"Rhapsody" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yer soul—is it you?' says I, my feelings rising into a rhapsody of affection for him: 'Give us ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... had brought him the manuscript. I was convinced of the truth of what he said, and I gave an order for his liberation. To avoid irritating the susceptibility of the Minister of Police I wrote to him the following few lines:—"The libel is the most miserable rhapsody imaginable. The author, probably with the view of selling his pamphlet in Holstein, predicts that Denmark will conquer every other nation and become the greatest kingdom in the world. This alone will suffice to prove to you how little clanger there is in rubbish ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... 'bloody instructions he had taught returned to him'; when that voice of the people, which was the voice of God to him, echoed with its doom the voice within, and 'sweet religion,' with its divine appeals—'a rhapsody of words' no longer, came, to second that great argument,—the blind instincts were overpowered in him, the lesser usurping nature was dethroned,—the angelic nature arose, and had her hour, and shed parting ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... what of age? Shall it too not testify to the rhapsody of existence? Let the years between be those of struggle, of sufferance—of disillusion if you will; but let youth and age affirm the ecstasy of being. Let us look forward all to a serene sunset, and in the still skies "a ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... undiscerning. He likewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any well-used copy of 'The Seasons,' the book generally opens of itself with the Rhapsody on Love, or with one of the stories, perhaps of Damon and Musidora. These also are prominent in our Collections of Extracts, and are the parts of his work which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the author ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... sharp-pointed, long, slender hand, on a kind of wavy, ribbed paper. There was something strangely suggestive about the look of it,—but exactly of what, Miss Darley either could not or did not try to think. The subject of the paper was The Mountain,—the composition being a sort of descriptive rhapsody. It showed a startling familiarity with some of the savage scenery of the region. One would have said that the writer must have threaded its wildest solitudes by the light of the moon and stars as well ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... I wish to call the reader's especial attention to, is, that the little senator's rabid rhapsody was received with shouts of gallery applause, which, as I have before observed, is an exhibition of sentiment not allowed in the Senate to either members of Congress or gallery. Yet, so thoroughly had ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... undiscerning. He likewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any well-used copy of the Seasons the book generally opens of itself with the rhapsody on love, or with one of the stories (perhaps 'Damon and Musidora'); these also are prominent in our collections of Extracts, and are the parts of his Work which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the author to general notice. ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... he is coming. I knew he would come. Why should he not come?" This she exclaimed to her mother, and then went on to speak of him with a wild rhapsody of joy, as though there had hardly been any breach in her happiness. And she continued to sing the praises of her husband till Mrs. Holt hardly knew how to bear her enthusiasm in a fitting mood. For she, who was not in love, still thought that this man's conduct had been scandalous, ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... went on without noticing this rhapsody, 'if you breathe one word or utter one sound by which suspicion can fall on Mr. Blake, my promise is forfeited; if you stay here after to-morrow, or attempt to see me within this and next Christmas Eve, ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking
... sequence.] Discontinuity — N. discontinuity; disjunction &c 44; anacoluthon^; interruption, break, fracture, flaw, fault, crack, cut; gap &c (interval) 198; solution of continuity, caesura; broken thread; parenthesis, episode, rhapsody, patchwork; intermission; alternation &c (periodicity) 138; dropping fire. V. be discontinuous &c adj.; alternate, intermit, sputter, stop and start, hesitate. discontinue, pause, interrupt; intervene; break, break in ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... from his quiescent posture, and tranquil occupation, by the growing excitement of his companion, "what has possessed you? Is it the daughter of our worthy host—is it Emily Sherwood, the nymph who haunts these woods—who has given birth to this marvellous train of reflection? to this rhapsody on the omnipresence of woman, which I certainly had never discovered, and on the misery of a snug bachelor's income, which to me is still more incomprehensible? I confess, however, it would be difficult to find a better specimen of this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... it dirges Longer let Eolus play; Touch it, and those notes of sadness Change to joyous rhapsody! And tho' the grape, the gift of Autumn, Has been prest to crown the bowl— Still in thy tresses shine its clusters, While down thy snowy neck ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... In some short rhapsody of love it may be presumed that Lucius indulged himself when he found that the affair which he had in hand had so far satisfactorily arranged itself. But he was in truth too wretched at heart for any true enjoyment of the delights ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody) it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius—he has all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney poetry; which may be defined to consist ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... water. It was a delightful afternoon of June, the river warm and still, and the soft, fitful western breeze occasionally rich with the perfume of the gardens of Putney and Chiswick. Waldershare talked the whole way. It was a rhapsody of fancy, fun, knowledge, anecdote, brilliant badinage—even passionate seriousness. Sometimes he recited poetry, and his voice was musical; and, then, when he had attuned his companions to a sentimental pitch, he would ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... it is unnecessary to speak in detail. It was one long rhapsody, and rhapsodies are apt to be a little tiresome to those other than the rhapsodists. Everybody has known such hours for themselves—or if they have not they are unfortunate. They breakfasted frugally—there is a delicious intimacy in breakfast no other meal knows, and then decided on Staten ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... short in his rhapsody by the approach of a pleasant faced lad of about his own age who was dressed from head to foot in white and wore a little white cap, across the front of which was printed in ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... moped, grew miserable, and contracted a slight malarial fever which for the next six or seven years never entirely relaxed its hold on him. Among his papers has recently been found the long, wild, pessimistic rhapsody to which reference has already been made and in which there is talk of suicide. The plaint is of the degeneracy among men, of the destruction of primitive simplicity in Corsica by the French occupation, of his own isolation, and of his yearning to see his friends once ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... was powerful (almost too loud sometimes) and most persuasive; he was eloquent and impassioned, but he used little gesture or any artifice to engage attention. He commenced with a rhapsody—startling in the sudden flow of its eloquence, thrilling in its higher tones, tender and compassionate (almost to tears) in its lower passages—a ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... with indifference, at least with apathy. Just above his head swung the sign with its legend, "Slosson—Entertainment"; but if he were Slosson, one could take the last half of the sign either as a poetic rhapsody on the part of the painter, or the yielding to some meaningless convention, for in his person, Mr. Slosson suggested none of those qualities of brain or heart that trenched upon the lighter amenities of life. He was black-haired and bull-necked, and there was about him a certain ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... observe, a flea Has smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em; And so proceed ad infinitum. 721 SWIFT: Poetry, A Rhapsody. ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... relieve him, and he sank back into his chair somewhat calmer. I could understand nothing of all that rhapsody, knowing, as I did, that his son Archibald had died from natural causes. "It is a severe blow," I said, in as soothing a tone as I could assume—"a very great disappointment; still, you are secured from extreme ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... clergymen and chambers of commerce to protest. A number of the "Outlook's" subscribers are New Haven "commuters", and the magazine could not fail to refer to their troubles. In the issue of Jan. 4th, 1913, three years and ten days after the Baxter rhapsody, we read: ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... phrases of similar celebrity, whilst she entirely depended on her own natural resources. Those to whom this oratory is not new, have no need of our reporting any of it; and those to whom it is a perfect mystery, boast a "state the more gracious," and are the more happy in their ignorance. None of this rhapsody, however, although teeming with blasphemy and abuse, had any effect on Garrick, and he would have remained unmoved had she not terminated in the following manner, which so excited the laughter of the collected ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... little chest with a gulp of morning air and found no better words for his rhapsody than: "Gee, but ain't ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Jacob's presence, enough to last her half a day. But this was wearing thin. And she wrote now—poems, letters that were never posted, saw his face in advertisements on hoardings, and would cross the road to let the barrel- organ turn her musings to rhapsody. But at breakfast (she shared rooms with a teacher), when the butter was smeared about the plate, and the prongs of the forks were clotted with old egg yolk, she revised these visions violently; was, in truth, very cross; was ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Mr M'Aulay began a rhapsody against creeds and confessions. Dr Johnson shewed, that 'what he called "imposition", was only a voluntary declaration of agreement in certain articles of faith, which a church has a right to require, just as any other society can insist on ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... said Noel, "two pages of passionate rhapsody, and stop at these few lines at the end. 'The countess's condition causes her to suffer very much! Unfortunate wife! I hate and at the same time pity her. She seems to divine the reason of my sadness and my coldness. By her timid submission ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... extravagant blemishes. Every play of the same author has more or less of them. Let me give you a sample from this. Alexander, in a full crowd of courtiers, without being occasionally called or provoked to it, falls into this rhapsody of vainglory: ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... indisposed to marry, owing to habits of gallantry. Of one alleged point of resemblance there is no evidence. The loveliness assigned to Shakespeare's youth was not, as far as we can learn, definitely set to Pembroke's account. Francis Davison, when dedicating his 'Poetical Rhapsody' to the earl in 1602 in a very eulogistic sonnet, makes a cautiously qualified reference to the attractiveness of his person in ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... is difficult to penetrate, especially after the rains, when the undergrowth is dense and rank. Very beautiful is the Bhabar, and very stimulating to the imagination. One writer speaks of it as "a jungle rhapsody, an extravagant, impossible botanical tour de force, intensely modern in its Titanic, incoherent magnificence." It is the home of the elephant, the tiger, the panther, the wild boar, several species of deer, and of many strange and ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... indeed for Miss Barfoot to be moved to rhapsody. Again Rhoda nodded, and then they laughed together, with joyous confidence in themselves and in ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... long while on the piano, at first a bravura from the operas, then some classical pieces, Liszt's "Twelfth Rhapsody," and finally ended with the artless music of Oppel's "A Summer's Night in Berezovka"—a piece she used to play to Ivanov when ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... echo the last word of Abel's rhapsody, for Brother Moses had succumbed to mundane slumber, and sat nodding like a massive ghost. Forest Absalom, the silent man, and John Pease, the English member, now departed to the barn; and Mrs. Lamb led her flock to a temporary fold, leaving the founders of ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... the bronze age, in the day of the ponderous Mycenaean shield; the last in the iron age, when men armed themselves with breastplate and light round buckler." [Footnote: Ibid., vol. ii. p. x.] We cannot guess how he found these things out, for corslets are as common in one "rhapsody" as in another when circumstances call for the mention of corslets, and are entirely unnamed in the Odyssey (save that the Achaeans are "bronze-chitoned"), while the Odyssey is alleged to be much later than the Iliad. As for "the iron age," no "rhapsodist" introduces so much as one ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... Fingal[369], he said, was a mere unconnected rhapsody, a tiresome repetition of the same images. "In vain shall we look for the lucidus ordo'[370], where there is neither end or object, design or ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... violence to my understanding in praising this unnatural rhapsody, I nevertheless extolled it as a production that of itself deserved immortal fame; and besought her ladyship to bless the world with the fruits of those uncommon talents Heaven had bestowed upon her. She smiled with a look of self-complacency, and encouraged ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... Miscellanies published in England at the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. A few of the lyrics here collected are, it is true, included in "England's Helicon," Davison's "Poetical Rhapsody," and "The Ph[oe]nix' Nest"; and some are to be found in the modern collections of Oliphant, Collier, Rimbault, Mr. W.J. Linton, Canon Hannah, and Professor Arber. But many of the poems in the present volume ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... singer that I wished to know him; nor to watch his dainty and graceful ways as he went about the daily duties of food-hunting, singing, and driving off marauders, which occupied his hours from dawn to late evening, and left him spirit enough for many a midnight rhapsody. It was in his domestic relations that I desired to see him,—the wooing of the bride and building the nest, the training of mocking-bird babies and starting them in the world; and no loitering and dreaming in the pine grove, however tempting, would tell me this. I must follow him to his ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... but to maintain they have not rights, is an entirely new species of discovery and suited to the paradoxical genius of Mr. Burke." In reply to the noble passage: "The age of chivalry is gone ...," Paine shrewdly says: "In the rhapsody of his imagination he has discovered a world of windmills, and his sorrows are that there are ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the half-unconscious rhapsody was a Fetishistic utterance in a Monotheistic setting; women whose chief companions are the forms and forces of outdoor Nature retain in their souls far more of the Pagan fantasy of their remote forefathers than of the systematized religion taught their race at later date. However, Tess found ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... this day followed a reading of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, which is itself the rhapsody of an eloquent man upon faith. If this were written, as some suppose, by Apollos, the orator of the early Church, one may almost fancy that he reads here a bit of one of those addresses wherein speaker and hearer are lifted up together ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... persuasion!" she rippled. "See how thou art shaken into thyself, man. What! No phrase of lackadaisical rapture! Why, I looked to see thee invert thine incorporate satin in an airy rhapsody—upheld and kept unruffled by some fantastical twist of thine imagination. Oh, Fancy—Fancy! Couldst not e'en sustain thy knight cap-a-pie!" and she laughed the harder as she saw her lover's face ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... plead."—Right of Tythes, p. 196. "But the time usually chosen to send young Men abroad, is, I think, of all other, that which renders them least capable of reaping those Advantages."—Locke, on Ed., p. 372. "It is a mere figment of the human imagination, a rhapsody of the transcendent unintelligible."—Jamieson's Rhet., p. 120. "It contains a greater assemblage of sublime ideas, of bold and daring figures, than is perhaps any where to be met with."—Blair's Rhet., p. 162. "The order in which the two last words are placed, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... die as you lived, in your clothes: don't strip yourself: let the old women strip you; that is their delight laying out a chap; that is the time they brighten up, the old sorceresses." He concluded this amiable rhapsody, the latter part of which was levelled at a lugubrious weakness of his grandmother's for the superfluous embellishment of the dead, by telling her it was bad enough to be tied by the foot like an ass, without settling down on his back like a cast sheep. "Give me the armchair. I'll sit ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... his introductory rhapsody, when the door opened, and my aunt's servant entered with tea and toast: the simmering of the water round the heated tube of the urn, tingling in the ears of Heartly, broke the thread of his narration. There was a pause of nearly a minute, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the present volumes may be—and, no doubt, they are both great and many—I have laboured to the full extent of my humble abilities to group and present my material perspicuously, and to avoid diffuseness and rhapsody, those besetting sins of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... peut-etre ses exces; mais du moins, elle ne fut pas pour le cardinal de Lomenie une manie sterile. Non seulement il aimoit, il connoissoit les livres, mais il savoit s'en servir; sans contredit il fut un des hommes les plus eclaires du Clerge de France."——To return from this pleasing rhapsody to the catalogue, the title of which is above given. It is composed by Laire, in the Latin language, with sufficient bibliographical skill: but the index is the most puzzling one imaginable. The uncommonly curious and magnificent ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... notes blend with those of the song sparrow, and a robin swinging on the topmost branch of a eucalyptus, after a few short notes as a prelude, pours forth a perfect rhapsody of melody. ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... seen—a thoroughly scientific University, in which every branch of human knowledge should be clearly taught on a positive basis—a school where literature and art would be ennobled and refined by elevation from mysticism, 'rhapsody,' and obscurity, to their true position as historical developments and indices of human progress. We are pleased to see that in the plan proposed, provision would be made for two classes of persons—those ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... to the old sealer's regretful rhapsody. The situation is too grave for them to be thinking of gain by the capture of fur-seals, even though it should prove "a mine of wealth," as Seagriff called it. Of what value is wealth to them while their very lives are in jeopardy? They were rejoiced when they first set foot on land; ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... foothills. And his casa's built too high. Oh, thar ain't any water thar, you bet. Ah," says Wise, with reflective admiration, "those greasers ain't the darned fools people thinks 'em. I'll bet thar ain't one swamped out in all 'er Californy." But the appearance of "grub" cut this rhapsody short. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... to his rhapsody with misgivings. With every allowance for the fervour of a lover who was also a Fairy Prince, even maternal partiality could not blind her to the fact that his description would be far less incorrect as applied to that Heritage girl than to the ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... quite unmoved. It almost seemed doubtful if she heard and understood all the simple girlishness in her niece's rhapsody, so preoccupied she seemed with her ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... strident voices, their notes fairly tumbling over each other in their exuberance, and in their hurry to sing their solos. Tree toads tune up for the evening concert, a few short notes at first, like a violinist testing the strings, then, the pitch ascertained, the air fairly vibrates with their rhapsody. ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... when he decreed him blind, And wiser still when he decreed him poor; For insight grew as outer sight declined, And want overrode the ills it could not cure, Else rhapsody had ...
— Thoughts, Moods and Ideals: Crimes of Leisure • W.D. Lighthall
... these feelings. She went to church each Sunday and read her Bible daily with a simple faith that defied derision. Once, when she was gone, Martin idly hunted out the Song of Solomon. His lips curled with contempt at the passionate rhapsody. He knew a thing or two, he allowed, about these wonderful Roses of Sharon and this Song of Songs. Lies, all lies, every word of it! Yet, in spite of himself, from time to time, he liked to reread it. He fancied ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... R. Gould, afterwards well known as a sculptor, being at the Episcopal church in Newton, found that Mr. Emerson was sitting in the pew behind them. Gould knew Mr. Emerson, and introduced young Rice to him, and they walked down the street together. As they went along, Emerson burst into a rhapsody over the Psalms of David, the sublimity of thought, and the poetic beauty of expression of which they are full, and spoke also with enthusiasm of the Te Deum as that grand old hymn which had come down through the ages, voicing the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the political popery of Austria. The estimate which Goethe forms of the poets of the time, of Gleim and Uz, of Gessner and Rabener, and more especially of Klopstock, Lessing, and Wieland, should be read in the original, as likewise Herder's "Rhapsody on Shakspeare." The latter contains the key to many of the secrets of that new period of literature, which was inaugurated by Goethe himself and by those who like him could dare to be classical by being true ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... almost seem to be a rhapsody, but every movement of continental politics in recent times confirms and enforces its plain truth. "The spirit of resurgent nationality," as Professor Bury of Cambridge tells us, "has governed, as one of the most puissant forces, the political course of the last century and is still unexhausted." ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... Theology, revelation has no other basis than mere tradition, we have even better authority than his Lordship's for the staggering fact that natural Theology, without the prop of revelation, is a 'rhapsody of words,' mere jargon, analogous to the tale told by an idiot, so happily described by our great poet as 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' We have a Rev. Hugh M'Neil 'convinced that, from external creation, no right conclusion can be drawn concerning the moral character ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... as a sailor, I shall not run into rhapsody on the subject of the beauties of the inner or outer bay of this prosperous place. No man but one besotted with provincial conceit could ever think of comparing the harbour of New York with the Bay of Naples; nor do I know two places, that ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... even indulge ourselves with a short extract from one of the "Conversations with Children," reported verbatim by an apparently concealed auditress, and eliciting many a cunning bit of infantine wisdom, besides the following finer rhapsody, which Mr. Alcott succeeded in charming out of the lips of a boy six ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... to break in wrathful assault upon the grim rocks below. 'Twas amazing: the slender figure drawn in glee to breast the gale, the long arms opened to the wind, the rapt, dark face, the flashing eyes, the deep, eager breaths like sighs of rapture. A rhapsody: the rush and growl and frown of the world (said he)—the sombre colors, the veil of mist, the everlasting hills, rising in serenity above the turmoil and evanescent rage. To this I listened in wonder. I had not for myself ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... This rhapsody, delivered with the rapidity and emphasis of Puddock's earnest lisp, was accompanied with very general tokens of merriment from the company, and the priest, who half suspected him of having invented it, was ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... more than a Rhapsody of tragical Adventures, which captivated the the Imagination and distracted the Heart[15]. 'Twas pleasant enough to read them, but nothing more was got by it than feeding the Mind with Chimaeras, which were often hurtful. The Youth greedily swallow'd all the wild and ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... rhapsody may be somewhat out of order, even in a popular scientific book; and yet one cannot help at moments envying the old Greek imagination, which could inform the soulless sea-world with a human life and beauty. For, after all, star-fishes ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... school, being too "sensational" to suit the most exacting taste. His song is a grand improvisation: a good deal jumbled, to be sure, and without any recognizable form or theme; and yet, like a Liszt rhapsody, it perfectly answers its purpose,—that is, it gives the performer full scope to show what he can do with his instrument. You may laugh a little, if you like, at an occasional grotesque or overwrought passage, but unless you are well used to it you will surely be astonished. Such power and range ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... be seen in full play. He would begin no matter how—perhaps with a jest at some absurd adventure of his own, perhaps with the recitation, in his vibrating voice and full Scotch accent, of some snatch of poetry that was haunting him, perhaps with a rhapsody of analytic delight over some minute accident of beauty or expressiveness that had struck him in man, woman, child, or external nature. And forthwith the floodgates would be opened, and the talk would stream on in endless, never importunate, flood ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... heart sink, and her whole being disturbed with a heavy sense of terror, as Sarah uttered the incoherent rhapsody which we have just repeated. The vague, but strongly expressed warnings which she had previously heard from Nelly, and the earnest admonitions which that person had given her to beware of evil designs on the part of Donnel Dhu and his daughter, now rushed upon her mind; and she ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... musical company, the Octave accept this peroration without criticism, and do not seem to consider it an extravagant rhapsody, though they are so daring as to take exception to other parts ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... of this nature, which required more time than he employed about it. There is nothing great or learned in his commentaries upon the Bible; every thing low and mean: and though he had studied divinity, he has rather composed a rhapsody of theological questions, than a commentary upon the scripture text: to which we may add, that he wanted understanding, and usually followed his senses ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... fired to sing The snail's discreet degrees, A rhapsody of sauntering, A gloria of ease; Proclaiming their's the baser part Who consciously forswear The delicate and gentle ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... pencilled with the shadowy writing that is a pale warning to the libertine. And yet his speech about the spring that night, as they leaned out over Victoria Street, had evidently not been a mere reckless rhapsody. It had held a meaning and was remembered. In Valentine there seemed to be flowering a number of faint-hued wants, such wants as had never flowered from his nature before. The fig-tree that had seemed so exquisitely barren began to put forth ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... forethought in this, I grant you; but such speeches as these were Dolly Crewe's mode of comforting her lover in his dark moods; at least, she was sincere,—and sincerity will excuse many touches of extravagance. And as to Griffith, every touch of loving, foolish rhapsody dropped upon his heart like dew from heaven, filling him with rapture and drawing him nearer to her ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... listening to this rhapsody with the greatest admiration, when just then Bittra came in. She has got over the most acute period of her grief, "except when," she says, "she looks at the sea and thinks of ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... descended the hill, I walked reverently, my soul upraised in chaste and fervent ecstasy. However, this fine, poetical rhapsody was banished, suddenly and most unpleasantly, by my companion who, setting fingers to mouth, emitted a shrill whistle,—three ear-piercing blasts that shattered the night's holy calm and startled me to ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... French, since his retirement to command of the forces in England, seems much older. So common is this quick aging that Lady Jellicoe, who went to Scotland to see her husband after the big naval battle, wrote to Mrs. Page in a sort of rhapsody and with evident surprise that the Admiral really did not seem older! The weight of this thing is so prodigious that it is changing all men who have to do with it. Men and women (who do not wear mourning) ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... ears hear the sound Of thy waters, which plunge with a turbulent bound O'er the precipice, seething and laden with foam; My ears hear their music wherever I roam; Where the cataract's rhapsody, joyous and light, Enchants in the morning and soothes in the night; Where blend the loud thunders, sonorous and deep, With the sobs of the rain as the black heavens weep; Where the whispering zephyr, and murmuring breeze, Unite with the soft, listless sigh of the trees; And where ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... came oftener in one's life! All that was beautiful and good in each of our hidden natures came dancing out to greet her at her coming, and all petty jealousies were so quieted and—why, what a rhapsody I'm writing! And to-morrow, our good better natures tucked away, dear knows where, we shall descend with business-like airs to breakfast, wish each other good morning, pretend that we haven't any hearts. Oh, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... music; therefore I am going to make a different work of the former, and for the sonata I adopted the modest quatrain that is printed in it.... Like the third, this fourth sonata is more of a 'bardic' rhapsody on the subject than an attempt at actual presentation of it, although I have made use of all the suggestion of tone-painting in my power,—just as the bard would have reinforced his speech ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... although uttered extemporaneously, are invariably well finished and scholarly. His words are well chosen; they are fit in with cultivated exactitude and polished precision. They will stand reading; nay, they will read excellently—infinitely better than the burning rhapsody of more phrensied and eloquent men; but they fall with a long-drawn dulness upon the ear when first uttered, and don't, as Sam Slick would say, "get up one's steam anyhow." Mr. Mearns has a clear head and a good heart, but his spoken words want power and immediate brightness, and his style is deadened ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Stewart, by what means I knew you after your warning about the kicking, eh? I suspected it was yourself, when I saw an American gentleman with his arm in a sling, and so I made bold to accost you in the midst of your rhapsody about angels—' ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... with the readers of his book! A confidence of this kind is abnormal, and illustrates, we think most fully, all the special characteristics of the man. With his passion for repeating, our author tells us in continuation of a strange rhapsody on ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... where—and here is the point—where any beauty has been shown. But how, where that is not the case? where the hatter is simply introduced, as God made him and as his fellow-men have miscalled him, at the crisis of a high-flown rhapsody? And what are we to say, where a man of Whitman's notable capacity for putting things in a bright, picturesque, and novel way, simply gives up the attempt, and indulges, with apparent exultation, in an inventory of trades or implements, with no more colour or coherence than so many index-words ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a rhapsody on the divine merits of an air-cooling system, clawed his billowing black hair, and sighed, "Sounds improbable, don't it? Must be true, though; it's going to appear in the Gazette, and that's the motor-dealer's bible. If you don't believe it, read the blurbs we publish about ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... truer faith than Lanier's, nor a faith more poetically and devoutly expressed. In his Sunrise he attains at times the beauty of The Marshes of Glynn, and voices in some of the lines a veritable rhapsody of faith. Yet for sustained elevation of feeling and for unbroken musical harmonies, Sunrise cannot equal The Marshes of Glynn, which alone would suffice to keep Lanier's name on the scroll of ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... the sense of outward things. In this condition of trance the sense of time vanishes, there is, he asserts, no such thing, no past or future, only now, which is eternity. In The Story of my Heart, a rhapsody of mystic experience and aspiration he describes in detail several such moments of exaltation or trance. He seems to be peculiarly sensitive to sunshine. As the moon typifies to Keats the eternal essence in all things, so to Jefferies ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... After uttering this rhapsody, the old gentleman snapped his fingers twenty or thirty times, and then subsided into an ecstatic contemplation of Miss La Creevy's charms. This affording Mrs Nickleby a favourable opportunity of explanation, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... rival of Chopin, wrote a biography of him which may almost be ranked among the curiosities of literature. Liszt was a genius, but not a good biographer, and his life of Chopin is largely a rhapsody. ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... effectively at Crosby Pemberton's party. Irene danced like a thing whose vocation is motion. She was a twig in a rain-storm, a butterfly seeking sweets, a humming-bird whose wing beat the air with a very rhapsody of rhythm. She was on the floor with the first note Professor Trask struck, and she danced down the side of the little hall, when the waltz was over and all the other couples had seated themselves, as though the meter of the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... rhapsody, happy or not, will it not awaken the suspicions of De Chemerant? Will you not thus compromise the safety of those whom you have, I must avow, ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... the morning and evening air. It does not ascend by gyrations, like the eagle or birds of prey. It mounts up like a human aspiration. It seems to spread out its wings and to be lifted straight upwards out of sight by the afflatus of its own happy heart. To pour out this in undulating rivulets of rhapsody is apparently the only motive of its ascension. This it is that has made it so loved of all generations. It is the singing angel of man's nearest heaven, whose vital breath is music. Its sweet warbling is only the metrical palpitation ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... the signal for laying by all reserve, and I prostrated myself before this divinity with all the adoration of a profound devotee, and poured out such a rhapsody of love and admiration, as to leave no doubt in her mind of the tenderness of my heart, the acuteness of my wit, and the excellence of my taste. In short, the emir's widow had every reason to be satisfied with the choice she ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... rheumatism rhapsody rhinoceros aghast hemorrhage rhyme rhythm Rhine gherkin rhubarb rhombus ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... was sought for. His was a name to conjure with. Between him and these assaults on his almost proverbial kindness stood the Princess, and the list of his great musical productions during this period, to say nothing of his literary work, like the rhapsody on Chopin, is the tale of what the world owes her for her devotion. The relations between Liszt and the Princess were frankly acknowledged, and by the world as frankly accepted, as if they were two exceptional beings in whom one could pardon things which in the case of ordinary mortals ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... instant his well-conceived project had gone by the board. He saw himself discredited, suspected, a skulking plotter driven into the open, a self-confessed trickster utterly at the mercy of some haphazard question that would lay bare his pretenses and cover his counterfeit rhapsody with ridicule. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... Italian strains accord with such an hour and scene! They were playing, if I remember rightly, the ever-popular Aida; other items followed later—more ambitious ones; a Hungarian rhapsody, Berlioz, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... of the Scandinavians a marvelous record of the coming of the Comet. It has been repeated generation after generation, translated into all languages, commented on, criticised, but never understood. It has been regarded as a wild, unmeaning rhapsody of words, or as a premonition of ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly |
