"Psalm" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he said at last, with an air of fine reproof. 'He wor your friend, wor that poor sinner Strafford—your awn familiar friend, as t' Psalm says. I'm not takin up a brief for him, t' Lord knows! He wor but meetin his deserts, to my thinkin, when his yed went loupin. But yo put a black mark agen yore name when yo signed that bit paper for your awn skin's sake. Naw, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... accompanied it. "After dinner we were to drink the Queen and Prince's health as a 'house-warming.' And after it the Prince said very naturally and simply, but seriously, 'We have a hymn' (he called it a psalm) 'in Germany for such occasions. It begins'—and then he repeated two lines in German, which I could not quote right, meaning a prayer to 'bless our going out and coming in.' It was long and quaint, being Luther's. We all perceived ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... respect. Paul says to the believers at Corinth, "that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils ([Greek: daimonia]), and not to God; and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils;"[1] and the Septuagint renders the word Elohim in the ninety-fifth Psalm by this [Greek: daimonia], which as the Christians had already a distinct term for good spirits, came to be applied to evil ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... written in it. She asked for a hymn-book, and desired us to sing what had been her favorite hymn, which at my request she instantly found. She next asked for a Bible, and asked me to read her favorite Psalm. I requested her to find it, although I knew well which it was. She turned to it instantly, and I read: 'The Lord is my shepherd,' etc. When the Psalm was finished, the medium stood transfigured before us; her countenance was radiant, and her eyes bright with ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... concluded to give us the sermon before he did the bride. He was afraid some of his audience would leave. Accordingly there ensued a prayer half an hour long, after which eight verses of a long meter psalm were sung to the tune of Windham. By this time I gave a slight sign to the two old ladies that I would like to move, but they merely shook their two black bonnets at me, telling me, in fierce whispers, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... "Adams wants me to speak a piece on that great day. I told him I couldn't—m' lip's cracked!" and Marty giggled. "But Sally Prentiss is going to recite 'A Psalm of Life,' and Peke Ringgold is going to tell us all about 'Bozzar—Bozzar—is'—as though we hadn't been made acquainted with him ever since Hector was a pup. And Hector's a big ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... differentiate the homonyms by their ignorance of the fact that even as late as Nehemiah's time the singers did not yet pass for Levites, but their endeavours are wrecked by the circumstance that the names of fathers as well as of sons are identical (Psalm lxxxviii. 1, lxxxix. 1; Ewald, iii. 380 seq.). In point of history these musicians of the second temple are descended of course neither from Levi nor from the sons of Mahol (1Kings v. 11 [iv. 31), but they have at least derived their names from the latter. On all hands we meet with such artificial ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... evening, for the joint purposes of amusement and devotion. The women were ranged at one end of the room, and the men at the other. Their bishop presided: he was an old man, dressed in the plainest manner, and possessed a countenance singularly mild and placid. He gave out a psalm, and led the choir; and the singing was alternately in German ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... of Babylon, where a certain number of captive Jews are seated in melancholy postures; a Babylonian officer enters, exclaiming, "Chantez nous quelques chansons de Jerusalem," and the request is refused in the language of the Psalm. Belshazzar's Feast is given in a grand tableau, after Martin's picture. That painter, in like manner, furnished scenes for the Deluge. Vast numbers of schoolboys and children are brought to see these pieces; the lower classes delight in them. The famous Juif Errant, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Testament, dear alike to Christian and Jew. The Jews were the chosen people of God, and have played a large part in the history of the world. We gladly clasp hands with them against the common foe. David speaks for Jews and Christians in the 8th Psalm. In contrast to evolution, which degrades man to the level of the brute, he declares that man is but a little lower than God, (Heb. Elohim). The revisers had the courage so to translate it. David under inspiration wrote better than he knew, and in ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... south-west, being very light, so that after three days we had not lost sight of the coast of Norway. There seemed every probability of our having a long passage. Some of the men said it was all owing to the black cat, and Grimes declared that we must expect ill-luck with such a psalm-singing Methodist old skipper as we had. Even Andrews prognosticated evil, but his idea was that it would be brought about by an old woman he had seen on shore, said by everyone to be a powerful witch. As, however, according to Andrews, she had the power of ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... service had been gone through on this particular Sunday without anything remarkable happening. It was at the end of the psalm which preceded the sermon that Sanders Elshioner, who sat near the door, lowered his head until it was no higher than the pews, and in that attitude, looking almost like a four-footed animal, slipped out ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... massy silver are still in wear, that made gallant display in the days of the patriarchs of Communipaw. The language likewise continues unadulterated by barbarous innovations; and so critically correct is the village schoolmaster in his dialect, that his reading of a Low-Dutch psalm has much the same effect on the nerves as the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with a "modified theory of authorship and of prediction." (p. 68.) In the prophecy of Zechariah are "three distinct styles and aspects of affairs." (Ibid.) "The cursing Psalms," (!!!) he informs us, were not "evangelically inspired;" (p. 63;) and yet we are constrained to remember that the cixth Psalm (specially alluded to) is evangelically interpreted by St. Peter[52]. The true translation of Psalm xxii. 17, (learnedly discussed, long since, by Bishop Pearson,) is not "they pierced My hands and My feet,"—but "like a lion;" (notwithstanding that Pearson has shewn ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... not only danced before the ark (2 Samuel vi. v. 16), but mentions dancing in the 149th and 150th Psalm. Certain historians also tell us that they had dancing in their ritual of the seasons. Their dancing seems to have been associated with joy, as we read of "a time to mourn and a time to dance"; we find (Eccles. iii. v. 4) they had also the pipes: "We ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... loathsome employment. Would God I had died, Mary, ere it had come to this!"—and the poor man hid his face in the bedclothes, and moaned like a stricken child. The patient wife laid aside her work, and taking the well-worn Bible from its sacred resting-place, read to him the thirty-seventh Psalm—then rising and going to the window, she pressed her ear against the pane, and listened for her Jennie's coming. Hark! a step is on the stairs! The husband and wife both started—it was a heavy, lumbering tread—not the soft foot-falls of their gentle little one, ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... known in the British army, and had accordingly commenced with 'Dumbarton's Drums,' when he was silenced by Gifted Gilfillan, the commander of the party, who refused to permit his followers to move to this profane, and even, as he said, persecuting tune, and commanded the drummer to beat the 119th Psalm. As this was beyond the capacity of the drubber of sheepskin, he was fain to have recourse to the inoffensive row-de-dow, as a harmless substitute for the sacred music which his instrument or skill were unable to achieve. This may be held a trifling ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... day dark with night." Amos, 5. 8. "He visiteth the earth, and maketh it soft with showers: He blesseth the springing thereof, and crowneth the year with His goodness; so that the pastures are clothed with flocks, and the valleys are covered over with corn." See Psalm 65. But, notwithstanding that this is the constant language of Scripture, yet we have I know not what aversion from believing that God concerns Himself so nearly in our affairs. Fain would we suppose Him at a great distance off, and substitute some ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... metaphor is called an allegory; both are figurative representations, the words used signifying something beyond their literal meaning. Thus, in the eightieth Psalm, the Jews are represented under the symbol of ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... speak my mind, Captain Dunsack; it's this—your girls are a long sight too good for you or for any other judgmatical, psalm-singing devil dodger." He stood fuming at the ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... PSALM cxxxix. I-6.—"O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with, all my ways. For there ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... youth, what says the 130th Psalm? If Thou, Lord, were extreme to mark what is done amiss, who could abide it? But there is mercy with Him, therefore shall He be feared. And how to fear God I know not better than by working on at the special work which He has given us, trusting to ...
— Out of the Deep - Words for the Sorrowful • Charles Kingsley
... had been put to death his spirit, surviving, descended into the separate state of departed souls. Having cited from the sixteenth Psalm the declaration, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in the under world," he says it was a prophecy concerning Christ, which was fulfilled in his resurrection. "The soul of this Jesus was not left in the under world, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... work. ... Tonight in the inky darkness I walked to the postoffice in the thundering wind and rain and surf, and learned how the deeps can praise the Lord. I have always felt the wonder of that psalm. ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton
... the dim light and the baffling glare of the clerestory windows he could discern the opposite worshippers indistinctly only, but he saw that Sue was among them. He had not long discovered the exact seat that she occupied when the chanting of the 119th Psalm in which the choir was engaged reached its second part, In quo corriget, the organ changing to a pathetic Gregorian tune as the singers ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... re-baptism as a symbolic cleansing from sectarian stains, and after some months advanced a proposition that his flock hold all things in common. He put a sudden end to the solemn "deaconing-out" and droning of psalm tunes and grafted on to his form of worship lively singing and marching accompanied by clapping of hands and whirling in circles; during the progress of which the most hysterical converts, or the most fully "Cochranized," would swoon upon the floor; or, in obeying their leader's instructions ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... indeed, do we not meet God every time a right, and true, and gracious thought arises in our hearts? But we have all forgotten this, and much more connected with this; and our notion of this world is not that of Holy Scripture—of that grand 104th Psalm, for instance, which sets forth the Spirit of God as the Lord and Giver of life to all creation: but our notion is this—that this world is a machine, which would go on very well by itself, if God would but leave it alone; that if the course of nature, as ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... troops, they were probably reviewed upon the Common. We may imagine Governor Shirley and General Pepperell riding slowly along the line, while the drummers beat strange old tunes, like psalm-tunes, and all the officers and soldiers put on their most warlike looks. It would have been a terrible sight for the Frenchmen, could they but have ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the number of supernumeraries by whom the needful illusion is effected, the greater the merit of the performance, the more convincing the testimony borne to the skill of the stage-manager. Again, no processions of psalm-singing priests and monks contribute to the essential illusion in the historical plays. Nor does the text of The Merchant of Venice demand any assembly of Venetian townsfolk, however picturesquely attired, ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... bread-and-water; and a peasant-boy who called his mother a devil was publicly whipped. A child who struck his mother was beheaded; adultery was punished with death; a woman was publicly scourged because she sang common songs to a psalm-tune; and another because she dressed herself, in a frolic, in man's attire. Brides were not allowed to wear wreaths in their bonnets; gamblers were set in the pillory, and card-playing and nine-pins were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... love was constrained and formal. Children were born into a cold and cheerless atmosphere, and it is not to be wondered at that they grew up hard and austere men and women, whose chief or only solace was the hope of an eternity of rest and psalm-singing, in a heaven earned by the endurance of trials with piety, patience, and faith that all their sufferings would in some way redound ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... and coquetry, and all the other dear things which he knows I dote upon, that I protest his conversation made me as melancholy as if I had been at church; and, heaven knows, though I never prayed to go there but on one occasion, yet I would have exchanged his conversation for a psalm and a sermon. Church is rather melancholy, to be sure; but then I can ogle the beaux, and be regaled with "here endeth the first lesson," but his brotherly here, you would think had no end.] You captivate him! Why, my dear, he would as soon fall in love with ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... the deep meaning of the Scriptures by reading sense instead of soul, as in the Forty-second Psalm: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul [sense]?... Hope thou in God [Soul]: for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance, and ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... We must talk fast and act promptly; the poor fellows up there in jail are game, I know! They would not willingly peach, but they are badly wounded. If one of them should have to die, and be blessed with a psalm-singing parson to attend him, no knowing what he may be persuaded to confess! Therefore, let us quickly decide upon some new rendezvous that will be unsuspected, even by our poor caged birds! If any of you have any place in your ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... that "the Protestant mind does not use prayer simply as part of a parade;" and The Times Correspondent, who has already been more than once quoted, was struck by the fervour with which at Balmoral "the whole of the vast gathering joined in singing the 90th Psalm," and he added the very just comment that "it is the custom in Ulster to mark in this solemn manner the serious nature of the issue when the Union is the question, as something different from a question ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... Old Testament. He seemed to know the Psalms by heart. He was a good deal of an actor, and he took the part of a Hebrew prophet with great effect. But his fervor was all stage fire, and he would turn in an instant from a denunciatory Psalm to a humorous story. Even his stories were of a religious cast, like those which ministers relate when they gather socially. He told me once about a priest who was strolling along the bank of the Loire, when a drunken sailor accosted him and reviled him as a lazy good-for-nothing, a faineant, ...
— In Madeira Place - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... received knowledge from them in turn. He set great store by their observations. His grandson Samuel ben Meir once drew his attention to a certain form of Biblical parallelism, in which the second hemistich completes the first, as in the following verse from Psalm xciii: ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... in Mulvaney, "ye'd no chanst against the maraudin' psalm-singer. They'll take the airs an' the graces instid av the man nine times out av ten, an' they only ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... eunuchs, and a poet, Which made their new establishment complete; The last was of great fame, and liked to show it: His verses rarely wanted their due feet; And for his theme—he seldom sung below it, He being paid to satirize or flatter, As the psalm says, ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... daughter, a maiden young and fair, Lifting to light her sweet blue eyes and pride of soft brown hair, The master of the village school, sleek of hair and smooth of tongue, To the quaint tune of some old psalm, a husking-ballad sung. ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... "And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing." "There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth." How often, before this picture, has some saddened soul uttered the words of the Psalm: "I have gone astray like a lost sheep: seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments"! And as if to afford still more direct assurance of the patience and long-suffering tenderness of the Lord, the Good Shepherd is sometimes ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... of this year (1843) with, so far as one can judge, immense effect and success. The pious press-men were, of course, scandalized by his very secular treatment of a sacred subject; they expected, or at least asked for, a Mendelssohnian psalm—and they would have grumbled even had they got it. It was considered a crime to compete with Mendelssohn, also a ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... standing listening by the door at the back. The STRANGER is sitting on a chair right and is trying to read a book. A hat and a brown cloak with a cape and hood hang nearby, and on the floor there is a small travelling bag. The Sisters of Mercy are singing a psalm. The others join in from time to time, but ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... they'd tried it before,— And the pounding was not soft, But might well appall The boldest heart. Cool and calm, Trumpet in hand, Up in the cock-loft, Where 't was the hottest of all, Our brave old Commodore Took his stand, And played his part, Humming over some old psalm! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... decree: the Lord hath said unto me, Thou art My Son; this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for Thy possession" (Ps. ii. 7, 8). Then in Psalm xxii, after the mysterious sufferings of Messiah have been set forth, His Kingdom is again proclaimed as universal: "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord; and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Thee" (Ps. xxii. 27). And, to pass ...
— The Kingdom of Heaven; What is it? • Edward Burbidge
... not to wish to be loved and honoured by them; He had enjoyed days of unbounded popularity, but now His soul was filled with reproach to the uttermost; and He could have appropriated the words of the Psalm, "I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men and despised ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... on his way weeping, and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him." Psalm CXXVI. ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... ob de good book. Now will you please sing de twenty-third Psalm, an' den ask de Lord Jesus keep fas' hold dis ole niggah, till Jordan am past, an' de ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... brought to the Lector, then or afterwards called Apostolus, from which he read one of the canonical epistles. A psalm followed, which was sung by the people; and, after this, the Lector received the Evangeliarium, and read a portion of the Gospel, at which lights were lighted, and the people stood. When he had finished, the Lector opened the roll wide, and, turning round, presented it to bishop, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... mighty in Clare now. The outdoor air had apparently taken away from him all tendency to act on impulse; she knew that he saw her without irradiation—in all her bareness; that Time was chanting his satiric psalm at her then— ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... peace here?" He was surprised to find a female so tranquil; a short conversation soon evinced that religion was the source of comfort and hope to them both in this perilous hour. He engaged in prayer and then read the 107th Psalm. While repeating these words, "he maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still," the vessel swung off the rock by the rising of the tide. She had been dashing against it for an hour and a half, the sea making a breach over her, so that the hold was ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem,' for the gates of the city were burned with fire, and only a blackened space showed where each had stood, but they may have joined together in that other psalm, which was probably written about this ...
— The King's Cup-Bearer • Amy Catherine Walton
... ridden out with them at five o'clock that morning, after the wholesome early ways of the time, to rouse a well-known stag in the glens at Buckish, by help of Mr. Coffin's hounds from Portledge. Who being as good a Latiner as Campian's self, and overhearing both the scraps of psalm and the "barbarous islanders," pushed his horse alongside of Mr. Eustace Leigh, and at the first check said, with two low ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... plates for a covering of the altar." The goldsmith described by Isaiah as making an idol, "spreadeth it over with gold"; whilst Jeremiah says, "silver spread into plates is brought from Tarshish." Again, in Psalm cxxxvi., in the account of creation we have the same word used with reference to the earth, "To him that stretched out the earth above the waters." In this and in many other passages the idea of extension ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... on the increase, and because I see, smell and feel it, "My friends scorn me, but my eye poureth tears into" [Psalm] the noble ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... and solemn, and I also perceived several musical instruments. The clergyman now stopped, and the clerk then said in a loud voice, "Let us sing to the praise and glory of God, the forty-seventh psalm." ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... of exulting triumph over the trammels of circumstance that Mr Dunn gave us this morning. Don't you remember? "Life is what we make it—an anthem or a dirge, a psalm of hope or a lamentation of despair." Do you believe any one can live in such a rare atmosphere ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... easy to put it all away and forget it in the hush and gloom of the great church, filled with the strange intonation from Heaven-knows-where—some side-chapel unseen—of a Psalm it would have puzzled David to be told was his, and a scented vapour Solomon would have known at once; for neither myrrh nor frankincense have changed one whit since his day. It was easy enough so long as both sat listening to Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax. Carried nem. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... philosophic apathy in such occurrences. The Psalmist, it may be safely affirmed, knew as much of human nature as the Doctor, and was as well acquainted too with what was becoming worship. He, however, differs egregiously in opinion. In the 107th psalm, which so beautifully describes the manifold goodness, and yet the varying providences of the Most High, we find a passage which strikingly applies to such a case as we have been contemplating, and which, at the same ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... feeble folk were of the company; but some three hours after noon of the third day, having toiled long through a wilderness of stony hills, they saw the city. Men and women kissed the ground, weeping and crying aloud. The priests in charge of the pilgrims struck up a psalm of thanksgiving. ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... is no doubt, I think, that by these words St. Paul means the Bible; that is, the Old Testament, which was the only part of the Bible already written in his time. For it is of the Psalms which he is speaking. He mentions a verse out of the 69th Psalm, "The reproaches of Him that reproached thee fell on me;" which, he says, applies to Christ just as much as it did to David, who wrote it. Christ, he says, pleased not Himself any more than David, but suffered willingly and joyfully for God's sake, ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... by that of a South Down clerk in the east of the county, whose seat in church commanded a view of the neighbourhood. During an afternoon service one Sunday a violent gale was raging which had already unroofed several barns. The time came, says Mr. Lower, for the psalm before the sermon, and the clerk rose to announce it. "Let us sing to the praise and glo—Please, sir, Mas' Cinderby's mill is ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Cotterills, stretched downwards into the dead heart of Bursley, and upwards over the brow of the hill into space. And although Arthur Cotterill knew Trafalgar Road as well as Mrs Hopkins knew the hundred and twenty-first Psalm, the effect of the scene on him was most uncanny. He watched Simeon persuade the loaded barrow down the step into the tiny front garden, not daring to help him, because Simeon did not like to be helped by clumsy people in delicate operations. Mrs Hopkins was rapidly pouring all the ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... the next morning read the prayers and the Psalter for the 7th of September; a part of it was the thirty-fifth psalm, which seemed wonderfully appropriate. Do you remember how it begins? 'Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... requirements of the Law were attended to. The festival proclaimed the full restoration of the worship of Jehovah, and kindled enthusiasm for his service. So great was this event that Ezekiel dates the opening of his prophecies from it. "It seems probable that we have in the eighty-fifth psalm a relic of this great solemnity.... Its tone is sad amidst all the great public rejoicings; it bewails the stubborn ungodliness of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... were condemned to be hanged.[35] On the night before their execution, they were confined in a barn, where they made an agreement not to confess a word at the gallows the following day, and sang a psalm in confirmation. Next day they "dyed ... very desperately."[36] But there were still one hundred and twenty others in gaol[37] awaiting trial. No doubt many forthwith would have met the same end, had it not been for a lucky chance of the wars. The king's ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... last office had been performed, the prayer said, a psalm sung, and the black dirt thrown in, they waited by him in sympathy. His feeling was that they had done a monstrous thing; that the mother he had known was somewhere alive and well. He stood a moment so, watching ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... forget how he took me in by the 'Hop-and-go-constant' affair. But then he's a good Protestant—not that I mean he has a single spark of religion in his nondescript carcass; but in those times it's not canting and psalm-singing we want, but good political Protestantism, that will enable us to maintain our ascendancy by other means than praying. Curse the hound that keeps him? Is this a day for him to be late on? and it now half past ten o'clock; however, he must come soon; but, upon my honor, I dread ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the 147th Psalm, 'He maketh the grass to grow upon ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... singers, and had sung together a third of a century. They were ready speakers and mighty in prayer, and in the quiet way of lay workers they went from house to house, and to a family in a place they presented the great salvation in conversation and psalm, and commended the people to God ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... emerald isles that sail a silver sea, Caverned by plumy groves of sunny palm, Broke on my startled vision suddenly; When as but quickly parted, sweet and calm, That long forgot yet ever haunting psalm Floated from lips that flew to greet me home. A meteor flamed; I woke in rude alarm; Above me orbed the temple's sullen dome; Around me swam ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... verse and verse, first grandfather, then granny, and by and by, as she came to know them, Jessie herself would take her turn too. Sometimes they would repeat a psalm or two in the same way, or a chapter, and before very long they had taught Jessie some of these also, so that, to her great delight, she could ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... is the only one among us who can combine extreme polish and the utmost facility of flow with deep-seated reflection.' SEATSFIELD then quoted, with a sublime energy, from the celebrated 'Psalm of Life:' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... awake, his eye glanced across to the front gallery, where one earnest young face, ever kindling with feeling and bright with intellect, followed on his way, and he felt uplifted and comforted. On Sunday mornings, when Mary came out of her little room, in clean white dress, with her singing-book and psalm-book in her hands, her deep eyes solemn from recent prayer, he thought of that fair and mystical bride, the Lamb's wife, whose union with her Divine Redeemer in a future millennial age was a frequent and favorite subject of his musings; yet he knew not that this ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... the church in these words: 'upon thy right hand did stand the Queen in gold of Ophir: her clothing is of wrought gold: she shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the Virgins her companions that follow her shall enter into the king's palace.' Psalm xlv. 9-16." Lastly they asked, "Is it not expedient that a priest be present and minister at the marriage ceremony?" The wise one answered, "This is expedient on the earth, but not in the heavens, by reason of the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... believe in grace, the Lord be praised; you haven't yet lost your faith; and then you must clasp your hands together, and look a very Satan of a fellow for believing in grace. As far as Mammon was concerned, why, you hated Mammon with all its pomps in any form. Now it's quite another thing with a psalm-book—a souvenir to the extent of a few shillings.... I stopped at the pastor's door, and read, "Office hours, ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... glimpse of this romance, in the midst of the ultra modern "glorious" revolution. At a large meeting at Hamar it was decreed, that the new King should bear a name after one on the ancient Kings of Norway. In a festival number of a "Vordens Gang" in honour of the revolution we find printed a "Psalm on ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... at me, Mr. Macey," said the deputy clerk, with an air of anxious propriety, "I'm nowise a man to speak out of my place. As the psalm says— ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... thinks it is jest as well to have one o' the girls set in between me an' Amos. The meetin'-house is full, for everybody goes to meetin' Thanksgivin' day. The minister reads the proclamation an' makes a prayer, an' then he gives out a psalm, an' we all stan' up an' turn round an' join the choir. Sam Merritt has come up from Palmer to spend Thanksgivin' with the ol' folks, an' he is singin' tenor to-day in his ol' place in the choir. Some folks say he sings wonderful well, but I don't like ...
— A Little Book of Profitable Tales • Eugene Field
... those of the magistrates who were Roman Catholics withdrew, while the remainder stopped to listen to the preacher. Ascending the pulpit, in a sonorous voice he gave forth a psalm, the words and air of which were well-known to the vast assemblage below. Hitherto a low murmur had alone been heard throughout the building. But now, many thousand voices swelled up together to the praise of Him who came on earth to die for man—the ...
— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston
... said the popinjay,* *parrot "Your might is told in Heav'n and firmament." And then came in the goldfinch fresh and gay, And said this psalm with heartly glad intent, "Domini est terra;" this Latin intent,* *means The God of Love hath earth in governance: And then the wren ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... Madam, I know your Virtue and your Piety too well to suspect your Honour wrongfully: 'tis impossible a Lady that goes to a Conventicle twice a Day, besides long Prayers and loud Psalm— singing, shou'd do any thing with an Heroick against her Honour. Your known Sanctity preserves you from Scandal— But ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... told me afterwards that in all the battles put together he had seen in England he did not think he had heard half the noise that came to him in that one afternoon on the top of the Hotel de Nidemerle. The Cavaliers gave a view halloo, and cried, 'God save the King!' the Ironsides sang a Psalm, and then they set their teeth and fought in silence, and hardly any one cried out when he was hurt—while here the shots were lost in the cries, and oh! how terrible with rage and ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to his thin visage a preternatural seriousness. Dishes were washed in such brief time and so thoroughly, and such havoc made in the garden-weeds that the world might make a note of Jeff's idea of reform (to its advantage). In the evening his fiddle wailed out psalm-tunes to the entire exclusion ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... that world that Mr. Channing had been carrying the thoughts of his children in these, the last moments. The Bible was before him, but all that he had chosen to read was a short psalm. And then he prayed God to bless them; to keep them from evil; to be their all-powerful protector. There was not a dry eye present; and Charles and Annabel—Annabel with all her ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... this very literal rendering of the Psalm, but found it impossible to advance further than the awakening in Patience's mind an expectation of a future, but equally literal table, the dainties on which Toby and Silas would ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... she was the object of the songs of the troubadours as well as of their French imitators; for her use also she caused the translations of books of piety like Genesis, or the paraphrase at great length, in verse, of the psalm 'Eructavit.'" ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... knotted hands resting on the staff, or folded quietly on the lap. They had nearly done the good day's work, and now preacher and prophet were needed to tell them what that day's work meant, where they keep the books for us, and so it was not a speech, but a psalm of life. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... your present frame of mind! It is wonderful to what a degree the Psalms especially suit the mood and temper of all kinds of readers in every conceivable position. I can imagine the poor suicide, stealing towards the peaceful river, and musing on a verse of a psalm. I can imagine the joyful man, on the morning of a marriage day which no malignant relatives have embittered, finding a verse which will seem like the echo of his cheerful temper. And passing from feeling to understanding, ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... committed a sin for which he was punished not only in the denunciation of Nathan the prophet and the loss of Bathsheba's first child, but by the stings of a deep remorse, which expresses itself in a psalm which is a miserere. Yet Bathsheba became the mother of Solomon, and Solomon was the heir chosen by the Lord to preserve the kingly line of David, and to maintain the kingdom ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... with the sound of the music which was heard in her streets; and, if I mistake not, the one is as unknown to English readers as the other. It has been said that Guillaume le Franc, a musician of Rouen, actually composed the tune known as the "Old Hundredth," originally set to the 134th Psalm in the Geneva Psalter, and used by English Protestants for the 100th about 1562. It was Haendel's opinion that Luther composed it, and to Claude Goudimel, who was assassinated in the St. Bartholomew of Lyons, the ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Psalms that are the very impulse of the Davidic hymns incarnate in another medium; make it seem as though the genius that had once flowered at the court of the king had attained miraculous second blooming. The setting of the 114th Psalm is the very voice of the rejoicing over the passage of the Red Sea, the very lusty blowing on ox horns, the very hieratic dance. The voice of Jehovah, has it spoken to those who throughout the ages have called for ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of the body, because the cause of pain is in the body: as when we suffer something hurtful to the body. But the movement of pain is always in the soul; since "the body cannot feel pain unless the soul feel it," as Augustine says (Super Psalm. 87:4). ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... chord of sympathy and mutual helpful neighborliness, were quiet, their denizens dining within. At the blockhouse a guard was mounted—doubtless a watchful and stanch lookout, but unconforming to military methods, for he sang, to speed the time, a metrical psalm of David's; the awkward collocation of the words of this version would forever distort the royal poet's meaning if he had no other vehicle of his inspiration. There were long waits between the drowsy lines, and in the intervals certain callow voices, with the penetrating timbre ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... a mighty psalm of praise; Its music-sheets are glaciers, vast and white. Sky-piercing peaks the voiceless chorus raise, To fill ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... formed those meetings or congregations which are called synagogues,—a name afterward more frequently applied to the buildings in which they convened. The earliest allusion to them is found in the seventy-fourth Psalm, where the writer, describing the havoc committed by the Assyrians, remarks, "they have burnt up all the synagogues of God in the land." We might infer, from this statement alone, that such edifices were common before the Babylonian captivity; but we are supplied with a more direct ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... adorned with silver pomegranates and with silver bells, and they placed it in the arms of one of those who had been reading the law; then a procession was formed, and they walked, while the Choir sang one of the Psalms of David—but not in the least like the same Psalm sung in an English Cathedral—bearing the Roll of the Law to the Ark, that is to say, to the cupboard, behind the railing and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... about whom fell alternately the shadows of hell and the splendors of heaven? We gather, indeed, from his record that he was not an idle on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament in his young years, among the praying sworders and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts whom he has immortalized in his allegory; but the only allusion which he makes to this portion of his experience is by way of illustration of the goodness of God in preserving him ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... mosaic blooming in jasper, carnelian, and lapis-lazuli, fresh and bright as when they came from the artist's hand centuries ago. As we stood beneath the arched roof of the cupola, beside the pure white tombs of glistening marble, a verse from Longfellow's "Psalm of Life" was repeated in a low tone of voice. Instantly there rolled through the dimly-lighted vault above a soft and solemn repetition, which sounded as though voices were repeating the psalm in ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... degree toward salvation. Paul calls such constrained works the works of the law; for they flow not from a ready and willing heart; howbeit the law does not require works alone, but the heart itself; wherefore it is said in the first psalm of the blest man, "But his delight is in the law of the Lord: and in His law doth he meditate day and night." Such a mind the law requires, but it gives it not; neither can it of its own nature: whereby it comes to pass that while the law continues to exact it of a man, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... more successful, furnishes one of the gayest and prettiest episodes in the whole history of New England. Across the somber procession of earnest-faced men and women, across the psalm-singing and the praying, across the incredible toil of the pioneers at Plymouth now flashes the brightly costumed and pleasure-loving courtier, Thomas Morton. An agent of Gorges, Morton with thirty followers floated into ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... turn again to Psalm cxvi. you will see a wonderful unfolding of the secret feelings of David's heart, and as we read it we cannot help saying to ourselves, the man who wrote this experience had very close dealings with some One ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... echoing through some artful strain, that all the while is thought by them who listen to come in simplicity from the unpremeditating heart. Songs, hymns, elegies, epicedia, epithalamia—rhyme rules alike all the shadowy tribes. The triumphant ode—the penitential psalm—wisdom's moral lesson—the philosophic strain "that vindicates the ways of God to man;" such is the range of rhyme, down all the depths of the pathetic, up all the heights of the sublime. It is yet unlimited. Where shall we find its bounds? Let ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... History of a Penitent. A Guide for the Inquiring, in a Commentary on the One Hundred and Thirtieth Psalm. By George W. Bethune, D.D., Minister of the Third Reformed Dutch Church, Philadelphia. Henry ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... appointed by the Government as a day of thanksgiving for the blessings of peace. Mr. Bennet preached at Amherst Court House, from Psalm 12, 1st verse, to a crowded and ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... seen through its pioneers, and taste and imagination are confused and confounded in the medium. A nature like Falkland's could not see liberty clearly even through John Pym—how much less through nasal psalm-singing butchers and brewers building a scaffold for the king. So, in our own time, the great question that so sorely rent us was seen by taste and imagination in the form of delicate, highly-cultured women, of a superficial tranquil elegance ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... shall transfuse the reverent souls, until the voice of the dew God sends down shall be heard dropping on the grassy sod, and welcomed as the prelude to the archangel's grand semibreve that will usher in the sublime Psalm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... everywhere took possession of the churches, and their new songs, which went from mouth to mouth, operated strongly on the minds of the people. Great enthusiasm and originally pious feelings are clearly distinguishable in these hymns, and especially in the chief psalm of the Cross-bearers, which is still extant, and which was sung all over Germany in different dialects, and is probably of a more ancient date. Degeneracy, however, soon crept in; crimes were everywhere committed; and there was no energetic man capable of directing the ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker |
