"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... times, one of the tattooing artists would crawl over the bulwarks, followed by his sitter; and then a bare arm or leg would be extended, and the disagreeable business of "pricking" commence, right under my eyes; or an irruption of tars, with ditty-bags or sea-reticules, and piles of old trowsers to mend, would break in upon my seclusion, and, forming a sewing-circle, drive me ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... foolish, ranting ditty seemed to mock me, my breath came and went to it, my heart beat to it; yet even so, I was praying passionately and this my prayer, viz: That whoso was waiting above us for my death-cry should not again lift the scuttle lest I be discovered to this man-thing that crept ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... imprisoned by the Archduke of Austria, his deadly enemy, the plaintive notes of a familiar lay fell on their ears. The singer was a young shepherd, and one of the knights, a troubadour, asked him to repeat his ditty. The youth complied, and the knight accompanied him as he sang, their voices ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... craw, maw, gizzard, breadbasket; mouth. pocket, pouch, fob, sheath, scabbard, socket, bag, sac, sack, saccule, wallet, cardcase, scrip, poke, knit, knapsack, haversack, sachel, satchel, reticule, budget, net; ditty bag, ditty box; housewife, hussif; saddlebags; portfolio; quiver &c (magazine) 636. chest, box, coffer, caddy, case, casket, pyx, pix, caisson, desk, bureau, reliquary; trunk, portmanteau, band-box, valise; grip, grip sack [U.S.]; skippet, vasculum; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to keep the purity nothing would have to be named which carried the least suggestion of sadness with it, and, in the world that human language refers to, such a condition would exclude every situation possible. "O joy, O joy," would be the whole ditty: hence some dialecticians, whose experience is largely verbal, think whatever ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Now, as this is a true ditty, I do not assert—this, you know, is between us That she's in a state of absolute nudity, Like Powers's Greek Slave or the Medici Venus; But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Which cost five hundred dollars, and not a cent less, And jewelry worth ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... on reading her letters, but all the while was thinking of her conversation with her uncle as well as something else suggested by the newcomer and his ditty. ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... measured sweep the burden bore, In such wild cadence as the breeze Makes through December's leafless trees. The chorus first could Allan know, 'Roderick Vich Alpine, ho! fro!' And near, and nearer as they rowed, Distinct the martial ditty flowed. ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... back an indistinct response. The Scot was either suspicious, or offended by my churlishness. I slipped off quickly to a dark corner, but I saw him eying me closely. A youth brushed past humming a ditty, which seemed strangely out of place in those surroundings. He stood an elbow's length from me and kicked moccasined heels against the floor in the way of light-headed lads. Both the air and figure of the young ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the first time that Talbot had seen this warlike ditty. Its intention was to guard soldiers from saying too much in front of strangers. Talbot vowed, however, to apply its moral to himself at all times and ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... way off on a low stool was a dingy Spaniard with a telescope laid across his knees, which every little while he would raise to his eye and take a steady glance around the horizon to seaward. At other times he would roll and light a paper cigar, murmuring some low ditty to himself as he sent the smoke in volumes through his nose. A small brass bell hung beside the shed near the battery, together with a telegraphic card, which was connected by a wire strung on low ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... Swiss girls about, until vengeance overtook them—a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jodeling refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep in the corridors of the hotel. ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... especially fine "barber chords" in this popular ditty, and the words are so touching that it is repeated over and over again. Then it is sung softly like the farmhand quartettes do in the rural melodrama outside the old homestead in harvest time. Oh! I tell you ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... I'll court in her sequester'd haunts, By mountain, meadow, streamlet, grove or cell; Where the poised lark his evening ditty chaunts, And health, and peace, and contemplation ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... am anxious to ascertain who was the author of the above ditty; it was very popular in Aberdeenshire about the beginning of this century. The scene, if I remember rightly, is laid in the parish of Forgue, in Aberdeenshire. Possibly some of the members of the Spalding Club may be able to enlighten me on ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... They had been to see some tragic melodrama performed by some players in a booth at the fair. A very slow, doleful, but catching air was played, which so laid hold of the tailors' fancy that for some time after they were found slowly whistling or humming the doleful ditty, the movement of their needles keeping time to it; the result was that the clothing that should have been sent home on Saturday was not finished until the Wednesday following. The music had done ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... think I've got a noospaper in my ditty-box down below as will tell you all about it, and then, p'r'aps, you'll feel as if you'd believe there ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to Palmerston later on, as they sat drinking in that ditty, one on either side of the kitchen table, "it can't sing, but the words is that I dreamt I dwelt in Marble Halls with Princes and Peers by my si-i-ide—just like that. Princes!" She leaned back in the cheap chair and closed her eyes. "It goes through me to this day. ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... I reach'd 85 That tenderest strain of all the ditty, My fault'ring voice and pausing harp Disturb'd her ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... bells— Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, All in time, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! O, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells, How it dwells On the future! how it tells Of rapture that impels To the swinging ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... defeated. I see two females in the old garden-house yonder—but how to address them? Stay—Will Shakespeare, be my friend in need. I will give them a taste of Autolycus." He then sung, with a good voice, and becoming audacity, the popular playhouse ditty,— ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... sign, however, that her life was very quiet and peaceful, that she had leisure to think upon the thing at all; and often she forgot it entirely in her low, chanting song, or in listening to the thrush warbling out his afternoon ditty to his patient mate in the ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... wondered that at the first note of the king of singers all other birds were not mute. But evidently the birds have not enthroned this thrush. Possibly, even, they do not share human admiration for his song. The redstart goes on jerking out his monotonous ditty; chippy irreverently mounts a perch and trills out his inane apology for a song; the vireo in yonder tree spares us not one of his never-ending platitudes. But the hermit thrush goes on with sublime indifference to the voices of common folk down below. Sometimes he is answered from ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... of insurrection. The fish-wives, who manifest the keenest jealousy of each other when the sale of a penny herring is in question, display a united front when a quarrel arises with a buyer. They sang the popular old ditty, "The baker's wife has heaps of crowns, which cost her precious little"; they stamped their feet, and goaded the Mehudins as though the latter were dogs which they were urging on to bite and devour. And there were even ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... whiskey that's doin' the singin'," explained the boy. "Hi tunket! Listen to that ditty, ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... himself for a moment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye, and a voice that was by no means bad, excepting that it ran occasionally into a falsetto, like the notes of a split reed, he quavered forth a quaint old ditty,— ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... at dusk, and air herself with her brothers in the garden. The weather was close and misty, and Honora set open the door to admit the air from the open passage window. A low, soft, lulling sound came in, so much softened by distance that the tune alone showed that it was an infant school ditty sung by Maria, while rocking herself in her low chair over the school-room fire. Turning to discover whether the invalid were annoyed by it, Honor beheld the hard, keen little eyes intently fixed, until presently they filled with tears; and with ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the woodside; reminding me sometimes of ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... hip—another word, d'ye see." They forthwith returned to know what he wanted, and found him already in a sweat. "Hark ye, brother," said he, wiping his face, "I do suppose as how one may pass away the time in whistling the Black Joke, or singing Black-eyed Susan, or some such sorrowful ditty."—"By no means," cried the doctor; "such pastimes are neither suitable to the place, nor the occasion, which is altogether a religious exercise. If you have got any psalms by heart, you may sing a stave ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... her to alert appreciation, and she proceeded to eat her dinner with an expression of artless and whole-souled relief. She was able to point out to Henry, as a bit of prandial small-talk, that the orchestra was playing "Nancy Brown"—a classic ditty whose notes had reached even Clayton Centre. It was at this stimulating point of the dinner, also, that she felt privileged for the first time to remove her gloves, glance at the other tables and the clothes of the women, and talk freely ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... the bedroom window and wonder with a foolish face of horror. The pavement was often blocked for hours together, and itinerant vendors of refreshment made it a new market centre, while vocalists hastened thither to sing the delectable ditty of the deed without having any voice in the matter. It was a pity the Government did not erect a toll-gate at either end of the street. But Chancellors of the Exchequer rarely avail themselves of the more obvious expedients for ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... two fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice to chant the following ditty:— ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... impressions. The previous day belonged to my remote past. I had travelled through ages of experience since then. For example, I quite definitely was no longer proud of being a clerk in an office. As I realised this I smiled down as from a great height upon a recollection of the chorus of a Scots ditty sung by a sailor on board the Ariadne. I have no notion of how to spell the words, but they ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Spirit-Island [CH] sitting under midnight's misty moon, Lo I see the spirits flitting o'er the waters one by one! Slumber wraps the silent city, and the droning mills are dumb; One lone whippowil's shrill ditty calls her mate that ne'er will come. Sadly moans the mighty river, foaming down the fettered falls, Where of old he thundered ever o'er abrupt and lofty walls. Great Unktehee—god of waters—lifts no more his mighty head; Fled he with the timid ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side A pleasanter spot you never spied; But when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, what ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... with a violent start, he wondered what set of brain-cells had been stirred to reproduce rhymes that he had, or so he deemed, long ago forgotten. And still musing, he almost mechanically went on with the wild ditty. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... the chaos of the raw material, beneath the touch of Charley's wise hands, emerged a wondrous cosmos of biscuits, light as the heart of a boy. And Frank, singing a French ditty, created wheat cakes. His method struck me as poetic. He scorned the ordinary uninspired cook's manner of turning the half-baked cake. One side being done, he waited until the ditty reached a certain lilting upward leap in ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... Bristles," Fred announced, as he touched this small pouch which, in the woods among old hunters would probably be called a "ditty-bag," and contain all manner of little odds and ends likely to be needed ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... Plank,' he cried brazenly, hating the boys more than ever because they had seen him unbend. He broke into the villainous ditty: ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... not remember to have seen that interesting old nursery ditty "London Bridge is broken down" printed, or even referred to in print. For the edification then of all interested in the subject, I send ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... sang a more appealing ditty still, whereat they were all about ready to advance, when one of their number, of a sceptical turn, urged them to avoid such fanciful matters and give heed to their sheep, who would otherwise become ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book II - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... sane person would, could, or durst attempt. James Montgomery will live by his smaller poems—his larger are long lyrics—and when was a long lyric any other than tedious? Hunt has sung many a joyous carol, and many a pathetic ditty, but produced no high or lasting poem. Pollok has aimed at a higher object than almost any poet of his day; he has sought, like Milton, to enshrine religion in poetic form, and to attract to it poetic admirers: he did so in good faith, and he expended great talents and a young ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... pu'fect f'om dey fo'heads to dey feet!" An' sich steppin' to de music down de line, 'T ain't de music by itself dat meks it fine, Hit's de walkin', step by step, An' de keepin' time wid "Hep," Dat it mek a common ditty soun' divine. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the Teian bard of pleasure, Round his brow where joy reposes Radiant love enwreaths his roses, Rapture in his verse is ringing, Soft persuasion in his singing:— 'Twas the same melodious ditty Moved Polycrates to pity, Made that tyrant heart surrender Captive to a tone so tender: To the younger bard inclining, Round his brow the roses twining, First the wreath in red wine steeping, He ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... on the knoll this spiritual ditty was unheard. They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every fold of the subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... started from the Goal, The first Plantation Ditty 'gan to roll Through Minstrel Troupes and Negro Baritones In its predestined ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... uproariously harmonious; Fips sung the good "Old English Gentleman;" Jack the "British Grenadiers;" and your humble servant, when called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, "When the Bloom is on the Rye," in a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper's, who was asleep, and Jack's, who was singing the "Bay of Biscay O," at the same time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at each other ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the gentle motion and the lulling song. They sang and rocked till the lids came creeping down, and hid the great blue eyes; but still they sang and rocked, lulling the boy, and gladdening their own hearts; for the quaint old Breton ditty was tunable as the lark that carols over the green wheat in April; and the words so simple and motherly, that a nation had taken them to heart. Such songs bind ages together and make the lofty and the low akin by the great ties of music and the heart. Many a Breton peasant's bosom in the ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... of the sweetest, for to Vijil he had expressed himself in forcible Mexican—which is supposed to be Spanish and often isn't—condemning the luck by which the cinch had gone bad at the wrong time, and as he tinkered he sang softly an old southern ditty: ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... slight. In a few minutes the boat had vanished, and then the gorge became wilder and sterner; but just as I thought the sentiment of desolation perfect, a little goatherd, who had climbed high up the rocks somewhere with his equally sure-footed companions, began to sing, not a pastoral ditty in the Southern dialect, but the 'Marseillaise,' thus recalling with shocking incongruity impressions of screaming barrel-organs at the fete of ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... is uncommonly childlike and bland; moreover, she sings charmingly; while of Mr. DAVID JAMES as the pastor Jackson it may be said, "Sure such a pere was never seen!" The Irishman, Mr. CHAUNCEY OLCOTT, has a mighty purty voice, and gains a hearty encore for a ditty of which the music is not particularly striking. Mr. PERCY REEVE has written words which go glibly to AUDRAN's music, and fit the situations. The piece is capitally played and sung all round; and marvellous ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... searching eye could cull: Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still Than Leda's love, and cresses from the rill. His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath, Seem'd like a poll of ivy in the teeth 160 Of winter hoar. Then came another crowd Of shepherds, lifting in due time aloud Their share of the ditty. After them appear'd, Up-followed by a multitude that rear'd Their voices to the clouds, a fair wrought car, Easily rolling so as scarce to mar The freedom of three steeds of dapple brown: Who stood therein did seem ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... weak, but freed of fever, woke one glorious afternoon, and heard a bird-like voice humming a quaint old ditty, and saw a field of golden wheat through an open window, and seated at that window the mellow songstress, Mercy Vint, plying her needle, with lowered lashes but beaming face, a picture of health and quiet womanly happiness. Things were going to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... to be aroused in passing through the roji differed with different tea-masters. Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained in the ancient ditty: ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... Ditty do's remember my drown'd father, This is no mortall busines, nor no sound That the earth owes: I heare it ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hospital and spend his time carefully preparing the toast and seeing that it was served in good condition. When Mr. Atkins felt so disposed he would summon a piou-piou to give him a French lesson or else request the various inmates of the ward to sing to him. He would in turn render that plaintive ditty, "Down by the Old Bull and Bush." A nurse who spoke a little English translated his song to the French soldiers! Whilst not desiring to criticise the rendez-vous selected by their "camerade anglais," they did not consider that "pres d'un vieux taureau" (near an old bull) was a safe or desirable ...
— The White Road to Verdun • Kathleen Burke
... with a calm disdain, Here laughed he careless in his easy seat; Here quaffed, encircled with the joyous train, Oft moralizing sage: his ditty sweet He lothed much to write, he cared to repeat. Stanza introduced into Thomson's "Castle of Indolence," Canto I. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... a bugbear, with which to frighten naughty children, now comforting and caressing this stolen child; when she fed him with her own hands, and then took him in her arms and hushed him to sleep—singing to him a wild, childish ditty, which she remembered, because her own long dead mother had sung it to her, when she also ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee ditty at the top of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... song, which is said to have been originally connected with a plaintive Jacobite ditty, now lost, has suggested several modern songs similar in manner and sentiment. Imlah composed two songs with this chorus. The earlier of these compositions appears in the "May Flowers." It is evidently founded upon a rumour, which prevailed in Aberdeenshire during the first quarter ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... thought!—Yet be as now thou art, That in thy waters may be seen 10 The image of a poet's heart, How bright, how solemn, how serene! Such as did once the Poet bless, [1] Who murmuring here a later [C] ditty, [2] Could find no refuge from distress 15 But in the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... had been taken ill of a fever, and removed to the town in a tilted ambulance; and as she had lain quivering and moaning on the stretcher she had seemed still to be singing her little ditty about the graveyard and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... while six chords beneath my fingers cried, He with his tuneful voice the seventh supplied; The midday songster of the mountain set His pastoral ditty to my canzonet; And when he sang, his modulated throat Accorded with the lifeless string ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the pleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect which the improvvisatori produced on the children of the desert. "When the bard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief's excitement was almost beyond control. The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved by these rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild tribes of the Persian mountains. Such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... themselves by shouting sundry derisive songs, one of which was specially chosen when the "Revenge" was sufficiently near to be aggrieved by it: and Arthur, who had learned enough Spanish from his mother to act as translator, rendered the ditty into plain English prose for the benefit of Jack and Basset. The former received it with lofty scorn,—the latter with fiery vaticinations concerning his intentions when the ships should meet: and looking at the figure-head of the ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... one is pretty sure to meet a wandering beggar—a shrewd-eyed, bewhiskered fellow. He carries, not a barrel organ and monkey, but a blinking tame crow perched on his shoulder, and at every farmstead he halts to whine his nasal ditty and ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... by casting aside the patches that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which recited the cause of his calamity. Dot-and-go-One disencumbered himself of his timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs, beside his fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty, and were reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing chorus. By the time the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch, that everybody joined in and sang it clear through from the beginning, producing a volume of villainous sound ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... both country and city, Come listen with patience, and hear out my ditty: At this time I'll choose to be wiser than witty. Which ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... begin by singing us a fashionable ditty," remarked Ferdishenko, and looked at the mistress of the house, to see what she ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... The ditty deals with broken vows, and faithless hearts, and blighted lives; just the sort of song that Tommy loves to warble after a good meal in the evening. It conjured to the Subaltern's eyes the picture of the dainty little star who had sung it on the boards of the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... elders of the people; warriors erst, But idle now through age, yet of a voice Still indefatigable as the fly's[10] 175 Which perch'd among the boughs sends forth at noon Through all the grove his slender ditty sweet. Such sat those Trojan leaders on the tower, Who, soon as Helen on the steps they saw, In accents quick, but whisper'd, thus remark'd. 180 Trojans and Grecians wage, with fair excuse, Long war for so much ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... I was seeking My ponies in their green retreat, I heard a lady sing a ditty To me which sounded ...
— Marsk Stig's Daughters - and other Songs and Ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... growth of the lusty brood within. The scuffle of little feet over the rough floor brings indolent, half-indifferent guessing as to which of the lesser four-foots they belonged. The whippoorwills down in the river woods call until they drop off, one by one, and the timid ditty of a singing mouse that lives under the floor by my cot is the last message the sandman sends to close our eyes before sleep. And such sleep! That first steel-blue starlit night in the open we said that we meant to sleep and sleep it out, even if we ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... the tinkling chords, and began a sweet love-ditty. Fixing my eyes on his, I made every word speak to his heart from mine. I saw his color change, his eyes melt;—when the song ended, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... ditty with the glorious tale?[60] Ah! such, alas! the hero's amplest fate! When granite moulders and when records fail, A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date.[bw] Pride! bend thine eye from Heaven to thine estate, See how the Mighty shrink into a song! Can Volume, Pillar, Pile preserve thee ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... old emperor." His army filed off by night, in silence, leaving behind its munitions and its tents just as they stood, "driven away, almost, by the chastisement of Heaven," says the contemporary chronicler Rabutin, "with but two shots by way of signal." The ditty of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... courtyard, there stood Charlotte, looking gay and fair, yet warlike, as I deemed. She was clad in a long garment of red over a white robe, and had sleeves of green, so that she wore the spring's own colours, and she was singing a French ditty concerning a lady who has a lover, and vows that she will never be ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the favorite folk songs sung to the children of a half century ago was "Run Nigger Run, or the Patty Roll Will Get You." Few of the children of today have ever heard this humorous ditty, and would, perhaps, be ignorant of its meaning. To the errant negro youths of slave times, however, this tune had a significant, and sometimes tragic, meaning. The "patty rolls" were guards hired by the plantations ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... slight in figure but harmoniously proportioned had placed herself about two yards from the bow window. She fixed her eyes on Gay and her pretty mouth curved into a smile. Then she sang. The ditty was "Cold and Raw," a ballad that two hundred years ago or so, never failed to delight everybody from the highest to the lowest. She gave it with natural feeling and without any attempt at display. The voice was untrained but ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... are new birds to be found. Still, it's singular," I continued, "that the house wren should dwell in such secluded places. It would seem that his name is a misnomer—at least, in a good many instances." Several times I stopped to listen more intently to the rolling ditty. "There's something odd about that wren's song," I repeated. "Does the house wren always close its song with the rising inflection, as if it were ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... began to lilt as blithely as he could, "The Bonny Lass of Livingston," and the spring was ever after to him as a hymn of thanksgiving, but the words he then sang was an auld, ranting, godless and graceless ditty of the grooms and serving-men that sorned about his father's smiddy, and the closer that the horsemen came he was strengthened to sing the louder ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... whooping anon, anon," etc., etc., is in the same exquisite measure. This appears to us neither more nor less than an imitation of such minstrelsy as soothed our cries in the cradle, with the shrill ditty of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... fresh, cheerful morning, succeeding several days of sultry weather—an auspicious commencement of the journey. My chaouch, Mohammed Souweea, preceded me on his great horse, murmuring some Arab ditty, and I followed hard on my little donkey. The desert assails the walls of Tripoli, and in half an hour we were in the Sahara sands, which here and there rise in great mounds. I should have liked to have pushed on to some considerable distance at once; but the habits of the country ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... girl has never played the game, and sung the ditty, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down," even though nobody now ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... bench in front of the yurta, and I could distinctly hear every word of a sentimental, gently melancholy little ditty which had once been ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... two crown pieces! They looked out from under her thick eyebrows like sunlight peeping from a heavy cloud. And she was made like a lad for suppleness. Taller than her mother by head and shoulders, and within a full inch o' my forelock. By'r lay'kin! how she could sing too! She would troll thee a ditty i' th' voice o' a six-foot stripling, but for a' that, as sweet as bells far away on a still noon in summer-tide. And she was always getting hold o' saucy songs, and putting them to tunes o' her own invention. A could 'a' had aye the lads i' th' village, ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... sang his plaintive and aimless ditty; at night, when his poor mother gathered up her little wares to return home, so deplorable did his defects appear, that while she carried her table on her head, her stock of little merchandize in her lap, and her stool in one hand, she was obliged to lead him by the other. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... Kilcolman was the 'lamentable lay' to which reference had just been made—the piece in praise of Elizabeth which bore the name of Cynthia. In Spenser's pastoral, the speaker is persuaded by Thestylis (Lodovick Bryskett) to explain what ditty that was that the Shepherd of the Ocean sang, and he explains very distinctly, but in terms which are scarcely critical, that Raleigh's poem was written in love and praise, but also in pathetic complaint, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... FERDINAND. The ditty does remember my drown'd father. This is no mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owes:—I hear it ...
— The Tempest • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... little too late to be printed with the official account of the celebration. It was written at the suggestion of Dr. Jacob Bigelow, who thought the popular tune "The Poacher's Song" would be a good model for a lively ballad or ditty. He himself wrote the admirable Latin song to be found in the record ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "Speak no more. I am tired of the burden of the ditty, dear; and it may do you such injury yet that already I hate it. Come out again into our garden with me. Dismiss these cares, these burning pains and rankling wounds. Be soothed by the cool evening air, taste the gorgeous quiet of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... on their parts renew an old acquaintance with the princess's attendants. Each, in heart, is already false to his vow, without knowing that the wish is shared by his associates; they overhear one another, as they in turn confide their sorrows in a love-ditty to the solitary forest: every one jeers and confounds the one who follows him. Biron, who from the beginning was the most satirical among them, at last steps forth, and rallies the king and the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... it appeared, was a bit of a poet, and had composed a choice song for this festive occasion, and which was sung in grand chorus, the Right Honourable Colonel himself, heartily joining. The whole ditty was supremely ludicrous. I remember only the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... Carthagena, to be at hand should any opportunity occur for Jamaica, and were lounging about one forenoon on the fortifications, looking with sickening hearts out to seaward, when a voice struck up the following negro ditty close ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... pronounced effective a comprehensive programme was rendered. Every popular song that occurred to the mind was turned on and yelled with wild lustiness. Those who did not know the words either whistled the air or improvised an impossible ditty. Whenever there was a pause to recall some new song, the interval was occupied with "Rule, Britannia!" This was a prime favourite, and repetition did not stale its forceful rendition, especial stress ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... she could bear it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, wondering when her husband would come and rescue her from these beasts. Watching ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... up; the scattered flocks and herds Who had survived the wild beasts' hungry chase Died moaning, each upon the other's face In helpless agony gazing; round the City All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case 3925 Like starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty! And many a mother wept, pierced with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... thus onloaded, reetires to the r'ar, coverin' his chagrin by hummin' a stanzy or two from the well-known ditty, 'Bill, of Smoky Hill.' ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... embodied; and who certainly would have hugged him for Tom's opening song, delivered in the arms of Huncamunca, if he could have forgiven the later master in his own craft for having composed it afresh to the air of a ditty then wildly popular at the "Coal Hole."[177] The encores were frequent, and for the most part the little fellow responded to them; but the misplaced enthusiasm that took similar form at the heroic intensity with which he stabbed Dollalolla, he rebuked by going gravely on to the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... what might be the consequences of irritating her friend, and trembling with the fear of doing so, poor Nell sang him some little ditty which she had learned in happier times, and which was so agreeable to his ear, that on its conclusion he in the same peremptory manner requested to be favoured with another, to which he was so obliging as to ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... master and the overseers, O Lord! so runs our chaplain's weekly ditty; Unreasonable prayers God never hears, He knows that they're ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the early days, expressed itself in what were called pipes—a ditty, either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme. These pipes were a substitute for the newspaper, and the fear of satire checked the haughtiness ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... in a muffled minor, ending with a prolonged dying fall at the burden of each verse, "On b-o-o-o-ard of the Arethusa." It was a fine sight to see Jack holding The Luck, rocking from side to side as if with the motion of a ship, and crooning forth this naval ditty. Either through the peculiar rocking of Jack or the length of his song,—it contained ninety stanzas, and was continued with conscientious deliberation to the bitter end,—the lullaby generally had the desired effect. At such times the men would lie at full length under ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... was now all submission. He walked up and down any number of times like a tame animal at the Zoological Gardens, and now quite agreed that his name was Mary Jones. He sang "Tom Bowling" at command, and No. 6, not to be outdone, warbled a ditty called, I think, "The Slave Girl's Love," the refrain of which, according to her version, was, "I cannot love, because I ham a slave." She broke down in the middle of this aspiring ditty, and then personated a Jew old ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... Elector, "and may good fortune attend you everywhere. Electress, give me your arm, and let us withdraw to our own apartments. And he, our son, will doubtless, first of all, have to take a most touching and tearful farewell of Leuchtmar, and sing a mournful ditty about the cruel father who would take away from him his nurse—that is to say, ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... containing a light sleeping bag and enough food to last him a week. With me this means coffee, tea, sugar, canned milk, dried fruit, rice, cornmeal, flour and baking powder mixture, a little bacon, butter, and seasoning. This will weigh less than ten pounds. With other minor appurtenances in the ditty bag, including an arrow-repairing kit, one's burden is less than twenty pounds, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... phonograph to Washington and exhibited it in the room of James G. Blaine's niece (Gail Hamilton); and members of Congress and notable people of that city came all day long until late in the evening. I made one break. I recited 'Mary,' etc., and another ditty: ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... he has a knapsack on his shoulders, which he casts down on the corner of the stoup; he is singing a line of an old French ditty; he raps at the open door. The Highlander bids him welcome, but starts with glad surprise as his hand is ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... which naturally was rather handsome, but something that resembled a compound of both, where the simplicity of the fool was mixed with the extravagance of a crazed imagination. He sung with great earnestness, and not without some taste, a fragment of an old Scottish ditty:— ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... hunting ditty which tells a tale of four bold riders who came by their death ower a cragg afollowing one of this same breed many years agone now, it tells ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... interrupted Tom. "That must be a second cousin to the ditty entitled ''Tis Well to Meet ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... 'Hussar,'" said he, scanning the fresh beardless face with its clear mirthful eyes. "And it's not an improving song for young officers neither. I'll try 'Twisting Jane' if you gentlemen will support me with the chorus;" and in a deep mellow voice he embarked without more ado on the following barrack-room ditty:— ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... with three faces within a wreath of oak-leaves with floriated spandrels.[44] We should like to pursue the subject of these Newbury clothiers and see Thomas Dolman's house, which is so fine and large and cost so much money that his workpeople used to sing a doggerel ditty:— ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... mournful dirge.—Ver. 118. Clarke translates 'Casuque canit miserabile carmen;' 'and in his fall plays but a dismal ditty.'] ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... Every body begins to feal the trip now, geting tiresome now. since they have taken all of our ditty Boxes and benches and all extra mess chests and stored them away, we have no place to sit down except on deck and let our feet hang over. then the men forward cant get enough water to keep themselves clean. I am more lucky ...
— The Voyage of the Oregon from San Francisco to Santiago in 1898 • R. Cross
... on. Nobody aboard the craft knew what to do. Once Bob tried to cheer up and hum a ditty, but the effort was ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... garrulous world. What a heap of mischief M. Jourdain has done by his discovery that he was talking prose all his life! Prose, indeed! Moliere has much to answer for. The rough, shuffling, slipshod, down-at-heel, clipped, frayed talk of every-day life bears as much relation to prose as a music-hall ditty to poetry. The name "prose" must be reserved for the fine art of language—that fine art whose other branch is poetry. It is a grammarians' term, "prose," and belongs not to the herd. They do not need it, and it would never have come into M. Jourdain's head or out of his mouth, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... passed a battalion of the 113th Regiment of the Line, heavy with their knapsacks, their red trousers dusty, returning from the long morning march, and singing as they went that very old regimental ditty which every soldier of France ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... for music. However, there was no doubt about it: he really did love it: at certain passages to which he attached the most ridiculous meanings the tears would come into his eyes. But after having been moved by a scene from Wagner, he would strum out a gallop of Offenbach, or sing some music-hall ditty after the Ode to Joy. Then Christophe would bob about and roar with rage. But the worst of all to bear was not when Sylvain Kohn was absurd so much as when he was trying to be profound and subtle, when he ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... got in the most unexpected places. I was particularly struck with a children's glee-party in Jura (a rough island known chiefly for its sterile Paps). The bairns admirably rendered Ben Jonson's delightful ditty, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," and the Shakespearian song, "Where the bee sucks, there suck I." In such islands a musical teacher is a valuable asset. Let me add that all the libraries have been gratuitously supplied with fine ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... admit the eunuch, who entered; and when he saw the Commander of the Faithful, he saluted not neither kissed the earth, but said, 'Quick, quick! Arise in haste! My lady Tuhfeh sitteth in her chamber, singing a goodly ditty. Come to her in haste and see all that I say to thee! Hasten! She sitteth [in her chamber].' The Khalif was amazed at his speech and said to him, 'What sayst thou?' 'Didst thou not hear the first of the speech?' replied the eunuch. 'Tuhfeh sitteth in ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... then bring out his store of facts which he has noted down as they occurred; he makes his selection according to circumstances, according to the state of his own mind; not forgetting the state of mind that the children may be in, and especially the state of the weather. The following little ditty may then be repeated, the subject being ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... most of my attention. It was pleasant to find here two comparatively rare warblers, of whom I had before had only casual glimpses,—the mourning warbler and the bay-breasted. The former was singing his loud but commonplace ditty within a few rods of the piazza on one side of the house, while his congener, the Maryland yellow-throat, was to be heard on the other side, along with the black-cap (Dendroeca striata), the black-and-yellow, and the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... stood still at a very short distance from the grave. Steenie was humming a plaintive ditty, or rather dirge; for it partook of a double character, something between an alehouse roundelay ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... and courage to thrust ourselves past a bundle of withered twigs, which served Janet as a door in summer, and as a door-protector in the blasts of winter. Janet was as usual at her wheel, and crooning some old Covenanting ditty, about— ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... I've told them it was none of their business what you folks did; that you could afford to hunt for buried treasure, or buried beans, or buried anything else, if you wanted to. And if you'll report one of them even winking disrespectful, or showing the trace of a grin, I'll set him and his ditty bag ashore ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... music; a bit of his own composition, "Old Aegina's Rock," or "Cockle-hat and Staff"; his cousin's Scotch ballads or Christy Minstrel songs; and if you can sing a new ditty, fresh from London, now is your chance. You are surprised to see the Prophet clapping his hands to "Camptown Races," or the "Hundred Pipers"—chorus given with the whole strength of the company; but you are in a house ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... flushed not thistle purple like the rest of her countenance. Even the serving-man smiled to himself, a mocking smile, and hummed in a low voice, as he continued to lay the blows thickly on Miles, a ditty having ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... was wont to sing it to the virginals. 'Cold to bosom,'" he reiterated with a plangent cadence; "I remember them all, sir; from the cradle I had a gift for music." And then, with an ample flirt of his bow, he broke, all beams and smiles, into this ingenuous ditty: ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... thought it was a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for a company that had met such cruel losses in the morning. But, indeed, from what I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... calls it Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier than any beast. Saving Thy Gracious Presence, he to me A long-legged grasshopper appears to be, That springing flies, and flying springs, And in the grass the same old ditty sings. Would he still lay among the grass he grows in! Each bit of dung he seeks, to ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... recall a saccharine tune sung by someone who strode stiffly to and fro in a glare of amber footlights—wasn't there a song about: "And I lo-ong to settle down, in that old Long Island town!" Wasn't there such a ditty? It came softly back, unbidden, to the sentimental attic of our memory as we passed along that fine avenue of trees and revisited, for the first time since we moved away, the wide space of those Long Island fields and the row of frame cottages. There ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... indistinct moaning. One of her companions, remembering the physician's instructions, endeavoured to lull her by singing, in a low voice, a tender little air, which was a particular favourite of Annette's. Probably it had some connexion in her mind with her own story; for every fond girl has some ditty of the kind, linked in her thoughts with sweet and ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... song for the willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding through all of ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... sinna H's jes brimful o' gas, Singin' dat tomfool ditty As he goes hobblin' pas'! He betta be prayin' and mebbe H'll git in de fold at las'! Yes, he's gwine to de grabe up yonder By de trees dar on de hill, Where all alone by hisself one day He buried po' massa Will! You see dey war boys togedder; To-day dey'd cuss an' fight; ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... "squalidus" is "in a sorry pickle." "Importuna" is "a plaguy baggage;" "adulterium" is rendered "her pranks;" "ambages" becomes either "a long rabble of words," "a long-winded detail," or "a tale of a tub;" "miserabile carmen" is "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is "to ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... precipitous on both sides of them. It was another crevasse, but not a long one. Presently the child came to a halt because the way ended and they could proceed no farther. He leaned against the rock and in a high-pitched, sweet voice sang part of a Sicilian ditty, neither starting the verse nor ending it, but merely ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... Weaver?" Not unless you are Lancashire born and bred, for it is a complete Lancashire ditty. I will copy it ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... what, when you have read, you may scratch your head, and say, I suppose, there's nobody knows, whether what I have got be verse or not; by the tune and the time, it ought to be rhyme; but if it be, did you ever see, of late or of yore, such a ditty before? ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... Pitt spoke strongly against the tax in the commons. It was defended by Grenville, who in the course of his speech constantly demanded where another tax could be laid. Mimicking his querulous tone, Pitt repeated aloud the words of an old ditty, "Gentle shepherd, tell me where". The nickname, Gentle shepherd, stuck by Grenville. The bill passed the commons and was sent up to the lords. For the first time since the revolution the lords divided on a money-bill, and voted 49 against, to ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... ever equalled thine, thou prince of Ganymedes? and when were cigars more justly appreciated, than as our puffs kept time with the trolling ditty, resounding through the walls ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... before, Mr. Price was able to start for Harwich, via Brampton, very early the next morning. He was driving along through Northcutt's woods with one leg hanging over the wheel, humming through his nose what we may suppose to have been a love-ditty, and letting his imagination run riot about the lady in question, when he nearly fell out of his wagon. The cause of this was the sight of fat Tom coming around a corner, with Jethro Bass behind him. Lem Hallowell and the storekeeper ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the "Ecclesiastical History" contain a letter by one Cuthbert to his fellow-student Cuthwine, describing the manner of Bede's death. In this letter is contained a pious ditty in the vernacular, which Bede, who was "learned in our native songs," composed at the time when he was contemplating the approach ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... with that John Brown whom the minstrel has immortalized as being the possessor of a diminutive youth of the aboriginal American race, who, in the course of the ditty, is multiplied from "one little Injun" into "ten little Injuns," and who, in a succeeding stanza, by an ingenious amphisbaenic process, is again reduced to the singular number. As far as we are aware, the author of this "genuine autobiography" claims no relationship with the famous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... there doth stand Inamorato with folded hand; Down hangs his head, terse and polite, Some ditty sure he doth indite. His lute and books about him lie, As symptoms of his vanity. If this do not enough disclose, To paint him, take thyself by ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Plotinus knew. What is that great wind which blows without, in continuous and ineffable harmonies? Part of you, practical man. There is but one music in the world: and to it you contribute perpetually, whether you will or no, your one little ditty of no tone. ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... the time, until they come, Sing me some doleful ditty to the lute, That may complain my ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... she gave this young gentleman her hand to support her to her seat, and asked him whether, in his country, they did not do service and devoir to the divine Dame Musica? And whereas he replied that verily they did, that in his own land he had heard many a sweet ditty sung by noble ladies to the harp and lute, that the children would ever sing at their sports, and that he, too, had oftentimes uplifted his voice in singing of madrigals, she besought him that he would make proof ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... over the group of Indians, who were amusing themselves at various athletic games. "I can see nothing of him. Your evident displeasure," he added playfully, "has destroyed his peace, as indeed you might have known from that plaintive ditty. However, dearest girl, I shall see him soon, and make him promise to be present this evening at the nuptials of his friend and sister. Nay, if I had not engaged Elmsley, I should insist on his being ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson |
