"Rhythmical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wont eat the microbes unless the microbes are nicely buttered for them. Well, the patient manufactures the butter for himself all right; but my discovery is that the manufacture of that butter, which I call opsonin, goes on in the system by ups and downs—Nature being always rhythmical, you know—and that what the inoculation does is to stimulate the ups or downs, as the case may be. If we had inoculated Jane Marsh when her butter factory was on the up-grade, we should have cured her arm. But we got in on the downgrade and lost her arm for her. I ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • George Bernard Shaw
... vigorous, had rusted slowly in the slow monotony of his days. He had come to accept the rhythmical ebb and flow of life's river as all-sufficient for content. Breakfast and dinner were the chief events of his life—if it was well with these it was ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the pirogues. One of these appeared to lead the others; in it was the Indian who had offered his services to Surville. At the back of the pirogue, a man stood erect, holding in his hands a bunch of herbs, raising them above his head, with a rhythmical movement. In the centre of the same pirogue stood a young man, resting upon a spear, who gravely watched all that went on. Red flowers were in his ears, and passed through the cartilage of his nose, and his hair ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... furrows that spread out beneath her stern in the form of a broad arrow, widening their distance apart as she moved onward, while the space between was frosted as if with silver by the white foam churned up by the ever- whirling propeller blades, beating the water with their rhythmical ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... an open-air sound that word has! The music of the wind is in it, and a peculiarly free, rhythmical swing, suggestive of the swirling lariat. Colorado is not, as some conjecture, a corruption or revised edition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, who was sent out by the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico in 1540 in search of the seven cities of Cibola: it is from ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... came out of the trenches. The visions of a Barbusse had not yet dawned to show the truth to these talkative shadows. There was no difficulty for Clerambault, he shone in these eloquent contests. For he had the fatal gift of verbal and rhythmical facility which separates poets from reality, wrapping them as if in a spider's web. In times of peace this harmless web hung on the bushes, the wind blowing through it, and the good-natured Arachne caught nothing but light in her meshes. Nowadays, however, the poets cultivated their carniverous ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... down to gather up his shoes, and his ear thus brought close to the table was conscious in the silence of a faint rhythmical sound. He stood up and looked about. Then he moved the newspaper on the table. Underneath it, forgotten in her anxiety and trouble, ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was drowsy, and like syrup in summer is dangling and slovenly. He struck the drum to make stops at certain intervals. The tune was kept with regular rhythmical order, though it appeared to have neither head nor tail. In response to this tune, the thirty drawn swords flash, with such dexterity and speed that the sight made the spectator almost shudder. With live men within two feet of their position, the ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... trained all his life to rhythmical drunkenness. Four months or so had generally elapsed between his bouts—sometimes six; it all depended on the length of the voyage. Six months now elapsed before he felt even an inclination to look at the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... a pair of stout horses, made its entry. It was like the shell of a vessel reversed—the keel for a roof, the deck for a floor, placed on four wheels. The wheels were all of the same size, and high as wagon wheels. Wheels, pole, and van were all painted green, with a rhythmical gradation of shades, which ranged from bottle green for the wheels to apple green for the roofing. This green colour had succeeded in drawing attention to the carriage, which was known in all the fair grounds as The Green Box. The Green Box had but two windows, one at each extremity, and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... car to ten miles an hour and leaned back, steering with one hand. The other fell upon hers, and closed over it. For a time they drove along in silence, conscious only of that electrical contact, and of the wind playing in their faces and the soft rhythmical hum ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... LXXXIX, XCVII.] The one figure which he adopts from the Hindu Pantheon and constantly uses, is that of Krishna the Divine Flute Player. [Footnote: Nos. L, LIII, LXVIII.] He sees the supernal music, too, in its visual embodiment, as rhythmical movement: that mysterious dance of the universe before the face of Brahma, which is at once an act of worship and an expression of the infinite rapture ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)
... voice had rolled out the first few notes of the tune, they caught him up with a vigor and enthusiasm that carried him along, and inspired him to his mightiest efforts. Wonderful singing it was, full toned, rhythmical ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... Ludwigsburg was brilliantly illuminated by a thousand waxen tapers which burned in the huge crystal chandeliers. The Landhofmeisterin's own musicians discoursed rhythmical strains from the gallery, and a gay motley crowd moved on the inlaid polished floor. There were dominoes of every colour, bizarre, fantastic shapes; and somehow this masked assemblage had a strangely ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... noted that the version of the Psalter {222} is not that of the Authorized Version of 1611, but that of the Great Bible of 1540. This was retained in the Prayer-book because the people had become familiar with it, and because it is more rhythmical and suited to chanting. The Psalter is divided into sixty portions to be used at Daily Morning and Evening Prayer and is thus designed to be read through once ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... favored, or because it is a work to which both heaven and earth have set their hand, showing him, as Emerson observes, "all imagination," or, as James Russell Lowell says, "The highest spiritual nature which has expressed itself in rhythmical form." ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... which to roam, for long days and nights of glory and of love, for intense hours of emotion and of life lived with exultant desperation. It was a melody that seemed to set the soul of Creation dancing before an ark. The tomtoms accompanied it with an irregular but rhythmical roar which Domini thought was like the deep-voiced shouting ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... victims; they brought misfortune; they were also the source of good or "luck ". Man regarded spirits emotionally; he conjured them with emotion; he warded off their attacks with emotion; and his emotions were given rhythmical expression by means ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... by the author is that of the rhythmical variations of level, or "seiches," of deep lakes; he applies the usual formula to Lake Tahoe, and calculates from it the length of a complete longitudinal and of a transverse "seiche;" these are found to be eighteen or nineteen minutes in the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... opinion are not only necessarily poets as they are inventors, nor even as their words unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth; but as their periods are harmonious and rhythmical, and contain in themselves the elements of verse; being the echo of the eternal music. Nor are those supreme poets, who have employed traditional forms of rhythm on account of the form and action of their subjects, less capable of ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... years. He is an Hawaiian poet; and, besides translating some of our best hymns, has composed enough to make up the greater part of a bulky volume, which is said to be of great merit. He says that the language lends itself very readily to rhythmical expression. He was indefatigable in his youth, and was four times let down the pali by ropes to preach in the Waimanu Valley. Neither he nor his wife can mount a horse now, and it is very dreary for them, as the population has receded and dwindled from about them. Their house is made lively, however, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... less rhythmical than English, owing to the absence of strong word-accents, makes up the deficiency by much greater stress on rhyme. In French verse, rhyme not only is almost indispensable, but must, in a measure, ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... quarter of a mile the distance remained the same, and the silence was unbroken except by the rhythmical beating of hoofs through the rustling, ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... and ease with which its sound fits in with the context—rather than because it is long or short. Mr. Longfellow's poem, "The Three Kings" published in the last Christmas number of ST. NICHOLAS, is an example of a fine poem in simple and rhythmical language, the study of which will improve your style of writing more than any number of rules that we ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... poems of sentiment by Hattie Howard entirely natural, spontaneous, direct, rhythmical, and free from ambitious pretense. Many of the fanciful verses have a laugh at the end; and the collection has altogether a sunny, hopeful spirit and will be welcome in this time ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard
... the head of Calisthenics, exhibits a varied course of exercises without the aid of apparatus. Pupils are taught to beat time, and use is thus made of the magic power of rhythmical movement. Nineteen pieces of piano music are given, which are well ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... hidden the One Law, You whose searchings obscure the goal, You whose systems from chaos begun, Chance-born, order-less, hark, they are marching, Hearts and tides and stars to the One Law, Measured and orderly, rhythmical, whole, Multitudinous, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... appropriate to such a monody. The expressions of the chant, like those of a Greek chorus, are abrupt, elliptical, and occasionally obscure. It is probable that this chant, like the condoling Hymn in the former part of the Book, is of earlier style than the other portions of the work, their rhythmical form having preserved the original words with greater accuracy. Such explanations of the doubtful passages as could be obtained from the chiefs and the interpreters will be found ...
— The Iroquois Book of Rites • Horatio Hale
... use of language. Questions to be asked in regard to external style are such as these: Is it good or bad, careful or careless, clear and easy or confused and difficult; simple or complex; terse and forceful (perhaps colloquial) or involved and stately; eloquent, balanced, rhythmical; vigorous, or musical, languid, delicate and decorative; varied or monotonous; plain or figurative; poor or rich in connotation and poetic suggestiveness; beautiful, or only clear and strong? Are the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... society of Madame Prateux's school, where she spent three years in learning all polite accomplishments, and whence she came, with brilliant hopes and romances ready imagined, for any possible exigency of the future. She adored all the modern Italian poets, and read their verse with that stately and rhythmical fulness of voice which often made it sublime and always pleasing. She was a relentless patriot, an Italianissima of the vividest green, white, and red; and she could interpret the historical novels of her countrymen in their subtilest application to the modern enemies of Italy. But all the Paronsina's ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... and the ipsissima verba I have given in my anecdotes lose a good deal in reading by anyone unacquainted with their method. Each sentence is uttered in a rising scale with a drop on the last few words, forming, as a whole, a not unmusical rhythmical drawl. As instances of "muscular effeminacy," two fields of mine, where flax was formerly grown, went by the name of "Pax grounds"; the words "rivet" and "vine," were rendered "ribet" and "bine." "March," a boundary, became "Marsh," so that Moreton-on-the-March ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... producing sound, of undulations giving rise to light and color, of oscillations resulting in heat, the movements of the heavenly bodies, the flow of electric and magnetic currents, the rhythmical beat of the pulse, the unceasing march of mind and human events, all lead us to the consideration of motion as one of the greatest of secondary causes in the guidance of the universe. Do we not, indeed, find the same element in the Divine ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... soft, humid air was sweet with the earthy scents of the canyon, and the curled fallen leaves of the live-oaks along the flume path were golden-brown with moisture. Beads of mist fringed the silken fluffs of the clematis, dripping with gentle, rhythmical insistence from ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... a man going homeward singing, with his jacket on his shoulder and his hat on his ear, came to us from a distance. This did not prevent the scene from being very comme il faut, as Miss Bordereau had called it the first time I saw her. Presently a gondola passed along the canal with its slow rhythmical plash, and as we listened we watched it in silence. It did not stop, it did not carry the doctor; and after it had gone on ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... character of Prince Frederic of Hochburg, so many odd ingredients entered into it. He was dictatorial, he was even domineering, he was hard-working, and he was conscientious. About these qualities I had already made up my mind. But his acts had been wholly in disregard of the rhythmical and regular conventions which he should thus have associated with himself. He had broken with his fatherland, he had thrown over dynastic laws, he had gone by his will alone, and no red tape. Perhaps there was the solution. He had gone by his conscience. I have said I was convinced of his conscientiousness, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... petticoats hang from it nearly to the ground. Three sides of the box are adorned with the head and shoulders of a female figure and the fourth side with a black yak's tail. Four men bear the poles, each carrying an axe in his right hand. They dance round, with a swinging rhythmical step, to the music of drums and a pipe. The dance goes on for hours and is thought to avert ill-luck from the fair. It is said that the box is brought to Simla from a place sixty miles off by relays of ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... vulgar errors in regard to works of art. In the first place one must remind our enthusiastic German that it is an engraving and not a woman that we are discussing; and that this engraving is extremely beautiful in arabesque and black and white pattern, rich, rhythmical and harmonious; and that there is no reason why our taste should be violated in having to bow submissively before such beauties as these, which it is a pleasure to worship. Now we come to the subject as presented to the intelligence, after the quick receptive ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... the rhythm of poetry, or of perfect prose, which is, of course, in its own way, no less rhythmical, every sensation of sound sends through me a diffusive wave of nervous energy. I am the rhythm because I imitate it in myself. I march to noble music in all my veins, even though I may be sitting decorously by my own ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... himself at the piano. Never, during all the years I knew him, did I hear him play better than to that blind girl and her brother. Even the old instrument seemed inspired. The young man and woman sat as if entranced by the magical, sweet sounds that flowed out upon the air in rhythmical swell and cadence, until, suddenly, the flame of the single candle wavered, sank, flickered, and went out. The shutters were thrown open, admitting a flood of brilliant moonlight, but the player paused, as if ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... along the dusty roads, our thoughts became as dusty as they; all thought indeed stopped, thinking broke down, or proceeded only passively in a sort of rhythmical cadence of the confused material of thought, and we found ourselves mechanically repeating some familiar measure which timed with our tread; some verse of the Robin Hood ballads, for instance, which one ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... his wheel and worked some levers, and the rhythmical chunking of the engine gradually ceased. Gliding at a speed that was still high, the train curved to the left, and swung down a sharp incline, to move with an imperial dignity through the railway yard at Rugby. There was a maze of switches, innumerable engines noisily ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... would have drawn open the shutter and revealed herself. But apart from maidenly shrinkings, familiarity with war had made her realize the sacred duties of a sentry, and she had remained in discreet seclusion, awake until his spell was over. But now the rhythmical beat of the heavy boots kept her from sleeping and would have irritated her nerves intolerably had not her sound common sense told her that the stout fellow who wore them was protecting her from the Hun, together with a million or ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... was too heart-broken to talk. He listened to the rhythmical chorus of that witches' cauldron in the heart of the defile, and watched the gray light slowly etching a path through the trees, until it touched the fast-running water with a shimmer ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Around the lonely islet thundered the ocean, whose waves rocked never-endingly, until Yaspard, gazing fixedly on them, felt as though the holme itself were some tremulous cradle swinging with the rhythmical ebb and flow of ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... fail, and found some of the men I knew best fishing there with a sort of dragnet. It is a tedious process, and I sat for a long time on the sand watching the net being put out, and then drawn in again by eight men working together with a slow rhythmical movement. ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... therefore, to find a name of such distinction as the late Laureate's formally opposed to Tyrwhitt, and committed to the opinion which may seem to have been Dryden's, that the verse of Chaucer is "rhythmical, not metrical." This hardly self-explicating distinction of Dr Geo. Fred. Nott's, Southey in his Life of Cowper has explained in set terms—a verse for which the number of beats or accents is ruled is rhythmical—for example, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... songs, strung together with such variations of his own as made him the envy and despair of all other fiddlers in the vicinity. Indeed, he could rarely get away from a great house without a sample of his powers in this direction, and then blending with the rhythmical cadence of feet, the rustle of garments, would be evoked ripples of mirth and bursts of laughter that were echoed back from the dim pine-groves without. Finally, when with his great foot beating time ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... the river and safe upon the Louisville pike, he loosened the reins. The horse, whose sympathetic heart had already been imbued with the spirit of his rider, shook his long black mane, plunged forward and pounded along the hard turnpike. His hoof-beats—sharp, sonorous, rhythmical—seemed to be crying for vengeance; for hoof-beats have a language, and always utter ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... For nights she had scarcely slept, and in the silence immediately round her the distant sounds gradually lost their dreary note, and became a rhythmical and soothing influence. She fell into a ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of Spanish poetry are (1) a fixed number of syllables in each verse (by verse we mean a single line of poetry); (2) a rhythmical arrangement of the syllables within the verse. Rime and assonance are hardly less important, but ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... describing intense, passionate feeling, his power of painting wild pictures of horror, his gifts for conveying his thoughts in rolling, rhythmical periods of eloquence, that make Melmoth a memory-haunting book. With all his faults Maturin was the greatest as well as the last ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... census since emancipation, there has been some hue and cry as to the destiny of the Negro population. Public opinion has been rhythmical with reference to its rise and fall above and below the mean line of truth. In 1870 it was extermination; in 1880 it was dreaded that the whole country would be Africanized because of the prolificness of a barbarous race; in 1890 the doctrine of extinction was ...
— A Review of Hoffman's Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 1 • Kelly Miller
... on the causeway and ran down seething to the sea; and another and another, filling the room with rhythmical thunders. But the voice of the sea was no longer the same in the darkness, where the Countess knelt in silence beside the bed—knelt, her head bowed on her clasped hands, as she had knelt before, but with a mind how different, with what different thoughts! Count Hannibal ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... above the waist line. When moving the hands up and out, move the body from the hips up and out in exactly the same manner and proportion. The hands and arms must not move faster than the body; the body must move rhythmically with the arms. This rhythmical movement of body and arms is highly important. In moving, the sensation is as though the body were lifted lightly and freely upon the palms of the hands. The hands say to the body, "Follow us." In this way, lift, expand, and let go. Do not raise the ...
— The Renaissance of the Vocal Art • Edmund Myer
... being covered with dung and straw, the noise of the stamping was deadened; a man's voice talking to the animals and swearing at them was heard from the rear of the building. A faint tickle grew soon into a clear and continuous jingling, rhythmical with the movements of the horses, now stopping, now resuming in a sudden peal accompanied by the deadened noise of an iron-shod ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... lyvynge expellyd secular clerks, and by the counsell of Wolstane (Wulfstan), Bysshope of Wurcestar, bringethe in monkes." The monks introduced by Cnut were of the Benedictine rule, or Black monks, as Parker calls them in his "Rhythmical History of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Gloucester [2nd ed.] • H. J. L. J. Masse
... last one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches, and for three days horse and foot, cannon and tumbril, drum and standard, kept pouring downward past the mill. All day the child stood and watched them on their passage; the rhythmical stride, the pale, unshaven faces tanned about the eyes, the discoloured regimentals, and the tattered flags, filled him with a sense of weariness, pity, and wonder; and all night long, after he was in bed, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vivacious than that of western nations. The Poles were long considered to be the best dancers in the world. It was their great national amusement; and all danced, from noble to peasant, entering into it with spirit and enthusiasm, and uniting the perfection of rhythmical motion with the grace and ease peculiar to them, and to their ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... rhythmical way of Tennesseans, emphasizing the auxiliary verbs beyond their usual value. After reading the letter he extended his hand. "I am very glad to meet you, sir. I am indeed. Bill, take care of Mr.——" He paused, ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... even read it aloud. Yet she delighted in reading to herself, though, for the most part, books which Mrs. Wilson characterised as very odd. Her voice, when she spoke, had a quite indescribable music in it; yet she neither sang nor played. Her habitual motion was more like a rhythmical gliding than an ordinary walk, yet she could not dance. Mrs. Wilson hinted at other and more serious peculiarities, which she either could not, or would not describe; always shaking her head gravely and sadly, and becoming quite silent, when I pressed for further explanation; so that, at last, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... gregarious disposition,—they scatter more; and at this time they prefer the sunniest exposures, and like to bask in the light and warmth. They assume every variety of attitude, but move always by the regular contraction and expansion of the disk, which rises and falls with rhythmical alternations, the average number of these movements being from twelve to fifteen in a minute. There can be no doubt that they perceive what is going on about them, and are very sensitive to changes in the state of the atmosphere; for, as soon as the surface of the water is ruffled, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... The weight of the superincumbent hour. This line is scarcely rhythmical: to bring it within the ordinary scheme of ryhthm, one would have to lay an exaggerated stress on two of its feet—'the superincumbent.' Neither this treatment of the line, nor the line itself apart from this treatment, can easily ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... raiment, flowing hair, love-laden youths, and stationary figures of grave saints, mid wayward tangles of acanthus and wild vine and cupid-laden foliage; but the subordination of these decorative details to the main design, clear, rhythmical, and lucid, like a chaunt of Pergolese or Stradella, will enrapture one who has the sense for unity evoked from divers elements, for thought subduing all caprices to the harmony of beauty. It is not possible elsewhere ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... He merely bowed again, and slipped through the partially opened door into the busy street. Then Cohen put clean linen upon his head and arm, and went and stood with his face to the east, and recited, in low, rhythmical sentences, the prayer called the "Assault." Miriam sat quiet during his devotion but, when he returned to his place, she asked him plainly, "What murder is there to ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... marvellous debate made the issue between liberty and slavery so clear that a wayfaring man, though a fool, could not misunderstand; declared that if slavery was not wrong, there was nothing that was wrong. Soon he came to be looked upon as one who each year would coin the happy phrase and the rhythmical watchword that would be taken upon the lips of 30,000,000 of people; was made the leader of the new "party ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... toward military brevity and precision is everywhere obvious. The omission of the cumbersome auxiliary, wherever permissible, already characteristically employed in his tale, is conspicuous, as in all his writings and letters. The words are arranged in rhythmical groups without falling into a monotonous sing song. Participial constructions, tending toward brevity, are more in evidence than in ordinary German prose. Sparingly, but with good reason and excellent handling, periodic structure ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... studio, where the waves of them had a singular effect on the brains of certain bright young women and sombre young and middle-aged men who were arranged in clasped couples: with the result that the brains of the women and men sent orders to their legs, arms, eyes, and they shifted to and fro in rhythmical movements. Each woman placed herself very close—breast against breast—to each man, yielding her volition absolutely to his, and (if the man was the taller) often gazing up into his face with an ecstatic ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... irregularity. Ritual is connected with words, gestures, symbols, and signs. Associations result, and, upon a repetition of the signal, the act is repeated, whether the will assents or not. Association and habit account for the phenomena. Ritual gains further strength when it is rhythmical, and is connected with music, verse, or other rhythmical arts. Acts are ritually repeated at the recurrence of the rhythmical points. The alternation of night and day produces rhythms of waking and sleeping, of labor and rest, for great numbers at the same time, ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... sower's bag at his waist, was returning towards them, scattering the seed with broad rhythmical gestures. He had heard his wife, and he paused to say to her: "Let him nurse and sleep till the sun comes back. He will be a man by harvest time." And, pointing to the great field which he was sowing with his assistants, he added: "All this ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... the Household, she at length found herself seated in the car with the Baron, who had dispensed with the usual attendants. And then the Courtyard, with the mass of upturned faces and waving hands, slowly sank to the rhythmical beating of the storks' wings as they obeyed the order, "To ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... if one analysed it, what a totally inexplicable pleasure it was. Part of it, the orderly and rhythmical beat of metre, such as comes from striking the fingers on the table, or tapping the foot upon the floor; how deep lay the instinct to bring into strict sequence, where it was possible, the mechanical movements of nature, the creaking of the boughs of trees, the drip of water from a fountain-lip, ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... imitation of a tiger or a gazelle with the living original; the first a wonderfully moving piece of machinery, illustrating the limit of human constructive power; perfectly under control, the movements smooth, unvarying, rhythmical, charming, excelling in agility and power its living prototype—but still, scientific—to the discerning eye, artful. The other, something more than rhythmical, more than smooth, beyond the control of human agency, beyond ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... been put on, who dragged the guns another thirty miles to the far side of the Tagliamento at Latisana. And as they hauled, they sang, until they were too tired to go on singing, and could only raise, from time to time, their rhythmical periodic cry of ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... was close and hot. The southern wind had died away. There was scarcely a sound in all the landscape save the regular clucking of the wagon-wheels, the soft, rhythmical tread of the horses' feet, and the snapping buzz of the grasshoppers rising from the weeds. Far away to the west lay the blue Coteaux, thirty miles distant, long, low, without break, like a wall. The sun was hidden ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... The rhythmical energy and propulsiveness thus imparted to the music of the merrymaking is heightened by the dance. Peasants rush upon the scene with shouts of "Juhe!" and make preparations to trip it while singing what, at first, promises to ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... editors of the Brehon Law Tracts point out that early laws are handed down "in a rhythmical form; always in language condensed and antiquated they assume the character of abrupt and sententious proverbs. Collections of such sayings are found scattered throughout the Brehon Law Tracts."[128] The sagas contain many verses which partake of the character of legal formulae, ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... silhouette was outlined on the dark background. A young woman, dressed in a petticoat of gray woolen material, and a jacket of the same, close-fitting at the waist, her arms bare to the elbows and supporting on her head a bag of nuts enveloped in a white sheet, advanced toward him with a quick and rhythmical step. The manner in which she carried her burden showed the elegance of her form, the perfect grace of her chest and throat. She was not very tall, but finely proportioned. As she approached, the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... instant decision. He opened his lips, but the words he had planned to speak were never uttered. The strong, rhythmical dip of oars suddenly beat ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... of pendulous swing is brought about in a series of waves so timed, and of such a length, that the duration of the swing coincides with the period required for one wave to succeed another. The increasing slope of the ship's decks, due to the inertia of this continuous rhythmical motion, often amounts to far more than the angle made by the declivity of the wave as compared with the sea level; and it is, of course, a source of serious danger in the eyes of ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... peace, now about to take place, were repeated. Then along a white path of moonlight, in their Indian costumes, the five girls led by Polly, swaying her pipes of peace slowly above her head, came dancing with a queer, rhythmical movement of their bodies, arms ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... (we have reached the era of the "Onlys"), and be only too delighted, what need I say more than that the libretto is written by Mr. BILL-OF-THE-PLAY YARDLEY conjointly with Mr. DRURIOLANUS AUCTOR, and I daresay it was very witty and rhythmical and poetical, though I didn't catch much of it, and the songs were neither particularly well sung, nor remarkably humorous,—one, introduced by Miss VESTA TILLY (and, therefore, for this our joint authors are not responsible, except for permitting ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 10, 1891 • Various
... as a background to all further discussion, is rendered richer and more rhythmical every day, or rather the hidden rhythm of their being is revealed more clearly every day, by the eccentricities and maladies, nay! by the insanities and desperations, of individual ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... and the wash of the waves as they raced over each other and broke with a seething 'whish' into masses of foam, and the motion of the ship gently rocking to and fro like a pendulum as she lurched this way and that with rhythmical regularity, my eyes presently began to close. So, cuddling myself up in the tarpaulin, for the air fresh from the north felt rather chilly, I dropped off into a sound nap, not waking again until one of the ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the Ecclesiastical or politico-ecclesiastical order. With the publication in 1594 of the first four books of Richard Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, the full claims of English as a great literary language were decisively established by his rhythmical, stately, and luminous periods. In their own field, Poets and Dramatists had already secured those claims; with the works of Marlowe, the earliest plays of Shakespeare, and the opening books of ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... and mysterious sounds, which then do predispose the mind to superstitious fears, and tell how, at such a time, his countrymen kindle a fire to avert the actual presence of the evil spirit, and wait around it—chanting their uncouth and rhythmical incantations—with fear and trembling, for the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... represented by Professor Noire, to account for language by means of interjectional cries. This Max Mueller revengefully styled the "pooh-pooh" theory. In it is included the rhythmical sounds which a body of men make seemingly by a common impulse when engaged in a common work, such as the cries of sailors when hauling on a rope or pulling an oar, or the yell of savages in an attack. It also derives an argument ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... and it was a luxury to lie flat upon my back on the beach, listening to the rhythmical thud of the big, long wave at my feet, and the song of the stars overhead. There is something unspeakably tranquillizing in the studded dome of heaven; there is also something unspeakably sad. It bends over the struggling, yearning, aching human heart, as a mother, who has attained that ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... continents is disappearing, and the classic traits of the West are being mingled with those of the subtle, sensuous, spiritual East. It is as if the art of music, with its new scales, its new harmonies, its new coloring, its new rhythmical life, were being revolutionized, as if it were returning to its beginnings. It is as if some of the original impulse to make music were reawakening. And so, through this confusion, Berlioz has suddenly flamed with significance. For he himself was the rankest of barbarians. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... every one who declaims warmly, or grows intent upon a subject, rises into a sort of blank verse or measured prose. The merchant, as described in Chaucer, went on his way "sounding always the increase of his winning". Every prose writer has more or less of rhythmical adaptation, except poets who, when deprived of the regular mechanism of verse, seem to have no principle of modulation left in ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... the people, the fanfare of trumpets, the rolling of drums, the rhythmical tread of thousands of mailed feet, we rode forth from Selles, led by the Maid, beside whom rode the King's cousin, the Duc d'Alencon, now resolved to join us, despite his former hesitancy and the fears of his wife. He had marched with us to Orleans, ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... steel, was transformed into a smokestack—still bearing sails—a donkey engine was installed in the hold, and the booms went aloft, or the anchor rose to the peak to the tune of smoky puffing instead of the rhythmical chanty songs of the sailors. So the modern schooner, a very leviathan of sailing craft, plows the seas, electric-lighted, steering by steam, a telephone system connecting all parts of her hull—everything modern about ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... toothache, while HARRISON, a blatant fellow with a red face and a loud voice, continues in a condition of robust and oppressive health? These speculations were not so painful and disturbing as might be supposed. Indeed, they had a soothing effect. From the rhythmical breathing and the closed eyes of two other occupants of arm-chairs, I judged that they were similarly occupied in philosophic reflection. I was just composing myself to a bout of specially hard thinking, when, lo, the door opened, and in stepped ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... melodramatic music upon which Sardou's play floats,—what is it like? Much of it like shreds and patches of many things with which the operatic stage has long been familiar. There are efforts at characterization by means of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmical symbols, of which the most striking, and least original, is a succession of chords which serves as an introduction to the first scene. This and much else came out of Wagner's workshop, and, like all else of the same origin in the score, is impotent because there is ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and took up my quarters as usual in my quiet little hotel in the Rue Servandoni, where the only sounds of the great city which reach me are the bells of Saint Sulpice, and the continual noise from a neighbouring forge, a sound of the rhythmical beating of iron, which I love because it reminds me of our village. I rushed off at once to my publisher. 'Well, when do ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... uncertainties of the text, and second because the prose, like most of that of the prophets, has often a rhythm approximating to metre. And thus it happens that, while on the one hand much agreement has been reached as to what Oracles in the Book are in verse, and what, however rhythmical, are in prose, some passages remain, on the original literary form of which a variety of opinion is possible. This is not all in dispute. Even the admitted poems are variously scanned—that is either read in different metres or, if in the same metre, either with or without ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... became very slight, and the pitch grew to be the characteristic feature of the accent. Consequently, when Virgil read a passage of the AEneid to Augustus and Livia the effect on the ear of the comparatively unstressed language, with the rhythmical rise and fall of the pitch, would have been very different from that made by the conversation of the average man, with the accented syllables more clearly ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... impressed the G.O.C., 29th Division, at their initial appearance before him. Whether the Guernsey's exceptional steadiness solicits approval, or if the rapid rhythmical movements in handling arms—quicker than is customary with other regiments—pleases the Official Eye cannot be accurately gauged. It is a concrete certainty, however, that the unit composes an efficient, compact body comparing very favourably with ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... droning of the engine seemed a bit less rhythmical. Verplanck throttled her down, but it had no effect. He shut her off. Something was wrong. As he crawled out into the space forward of us where the engine was, it seemed as if the Streamline had ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... lymphatic duct. The duct or ducts may be displaced by a tumour or a mass of enlarged glands, and may be accidentally wounded in dissections at the root of the neck; jets of milky fluid—chyle—may at once escape from it. The jets are rhythmical and coincide with expiration. The injury may, however, not be observed at the time of operation, but later through the dressings being soaked with chyle—chylorrhoea. If the wound involves the only existing main ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... the critical instinct which he brought to the task of creation. His theory of verse is simple, in fact too simple to account for all of the facts. The aim of poetry, according to Poe, is not truth but pleasure—the rhythmical creation of beauty. Poetry should be brief, indefinite, and musical. Its chief instrument is sound. A certain quaintness or grotesqueness of tone is a means for satisfying the thirst for supernal beauty. Hence the musical lyric is to Poe the only true type of poetry; a ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... in the conservatory, soft perfumes from the many flowers fill the air. From beyond—somewhere—(there is a delicious drowsy uncertainty about the where)—comes the sound of music, soft, rhythmical, and sweet. Perhaps it is from one of the rooms outside—dimly seen through the green foliage—where the lights are more brilliant, and forms are moving. But just in here there is no music save the tinkling drip, drip of the little fountain ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... breathe on their slumber, All softly in ear, The musical number They slumber'd to hear— For what can awaken An angel so soon Whose sleep hath been taken Beneath the cold moon, As the spell which no slumber Of witchery may test, The rhythmical number Which lull'd him ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... nothing more complex than an elaborate poem. The sources of its effect upon our minds may be likened to a system of forces which is in the highest degree unstable; and the slightest displacement of phrases, by disturbing the delicate rhythmical equilibrium of the whole, must inevitably awaken a jarring sensation." Matthew Arnold has given us an excellent series of lectures upon translating Homer, in which he doubtless succeeds in showing that some methods of translation are preferable to others, but in which he proves ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the floor below, the stillness in the cottage was merrily broken by an outburst of dance-music—with a rhythmical thump-thump of feet, keeping time to the cheerful tune. Toff was playing his fiddle; and Toff's boy was dancing to ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins |
