"Troubadour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Encores and the Gate began to jump $80 a Night, both the intellectual Troubadour and the Student of Counter-Harmonies went to the Manager and cried on his Shoulder and said that their Beautiful Work ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... and take the road thence to Hautefort, the birthplace of Bertrand de Born, who was put into hell by Dante for having encouraged Henry Plantagenet's sons to rebel against their father. The sombre Florentine treated the troubadour baron with excessive harshness, for it is recorded of Bertrand that his repentance for the sins of his restless and agitated life was so sincere that he ended his days as a monk in the monastery of Cteaux. [Footnote: 'Mobile, agit, comme son aventureuse existence qui commenca ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... But as the Troubadour nestles more warmly into the rhythm of his verse, the birds are all forgotten, and the beautiful spring, and there is a sturdy clang of battle, that would not discredit ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... Car le fleuron tranchant, c'est l'homme et le baron. Elle a des tribunaux d'amour qu'elle preside; Aux copistes d'Homere elle paye un subside; Elle a tout recemment accueilli dans sa cour Deux hommes, un luthier avec un troubadour, Dont on ignore tout, le nom, le rang, la race, Mais qui, conteurs charmants, le soir, sur la terrasse, A l'heure ou les vitraux aux brises sont ouverts, Lui font de la musique et ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... Etruscan murmur into Terza rima—Horatian Latin into Provencal troubadour's melody; not, because ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... sentimentalism and operatic romance. If Nature wishes primarily to entrap us into sexual union, then all the means of sexual attraction, even the most maudlin or theatrical, are justified at one stroke. The guitar of the troubadour is as practical as the ploughshare of the husbandman. The waltz in the ballroom is as serious as the debate in the parish council. The justification of Anne, as the potential mother of Superman, is really the justification of all the humbugs and sentimentalists whom Shaw had been denouncing ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... with a high crowned turban of red, and yellow cotton handkerchief on her head, appeared at the parlor door. Mr. Tiffany paused: he saw the Moorish princess before him; rallying, however, he was proceeding to describe himself as a friendly troubadour, whose affection had been responded to, when the Captain placing his mouth to his ear, as in confidence, uttered in ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... a sly jest out of the cornet. Passion thumbs its nose at the stars out of the cornet. The melody of jazz, the tin pan ghosts of Chopin, Tchaikowsky, Old Black Joe, Liszt and Mumbo Magumbo, jungle troubadour of the Congo, come whinnying out from under ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... celebrated with a gaiety which had its mundane side; love and malicious sport demanded an expression as well as pious joy. But in tracing the forms of lyrical verse anterior to the middle of the twelfth century, when the troubadour influence from the South began to be felt, we must be guided partly by conjecture, derived from the later poetry, in which—and especially in the refrains—earlier fragments have ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... 't is no troubadour That sings so sweetly at your door, To tell you of the joys in store— So grand and gay; But one that sings "Remember ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... I took little note—other and "more attractive metal" met my eye, for around me were kings and princes—peer and peasant—lords and ladies—turbaned infidel and helmeted knight—the wild roving gipsy and the wandering troubadour. In short, I found myself in the world of the immortal master of Abbotsford, and surrounded by those to whose enchanting company I had oft been indebted for dispelling many a weary hour of sickness and gloom—friends whom at my bidding I could at any moment summon to my presence—friends ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... the rest, one rose in a bower. I speak after my fancies, for I am a Troubadour, you know, and won the violet at Toulouse; but my voice is harsh here, not in tune, a nightingale out of season; for marriage, rose or no rose, has killed ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... was at the beginning of the second act. The scene represented an orange grove by moonlight, and a handsome girl in spangled muslin was whispering loudly, to an accompaniment of harps, her eternal fidelity to a gesticulating troubadour. Both performers were immensely popular, and the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... other. She calls me her Troubadour. She has the prettiest hands of any woman out of Paradise. She 's as sweet as remembered kisses after death. She 's as sharp as a needle. She 's as bright as morning roses lightly tipped with dew. She has a house of her own in Kensington. And ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... you villanelles, Madrigals and lyrics; Ballades and rondels, Odes and panegyrics. Poet pinched and poor, Pricked by cold and hunger; Trouble's troubadour, Misery's balladmonger." ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... Crnica General de Espaa, the most ancient of the Prose Chronicles of Spain, in which adventures of the Cid are fully told. This old Chronicle was compiled in the reign of Alfonso the Wise, who was learned in the exact science of his time, and also a troubadour. Alfonso reigned between the years 1252 and 1284, and the Chronicle was written by the King himself, or under his immediate direction. It is in four parts. The first part extends from the Creation of the World to the occupation of Spain by the Visigoths, and is dull; the second part tells ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... there been no battle of Hastings. The banners of William the Conqueror had been blessed by Rome. They represented Europe, and the inevitable flooding of the island outpost of "Germania" by the tide of European civilization. Chanson and carole, dance-songs, troubadour lyrics, the ballade, rondel and Noel, amorous songs of French courtiers, pious hymns of French monks, began to sing themselves in England. The new grace and delicacy is upon every page of Chaucer. What was first Provencal and then French, became English when Chaucer touched it. From the ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Edinburgh as a teacher of the pianoforte and violin until his compositions attracted the attention of his countrymen and induced his being called to London. The most important compositions of Dr. Mackenzie up to the present time are the operas "Colomba" (1883), "The Troubadour" (1886) and the oratorio "The Rose of Sharon" (1884). There are several cantatas, "Jason," "The Bride," "The Story of Sayid" (1886) and a considerable number of orchestral pieces, of which two Scotch rhapsodies and the overture to ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... troubadour S'accordait pour chanter les saules de l'Adour; Le vin franais coulait dans la coupe trangre; Le soldat, en riant, parlait ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... early records of miracles wrought at Roc-Amadour. Gauthier de Coinsy, a monk and poet born at Amiens in 1177, has left a poem telling how the troubadour, Pierre de Sygelard, singing the praises of the Virgin in her chapel at Roc-Amadour to the accompaniment of his vielle (hurdy-gurdy), begged of her as a miraculous sign to let one of her candles come down from her altar. According to the poem, the candle came down, ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... third time Saval said: "I tell you that you are in love. You speak of her with the magniloquence of a poet and the feeling of a troubadour. Come, search ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... not by any means the first who ever burst into the responsive heart of Ludwig I. She had many predecessors there. One of them was an Italian syren. But that Lola soon ousted her is clear from a poetical effort of which the royal troubadour was delivered. This begins: ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... which, in other days, have echoed through the halls of feudal pride, or have been sung in the bowers of listening beauty. Of the prevalence of this refined taste in poetry among the lower orders of the peasantry, the following fragment of an old ballad, still very commonly sung to the ancient Troubadour air by the peasantry of Provence, may be given ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... young troubadour, the boy poet, beloved by all, burning for fame; and, in his innocence, he performs the mean ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... with music in his hand while Philip finished the song. "You demoralize the fair sex by warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all sorts of vile treatment. Nothing short of having your heads served up in a dish like that mediaeval tenor or troubadour, would prevent you from expressing your entire resignation. I must administer an antidote, while Miss Deane prepares to tear herself away from ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... associated with Blois is Francois Villon. A loafer and a vagabond he was, and a thief he may have been, yet by reason of his genius and for the beauty of his song this troubadour was welcomed to the literary court of Charles d'Orleans. That Villon received substantial assistance and protection from his royal brother poet appears from his poems. Among them we find one upon the birth of the Duke's daughter Mary: Le Dit de la Naissance Marie, which, like his patron's ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... Templar, "you are a man of gallantry, learned in the study of beauty, and as expert as a troubadour in all matters concerning the 'arrets' of love; but I shall expect much beauty in this celebrated Rowena to counterbalance the self-denial and forbearance which I must exert if I am to court the favor of such a seditious churl as you ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... myself alone may be conceived. Yet was it no ecstasy, but a sober exhilaration; such as stirred my pulses indeed, and bade me once more face the world with a firm eye and an assured brow, but was far from holding out before me a troubadour's palace or any dazzling prospect. The longer I dwelt on the interview, the more clearly I saw the truth. As the glamour which Henry's presence and singular kindness had cast over me began to lose some of its power, I recognised more and more surely why ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... themselves up to a delicious reverie in which they flirt with the divinity. They will recount their privileges and ecstasies, and how ingeniously and wonderfully God has tried and proved them. But indeed the true God was not the lover of Madame Guyon. The true God is not a spiritual troubadour wooing the hearts of men and women to no purpose. The true God goes through the world like fifes and drums and flags, calling for recruits along the street. We must go out to him. We must accept his discipline and fight his battle. The ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... education devolved upon his mother, his father having died while the boy was very young. His mother's friend, Brunetto Latini, famous as statesman and scholarly poet, was of great assistance in directing his tastes and studies. As a mere youth he wrote sonnets, such as Sordello the Troubadour would not disdain to own. He delights, as a boy, in those inquiries which gave fame to Bonaventura. He has an intuitive contempt for all quacks and pretenders. At Paris he maintains fourteen different theses, propounded ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... be God's troubadour! Beneath His starry walls I'd pour Across the moat such roundelays He'd love ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... appearance of Mr. Snodgrass in blue satin trunks and cloak, white silk tights and shoes, and Grecian helmet, which everybody knows (and if they do not, Mr. Solomon Lucas did) to have been the regular, authentic, everyday costume of a troubadour, from the earliest ages down to the time of their final disappearance from the face of the earth. All this was pleasant, but this was as nothing compared with the shouting of the populace when the carriage drew up, behind Mr. Pott's chariot, which chariot itself drew up at Mr. Pott's ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... "A troubadour!" he said scornfully to himself. "Edward Mauville sighing at a lady's window like some sentimental serenader! There's a light yonder. Now to play my despairing part, I must watch for her image. If I were some one else, I should say my heart beats faster than usual. She comes—the fair lady! ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... that music is the voice of love," whispered the letter against my heart. What a brave thing is life when we have love and the hope of spring latent within us! I admit, as I listened to the little red troubadour of the pine, that, had you been as near as the dreams and fancies that wrapped me about, this fight in me for freedom would have been at an end. Do not trust these feeble moods of mine, however; not one of them would last half the length of time ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... words I ever heard and spelled like lightning through a lot of others the meaning of which I couldn't imagine. Father never gave them out at home. They spelled epiphany, gaberdine, ichthyology, gewgaw, kaleidoscope, and troubadour. Then Laddie spelled one word two different ways; and the Princess went him one better, for she spelled ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... was like the song of a bird in spring. The more the matter is considered the clearer it will seem that these old experiences are now only alive, where they have found a lodgment in the Catholic tradition of Christendom, and made themselves friends for ever. St. Francis is the only surviving troubadour. St. Thomas More is the only surviving Humanist. St. Louis is ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... her son, when, many years after her death, he saw her picture at Washington, is unspeakably affecting. Catlin gives anecdotes of the grief of a chief for the loss of a daughter, and the princely gifts he offers in exchange for her portrait, worthy not merely of European, but of Troubadour sentiment. It is also evident that, as Mrs. Schoolcraft says, the women have great power at home. It can never be otherwise, men being dependent upon them for the comfort of their lives. Just so among ourselves, wives who are ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... spark of it remains, in forgotten places, For I saw a blinded boy strumming a guitar, Playing with his face a-smile, with the arts and graces Of a troubadour of old. ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... again, the ring of her laugh changed oddly and died away in a short silence. It was long since she had looked upon so goodly a man; she was weary of her monkish husband, and she was the grand-daughter of William of Aquitaine, giant, troubadour, and lover. It was no wonder that there was light in her eyes, and life in every ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... Bill, and the serious earnestness with which he invests the part intensifies the drollery of the complications. And to think that the adapter of this gay and festive piece should be none other than the sentimental troubadour, song-writer and composer, author of a Lyceum Tragedy and other similar trifles, Mr. HAMILTON AIDE!! "Sir," in future will HAMILTON AIDE say, when being interviewed by a Manager, "I will now read you my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... situation for a father of a family, for a man whose youth was past, compromising himself in a love affair, getting melancholy in the twilight, kissing a white hand like an enamored troubadour! Good God! How his friends would have laughed to see him in that posture! He must purge himself of that romanticism which sometimes mastered him. Every man must follow his fate, accepting life as he ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Chrestien's original poems. No one except the merest pedant of originality would hesitate to put Parzival above Percevale le Gallois, though Wolfram von Eschenbach may be thought to have been less fortunate with Willehalm. And though in the lyric, the debt due to both troubadour and trouvere is unmistakable, it is equally unmistakable what mighty usury the minnesingers have paid for the capital they borrowed. The skill both of Northern and Southern Frenchmen is seldom to seek in lyric: we cannot give them too high praise ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... to be a heroine, a beauty, the queen of hearts, cynosure of gallants' eyes; to reign supreme in the court of love and chivalry; to be the watchword and war-cry of the knight and the theme of the troubadour. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... species of satire is now and then visited upon the 'Troubadour Songs,' which have become so afflictingly common of late years. Some of these we have already given; and we find them on the increase in England. We have before us, from the London press of TILT AND BOGUE, 'Sir WHYSTLETON ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... spirits of the troubadour and the spearman. Ivanhoe was not more gallant nor Bois-Guilbert fiercer. But the valor and the prowess were tempered by humor. Below the surging subterranean flood that stirred and lifted him to high attempt, he was a comedian who had tales to tell, and told them ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the dance was over, he caught up a guitar, and lolling against the old marble fireplace, in an attitude which I am half inclined to suspect was studied, began the little French air of the Troubadour. The Squire, however, exclaimed against having anything on Christmas eve but good old English; upon which the young minstrel, casting up his eye for a moment, as if in an effort of memory, struck into another ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... the tradition of his playing would have lingered in the minds of at least two generations. Through the reminiscences of college mates, of soldiers and of frequenters of the Peabody concerts, the memory of this genius with the flute would have remained like that of some troubadour of the Middle Ages. It is unfortunate that he left no compositions to indicate a musical power sufficient to give him a place in the history of American music. It cannot be controverted, however, that he is the one man of letters in America who ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... have loved to be a troubadour, or a trouvere, Frank; that was my true metier, to travel from castle to castle singing love songs and telling romantic stories to while away the tedium of the lives of the great. Fancy the reception ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... him in the doorway of the Cafe Maure, a slim Arab boy, bronze-coloured and serious as an idol, who was a troubadour of the Sahara, singer of "Janat" and many lovesongs, player of the guitar backed with sand tortoise and faced with stretched goatskin. Behind them swung an oil lamp fastened to a beam of palm, and the red ashes glowed in the coffee niche and shed ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... same grace and the same delicate emotion in his recent story, "The Garnet Necklace," a tale which is analogous to the legend of the troubadour Geoffrey Rudel, which has been made into a play by Rostand in ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... songs of the Troubadours, the poets of the South. It is instructive to note that it was the home of the Albigensian heresy, the land that had felt the influence of every Mediterranean civilization, that was also the home of the Troubadour literature. The Counts of Toulouse, the protectors of the heretics, were also the patrons of the poets. The same fierce persecution that uprooted the heretical faith of the Albigenses, also stilled the song of the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... Middle Ages and in antiquity the man of letters, a sort of encyclopaedic doctor, a successor of the troubadour and the poet, all-knowing, was almighty. Literature lorded it over society with a high hand; kings sought the favor of authors, or revenged themselves for their contempt by burning them,—them and their books. This, too, was a way of ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... troubadour of the twelfth century, meets the undiscerning critic more than half-way. Let none judge, he writes, till he be capable of separating the grain from the chaff; 'for the fool makes haste to condemn, and the ignorant only pretends to know all things, and muses on the wonders ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... again disagree; but, by my halidame, I think one troubadour roundel worth all that Petrarch ever wrote. He has but borrowed from our knightly poesy, to disguise ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... One of the best is L'Amiradou (The Belvedere), the story of a fairy imprisoned in the castle at Tarascon, "who will doubtless love the one who shall free her." Three knights attempt the rescue and fail. Then there comes along a little Troubadour, and sings so sweetly of the prowess of his forefathers, of the splendor of the Latin race, that the guard are charmed and the bolts fly back. And the fairy goes up to the top of the tower with the little Troubadour, and they stand mute with love, and look out over all the ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... gives a picture of the man, without taking into account his temperament, for that colored every hour of his life, and every act of his career. The things that he knew seized his imagination. Even when a middle-aged man he sang, like a troubadour, of the fertility of the soil; he was stirred by the virtue and energy of what he saw and touched; his heart leaped at the thought of the power of water ready to be unlocked for man's use—most happy in that the thing that ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... fellow-townsman Bernhard Kellermann (born at Fuerth in 1879). He too is a seeker after new forms of expression for psychical reactions; but he presents himself to us from the very first as a purer nature of greater delicacy and lucidity. He introduces himself as a troubadour of narrative art in his first two novels Yester and Li, a Story of Longing (1904) and Ingeborg (1905). With unutterable tenderness and richness of tone he depicts in each of these two novels the love-longing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... large-hearted and poetic spirits in that age found their most congenial atmosphere in these awful renunciations? Why did he who loved where all men were blind, seek to blind himself where all men loved? Why was he a monk, and not a troubadour? These questions are far too large to be answered fully here, but in any life of Francis they ought at least to have been asked; we have a suspicion that if they were answered, we should suddenly find ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... love, that all-enduring passion, where maidens and their lovers sighed for twice seven years, and all too brief a trial of their truth and constancy! As she listened, her soul seemed to hang on the minstrel's tongue; that erratic troubadour, Gaffer Gee, being a welcome and frequent visitor ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... expecting—a troubadour? I am satisfied to appear in my own character. Only a proportion of the people wear masks at this ball; it's an annual affair. Besides, life with a purpose is too wearing; one must always be on the alert and have the purpose in ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... troubadour who incited the young Prince Henry to rebellion against his father, Henry II. of England. The prince ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... discourse in a royally gallant, troubadour tone which must have astonished the beautiful ...
— The Mummy's Foot • Theophile Gautier
... beautiful craft backed away and turned for Nine-Mile Point. And here came the Troubadour, with whistles trumpeting a troubadour's salute to the new queen of the river. The Hayle boat's people had espied their own commodore and the black mass on their forecastle were singing ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... "that the old days of romance are returned, when a queen could turn from princes and warriors to listen to a troubadour." ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... partners in the hall, and marched in procession into the recreation room, where Miss Maitland (a stately Marie Antoinette) acted hostess, and received her guests with the assistance of Miss Parkinson (a Spanish gipsy) and Vivian Holmes (hastily attired as a troubadour). ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... his back upon the mill-wheels of his native town and an assured future in a Parisian business house, like Gil Bias's friend, il s'est jet dans le bel esprit—in other words, he betook himself to the career of a troubadour. Never, surely, did master of song-craft write and sing so ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... "It's a sort of troubadour story," said Lady Pentreath, an easy, deep-voiced old lady; "I'm glad to find a little romance left among us. I think our young people now ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... little leather case on which it usually stood. In another moment she gave vent to an ejaculation of surprise which startled the remainder of the company, and made them immediately forget all about the china troubadour. ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... Gaily the Troubadour touched his guitar, As he was hastening home from the war, Singing, "From Palestine hither I come,— ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... her through the trees as he entered this last village of his march, but the air was too dull with heat for him to catch so much as a whiff of her refreshing saltness, and for the present he could not go down to greet her. He was still the lonely troubadour, dressed in a native cloth around the loins, with a turban of rags upon his head, and a battered accordion slung from his back, come in from afar to sing and pull ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne |
