, sweet, fairy song in adoration of the High King of ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... the distant glare The murmur of a railway steals Round yonder jutting point the air Is beaten with the puff of wheels; And here at hand an open mill, Strong clamor at perpetual drive, With changing chant, now hoarse, now shrill, Keeps ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... not handsome, and her voice had a small degree of tremor. Moreover, she imitated, or, rather, faultily exceeded, Mrs. Barry in the habit of prolonging and toning her pronunciation, sometimes to a degree verging upon a chant; but whether it was that the public ear was at that period accustomed to a demi-chant, or that she threw off the defect in the heat of passion, it is certain that her general judgment and genius, in the highest bursts of tragedy, inspired enthusiasm in all around her, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... chant their artless notes in simple guise; They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim: Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise, Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name; Or noble Elgin beets the heav'n-ward flame, The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays: ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... their heads and faces, one against the other. In this equipage they neither sing hymns nor psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market. The nonsense verses they chant ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... back her veil, leaned her head against the trunk of the tree where wan lichens made a pearly cushion, and shut her eyes. The afternoon was wearing away; a keen wind shook the bare boughs; only the ceaseless, unchanging chant of waters rose from the vast throat of nature, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... faithfully superintending the work of annihilation. The monotonous patter of the rain-drops upon the wet pavement or muddy roads, blending with the low whining of the wind and the steady rumble of the coach-wheels, seemed to make a kind of witch-chant, that wove with braided sound a weird spell about me, a charm fating me for some service, I knew not what. That chant moaned, it wailed, it whispered, it sang gloriously, it bound, it drowned me, it lapped me in an inextricable stream of misty murmuring, till I was perplexed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... main d'une femme, rappeles par la voix d'un ami—lui, jamais! Il n'eut pas besoin, comme Ulysse, de se lier au mat du navire, ni de se boucher les oreilles avec de la cire; il ne redoutait pas le chant des Sirenes—il le dedaignait; il se fit marbre et fer pour executer ses grands projets. Napoleon ne se regardait pas comme un homme, mais comme l'incarnation d'un peuple. Il n'aimait pas; il ne considerait ses amis et ses proches que comme des ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was then formed, and all proceeded on to the African village, which was but a short distance from the spot. On entering it, a group of about a hundred and fifty women received them with a chant, expressed in low murmuring tones, not unlike the lullaby with which a mother sings her child ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... himself, then he entered his tent for a match. The melancholy pulse of the drums and the minor-keyed chant which issued out of the night sounded like a dirge sung by a ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... write, that they might copy the manuscripts of the church fathers, the sacred books, and the psalter; they were taught arithmetic, that they might be able to calculate the return of Easter and the other festivals; they were taught music, that they might {359} be able to chant well. But the education in any line was in ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... les morales du monde, parce que la justice et la bont sont recommandes dans tous les catchismes de l'univers, et que chez aucun peuple, quelque barbare qu'il fut, on n'a jamais enseign qu'il fallt tre injuste et mchant. Quant ce que la morale chrtienne a de particulier, l'auteur pretend dmontrer qu'elle ne peut convenir qu' des enthousiastes peu propres aux devoirs de la socit, pour lesquels les hommes sont dans ce monde. Il entreprend de prouver, dans ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing
... Affinity is all too familiar to me," sighed Hilda, "because we had a governess who made us learn it as a punishment. I suppose I could recite it now, although I haven't looked at it for ten years. We used to chant it in the nursery schoolroom on wet afternoons. I well remember that the vicar called one day to see us, and the governess, hearing our voices uplifted in a pious measure, drew him under the window to listen. This is what he heard—you will see how admirably it goes! And do not imagine ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... which was always ushered in with a smile of tender reverence. When he read aloud it was with a slight tone, which I used to think he had caught from Coleridge; Coleridge's recitation, however, rising to a chant. Lamb's reading was not generally in books of verse, but in the old lay writers, whose tendency was towards religious thoughts. He liked, however, religious verse. "I can read," he writes to Bernard Barton, "the homely old version of the Psalms in our prayer-books, for an hour or ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... softly; a golden gleam as of sunshine swept circling about him; then as the chant ceased a look of wild exultation came to his face, and he threw up his arms, so that for an instant he had the aspect he wore when guiding the great war-chariot of Cuchullain into the thick of battle. His swaying form fell softly upon the greensward, and above it floated ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... that art ought to have an object—to aim at the improvement of the masses. "Let us chant science, our discoveries, patriotism," and he broke into ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... pistachio nuts, sheep with four or five horns—Balkh[8] cats, with long silken hair; of singular beauty—faqueers begging, and abusing the uncharitable with the grossest and most filthy language—long strings of elderly ladies, proceeding in a chant to the priests of the Lingam, to bargain for bodily issue—Ghat priests presenting their books for the presents and signatures of the European visitors—groups of Hindoos surrounding a Bramin, who gives each of them a certificate of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... disorder on the board; and thus it was a dispute how the game had stood. This is given as a proof of Sigurd's cunning. People did not know that he was a learned clerk until the Saturday before Easter, when he consecrated the holy water with chant; and the longer he stayed there the more he was esteemed. The summer after, Sigurd told Thorgils before they parted, that he might with all confidence address his friends to Sigurd Slembidjakn. Thorgils asked how nearly he was related to him, on which he replies, "I am Sigurd Slembidjakn, ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... into those silent mansions where the dead have their habitation, and they laid him by the side of his departed wife as he had desired. The last hymns sounded so ghostly down in the vault there as the wailing chant ascended up through the earth, even those who wept made haste to depart from thence and get into the light of day once more. And the heavy iron door clanged thunderously ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... daily prayers, and recite the more important of them by heart. Then the Pentateuch beginning with Leviticus was explained to him, and, if necessary, it was translated into French. It was read with a special chant. Rashi, be it said parenthetically, by his commentary gave this Bible instruction a more solid basis. Not until the pupil was a little older did he study the Talmud, which is so well qualified to develop intelligence and clear-headedness. ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... see it in the whirling of the dervishes of Cairo, despite Mahomedans' overawing idea of God. May we not say that the singing in Christian worship recognises the same religious instinct, and the necessity to permit the exercise of it. Many of the psalms, we feel we must chant or sing; reading is too cold for them—the 148th Psalm for example, "Praise ye the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights: praise ye Him, sun and moon," and ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... the Reformers are being signed all over the country. All feeling against the Reform Committee has veered round, and the strongest sympathy is now felt for them. Only the extreme of the Boer and Hollander factions chant the old story of their trying to subvert the Government—conniving with Jameson, and then deserting ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... [seven feet six inches], clad in skins of wild beasts, darker-complexioned than would have been expected in that part of the world; and when some of our men went on shore and showed them bells and pictures, they began to dance round our men with a hoarse noise and unintelligible chant, and to excite our admiration they took arrows a cubit and a half long, and put them down their own throats to the bottom of their stomachs without seeming any the worse for it. Then they drew them up again, and seemed much pleased at having shown their bravery. At length three men ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair
... dews of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems, and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for France has won so holy a significance—holy because it is the master-chant of a religion which all men and all nations should revere—the "religion of our memories." Thus, this "Va t'en, Guerrier," which France now sings, resounds over the grave of the queen, like a salute of honor over the last resting-place ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... watch her wonderingly as she lay curled along the low branch of the mighty oak, clinging with little curved limbs and flying fingers. Possessed by the spirit of her vision, she would chant, low-voiced, tremulous, mischievous: ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... at her with a certain intelligence in his eyes, and then struck a few wild, startling chords. They proved to be the basis of a sea-chant. Denas heard them with a quick movement of her head and an involuntary though slight movement of the hands, as she cried ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the conversation was, for the most part, a chant, sung as a solo by George Kent, and having as its subject, the wonders of Miss Berry. Captain Sears joined occasionally in the chorus, and smiled cordial and complete agreement. ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... must fight. Besides—and she acknowledged it—readily, though in a cold, dead way—besides, Billy was better than most husbands. Better than any other husband she had heard of, she concluded, as she remembered many of his earlier nicenesses and finenesses, and especially his eternal chant: NOTHING IS TOO GOOD FOR US. THE ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... his hands to his head, and exclaimed, "Curses on thy lips, infernal messenger! Chant elsewhere thy rueful ditty! Vanish! if thou wouldst not feel in thy heart fangs red with blood less ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... low chant of men's voices was heard. This went on for a few minutes, and then a loud pean in honor of the god rang through the temple with an accompaniment of flutes, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... myself, I know not; but at that very moment a detachment of soldiers marched past in the street without. They were setting off to join the army of the Rhine, and were singing in joyous chorus the celebrated song of the day, "Le chant du depart." The tramp of their feet—the clank of their weapons—their mellow voices—but, more than all, the associations that thronged to my mind, routed every other thought, and I darted from the spot, and never stopped till ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... buggy-springs, you hear the hum of recitation; yet more fortunate if it is recess time, and you can see the children out at play, the little girls holding to one another's dress-tails as they solemnly circle to the chant: ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... lofty pinnacle. Don't strain your precious eyes and necks in fruitless endeavors to discover him there, since he can make himself invisible at will. But listen, ye men of The Street, with all your ears, (Erie,) and you will hear a solemn chant like unto that of the muezzin from the minaret. 'Tis the voice of PUNCHINELLO wafting sonorously from his tower the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 1, Saturday, April 2, 1870 • Various
... simple, and full of a tranquil melody. Mary evidently felt the peculiar character of this chant, for instead of endeavoring to add to the effect, she softened still more her singularly sweet voice, and let the words drop slowly from her lips, as if the songstress herself were ravished in contemplation and was ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... man arose and commenced to hitch around the stove with stiff joints, like a mechanical figure. The company broke into a wild chant in a minor key, commencing on a high note and descending the whole gamut, with ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... much resembling burlesques of those sublime odes in which the Hebrew prophets foretold the calamities of Babylon and Tyre. [32] He soon acquired great notoriety by these feats. His strange face, his strange chant, his immovable hat and his leather breeches were known all over the country; and he boasts that, as soon as the rumour was heard, "The Man in Leather Breeches is coming," terror seized hypocritical professors, and hireling priests made haste to get out of his way. [33] He was repeatedly imprisoned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Metellus, thenceforth from his loss To leanness doom'd. Attentively I turn'd, List'ning the thunder, that first issued forth; And "We praise thee, O God," methought I heard In accents blended with sweet melody. The strains came o'er mine ear, e'en as the sound Of choral voices, that in solemn chant With organ mingle, and, now high and clear, Come swelling, now ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the gallery took precedence in the music for that day only. There was a want of harmony. One morning when the priest was chanting the first words of the Gloria, the head of a little French bugler appeared at the top of the gallery stairs, and at once started a plaint chant, Gloria, we had never rehearsed or heard before. He sang his solo to the end. He was thirsting for glory, and he took a ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... by dancing, were performed. The comic chorus transforms itself occasionally into such an expression of public joy, as, for instance, when the women who celebrate the Thesmophoriae in the piece that bears that name, in the midst of the most amusing drolleries, begin to chant their melodious hymn, just as in a real festival, in honour of the presiding gods. At these times we meet with such a display of sublime lyric poetry, that the passages may be transplanted into tragedy without any change or alteration whatever. There is, however, this deviation ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... my soul's morning died in tearful gray. The last I saw was thy white shroud yet steeped In that sun-glory, all-transfiguring; The last I heard, a chant break suddenly Into an anthem. Silence took me like sound: I had not listened ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... but pleasing-looking, advanced, and standing straight up before the preacher, repeated to him her experience almost as if it were a lesson she had learnt by heart. There was a cadence, or sort of chant, in her delivery; but with the most perfect quietness of manner. She had been, she said, a great sinner; and she then gave an account of herself at much greater length than the others. In speaking of the difficulties that had met her in her spiritual path, there was a very musical ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... original, as given by Halliwell in his Nursery Rhymes of England, is said to be a Hebrew hymn, at first written in Chaldaic. To the Hebrews of the Middle Ages it was called the Haggadah, and was sung to a rude chant as part of the Passover service. It first appeared in print in 1590, at Prague. Later, in Leipzig, it was published by the German ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... had settled down to the chant of the rails Garrison sent Dave on a tour of the cars. The young man reported all well and returned to the caboose. The train crew was playing poker for small stakes. Garrison had joined them. For a time Dave watched, then read a four-day-old newspaper through to the last advertisement. ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... stone upon another, and restored its pathlessness to the desert; the great cathedrals of old religion would have stood—it is we who have dashed down the carved work with axes and hammers, and bid the mountain-grass bloom upon the pavement, and the sea-winds chant in the galleries. ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... from the history of the Lundus' visit to Kuching in 1855, which was at the time a great event. I find the following passage in my journal: "Every evening, before late dinner, the Lundus go up to Mr. Gomes's room to say their prayers, and sing, or rather chant, their hymns. There is something very affecting in this little service—the Dyak voices singing of Christ's second coming with His holy angels, and rejoicing that He came once before for their salvation; then praying for holy, gentle hearts to receive Him. I always feel on these occasions ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... triumphant chant, Match'd with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt— A thing wherein we feel there is some ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... Messer Lodovico showed them also what he himself held to be his greatest treasures—the precious books adorned by exquisite miniatures from the hand of Fra Antonio da Monza and other living artists, the Sforziada and the Chant de Roland, and the rare Greek and Latin manuscripts which he had been at such infinite pains to collect; the codici brought from Bobbio by Giorgio Merula, and the manuscripts which Erasmo Brasca had discovered when Il Moro sent him to search for missing texts in the convents ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... temperature, only we are in an ungrateful hurry, and the stars find us scarcely a dozen miles from where they left us. I sit up to see myself safe through the narrow passage between Flat Island and Round Island, and fall asleep at last to the monotonous chant of so many "fathoms and no bottom," for we take soundings every five minutes or so in this reefy region. An apology for wind gets up at last, which takes us round the north end of the island, and we creep ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... cold nose against the boy's cheek. The suddenness with which Winn started up caused the dog to spring back into the darkness, from the shelter of which he regarded his new acquaintance distrustfully. Just then Billy Brackett, to cheer the loneliness of his log-hut, began to chant the ballad of "The Baldheaded Man," and Bim, hearing his master's voice, darted off in ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... music began to chant out of the earphones. The insidious fingers of the drug blocked off his senses, one by one. The music diminished, and the words of the hypnotic formula lulled ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... fastened upon Long Hair. The faithful Indian's handsome face betrayed no fear, but it was evident that he had given up all hopes of deliverance. With eagle eye he watched the ceremonies, and, as he saw them approach their fatal termination, began to chant his death-song. Captain Manly understood Indian customs, and telling certain of his men to make sure of the savages nearest Long Hair, he gave the signal, and the bullets of the ten unerring marksmen mowing them down, firing from the other ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... wrapped in the folds of that Springvale flag, who gave his life to make safe and happy the land we love and the home we hope to build, your father, sent us his blessing. When the roar of cannon was changing for him to the chant of seraphim, and the glare of the battle field was becoming 'a sea of glass mingled with fire' that burst in splendor over the jewelled walls and battlements of the New Jerusalem, even in that moment, his last thought was of us two. ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... successively for the Sultan, the Emperor of Russia, and the Prince,—and now uprose from every tongue, and every heart, a hymn for the longevity of Wuczicz and Petronevich. 'The Solemn Song for Many Days' is the title of this sublime chant, which is so old that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of Christianity in the East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be beyond the ravages of time, and the caprices of convention." The town was illuminated in the evening; and a ball was given at the new Konak or palace, built by the exiled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... and seats for the cardinals and bishops. The Pope is too feeble to go through the ceremony of high mass; it was, therefore, performed before him by one of the cardinals. There was nothing in this ceremony that was novel or interesting; it was the same monotonous chant from the choir, the same numberless bowings, and genuflections, and puffings of incense, and change of garments, and fussing about the altar. All that was new was the constant bustle about the Pope, kissing of his toe and his hand, helping him to rise and to sit ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... draughts of pride And read their minds more clearly than his own; All, with one counsel like a chorus, dinned His soul that then was mine, With truths well-proved in action. "Love is chaos, For order's sake Whatever must be, should be," Roared those bulls of Bashan. Then their proud chant argued, "How should this woman know Her little lad again, Who either now is bones Under the fertile field, Or well nigh a grown man? Say they should cross at market Both slaves would pass on, not a start the wiser. ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... A loud chant now broke from all the boatmen, who joined the head bidarka, all backing away from the struggling whale. To the surprise of Rob, no further effort was made to launch a harpoon, and he saw that the presence of these other boats was rather intended ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Jacob, but by the wish of keeping Isaac from committing a detestable act.[82] Rebekah said to Jacob: "This night the storehouses of dew are unlocked; it is the night during which the celestial beings chant the Hallel unto God, the night set apart for the deliverance of thy children from Egypt, on which they, too, will sing the Hallel. Go now and prepare savory meat for thy father, that he may bless thee before his death.[83] ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... while Buckingham recited a weird, prayer-like chant. It was rather long, and I recall only a portion of it, which ran, if my memory serves ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the road wound pleasantly along. In the course of a few hours night fell, and then all nature seemed to come into active life with the hum of insects, the croaking of frogs, and various other indications of an abounding animal life. Presently I was lulled to sleep by the monotonous chant of the bearers—sleep only partially broken when changes of the whole set of bearers had to be made—and awoke the following morning to find myself some fifty miles from the coast, and amidst the gorges of the Ghauts, with vast heights towering upwards, and almost all around, while ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... was leaving Vienna forever, and yet there was no message for him. A longing, that seemed to drown him in the flood of its intensity, rushed over his soul. He would fly to her presence and implore her to forgive the chant of victory that was rejoicing over her country's grave! Oh, the crash of that stunning harmony, how it maddened him, as kneeling, he listened ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... disappeared for a considerable time from the church music is not at all remarkable, for in the first steps toward regulating the liturgy simplification was a prime requisite. Thus in the centuries before Gregory the plain chant gained complete ascendancy in the church and under him it acquired a systematization which had in ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... music, created, no doubt, by the blind organist who taught him in his childhood and nourished by his studies and labors at the monastery under the gifted Hauser, found opportunity for expression in the religious sentiments of the drama, and his knowledge of plain chant is exhibited in the score "the simplicity, grandeur, and dramatic truth of which will always command the admiration of impartial musicians," remarks Gustave Choquet. The enthusiasm of M. Tiersot goes further still, for he says that the music of "Joseph" is more conspicuous for the qualities of dignity ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... favourite chant of the Prince Consort's, both his sons hid their faces and wept. The Duke of Coburg wept incessantly for the comrade of his youth, the friend of his ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... C major chords, and the significant long pauses, by which these chords are so well relieved, the musicians were greatly surprised when I asked them to play the second theme, which is now raised to a joyous chant, NOT as they had been accustomed, in the violently excited nuance of the first allegro theme, but in the milder ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... And, as he said, here you see the fields and hear the birds, and here you can bathe in the Ganges. We did; and then breakfasted; and then set out in palanquins for the nearest railway station. The bearers sang a rhythmic chant as they bore us smoothly along through mustard and pulses, yellow and orange and mauve. The sun blazed hot; the bronzed figures streamed with sweat; the cheerful voices never failed or flagged. I dozed and drowsed, while East and West in my mind wove a web whose ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... a poet to chant the epic of sex. The mystery of it puzzled the minds of the earliest Sumerian thinkers. As a source of deepest excitement, it generated the most revolting ceremonies, bizarre customs, astounding cruelties and incomprehensible stupidities of the race. Men and women, as soon as they have ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... last attack on Warsaw, when the loss of the Russians amounted to upwards of twenty thousand men, the soldiery mounted the breach, repeating in measured chant, one of their popular songs: "Come, let us ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... instead of all it meant to her, there was to be the silent evening meal, the close, lighted chapel, the wearily nasal chant of the sisters, her lonely cell, with its close darkness, the unrefreshing sleep, broken by the bell calling her to another office in the chapel; then, at last, the dawn, and the day that would seem as much a prisoner as herself within the convent walls, ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... came from within, a wordless, fluctuating lament. Suddenly it was pierced by a shrill, high scream, a voice tormented out of all semblance to reason. The sound grew deeper and louder; it swung into a rhythm which formed into words, lines, a primitive chant that filled the plateau, swelled out over the swamp. It continued for an incredible length of time, rising to an unbearable pitch, then it died away in ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... suddenly as it had begun the blanket tossing stopped. Yet, hardly had Jack been allowed to step out than Hal Hastings was unceremoniously dropped athwart the blanket. The tossing began again, to the chant of: ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... The gates of the Palace were shut; the mob, behind a front of Makann People's Watchmen, surged up to them and stopped. The loud-speakers bellowed on, reiterating their four-word chant. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... custom passed from the theatre to the forum, from the forum to the senate. Applauses on the adoption of the Imperial decrees were first introduced under Trajan. (Plin. jun. Panegyr. 75.) One senator read the form of the decree, and all the rest answered by acclamations, accompanied with a kind of chant or rhythm. These were some of the acclamations addressed to Pertinax, and against the memory of Commodus. Hosti patriae honores detrahantur. Parricidae honores detrahantur. Ut salvi simus, Jupiter, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... singeth at her spinning wheel A pleasant chant, ballad, or baracolle; She thinketh of her song, upon the whole, Far more than of her flax; and yet the reel Is full, and artfully her fingers feel, With quick adjustment, provident control, The lines, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... joined heartily in the festivities of Christmastide, and atoned for his father's ravages by costly gifts to the religious houses. And his love for monks broke out in the song which he composed as he listened to their chant at Ely: "Merrily sang the monks in Ely when Cnut King rowed by" across the vast fen-waters that surrounded their Abbey. "Row, boatmen, near the land, and hear we ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... clouds. Beyond the oak trees, in the southern sky, great tongues of flame shot up into the dark heavens out of the blast furnaces of the steel works. Deep-toned, full-throated frogs had begun their monotonous chant. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... think so, for in the shortest of his later ballads, The White Ship—that old true history of the generosity with which a youth, worthless in life, flung himself upon death—he was contented with a single utterance of the refrain, "given out" like the keynote or tune of a chant. ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... bonie Doon, How can ye blume sae fair? How can ye chant, ye little birds, And I sae ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, 'This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say he was a man.' The idioms of his language and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the place of his ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Slave Lake, we think of Chant-la, Chief of the Slavis at Hay River. Bishop Reeves was anxious to convert him to the Christian faith, but had great difficulty in giving Chant-la a proper conception of the Trinity. The old man would not say he believed or understood what was inexplicable to him. Setting out once on a long ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... to reach a definite destination. To Leigh, on the contrary, it was sometimes a comparative unreality, a vista suggesting thoughts of Thebes and Babylon and Rome, a symbol of life's pilgrimage, a path where multitudinous sounds blended into a universal chant of the voyager. It was perhaps this difference that constituted an element of attraction between the two men. The star-gazer admired the practical qualities that made for success in the world below his tower, and the politician paid an involuntary ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... tree near, and silence seemed guardian spirit of the beautiful spot, when a whip-poor-will whirred through the air, and, perching on the snowy brow of the Aphrodite, began his plaintive night-hymn. In childhood Guy Hartwell had been taught by his nurse to regard the melancholy chant as ominous of evil; but as years threw their shadows over his heart, darkening the hopes of his boyhood, the sad notes of the lonely bird became gradually soothing, and now in the prime of life he loved to listen ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... As one looked on her profile, which was what you might call firm, and saw the mild-looking little king, who seemed quite eclipsed by her presence, one understood—or anyway one thought one understood—why an English assemblage, when standing to chant the national anthem these times, always puts such fervor and meaning into the first ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... witness'd Your stolen embraces; and, by Holy Church! I think it right that you be married straight, Ere vice usurps the throne that should be held By virtue only. Children, not far from hence There is a chapel, where attending priests Chant holy masses for a soul's repose. There may you join your hands, and there receive The ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Bishop of Poitiers has been called "the father of Christian hymnology." About the middle of the 4th century he regulated the ecclesiastical song-service, wrote chant music (to Scripture words or his own) and prescribed its place and use in his choirs. He died A.D. 368. In the Church calendars, Jan. 13th (following "Twelfth Night"), is still kept as "St. Hilary's Day" in the Church of England, and Jan. 14th in ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... thirty seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta; one minute and forty-five seconds after nine, and all's well in the halls of Nu Delta," and so on for an hour. Then he was relieved by another freshman, who took up the chant. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... in summer they are heard chiefly at nightfall, so then by their incessant chirp they usher in the evening of the year. Nor can all the vanities that vex the world alter one whit the measure that night has chosen. Every pulse-beat is in exact time with the cricket's chant and the tickings of the deathwatch in the wall. Alternate ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau |
