"Flute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from ancient days, With thoughtless reverence we praise; The rites that taught us to combine The joys of musick and of wine, And bade the feast, and song, and bowl O'erfill the saturated soul: But ne'er the flute or lyre applied To cheer despair, or soften pride; Nor call'd them to the gloomy cells Where want repines and vengeance swells; Where hate sits musing to betray, And murder meditates his prey. To dens of guilt and shades of care, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... themselves with games of various kinds, as well as dancing and singing, until nine o'clock, when they had to turn in, and all lights were extinguished. The officers employed their evenings in reading and writing, with an occasional game of chess, or a tune on the flute ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... to the full front; the parish clerks fell to the extreme rear. Helstone lifted his shovel-hat. In an instant out clashed the eight bells in the tower, loud swelled the sounding bands, flute spoke and clarion answered, deep rolled the drums, and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... look at everything. He looked. A troop of dancers poured into the open space before the Emir's tent. Different Tartar instruments, the "doutare," a long-handled guitar, the "kobize," a kind of violoncello, the "tschibyzga," a long reed flute; wind instruments, tom-toms, tambourines, united with the deep voices of the singers, formed a strange harmony. Added to this were the strains of an aerial orchestra, composed of a dozen kites, which, fastened by strings to ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... is also reported that, during a sacrifice, he was so captivated with the form of a youth who held a censer, that, before the religious rites were well over, he took him aside and abused him; as also a brother of his who had been playing the flute; and soon afterwards broke the legs of both of them, for upbraiding ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... of a cup o' tea or the like o' that. By that time I had my shelves all put t' rights an' was stretched out on my counter, with my head on a roll o' factory-cotton, dawdlin' along with my friendly ol' flute. I tooted a ballad or two—Larboard Watch an' Dublin Bay; an' my fingers bein' limber an' able, then, I played the weird, sad songs o' little Toby Farr, o' Ha-ha Harbor, which is more t' my taste, mark you, than any o' the fashionable music that ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... package, wrapped in a faded and yellow newspaper. Unfolding the wrappings, nothing but a piece of bamboo-like cane, about as large as a flute, ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... Spark think that he can engage, The Heart of a Female, like one on the Stage; His Flute, and his Voice, and his Dancing are rare, And wherever they meet, they prevail with the Fair: But no quality Fop, Charms like Mr. Hop, Adorn'd on the Stage, and in East-India Shop; So that each from Miss Felton, ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... The King held his breath as the blue-penciled passage drew near. The voice quavered and broke; singer and orchestra stopped dead. The house roared. "Go on!" cried encouraging voices from gallery and pit. "Go on! Go on!" And the singer thus emboldened, and accompanied by one small piping flute, a ridiculous starveling of sound after all the blare that had preceded it, sang with a modest and deprecating air a line which fell very flat indeed—a mere nothing tagged from a nursery rhyme—obviously ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... made in the island, all of Corsican wood and iron, and of excellent workmanship. I had every other accoutrement.[38] The peasants and soldiers became quite free and easy with me. One day, they would needs hear me play upon my German flute. I gave them one or two Italian airs, and then some of our beautiful old Scotch tunes—‘Gilderoy,’ ‘The Lass of Patie's Mill,’ ‘Corn-riggs are bonny.’ The pathetic simplicity and pastoral gaiety of the Scotch music will always please ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... strange, solemn music,—the sobbing of the 'cellos, the tenderer melancholy of the flute—the long procession was moving up the Canal Grande—the ducal barge and the gondola of the Patriarch not keeping decorous line, for the roughness of the waters. From the portals of the Palazzo ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... my day they called it elocution. When a girl was too dumb to learn anything else, the teacher got money out of her parents by teaching her to swing her arms around her hear and say, 'Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night.' Now they all want to write poetry, or play the flute, or go on the stage, or some other fool thing ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... pushed in and out of the light, snatching from below the bottles handed up to him, and taking in the clinking silver and fluttering greenbacks. And still they came, that line of grotesques, hobbling, limping, sprawling their way to the golden promise. Never did Pied Piper flute to creatures more bemused. Only once was there pause, when the dispenser of balm held aloft between thumb and finger ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... of the "Aimable" affirm that she was wilfully wrecked, [Footnote: This is said by Joutel and Le Clercq, and by La Salle himself, in his letter to Seignelay, 4 March, 1685, as well as in the account of the wreck drawn up officially.—Proces verbal du Sieur de la Salle sur le naufraqe de la flute l'Aimable a l'embouchure du Fleuve Colbert, MS. He charges it, as do also the others, upon Aigron, the pilot of the vessel, the same who had prevented him from exploring the mouth of the Mississippi on the sixth of January. The charges are supported by explicit ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... of Arc. So the King sent for them and presented them to her, and you may believe she filled the bill of their expectations. When they heard that rich voice of hers they must have thought it was a flute; and when they saw her deep eyes and her face, and the soul that looked out of that face, you could see that the sight of her stirred them like a poem, like lofty eloquence, like martial music. One of them wrote home to ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... specimens of terse, restrained, yet rhythmical, and finely-modulated vigour; specimens of the most copious and varied choral harmony; specimens of the most quiet, simple, and pure-flowing melody; now a full burst of the many-voiced lordly organ, now the softest and mellowest notes of the flute. Not only these, but all the intermediate, and ever so many surrounding varieties of structure are met with in his omniformity of sentence-building. In short, the leaves of a forest are hardly more varied in figure and make than Shakespeare's sentences; so that if these ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... longitudinally. Lucien had never seen the plant before, although he had often heard accounts of it, and he at once recognised it from its botanical description. It was the celebrated "cow parsnip." Its stem was jointed and hollow, and Lucien had heard that the Indians called it in their language "flute stem," as they often used it to make their rude musical instruments from, and also a sort of whistle or "call," by which they were enabled to imitate and decoy several kinds of deer. But there was another use to which the plant was put, of which the naturalist ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... which eve and morn Played measures brave and nimble, Had just struck up with flute and horn And ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... had never heard a song of that kind before. Nor could he readily associate the voice, which again and again he could not distinguish from the flute-like tones of the organ, with the sordidness and grime of material, fleshly existence. He entered softly and took a seat in the shadow of a pillar. The clear, sweet voice of the young girl flowed over him like ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... months of spring, of summer, and of autumn? Sometimes the shepherds, as they sat in the shade watching their sheep, would play sweet tunes on their pipes and flutes, for a shepherd who could not use a flute was thought little of in those hills. It was sweet to hear those pipes and flutes from a little distance, when all was quiet among the hills, excepting the ever restless and ever dancing waters. There were many villages ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... now 't was like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, 365 That makes the ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... are of purple. My bed is strewn with purple and the steps are of silver. The hangings are sewn with silver pomegranates and the steps that are of silver are strewn with saffron and with myrrh. My lovers hang garlands round the pillars of my house. At night time they come with the flute players and the players of the harp. They woo me with apples and on the pavement of my courtyard they write my ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... accepted in Italy, so she must sing it as well as she acted it. But when she had asked the Marquis d'Albazzi if she sang it as well as her mother, he had said, "Mademoiselle, the singers of my day were as exquisite flutes, and the singers of your day give emotions that no flute could give me," and when she had told him that she was going to be so bold as to attempt Norma, he had raised his eyebrows a little and said, "Mademoiselle will sing it according to the fashion of to-day; we cannot compare the present with the past." ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... hand gave a signal, Mr Helder's hands descended on the keys, and at the same instant from between Claire's pursed-up lips there flowed a stream of high, flute-like notes, repeating the air with a bird-like fluency and ease. She had chosen the old-world ballad, "Cherry Ripe," the quaint turns and trills of which lent themselves peculiarly well to this method ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... and then a big bell rings, and the working men and women tramp gaily by, chatting noisily and in excellent spirits. Now comes the milkman's turn. He, like the chimney-sweep, has his own howl, softer, more flute-like in quality than that of the sweep, but still capable of waking any one who is not a domestic servant in hard training. The milkman also cries "woa" to his horse at every house, and accompanies himself on his great tin cans, making a noise most tolerable, and not ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... their very chastity? Would it be best then to marry off the street some Thracian Abrotonus, or some Milesian Bacchis, and seal the bargain by the present of a handful of nuts? But we have known even such turn out intolerable tyrants, Syrian flute-girls and ballet-dancers, as Aristonica, and Oenanthe with her tambourine, and Agathoclea, who have lorded it over kings' diadems.[74] Why Syrian Semiramis was only the servant and concubine of one of king Ninus's slaves, till Ninus the great king seeing and falling in love with her, she ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... Faucet, or tappe, a flute, a whistle, apipe as well to conueigh water, as an instrument of ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... service which is about to take place. Many new musical instruments had been invented since the time of David, and the Jews of the captivity had seen and used these in Babylon and Shushan. We read, in the Book of Daniel, of the cornet, the flute, the sackbut, the dulcimer; all these instruments were familiar to the Jews of Nehemiah's day. But we do not find one of these newly invented instruments in use at this grand service. They cling to the old instruments, used ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... breath of all ages it is, From Teos, and Lesbos, and Ind; Through the years, like a shuttle of gold, Runs the wonder of song on the wind— The wonder of flute and of lyre, A music made mellow and meet For Sappho, the princess of song. Oh, the South ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... garland's grace With arms entwined in soft embrace; The crimson of the rose eclipse With kisses from thy rosy lips. Or if thou wilt, be this my meed And breathe thy soul into the reed; Then shall my songs be shamed and mute Before the music of thy flute. ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... Sire, in his most flute-like tones, "I have brought a friend to see you, my little girl; turn round and give him your pretty hand. It is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be polite, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Governor and Bailli of Vaud, "conseiller" and "chambellan" of the court, he was chatelain of Moudon and Faucigny, military governor of the great fortress of Montbeliard; and finally, as marechal of Savoy, became the general-in-chief of all his forces. When Amedee, resigning his flute playing and his many charities, returned to Italy and abandoned his throne to the Duchess Yolande—worthy sister of Louis the XI of France—Francois de Gruyere was still the principal support of the throne. ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... turned 'em inside out, an' it seems beyond a doubt As if there weren't enough to dust a flute (Cornet: Toot! toot!)— Before you sling your 'ook, at the 'ousetops take a look, For it's underneath the tiles they 'ide ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... what do you say? He'll be giving us into custody again. 'Tillery's our only chance. He daren't touch us there. But I say, he isn't going back to the office. Let's run and get what's in our desks. There's my old flute." ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... stream. The movement is so easy that, with your eyes shut, you do not know you move. The route is so direct, that when you are once shielded from the sun, you are safe for hours. You draw, you read, you write, or you sew, crochet, or knit. You play on your flute or your guitar, without one hint of inconvenience. At a "low bridge" you duck your head lest you lose your hat,—and that reminder teaches you that you are human. You are glad to know this, and you laugh at the ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... the young ladies living here at Brookside Farm—Miss Edith Atwood. She has made copies of the words so you can all help sing it; you'll find the tune easy and perhaps familiar to some of you. Let's stand while we sing 'America'," and as they arose Tony stepped forward with his flute and ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... at the piano. Papa Wolf opened his 'cello case. Uncle Hugo put his silver flute to his lips and played a tentative sweet note. In a moment the strains of Schubert's Serenade, exquisitely rendered, filled the quiet house. Roger relighted his pipe and let it go out. Whenever over her shoulder, Elsa ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... violinist must be able to play nowadays would in those days have seemed too break-neck for the foremost virtuosos. Men themselves were not tuned high enough to take pleasure in such poignant chirping. The flute of the seventeenth century was a fourth lower than that of the eighteenth. In the flute and the piccolo of the nineteenth century we have again risen a third, yes, an entire octave above the eighteenth century! Our great-grandfathers ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... at his concert, playing the flute. 'Tis his dessert after dinner, and he treats himself to it every day. Did he fix ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... the house, in which there was a small arbour, where often in the summer evenings Eugene and Lucille had sat together,—hours never to return! One day she heard from her own chamber, where she sat mourning, the sound of St. Amand's flute swelling gently from that beloved and consecrated bower. She wept as she heard it, and the memories that the music bore softening and endearing his image, she began to reproach herself that she had yielded ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... world, to part for praise and sunder. The brooks be bells; the winds, in caverns dumb, Wake fife and flute and flageolet and voice; The fire-shook earth itself be the great drum; And let the air the region's bass out thunder; The firs be violins; the reeds hautboys; Rivers, seas, icebergs fill the great score up ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... a cry for his flute; and in vain did Mahony protest that weeks had elapsed since he last screwed the instrument together. He got no quarter, even from Mary—but then Mary was one of those inconvenient people to whom it mattered not a jot what a fool you made of yourself, as long as you did what ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... applied to his foot, and the accidents that resulted compelled his attendants to withdraw it. A young man was known to faint whenever he heard the servant sweeping. Hippocrates mentions one Nicanor, who swooned whenever he heard a flute; even Shakespeare has alluded to the effects of the bagpipes. Julia, daughter of Frederick, King of Naples, could not taste I meat without serious accidents. Boyle fainted when he heard the splashing of water; Scaliger turned pale at the sight of water-cresses; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... began his song. It was of that day when the pipings of love's flute startled for the first time the hushed air of the Vrinda forest. The shepherd women did not know who was the player or whence came the music. Sometimes it seemed to come from the heart of the south wind, and sometimes from the straying clouds of the hilltops. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... creatures that are brought up together love one another. Look at our birds reared up in the same nests; they love like us; they are always together like us. Hark? how they call and answer from one tree to another. So when the echoes bring to my ears the air which you play upon your flute at the top of the mountain, I repeat the words at the bottom of the valley. Above all, you are dear to me since the day when you wanted to fight the master of the slave for me. Since that time how often have I said to myself, 'Ah, my brother has a good heart; but for him I should have ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... how happy and childlike we would be together in Baden and what sad, tedious hours I pass here! I take no pleasure in my work, because I cannot break it off now and then for a few words with you, as I am accustomed to. When I go to the piano and sing something from the opera ["The Magic Flute"], I have to stop right away, it affects me so. Basta!—if this very hour I could see my way clear to you, the next hour wouldn't find me here." In another letter written at this time he kisses her "in ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... tone, gesture all answered the bidding of the magic words.[569] Sometimes the emotion was too highly strung; the words would become coarser, the voice harsher, the faultless sentences would grow confused, until the soft tone of a flute blown by an attendant slave would recall his mind to reason and his voice to the accustomed pitch.[570] Men contrasted him with his gentle and stately brother Tiberius, endowed with all the quiet dignity of the Roman orator, and diverging ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... company of Broad Brims for to stop the May Dance about the pole at Sinnington, and others acting by concert did the like at Helmsley, Kirby Moorside and Slingsby, singing and praying they gat them round about the garland pole whilst yet the may Queen was not yet come but when those with flute and drum and dancers came near to crown the Queen the Broad Brims did pray and sing psalms and would not give way while at the finish up there was like for to be a sad end to the day but some of the Sinnington ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... the tallys lodged with Viner for his security in the answering of my Lord's bills, which we did set right very well, and Sir Robert Viner went home with me and did give me the L5000 tallys presently. Here at Mr. Debasty's I saw, in a gold frame, a picture of a Outer playing on his flute which, for a good while, I took for paynting, but at last observed it a piece of tapestry, and is the finest that ever I saw in my life for figures, and good natural colours, and a very fine thing it is indeed. So home and met ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... poets write verses about them. There are some whose branches droop so sorrowfully towards the ground that people plant them on their graves and some whose branches are so tough and flexible that people use them to weave baskets of. There are some out of which you can carve yourself a grand flute, if you know how. And then there are a heap about which there is ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald
... most dissipated, degraded, and corrupt of all the sovereigns in the dynasty. He spent his whole time in vice and debauchery. The only honest accomplishment that he seemed to possess was his skill in playing upon the flute; of this he was very vain. He instituted musical contests, in which the musical performers of Alexandria played for prizes and crowns; and he himself was accustomed to enter the lists with the rest as a competitor. The people of Alexandria, and the world in general, considered such pursuits ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... Edwin, Fate a nobler doom had planned; Song was his favourite and first pursuit. The wild harp rang to his adventurous hand, And languished to his breath the plaintive flute. His infant muse, though artless, was not mute: Of elegance, as yet, he took no care; For this of time and culture is the fruit; And Edwin gained, at last, this fruit so rare: As in some future verse I purpose ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... is musical, if that's what you mean—musical and low, and reminds one of the sounds made by a great master playing his heart out in the lowest notes of the flute; but it is so far from being familiar to me that I'm quite sure I never heard ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... was crossing a lonely sheep-field she saw the god Pan: he was sitting at the foot of a tall rock, making music on a shepherd's flute. He too had horns on his brow, and hairy ears, and goat's feet. He knew Mother Ceres and answered her questions kindly, and he gave her some milk and honey to drink out of a wooden bowl. But he knew nothing ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... day last season, I had received from my kind and most estimable friend, MRS. PERKINS OF POCKLINGTON SQUARE (to whose amiable family I have had the honor of giving lessons in drawing, French, and the German flute), an invitation couched in the usual terms, on satin gilt-edged note-paper, to her evening-party; or, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the material; it gives the latter only just enough form to make it real and perceptible. Very rich and beautiful materials therefore do well to assume this form. You will spoil the beauty you have by superimposing another; as if you make a statue of gold, or flute a jasper column, or bedeck a velvet cloak. The beauty of stuffs appears when they are plain. Even stone gives its specific quality best in great unbroken spaces of wall; the simplicity of the form emphasizes the substance. And again, the effect ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... carnivorous plants of the Antilles—morbid horrors of vegetation, chosen, not for their beauty, but for their strangeness. And his imagination plays harmonies on the sense of taste, like combinations of music, from the flute-like sweetness of anisette, the trumpet-note of kirsch, the eager yet velvety sharpness of curacao, the clarionet. He combines scents, weaving them into odorous melodies, with effects like those of the refrains of certain poems, employing, for example, the method of Baudelaire in L'Irreparable ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... longer. But towards four o'clock of that day a great bank of yellow cloud rolled up, darkening the earth save for a queer saffron light that stained everything, and made our very faces yellow. And then a wind burst out of the east with a high mournful note, as from a great flute afar, filling the air with leaves and branches of trees. But it bore, too, a savor that was new to me,—a salt savor, deep and fresh, that I drew down into my lungs. And I knew that we were near the ocean. Then came the rain, in ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... held by the lips, and plays loose in the smaller end of the stock; while the stock, with the horn hanging on its larger end, is held by the hands in playing. The stock has six or seven ventages on the upper side, and one back-ventage, like the common flute. This of mine was made by a man from the braes of Athole, and is exactly what the shepherds wont ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... when it was dark, there was a dance on the lawn by torchlight, the torches being held by the servants; the music consisted of a flute, cornet, and violin, but the cornet proved of no use, as some urchin had bunged it up with a cork before the dance commenced. No particular dances were called for; the musicians played just what they chose, the dancers danced whatever they knew ...
— Leslie Ross: - or, Fond of a Lark • Charles Bruce
... gray winters evenings, when I looked at the butterfly I would sing to myself the little refrain of the "good, good story;" to accomplish this I had to make my voice very flute-like; and as I sang, the porch of Bories appeared to me more vividly than ever, as it stood, sunny but desolate, under the dazzling light of the September noon. This association was a little like the one that later established itself for me between the sad falsetto ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... deal of such discourse, and sometimes others that signified as little. By and by he asked me to sing them a song, at which I smiled, and said my singing days were over. At last he asked me if he should play upon his flute to me; his sister said she believe it would hurt me, and that my head could not bear it. I bowed, and said, No, it would not hurt me. 'And, pray, madam.' said I, 'do not hinder it; I love the music of the flute very much.' Then his sister said, 'Well, do, then, brother.' ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe
... sacred writers speak of the charming of adders and serpents; and nothing, says he, is more notorious than that the eastern Indians will rid the houses of the most venomous snakes, by charming them with the sound of a flute, which calls them out of their holes. These anecdotes seem fully confirmed by Sir William Jones, in his dissertation on the musical ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... supper"); [Order, 14th September, 1730 (in Forster, i. 372).] food to be cut for him, no knife allowed. Room is to be opened, morning, noon and evening, "on the average not above four minutes each time;" lights, or single tallow-light, to be extinguished at seven P.M. Absolute solitude; no flute allowed, far from it; no books allowed, except the Bible and a Prayer-Book,—or perhaps Noltenius's MANUAL, if he took a hankering for it. There, shut out from the babble of fools, and conversing only with the dumb Veracities, with the huge inarticulate ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... soft sounds of the flute or of the hautboy that I hear, but the sweeter notes of Nature's own music. The mellowness of the song, the varied modulations and gradations, the extent of its compass, the great brilliancy of execution, are unrivalled. There is probably no bird in the world that possesses all the musical qualifications ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... The silvery flute, The melancholy lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo - Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo - ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... the god of pastures, forests and flocks. He was represented as half-man, half-goat, in appearance. He was the inventor of the shepherd's flute. ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... identical with thee). Thou art he that appears in the firmament in the heart encased in the body of every creature.[119] Thou art he who enters into the cranium (brain) of every creature. Thou bearest the wrinkles of age. Thou bearest the bamboo flute. Thou hast also the tabour. Thou bearest the musical instrument called Tali. Thou hast the wooden vessel used for husking grain. Thou art he who covers that illusion which covers Yama.[120] Thou art an astrologer inasmuch as thy understanding is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... their cornets; Limpy-toes brought his flute, Wiggle his fife, Scamper the alto horn, and Nimble-toes his beloved drum. At a signal from Uncle Squeaky, the little band began to play ...
— Grand-Daddy Whiskers, M.D. • Nellie M. Leonard
... were now shaking from their hair and garments the straw and chaff amid which they had slept. Above them, under the open gable of the barn, Daniel Nothafft was lying in the straw. With an absorbed and devout expression he was seeking to elicit a melody from a flute which one of ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... many a sacred shrine Young bulls' thigh-bones burn and shine As the god that is fire overtakes them, and fast The smoke of Arabia to heavenward is cast, Scattering wide its balm: and shrill Now with nimble notes that thrill The flute strikes up for the song, and the harp of gold Strikes up to the song sweet answer: and all behold, All, aswarm as bees, give ear, Who by birth hold ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in a foreign land, Soft music met mine ear— O Richard, O mon roi, struck up In flute-notes wild and clear: And scarce had died that plaintive strain, When lo! how could it be? Thy thunder pealed above the tide, 'Britannia rules the sea!' I knew not whence the magic came, But sought the distant shore, And there a stately pageant lay Unseen, undreamt ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... in obedience; or in those Small, sorrowful colloquies Of bronze and russet and gold, Colour with colour, dying things with dead, That break along this visual orchestra: As in that other one, the audible, Horn answers horn, hautboy and violin Talk, and the 'cello calls the clarionet And flute, and the poor heart is glad. There is no hope in ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... burden as an eagle is nobler than a domestic fowl. There was a musician among the camel-drivers, chosen especially—so said Ben Hadj—because he knew and could sing a hundred famous songs of love and war. Also he was master of the Arab flute, and the raeita, "Muezzin of Satan," strange instrument of the wicked voice that can cry down ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... your slow sweet name, As one breathes low notes on a flute, Have vext your peace with word of blame, The phrase is dead — the lips are mute. Yet when I turn towards the wall, In stormy nights, in times of rain, I often wish you could recall Your tender ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... fourteen, and my courage failed me. I contented myself with hovering as near her as politeness would permit; near enough to hear her voice, which in conversation was low, yet thrilling, like the deeper middle tones of a flute. I watched the men gather round her talking and laughing in an easy manner, and wondered how it was possible for them to do it. But destiny, my special destiny, was at work. I was standing near, talking with affected gaiety to several young ladies, who, however, must have remarked my preoccupation; ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... and ebb of the tides of a sea of melody. The robins were undoubtedly the most gifted of all the vocalists, and their old familiar songs heard along the seashore seemed to have an added sweetness; their notes being as strong and pure as those of a silver flute, making the seaside echoes ring. We have heard many robins sing, but never have been so impressed with the excellent quality of their songs as on that early morning, when they flung out their medley of notes upon the balmy air. No one could doubt ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... had a good ear for tunes. As Lin put it, Billy caught more of the tunes than any of the others. Billy became a nightly visitor. Billy's flute and the melodeon did not harmonize as the melodeon had only three notes left in it. Lin just waited when a note was missing until the next measure and then "ketched up" as ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... pleasures of the Mahometans consist in playing upon the flute and lying with Houris, be mine to read eternal new romances of Marivaux ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Rothwell himself seemed bent on promoting the intimacy, and his son laid himself out to please. There was, moreover, rankling in Mary's heart the impression that Mark was being harshly judged by her mother; this helped to draw her closer to him. He was, besides, an excellent performer on the flute, and would sometimes come over on lesson mornings and accompany her, much to ...
— Nearly Lost but Dearly Won • Theodore P. Wilson
... a familiar acquaintance of Goldsmith, who in his Chinese letters speaks of him kindly as 'the little sculptor.' He was fond of music, and Goldsmith would play the flute to him. As Sir John Hawkins records, the sculptor once tricked the poet by pretending to set down the notes on paper as Goldsmith played them. Goldsmith looked over the paper afterwards with seeming great attention, said it was quite correct, and that if he ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... at Lucia. "That's you, Lucy. You've been talking to him about that flute. I suppose you told him you would love ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... on: at lowest, if, as is too common, it rains, our Federate Volunteers will file through the inner gateways, Royalty standing dry. Nay there, should some stop occur, the beautifullest fingers in France may take you softly by the lapelle, and, in mild flute-voice, ask: "Monsieur, of what Province are you?" Happy he who can reply, chivalrously lowering his sword's point, "Madame, from the Province your ancestors reigned over." He that happy 'Provincial Advocate,' now Provincial ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... slowly, watching him with interest. She wondered what he would find it necessary to do. She heard him begin a low, flute-like whistling, and then saw the antlered head turn towards him. The woodland creature moved, but it was in his direction. It had without doubt answered his call before and knew its meaning to be friendly. It went towards him, stretching out a tender sniffing nose, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... shook the literary world awake with its perfect interpretation of The Salvation Army leader. It is a poem to be chanted at first with "Bass drums beaten loudly" and then "with banjos"; then softly with "sweet flute music," and finally, as the great General comes face to face with Christ, with a "Grand chorus of all instruments; tambourines to the foreground." Running through this poem is the refrain of "Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?" and the last lines ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... in her two hands and scrambled through the bushes until she had found its nest and put it safely in. The branches tore her dress that had been ragged before, but the mother thrush sang like a flute to ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... of a certain sort of admiration. Who could drive a knife in a man's back with a braver air of deviltry than Benvenuto Cellini? And yet he could turn himself from the deed and devote himself to the producing of a Perseus, or to playing the flute well enough to attract the attention of a Pope. And his own countrymen, the Borgias, had as pretty a talent for assassination as ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... among our fields and meadows is frequently heard giving his high, pleasing, flute-like whistle with its variations; his beautiful yellow breast with its black crescent is not so frequently seen in life, for they are usually quite shy birds. They artfully conceal their nests on the ground among the tall grass of meadows, arching them over with dead grass. During May ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... the flute! Now it's mute! Bird's delight, Day and night, Nightingale, In the dale, Lark in sky,— Merrily, Merrily merrily, to ...
— Poems of William Blake • William Blake
... his guests in their seats, Faull stepped up to the curtain and flung it aside. A replica, or nearly so, of the Drury Lane presentation of the temple scene in The Magic Flute was then exposed to view: the gloomy, massive architecture of the interior, the glowing sky above it in the background, and, silhouetted against the latter, the gigantic seated statue of the Pharaoh. A fantastically carved wooden couch lay before the ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... in the teepee they sang, and they danced to the mighty Unktehee, While the loud-braying Chan-che-ga rang and the shrill-piping flute and the rattle, Till Anpetuwee [70] rose in the east— from the couch of the blushing Han-nan-na, And thus at the dance and the feast sang the sons ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... its terror, in robbing it of its perpetuity. It is strange that believing readers should have thought that our Lord meant to say that the little girl was not really dead, but only in a swoon. The scornful laughter of the flute-players and hired mourners understood Him better. They knew that it was real death, as men count death, and, as has often been the case, the laughter of His foes has served to establish the truth. That was not worthy to be called death from ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the shade of a large warehouse; the line of slates making a crescent of the full moon, and amid the reverberating yards and brickways Kate's voice sounded as penetrating and direct as a flute. The exquisite accuracy of her ear enabled her to give each note its just value. Dick was astonished, and he said ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... the Concert Rouge. Those were the happy days when there were no frills; when the price of admission was charged with what you drank; when Saint-Saens accompanied his "Samson and Delilah" with an imaginary flute obligato on a walking-stick; when Massenet, with his librettist, Henri Cain, dozed quietly through the meditation of "Thais"; when the students and their girls forgot frivolity ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... little chest of drawers, there were on one wall telescopes, swords, and naval caps; on another a compact library. Above my head, stretching diagonally across the bed, was an object which caused me no little surprise and much speculation. In appearance it resembled a giant flute with finger holes that no man of mortal mould could have covered. Not till next morning did I discover that this tube was part of a system of air-distributing pipes, supplied by fanners worked by steam, whereby fresh air is driven to every part ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... Now, the sun, whose ardour was already melting into the tenderness of evening, shone upon a broad valley, where the grass stood high in rich meadows separated from other meadows and green cornfields by hedges, from the midst of which rose many a tall tree. The blackbird's low, flute-like note sounded above the shrilling of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... through the gin breast, much as if one were to put the teeth of one comb into the teeth of another comb. This process takes the lint cotton off the seed, and by the use of brushes the cotton goes into the lint flute, into the condenser, and into the box, where it is revolved and made into a bale. While the lint is going through this process, the seeds, being heavier and smaller, draw to the bottom of the gins, fall into an auger which is operated by a belt, and then are dropped into ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... suppose they also handed on to me a hare-brain humour, which it has been my chief delight to indulge. I received a good education. I can play the violin nearly well enough to earn money in the orchestra of a penny gaff, but not quite. The same remark applies to the flute and the French horn. I learned enough of whist to lose about a hundred a year at that scientific game. My acquaintance with French was sufficient to enable me to squander money in Paris with almost the same facility as in London. In short, I am a person full of manly accomplishments. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a grudge against phrenologists myself. I had a relative who went to one when he was a young man, and was told that he had a wonderful baritone voice that he ought to cultivate. Up to that time he had only played the flute, but afterwards he sang every evening through ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... much as he was loved by her, and in virtue of the permission formally given by the Pope, he went every week to pass an hour or two with her in the parlour. He regularly took there his singing and flute lessons; these were two amiable talents in which ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... of confused personal identity also in a brief poem printed among the "Translations" in the Appendix to Emerson's Poems. These are the last two lines of "The Flute, from Hilali":— ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... were playing a peculiar little wooden flute of their own invention, that emitted wailing sounds not without a certain sweetness. In a corner a half dozen warriors hurt in battle were bathing their wounds with a soothing lotion made from the ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... East make it the object of their art more often than any other species. [PLATE XXVIII., Fig. 2.] After extracting the fangs or burning out the poison-bag with a red-hot iron, the charmer trains the animal by the shrill sounds of a small flute, and it is ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... fifty years—one of flesh and blood, like ourselves. His majesty must be shaped like a dwarf—that's quite necessary; but when he is lifted to the throne, the creatures heap upon him all sorts of wondrous gifts. They teach him to play the fiddle, flute, and clarinet like an angel. They put him up to the art of manufacturing wonderful clocks—of eclipsing the sun and moon, and all that kind of thing. They once had a dwarf king, a shoemaker, and that fellow never had his equal. Whenever he took it into his head, he would sit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... blossom blown Against the snow-white bosom of the Spring, The chaste confusion of her lawny breast, Sang on, prophetic of serener days, As confident as June's completer hours. And I stood listening like a hind, who hears A wood nymph breathing in a forest flute Among the beech-boles of myth-haunted ways: And when it ceased, the memory of the air Blew like a syrinx in my brain: I made A lyric of the notes that men ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... being an orphan and hardier; but this I did not like, but, running out, did not come back for long enough. There is no doubt that the music was to blame for firing the men's blood, and the result most disgraceful fighting with no object in view. There was three fiddlers and two at the flute, most of them blind, but not the less dangerous on that account; and they kept the town in a ferment, even playing the countryfolk home to the farms, followed by bands of townsfolk. They were a quarrelsome set, the ploughmen ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... sir," said Bassett, more and more perplexed. "It's not in my book, but I remember once reading, when I was at school, that spiders are sometimes attracted by the sound of a flute." ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs |
