"Mellifluous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and ill-proportioned, that his countenance had little of that flexibility which anticipates the tongue, that his eye had scarcely anything of that language which, by preparing the spectator for the coming sentence, enchains the attention, that his voice was neither silvery nor mellifluous. Nevertheless, by a subtlety of discrimination, that seemed almost intuitive, by a force of judgment and a fervency of mind, that were simply exquisite and irresistible, this was the very man who could at any moment, by an inflection of his ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... remedy I would speak of is to cast out the demagogue. They are the fellows that are the curse of both and of all political parties. We have had them from the days of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony down to date. [Laughter.] These smooth, sleek, mellifluous-tongued fellows that always have the same blood-stained garment to hold up before the populace, and some forged will to read, whereby the people were to get great legacies which they never could collect, let us cast ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... son," said the Rev. Mr Bastian, with a face and voice as mellifluous as a honeycomb, "that all the members of your household are faithful, and well affected towards the ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... his deep, mellifluous voice—while the rain beat upon the windows, crying out the sorrows of the poor—the curate unfolded the poignant story: the terms simple, the recital clear, vivid, complete.... And to the heart of this child the appeal ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... responsibility. Sometimes, as in some of the lyrics of Maud, he had a flash of the old spirit. But compare the Idylls of the King, for all their dignity and lavish art, their sweet cadences, their mellifluous flow, with the early fragment in the same manner, the Morte d'Arthur, and you become aware that some exquisite haunted quality has slipped away from the later work which made the Morte d'Arthur one of the most perfect poems of the century. The Morte ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... insects caught in their leaves, and which dissolve and mix with the fluid, serve for aliment or support to these kind of plants is doubtful," he thinks, but he should be credited with the suggestion. In one sentence he speaks of the quantities of insects which, "being invited down to sip the mellifluous exuvia from the interior surface of the tube, where they inevitably perish," being prevented from returning by the stiff hairs all pointing downward. This, if it refers to the sweet secretion, would ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... made himself immortal, by shewing the way of introducing Graces without transgressing against Time. This Example alone, which is worth a Thousand (O my rever'd Moderns!) should be sufficient to undeceive you. But if this does not satisfy you, I will add, that Sifacio[63] with his mellifluous Voice embrac'd this Rule; that Buzzolini[64] of incomparable Judgment highly esteemed it: After them Luigino[65] with his soft and amorous Stile followed their Steps; likewise Signora Boschi[66] who, to the Glory of her Sex, ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... discouraged. He may look forward to some time, in the more or less distant future, when there may be a union of the nations in the interests of all men; when the gross egoism of the hypertrophied patriot may be curbed; when the mellifluous language of the statesman may mean more than did the pious letter which Nero wrote to the Roman Senate, after he had murdered ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... envy his philosophy, when SHALLA-BA-LA, that demon with the bell, besets him at every turn, almost teasing the sap out of him! The moment that his tormentor quits the scene, PUNCH seems to forget the existence of his annoyance, and, carolling the mellifluous numbers of Jim Crow, or some other strain of equal beauty, makes the most of the present, regardless of the past or future; and when SHALLA-BA-LA renews his persecutions, PUNCH boldly faces his enemy, and ultimately ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... applause followed this little extempore speech,— applause accompanied by an odorous rain of flowers. There were many women in the crowd, and these had pressed eagerly forward to catch every word that dropped from the Poet-Laureate's mellifluous lips,—now, moved by one common impulse, they hastily snatched off their posies and garlands, and flung them in lavish abundance at his feet. Some of the blossoms chancing to fall on Theos and cling to his garments, he quickly shook ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... of monasteries, castles and soaring church spires of Coventry looked luminous in the morning sunshine, while the brazen tongues of century bells rolled their mellifluous matin tones in voluminous welcome to the great multitude of revelers within her embattled walls and ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... freely and liberally, in flowing phrases, without being brought to a stop by the severe fences of poetical form! The melody, the cadence, the rise and fall of the sentence, antithesis, contrast, mellifluous energy—these are the joys of prose; but there is nothing like the writing of verse to make them easy ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her lovers, when they had the time or the inclination for talking, of the ancient authors of Rome, and of Greece, too, for that matter—did I not say her mother was a Greek?—and could say you or sing you the stanzas of mellifluous poets, most ravishingly to the ear. She knew all the verses of Guido Guinicelli by root of heart, and to hear her repeat that ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... gloomy piece, which was acted in 1580 at Pont-a-Mousson. In the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared another tragedy by a Norman squire named Virey: it was titled Jeanne d'Arques, dite la Pucelle d'Orleans. This very mellifluous production was published at ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... he is said to draw storks &c, after him. A picked raisin for a sweet banquet of sounds; but I affect not these exotics. Nos DURUM genus, as mellifluous Ovid hath it. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and 'The Miller's Daughter,' or in those tender lyrics such as 'Mariana,' 'Sir Galahad,' 'The Dying Swan,' and 'The Talking Oak.' In the ballads and songs, how felicitous again is the poet's work, and how rich yet mellifluous is the strain! Had Tennyson written nothing else but these, with the verse included in the volumes issued by him in 1832 and 1842, how high would he have been placed in the choir of song, and how supreme should we have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... a specimen of really mellifluous Dutch. "How would you like," is the timely question of a daily paper this morning, as I finish this chapter, "to be hit by a 'snellpaardelooszoondeerspoorwegpitroolrijtung?' That is what would happen to you if you were run down by a motor-car in Holland. ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... of treachery in regard to "controversial business" was consummated on the 18th of September, when the Home Rule Bill received the Royal Assent. On the 15th Mr. Asquith put forward his defence in the House of Commons. In a sentence of mellifluous optimism that was to be woefully falsified in a not-distant future, he declared his confidence that the action his Ministry was taking would bring "for the first time for a hundred years Irish opinion, Irish sentiment, Irish loyalty, flowing with a strong and a continuous and ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... associations and it seems more than cruel to allow its desecration by unholy surroundings and various forms of vice. Standing beside it now, and remembering it in its purity, just as God made it, my eyes are full of unshed tears, and its mellifluous ceaseless song seems pleading to be saved from the vandalism which threatens to destroy all its sweet influences and make it common and unclean. But as I, alone, of all who saw it in those days long gone by, stand mourning by its side, there dawns in my heart the hope that the half formed purpose ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... piece of preferment; persuading himself that the lad's thickness of voice, concerning which the choir-master speaks with aggravating persistence, is a matter of no real importance; fearing that the friends of another contemporary boy, who is said by the choir-master to have an exceedingly mellifluous voice, may defeat his paternal aspirations. The momentous question agitates many humble homes in Canterbury; and whilst Mr. Abbott, the barber, is encouraged to hope the best for his son, the relatives and supporters of the contemporary ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... murmur, when daintily falling, Sweet as its plaintive, mellifluous song, Voices of absent ones seem to be calling:— "Come to us! Come! thou ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... not write for the multitude, but few poets of the day have a more devoted band of admirers. Some readers will express a preference for The Building of the Dream, [347] others for Lautrec [348] or Salvestra [349], and others for the dazzling and mellifluous Prelude to Hafiz. Mr. A. C. Swinburne eulogised the "exquisite and clear cut Intaglios." [350] D. G. Rossetti revelled in the Sonnets; Theodore de Banville, "roi des rimes," in the Songs of Life and Death, whose beauties blend like the tints ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... Mulrooney, for such was my fair companion called, was on the present occasion making her debut on what she was pleased to call the "says;" she was proceeding to the Liverpool market as proprietor and supercargo over some legion of swine that occupied the hold of the vessel, and whose mellifluous tones were occasionally heard in all parts of the ship. Having informed me on these, together with some circumstances of her birth and parentage, she proceeded to narrate some of the cautions given by her friends as to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... schoolmasters. There is always corn in their Egypt, and no village is so small but it lifts a smokestack toward a sky that yields nothing to Italy's. The heavens are a soundingboard devised for the sole purpose of throwing back the mellifluous voices of native orators. At the cross-roads store, philosophers, perched upon barrel and soap-box (note the soap-box), clinch in endless argument. Every county has its Theocritus who sings the nearest ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... her red curls waving over her head. No one took any notice of these little amenities. No one remembered that the ointment which ran down Aaron's beard was like brethren dwelling together in unity—a good and pleasant thing. They were all brothers or sisters and accustomed to such mellifluous modes ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... near her, but farther from the chimney-nook, are gossiping idly, but persistently, in the soft, mellifluous brogue that distinguishes the ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... of the note of the Hotel Europa to some conclusion whether for good or ill—it did not matter. If Marishka herself had written it!... She would be awaiting him now—and he could not come to her.... In his stead—Linke the gigantic, the mellifluous.... ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... Kostanzhoglo's mellifluous periods fell upon Chichikov's ear like the notes of a bird of paradise. From time to time he gulped, and his softened eyes expressed the pleasure which it gave ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... tenderness to his 'character,' and thinking what a story 'them villians o' the world'id make iv it down at the club there.' But on second thoughts, poor little Sally being neither young nor comely, he ventured, and sat down by the bed, veiled behind a strip of curtain, and poured his mellifluous consolations ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... resulted. But in the first place a special feature of the situation has to be noted. The Japanese language was then undergoing a transition. In order to fit it to the Chinese ideographs for literary purposes, it was being deprived of its mellifluous polysyllabic character and reduced to monosyllabic terseness. The older words were disappearing, and with them many of the old traditions. Temmu saw that if the work of compilation was abandoned solely to princely and official litterateurs, they would probably ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... recall him as he stood before his audience. There was but little animation; his theme did not seem to stir him into life; even the usual repose of his countenance was rarely broken up; he used little or no action; and his voice, though mellifluous, was monotonous: he lacked, indeed, that earnestness without which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... compute that the longest of his novels would be finished in a week. Contarini Fleming seems to have occupied him the greater part of a year. He liked the public to think of him, exquisitely habited, his long essenced hair falling about his eyes, flinging forth a torrent of musky and mellifluous improvisation; as a matter of fact he was a very hard worker, laborious in the arts ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... circumstances are expressed by pretty rapid fiddling for some minutes, winding up with a puff from the orpheclide played by an intoxicated Teuton with an atrocious breath—it is impossible to misunderstand the description.) Now rises o'er the plains, in mellifluous accents, the grand Pike ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... of mixed blood jabbered in French, Cree, and Chipewyan chiefly, but when they wanted to swear, they felt the inadequacy of these mellifluous or lisping tongues, and fell back on virile Saxon, whose tang, projectivity, and wealth of vile epithet evidently supplied a long-felt want in the Great Lone Land of the Dog ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... inebriate with floral honey and resounding with the notes of the peacock, the king at last reached the sacred lake of Dwaitavana. And the spot which the king reached swarmed with bees inebriate with floral honey, and echoed with the mellifluous notes of the blue-throated jay and was shaded by Saptacchadas and punnagas and Vakulas. And the king graced with high prosperity proceeded thither like the thunder-wielding chief of the celestials ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of better names; it winds aloft, under shady chestnuts, with views on either side. Here one can sit and smoke and converse with some rare countryman passing by; here one can dream, forgetful of nightingales—soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note of the oriole among the green branches overhead and the piping, agreeably remote, of some wryneck in the olives down yonder. The birds are having a quiet time, for the first time in their lives; sportsmen ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... he was bred. His discourse savored of the weighty doctrines of Hippocrates, diluted by the subtle speculations of Galen, reinforced by the curious comments of the Arabian schoolmen as they were conveyed in the mellifluous language of Fernelius, blended, it may be, with something of the lofty mysticism of Van Helmont, and perhaps stealing a flavor of that earlier form of Homoeopathy which had lately come to light in Sir Kenelm Digby's "Discourse concerning ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Mr. Dutt makes the claim to be the first Asiatic poet to write in English, and if that is true this insignificant work becomes the seed of which the full flower is the gifted Rabindra, son of Tagore, whose mellifluous but mystic utterances lie, I am told, on every boudoir table. Me they, for the ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... constant inspection disturbed you. Myriad pardons for me," began the Swami in his mellifluous voice. "It is the tribute. When I feel deep interest I am prone to forget all but my study. See, I am the last of a family once powerful and wealthy; yet I hardly regret that heritage that I have lost. I look at you. You are the type of another fate. You are a bride, young, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... Perkins, the water in her eyes affecting her voice so that it became mellifluous instead ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... contemptuous grimace at his back, and said, in mellifluous tones: "Very well, dear. I may as well go at once, and perhaps she will come with me to that dressmaking ally of hers, Miss Trant. I hear she is raising her prices, but she will not do so to me if I ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... beautiful daughters of the Fatherland smile, in coifs and tuckers and short skirts, Katti and Luisa and Nina, dulciferous names that trip off the tongue as the gentle creatures trip from table to table with flasks of Rhenish wine; the mellifluous voice of Sarah cries cigarettes at her booth in the Rue du Caire—Sarah, the Egyptian Jewess, whose ancestors went back to the land of Pharaoh in defiance of Rabbinic decree—Sarah, with the charm of her eighteen summers and her graceful virginal figure and her sweet ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... unisonant^, concentual^, symphonizing^, isotonic, homophonous^, assonant; ariose^, consonant. measured, rhythmical, diatonic^, chromatic, enharmonic^. melodious, musical; melic^; tuneful, tunable; sweet, dulcet, canorous^; mellow, mellifluous; soft, clear, clear as a bell; silvery; euphonious, euphonic, euphonical^; symphonious; enchanting &c (pleasure- giving) 829; fine-toned, full-toned, silver-toned. Adv. harmoniously, in harmony; as one &c adj.. Phr. the hidden ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... lot of talk about the soul. Sentimentalists wallow in the word, and realists deride it. What it really is I do not pretend to know. Probably as good a word as any—and certainly a very mellifluous word—for some obscure chemical combination of finer essence than the obvious material part of us, that craves a foretaste of immortality while we are still mortal. Perhaps we are descended from the gods after all, and unless we ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... whole house to himself, self-contained, as they say in the advertisements; and on the money question we were prepared to go far. Kong Sam Kee, the Calistoga washerman, was entrusted with the affair; and from day to day it languished on, with protestations on our part and mellifluous excuses on the part of Kong ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... can prove the correctness of it; by special and general metric analysis. In conclusion, I have not indulged in Rhetorical figures and Tropes, but have rigidly adhered to the use of figurative and literal language; finally I have used a concatination of appropriate mellifluous epithets, logically and philosophically accurate, copious, sublime, eloquent, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... Poe came to write it and how all these years it had been lost to view. In a few words Mr. Riley related the incident and then dismissed it. "I studied Poe's methods. He seemed to have a theory, rather misty to be sure, about the use of 'm's' and 'n's' and mellifluous vowels and sonorous words. I remember that I was a long time in evolving the name Leonainie, but at length the verses were finished and ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... breach, ye soldiers of the cross, Scale the red wall and swim the choking foss. Ye dauntless archers, twang your cross-bows well; On, bill and battle-axe and mangonel! Ply battering-ram and hurtling catapult, Jerusalem is ours—id Deus vult." After which comes a mellifluous description of the gardens of Sharon and the maids of Salem, and a prophecy that roses shall deck the entire country of Syria, and a speedy reign of peace be established—all in undeniably decasyllabic lines, and the queerest aping of sense and ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the dry and bushy places I found him at my elbow—or, rather, some distance away, but in evidence by his mellifluous song. Let me enumerate the localities in which I found my little favorite: Forty miles out on the plain among some bushes of a shallow dip; among the foothills about Colorado Springs and Manitou; on many of the ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... of Williams College, came to Kansas, to become a member of the faculty of the State University. His election to the chair of natural science was unexpected, as he first taught mathematics in the university, and expected in due time to become professor of Greek. As professor of the mellifluous and most plastic of all the ancient tongues, he would undoubtedly have been proficient, as his college classics still remain fresh in his warm and retentive memory, and his literary taste is so severe and chaste as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... and figure that completely fill up that ideal which exaggerated fancies have wrought out of the Grecian heaven. The vision steals upon you at all hours,—now rounding its flowing outline to the mellifluous metre of Epic hexameter, and again with its bounding life pulsating with the glorious dashes ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... she had seemed before this trouble came. One evening as he left Leopold, he heard her singing, and stood on the stair to listen. And to listen was to marvel. For her voice, instead of being hard and dry, as when he heard it before, was, without any loss of elasticity, now liquid and mellifluous, and full of feeling. Its tones were borne along like the leaves on the wild west wind of Shelley's sonnet. And the longing of the curate to help her from that moment took a fresh departure, and grew and grew. But as the hours and ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... by the sound of Clarke's mellifluous voice. He was, indeed, a master of the spoken word, and possessed a miraculous power of giving to the wildest fancies ...
— The House of the Vampire • George Sylvester Viereck
... The mellifluous sentimentality, too, of the novelist seems to come to a climax in this book; justifying Taine's satiric remark that "these phrases should be accompanied by a mandolin." The moral tag is infallibly supplied, as in all Richardson's tales—though perhaps here with an effect of crescendo. ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... A smooth, mellifluous voice suddenly intervened. Otto Schmidt thought fit to assume a role for which Lord ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... not be offended, sir—you mean, of course, sir, that you would like me to state exACTly what your father said, proceeding as if I was under oath." It is indescribable how soft and mellifluous ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tone of her voice and expression were as enchanting as her countenance and conversation. With a mellifluous-toned voice, a perfect shake and intonation, she was possessed of the double power of delighting an audience equally in pathetic strains and songs of brilliant execution, which is allowed ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... Emma's honest brow we read display'd The constant virtues of the Nut Brown Maid; Mellifluous sounds on Clara's tongue we hear, Notes that once lured a Seraph from his sphere; Cecilia's eyes such winning beauties crown As without song ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Julia, in mellifluous accents, and the girl pulled herself stiffly from the bed, and went blinking down to an improvised supper. They two were alone in the big house, and fell into intimate conversation over their sardines ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... would have been difficult to find a perfectly satisfactory one. However, the hour was late enough to excuse his beginning the reading without farther delay. It was not a success. There was a stoppage somewhere in the current of his mellifluous eloquence; and the exposition was concluded so soon, and indeed abruptly, that Mrs. Danvers retired to rest with a feeling of disappointment and inanition, such as one may have experienced when, expecting a "sit-down" supper, we are obliged to content ourselves ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... the pudgy and vivid old gentleman, whose voice usually ended in a softly mellifluous shout when speaking emphatically: "that worthless Westbury—Cedarhurst—Jericho— Meadowbrook set are going to be in evidence at this housewarming, and I caution you now against paying anything but the slightest, most ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... huge, hacking knife and relaxed to the extent of engaging in an occasional sober romp with Possum. Wada's face is no longer solemnly long, and Louis' Oxford accent is more mellifluous than ever. Mulligan Jacobs and Andy Fay are the same venomous scorpions they have always been. The three gangsters, with the clique they lead, have again asserted their tyrrany and thrashed all the weaklings and feeblings in the forecastle. Charles Davis resolutely refuses ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... swarmed, and the new colony, pitching on the window-sill, was making its way into the room when the horrified nurse shut down the sash. If that well-meaning woman had only abstained from her ill-timed interference, the swarm might have settled on my lips, and I should have been endowed with that mellifluous eloquence which, in this country, leads far more surely than worth, capacity, or honest work, to the highest places in Church and State. But the opportunity was lost, and I have been obliged to content myself through life with saying what I mean in the ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... misgivings. It was not difficult for me to imagine that the frank nature of Jerry's visits to Una might have given the girl a false notion of the state of Jerry's mind, for it was like the boy to have told her of Marcia's mellifluous contrition which, as I knew, was no more genuine than any other of her carefully planned emotional crises. I did not know what Marcia thought of Una's approaching visit or whether Jerry had even told her of it, but I had no fancy ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... so called obviously because of the shape of its flowers, has a most mellifluous and pleasing botanical name, Liriodendron Tulipifera—is not that euphonious? Just plain "liriodendron"—how much better that sounds as a designation for one of the noblest of American forest trees than the misleading "common" names! "Tulip-tree," for a resemblance of the form only ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... water-meadows. What gardens and green shades and coolness of comfort, he remembered, and linked with that time and that place. He dreamed a dream with the smell of new-turned hay in it, then awoke to find himself repeating that mellifluous tag of his about man's airy notions. The ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... poets but Shakespeare would have paraded as pets many a time, are multifarious. Among a hundred others never used but once, we have magical, mirthful, mightful, mirth-moving, moonbeams, moss-grown, mundane, motto, matin, mural, multipotent, mourningly, majestically, marbled, martyred, mellifluous, mountainous, meander, magnificence, magnanimity, mockable, merriness, masterdom, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... next; ... To sage philosophy next lend thine ear. From Heaven descended to the low roof'd house Of Socrates; see there his tenement, Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced Wisest of men; from whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams that water'd all the schools Of Academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the sect Epicurean, and the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... that during the first year of your mellifluous union, scenes more or less delightful, pleasantries uttered in good taste, pretty purses and caresses might accompany and might decorate the handing over of this monthly gift; but the time will come when the self-will of your wife or some unforeseen ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Silence, ye vocal choir, And thou, mellifluous lute, For man soon breathes his last, And all his hope is past, And all his ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... almost cloying in the excessive sweetness of his amorous muse, he offers no support to the wearied spirit,—no sense of strength or renewal to the fagged brain. He does not grapple with the hard problems of life; and his mellifluous murmurings of delicious fantasies have no place in the poignant griefs and keen regrets of those who have passed the meridian of earthly hopes, and who see the shadows of the long night closing in. And David Helmsley realised this all suddenly, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... certain jewels, while she knew that the jewels were actually in her own possession?" Lizzie, confounded by the softness of his voice as joined to the harshness of the question, could hardly understand him, and he repeated it thrice, becoming every time more and more mellifluous. "Yes," said Lizzie at last. "Yes?" he asked. "Yes," said Lizzie. "Your ladyship did send the Cumberland police after men for stealing jewels which were in your ladyship's own hands when you swore the information?" "Yes," said Lizzie. "And ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... clean strait oaten reed, To charm His cries at time of need. Tell Him, for coral, thou hast none, But if thou hadst, He should have one; But poor thou art, and known to be Even as moneyless as He. Lastly, if thou canst win a kiss From those mellifluous lips of His; Then never take a second on, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... around a religious epic. Edmund Spenser, the Puritan and Englishman, allegorized the whole in such fashion that while the conscience was soothed by knowing that all the knights and ladies represented moral virtues or vices, the senses were titillated by mellifluous cadences and by naked descriptions of the temptations of the Bower of Bliss. And how British that Queen Elizabeth of England should impersonate the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugred Sonnets among his private friends &c. As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and Tragedy among ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... Patrick had heard of him in Paris. He begged for another song and she complied, accepting the one he selected as the favourite of his brother Philip's, though she said: 'That one?' with a superior air. It was a mellifluous love-song from a popular Opera somewhat out of date. 'Well, it's in Italian!' she summed up her impressions of the sickly words while scanning them for delivery. She had no great admiration of the sentimental Sicilian composer, she confessed, yet she sang as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the half dozen candles which were still burning, and stood within the narrow circle of its feeble rays. Drawing from the inner pocket of his coat a well-worn volume he opened it, held it up to the light and began to read. The tones of his voice were clear and mellifluous, his articulation slow and distinct, and his soul seemed permeated with the wondrous depth and beauty of what is perhaps the most exquisite passage in the literature of the world. It was the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... emphasis; alternately touching the chord of pathos, or advancing with equal ease into the region of argument or passion; and then let him remember that every sentiment he uttered was clothed in expressions as mellifluous as perhaps ever fell from ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... imagine," said I truthfully. "But she had a nice voice. You know—one of those soft mellifluous ones, suggesting that she's bored to distraction with everything except you." I took out a cigarette and looked about me. "Anyone got ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... three days old. The baby hated it herself when she reached years of discretion, and when she found that she possessed a voice and had a possible career before her, she saw plainly that something more mellifluous must be substituted if programmes should ever be in question. Meantime she was Tommy to her friends, and the gay little name suited her to a T. The gay little rhyme suited her, too, for like the Tommy ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Constance, taking her book, found the places for her; for Mary had failed after all to teach her how to use it. Mr. Northcott preached the sermon, and it was a poor performance. He was not gifted with a good delivery, and his voice was not of that moist mellifluous description, as of an organ fattened on cream, which is more than half the battle to the young cleric, certainly more than passion and eloquence, and of the pulpit pulpity. There was a restless spirit in Mr. Northcott; he took a somewhat painful interest in questions of the day, and in preaching ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... Sarjjas and Arjunas, and Karnikars, many of them covered with flowers. And flocks of peacocks and Datyuhas and Chakoras and Varhins and Kokilas, seated on the tops of the tallest trees of that forest were pouring forth their mellifluous notes. And the king also saw in that forest mighty herds of gigantic elephants huge as the hills, with temporal juice trickling down in the season of rut, accompanied by herds of she-elephants. And approaching the beautiful Bhogavati (Saraswati), the king saw ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... spiritual sustenance even to the devout. There are apt to be two or three among the regular attendants who being, according to their own estimate, "gifted in prayer," raise their voices loud and long with many a mellifluous phrase and lofty-sounding polysyllable. Mr. Eli Lewis is one of the most eloquent among the church-members in the village of C——, and if left to his own way would engross the entire evening with his prayers and exhortations. Nothing is too large for his imagination to grasp nor too small for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... his sentimentalism forces him to be has often been overlooked because of his diction and his pictures. Though he tends to the mellifluous and the saccharine he has in his better pages a dewy, luminous style, with words choicely picked out and cadences delicately manipulated. By comparison most of the local colorists of his period seem homespun and ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... the glow and cheer of Sim Roxby's fireside was like a rescue, a restoration. The smiling welcome in the women's eyes, their soft drawling voices, with mellifluous intonations that gave a value to each commonplace simple word, braced his nerves like a tonic. It might have been only the contrast with the recollections of the night, with the prospect visible through the open door—the serried lines of rain dropping aslant from the gray sky and elusively ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of purity, of righteousness, of elevated sentiments, of love to God and man. It is not in the frigid philosophy of the porch and academy that we are to seek these; not in the marvelous teachings of Socrates, as they come mended by the mellifluous words of Plato; not in the resounding line of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of blood Alexander pillowed his head; not in the animated strain of Pindar, where virtue is pictured in the successful strife of an athlete ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... given to it. These faults are found to a much smaller degree in her miscellaneous poems. Her sonnets, here printed for the first time, seem to me to be of great beauty, and her longer piece entitled "Our Casuarina Tree," needs no apology for its rich and mellifluous numbers. ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... melancholy-looking, in itself; but Terence told us long ago, and truly, "that it was not the walls, but the company, made every place delightful:" and these inhabitants, though few in number, are so exceedingly cheerful, so charming, their language is so mellifluous, their manners so soothing, I can scarcely bear to ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of the country the hedge-schoolmaster was often also a poet who wrote mellifluous songs in Irish, which were sung throughout the entire district and sometimes earned him enduring fame. Eoghan Ruadh O'Sullivan and Andrew MacGrath, called An Mangaire Sugach or "the Jolly Pedlar," are well-known instances of ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... 'bout that," he said in a mellifluous voice. "Ye know I was tucked up in yonder"—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—"tendin' to the countin' of the ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Boulogne in the conquest of Jerusalem, with other divers works and books, I ne wist what work to begin and put forth after the said works to-fore made. And forasmuch as idleness is so much blamed, as saith Saint Bernard, the mellifluous doctor, that she is mother of lies and step-dame of virtues, and it is she that overthroweth strong men into sin, quencheth virtue, nourisheth pride, and maketh the way ready to go to hell; and John Cassiodorus saith that the thought of him that is idle thinketh on none other thing but on ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... their real or fancied wrongs. It was an earnest, implacable crowd; men with lowering brows merely glanced at the soldier as he rode forward; women gazed more intently, but were quickly lured back by the tripping phrases of the mellifluous speaker. ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... round, Made heart and heel leap light as bounding roe. Alas! no more shall we behold that look So venerable, yet so blent with mirth, And festive joy sedate; that ancient garb Unvaried,—tartan hose, and bonnet blue! No more shall Beauty's partial eye draw forth The full intoxication of his strain. Mellifluous, strong, exuberantly rich! No more, amid the pauses of the dance, Shall he repeat those measures, that in days Of other years, could soothe a falling prince, And light his visage with a transient smile Of melancholy joy,—like autumn sun Gilding a sear tree with a passing beam! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Veiling the Woolworth, argently Rising slender and stark Mellifluous-shrill as a vender's cry, And towers squatting graven and cold On the velvet bales of the dark, And the Singer's appraising Indolent idol's eye, And night like a ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... happy, but Romley promised to be the bright exception in a long list of failures. (It was he who discovered and introduced Johnny Whitelamb to the household.) He was sociable; had pleasant manners, a rotund figure not yet inclining to coarseness, a pink and white complexion, and a mellifluous tenor voice. To his voice, alas! he owed most of ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... content and sugar-plums has yielded to maturer age, the man takes his coffee and his cracknel without observing the pattern of the pottery. And, unfortunately, it was to this that the Herveyites directed their chief attention, and hungry people have long since tired of their flowery truisms and mellifluous inanities; and, partly from impatience of the copyists, the reading republic has nearly ostracized ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... short, the Jury was thus admitted to the secret legal arena, and into community with the learned friends themselves, and were persuaded that they were very sharp fellows indeed. What pleasant satire is here, on the mellifluous "openings" of Counsel, the putting a romantic gloss on the ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... is sharp and tedious to them that be guilty; but to the innocent and guiltless it is mellifluous. Here droppeth the delectable dew; here floweth the pleasant nectar; here runneth the sweet milk; here is plenty of all good things. And although the place itself be desert and barren, yet to me it seemeth a large walk, and a valley ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... on his cheeks could have arisen from that cause. He shook the hands of his brother-captains, as if he would have wrung them off, and then threw himself into a chair to recover from his exertions; but, when he began to speak, instead of the rough voice one might have expected, a soft, mellifluous tone was heard, which might better win a woman's ear than vie with the howling of the tempest. He at once waived all the right he might claim to lead the attack on the island, and cordially agreed to the plan proposed ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... fair! within as foul As fiends of fiercest heart below, Who ride the hurricanes of fire, that roll Their thundering vortex o'er the realms of woe, Yon naked waste survey; Where late was heard the flute's mellifluous lay; Where late the rosy-bosomed hours, In loose array, danced lightly o'er the flowers; Where late the shepherd told his tender tale; And, wakened by the murmuring breeze of morn, The voice of chearful Labour ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... the manuscript, declined by publishers, was in the end destroyed, and editors have been saved from the necessity of printing or reprinting these crudities of a great poet's childhood. Their only merit, he assured Mr Gosse, lay in "their mellifluous smoothness." It was an event of capital importance in the history of Browning's mind when—probably in his thirteenth year—he lighted, in exploring a book-stall, upon a copy of one of the pirated editions of Shelley's Queen Mab and other poems. Through ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Hemings, Tho. Pope, Chr. Beeston, Joh. Dyke." These evidences of prominence are more than corroborated by the famous passage in the Palladis Tamia (1598) of Francis Meres, in which he not only compares the "mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare" with Ovid for his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, "his sugred sonnets among his private friends," but with Plautus and Seneca for his excellence "in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... calls. She disappeared from Symford as suddenly as she had appeared; and Mrs. Morrison, coming into Creeper Cottage on Monday afternoon to unload her conscience yet more, found only a pleasant gentleman, a stranger of mellifluous manners, writing out cheques. She had ten minutes talk with him, and went home very sad and wise. Indeed from that day, her spirit being the spirit of the true snob, the hectorer of the humble, the devout groveller in the courtyards of the great, she was a ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... sentiments towards an author. If when you have read an author you are pleased, without being conscious of aught but his mellifluousness, just conceive what your feelings would be after spending a month's holiday with a merely mellifluous man. If an author's style has pleased you, but done nothing except make you giggle, then reflect upon the ultimate tediousness of the man who can do nothing but jest. On the other hand, if you are impressed by what an author has said to you, but are aware ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... the most mellifluous and self-possessed of men, flew into a violent, roaring, cursing passion, on this occasion—declared that I was imperiling the honor and standing of the family—insisted on my never drawing another caricature, either for public or private purposes, as long as ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... tales; and Sara Ray brought him a pudding she had made herself. Sara's intentions were good, but the pudding— well, Dan fed most of it to Paddy, who had curled himself up at the foot of the bed, giving the world assurance of a cat by his mellifluous purring. ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... lady," he urged in a voice as nearly mellifluous as he could contrive with its mighty volume. "That's all right. I have to keep on telling you. Nobody's going to hurt you—not a little bit. Believe me! Why, nobody ever would ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... 'Titus,' and 'Romeo and Juliet') were set forth, and mention followed of his 'Venus and Adonis,' his 'Lucrece,' and his 'sugred {179} sonnets among his private friends.' These were cited as proof 'that the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare.' In the same year a rival poet, Richard Barnfield, in 'Poems in divers Humors,' predicted immortality for ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Van Dorn drew down the corners of his mouth—and batted his furtive eyes, and put on his bony knee a mottled, nervous hand, with brown splotches at the wrist, coming up over the veined furrows that led to his tapering fingers, as he cried harshly in a tone that once had been soft and mellifluous, and still was deep and chesty: "Still me with flagons, comfort me with apples, for ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... to the Admiral; but I cannot join in an attack on the Secretary of State. For, to my knowledge, their Majesties have no more zealous, laborious or faithful servant than my Lord Nottingham." Finch exerted all his mellifluous eloquence in defence of his brother, and contrived, without directly opposing himself to the prevailing sentiment, to insinuate that Russell's conduct had not been faultless. The vote of censure on Nottingham was not pressed. The vote which pronounced Russell's conduct ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the lax, the purse-proud and the lowly, the coarse and the genteel, the wonderful chapmen and the luckless Schlemihls, Rabbi and Dayan and Shochet, the scribes who wrote the sacred scroll and the cantors who trolled it off mellifluous tongues, and the betting-men who never listened to it; the grimy Russians of the capotes and the earlocks, and the blue-blooded Dons, "the gentlemen of the Mahamad," who ruffled it with swords and knee-breeches in the best Christian society. Those who kneaded ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... awkward wavings of the beam-like arms. None the less, before he had uttered a dozen halting sentences he was carrying the audience with him step by step; moving the great concourse of listeners with his commonplace periods as a mellifluous Hawk could never ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... native tune thundered out fortissimo in naked unison with periodic punctuations of harmony at the close are striking cases in point. Nor should the local color in the delineation of the break of day in the beginning of the third act, and the charmingly felicitous use of mellifluous gongs in the marriage scene be overlooked. Always the effect is musical and dramatically helpful. As for the rest there are many moments of a strange charm in the score, music filled with a haunting tenderness and poetic loveliness, music in which there is a beautiful meeting ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... at me, darling?" he asked in that mellifluous voice of his which no woman had yet been ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... retired. The males remained on duty with punch and wassail, and dropped off one by one into sweet forgetfulness; so that when the rising sun of December looked through the painted windows on mouldering embers and flickering lamps, the vaulted roof was echoing to a mellifluous concert of noses, from the clarionet of the waiting-boy at one end of the hall, to the double bass of the Reverend Doctor, ringing over the empty punch-bowl, ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... mellifluous melody, 'Midst Murcia's misty mounts marine, Meet me by moonlight—marry me, ...
— English as She is Wrote - Showing Curious Ways in which the English Language may be - made to Convey Ideas or obscure them. • Anonymous
... it—of clogging his lines with consonants, and of mistaking inversion of language for poetry. Not one of these faults belongs to Collins. In almost all his poems the words follow their natural order, and are mellifluous beyond those of almost any other verse writer. If the Passions are not described with splendour, there is no such thing as splendour. If the beauties which he sought and attained are unnatural and extravagant, then the tests of correctness and good ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... Isle! Nor can I well conceal my joy that the emblem of Ireland, despised and rejected though she be, is the sweetest-tongued of all music-making things in this vale of tears. For her, no lion, tempest-crowned, for her no prowling bear, for her no screaming eagle—but the harp, mellifluous and tender. And although its liquid strain hath for centuries been touched by sorrow, yet there hath been music in its voice for all the happier listening world, and the day draweth near, please God, when its unfleeting joy ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... more to do with you." And then he, who five minutes before had been shaking my hand with delight because I knew the owner of the parent dog (of his puppies), with a lofty wave of the hand motioned me to depart. Before doing so I soothed his offended dignity by a mellifluous explanation, and he once more, but somewhat loftily, offered me his hand as I bade him farewell. So, in spite of the pleasant diversion, Miss Blunt did ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... was thought to live in Pythagoras: so the sweete, wittie soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his 'Venus and Adonis;' his 'Lucrece;' his sugred 'Sonnets' among his private friends.... As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for Comedy and Tragedy amongst ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... the omnipresent bush-magpie. Here he may warble all the day long on the liquid, mellifluous notes of his Doric flute, fit pipe indeed for academic groves . . . sweetest and brightest, most cheery and sociable ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... the situation very annoying, and she therefore resolved to get one of her sudden attacks of headache. She retired, with signs of disgust on her pretty face, to another corner, and when Borgert joined her soon afterward, she requested him in mellifluous tones to escort ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... Mellifluous streams that watered all the schools Of Academics old and new, with those Surnamed Peripatetics, and the Sect Epicurean, and the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... mellifluous or Pericles heard of these wonderful arts, brachylogies and eikonologies and all the hard names which we have been endeavouring to draw into the light of day, what would they say? Instead of losing temper and applying uncomplimentary ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... collection of declamations, or school rhetorical exercises on set themes; cf. Section 17. (5) Came from Egypt; cf. Section 24; Xois and Thmuis were in that country. (6) Is said to have been appointed professor of rhetoric at Athens by Commodus purely on account of his mellifluous voice; ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... beauty in that University! Think of that rich round-up of creamy dreams! Consider that mellifluous marmalade! And—we can't have any—because you are slightly bald and near-sighted and I am thin and scholarly!" He ran at the ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... and virtuous; and I know that they often said as much to Leonisa, in order to dispose her to receive me as her betrothed; but she had set her heart on Cornelio, the son of Ascanio Rotulo, whom you well know—a spruce young gallant, point-de-vice in his attire, with white hands, curly locks, mellifluous voice, amorous discourse—made up, in short, of amber and sugar-paste, garnished with plumes and brocade. She never cared to bestow a look on my less dainty face, nor to be touched in the least by my assiduous ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... unimaginable speed, The myriads, congregating zenith-ward, Reached the far confines of the utmost sphere, The home of Truth, the dwelling-place of Love, Striking celestial symphonies divine From the resounding sea of melody, That heaved in swells of soft, mellifluous sound, To the blest crowds at whose triumphal tread Its soul of sweetness waked in thrills sublime, The sun stood poised upon the western verge; The moon paused, waiting for the march of earth, That stayed to watch the advent of the stars; And ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... academic bowers, A gift to Glory from the Sylvan powers: But what keen Sage, with all the science fraught, By elder bards or later critics taught, Shall count the cords of his mellifluous shell, Span the vast fabric of his fame, and tell By what strange arts he bade the structure rise— On what deep site the strong foundation lies? This, why should scholiasts labour to reveal? We all can answer it, we all can feel, Ten thousand sympathies, attesting, ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... with eight white horses and a Yankee coachman, originally, no doubt, called Brown, but now answering to the mellifluous appellation of Bruno; A—— with her French cap, and loaded with sundry mysterious looking baskets; I with cloak and bonnet; C—-n with Greek cap, cloak, and cigar; the captain of the Jason also with cloak and cigar, and very cold; ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... to describe the manner in which Mr. Darrell vented this or similar remarks of mocking irony or sarcastic spleen. It was not bitter nor sneering, but in his usual mellifluous level ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Europe. Behind him lies that which, taken with the Divina Commedia, has won for Italy an exaggerated literary reputation. In the thirteenth century there was plenty of poetry hardly inferior to the Lamento of Rinaldo; in the fourteenth comes Petrarch with the curse of mellifluous phrase-making. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... were once dining in one of the little Bohemian restaurants of San Francisco. Two of them made a bet with the others that they could kiss every woman in the room. They went from table to table and in mellifluous accents, plus a strain of hyperbole, explained their predicament to each lady, concluding with a respectful demand for a kiss. Every woman in the room (with the gallant indulgence of her swain) acceded to this amazing request. In fifteen minutes all the kisses ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... shalt thou wake her more! And thou, bright sun, shalt ne'er again, On inland mead, or sea-girt shore, Salute the darling of the plain. Maiden! they bade me o'er thy fate Numbers and strains mellifluous swell, They knew the love I bore thee great,— They knew not what I ne'er ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... down at a little table and began to talk in English, while round us on every side the Spanish language—pure Castilian, and slipshod, mellifluous Andaluz—gushed forth like a ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to be the most enchanting of warblers; and many might be tempted to encage the mellifluous songster, but for the supposed difficulty of procuring proper food for it. In the village of Cossey, near Norwich, an individual has had a nightingale in cage since last April; it is very healthy and lively, and has been wont to charm its owner with its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... know what Dr. Johnson was like, he could have found him in Forster. There was the same social intolerance; the same "dispersion of humbug"; the same loud voice, attuned to a mellifluous softness on occasion, especially with ladies or persons of rank; the love of "talk" in which he assumed the lead—and kept it too; and the contemptuous scorn of what he did not approve. But then all this was backed by admirable training and full knowledge. ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... providing them with their authorities; and it is only by judiciously appreciating these that we may confidently accept their discoveries. Unquestionably the ancients have often introduced into their histories many tales similar to the story of Kirk—popular or party forgeries! The mellifluous copiousness of Livy conceals many a tale of wonder; the graver of Tacitus etches many a fatal stroke; and the secret history of Suetonius too often raises a suspicion of those whispers, Quid rex in aurem reginae dixerit, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... brake; The mellow bullfinch answers from the grove: Nor are the linnets, o'er the flowering furze Poured out profusely, silent. Joined to these, Innumerous songsters, in the freshening shade Of new-sprung leaves, their modulations mix Mellifluous. The jay, the rook, the daw, And each harsh pipe, discordant heard alone, Aid the full concert: while the stock-dove breathes A melancholy murmur through the whole. The Seasons: ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... any rate, somewhat orderly, but the day his cousins say one word more to him than usual, much trouble forthwith arises, at the outburst of delight in his heart. That's why I enjoin upon you not to heed him. From his mouth, at one time, issue sugared words and mellifluous phrases; and at another, like the heavens devoid of the sun, he becomes a raving fool; so whatever you do, don't ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin |
