"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Clytius, Lampus sat, 170 Thymoetes, Hicetaon, branch of Mars, Antenor and Ucalegon the wise, All, elders of the people; warriors erst, But idle now through age, yet of a voice Still indefatigable as the fly's[10] 175 Which perch'd among the boughs sends forth at noon Through all the grove his slender ditty sweet. Such sat those Trojan leaders on the tower, Who, soon as Helen on the steps they saw, In accents quick, but whisper'd, thus remark'd. 180 Trojans and Grecians wage, with fair excuse, Long war for so much ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... everything was as I had last seen it; and though the domestic squabble in the back lane was, unhappily for me, allayed, I yet could hear a pleasant fellow singing, on his way home, the then popular comic ditty called, 'Murphy Delany.' Taking advantage of this diversion I lay down again, with my face towards the fireplace, and closing my eyes, did my best to think of nothing else but the song, which was every moment growing ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... moment when once more his persecutor was commencing his childish ditty, he felt as if, from the top of a mountain a hundred miles away, a cold cloud came journeying through the sky, and descended upon him. He opened his eyes: there was Joan, and the cold cloud was her soft cool hand on his ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... the Spanish cavalier, And thus his ditty ran: 'God send the gypsy maiden here, But not ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... and the overseers, O Lord! so runs our chaplain's weekly ditty; Unreasonable prayers God never hears, He knows that they're supported by ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... with none of the coyness common to amateurs, she seated herself at the instrument, quietly pulled off her gloves, and dashed without more ado into a rollicking Irish ditty. ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... depressed and confounded, that their guests exerted themselves to be merry again, and to efface, as far as was possible, the impression of the late scene. When Mr Hope returned, he found Mr Grey singing his single ditty, about Dame Dumshire and her crockery-ware, amidst great mirth and unbounded applause. Then Mrs Enderby was fluttered, and somewhat flattered, by an entreaty that she would favour the company with one of the ballads, for which she had been famous ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... the master and purser, with the midshipmen, were engaged in amusing themselves in a more uproarious fashion. Many a merry stave and sentimental ditty was sung, and not a few yarns were spun, anecdotes told, and jokes cut, albeit not of the newest. The remainder of the shipwrecked men having been pretty well worked during the day, soon turned in, and in spite of the storm raging over their heads went fast asleep; the only people awake ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... ditty have the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia become famous: their own natural beauty is sufficient to render them beloved by all those who have had the opportunity to see them or live amongst them. But it is also under the blue ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... and the cook is ready to receive the gear. Sleeping-bags, "computation bag," hypsometer, "meat block" (a three-inch-square paper pad on which meteorological notes were taken); clothes-bag opened, three ditty-bags passed in and bag retied; a final temperature taken and aneroid read; sledge anchored securely by tow-rope to the ice-axe, and a final look round to see all gear is safely strapped ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... casting aside the patches that sheltered his excellent eyes, and the pathetic placard which recited the cause of his calamity. Dot-and-go-One disencumbered himself of his timber leg and took his place, upon sound and healthy limbs, beside his fellow-rascal; then they roared out a rollicking ditty, and were reinforced by the whole crew, at the end of each stanza, in a rousing chorus. By the time the last stanza was reached, the half-drunken enthusiasm had risen to such a pitch, that everybody joined in and sang it clear through ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire: Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier: And this ditty, after me, ...
— A Midsummer Night's Dream • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... short by Tom Platt launching into a most dolorous tune, like unto the moaning of winds and the creaking of masts. With his eyes fixed on the beams above, Disko began this ancient, ancient ditty, Tom Platt flourishing all round him to make the tune ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... the prominent feet in the third story window of the Linder mansion, and rested. He moved forward. Opposite the window he paused. He raised the mouthpiece to his lips and embarked on a perilous sea of notes from which the tutored ear might have inferred that once popular ditty, Egypt. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... scene opens in a pavilion on the deck of the ship. Isolde is reclining on a couch, her face buried in the pillows. Brangaene's listless attitude as she gazes across the water, the young sailor's ditty to his Irish girl as he keeps watch on the mast, reflect the calmness of the sea as the ship glides before the westerly breeze, and contrast with the tempest raging in Isolde's breast. Suddenly she starts up in alarm, but Brangaene tries to soothe her, and tells her, to the soft ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... which the men have. This they make into a frock; if they have any under garments they must procure them for themselves. When the slaves get a permit to leave the plantation, they sometimes make all ring again by singing the following significant ditty, which shows that after all there is a flow of spirits in the human breast which for a while, at least, enables them to ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of course, where they were bound to, this ditty was the farewell song; and it always had the desired effect of melting the bystanders, especially the females, though Jack himself showed no really soft emotion. Not that they were not sentimental, but theirs seemed always to be ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... pushed as if starting the boat, and then pulled as if rowing, and with every pull of the oar, the girl ran a few steps, making it appear that the boat shot forward. All the while the boy sang a boat-song or a love-ditty to his sweetheart. ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... she could bear it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, wondering when her husband would come ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... fickle Man betray'd, So Men by me too shall be Bubbles made, Till the dull Sots clandestine Means do take, In robbing Masters,for a Strumpets sake, For which if they shou'd at the Gallows Swing, Their End I'd in some merry Ditty Sing. ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... Earl of Derwentwater. He is generally believed to have been buried in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, near the altar. But a popular tradition has found credence, that he was buried at Dilstone. This has arisen from the Jacobite ditty, called "Derwentwater's Good Night," or has probably given origin to that lay, in which the ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... no answer, but, lifting his babe from its mother's lap, commenced tossing it in the air and singing a pleasant nursery ditty. Caroline sat in a moody state of mind for some minutes, and then left the room to give some directions about tea. On her return, Ellis said, in as cheerful a voice as if ...
— The Two Wives - or, Lost and Won • T. S. Arthur
... at his master, then up to the arched roof of the hall, then drank off the horn of ale, or wine, which stood beside him, and with a rough, yet not unmelodious voice, sung the following ditty to the ancient air of "Blue bonnets ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... shanty they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee ditty at the top of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... never known a lover's sin Let them not read my ditty, it will be To their dull ears so musicless and thin That they will have no joy of it, but ye To whose wan cheeks now creeps the lingering smile, Ye who have learned who Eros is,—O ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... Matters fare no better with his companions, who on their parts renew an old acquaintance with the princess's attendants. Each, in heart, is already false to his vow, without knowing that the wish is shared by his associates; they overhear one another, as they in turn confide their sorrows in a love-ditty to the solitary forest: every one jeers and confounds the one who follows him. Biron, who from the beginning was the most satirical among them, at last steps forth, and rallies the king and the two others, till ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... ditty, ballad, onody, chansonnette, lyric, lilt, lied, paean, cantata, aria, sonnet, strain, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Spaniard with a telescope laid across his knees, which every little while he would raise to his eye and take a steady glance around the horizon to seaward. At other times he would roll and light a paper cigar, murmuring some low ditty to himself as he sent the smoke in volumes through his nose. A small brass bell hung beside the shed near the battery, together with a telegraphic card, which was connected by a wire strung on low posts, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... song of the Black-throated Bunting consists of five, or rather two, notes; the first repeated twice and very slowly, the third thrice and rapidly, resembling chip, chip, che-che-che; of which ditty he is by no means parsimonious, but will continue it for hours successively. His manners are much like those of the European yellow-hammer, sitting, while he sings, on ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... lovers, male and female. It was probably with reference to this that Shakespeare represented poor mad Ophelia hanging her flowers on the "Willow tree aslant the brook" (No. 6), and it is more pointedly referred to in Nos. 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9. The feeling was expressed in a melancholy ditty, which must have been very popular in the sixteenth century, of which Desdemona says a few of the first verses (No. 7), ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... an early bird," commented Pinac, and he went out humming the latest music-hall ditty which he was playing nightly to the patrons of the cafe. Poons went along; he had no more idea of his benefactor's condition than the man in the moon. The three men had not seen much of him lately, for they always left him to himself when he signified by his silence that he wanted to ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... you! Not that I object to the first part of the ditty. It is natural enough that a Scotchman should cry, 'Come, fill up my cup!' more especially if he's drinking at another person's expense—all Scotchmen being fond of liquor at free cost: but 'Saddle his horse!!!'—for what purpose, I would ask? Where is the use of saddling a horse, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... she must agree to become the wife of one or other of them, and if she did not make up her mind and give them an answer that very day, she was to be killed and eaten by both of them. In order the more strongly to impress the audience with her forlorn condition, Whackinta sang a tender and touching ditty, composed by herself expressly for the occasion, and sang it so well that it ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... Go, by all means. I will make myself jolly until you return," said Cloudy, walking up and down the floor whistling a love ditty, and thinking of little Jacko. He always thought of her with tenfold intensity whenever he returned home and came ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... victory this, O comrades, ready before us. Busy the virgins muse, their practis'd ditty recalling, Muse nor shall miscarry; a song for memory waits us. Rightly; for all their souls do ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... reach of where the Baron de Ross danced to his ditty of reiteration, Jastrow the Granite Jaw reached up and in through the rail, capturing one of the jiggling ankles, elevating the figure of the Baron de Ross to a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... taken away by Leonard's speech. It was a sign, however, that her life was very quiet and peaceful, that she had leisure to think upon the thing at all; and often she forgot it entirely in her low, chanting song, or in listening to the thrush warbling out his afternoon ditty to his patient mate in ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... two fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice to chant the following ditty:— ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... foolish, ranting ditty seemed to mock me, my breath came and went to it, my heart beat to it; yet even so, I was praying passionately and this my prayer, viz: That whoso was waiting above us for my death-cry should not again lift the scuttle lest I be discovered to this man-thing that crept ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... arrive!" he told himself. That ancient ditty, "The Yeoman's Wedding," that he had often heard Dr. Mangan sing, attacked him like an illness, and enforced its galloping metres ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... It was a tavern ditty, and not too nice in its sentiments, as, indeed, why should it be, to please its hearers? There was a lilt in its chorus which even Stefan's unmusical voice could not hide, and it set the men's heads nodding in time as ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... spell of foul weather to men that have sailed the salt seas! Haul forward your stools, mates, and we'll have a concert and make all snug. I warrant some of you can troll a ditty, though ye be too modest to own it; and not being plagued wi' modesty ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... manner may be suggestive of the singing of hymns in church, the words of the songs are occasionally such as to correct this impression. But whether it be a patriotic song, a sentimental ballad, or a ditty of a nature that would shock the average young Englishman, all are sung through with stern earnestness, without a laugh, without a false note. At the end, the chairman calls "Prosit!" Everyone answers "Prosit!" and the ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... surprise they found Ross there. He was sitting at the piano strumming a music-hall ditty. As the door opened be shuffled to his feet, shook hands distantly with Auntie Nan, and nodded his ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... the early days, expressed itself in what were called pipes—a ditty, either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme. These pipes were a substitute for the newspaper, and the fear of satire checked ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... of the guitar now ceased, and no French words were heard. No ditty of Latin origin, be it ever so melodious and fervid, could stand against such a wild storm of Anglo-Saxon vociferation. Every ahoy rang out as if sea captains were hailing ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... recite to you," he said, "a ditty that I have composed myself. It is called A Chanty ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... has fled to another retreat, Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat; And the scene where his melody charmed me before Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more. ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... erect and stiff in his saddle from the waist upwards, but leaning from side to side with the motion of his horse, like the tall mast of some laboring sloop, he "loped" away towards the House of the Lost Mission. Once or twice he broke into sentimental song. Strangely enough, his ditty was a popular Spanish refrain of ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... doctissimus. [21] The qualities that shone out conspicuously in his works were, besides learning, a genial though somewhat caustic humour, and a thorough contempt for effeminacy of all kinds. The fop, the epicure, the warbling poet who gargled his throat before murmuring his recondite ditty, the purist, and above all the mock-philosopher with his nostrum for purifying the world, these are all caricatured by Varro in his pithy, good-humoured way; the spirit of the Menippean satires remained, though the form was changed to one more befitting the grave old teacher of wisdom. The fragments ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... verse of a half-Swedish ballad about a "girl so true," that he wished he then had by his side, for the time without her seemed so long. Now and then the spray of a sea would bring him more sharply to himself, but it did not last long; and so the ditty, which was melancholy to the ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... wants a Subsidy. You must, sure, have heard speak of an old Man, who walks about the City, and that part of the Suburbs which lies beyond the Tower, performing the Office of a Day-Watchman, followed by a Goose, which bears the Bob of his Ditty, and confirms what he says with a Quack, Quack. I gave little heed to the mention of this known Circumstance, till, being the other day in those Quarters, I passed by a decrepit old Fellow with a Pole in his Hand, who just then was bawling out, Half an ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... easy life, burthened with few cares. He is the finest rider in the world, following his cattle on horseback, and never makes even the shortest journey on foot. He plays upon the bandolin, sings an Andalusian ditty, and is fond of chingarito (mezcal whisky) and ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... sinking nearly to the floor, while he extends the other leg straight before him, raises one hand above his head, and rests the other on his hip. His heels must never touch the floor, nor may he, while bobbing thus comically up and down and trolling his lively ditty, suffer his face to relax from that expression of sober and dignified earnestness which marks the true Szekler. It is a dance and a display of great physical strength and endurance ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... stomach, paunch, venter, ventricle, crop, craw, maw, gizzard, breadbasket; mouth. pocket, pouch, fob, sheath, scabbard, socket, bag, sac, sack, saccule, wallet, cardcase, scrip, poke, knit, knapsack, haversack, sachel, satchel, reticule, budget, net; ditty bag, ditty box; housewife, hussif; saddlebags; portfolio; quiver &c (magazine) 636. chest, box, coffer, caddy, case, casket, pyx, pix, caisson, desk, bureau, reliquary; trunk, portmanteau, band-box, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... I went below to the officers' corridor. Now and then, through the quiet, a mandolin or guitar could be heard far off twanging some sentimental island ditty; and beneath these sweeter sounds lay a monotonous ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... harmonious; Fips sung the good "Old English Gentleman;" Jack the "British Grenadiers;" and your humble servant, when called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, "When the Bloom is on the Rye," in a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper's, who was asleep, and Jack's, who was singing the "Bay of Biscay O," at the same time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at each other with a pair of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... next sang a ditty relating an adventure with four coy maidens, and the drinking and ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... left the house, he went splashing down the road with a very elastic tread, springing over the starlit puddles, and trolling out some sentimental ditty. He reached the inn, and went up to his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... LYKKE. Alas, it is women of twenty and thereabouts that ditty speaks of. Lady Inger Gyldenlove is nigh on fifty, and wily to boot beyond all women. It will be no light matter to overcome her. But it must be done—at any cost. If I succeed in winning certain advantages over her that the King has long desired, I can reckon ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... free and light music of that Swabian era. The brightest sky of spring is not without its clouds in Germany, and the German heart is never happy without some sadness. Whether we listen to a short ditty, or to the epic ballads of the "Nibelunge," or to Wolfram's grand poems of the "Parcival" and the "Holy Grail," it is the same everywhere. There is always a mingling of light and shade,—in joy a fear ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... is this sudden quiet cradling me To that dim ditty's dreamy rise and fall? What do you want with me, pale melody? What is it that you want, ghost musical That fade toward the window waveringly A little open ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine
... jumbled;" and "squalidus" is "in a sorry pickle." "Importuna" is "a plaguy baggage;" "adulterium" is rendered "her pranks;" "ambages" becomes either "a long rabble of words," "a long-winded detail," or "a tale of a tub;" "miserabile carmen" is "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is "to tip him a kiss;" "pingue ingenium" is a circumlocution ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... out in the city, A jubilant ditty, And every guitar Vibrates to the names of Pedro and Pilar; And the strings and voices are soulless and dull That sound not the name of the ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... verse," observed the monk, "has been added to the ditty by Nicholas Demdike. I heard him sing it the other day ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... girl has never played the game, and sung the ditty, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down," even though nobody now living ever saw ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... to the r'ar, coverin' his chagrin by hummin' a stanzy or two from the well-known ditty, 'Bill, of ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... upflinging of dust. Pink, with a quite obtrusive facetiousness, began lustily chanting that it looked to him like a big night to-night—with occasional, furtive glances at Weary's face; for he, also, had been quick to read those close-pressed lips, which did not soften in response to the ditty. Usually ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... many miles of "foot-path way," under how many green hedges, has my childish treble chanted that enlivening ditty! ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... step" taken by the President "in vindication of the national authority." Both the Senate end the House adopted resolutions endorsing the prompt and vigorous measures of the Administration. The newspapers, too, joined in the chorus of approval. A newspaper ditty which was widely circulated and was read by the President with pleasure and amusement ended a string ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... effusions, LEGION poured forth Ballades, and Rondeaux, and wrote a Chant Royal on a General Election which occupied a whole column of a newspaper, and needed three men to read, with a boy for the "envoy." But this ditty was not thought to have seriously affected the voting classes in any direction. LEGION was now usually spoken of as "the versatile Mr. LEGION," a compliment which never failed to annoy him hugely. Sated with popular applause, he turned into a vein of new poetry, and produced The Song of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... that this simple story, told by a country parson, is worth whole pages of learned arguments against Disestablishment? {57} Anyhow, to support such arguments, I will here cite an ancient ditty of my father's. He had got it from "a true East Anglian, of Norfolk lineage and breeding," but the exegesis is wholly my ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... Corydon no rival now!— But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate, Some good survivor with his flute would go, Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate; And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow, And relax Pluto's brow, And make leap up with joy the beauteous head Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair Are flowers first open'd on Sicilian air, And flute his friend, like ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Reason—thence his power's increased, To be far beastlier than any beast. Saving Thy Gracious Presence, he to me A long-legged grasshopper appears to be, That springing flies, and flying springs, And in the grass the same old ditty sings. Would he still lay among the grass he grows in! Each bit of dung he seeks, to ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... of the Kegs! That I can, my boy. But read the song," replied old Harmar. His son then read the following facetious ditty: ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... a string, by which she could draw it like a cart. Victor filled it with apple parings, and they started forth in a procession, Nana drawing the shoe in front, followed by the whole flock, little and big, an imp about the height of a cigar box at the end. They all sang a melancholy ditty full of "ahs" and "ohs." Nana declared this to be always the ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... up, he took her hollow lute,— Tumultuous,—and, in chords that tenderest be, He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, In Provence called "La belle dame sans mercy": Close to her ear touching the melody;— Wherewith disturbed, she uttered a soft moan: He ceased—she panted quick—and suddenly Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone: Upon ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... Holl, there was no one outside to greet her or announce her arrival, and so she entered, going straight into the bastofa. There she found her father sitting on his bed, knitting a seaman's mitten, crooning an old ditty the while: ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... to wear! Now, as this is a true ditty, I do not assert—this, you know, is between us— That she's in a state of absolute nudity, Like Powers's Greek Slave or the Medici Venus; But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... of hailing distance. Nobody seemed stirring. The whole shore and back land thereabout was deserted; the edge of the city was four miles distant. Hoang returned to the forecastle-hatch and went below, groping under his bunk in his ditty-box. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... (who lived above an hundred Years ago) in the third Part of his Treatise, pag. 179, speaking of Motetts or Anthems, complains thus:—'But I see not what Passions or Motions it can stir up, being as most Men doe commonlie Sing,—leaving out the Ditty—as it were a Musick made onely for Instruments, which will indeed shew the Nature of the Musick, but never carry the Spirit and (as it were) that lively Soule which the Ditty giveth; but of this ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... finished playing a melancholy air, exclaimed, "That was but a melancholy ditty, miss—we'll try a ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... mountains seek, O stranger from the city? Is it perhaps some foolish freak Of thine, to put the words I speak Into a plaintive ditty? ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... thine, thou prince of Ganymedes? and when were cigars more justly appreciated, than as our puffs kept time with the trolling ditty, resounding through the walls ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... sing some sweet love ditty of a lonely forest maiden and her lover, robed in the innocence ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... went along they passed a battalion of the 113th Regiment of the Line, heavy with their knapsacks, their red trousers dusty, returning from the long morning march, and singing as they went that very old regimental ditty which every soldier of France knows ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... food to last him a week. With me this means coffee, tea, sugar, canned milk, dried fruit, rice, cornmeal, flour and baking powder mixture, a little bacon, butter, and seasoning. This will weigh less than ten pounds. With other minor appurtenances in the ditty bag, including an arrow-repairing kit, one's burden is less than twenty ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... Cruikshank, who, however, adds in a postscript: 'The above is not my writing.' The ballad follows, and then comes a set of notes, mainly critical. The author of the Warning remarks: 'In some collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty, which, I am told, bears some remote and distant resemblance to the ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... Raleigh to Spenser at Kilcolman was the 'lamentable lay' to which reference had just been made—the piece in praise of Elizabeth which bore the name of Cynthia. In Spenser's pastoral, the speaker is persuaded by Thestylis (Lodovick Bryskett) to explain what ditty that was that the Shepherd of the Ocean sang, and he explains very distinctly, but in terms which are scarcely critical, that Raleigh's poem was written in love and praise, but also in ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Town's in Brunswick, By famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its walls on the southern side; A pleasanter spot you never spied; But, when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... little vessel to his lips; his droll features ever and anon seeming acted upon by some passing dream of former devilment, as he smiled and muttered some sentences in an under-voice. Sleep at length overpowered me; but my last waking thoughts were haunted with a singular ditty by which Mike accompanied himself as he kept burnishing the buttons of my jacket before the fire, now and then interrupting the melody by a recourse to ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... to the songs of my boatmen) how strange some of their words are: in one, they repeatedly chanted the 'sentiment' that 'God made man, and man makes'—what do you think?—'money!' Is not that a peculiar poetical proposition? Another ditty to which they frequently treat me they call Caesar's song; it is an extremely spirited war-song, beginning 'The trumpets blow, the bugles sound—Oh, stand your ground!' It has puzzled me not a little to ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... the strength of his arm in assisting us, and his agility, that he possessed qualities more useful than the Arcadian accomplishment, the want of which had annoyed me as we came, and I forgave him for being unable to sing the praises of La Plus Charmante Anesquette, the words of which ditty he nevertheless repeated, with surprise and pleasure at finding they were old ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... twisted the course of true love This ditty explains, No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... man draws near; he has a knapsack on his shoulders, which he casts down on the corner of the stoup; he is singing a line of an old French ditty; he raps at the open door. The Highlander bids him welcome, but starts with glad surprise as his hand is grasped by the old trapper. "Ha, Jacob Morelle, it is many a weary year since your step ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... sing 'The Rover' and I will sing 'The Man with the Coat of Green,'" said she, with the generosity of one with many gifts. And she started upon her ditty. She had a voice that as yet was only in its making; it was but a promise of the future splendour, yet to Gilian, the hearer, it brought a new and potent joy. With 'The Rover' he lived in the woods, and set foot upon foreign wharves; 'The ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... for the willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding through ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... her Majesty's delectation, and that among the songs were some of the satires and parodies poured forth on the unfortunate Lord Provost and bailies, who had robbed the town of the full glory of the Queen's arrival. The cleverest of these was an adaptation of an old Jacobite ditty, itself a cutting satire which a hundred years before had taunted the Georgian general, Sir John Cope, with the excess of caution that led him to shun an engagement, withdraw his forces over night, and leave the country open to the Pretender to ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... of her success at the Theater Lyrique under the patronage of Madame Miolan-Carvalho. One day I said to her: "The time may come when you will be giving concerts." She was indignant. "Nevertheless," I continued, "let me teach you a sure encore." I played her Stephen Foster's immortal ditty. She was delighted. The sequel was that it served her even a better turn than it had ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... his ditty he dropped, And murmured, "Good morning, my dear! I never will sing to a sensitive thing That shatters a song with a sneer!" The Rollicking Mastodon bade him "adieu." Of course 't was a sensible thing to do; For Little Peetookle ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... and nurses all over the kingdom, as a bugbear, with which to frighten naughty children, now comforting and caressing this stolen child; when she fed him with her own hands, and then took him in her arms and hushed him to sleep—singing to him a wild, childish ditty, which she remembered, because her own long dead mother had sung it to her, when she also was an ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... long and unamusing ditty, topical in its points. Here and there a smile showed that it did not pass unheard, and as the singer disappeared a faint roulade of applause came from the back ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... no, my lord! Besides, I hoped to hear My ditty warbled into fairer ears, By your own ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... were the companions of his sports, and who were wont, in his own phrase, to fear neither dog nor devil; he looked at the priming of his piece, and, like the clown in Hallowe'en, whistled up the warlike ditty of Jock of the Side, as a general causes his drums be beat to inspirit the doubtful ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... York City, Blithely every morn, I carolled o'er my artless ditty, Cheerly though forlorn! Before the rosy light, my lay Was to the maids begun, Ere winters snows had passed away, Or smiled the ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... duenna. He saw them get into their cabriolet, and when the vehicle rolled away on its great scarlet wheels, he hung on behind, as if giving way to a childish impulse, and was whirled through a cloud of dust, singing at the top of his voice the popular ditty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... her maidens, she opened the window. The rich melody came upon her senses through the balmy odour of myrtle boughs and leaves of honeysuckle. The chords were touched with a skilful hand, and the prelude, a wild and extempore commentary on the ballad, was succeeded by the following ditty:— ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... much to be quite fair in judgment, I fear, even to men- of-war's men;" and she paused, listening to a song which came from the after-part of the ship. The air was very still, and a few of the words of the droll, plaintive ditty ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... bright, starlight nights, and sing songs, and sech. He had a powerful, sweet v'ice, and it allers 'peared to me as ef every kind of a livin' thing hushed up and listened, when he sung o' nights. He could reel off most anything you can think on. There was one kind of a mournful ditty he sung, and once in a while he brung in a chorus,—cawcawee! cawcawee,—jest like what them ducks say, only, the way he made it seound, was soft and meller and doleful-like. I liked to hear him sing that, only he was so solemn arter it, and would set and fetch up great long sythes. And ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... in the park, With Jack humming bars from a ditty; Kissing me (when it grows dark). Fy! ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... is based on a sound old melody called "The Jilt's Hornpipe." Just as they turn Madeira into port in the space of a single night, so this old air has been taken and doctored, and twisted about, and brought out as a new popular ditty.' ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... builder of this ditty Returns to this pulsating city, The perpetrator of this pome Yearns for a ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... casual wave of his hand and took his place on the left flank. From his face Weary guessed that all was well with the claims, and the assurance served to lighten his spirits. Soon he heard Andy singing at the top of his voice, and his own thoughts fell into accord with the words of the ditty. He began to sing also, whenever he knew the words. Farther back, Pink took it up, and then the others joined in, until all unconsciously they had turned the monotonous drive into ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... went off... you will understand the allusion. This song achieved instant popularity, and when Tartarin was passing, the stevedores on the quay and the grubby urchins hanging round his door would chant this insulting little ditty... only they sang it from a safe distance ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... stoops to folly," it began, what art can wash her tears and stains and shame away? And the answer was what Rosalind herself had already given: the only way "to rouse his pity" was "to die!" She almost laughed at herself for repeating the well-worn, hackneyed, century-old ditty. People did not die now-a-days, either of broken hearts or of chloral, when their lovers deserted them. And Caspar Brooke had never been her lover. No, he had only given her pain; and she wished that she could make him suffer, ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that he had discovered the reason why her cheeks had remained pink, and flushed not thistle purple like the rest of her countenance. Even the serving-man smiled to himself, a mocking smile, and hummed in a low voice, as he continued to lay the blows thickly on Miles, a ditty having this refrain— ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... hang my self, my friends will look for't. Eating and sleeping, I do despise you both now: I will run mad first, and if that get not pitty, I'le drown my self, to a most dismal ditty. [Exit Savil. ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Until, when seventy came at last, The occupant of number three Called friends to hold a jubilee. Wild was the night; the charging rack Had forced the moon upon her back; The wind piped up a naval ditty; And the lamps winked through all the city. Before that house, where lights were shining, Corpulent feeders, grossly dining, And jolly clamour, hum and rattle, Fairly outvoiced the tempest's battle. As still his moistened lip he fingered, The envious policeman ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sweet. Much depends upon the time and place, and perhaps the romance of the open fire sparkling beneath the bank of evergreen, and making the roses come into the fair singer's cheeks, and warming the golden sheen of her hair, had much to do with it. When she came to "Ben Bolt," that old ditty that has all the pathos of our lost youth in it, there was a tiny quiver in her voice; and when she finished, had he been near he would have seen the glint of two unshed tears in her eyes, for the song carried her thoughts to where ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... selection according to circumstances, according to the state of his own mind; not forgetting the state of mind that the children may be in, and especially the state of the weather. The following little ditty may then be repeated, the subject being On Cruelty ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... the business of teaching the tune by whistling it incessantly until the air was firmly fixed in those tiny memories, which, if they had not been exactly 'wax to receive,' proved 'marble to retain.' As the finches grew perfect in their one life-lesson, the Scottish ditty resounded sweetly all over the village of Northbourne. After that, the pupils being pronounced 'finished,' Jerry Blunt set forth, with his batch of performers, to London, where he got a fairly good price for his well-trained songsters. ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... Song has been compared with Webster's "Call for the robin redbreast" in The White Devil, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls it, is like a breath of the west wind over an aeolian harp. Where, in any language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's Fourth Song,—"Where the bee sucks"? ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... merry; afterwards he said, "Dear Mrs. Gossip, it is our duty to take care of the child, it must have good food that it may be strong. I know a sheep-fold from which we might fetch a nice morsel." The wolf was pleased with the ditty, and she went out with the fox to the farm-yard. He pointed out the fold from afar, and said, "You will be able to creep in there without being seen, and in the meantime I will look about on the other ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... window and wonder with a foolish face of horror. The pavement was often blocked for hours together, and itinerant vendors of refreshment made it a new market centre, while vocalists hastened thither to sing the delectable ditty of the deed without having any voice in the matter. It was a pity the Government did not erect a toll-gate at either end of the street. But Chancellors of the Exchequer rarely avail themselves of the more obvious expedients for paying off ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... was vigorously encored, and Tom at once responded with a second—and I have no doubt, genuine—barrack-room ballad. The hero of this ditty is a "Lancer bold." He is duly wetted with tears before his departure for the wars; but is cheered up at the last moment by the lady's assurance that she will meet him on his return in "a carriage gay." Arrived ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... with floriated spandrels.[44] We should like to pursue the subject of these Newbury clothiers and see Thomas Dolman's house, which is so fine and large and cost so much money that his workpeople used to sing a doggerel ditty:— ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... certain passages to which he attached the most ridiculous meanings the tears would come into his eyes. But after having been moved by a scene from Wagner, he would strum out a gallop of Offenbach, or sing some music-hall ditty after the Ode to Joy. Then Christophe would bob about and roar with rage. But the worst of all to bear was not when Sylvain Kohn was absurd so much as when he was trying to be profound and subtle, when he was trying to impress Christophe, when it was Hamilton ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... gaze; Or when, in silence of the summer night, My wandering steps arresting, I before The houses of the village pause, to gaze Upon the lonely scene, and hear the voice, So clear and cheerful, of the maiden, who, Her ditty chanting, in her quiet room, Her daily task protracts into the night, Ah, then this stony heart will throb once more; But soon, alas, its lethargy returns, For all things sweet are strangers ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... we may linger there a moment to recall to memory the resemblance between the description of this piece of handiwork and that ascribed to good King Arthur, who lived in days when monarchs were their own chefs, for the Arthurian dish was also prepared in a bag, and consisted, according to the ditty, of barley-meal and fat. Soberly speaking, the two accounts belong, maybe, to something like the same epoch in the annals of gastronomy; and a large pudding was, for a vast length of time, no doubt, a prevailing piece de resistance in ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... on for a good old Christmas song. He bethought himself for a moment, and then, with a sparkle of the eye and a voice that was by no means bad, excepting that it ran occasionally into a falsetto like the notes of a split reed, he quavered forth a quaint old ditty: ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... early morning, and under the directions of Hayton, the bo'sun, the swabbers were at work in the waist and forecastle. Despite the heat and the stagnant air, one of the toilers found breath to croak a ribald buccaneering ditty: ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... some slender youth crowned the swiftest workwoman with field flowers, withering in the nearest swathe. All wove garlands, then made for the shade of the trees and shared a low basket of golden apples. One had a lute and another sang a love ditty with ethereal passion. They were in Arcadia,—silken shepherdesses, slim princes in disguise,—and they breathed the sweetness, the innocent yet lofty grace which was ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... the melody of his little ditty in a deep bourdon as he paused a moment at the door. Then he advanced slowly across ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... of a Perfect Pig?" she reproached him. And with adorable sauciness she warbled a nursery ditty:— ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the funeral dirge in this play for the death of Marcello, except the ditty which reminds Ferdinand of his drowned father in the Tempest. As that is of the water, watery; so this is of the earth, earthy. Both have that intenseness of feeling, which seems to resolve itself into the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... get them by heart: Nay, the Mavis at once sung aloud in his glee, And looked for a spot where love's dwelling should be; And ever since then, both in garden and grove, The Mavis tunes first a short ditty to love, While all the young gentlemen birds that were near Fell to trimming their jackets anew for the year: One and all they determined to seek for a mate, And thought it a folly for seasons to wait, So even agreed, before Valentine's ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... of a celebrated Bacchanalian ditty, as it might be revised by Dr. Mortimer Granville ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... the sense of "oils are spotty"; I know the height of Siniolchum's peak; I know that some may think my ditty dotty; But I cannot tell a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... tea-masters in producing these effects of serenity and purity. The nature of the sensations to be aroused in passing through the roji differed with different tea-masters. Some, like Rikiu, aimed at utter loneliness, and claimed the secret of making a roji was contained in the ancient ditty: ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... sea Duteous to the lunar will, But some discord stealthily Vexes the world-ditty still, And the bird that caws and caws Clasps ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... whether Virgil himself, who seems first to have invented this fancy, and behind whose broad mantle later poets have sheltered themselves, may not have felt an inclination to depart from the Greek opinion of Philomel's ditty. Why otherwise did he not simply and at once—as his masters Homer and Theocritus had done before him—describe her notes as mournful, instead of casting about for some cause that might excuse him for giving them that ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... p'licemen, list to me, I'll sing a mournful ditty About a poor young serving-gal, What lived in ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... he means to stick us with it," chuckled Bob; "for you can see he's got his hand in his shirt right now, as if searching for something so valuable that he won't even carry it in his ditty bag." ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... of melody go sweeping around his brow, and the Hortensias on the queen's grave raise dreamingly their heads of bloom, in which the dews of heaven, or the tears of the departed one, glisten like rarest gems, and seem to look forth lovingly and listen to this ditty, which now for France has won so holy a significance—holy because it is the master-chant of a religion which all men and all nations should revere—the "religion of our memories." Thus, this "Va t'en, Guerrier," ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... some surprise to Russell that a Spanish chieftain should speak English with the Irish accent; but now to find one who claimed to be the King of Spain lightly trolling an Irish ditty to a rollicking tune was, to say the least, just a little unusual. It occurred to him, however, that "His Majesty" must have learned his English from an Irishman; and further thought showed him that such a fact was perfectly ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille |
