"Rhythm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "The Descent of Man," remarks that we can no more explain why musical tones, in a certain order and rhythm, afford pleasure to man and the lower animals, than we can account for the pleasantness of certain tastes and odors. We know that sounds, more or less melodious, are produced, during the season of courtship, by many insects, ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... air fanned through the closed blinds of the darkened room, and played with the silvery locks that straggled over the white pillow; the paper rose and fell with a crinkling noise, keeping time to the rhythm of the exhaust. Beyond this there was no movement. The Hon. I. B. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... tenderness; it aspired like a flame and lost itself in light; it grew like a wave till it was vaster than any tenderness or any pity. It was as if her heart rose on the swell of it and was carried away into a rhythm so tremendous that her own pulses of compassion were no longer felt, or felt only as the hushed and delicate vibration of the wave. She recognised her state. It was the blessed state desired as the condition of the ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... smell of mustiness contended feebly with the sickening reek of a cigar which the man was forever relighting and which as often turned cold between his teeth. Outside, unwearying hoofs were beating their deadly rhythm, cloppetty-clop.... ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... francs for her whole resources. It was the edge of the precipice at last. It was that precipice, overhanging depths unseen and terrible, which she was contemplating as she sat, feet swinging gently in the rhythm of meditation, her face serious and quiet. For six weeks she had seen it afar off; now it was ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... lovely," she declared, sorting out two or three sheets of manuscript music from the quantity on the rack before her. "But there's one place—the rhythm, you know—if you could change it. There!—but listen. First I'm going to play it straight through to you." And she dropped her fingers to the keyboard. The next moment a tenderly sweet melody—with only a chord now and then for accompaniment—filled Arkwright's soul with rapture. ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A deadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here." Soames took up the book and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames's laugh was a short, single, and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. "What ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... bookish clan that cannot understand The rhythm and the cadences they never can command— But what is that to him that knows and touches all the strings Of hearts responsive to his strain ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... gentleman whom possibly you know, was in company with our friend Clarke; and talking of Scottish music, Miller expressed an ardent ambition to be able to compose a Scots air. Mr. Clarke, partly by way of joke, told him to keep to the black keys of the harpsichord, and preserve some kind of rhythm, and he would infallibly compose a Scots air. Certain it is, that in a few days, Mr. Miller produced the rudiments of an air, which Mr. Clarke, with some touches and corrections, fashioned into the tune in question. Ritson, you know, has the same story of the "Black keys;" but this account ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... some—old really, as that of Velasquez and Frans Hals—swing their brushes from their spinal columns down their forearms (Knight's biceps measure seventeen inches) and out through their finger-tips, with something of the rhythm and force of an old-time blacksmith welding a tire. Broad chests, big boilers, strong arms, straight legs, and stiff backbones have much to do with success in life—more than we give them credit for. Instead of measuring men's heads, it would be just as well, once in a while, to slip the tape ...
— The Man In The High-Water Boots - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... it, keeping time with a certain number of steps. For instance, while taking eight steps, draw in a breath and exhale during the next eight steps. You may make this six, eight, ten or twelve steps if you like. If you have some piece of music in mind that carries with it a rhythm that accommodates itself to your steps while walking, and if each inhalation and exhalation takes up an even number of steps, you will find that you are swinging along with a sense of harmony and pleasure that will make distances pass away and cause you to be unconscious of the ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... moment, you should, for sheer affection, abandon your own personality in favor of his, so that you may become, as nearly as possible, the person whom it is your business to represent. Naturally, if you have any ear at all, your sentences will tend to fall into the rhythm of his style; and if you have any temperament (whatever that may be) your imagined mood will diffuse an ineluctable aroma of ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... [Teutonic] troops in the nights preceding the attack had pushed forward closer to the enemy and had assumed positions in readiness for the forward rush. In the night from May 1 to 2 the artillery fired in slow rhythm at the enemy's positions. Pauses in the fire served the pioneers for cutting the wire entanglements. On the 2d of May at 6 A.M. an overwhelming artillery fire, including field guns and running up to the heaviest calibres, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... then?—Well, there are several reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... for him divinely done. Even when his eyes were on the dark trail ahead he saw only the dusky loveliness of curved cheek, the face luminous with a radiance some women are never privileged to know, the rhythm of head and body and slender legs that was part of ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... ringing—Madre Beata! For such a festa as never had been in Venice! The hearts of the happy people throbbed to their rhythm, while each gave something to the splendor of the day—were it but the color of a mantle, or the grace of a jubilant motion, or the radiance of a beaming face—there was no festa in Venice of which the people ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... wall near the door. He was obviously unconscious of himself, of the possibility that he might be observed. His eyes were pouncing from blaze of jewels to white neck, to laughing, sensuous face, to jewels again or to lithe, young form, scantily clad and swaying in masculine arm in rhythm with the waltz. It gave Arkwright a qualm of something very like terror to note the contrast between his passive figure and his roving eyes with their wolfish gleam—like Blucher, when he looked out over London and said: "God! What ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... from mental bondage and fitted to perform the work of intellectual emancipation for the rest of Europe. Thus the essential characteristic of Italy is diversity, controlled and harmonized by an ideal rhythm of progressive movement.[1] We who are mainly occupied in this book with the Italian genius as it expressed itself in society, scholarship, fine art, and literature, at its most brilliant period ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... curse. It throws its jargon into the sweetest harmony. What was it that silenced Sheridan's voice and shattered the golden sceptre with which he swayed parliaments and courts? What foul sprite turned the sweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless ballad? What brought down the majestic form of one who awed the American Senate with his eloquence, and after a while carried him home dead drunk from the office of Secretary of State? What was ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... went through the hall to the back porch and down the steps to the orchard, in one hand writing-materials, in the other pieces of stale bread for the birds; and as she walked she hummed a gay little tune to whose rhythm she unconsciously kept step. ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... pronounced me to be a very tolerable waltzer, "for an Englishman," and I led my partner to the circle already formed with the "air capable" which the object of such praise is entitled to assume. There was a certain languid rhythm in the air they were playing which rather offended my ears, but I suspected nothing until, observing the few couples who had already descended into the arena, I became aware that they were twirling about with all the antiquated grace of "la valse a trois temps." Of course my partner would ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... they raised or bowed the head to listen) gave to the group a strange air of animation and anxiety. My lord was to the front, crouching a little forth, his hand raised as for silence: a man turned to stone. And still the sounds continued, breathlessly renewed with a precipitate rhythm. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Forecast Little Girls Science The Earth The Muse and the Poet The Spinster Brotherhood The Tavern of Last Times The Two Ages If I Were Warned Forward In England Karma The Gossips Together Petition A Waft of Perfume The Plough Go Plant a Tree Pain's Purpose Memory's Mansion Old Rhythm and Rhyme All in a Coach and Four Songs of a Country Home Worthy the name ...
— The Englishman and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... slow and stately rhythm, my voice rising and falling softly, after the manner of a Gregorian chant, as I dwelt on the piety that had succeeded the Lord of Pesaro's brave exploits, and how upon his return from the stricken field he had repaired straight to his closet, his battered and bloody harness on his back, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... fiddle, and the shrill scream of it filled the barn. Tone he did not aspire to, but he played with Caledonian verve and swing, and kept the snapping time. It was mad, harsh music of the kind that sets the blood tingling and the feet to move in rhythm, though the exhilarating effect of it was rather spoiled by the efforts of the little French Canadian who had another fiddle and threw in clanging chords ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... creeds, religious, social and esthetic. The clash of two generations became one of the most popular themes. Caesar Flaischlen, a Suabian, handled it most thoughtfully and effectively in Martin Lehnhardt. Though the author modestly called it "dramatic scenes," it was a play presenting with spirited rhythm a phase of the spiritual revolution and moral revaluation then taking place, and in the orthodox uncle and the radical nephew he created two figures full of real dramatic life. The well-to-do and well-satisfied ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... into other emotions as the old hymn rose in the low-ceilinged room. There was no accompaniment of any musical instrument, just a harmonious blending of the deep-toned voices of the brethren with the sweet voices of the sisters. The music swelled in full, deliberate rhythm, its calm earnestness bearing witness to the fact that every word of the hymn was uttered in a spirit ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... minute, with irregular contractions, the blood being sent through the arteries with irregular force, as evidenced by the varying volume of the pulse. At this time, with or without cardiac pain, which upsets the rhythm of the heart, the patient becomes frightened at the feeling of impending demise, and the cerebral reflexes begin to add to the cardiac difficulty. The breathing becomes nervously rapid, besides that which is due to the rapid ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... the Professor, "that what we call music does not appear as such to savages. Noise and sound are not distinguished by them. The beating of their crude tom toms is the only thing that appeals to their ears. That is simply noise. Rhythm and time are recognized, principally because all their music is associated by some ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... was then placed on the ground, and raising itself straight on end, in the attitude it assumes on desert roads to attract travelers, began to sway from right to left, following the rhythm of the music. The Aissoua, whirling more and more rapidly in constantly narrowing circles, plunged his hand once more into the basket, and pulled out two of the most venomous reptiles of the desert of Sous; serpents thicker than a man's arm, two or three feet ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... raking his hair with his fingers as he was wont to do when at all puzzled—"The problem is—'why do I write poetry if nobody wants to read it'—and 'what's the good'? Now, in the first place, I will reply that I am not sure I write 'poetry.' I try to express my identity in rhythm and rhyme—but after all, that expression of myself may be prose, and wholly without interest to the majority. You see? I put it to you quite plainly. Then as to 'what's the good?'—I would argue ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... music rises; the cataract seems to seize its own rhythm and sing it over again, so that the ear and soul are roused by a double vibration. This is some effect of the wind, causing echoes to the thundering anthem. It is very sublime, giving the effect of a spiritual ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... sailed softly, steadily now, as if it would not jar the rhythm of the voice telling, with soft inflections, with long, rushing meter, the story of that other Revenge, of the men who had gone from these shores, under the great Sir ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... out with long poles. Everyone partook in silence—grim silence that was ominous. And after a while Choflo danced a sacred dance around the fire. He wore an anklet of dried seeds that rattled above his right foot; as he stepped over the sand in rhythm with the music of a wind instrument made of a long-necked calabash, and the thrumming of a snake-skin drum played by two assistants, he called upon Tumwah to look down upon them and to pity their unhappy plight. Then both dancer and feasters went quietly to their shelters ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... masterpieces, as they were regarded two generations ago, reminding one of the witchery of Ariosto; yet there is no great variety in these poems such as we find in Byron, no great force of passion or depth of sentiment, but a sort of harmonious rhythm,—more highly prized in the earlier part of the century than in the latter, since Wordsworth and Tennyson have made us familiar with what is deeper and richer, as well as more artistic, in language and versification. But no one has denied Scott's originality ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... along the sunny, dusty road, Randy hummed a merry little tune, her footsteps keeping time to its rhythm and her heart beating faster as she thought of her ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... night's climactic quality raised her spirits to the point where they were irrepressible, and she danced her garments off one by one, using each in turn as a foil for her art until there was nothing left with which to multiply rhythm and she danced before the long French mirrors yet more gracefully ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... rocks of his domain, were interspersed with naive meditations which kept him motionless for hours together before his smiling flowers—those sweet companions!—or crouching in a niche of the rocks before some species of algae, a moss, a seaweed, studying their mysteries; seeking perhaps a rhythm in their fragrant depths, like a bee its honey. He often admired, without purpose, and without explaining his pleasure to himself, the slender lines on the petals of dark flowers, the delicacy of their rich tunics of gold or purple, green or azure, the fringes, so profusely beautiful, ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... sense of the words suddenly flashed upon him again, they bore a new significance. He went in meekly, and borrowed fourpence of the operatic villain. Then he took the 'bus for Scotland Yard. There was a not ill-looking servant girl in the 'bus. The rhythm of the vehicle shaped itself into rhymes in his brain. He forgot all about his situation and his object. He had never really written an epic—except "Paradise Lost"—but he composed lyrics about wine and women and often wept to think how miserable he was. But nobody ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... with infinite incidents—inequalities of work, war, and pastime, inequalities of sleep—the symmetry of man. Only in death and "at attention" is that symmetry complete in attitude. Nevertheless, it rules the dance and the battle, and its rhythm is not to be destroyed. All the more because this hand holds the goad and that the harrow, this the shield and that the sword, because this hand rocks the cradle and that caresses the unequal heads of children, is this rhythm the law; and grace and strength are inflections ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... with hypnotic effect to the whole dancing circle. At times men tear their hair, cut their flesh or even mutilate their limbs for life. The "tom-tom," or Indian drum, adds to the power of monotonous rhythm and to the ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... Ole Miss' is all by Mrs. Renshaw, and therefore of first quality. "Some One I Know" is a lightly amatory piece of tuneful rhythm. "Night of Rain" gives a peculiarly pleasing aspect to a type of scene not usually celebrated in verse. The only jarring note is the rather mundane metaphor which compares the trees to a "beautiful mop". Though Mrs. Renshaw holds unusual ideas regarding the use of art in ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Westminster Abbey. The only change in text I should adopt is to avoid the constant enumeration of the list of rulers and the musical instruments. In doing this, I am aware that I am sacrificing something of beauty in the rhythm, but, on the other hand, for narrative purpose the interest is not broken. The first time the announcement is made, that is, by the Herald, it should be in a perfectly loud, clear and toneless voice, such as you ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... was his especial concern, and he was more than once afraid he had discovered it: Elizabeth was not allowed to go to dancing-school— dancing and vanity were somehow related in her uncle's mind; so the vital, vivid little creature expressed the rhythm that was in her by dancing without instruction, keeping time with loud, elemental cadences of her own composing, not always melodious, but always in time. Sometimes she danced thus in the school-room; sometimes in Mrs. Todd's "ice-cream parlor" at the farther end ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... about his heart, As they had need. Mark him, and mark the part He plays hereafter. Odysseus is his name, The wily Ithacan, deathless in his fame And in his substance deathless, since he goes Immortal forth and back wherever blows The thunder of thy rhythm, O blind King, First of the tribe of them with songs to sing, Fountain of storied music and its end— For who the poet since who doth not tend To essay thy leaping measure, or call down Thy nodded approbation for his crown And all his wages? Other chiefs sat there In order due: as Pyrrhos, very fair ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... utter Crying in the night and darkness, Sang how unto the Red Planet Mars he gave the Night's First Watches, Henry Wadsworth, whose adnomen (Coming awkward, for the accents, Into this his latest rhythm) Write we as Protracted Fellow, Or in Latin, LONGUS COMES— Buy the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... was not mechanical, was not attained without labour and care. In Dr. John Brown's works, in his essay on Thackeray, there is an example of a proof- sheet on which the master has made corrections, and those corrections bring the passage up to his accustomed level, to the originality of his rhythm. Here is the piece:— ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... a sound of the firing of machine guns [?]. At first it was like the barking, of all the dogs in Belgium. I thought it was the dogs of Belgium, till I discovered a deadly rhythm ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... to be young, when every vein throbs with energy and life, when the rhythm of life beats its measures into our hearts and calls upon us to keep step with Joy and Gladness, as we march confidently down the white road which leads to the Land of our Desire. God made every young thing to be ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... ate and drank and made merry. Then he filled the cup and taking it in his hand, said to the blonde, "O new-moon- face, let us hear somewhat pleasing." So she took the lute and tuning it, made music thereon with such melodious trills and modulations that the place danced to the rhythm; after which she played a lively measure ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... the morning," Ghitza urged them. But soon the breath of the flutist gave way. His lips swelled and blood spurted from his nose. The guitar player's fingers were so numb he could no longer move them. Then some of the people beat the rhythm of the dance with their open palms. Ghitza was still dancing on. They broke all the glasses of the inn and all the bottles beating time to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... in the middle of the road, listening with rapt attention. It was pleasant hearing the hum of the spruce, though it was all on one note, with no rests, so that there was neither melody nor rhythm about it. ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... imploring the hastening of light, as men pray continually without reason for things that can but come in a due order. I still went forward a little, because when I sat down my loneliness oppressed me like a misfortune; and because my feet, going painfully and slowly, yet gave a little balance and rhythm to ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... book. And someone else finds a handkerchief. And the boots are disgustingly encrusted. A sound comes from an old man's open mouth. A young boy looks at a young girl. A boy plays with the button on his trousers. On a podium an agile body rocks To the rhythm of its serious instrument. On a collar lies a ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... three, four sheets. Suddenly, she raised her head and hid the sheets in her bodice ... She seemed to be listening ... Raoul also listened ... Whence came that strange sound, that distant rhythm? ... A faint singing seemed to issue from the walls ... yes, it was as though the walls themselves were singing! ... The song became plainer ... the words were now distinguishable ... he heard a voice, a very beautiful, very soft, very captivating voice ... ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... the rhythm of slow-moving rocker, Their sweet dreamy fancies are fostered and fed; No more to low singing the cradle goes swinging— The child of this era is ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... When the rhythm begins to assert itself, the best way to practise is with the head under water. Then the pupil can think of his arm and leg movements without the bother and exertion of holding his head ...
— Swimming Scientifically Taught - A Practical Manual for Young and Old • Frank Eugen Dalton and Louis C. Dalton
... to a man of muscle? Don't you know that I pride myself upon my strength! The old proverb says that cleanliness is next to godliness; if that is so, I give the third place to strength. What a pity we cannot say 'muscleness,' to keep up the rhythm! Do you know, Bessie, if ministers had more muscle, I should ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... in silent rhythm; the chief sound was that made by Watson's leather-heeled shoes, drowning out, for once, the everlasting tinkling undertone of those unseen fairy-bells; that running cadence, never ceasing, silver, liquid, like the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... followed as fast as we could, but it was at a respectful distance. Nearer and nearer we came to the open field, and by the same token, quicker and nearer and hotter came the German shells. We were continually on the duck. Our progress had an accordion rhythm that made distance come slow. We came to a dead mule in the road. He had been bombed recently, and was not ready for visitors. Now a mule is not nature's masterpiece at his best; but in the transition state between a mule and hamburger, a mule leaves much ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... real. We tend to be misled by language; we speak, for instance, of 'the state of things'; but what we call a state is the appearance which a change assumes in the eyes of a being who, himself, changes according to an identical or analogous rhythm. "Take, for example," says Bergson, "a summer day. We are stretched on the grass, we look around us—everything is at rest—there is absolute immobility—no change. But the grass is growing, the leaves of the trees are developing ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... joy was hers that good dancers take when they have found a good dancer for a partner. The grace of those slow-moving, certain muscles of his accorded perfectly with the rhythm of the music. There was never doubt, never a betrayal of indecision. She glanced at Bert, dancing "tough" with Mary, caroming down the long floor with more than one collision with the increasing ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... the passions of others, shows itself in the most direct way of all, that of dream. 'Last night,' he writes, at Innismaan, 'after walking in a dream among buildings with strangely intense light on them, I heard a faint rhythm of music beginning far away on some ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... voice changed to a rhythmic, cadenced chant that was almost a song. Her face became rapt and introspective as she rocked slowly from side to side. The rhythm was familiar and then he recognized it—the unintelligible music he had often heard coming from the barracks late at night when no men were around—the voiceless humming that ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... the principle is one that must be handled and applied with the most delicate tact, or virtue goes out of it. We must distinguish between similarity and sameness. The ordered recurrence of accents is what makes the rhythm of verse; but for all that, there is a difference between poetry and sing-song, just as there is a difference between melody and monotony. Moreover, the taste of mankind undergoes change as to the sorts of repetition which it is disposed to tolerate. ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... love for music and their skill in dancing Negritos betray other striking Negroid characteristics. Their music is still of the most primitive type, and their instruments are crude. But if their notes are few no fault can be found with the rhythm, the chief requisite for an accompaniment to a dance. Their instruments are various. The simple jew's-harp cut from a piece of bamboo and the four-holed flutes (called "ban'-sic") made of mountain cane (figs. 6, 7, Pl. XLVI) are very common but do not rise to the dignity of dance instruments. Rarely ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... children in a London court or alley when a barrel-organ appears on the scene. Without having any one to direct or teach them, they will come together and dance in couples, often with abundant grace and charm. Nature is their tutor. Her own rhythm, of which the musician must have caught an echo, is passing through their ears into their hearts and into their limbs. No instinct is so spontaneous as this. A child will whistle or sing while his mind is engaged on other things. If he is happy he will dance about as naturally, and almost ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... Lays and rewrote them in an excellent imitation of Aytoun, but on the opposite side. In view of his own later developments such a line as "Drive the trembling Papists backwards" has an ironic humour. But one wonders what Aytoun himself would have made of a small boy who took his rhythm and sometimes his very words, turned his hero into a traitor ("false Montrose") and his traitor Argyll into a hero! I have left ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... 3. Rhythm of the Phrase.—Some way back, I used a word which still awaits an application. Each phrase, I said, was to be comely; but what is a comely phrase? In all ideal and material points, literature, being a representative art, ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that he knew, a song so bubbling over with mirth and sheer happiness that the whole market-place seemed to wear a broad smile and the wooden shoes of the peasants kept time with clumping thumps in the dusty road to the rhythm ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... games, where the tone color is so close to the meaning that any exaggeration of that color by dancing and chanting only makes the story clearer. The writer would like to see some one try Dryden's Alexander's Feast, or Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon. Certainly in those poems the decorative rhythm and the meaning are ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... Spanish. The author has endeavoured to preserve the language adapted to his characters; and where it is (and this is but rarely) taken from actual Scripture, he has made as little alteration, even of words, as the rhythm would permit. The reader will recollect that the book of Genesis does not state that Eve was tempted by a demon, but by "the Serpent[88];" and that only because he was "the most subtil of all the beasts of the field." Whatever ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... nature is his shrine. Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea, In earth's and air's emotion or repose, In every star's august serenity, And in the rapture of the flaming rose. There seek him if ye would not seek in vain, There, in the rhythm and music of the Whole; Yea, and for ever in the human soul Made stronger and ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... first only unwinds a roll ready prepared. In principle, it might be accomplished almost instantaneously, like releasing a spring. But the ascending movement, which corresponds to an inner work of ripening or creating, endures essentially, and imposes its rhythm on the first, ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... yet," she said, slipping into his arms. She didn't care to know the name of the dance. All she knew was the ecstasy of the moment in the flowing, melting rhythm. Jo had the easy assurance of the dancer born, and she went where he willed, as if she were floating on silver wires. Finally, Sleepy Sandy, watching them in envious admiration, was aware that he had played as long as the law of ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... the principles of arrangement, with brief comment on the periods of design which have most influenced printing. Treats of harmony, balance, proportion, and rhythm; motion; symmetry and variety; ornament, esthetic and symbolic. ...
— The Uses of Italic - A Primer of Information Regarding the Origin and Uses of Italic Letters • Frederick W. Hamilton
... he was very far from possessing Tennyson's fine ear for melody. His skill in versification, sometimes striking enough, was evidently artificial; he overstudied metrical expression and overrated its value so as sometimes to write, what were little better than nonsense-verses, for the rhythm. He had an incurable propensity for refrains, and when he had once caught a harmonious cadence, appeared to think it could not be too often repeated. Poe's name is usually mentioned in connection with The Raven, a poem which he published about five years ago. It had an immense run, and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... high-souled men as well as artists, lovers of the really beautiful in life as well as masters of their medium. Their art has no conflict with morality; it is rather its greatest stimulus and stay. To the lesser brood with the gift of melody, of rhythm, with an eye for color or form, but without a true perspective of human values, we must repeat sadly, or even sternly, the poet's reproof: "Can'st thou from heaven, O child Of ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... than ever against a black background as the day darkened and the twilight approached. Its sound now was a roar and a hum—many varying notes blending into a steady clamour, which was not without a certain rhythm and music—like the simultaneous beating of a million mighty ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... form of poetic utterance. But where there is no melody within, there will be no melody without. It is in vain to attempt the setting of spiritual discords to physical music. The mere practical patience and self- restraint requisite to work out rhythm when fixed on, will be wanting; nay, the fitting rhythm will never be found, the subject itself being arhythmic; and thus we shall have, or, rather, alas! do have, a wider and wider divorce of sound and sense, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... the tree flows toward foliage and fruit. Every drop of blood in the bird beats toward flight and song. In a conscious being this movement toward perfection must take a conscious form. This conscious form is happiness,—the satisfaction of the vital impulse,—the rhythm of the inward life,—the melody of a heart that has found its keynote. To say that all men long for this is simply to confess that all men are human, and that their thoughts and feelings are an essential part of their life. Virtue means ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... hoping that it would not be with the airs of Lucia and Traviata that she would become famous. As if in answer, the child began to hum the celebrated waltz, a moment after a beautiful Ave Maria, composed by a Fleming at the end of the fifteenth century, a quick, sobbing rhythm, expressive of naive petulance at delay in the Virgin's intercession. Mr. Innes called it natural music—music which the modern Church abhorred and shamefully ostracised; and the conversation turned on ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... unaware of this peculiarity. The suggestion of sound by sound was as hidden from her as it was deep-seated in her and strong. And this was not all: the riming might have passed unperceived by others too, but for the accompanying tendency to rhythm as well. Nor was this by any means all yet: there was in her a great leaning to poetic utterance generally, and that arising from a poetic habit of thought. She had in her everything essential to the making of a poetess; yet of the whole she was profoundly ignorant; and had any one sought ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... which Coue considers most satisfactory is this: "Day by day, in every way, I'm getting better and better." This is very easy to say, the youngest child can understand it, and it possesses a rudimentary rhythm, which exerts a lulling effect on the mind and so aids in calling up the Unconscious. But if you are accustomed to any other version, such as that recommended by the translators of Baudouin, it would be better to continue to use it. Religious minds ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... chorus of dancers and the performances of the men in the Egyptian chapters represent without much doubt public dancing performances. We get singing, dancing, mimicry and pantomime in the early stages of Greek art, and the development of the dance rhythm in music is ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... old-fashioned hat tied under her round chin, and a gay flowered muslin dress that floated about her with an easy swaying motion. She wore, too, a pair of soft low-heeled slippers, that gave forth a soothing accompaniment to the rhythm of her movements. She was surrounded by a perfect bodyguard of children. They danced behind her and ahead of her, they clung to her hands and peeped from the flowing muslin draperies, while she moved among them, serene and smiling like a great ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... and his soul; he is as powerless to detach his work from his past as he is to detach himself from it; and one of the saddest penalties of his misdoings is their survival in his work. The dulness of the poet's ear shows itself in the defective melody of his verse; for both metre and rhythm have a physiological basis; they represent and express the harmony which is in the body when the body is finely attuned to the spirit. Dull senses and a sluggish body are never found in connection with a great command of the melodic ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... very pretty, slim and strong; their faces often have quite a refined outline, a pointed chin, a small mouth and full but well-cut lips; their eyes are beautiful, with a soft and sensual expression; and the rhythm of their movements, their light and supple walk, give them a charm hardly ever to be found in Europe. The men, too, are good to look at. Considering the intelligence and thriftiness of the race, it is doubly regrettable that ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... are a temptation to Scott; they hang about his path with their monotonous and mechanical jugglery, their horrors made all the more intolerable through the degraded verse of Lewis—a bad example which Scott instinctively refused to follow, though he most unaccountably praised Lewis's sense of rhythm. The close of the eighteenth century cannot be fully understood, nor the progress of poetry in the nineteenth, without some study of the plague of ghosts and skeletons which has left its mark on The Ancient Mariner, from which Goethe and Scott ...
— Sir Walter Scott - A Lecture at the Sorbonne • William Paton Ker
... with certain periods of time and states of the body. When once acquired, they often remain constant throughout life. Several other points of resemblance between instincts and habits could be pointed out. As in repeating a well-known song, so in instincts, one action follows another by a sort of rhythm; if a person be interrupted in a song, or in repeating anything by rote, he is generally forced to go back to recover the habitual train of thought: so P. Huber found it was with a caterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock; for if he took a caterpillar which had completed ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... dancing into a system, expressive of all the different passions. For example, the dance of the Furies, so represented, would create complete terror among those who witnessed them. The Greek philosopher, Aristotle, ranked dancing with poetry, and said that certain dancers, with rhythm applied to gesture, could express manners, passions, and actions. The most eminent Greek sculptors studied the attitude of the dancers for their art of imitating the passions. In a classical Greek song, Apollo, one of the twelve greater gods, ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... in two parts, though when my companions came to hear it, as they did the next day, they reported it as in three. We visited the place together afterwards, and the discrepancy was readily explained. As to pitch, the song is in three parts, but as to rhythm and character, it is in two; the first half being composed of double notes, the second of single notes. The resemblance to the Nashville's song lies entirely in the first part; the notes of the concluding portion are not run together ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... appear, since through it, most lofty and most original ideas may be as fitly, sufficiently, and easily expressed as if it were by the Latin itself, which cannot show its virtue in things rhymed because of accidental ornaments which are connected therewith—that is, the rhyme and the rhythm, or the regulated measure; as it is with the beauty of a lady when the splendour of the jewels and of the garments excite more admiration than she herself. He, therefore, who wishes to judge well of a lady looks at her when ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... and poetry. It was the attempted imitation of those ancient natural strains of thought which in later times gave rise to poetry in our sense of the word, that is to say, to poetry as an art, with its counted syllables, its numerous epithets, its rhyme and rhythm, and all the conventional attributes ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... right enough, and many of the men moved heavily and awkwardly to the slow rhythm of the motion. It is not easy to dance with such ornaments as are provided free and gratis by the paternal Prince to ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... her eyes indolently, and presently, lulled by the drowsy rhythm of the waves breaking at the foot of the cliff, she ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... eyes of woe, And clotted holes the khaki couldn't hide. Oh, the clammy brow of anguish! the livid, foam-flecked lips! The reeling ranks of ruin swept along! The limb that trailed, the hand that failed, the bloody finger-tips! And oh, the dreary rhythm ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... Caliban was drunk, and, after singing 'firing' and 'requiring,' would naturally sing 'trenchering.' There is a drunken swing in the original line which is entirely lost in the precise, curtailed rhythm of— ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... melody enough in the old music, but its rhythm was very subtle, and there was no suggestion of catchiness in it. Melody of a familiar folk-song or dance type now came in, divided into regular periods with strongly-marked rhythms. This may be seen clearly in, for example, Morley's "ballets"—part-songs that could be danced to. Clear, ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... goat-skin pipes of Lower Brittany; the music wild, weird, appealing to the passion if not melodious to the ear. At any rate the effect was inspiriting. First, the men danced, the maidens seating themselves round the dancers and chanting the following words, to the rhythm of which they swayed ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... to give you a proper mental picture. If you had left me alone I'd have finished it ten minutes ago. The rest moves with accelerated rhythm. It begins with the cracking of a stick in the forest. ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... suppose that the remedy lies in waiting for monographs from the research of the laboratory is to have lost a sense of the rhythm of actual affairs. That is not the way things come about: we grow into a new point of view: only afterwards, in looking back, do we see the landmarks of our progress. Thus it is customary to say that Adam Smith dates the change from the old mercantilist economy to the capitalistic ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... of hands. The following dialogue takes place between the two lines, all of the players in a line asking or answering the questions in unison. The lines rock forward and backward during the dialogue from one foot to another, also swinging the clasped hands forward and backward in time to the rhythm of the movement and the words. The time ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... Carried away by the rhythm, and the pleasure of treading the soft grass under their feet, the dancers quickened their pace. The chain of young folks disconnected for a moment, was reformed, and twisted in and out among the trees; sometimes in light, sometimes in shadow, until ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... The next out-breath, expected of the long rhythm, did not take place. Neither did the white, long moustache rise up. Instead, the cheeks, under the whiskers, puffed; the eyelids lifted, exposing blue eyes, choleric and fully and immediately conscious; the right hand ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... met her in mantilla and high-heeled shoes, her fan half shading her face, you would have declared, despite Miss Felicia's protest, that only the click of the castanets was needed to send her whirling to their rhythm. Had she tied that same mantilla close under her lovely chin, and passed you with upturned eyes and trembling lips, you would have sworn that the Madonna from the neighboring church had strayed from its frame in ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... enraptured and awed, as their wondrous volume of rhythm rang and thundered out. Sweet sopranos and mellow contraltos; ringing tenors and deep basses; first one, then the other, back and forth responding to each other, then all together; marvellous music ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... who performed his jig dance to the rhythm of "Gunga Din" when he was told he faced another adventure, Brennan and John were in Gibson's office before 10 o'clock the next morning. They found Gibson alone in his ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... told me that he left the naked graveyard repeating it to himself, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do," conscious less of the words than of the august rhythm falling in with the pulse ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... would be incredible if it were not true. His brief and dim experience of married life seems hardly to have affected him. As a critic of art and ethics, as the writer of facile magnificent sentences, full of beauty and rhythm, as the composer of word-structures, apparently logical in form but deeply prejudiced and inconsequent in thought, he became one of the great influences of the day, and wielded not only power but real domination. The widespread delusion of ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the River Time, As it flows through the realm of Tears, With a faultless rhythm and a musical rhyme, And a broader sweep and a surge sublime As it blends ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the tall, lean figure soberly clad in black betokened the monk or the scholar, but claimed no kinship with them that toiled in the woodlands or won a living from the dangerous sea. Leaning against a giant beech that rocked in wild rhythm with the storm, he watched the wind and tide at their work of devastation, an odd smile of satisfaction playing about the corners ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... twenty-two when Orville Platt, making his initial Wisconsin trip for the wholesale grocery house he represented, first beheld her piquant Irish profile, and heard her deft manipulation of the keys. Orville had the fat man's sense of rhythm and love of music. He had a buttery tenor voice, too, of which he was ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... his science consists of {78} invention and rhythm, and this is the simple body of poetry, invention as regards the subject matter and rhythm as regards the verse, which he afterwards clothes with all the sciences. To which the painter rejoins that he is governed by the same ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... and horror he had encountered on his journey. The curves and spires of glowing plastic passed him, lighted with a million hues. He realized that his whole life was entangled in the very beauty of this wonderful city. Everything he had ever hoped or dreamed lay sheltered here in the ever-changing rhythm of colors and shapes and sounds. And now, he knew, he would soon see his beloved city burning once again, turning to flames and ashes in a heart-breaking memorial to the age-old fear of ...
— The Link • Alan Edward Nourse
... loose?" he ejaculated. He knew every sound of the foothill country, but this was strange to him. A kind of snort, a sort of hiss; mechanical in its regularity, startling in its strangeness, it came across the valley with the unbroken rhythm of a watch-tick. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... move to the cadence of a tune. . . . Sometimes, as in the 'Marshes of Glynn' and in the best parts of 'Sunrise', there is a cosmic rhythm that is like unto the rhythmic beating of the heart of God, of which Poe and Lanier ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... chapters of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul's Epistles. The Bible and our elder English poets best suited the organ-like tones of her voice, which required for their full effect a certain solemnity and majesty of rhythm.' She once expressed to a younger friend, who shared her opinions, her sense of the loss which they had in being unable to practise the old ordinances of family prayer. 'I hope,' she says, 'we are well out of that phase in which the most philosophic view of the past was held to be a smiling survey ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley
... poem, in which shone the sun that Saadi, that Hafiz, have set in their pulsing strophes. Only, neither the rhythm of Saadi, nor that of Pindar, could have expressed the ecstasy—full of confusion and stupefaction—which seized the delicious girl when the error in which an iron hand had caused her to live ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... method of softening skins by beating and treading upon them illustrates the common use of rhythm and song as a means of holding the attention to what otherwise ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... voice that had the rhythm of music and the hush of veneration in it, he quoted: "'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall ...
— The Song of our Syrian Guest • William Allen Knight
... kept time to the rhythm of the song. "The hour that brought her the scent of the Rose—she ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... may be taken to task for rendering lisiere "fringes," but the actual English equivalent "list" is not only ambiguous, not only too homely in its specific connotation, but wrong in rhythm. And "selvage," escaping the first and last objections, may be thought to incur the middle one. Moreover, while both words signify a well-defined edge, lisiere has a sense—special enough to be noted in dictionaries—of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... is held in highest reverence by its own special admirers. The patriotic fervour with which Lord Tennyson has done almost all his laureate work, the lucid splendour of his style, the perfect music of his rhythm, and the stinging sharpness with which he has sometimes chastised contemporary sins, have all combined to win for him a far wider popularity than even that accorded to the fine lyrical passion of Mrs. Browning, or to the deep-thoughted and splendid, but often perplexing and ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... after hours had passed, that she had ceased to be tired and that her body, wafted by an involuntary rhythm, was as light as thistle-down on ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... The rhythm of the meter is also varied by the alternating of end-stopped and run-on lines, as in the last quotation. An end-stopped line has a pause at the end, usually indicated by some mark of punctuation. A run-on line should be read closely with the following line with only a ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... Longfellow family alone, that he broke now and then into a quotation from some of the modern Italian poets he knew by heart (preferably Giusti), and syllabled their verse with an exquisite Roman accent and a bewitching Florentine rhythm. Now and then at these times he brought out a faded Italian anecdote, faintly smelling of civet, and threadbare in its ancient texture. He liked to speak of Goldoni and of Nota, of Niccolini and Manzoni, of Monti and Leopardi; and if you came to America, of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... knowledge," the magic of the Kabalists and of the Tantrika worship, often Sorcery of the worst description. (3) Guhya-Vidya, knowledge of the mystic powers residing in Sound (Ether), hence in the Mantras (chanted prayers or incantations) and depending on the rhythm and melody used; in other words a magical performance based on Knowledge of the Forces of Nature and their correlation; and (4) Atma-Vidya, a term which is translated simply "Knowledge of the Soul," true Wisdom by the Orientalists, but which means ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... Robert Shaw, This bright March morn I stand, And hear the distant spring come up the land; Knowing that what I hear is not unheard Of this boy soldier and his negro band, For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead, For all the fatal rhythm of their tread. The land they died to save from death and shame Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name, And by her pangs ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... command fell imperiously upon his ears, the strokes of the oars ceased, their blades sank with a loud splash into the water, and at the same instant from the temple steps Hermon was greeted by the solemn notes of the chorus, from whose rhythm his own name rang forth again and again like ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... harmonium screaming in amazing discords, and the deep and untuneful voices of some members of the congregation drowning the ladies and placing a general discord upon everything. Especially distressing was Aunt Elizabeth, who evidently loved to sing hymns but had little idea of melody or rhythm, and was influenced entirely by a copious sentiment which overflowed into her eyes and trembled at ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... Tom Sheffield, and his cousin, Madame de Rhouel, a Creole, who laughed as incessantly as a bird sings. It was growing dusk, and the distant rumbling of the carriages in the Avenue of the Champs-Elysees sounded like some somnolent rhythm. There was a delicate perfume of flowers; the lamps had not been brought in yet, and chatting and laughing filled the room with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the idol, cross-legged against the wall of the entrance to the conical hut, were the musicians beating a monotonous rhythm upon big and small drums and twanging a primitive lyre of five strings. Just as Marufa and MYalu took their respective places without among the wizards and the chiefs, a young goat skipped into the open and stared inquisitively at the Keeper of the Fires. As the man waved the animal ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... the theme; with us an unvalued art, because our translators have usually been the jobbers of booksellers; but no inglorious one among our French and Italian rivals. In this poem, if the reader's ear be guided by the compressed sense of the massive lines, he may feel a rhythm which, should they be read like our modern metre, he will find wanting; here the fulness of the thoughts forms their own cadences. The mind is musical as well as the ear. One verse running into another, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... be rendered save by actors strung up to a pitch of almost frenzied tension. To do full justice to what in Webster's style would be spasmodic were it not so weighty, and at the same time to maintain the purity of outline and melodious rhythm of such characters as Isabella, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... poems, can hardly be credited to any one author, every hamlet has rung with beautiful national songs, which sprung straight from the fervid heart of the people. These songs are balmy with the breath of the forest, the meadow, and river, and have that simple and bewitching freshness of motive and rhythm which ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... forcefulness of words and he consequently was unable to restrain himself easily but was often led to say what he did not wish, he used to bring in a flute-player, and from him, playing a low accompaniment, he would take his rhythm and time, or if even so he in some way fell out of measure, he would stop. This was the sort of man that attacked the government, and, by assuming no speech or act to be forbidden, in the briefest time became a great power ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... contrasts of unusual shades of colour which are always differing and shifting with the changing sunshine and the ever moving position of the aerial observer. Ah! for some better pen than mine to describe these things! One with glowing words and a magic rhythm to express the wonders of the air and the beauty of the garden beneath—the immensity of the sea—the sense of space and of one's littleness there—the realization of the Power moving the multitudes below—the exaltation of spirit altitude produces—the joy ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... return shortly, and shall be expecting some of your best juleps." For the Colonel belonged to that school of Kentucky gentlemen, still existing if not flourishing as of yore, whose daily routine was punctuated into poetic rhythm by fragrant mint and venerable bourbon with a regularity that would have brought confusion to a younger generation. Once in a great while he took too much, and once every year he slipped off to "the springs" ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... for ballad feeling and for ballad rhythm and music. But, except for some vigorous satiric, political, and bacchanalian chants of his own, and the recasting of a few of the old-fashioned and lively rhymes like The Carl o' Kellyburn Braes that were ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... and creaked and swayed with the rhythm of it. "My word!" said Miss Bruce-Drummond. She listened fascinatedly to their deafening repertoire. Greenmount's supporters, a rather forlorn little group of substitutes, with the coach and trainer and a teacher or two, and a pert fox terrier wearing their colors ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... funeral of his father. The boy carried a child's memory of the prairie—probably his first sight of the prairie, with the vacant horizon circling around and around him, and the monotonous rattle of the wagon on the level prairie road, for hours keeping the same rhythm and fitting the same tune. Then there was a mottled memory of the woods—woods with sunshine in them, and of a prairie flooded with sunshine on which he played, now picking flowers, now playing house under the limestone ledges, now, after a rain, following little rivers down rocky ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... stood with one hand touching the table, the tips of his fingers drumming the rhythm of a song he hummed to himself. The boy's back was toward him. Waring's gaze traveled from his ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... a time until Blount broke in upon Gantry's tapping of the dance-music rhythm with: "If I can close up a few unfinished business matters and get ready I may go with you, Dick. ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... these poems have a genuine sound; they are full of poetical thought, and breathed out in softly modulated words. The music of "Sleep On!" is very sweet, and I have never seen heroic verse in which the rhyme was less obtrusive or the rhythm more diffluent. Still it would not be fair to speak in these terms of praise without pointing out the transparent imitativeness which is ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... dancer of a bizarre kind, she had set Paris nodding to the rhythm of her movements and raving about the beauty of her eyes and hair. Her reputation had preceded her to London, and when she appeared at the Regency it was universally admitted that she far surpassed everything that had ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the entrance to Hades—for there is no telltale spot of light to prove to our senses the existence of any opening at the other end. The sound echoed from the walls and roof has a tremendous quality, and resolves itself into a grand sort of Wagnerian rhythm, making a vast crescendo, till with a rush we clear the tunnel, and are once more under the open sky. The pace is increasing, the steady beat of the engine tells more distinctly on the ear than in the daytime; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... caught from the brooding rocks, and moulded in the substance of the rocks, still it climbs, instructed by the winds, the ocean's tidal rhythm, and the tumultuous transports of the human voice, its raptures, sorrows, or despairs, to the newer wonder, the numbered cadences of poetry, the verse ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... certain that he had said "dear." The rhythm of it remained in her ears, that, and the deep gentleness of his tone. He had been sorry for her, so sorry! And he was so much older, and he was Stanor's uncle. Why should ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... forest to the left. They carried heavy spears and oval shields painted in various designs. A fillet bound long ostrich plumes that slanted backward on either side the head; and as they walked forward in the rather teetery fashion of the savage dandy these plumes waved up and down in rhythm. ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... hand, he inclosed her two clasped ones within it, as the little voice ran over an utterly unintelligible form of childishly clipped Latin, sounding, however, sweet and birdlike from the very liberties the little memory had taken in twisting its mellifluous words into a rhythm of her own. And there was catchword enough for Richard to recognize and follow it, with bonnet doffed, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge |
