"Dulcet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be owned that poor Lizzie did receive from his hands some of that punishment which she certainly deserved. This acute and learned gentleman seemed to possess for the occasion the blandest and most dulcet voice that ever was bestowed upon an English barrister. He addressed Lady Eustace with the softest words, as though he hardly dared to speak to a woman so eminent for wealth, rank, and beauty; but nevertheless he asked ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... who look upon "The Lions" daily, without the love for them that is in the Indian heart; without knowledge of the secret of "The Two Sisters." The legend was intensely fascinating as it left his lips in the quaint broken English that is never so dulcet as when it slips from an Indian tongue. His inimitable gestures, strong, graceful, comprehensive, were like a perfectly chosen frame embracing a delicate painting, and his brooding eyes were as the light in which the picture hung. "Many thousands of years ago," he began, "there were no twin peaks ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... your dulcet harmony What time you sing makes this life dear to me. Ah! had I wings that I might fly like you; Ere two days sped I should be ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... amber, dreams of gladness, Dulcet joys and sports of youth, Soon must yield to haughty sadness; Mercy ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... crushed his Strawberries, and mixed them with Cream, and now she put his Spoon into his Hand, saying, in jest, "Father, this is Angels' Food, you know. I Have pressed the Meath from many a Berry, and tempered dulcet Creams." ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... 'Well, they are all taken, just as they were the first time I told you they were,' he said, and opened a despatch given him by his porter, a tall, black, elderly negro with gray hair. I pushed my way in and asked him, in my most dulcet tone, if I could get an upper berth to New Orleans. I called him 'Captain', thinking him a pompous old fellow. He was just beginning to speak to someone else, but I caught him and he looked across the crowd and said 'New Orleans!' My ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... his hostess, a woman ardent but no longer young. He thought of how he had passed his time over the writings of Voltaire and over the composition of an audacious rejoinder which until that moment had seemed to him by no means inadequate. Yet now, in the dulcet atmosphere of a morning in late summer, all these things appeared stupid ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... crusaders! just as brave, Form'd a nation's right to save! Now repose on tranquil plains, Listen to our dulcet strains. Peace inviting, Joy exciting, 'Till the foe again assail, Then ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... for a pupil of Paul to recline On voluptuous couch, while Falernian wine Fill'd his cup to the brim! Dulcet music of Greece, Asiatic repose, Spicy fragrance of Araby, Italian ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... many months been accustomed to the roar of guns, the howling of the tempest, and the gruff voice of the boatswain, may conceive what effect such dulcet notes were likely to produce on the lieutenant and midshipman. They stopped for some ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... Hell's portal; There breathed all tender things Upon his sounding strings, Each rhapsody high-wrought His goddess-mother taught— All he from grief could borrow And love redoubling sorrow, Till, as the echoes waken, All Taenarus is shaken; Whilst he to ruth persuades The monarch of the shades With dulcet prayer. Spell-bound, The triple-headed hound At sounds so strangely sweet Falls crouching at his feet. The dread Avengers, too, That guilty minds pursue With ever-haunting fears, Are all dissolved ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... hither. Thou remember'st Since once I sat upon a promontory, And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back, Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, That the rude sea grew civil at her song; And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, To hear the sea-maid's music." Midsum. ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Greek Music.—Whether it is singing, harp playing, or flute playing, a most careful watch is kept upon the CHARACTER of the music taught the lads. The master who lets his pupils learn many soft, dulcet, languishing airs will find his charges' parents extremely angry, even to depriving him of their patronage. Very soft music, in "Lydian modes," is counted effeminate, fit only for the women's quarters ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... place, two of them, Esther and F. B., had a safe and commodious journey hither, in the midst of pattering showers and cloudy skies, making up as well as they could for the deficiencies of the elements by the dulcet recreation of the concord of sweet sounds ; not from tabrets and harps, but from the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... solving of geometric problems, as, for instance,—given, a human body; how many angles is it capable of forming in fifteen minutes? or how many more than a crab in the same time? And then, no crying children,—not a bit of that,—singing cherubs, innocently piping,—cheering the dull hours with dulcet sounds. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... called, by some of the American writers, the "amiable Cornwallis". It is rather difficult to say for which of his qualities this dulcet epithet was bestowed. The preceding may well justify us in the doubt we venture to express, whether it was not given as much in mockery as compliment. But, lest his commands should not be understood, as not sufficiently explicit, his Lordship ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... a scarlet ball, or cone, of crystalline and delicious coral, in the outside of which the separate seeds, husk and all, are imbedded. In the raspberry and blackberry, the interior mound remains sapless; and the rubied translucency of dulcet substance is formed round each separate seed, upon its husk; not a part of the husk, but now an entirely independent and added portion of the plant's ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... to the Serjeant's house, with the express intention of meeting her again. Why should he come? Alas, alas! She was sure that he would never speak to her again in that bright sunny manner, with those dulcet honey words, which he had used when first they saw each ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... flings A dole of myrrh where groan Is loudest, sings Thy grace to me, me thus Unbeauteous By thee. Uneased thy covenanted bit From Levite ark till now. Thy judges sit, Gods ruminant, to keep Earth pure for dulcet sleep Of babe and mother. Ay, Drones yet the lulling lie, Whilst I, Disease uncinctured, darkly mate With guard and ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... of some over-charging inn-keeper! Then, again, how pleasant to immortalize the holiday, and read in after-years the story of that happy trip langsyne; how pleasant to gladden the kind eyes of friends, that must stay at home, with those wonder-telling journals, and to taste the dulcet joys of those first essays at authorship. A great charm is there in jotting down the day's tour, and in describing the mountains and museums, the lakes and lazzaroni, the dishes and disasters that have made it memorable: moreover, for fixing ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... dulcet as numbers Breathed on the eyelids of Love by music that slumbers, Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow, Thou comest mysterious, In beauty imperious, Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we know: Deep to my innermost soul am ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... I only want him to take Pichereau's place at my reception. My dear Lissac, my kind Lissac," she continued in dulcet tones, and clasping her little gloved hands entreatingly, like a child begging for a toy, "persuade Monsieur Vaudrey to accept this invitation of mine and you will be a love, ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... down, leaned both hands on his gold-headed cane, and took a deliberate look at both Nicholas and Collet before he said a word beyond the bare "Good even." After waiting long enough to excite considerable uneasiness in their minds, he inquired in dulcet tones— ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... [dulcet diseases] This I do not understand. For diseases it is easy to read discourses: but, perhaps the fault ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... is sweet to see the flowers woo the sun, To watch the quaint wiles of the cooing dove, But sweeter far to hear the dulcet tones Of her one loves confessing ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... Jimmie?" inquired Jennie, sweetly, too sweetly, Jimmie thought. He had heard those dulcet ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... seas Heard from still coves, and dulcet-soft as these, Such is the echo of his perfect song, It lives, ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... thy dear home shall never greet thee more! No more the best of wives!—thy babes beloved, Whose haste half-met thee, emulous to snatch The dulcet kiss that roused thy secret soul, Again shall never hasten!—nor thine arm, With deeds heroic, guard thy country's weal!— Oh mournful, mournful fate!' thy friends exclaim! 'One envious hour of these ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... and jingling his brass anklets, which weighed at least three pounds, and which, by the by, lamed him for several days. But he was heroic as the singer who broke his collar-bone by the ut di petto. A peculiar accompaniment was a dulcet whistle with lips protruded; hence probably the fable of Pliny's Astomoi, and the Africans of Eudoxus, whose joined lips compelled them to eat a single grain at a time, and to drink through a cane before sherry-cobblers were known. Others joined him, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Crusoe,' or then is the 'Forest Lovers' a finer book than 'Huckleberry Finn'; then is Pater a better writer than Benjamin Franklin or Abraham Lincoln. Books are not made by style alone. Even lyric poetry is estimated by its fervor and by its sincerity rather than by the dulcet phrases in which the lyrist has voiced his emotion of the moment. If verbal felicity alone is all that the poet needs, if he is to be judged only by the compelling melody of the words he has chosen to set in array, ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... beloved's sake, Formed a fair palace neath the lake. Under the flood the ladies live, To joy and ease their days they give, And lap in bliss the hermit wooed From penance rites to youth renewed. So when the sportive nymphs within Those secret bowers their play begin, You hear the singers' dulcet tones Blend ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... minim by those delicate poets Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is in their Maid's Tragedy that was writ for a like twining of lovers: To bed, to bed was the burden of it to be played with accompanable concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... friend made an ineffectual attempt to get past. The waistcoat, however, barred the way, and then the bland and dulcet voice spoke again. ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... well. The physicians say my constitution and good nursing saved me; but it was all resolution. My will was stronger than the disease. As soon as I could sit up and see him, Denis Christopher was admitted. I used to hear a dulcet strain on the stairs, formed by her delicate note and his melodious base, and then he would follow Leonora in to pay his respects to me; always bringing something to brighten up my boudoir, and render her imprisonment less unendurable. Afterward he would never be exiled to the drawing rooms. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... collecting all The various forms of being to present, Before the curious aim of mimic art, Their largest choice; like Spring's unfolded blooms Exhaling sweetness, that the skilful bee May taste at will, from their selected spoils To work her dulcet food. For not the expanse Of living lakes in Summer's noontide calm, Reflects the bordering shade, and sun-bright heavens, 360 With fairer semblance; not the sculptured gold More faithful keeps the graver's ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... become an alien to Nature in your quest of a mere Earthly Paradox. Epigrams are all very well, but I fancy there is more happiness to be derived from a single impulse from a vernal wood than from a whole problem-play of smart sayings. So few of us are natural," Mr. Kennaston complained, with a dulcet sigh; "we are too sophisticated. Our very speech lacks the tang of outdoor life. Why should we not love Nature—the great mother, who is, I grant you, the necessity of various useful inventions, in her angry moods, but who, in her kindly moments—" He paused, with a ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... held out his hand as he uttered the dulcet flattery, and she placed her hand in his, but it was cold and passionless. Her heart did not send the blood leaping into her finger-ends as when they were held in the loving grasp of ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sapphire shallop slip Its moorings suddenly, to dip Adown the clear, ethereal sea From star to star, all silently? What tenderness of archangels In silver, thrilling syllables Pursued thee, or what dulcet hymn Low-chanted by the cherubim? And thou departing must have heard The holy Mary's farewell word, Who with deep eyes and wistful smile Remembered Earth ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Holmes. With D'Artagnan and Holmes for my companions I think I could pass the balance of my days in absolute contentment, no matter what woful things might befall me. So it was that, when I next heard the tapping keys and dulcet bell of my Enchanted Type-writer, and, after listening intently for a moment, realized that my friend Boswell was making a copy of a Sherlock Holmes Memoir thereon for his next Sunday's paper, all thought of the interesting little red ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... hails, 25 With lungs untaught arrests the balmy gales; Tries its new tongue in tones unknown, and hears The strange vibrations with unpractised ears; Seeks with spread hands the bosom's velvet orbs. With closing lips the milky fount absorbs; 30 And, as compress'd the dulcet streams distil, Drinks warmth and fragrance from the living rill;— Eyes with mute rapture every waving line, Prints with adoring kiss the Paphian shrine, And learns erelong, the perfect form confess'd, 35 Ideal ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the line had not been relaxed. A. remained cool; Ben ordered him to seize my line. "I'll knock him out of the boat if he does," was the shout of another of the party, with a dulcet aside, "Lay hold of the gaff, old chap; we'll have him yet." And we did have him; A. leaned over, grasped the stick, hoisted the fish, kicking furiously, out of the water, and deposited it amongst our ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... virtue of his hosts. No court or hall was complete without the presence of the bard, who enlivened the feast with his minstrelsy and song. We also see that the Welsh bard, like the primitive poets of Greece, and the troubadours of southern France, sang his verses to the harp, whose dulcet strings have always sent forth the national melodies. The chief bards were attached to the courts and castles of their princes and chieftains; but a multitude of inferior minstrels wandered the country singing to their ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... gaze on the wondrous loveliness of the ceaseless flash and flow, and to hearken to the multitudinous broken music. Every now and then some incipient air would seem about to draw itself clear of the dulcet confusion, only to merge again in the consorted roar. At moments the world of waters would invade as if to overwhelm me—not with the force of its seaward rush, or the shouting of its liberated throng, but with the greatness of the silence wandering ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... have the best of everything and plenty of it is, at this advanced stage in her career, unthinkable. Even though she read it in print she would disregard it, for her attitude to them papers is sceptical; even Lord NORTHCLIFFE, with all his many voices, dulcet or commanding, has wooed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various
... where the Armen Ball had attracted so crowded an assemblage, that more than one archduchess had her share of elbowing. Strauss was in all his glory; the long-drawn impassioned breathings of Lanner having ceased for ever, the dulcet hilarity of his rival now reigns supreme; and his music, when directed by himself, still abounds in those exquisite little touches, that inspire hope like the breath of a May morning. Strange to say, the intoxicating ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... It is your leadership we want; that and the inspiring strains of your dulcet horn. Play what you will, McTurkle, only play. Remember that the success of the team may depend upon you! That to-night it is our duty and pleasure to show the team that the whole college is behind them, eager and ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... with myriad forms scintillating on the verge of nothingness—obscure, elusive, yet mighty in their wayward way—soothed with never so gentle, so dulcet a swaying. This smooth-bosomed nurse was pleased to fondle to drowsiness a loving mortal responsive to the blissfulness of enchantment. Warm, comforting, stainless, she swathed me with rose-leaf softness while whispering ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... They rise very early i' th' morn, And walk into the field, where pretty birds do yield Brave music on every thorn. The linnet and thrush do sing on each bush, And the dulcet nightingale Her note doth strain, by jocund vein, To entertain that worthy train, Which ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... of long ago. How could we know?—) For who should guess The shock and smiting of that perfectness?— The lily-thrust of those ecstatic feet Unpityingly sweet?— Sweet beyond all the blurred blind dreams that grope The upward paths of hope? And who could guess The dulcet holiness, The lilt and gladness of those jocund feet, Unpityingly sweet? Ah, for your coolness that shall change and stir With every glee of her!— Under the fresh amaze That drips and glistens from her wiles and ways; When the endearing ...
— The Singing Man • Josephine Preston Peabody
... parted wide, The gust of His approach would clash it to. Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue. Across the margent of the world I fled, And troubled the gold gateways of the stars, Smiting for shelter on their clanged bars; Fretted to dulcet jars And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon. I said to dawn: Be sudden; to eve: Be soon— With thy young skyey blossoms heap me over From this tremendous Lover! Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see! I tempted all His servitors, but to find ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... prepare; Nymphs sprung from fountains, or from shady woods, Or the fair offspring of the sacred floods. One o'er the couches painted carpets threw, Whose purple lustre glow'd against the view: White linen lay beneath. Another placed The silver stands, with golden flaskets graced: With dulcet beverage this the beaker crown'd, Fair in the midst, with gilded cups around: That in the tripod o'er the kindled pile The water pours; the bubbling waters boil; An ample vase receives the smoking wave; And, in the bath prepared, my limbs I lave: Reviving sweets repair the mind's decay, And ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... Who can attempt to describe the sumptuousness of the palace, and the splendour of the ball in which the beautiful princess sat, to receive the homage of the flower of the youth of her kingdom. Soothingly soft, sweetly, lovingly soft, were the dulcet notes of the warbling asparas, or singing girls, now ebbing, now flowing in tender gushes of melody, while down the sides of the elegant and highly pillared hall, now advancing, now retreating, the dancing girls, each beautiful ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... effusive, but the woodpecker was a veritable Bluebeard. The Cardinal longed to pull the feathers from his back until it was as red as his head, for the woodpecker had dressed his suit in finest style, and with dulcet tones and melting tenderness had gone acourting. Sweet as the dove's had been his wooing, and one more pang the lonely Cardinal had suffered at being forced to witness his felicity; yet scarcely had his plump, ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... monarchies of Europe. Every traveller is conscious of it. His bow showed it—so did the soft purring quality of his speech. Recollections of Manila, Santiago, and the voyage of the Oregon around Cape Horn were in the bow, and Kansas wheat, Georgia cotton, and the Steel Trust in the dulcet tones of his voice. That he should have mistaken me for a great financial magnate controlling some one of these colossal industries, instead of locating me instantly as a staid, gray-haired, and rather impecunious landscape-painter, was quite natural. Others ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... Monsieur Barbet is a kind of a tiger one mustn't offend, and—But I would like to know what he's telling him. Felicite! Felicite, you great gawk! where are you?" cried the widow in her rasping, brutal voice,—she had been using her dulcet tones to Godefroid. ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... in the west gallery and made strange noises and sang curious tunes, the echoes of which we shall try to catch. No organ then pealed forth its reverent tones and awaked the church with dulcet harmonies: a pitch-pipe often the sole instrument. And then—what terrible hymns were sung! Well did Campbell say of Sternhold and Hopkins, the co-translators of the Psalms of David into English metre, "mistaking vulgarity for simplicity, they turned into bathos ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... as an ape, Or as *craft counterfeiteth kind.* *art counterfeits nature* Then saw I standing them behind, Afar from them, all by themselve, Many thousand times twelve, That made loude minstrelsies In cornmuse and eke in shawmies, And in many another pipe, That craftily began to pipe, Both in dulcet and in reed, That be at feastes with the bride. And many a flute and lilting horn, And pipes made of greene corn, As have these little herde-grooms,* *shepherd-boys That keepe beastes in the brooms. There saw I then Dan Citherus, And of Athens Dan Pronomus, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... me: "What from thee I hear Is grav'd so deeply on my mind, the waves Of Lethe shall not wash it off, nor make A whit less lively. But as now thy oath Has seal'd the truth, declare what cause impels That love, which both thy looks and speech bewray." "Those dulcet lays," I answer'd, "which, as long As of our tongue the beauty does not fade, Shall make us love the very ink that trac'd them." "Brother!" he cried, and pointed at a shade Before him, "there is one, whose mother speech Doth owe to him a ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... it to her head, where it rested solidly on the cushion of her head-kerchief. During this interlude, Warwick, though he had slackened his pace measurably, had so nearly closed the gap between himself and them as to hear the old woman say, with the dulcet negro intonation:— ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... kindly favor us with a little music? Give us that duet Mr. Ginsling and you rendered the other evening. You have a magnificent bass voice, sir," she said to Mr. Ginsling, in her most dulcet tones; "will you not kindly ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... good in their way Are the Verzenay, And the Sillery soft and creamy; But Catawba wine Has a taste more divine, More dulcet, delicious, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... ain't you? p'raps you'd better go back to bed, seein' it's nigh noon." "There, honey, you jest drink this, an' it'll do you good," came in the next second from the same lips, in such dulcet tones, that Caesar rubbed his head in sheer astonishment, and gazed with open mouth and eyes upon Nan, who was holding the glass to Sally's mouth, as caressingly as she would ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Helen Jackson
... was there, of course, adding its vocal melody to the dulcet tones of the blacksmith's violin. Even the cats of the settlement were present, including that celebrated kitten which had been reduced to a state of drivelling imbecility by the furious advent of the Wild Man. Owls and other sagacious ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... to him he tossed his head coquettishly, and trotting away a few steps, turned and looked at her with a droll air. Colina called him in dulcet tones, and held out ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Novel?'—She would rather die first. And yet to be silent altogether on the latest acquisition to the circulating libraries would bring on a functional derangement of her ladyship's organs of speech. Or how could pretty Miss Dulcet—all sentiment, it is true, but all bashful timidity—appall Captain Smirke from proposing with, 'Did not you think the parson's sermon a little too dry in—MY Novel'? It will require a face of brass, or at least a long course of citrate of iron, before a respectable lady or unassuming young ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the dulcet instrument We favour, still the lilt will stop; And with a gorgeous chalice blent Oft lurks the tiny poisoned drop. I'm not so spry myself to-night; I'll try a dose of arrowroot. You'll own that Indigestion's quite A ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... echoes—how often, even when he affected to work, he left the plow in the furrow while he followed till sunset the flight of successive birds through the adjacent pastures, imitating as he went the fresh mid-air cry, whistling in so vibrant a bird-voice, so signally clear and dulcet, yet so keen despite its sweetness, that his brothers at the plow-handles sought in vain to distinguish between the calls of the earth-ling and the winged voyager of the empyreal air. None of them had ever heard of ventriloquism, ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... forth, that should the thickets thrill; The woosel near at hand, that hath a golden bill; As nature him had mark'd of purpose, t'let us see That from all other birds his tunes should different be: For, with their vocal sounds, they sing to pleasant May; Upon his dulcet pipe the merle doth only play. When in the lower brake, the nightingale hard by, In such lamenting strains the joyful hours doth ply, As though the other birds she to her tunes would draw, And, but that nature (by her all-constraining law) Each bird to her own kind this ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... —Yet obey the uxorious yoke and are tamed by Dione her doom. Or behear ye the sheep, to the husbanding rams how they bleat to the shade! Or behear ye the birds, at the Goddess' command how they sing unafraid!— Be it harsh as the swannery's clamour that shatters the hush of the lake; Be it dulcet as where Philomela holds darkling the poplar awake, So melting her soul into music, you'd vow 'twas her passion, her own, She chanteth—her sister forgot, with the Daulian crime long-agone. Hush! Hark! Draw ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bee, as he plied his task amidst the red and orange flowers of the dak, and by the gushings of many waters that made music as they coursed down their stuccoed channels between borders of many coloured poppies and beds of various flowers. From time to time the dulcet note of the kokila bird, and the hoarse plaint of the turtle-dove deep hid in her leafy bower, attracted every ear and thrilled every heart. The south wind—"breeze of the south,[FN145] the friend ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... years isolation from general society," said the officer, in a voice dulcet enough to sell advance orders for replacement products that had not yet been made. "Our intention is to protect you from bad influences. Our hope is that others will take your ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... not of sufficient power for general orchestral purposes, is yet excellent for finished solo-playing, and as an accompaniment to a voice. It was much used by the ancient troubadours, its dulcet tones according well with their songs. In Italy and Spain, in other parts of Europe, as well as in some sections of this country, the guitar is much esteemed. It has always been the favorite instrument of the serenading gallant; and to perform upon it, previously to their more general adoption of ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... might I save thee flung by spuming billows of ocean, Shipwreckt, rescuing life snatcht from the threshold of death; Eke neither Venus the Holy to rest in slumber's refreshment 5 Grants thee her grace on couch lying deserted and lone, Nor can the Muses avail with dulcet song of old writers Ever delight thy mind sleepless in anxious care; Grateful be this to my thought since thus thy friend I'm entitled, Hence of me seekest thou gifts Muses and Venus can give: 10 But that bide not unknown to thee my sorrows ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... for pride to dwell there. Tender-souled As that first streak, the harbinger of dawn Revealed through cloudless ether, such the queen, All charity, all humbleness, all grace, All womanhood. Harmonious was her voice, Dulcet her movements, undisguised her thoughts, As though they trod an Eden land unfallen, And needed raiment none. Some heavenly birth Their children seemed, blameless in word and act, The sisters as their brothers frank, and they, Though bolder, not less modest. Kenwalk marked, And marking, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... with lengthen'd throat Miss Crane screams out the dulcet note The wondering Piggy takes his Bow And draws in ...
— Life and Adventures of Mr. Pig and Miss Crane - A Nursery Tale • Unknown
... '"As are those dulcet sounds in break of day, That creep into the dreaming bridegroom's ear, And summons him ...
— The American Prejudice Against Color - An Authentic Narrative, Showing How Easily The Nation Got - Into An Uproar. • William G. Allen
... up the pause in his dulcet voice: "We want, my lord, such a mutiny as, without succeeding, shall convince England of the strong dissatisfaction felt by our forces at the favouritism shown by his ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... love-knots and reigned. Oh! it was a naughty Court. Yet have we dreamed of it as the period when an English cavalier was grace incarnate; far from the boor now hustling us in another sphere; beautifully mannered, every gesture dulcet. And if the ladies were . . . we will hope they have been traduced. But if they were, if they were too tender, ah! gentlemen were gentlemen then—worth perishing for! There is this dream in the English country; and it must be an aspiration after ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to mention that the Finnish language is very remarkable. Like Gaelic, it is musical, soft and dulcet, expressive and poetical, comes from a very old root, and is, in fact, one of the most interesting languages we possess. But some of the Finnish words are extremely long, in which respect they excel even the German. As a specimen of what a Finnish word can be, we may ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... other apparatus of that operatic species. Tasso was the first poet to bathe Arcady in a golden afternoon light of sensuously sentimental pathos. In his idyllic as in his lyrical interbreathings, melody seems absolutely demanded to interpret and complete the plangent rhythm of his dulcet numbers. Emotion so far predominates over intelligence, so yearns to exhale itself in sound and shun the laws of language, that we find already in Rinaldo Tasso's familiar Non so che continually used to adumbrate sentiments for ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... shall these woods to-day Hear love discoursed; and it shall well be seen That my divinity is present here In its own person, not its ministers. I will inbreathe high fancies in rude hearts; I will refine and render dulcet sweet Their tongues; because, wherever I may be, Whether with rustic or heroic men, There am I Love; and inequality, As it may please me, do I equalise; And 'tis my crowning glory and great miracle To make the rural pipe as eloquent ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... Betsey Kling's. It must be confessed that there are more pleasing views than sheds in greater or less degrees of dilapidation, a sickly grape-vine, a line of flapping sheets, an overflowing ash barrel; sweeter sounds than the dulcet notes of old rag-men, the serenades of musical cats, or the strains of a cornet played upon at intervals from nine P. M. to twelve, with the evident purpose of exhausting superfluous air in the performer's lungs. Perhaps, too, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... so much," said Sylla, in her most dulcet tones. "And now, Captain Braybrooke, I want you to do me a great favour. It's of no use denying it, but I am an arrant gambler at heart; I must and will have a gamble on this. Will you please put five pounds for me on Captain Bloxam?" and as ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... breathed a dulcet breath. "Perfectly," he murmured. "The contemplation of Mr. Briggs' happiness eliminates all thoughts of self within you. By this process of elimination you arrive at happiness yourself. Ah, the thought is a very precious one, my young friend, for ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... music at the august nuptials of Henry of Navarre and Mary of Medicis.* Still, as I have said, the style of the Neapolitan musician was not on the whole pleasing to ears grown nice and euphuistic in the more dulcet melodies of the day; and faults and extravagances easily discernible, and often to appearance wilful, served the critics for an excuse for their distaste. Fortunately, or the poor musician might have starved, he was not only a composer, but also an excellent practical performer, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... thereof responsible—personally responsible. It is possibly my fault that I have failed, oratorically, to convey to the gentlemen of the jury the full force and significance of the defendant's signals. I am aware that my voice is singularly deficient in producing either the dulcet tones of my fair client or the impassioned vehemence of the defendant's repose. I will," continued the Colonel, with a fatigued but blind fatuity that ignored the hurriedly knit brows and warning eyes of the Judge, "try again. The note uttered by my client" (lowering his voice to the faintest ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... sea-mists that surround it. But in the ordinary life there in my time there was little to "asperate" the douceur. Perhaps it does not require so very much to sweeten things in general between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-nine. But the things in general themselves were dulcet enough. The beauty of the place—extraordinarily varied in its triangle of some half-score miles or a little less on each side—was not then in the least interfered with by the excessive commercial glass-housing which, I believe, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Louis," Morris said in the dulcet accents of the sucking dove, "your contract is up next week, and Abe and me was talking about it the other day, Louis, and about the house, too, and we says we should do something about that house, Louis, and so we'll make another contract for about, say, three years, and ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... that golden barrier hides A realm where deathless spring abides; Where flowers shall fade not, and there floats Thro' moon-rays mild or sunlit motes— 'Mid dewy alleys That gird the palace, And fountain'd spray's unceasing quiver— A dulcet rain of song-birds' notes. ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... materials. Joseph Bourgogne looked the cook. His phiz gave us faith in him; eyes small and discriminating; nose upturned, nostrils expanded and receptive; mouth saucy in the literal sense. His voice, moreover, was a cook's,—thick in articulation, dulcet in tone. He spoke as if he deemed that a throat was created for better uses than laboriously manufacturing words,—as if the object of a mouth were to receive tribute, not to give commands,—as if that pink stalactite, his palate, were more used by delicacies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... up, and manage well the jest. Carry him gently to my fairest chamber, And hang it round with all my wanton pictures; Balm his foul head in warm distilled waters, And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet. Procure me music ready when he wakes, To make a dulcet and a heavenly sound; And if he chance to speak, be ready straight, And with a low submissive reverence Say 'What is it your honour will command?' Let one attend him with a silver basin Full of rose-water and bestrew'd with flowers; Another bear the ewer, the third a diaper, And say ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... majority, for once laudably employed in the nation's good. How delightful then to saunter near the works—how charming then to listen to members of Parliament! What a picture of senatorial industry! For an Irish speech by STANLEY, have we not the more dulcet music of his stone-cutting saw? Instead of an oration from GOULBURN, have we not the shrill note of his ungreased parliamentary barrow? For the "hear, hear" of PLUMPTRE, the more accordant tapping of the hammer—for the "cheer" from ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 16, 1841 • Various
... assumed, on the same day, the full-blown honours of the Advocate's wig and gown. Nor did our fraternal parallel end there: for although we had walked the boards of the Parliament House with praiseworthy diligence for a couple of sessions, neither of us had experienced the dulcet sensation which is communicated to the palm by the contact of the first professional guinea. In vain did we attempt to insinuate ourselves into the good graces of the agents, and coin our intellects into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... when he saw the lights of town, panelled in gold against a peacock sky. Acres and acres of blue darkness lay close-pressing upon the gaudy grids of light. Here one might really look at this great miracle of shadow and see its texture. The dulcet air drifted lazily in deep, silent crosstown streets. "Ah," he said, "here is ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... bathe 'em?" Florence inquired, but Kitty Silver did not reply immediately. She breathed audibly, with a strange effect upon vasty outward portions of her, and then gave an incomparably dulcet imitation of her own voice, as she interpreted her use of it ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... Doubtless, sad men will say that our own eyes are clouded with some glittering dust of optimism, when we declare that this Man for the Continent is the very one whose advent we celebrate. This might, indeed, seem a fatuitously dulcet song to sing just now, when a din of defection and recreancy is loud through all the land,—now, when we have immediately in view, and on the largest scale, an open patronage of infamous wrong-doing, so brazen-fronted and blush-proof that only the spectacle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... children of all ages—but I forbear. I will merely announce that on this day—the day he has selected for attaining his majority—he has gratified us all by plighting troth to his cousin, the Lady ROSE CARAMEL, with whose dulcet and clinging disposition he has always possessed the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... either too stupid or too good-natured to pull each other's characters to pieces; 20 nor can I furnish any whimsical anecdotes of brag—how one lady cheated or another bounced into a passion; for as yet there was no junto of dulcet old dowagers who met to win each other's money and lose their own tempers at a ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... music makes, As the descendant waters roll along, In rhythmic flow and dulcet cantabile, In various concord and harmonious pitch, Pursuant of its journey to the sea; The murmuring treble of the rivulet, Uniting with the deep and ponderous bass Of torrent wild and foaming cataract; The thunderous, reverberating tones ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... bubble and frolic—a roundelay far! Pearls on pearls break and roll like bright drops from a bowl! And they thrill, as they spill in a rill, o'er my soul: Then thou laughest so light From thy rapturous height! Earth and Heaven are combined, in thy full dulcet tone; North and south pour the nectar thy throat blends in one! Flute and flageolet, bugle, light zither, guitar! Diamond, topaz and ruby! Sun, moon, silver star! Ripe cherries in wine! Orange blossoms divine! Genius of Songsters! so matchless in witchery! Nature hath fashioned ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... Fountain whose dulcet cool I sing, Be thou immortal by this Ode (a Not wholly meretricious thing), Bandusian fount ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... to play for a much more select and fashionable auditory. And now the voluptuous Kitty Cling-cling is led to the centre of the festive hall by a sable mariner, and begins to foot it merrily to the dulcet strains; while Bald-head and Cockroach find partners in two African geniuses, whose dress and general appearance would most decidedly exclude them from admission into a fancy ball at Brigham's. Away they go, through ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... out of the earth a fabric huge Rose like an exhalation, with the sound Of dulcet symphonies, and voices sweet, Built like a temple, where pilasters round Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did there want Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures graven; The roof ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... the lawn, dear Rosa," said Falcon, in his most dulcet tones. He was sure of his ally, and very glad to use him as a buffer ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... to be mixed with their dulcet invitations to the vanished one to return. From the sounds, one would have been justified in thinking a part of bedlam had been let ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... sweet Cora first of all! Ah! my sweet child! You and I both widowed since the last time we met!" cooed Rose, in her most dulcet tones, as she drew Cora to her bosom and kissed her before the latter could ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... twin-lights the tear-drops gleam, Those lights that made the sun with envy glow, And from those lips such sighs and words did flow, As made revolve the hills, stand still the stream. Love, courage, wit, pity and pain in one, Wept in more dulcet and harmonious strain, Than any other that the world has known. So rapt was heaven in the dear refrain, That not a leaf upon the branch was blown, Such utter ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... his business he entered a certain farm-house, to find the baby already in possession of another officer, a heavy red creature with a monocle, who was rocking the infant's cradle seventy-five revolutions per minute and making dulcet noises ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... contortions, gesticulations, and wild cries, until finally the fit of hysteria, for such it was, wore itself out. The methods of treatment were many and curious. One of the most favoured was to bury the patient up to the neck! But the dulcet strains of music were believed to be the most powerful of all cures, and certain peculiar tunes came to be regarded as especially effective, and ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... prudent problems / & the noble werkes Of the gentyll poetes in olde antyquyte Vnto this day hath made famous clerkes For the poetes Wrote nothynge in vanyte But grounded them on good moralyte Encensynge out the fayre dulcet fume Our langage rude ...
— A Ioyfull medytacyon to all Englonde of the coronacyon of our moost naturall souerayne lorde kynge Henry the eyght • Stephen Hawes |
