"Litany" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hymn is a worthy companion of Perronet's "Coronation"—if, indeed, it was not its original prompter—as King Robert's great litany was the mother song of Watts' "Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove;" and the countless other sacred lyrics beginning with similar words. As the translation stands in the Church of England, there are six stanzas now sung, though ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Moorish bath. Meantime, the M'zabite or negro, as he dislocates your legs, cracks your spinal column or dances over you on his knees, drones forth a kind of native psalmody, which, melting into the steamy atmosphere of the place, seems to be the litany of happiness and of the pure in heart. Clean in body and soul as you never were before, skinned, depilated, dissected, you emerge for a new life of ideal perfection, feeling as if you were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... yesterday," said the senora, obviously pleased. "The muchacha—for she was but that—had just returned from the convent at San Jose, where she had been for four years. Ah! what would you? The fonda was no place for the child, who should know only the litany of the Virgin—and they had kept her there. And now—that she was home again—she cared only for the horse. From morning to night! Caballeros might come and go! There might be a festival—all the same to her, it made nothing if she had the horse to ride! Even now she was with one in the fields. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... are celebrated one by one, as in a litany; for, said one of those poets, an Englishman who ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... surprised to find a tone of levity in them, but they were certainly not intended to throw any discredit on our Church. In "The Rump, or an exact collection of the choicest poems and songs relating to the late times from 1639" we have "A Litany for the New Year," of which the following will serve as ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... attending the service of that Church when anywhere from home, and constantly when at Peterhead. He spoke with enthusiasm of the beauty, simplicity, and energy of the English Liturgy, especially of the Litany, which he declared to be the finest piece of uninspired composition in any language." Life of Dr. Beattie, by Sir W. Forbes, Bart., vol. iii. p. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... and all the Saints; then wait—nothing comes. Put in a few prayers about the Lord's Transfiguration; then wait. Nothing again. No, only the small dogs whine about your wallet and the maids bustle behind the hedges. Add a litany—perhaps they give you two farthings or a mouldy bit of bread. Curse you! I wish you were dirty, half-blind, and had to ask even beggars for help! Why, after all that praying the whisky to wash my throat with costs me more than they give!' ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... priest in his dalmatic of cloth of gold passed from the sacristy and genuflected at the altar, he seemed to be listening in a very passion of attention. But as the incense began to fill the air, and the Litany of Loreto smote on my ear to some sorrowful, undulating Gregorian, I lost thought of the wretched man beside me; I forgot the miserable mistake that he had perpetuated, and I was once more back in the past—with Delphine—kneeling ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... balcony of his palace at midnight, surveying the havoc he has unintentionally wrought, the smoke of the burning cottage is wafted toward him and takes the form of four gray old women. One of them, Dame Care, slips into the rich man's palace by way of the keyhole and croons in his ear her dismal litany of care. Faust replies in a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... days more they returned, headed by a Medicine-man, whom the English called the 'mace-bearer.' With the slow and stately measure of a mystic dance this great high priest of heathen rites advanced chanting a sort of litany. Both litany and dance were gradually taken up by tens, by hundreds, and finally by all the thousands of the devotees, who addressed Drake with shouts of Hyoh! and invested him with a headdress of ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... numbing, freezing, paralysing the life within us. I tried to answer, but turned my head away. My mother sank once more upon her knees, weeping, praying, despairing, wailing, while the storm outside continued to moan and sob its passionate litany. ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shall not hear the snowbirds Their morning litany, For when the dawn comes over dale I must put out ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... direction, and would not return home until the next day. Finding the poor fellow, though almost too far gone to articulate, constantly murmuring words of prayer, I took his prayer-book and read aloud the "Recommendation of a soul departing," also some of the preceding prayers of the "Litany for the dying." He faintly responded, and seemed to die comforted and satisfied. Afterwards I never hesitated to use the same service ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... know also why the Church hath appointed Ember-weeks; and to know the reason why the Commandments, and the Epistles and Gospels, were to be read at the Altar or Communion Table: why the Priest was to pray the Litany kneeling; and why to pray some Collects standing: and he gave them many other observations, fit for his plain congregation, but not fit for me now to mention; for I must set limits to my pen, and not make that a treatise, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... gifted with taste, that he would have probably failed to appreciate the sublimities of Brady and Tate. Nor could Peter have known that the 'liturgy of the heart' was in the Covenanter's cottage, and that the 'litany' of the spirit breathed from his evening devotions. But it is all known to the Rev. Mr. Cumming. He knows, too, that there were sufferings and privations endured by the persecuted Presbyterians of those days, ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... of the crowd As Hadrian divulged Antinous Would I denote Thy sanctity, not thus Should Love's deep litany be cried aloud. There is a mountain set apart for us Where I have hid Thy soul as in a cloud, And there I dedicate as I have vowed My secret voice,—all else ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... multitude of the common people coming in from all parts; and when divine service had been performed, and the Holy Spirit invoked, the said bishop, putting off his shoes, went in procession with the clergy of the church to the place of foundation singing the litany; then the litany being ended and a sermon first made to the people, the bishop laid the first stone for our Lord the Pope Honorius, and the second for the Lord Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, at that time with our Lord the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... quick; his canonization of men; calling upon angels or saints departed, worshipping of imagery, relics, and crosses; dedicating of kirks, altars, days; vows to creatures; his purgatory, prayers for the dead; praying or speaking in a strange language, with his processions, and blasphemous litany, and multitude of advocates or mediators; his manifold orders, auricular confession; his desperate and uncertain repentance; his general and doubtsome faith; his satisfactions of men for their sins; his justification by works, opus operatum, works of supererogation, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... silence while the double mysteries of the hidden Holy of Holies were celebrated. Not more than a dozen devotees at most were present. These gathered modestly in the rear of the nave and put us to shame with their reverent gravity. Strange chants were chanted; it was a weird music, like a litany of bumblebees. Dense clouds of incense issued from gilded recesses that ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... in the Litany and Holy Communion. The afternoon was spent in visiting the sick and giving medicine. Several women came to the house for instruction, and seemed to take great interest in Mr. Chambers, teaching; but it was not until Mr. Chambers ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... sceptres, any more than of the repetition of flowers and stars. The whole imaginative effort of Walt Whitman was really an effort to absorb and animate these multitudinous modern repetitions; and Walt Whitman would be quite capable of including in his lyric litany of optimism a list of the nine hundred and ninety-nine identical bathrooms. I do not sneer at the generous effort of the giant; though I think, when all is said, that it is a criticism of modern machinery that the effort should be gigantic as well ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... 'maimed rights' raised the indignation of the priest Martin, and he indignantly refused to proceed with the ceremony until lights and stole were brought. During the time in which Joan of Arc was receiving the Sacrament, those persons who had been admitted within the castle recited the litany for the departing soul, and never had the mournful invocation for the dying, the supplication of the solemn chant, 'Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison!' been raised from a more tragic place, or on a more heart-stirring occasion. Outside, in the street, ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... as they were shrill enough to pierce God's ear and touch His heart, than to the formal petitions of well-ordered worship? A single ejaculation flung heavenward in a moment of despair or agony is more precious in God's sight than a whole litany of half-hearted devotions. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... beginning of the Chants and Litany, had failed in her part and had, with such a pitiable moan and beseeching glance at her, been hastily withdrawn from the assembly and ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... thoughts of love. For such trifling the rest of the week afforded no leisure; but in church—well, there was really nothing else to do! True, naughts-and-crosses might be indulged in on fly-leaves of prayer-books while the Litany dragged its slow length along; but what balm or what solace could be found for the sermon? Naturally the eye, wandering here and there among the serried ranks, made bold, untrammelled choice among our ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... Cavaliere whispered from under her beaded veil, "Don't speak of it, but I am tired to death of reformers," it was only the artist's impatience of the ploughman; it was Rupert and his men not only sneering at Praise God Bare-bones, and singing their mock prayer in the Lenten litany, ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... that looked, the lips that spake Here, from the shadows of impending death, Those words of solemn breath, What voice may fitly break The silence, doubly hallowed, left by him? We can but bow the head, with eyes grown dim, And, as a Nation's litany, repeat The phrase his martyrdom hath made complete, Noble as then, but now more sadly sweet: "Let us, the Living, rather dedicate Ourselves to the unfinished work, which they Thus far advanced so nobly on its way, And saved the periled State! Let us, upon this field where they, ...
— The Poets' Lincoln - Tributes in Verse to the Martyred President • Various
... most eloquent prayers—for you know necessity was the mother of eloquence. With the whites of his eyes turned up towards heaven, down on his marrow-bones, his arms reared high, his fingers stretched wide, and his head bare, the poor wretch without ceasing was roaring out, by way of litany, at every repetition of his supplications, My hatchet, Lord Jupiter, my hatchet! my hatchet! only my hatchet, O Jupiter, or money to buy another, and nothing else! alas, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... clothed in some sort of European apparel; those who were not, drew their krosses close round them, so as to appear more covered. A hymn in the Caffre language was first sung, and then prayers, after which the Litany and responses; the Commandments were repeated in the same language. Mr S then read a chapter in the Bible, and explained it to the assembly. Profound silence and quiet attention generally prevailed, although in some few instances there was mockery from ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... an invisible power to communicate to you, a Litany sanctioned by me, and to be adopted by the professors of the patriotic religion of Ireland; a Litany which breathes the spirit of that freedom which I professed when on earth, and has been here on eternal ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... glancing back; and the others aboard are waving hands landward; and on a thwart beside the mast stands the little lad, and at a sign from Serapion he lifts up his clear sweet voice, singing joyfully the Kyrie eleison of the Litany. The eleven join in the glad song, and it is caught up by the voices of those on shore, as though it were by an organ; and as he sings the lad Ambrose watches the white ruffled wake-water of the ship, how it streams between the unbroken green sea on either hand, and it seems ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... world for thousands of years, that it has been the means of awakening the human intellect and heart, of reforming society, and purifying life. Even in the Old Testament they find the noblest truth and the tenderest piety. The Bible has been the litany, prayer-book, inspirer, comforter of nations and centuries. They cannot and would not emancipate themselves from the traditions in which they were born, nor cut off history behind them. The Christian Church is their mother; she has taught them out of this book to know God, and out ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... 28 Mr. William Annan preached in St. Giles', defending the Litany, and when the news was spread about what the subject of his sermon was to be there arose, says the chronicler, in the town and among the ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang
... natural birth;—for I do not speak of those peculiar religious experiences which form the point of transition in many lives between the consciousness of a general relation to the Divine nature and a special personal relation. The litany should count a prayer for them in the list of its supplications; masses should be said for them as for souls in purgatory; all good Christians should remember them as they remember those in peril through travel or sickness or ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... of fellowship may come to us in another way. The special service of the nave is the Litany. This solemn service has been said from very early times from the Litany-desk, placed {23} at the head of the nave, before the entrance to the chancel. "Its position there refers to a Litany, and a place for ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... proclamation was issued (27th Dec., 1558) forbidding preaching or the use of other public prayers, rites, or ceremonies save those approved by law until Parliament should have determined otherwise, except in regard to the recitation in English, of the Litany, the Commandments, the Creed, together with the Epistles and Gospels.[2] Still the anti-Catholic party boasted that the new ruler was on their side. The queen's own inclinations were soon made clear by her prohibition addressed to Bishop Oglethorp ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... the last lap of the journey to Quebec. There are a score or so of little hamlets, the names of which—St. Alexandre, St. Andre, St. Pascal, St. Pacome, St. Valier and so on—sound like a reading from the Litany of the Saints. And, passing the last of them, we saw across the narrowed St. Lawrence a trail of lace against the darkness of the Laurentine hills, a mass of filigree that moved and writhed, so that we understood ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... to my mind," said he, "a hymn in honour of the Virgin composed in rhyme by Conrad of Haimburg, a German monk in the fourteenth century. Imagine," he continued, as he turned over the pages, "a litany of gems, each verse symbolizing one ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... Gompers of the American Federation of Labor, who had every facility of meeting European Socialists and unionists on a recent tour, made some observations which are by no means without a certain foundation.[95] He says that he talked to these people about Socialism and, though they all knew "the litany, service, and invocation" and the Socialist text for the coming revolution, they preserved this knowledge for their speech making, while in conversation it all faded away into the misty realms of the imagination. "Positively," writes Mr. Gompers, "I never ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... peasants were thrashing and there was a smell of corn and straw. Behind the wattled hedges the fruit-trees were reddening and all around the trees were red or golden. In the church-tower the bells were ringing, the children were carrying ikons to the school and singing the Litany of the Virgin. And how clear the air was, and how high the ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... as it may," he said evenly, "the throne of Yaque was still empty. Many stood near to the crown, but there seemed no reason for choosing one more than another. One party wished to name the head of the House of the Litany, in Med, the King's city, who was the chief administrator of justice. Another, more democratic than these, wished to elevate to the throne a man from whose family we had won knowledge of both perpetual motion and the ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... by the side of the strange grave and bowed his head in silence for a moment. Then he began to repeat words and phrases of prayers he had known as a peasant boy in a forest over seas, and his voice rose to a kind of chant. Such petitions of the Litany of the Saints as he could recall he uttered, his voice rising mournfully among ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... tail—something that looked like a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the response of some satanic litany. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... idly, thinking of my father, and, as I before said, vexed and sorry and ashamed by turns. Often now I pause before I enter this sacred edifice, and think of that hour of tribulation. I could hear the fine, full voice of the Rev. Dr. Duche as he intoned the Litany. He lies now where I stood, and under the arms on his tomb is no record of the political foolishness and instability of a life otherwise free from blame. As I stood, Mrs. Ferguson came out, she who in days to come helped to get the unlucky ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... assassination, when the minutes of his earthly career were numbered, being asked what death, in his judgment, might be pronounced the most eligible, replied "That which should be most sudden." On the other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, when breathing forth supplications, as if in some representative character, for the whole human race prostrate before God, places such a death in the very van of horrors: "From lightning and tempest; from plague, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Mito,[17] who, proud in lineage, learned and scholarly, and surrounded by a host of educated men, is yet unsatisfied with what the wise of his own country could give him, and gathers around him the relics unearthed from the old persecutions. From a picture of the Virgin, a fragment of a litany, or it may be a part of a breviary, he tries to make out ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... money from the savages for the trinkets and the chainies. Perhaps that made her severe against Parnell. And she did not like him to play with Eileen because Eileen was a protestant and when she was young she knew children that used to play with protestants and the protestants used to make fun of the litany of the Blessed Virgin. TOWER OF IVORY, they used to say, HOUSE OF GOLD! How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of gold? Who was right then? And he remembered the evening in the infirmary in Clongowes, the dark waters, the light at the pierhead and the moan of sorrow from the people when ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... you!" Glenn repeated it like a litany. "Nancy! Does it make you as happy because I love you as it makes ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... As a preparation for the legislature, St. Patrick's Cathedral and Christ Church were purified by paint; the niches of the Saints were for the second time emptied of their images; texts of Scripture were blazoned upon the walls, and the Litany was chanted in English. After these preparatory demonstrations, the Deputy opened the new Parliament, which sat for one short but busy month. The Acts of Mary's Parliament, re-establishing ecclesiastical relations with Rome, were the first thing repealed; then so much of the Act 33, Henry ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... not find it," she said, nodding with an air of childish triumph. "Shall I tell you why? I have hidden it!" Here she fell back on her old litany. "He would kill me if he knew . . . I hid it—oh, years ago! But come, and I will show you; and you shall take a great deal—yes, as much as you can carry—if only you will go away, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the questions as to "crime or impediment" being duly asked and answered, the Litany and Suffrages began, and every note and word of the solemn intonation, ringing through the silence of the great Cathedral, found an echo which rang true in three souls at least among ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... with astonishment to this strange recital, asked her father and aunt how they had been able to learn by heart this bit of prose, and why they recited it as if it were a litany. ...
— Putois - 1907 • Anatole France
... come to great misery. Help us, oh God of our salvation, for the glory of thy name. Oh, be merciful unto our sins for thy name's sake. Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God?' Ye shall say this Psalm," repeated the abbot, "every Friday, after the litany, prostrate, when ye lie upon the high altar, and undoubtedly God will cease this extreme scourge." And so,' continues Salford, significantly, 'the convent did say this aforesaid Psalm until there were certain that did murmur at the saying of it, and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Mrs. Belding's ample approach broke in upon her trance and Farnham's litany. He rose, not without some confusion, to greet her, and Alice, with bright and even playful eyes, said, "Mamma, what do you think this errant young cavalier has come to ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... of Dona Barbara di Braganza, foreseeing the surprise and difficulties that the musicians and singers would meet with in the innovations in his score, he wrote on the margin, 'This is to give notice that there are no mistakes in the score.' His Litany became so celebrated that it was forbidden to copy it, under pain of excommunication; but I think to-day the persons who remember it would be the excommunicated. Believe me, Gabriel, these archives are a pantheon of ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... when thirty female tongues joined in the chorus of their leader's assault. They boldly charged him, singly and in pairs, with every vice and fault that injured matrimony habitually denounces; and as each item of this abusive litany was screamed in his ears, the chorus responded with a deep "amen!" They boasted of their infidelities, lauded their lovers, and producing their children, with laughs of derision, bade him note ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... over public opinion, with this irresistible preponderance, when he reached the Committee of Public Safety, he was already the most important being in France." After three years, a chorus of a thousand voices,[31122] which he formed and directs, repeats again and again in unison his litany, his personal creed, a hymn of three stanzas composed by him in his own honor, and which he daily recites to himself in a low tone of voice, and often ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to wish you good luck in the new house. Hide my manuscripts, that they may not appear printed before the time. If the Prelude is printed, that is Pleyel's trick. But I do not care. Mischievous Germans, rascally Jews...! Finish the litany, for you know them as well ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... encourage him in his old-fashioned notions. And here, Nell, just listen to this! Don't you think, he says the Episcopal Prayer Book ought to be revised for the women worshipers and omit that part of the litany where it says, 'From pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy, good Lord, deliver us.' What fol-de-rol!" And being out of breath she stopped talking and they walked away down ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... Wednesday is omitted, only the two prayers at the end being retained; these are read after the Litany. The Athanasian Creed ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... pressing her cheek against the hand she held, began a Litany, very low. Suddenly the ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... adoration, devotion, aspiration, homage, service, humiliation; kneeling, genuflection, prostration. prayer, invocation, supplication, rogation, intercession, orison, holy breathing; petition &c (request) 765; collect, litany, Lord's prayer, paternoster [Lat.]; beadroll^; latria^, dulia^, hyperdulia^, vigils; revival; cult; anxious meeting, camp meeting; ebenezer, virginal. thanksgiving; giving thanks, returning thanks; grace, praise, glorification, benediction, doxology, hosanna; hallelujah, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... however, these defects the Scottish capital continued to be the home of all delights to the poet-priest. When his King was absent at Stirling, Dunbar in the pity of his heart sang an (exceedingly profane) litany for the exile that he might be brought back, prefacing it by the ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... fact in advance, that Miss P*** May not strive to embezzle the laurels from me. That her Reverend friend may attend to his Litany, And leave me my fame, if perchance I shall get any. I deemed it best, to set at rest, This question before it was started, lest Some terrible girl from the far countree, Without proper regard to veracitee, Should ...
— Nothing to Say - A Slight Slap at Mobocratic Snobbery, Which Has 'Nothing - to Do' with 'Nothing to Wear' • QK Philander Doesticks
... naturally, to One who knows what they desire, even before they ask. No one in that church prayed more earnestly to be delivered from 'all blindness of heart, from pride, vain-glory and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness,' than he did. And as he proceeded with the litany, his mind grew calmer, and he gradually received strength to overcome the great inward struggle that he was ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... boiling water, the priest first performed mass and then descended to the place of trial, bearing a cross and a book of the gospels. After he had chanted a litany, he exorcized and blessed the water, which was to be boiled. He then stripped the accused of his clothes and arrayed him in ecclesiastical vestment of the kind worn by an exorcist or a deacon; sprinkled some of the water over him, ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... the lurid litany of the army mule skinner to his gentle charges and embellished it with excerpts from the remarks of a Chicago taxi chauffeur while he changed tires on the road with the temperature ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... forehead.) He rarely looked down the church, as he fancied to do so would be to meet the collective eye of the congregation regarding him. So that in the morning he was not able to see that the Frobishers' pew was empty until the litany. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... witnessed so much spiritual travail. Somehow its dusty rafters seemed saturated with a human quality, as if they had imprisoned all the perverse longings and bitter griefs of the company that once sat in the dim lamplight and chanted their litany of hate. He never really had been a part of this company ... he never really had been a part of any company. At the office of Ford, Wetherbee & Co., at Fairview, at Storch's gatherings, he had mingled with his fellow-men amiably or tolerantly or contemptuously, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... who had evidently been in some choir, paced arm in arm, singing the responses to the Litany in melodramatic fashion, except when their voices were choked with loud laughter at their ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... purpose. The Government indicted him for impious, profane, blasphemous intent, but not for seditious intent. They hoped to wear him out by proceeding day by day. December 18, 1817, they hid themselves under the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Commandments; December 19, under the Litany; December 20, under the Athanasian Creed, an odd place for shelter when they could not find it in the previous places. Hone defended himself for six, seven, and eight hours on the several days: and the jury acquitted ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... new doctrines by all the means in his power. His reputation for holiness Was so great in the Society of Jesus, that St. Francis Xavier invoked him when in danger from a storm at sea, and inserted his name in the Litany of the Saints while he was yet living. At Mainz Father Faber gave the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and obtained ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... elevate the Host at Mass; she genuflected and fell prone in mute adoration, crying all the time with tears streaming down her face. She was at this time like to dissolve in tears! Without fail the mysteries ended with the Pater Noster, the Ave, a certain Litany which the nuns had taught her, and some gasping words of urgency to the Virgin and Saint Isidore. Love was scourging her slender body at this time truly, and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Sunday morning and every morning throughout the week, because of the mediaeval system of octaves. He calls this knocking the same nail on the head, and, as is common enough, he is led to confuse a metaphor with an argument. Again, he is very anxious to have the Litany twice a week, that the boys may be trained, as he calls it, in the habit of continuous prayerful attention. Another member, Randall, is very anxious that the services should be what he calls instructive; that courses, for instance, of sermons ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... walked in solemn procession to the shore, lighted candles in their hands, priests chanting a solemn litany as they walked. The beach was crowded with people. Under the blazing summer sun they knelt once more before taking leave of the weeping multitudes. Listen to the Portuguese poet, Camoens, who makes Vasco da Gama the hero ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... abbeys and priories into which they were divided. The coming storm was heralded at St. Mary's on 11th November, 1535 on which date, "by command of the king," a solemn procession was held in the church to inaugurate its downfall by a Litany, in which the Prior and Canons took part, "with their crosses, candlesticks and vergers before them," as if in mockery of the state of which they were so soon to be deprived. The "Act of Suppression," passed in 1536, sealed the fate of the smaller foundations, to be followed ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... to priests, nor should I have upset the cushion on which I was kneeling, for, not having sufficient confidence to replace it, I was forced to hang on by my elbows to the reading-desk for the remainder of the Litany. As for my sermon, I knew it by heart, and it went off very well. I think, at all times, if my sermon was a good one, I used to get along well enough, for, as I proceeded, I became interested in it. On the other hand, when it was considerably below the ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... hear us, good Lord;" but though our hands are nationally clean now as regards the administration of justice and the treatment of criminals, we need not hold them up in holy horror as if the Chinese were guilty above all other men, for the framers of the Litany were familiar with dungeons perhaps worse than the prison of the Naam-Hoi magistrate, and with forms of torture which spared not even women, and the judges' and jailers' palms were intimate with the gold of accused persons. It is simply that heathenism in Canton is practising ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... frigate, cruising deep in the Bay of Biscay, just as the captain had finished the Litany, and the purser, whose greatest pleasure it was to officiate as clerk, had said Amen, that the man at the main royal-mast head ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the Reverend Thomas Prince's litany, rhymed by a later bard, summed up the gist of all the supplications that ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... solemn procession toward Canterbury, bearing before them a silver cross, with a picture of Christ, chanting in concert, as they went, the litany of their Church. Christianity had entered by the same, door through which paganism had ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... the church at three o'clock, with a Litany, and after this, when the daylight lasts long enough, there is a second Sunday School. The church is as full in the afternoon as in the morning, and the punctuality of the attendance is surprising. In the evening, at seven o'clock, service is again held in the school room, which is crowded, ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... which voices of lonely children and forgotten women broke. To the solitary farmer's wife such a wind brings tears or madness. I am tense with desire to escape. This bare little town on the ridge is appalling to me. Think of living here with the litany of this wind forever ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... sparkling it was—the lights, the bright colors, the dancing music! "Dolce Sacramento! Santo Sacramento!" these words of an Italian hymn or litany recurred again and again, with endless iteration. Kitty's sensuous, excitable nature was stirred with delight. Then, suddenly, she remembered her child, and the little face she had seen for the last time in the coffin. She ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fair cousin has undertaken to be custodian of these. I got back the offertorium punctually, having desired that it should be returned first. They all, and even the Prelate, plagued me to give them a litany, De venerabili. I said I had not got it with me. I really was by no means sure; so I searched, but did not find it. They gave me no peace, evidently thinking that I only wished to evade their request; so I said, "I really have not the litany with me; it is at Salzburg. ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... Faro Islands which lie far to north of Scotland, the great island of Iceland and Greenland, relics of the times when the Viking ships brought such terror to the other countries of Europe, that the Litany used to read: "From plague, pestilence and famine, from battle and murder, from sudden death and from the fury of the Northmen, good ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... splendid. A pity it's over. That's the litany of Anglo-India. It's over. Change the scene. Shuffle the puppets—and begin again. I've been doing it for ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... congregation also held an open-air service. The unfortunate Episcopal congregation is quite disorganized by the loss of their church and rector. They held no service, yet in a hundred temporary houses of the homeless the beautiful old litany of the faith was ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Father Dumphy what I'd done, he called me an ol' fool an' gave me an extry litany fer ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... longer singing hymn and litany, swelled, hoarse through their helmets, the martial chorus. This warrior, in front of the Duke and the horsemen, seemed beside himself with the joy of battle. As he rode, and as he chaunted, he threw up his sword in the air like a gleeman, catching ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... litany, Levin attempted to revive in himself his youthful recollections of the intense religious emotion he had passed through between the ages ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... but there is no evidence to support this. It must be confessed that his service in the Dorian mode, which heads the collection in Boyce's Cathedral Music, and which is indeed the first harmonised setting of the Canticles ever composed for the English Liturgy, is very dull, but his harmony of the Litany and of the Versicles after the Creed, has never been equalled for beauty. His Canon tune, to which we sing Ken's Evening Hymn, is also unsurpassed, and his anthem, "If ye love Me," is one of wonderful sweetness and devout feeling. John Redford was his contemporary, and ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... cynic he forgot to rise from his knees at the proper place, and was still in an exemplary attitude of devotion when, the litany over, the first hymn was given out. To be so caught did not contribute to soothe him. He started up red (for he was as sensitive to ridicule as any girl). To make the matter worse, the church door had reopened, and the aisles were filling: patter, patter, patter, a hundred little ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... M. Reutzius, advanced to the altar, having first chanted the litany, and there, to obey the Duke's behests as nearly as possible, opened his sermon with some verses from the afore-mentioned hymn, which I shall set down here for the sake of the ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... this work that deep religious note, that exaltation of spirituality which so completely characterized Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is felt by the reader. Religion was always to her a life, not a litany. The Divine Love was as the breath of life to her, wherein she lived and moved, and on which she relied for ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... that they would have held it sacrilege to utter a falsehood, when speaking of the blessed saints? And, can the lives of the saints be like those of common mortals? What is there strange in considering that the earth was mysterious and heavenly, when heavenly beings walked upon it? Read the Litany and Festology of Aengus, and doubt if the holy man did not believe all therein contained. Say, if it can be possible, that it is not all true, though apparently incredible. Who can doubt what is asserted with such vehemence of belief? How can that fail to be true which holy men and women have themselves ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... leads off in the recitation of a long metrical ritual, in which he is followed by the two warrior priests with shorter recitations, and by a prayer from another priest (of uncertain rank). During these recitations, responses like those of the litany in the Church of England may be heard from the whole assembly, and at their close, at or after sunrise, all members flock around the altar and repeat, prayer-meal in hand, a concluding invocation. This is followed ...
— Zuni Fetiches • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... moment, however, was when Sam-Chaong and more than a hundred of the priests most distinguished for learning and piety in the whole of the church, marched in solemn procession, chanting a litany, and took their places on the raised platform from which they were to conduct ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... sabidura; the words with which Len jocularly greets Mariucha are taken from the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, commonly called the Litany of Loreto. The Latin phrases are—Stella matutina, Turris eburnea, Sedes sapientiae. Ora pro nobis is the response given by the ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... Islam, except by the modice docti. The discourse over, our clerk, who is, if possible, worse than the curate, repeats the form of call termed El Ikamah; then entering the Mihrab or niche, he recites the two-bow Friday litany, with, and in front of, the congregation. I remarked no peculiarity in the style of praying, except that all followed the practice of the Shafeis in El Yemen,—raising the hands for a moment, instead of letting them depend along the thighs, between the Rukaat or bow and the Sujdah or prostration. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... enormous poem of azure and emerald unrolls before us, but in order inverse; again is the island—Litany of the Saints repeated for us, but now backward. All the bright familiar harbors once more open to receive us;—each lovely Shape floats to us again, first golden yellow, then vapory gray, then ghostly blue, but always sharply ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... in the Litany, for all prisoners and captives brought to her the thrill that she had only to look up to see the fulfilment of many and many a prayer for one captive, for once she did not hear the response, only saw the bent head, as though there were thoughts went too deep to find voice. And ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... This was his commendation, from hour to hour; it made up the litany of his gratitude for what she had been to him. "But I dunno's I feel quite ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... him—some," conceded Flame. In her bright cheeks suddenly an even brighter color glowed. "I like him when he leaves out the Litany," she said. "I've told him I like him when he leaves out the Litany.—He's leaving it out more and more I notice.—Yes, I like him ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... Mazeroux's chin according to the most scientific rules of the noble art. And Mazeroux foresaw this contingency, for he prudently kept as far away as possible and, to appease the chief's anger, intended a whole litany ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... not, this once, a child's sleep in my garret, At least enough to buy that two-pronged coral The others covet 'gainst the evil eye, Since, after all, one sees that I'm the youngest— So, muttering my litany to hell (The only prayer I knew that was not Latin), Felt on my arm a touch as kind as yours, And heard a voice as kind as yours say "Come." I turned and went; and from that day I never Looked on the face of any other man. So much is known; so much ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... spiritual benefits of Communion though deprived for the time being of the actual Sacrament. Apart from the "early service," which is now almost universal, schemes of worship upon Sunday mornings vary in different parishes. In some churches Matins and Litany are sung and a sermon preached, a late Eucharist without music being commonly celebrated about noon: in other parishes Matins is said quietly without music at a comparatively early hour, and the Eucharist ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... Virgin (1290) is like a litany of the saints and of the Virgin herself, chanted in antiphon, ending in the simpler splendour of Magnificat, sung to some Gregorian tone full of gold, of faint blues as of a far-away sky, of pale rose-colours as of roses fading on an altar in the sunlight, and the candles of white are ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... fling back into his lair—and, after a cooling lapse of some minutes (during which all but the culprit had totally forgotten the context) drive headlong out again, piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell—"and I WILL, too."—In his gentler moods, when the rabidus furor was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method, peculiar, for what I have heard, to himself, of whipping ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... I could repeat the whole Litany in Greek, standing on one foot. I still remember that the ...
— Comedies • Ludvig Holberg
... solemn service before a statue erected to the Virgin Mary on the shore opposite to the ships. All who were fit to walk went in procession from the fort to the statue, singing penitential psalms and the Litany and celebrating Mass. ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... During the Litany in bustled Clara, the housemaid, with a white jacket on so like her mistress's, that Rosa clutched her own convulsively, to see whether she had not been skinned of it by ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Bowl," was the order given by Old Hurricane as he followed the minister into the carriage. "And now, sir," he continued, addressing his companion, "I think you had better repeat that part of the church litany that prays to be delivered from 'battle, murder and sudden death,' for if we should be so lucky as to escape Black Donald and his gang, we shall have at least an equal chance of being upset in the darkness of these ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... no longer trip about in short and simple skirts, and tie up my curls with a ribbon, but should sweep grandly and languidly in to the parade service, bury half a pew under the festoons and furbelows of my silk dress and velvet trimmings, sink into a nest of matchless millinery for the Litany, scent the air with patchouli as I rose for the hymn, examine the other ladies' bonnets through one of those eyeglasses which are supposed to make it no longer rude to stare, and fan myself from the fatigues of the service ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... The litany was nearly over when Ida heard a familiar step on the stone pavement of the nave. It was Brian's step; and presently he stopped at the door of the high oaken pew, opened it, and came in and seated ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... resulting attitudes of the victims are quaint and realistic in the extreme! The border has been appropriately described as "a layer of dead men." In the tenth and eleventh centuries one of the regular petitions in the Litany was "From the fury of the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... complaints of any serious omissions, until three or four of the Arian and semi-Arian clergy ventured, not only to leave out the Athanasian Creed, but to alter the doxologies,[1136] and to pass over the second and third petitions of the Litany.[1137] ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... could hear his very tones as he told her that of all queens she was the peeress, of all women the most beautiful, of all wives the most dear. Almost she forgot the horrors of the night, so certain did it seem that his dear voice must soon again tell her the words that have been love's litany since ever ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... cloisters of the convent, processions carrying lights and garlands; and on certain nights, when the monks were in prayer in their cells, strange sounds would issue from the church itself, of flutes and timbrels, and demon laughter, and demon voices chanting some unknown litany, and clearly aping the mass; and Cardinal Capranica was blamed by many pious persons for his rash intention of filling once more the deserted convent, and exposing holy men to the wrath of such very pertinacious ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... Litany the deacon crossed the stole over his breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... Litany-hymn of the German churches, much used in Passion-week and in the processions before Ascension-day by Luther "gebessert ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... litany of prayer poured from his heart! For Israel, that the chosen people should be delivered from their low estate; for the cause of religion, that it might be revived; for the crowds without, that God would hear the prayers ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... excited voice he exclaimed, "You who hide your faces, perhaps because you are not good subjects, pay attention and listen to what I am about to say to you." The first to halt were those who were carrying the image, and one of the four ecclesiastics who were chanting the Litany, struck by the strange figure of Don Quixote, the leanness of Rocinante, and the other ludicrous peculiarities he observed, said in reply to him, "Brother, if you have anything to say to us say it quickly, for these brethren are whipping themselves, and we cannot stop, nor is it reasonable ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... side of an open grave; the sacristan is waiting with his shovel; the coffin has sunk; the dust to dust has descended. Again I was in the church on a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight of God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his martyrs, his saints; the fragment from the litany, the fragment from the clouds, awoke again the lawny beds that went up to scale the heavens,—awoke again the shadowy arms that moved downward to meet them. Once again arose the swell of the anthem, the burst of the Hallelujah chorus, the storm, the trampling ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... had the litany and hymns at 11 a.m.; prayers and hymns and a sermon at 5 p.m. In the course of the afternoon we were again surrounded by a shoal of whales. We passed the island of Chiloe to-day, where it always rains, and where the vegetation is proportionately dense and luxuriant. It is inhabited by ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... all had concluded the litany; when the old nun who had taken her place at the head of the table next the door, said the prayer before meat, beginning "Benedicite," and we sat down. I do not remember of what our dinner consisted, but ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... and her nobles left the chapel and retired to her privy chamber. Two days after this, a proclamation was issued, forbidding the elevation of the host. It was also ordered that the Gospels and Epistles, the Creed, and Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the Litany should be used in English. Her respect for the Bible, and her desire to have it spread throughout her realms, was still more clearly shown on the occasion of her progress from the Tower to Westminster, the day before her coronation, on the 15th of ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... her Hegira been like? In what frightful places had she found herself welcome? From her talk, it could have been an Ozark backwater. I didn't want to know what backwoods crone had taught her some mnemonic rendition of the Devil's Litany. ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... How is't, how is't? you that be of the graver sort, do you think these youths worthy of a plaudite for praying for the queen, and singing the litany? They are poor fellows, I must needs say, and have bestowed great labour in sewing leaves, and grass, and straw, and moss upon cast suits. You may do well to warm your hands with clapping before you go to bed, and send them to the tavern ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... not heard this litany before? Who does not know this never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters. But I insist that not the handful of parasites, ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... them address themselves to God in their own behalf; caused them to recite the litany on their knees, at the foot of a large crucifix; and then ordered them to retire, but to have confidence in Jesus Christ. He himself withdrew also into a chamber; from whence coming out some time after, he went down into the chalop with a little child, and having caused him ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... to thee at the sacrificial-stone of the Factories and Mills. The cultured, too, and the wise, are counted among thy slaves. Even the righteous surrender themselves to thee and are willing to undergo that hideous transformation. O Success, what an infernal litany thy votaries and high-priests are chanting to thee.... Thou ruthless Gorgon, what crimes thou art committing, and what crimes are being ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... splendid that the laughter of the street people sometimes died suddenly on their lips. For three times in the day the new sun-worshipper went out on his little balcony, in the face of all Westminster, to say some litany to his shining lord: once at daybreak, once at sunset, and once at the shock of noon. And it was while the shock of noon still shook faintly from the towers of Parliament and parish church that Father Brown, the friend of Flambeau, first looked up and saw the white ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... mostly peasants, but among them were a few who seemed to be of higher rank, and these, for the most part, though by no means all of them, wore their clothes reversed—as I have forgotten to say was done also by Mr. Balmy. Both men and women joined in singing a litany the words of which my father could not catch; the tune was one he had been used to play on his apology for a flute when he was in prison, being, in fact, none other than "Home, Sweet Home." There was no harmony; they never got ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... raised chair in the middle of the top row, something like I saw the warders sitting amongst prisoners at Millbank one Sunday morning when Chiltern took me to see the Claimant repeating the responses to the Litany. The House itself is of oblong shape, with rows of benches on either side, cushioned in green leather and raised a little above each other. There are four of these rows on either side, with a broad passage between covered ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... but being of interest on account of the great stones to be seen there. No record has been preserved as to the origin of the city, but coins of the first century of the Christian era show that it was then a Roman colony. It is situated in the valley of the Litany, at an elevation of two thousand eight hundred and forty feet above the sea. The chief ruins are in a low part of the valley by the side of the present town, and are surrounded by gardens. Within the inclosing wall are the remains of the temple ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... she would sing from the litany. Her companions joined with her; but still I could discern the voice of Maddalene from all others, which seemed only to unite for the purpose of robbing me of it. Sometimes, too, when her companions were recounting to her their various misfortunes, I could ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... yellow glass of the windows overhead encircled the mighty vault of the lantern with a fiery crown, and played around the walls of its cage in rays which, growing fainter as they fell, flooded the floor with their expiring flames, a mysterious dayspring, a diffused glory, through which litany and sacred chant winged their way up toward ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet |
