"Harping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... new song in the height, Harping with harps to Him Who is Strong and True: 170 They drank new wine, their eyes saw with new light, Lo, all things were ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... found in old tyme. In the beginning of holi Chirche, it was so that the pepull cam to the Chirche with candellys brennyng and wold Wake and come with light toward nyght to the Chirch to their devocions; and afterwards they fell to lecherie and songs, daunces, harping, piping and also to glotony and sinne and so turned the holinesse to cursaydnesse; wherefore holi faders ordeined the pepull to leve that waking and to fast the Evyn. But it is called Vigilia, that is Waking in English and it is called the Evyn, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... gleamed ruddily. A merchantman was loading her cargo of pottery crates and oil jars,—to sail with the morning breeze. Swarthy shipmen ran up and down the planks betwixt quay and ship, balancing their heavy jars on their heads as women bear water-pots. From the tavern by the mooring came harping and the clatter of cups, while two women—the worse for wine—ran out to drag the newcomers in to their revel. Phormio slapped the slatterns aside with his staff. In the same fearful waking dream Glaucon saw Phormio demanding the shipmaster. He saw ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of August, M. de Nion received an answer, and not an acceptable one, to his last note, still harping on "the punishment of the general." We had had enough of that sort of thing. On the 5th a despatch-boat brought me news of the safety of Mr. Hay, the British Plenipotentiary, on board an English ship, and of the failure of his mission. On the 6th I attacked the fortifications of ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... mountebank, when he got started, as Blenkiron himself. All the way back to Lisbon he yarned about Maritz and his adventures in German South West till I half believed they were true. He made a very good story of our doings, and by his constant harping on it I pretty soon got it into my memory. That was always Peter's way. He said if you were going to play a part, you must think yourself into it, convince yourself that you were it, till you really were it and didn't act but behaved naturally. The two men who had ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... a critic lay in his artistic temperament and in the incisive intellect that enabled him to analyze the effects produced in his own creations and in those of others. His weaknesses were extravagance; a mania for harping on plagiarism; lack of spiritual insight, broad sympathies, and profound scholarship; and, in general, the narrow range of his genius, which has already been made sufficiently clear. His severity has been exaggerated, as he often praised highly, probably erring more frequently ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... sweet and fresh things as though some heavenly censer swung there. The thrushes and the blackbirds were singing their wildest as is their custom about sunset; and below their triumphant songs you could hear the whole chorus of the little birds' voices as well as the fiddling and harping of the myriad field-crickets and grasshoppers. Then from the field beyond the wood I could hear the corncrakes sawing away in the yet unmown grass, and there were a great many wood-doves uttering ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... professed to be seized with an uncontrollable fit of laughter at the nonsense of forty-seven men—the flower of the State—terrified of a bare third, and of a man but just in his thirties. I rapidly recounted your failures in your first Congress, dwelling on them, harping on them; and then I stood up like a Chorus, and proclaimed the victories of C's career. C, who had scowled when I went off into hysterics, almost knelt over my hand at parting; and the rest departed secure in your fancied destiny, their waxen ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... their sight A globe of circular light, 110 That with long beams the shame faced night arrayed The helmed Cherubim And sworded Seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings displaid, Harping in loud and solemn quire, With unexpressive notes to Heav'ns ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... comedies we find humour in the representation of ludicrous characters. Words, which would be dull enough in ordinary cases, become highly amusing when coming from men of peculiar views. Sometimes people are represented as perpetually riding their hobby, or harping on one favourite subject. We have an instance of this in Holophernes and his pedantry; and the conversation between the two gravediggers in Hamlet, is largely indebted for its relish to the contrast between the language of the men and their occupation. In the same way, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... their sight A globe of circular light, That with long beams the shamefac'd night array'd; The helmed Cherubim, And sworded Seraphim, Are seen in glittering ranks with wings display'd, Harping in loud and solemn quire, With unexpressive notes to Heaven's ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... are dotards, who believe And glory in the days of old; While some are dreamers, harping still Upon an unknown age ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... therefore, try to dodge the question at issue by leading their opponents off on a tangent. The real question, free-love, will, however, by no means be forgotten by us until the Socialists have been shown up thoroughly. Since the conspirators against family life are so fond of harping on the matter of prostitution, with a view to drawing critics away from attacking their doctrine of free-love, the reader will be shown that even prostitution, instead of decreasing in the Socialist state, would, together with immorality of every ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... oaks had reached the last stage of autumnal decay,—the dusky brown hue. Millions of their leaves strew the woods and rustle underneath the foot; but enough remain upon the boughs to make a melancholy harping when the wind sweeps over them. We found some fringed gentians in the meadow, most of them blighted and withered; but a few were quite perfect. The other day, since our return from Salem, I found a violet; yet it was so cold that day, that a large pool of water, under the shadow ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... in a day boy to be head of the House,' said Vaughan, harping once more on the old string, 'he might at ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... live most for will be a great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it? Were I in health it would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my state? I dare say you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping,—you know what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at your house I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and sea, ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... ready and fluent speaker, gay and genial in address, an artist, a musician, he was at the same time an indefatigable worker alike at books or handicraft. As his sphere began to widen we see him followed by a train of pupils, busy with literature, writing, harping, painting, designing. One morning a lady summons him to her house to design a robe which she is embroidering, and as he bends with her maidens over their toil his harp hung upon the wall ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... be endeavoured, every proof has been crowded into this book in refutation of this favourite allegation of Mr. Froude's. It is only an idle waste of time to be thus harping on his colour topic. No one can deserve to govern simply because he is white, and no one is bound to be subject simply because he is black. The whole of West [191] Indian history, even after the advent of the attorney-class, proves this, in spite of the ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... is dated August 15th. It reads as follows: "Grace and peace in Christ. I have forgotten, my dear Jerome, what I wrote you in my former letter concerning the spirit of melancholy, and I may now be writing you the same things and harping on the same string. Nevertheless, I shall repeat what I said, because we all share each other's afflictions, and as I am suffering in your behalf, so you, no doubt, are suffering in mine. It is one and the same adversary that hates and persecutes every ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... Christopher," she went on, harping fitfully on her favourite string, "remember that keeping in love is as much the profession for a man as it is the art for a woman, and that love feeds on little delicacies rather than on meat and drink. Don't forget the little things, dear, and the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Harper charm. The book directed that on a lonely hill, you must listen with your eyes shut for the fairy playing. If the undertaking was good you would hear, coming from very far away, a sound of harping. Silver folk with golden harps, so the book said, keep on a purple hill somewhere beyond seeing, and there they play the moon up and the moon down. And at sun-up they cry for those that have not heard them. If you hear them ever ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... died in the assured hope that he would be the leader of a heavenly choir. It does not seem far fetched to believe that his ambition is gratified. At this very hour he may be a director of those harpers that are harping upon ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... not only did not walk his body off, but harping on the same string, pertinaciously continued to ply me with alternate arguments and intreaties, until at last fairly wearied out, and more, I believe, with the hope of getting rid of the "importunate chink" of the fellow's discourse, than anything else, in an evil ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... Mr. O.," I said, as he began again when I came into his office, "that it might be as well to quit cursing the Syndicate till you've got something new to say or something different to rail about? It seems to me a man's likely to get daffy if he keeps harping on—" ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... in The Last Tournament, follows Malory in the story of Tristram's and Iseult's death. "That traitor, King Mark, slew the noble knight, Sir Tristram, as he sat harping before his lady, La Beale Isoud, with a trenchant glaive, for whose death was much bewailing of every knight that ever was in Arthur's days ... and La Beale Isoud died swooning upon the cross of Sir Tristram, whereof was ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... harping on the raiders? and nervous too! What ails you, daughter? I thought you never were nervous. We Wiltons are not accustomed to nervousness, you know, and what ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the far better land of glory and light The ransomed are singing in garments of white, The harpers are harping and all the bright train Sing the song of redemption, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... and independence for women has certainly had startling moral results. The reasons are obvious enough. It is a necessary consequence of our modern insistence on individual values; the harping of one generation on freedom, which has caused our young women, in many directions, to carry their ideas of freedom far beyond the accepted conventions of our ordinary civilized human association. It has been shown as manifestly ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... slow decay; the stucco peeled off in great patches, the stable roofs sagging, the windmill wheelless, the fences following the line of a drunken man's walk, the trees storm-torn, and the mournful cedars harping with every passing wind a requiem for the glory that was gone. As he looked, the memory of the old man's funeral came to Burnham: the white old face in the coffin—haughty, noble, proud, and the spirit of it unconquered ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... all the same," said Waldershare. "I wish he were more aware of it himself. Instead of looking to a restoration to his throne, I found him always harping on the fear of French invasion. I could not make him understand that France was his natural ally, and that without her help, Charlie was not likely to have ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... dew of the dawn, and the Rose of the Mystical Vision, The spirit and soul of the Men of the Future shall rise and be free, They shall hail me with hymning and harping, With eloquent Art and Elysian, - The Singer who sung not but spurned them, The slaves that could sing "Jubilee;" With pinchbeck lyre and tongue, Praising their tyrant sung, They shall fail and shall fade in derision, As wind on the ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang
... dark, the evening closing in quickly, and, what with the dying man's queer talk and the boatswain harping on the same theme immediately afterwards, I confess I felt far from comfortable, my nerves being in a state of constant tension from the painful scene in the cabin that I had just witnessed, while the gloomy shades of the night that were fast enwrapping us, ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... life was a dream of workaday. He only LIVED in the other, which was spent in an old orchard, grassy and overgrown, where the minutes seemed to lag for sheer love of the spot and the June winds made wild harping in the old spruces. ...
— Kilmeny of the Orchard • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... ladies is not qualyfied for, they would not make a good figure in battle or in a duel. Alas! we females are of little use to our country. The history of all the malcontents as ever was hanged is amusing." Still harping on the Newgate Calendar! ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... address, drank a glass of vodka to the success of the plan and left the old peddler still harping on his daughter. All the way home and many days afterwards Petka could think of nothing else. It seemed to him the greatest opportunity in the world to marry a girl from America. But now and then he got skeptical of his ability to get such a prize. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... doubt that," Mark laughed, "and if I want your aid I shall have no hesitation in asking for it. Until then I hope you will go on with your painting and harping steadily, like a ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... we read how, after the wonderful harping of Wainamoinen, the great Finnish hero, which enchanted beasts, birds, and even fishes, was over, the musician shed tears of gratitude, and these, trickling down his body and through his many garments, were transmuted into pearls ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... that there honest Deputy Lock, let her go, instead of putting her safe with the Parish? That's what a man of his character ought to have done, it would be argueyfied,' said the Deputy Lock, cunningly harping on the strong string of her terror; 'he ought to have handed her over safe to the Parish. That was to be expected of a man ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... to talk of other things in between, but the boy with the short legs would every little while think up some new question in connection with that shriek, which he would fire at Max, and demand an answer. When Steve tried to make fun of him for harping on that old string so long, the other immediately took up arms in ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... house, with Watson just returned to the wheel. Once more the colossal, hot-breathing twin chimneys, their slender iron braces holding them so uprightly together and apart, the golden globe—emblem of the Courteney fleet—hanging between them, and their far-stretched iron guys softly harping to one another in the breeze. All these again, and away out beyond the front rail, with a hundred feet depth of empty air between, the jack-staff, high as a pine and as slim for its height as a cane from the brake, its ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... looked forward to it might be read in the invariable eagerness of his welcome; and this was even harder to explain, because the Elder never failed to harp—seldom, indeed, relaxed harping—on old misdeeds and the lost insurance money. Nay, perhaps in scorn of his own weakness, he insisted on this more and more offensively; rehearsing each day, as he climbed the hill, speeches calculated to offend or hurt. But ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... CRAVEN (tactlessly harping on Cuthbertson's inconsistency). Well, you know, this is unexpected: now it's really very unexpected. I should never have thought it from hearing you talk, Jo. Why, you said the whole modern movement was abhorrent to you because your life had been passed in witnessing scenes of suffering ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... naiks—corporals, as you would say—Surath Singh and Mirath Singh, both rather recently promoted from the ranks and therefore likely to see both sides to a question (whereas a naik should rightly see but one). Very early I had taken those two naiks in hand, showing them friendship, harping on the honor and pleasure of being daffadar and on the chance ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... Whatta you know? A dandy fellow like him, with a dagger-shaped scar clear down his arm from standing by his job that time when the whole south end of the plant exploded. A fellow that could save a whole plant and two hundred lives afraid to face a few skirts! Crazy to get married. Told Ed so. Always harping on his idea of blue eyes and yellow hair, and then, when he gets the chance, afraid of ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... at him and pass it off, but it was of no use. He took it regularly to heart, harping constantly upon Gunson's manner ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... should hold, as they did, women's eyes. There were pictures in it—always pictures—pictured embraces, with words beneath. "How beautiful you are! I love you—I love you! How beautiful you are!" Always harping on the same thing—love and beauty. As if life were a sentimental thing ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... high psalms of ecstatic delight,— Heard the harps harping, like soundings of seas,— Watched earth's assoiled ones walking in white Under ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... might be founded. Lucy pleaded the desire to be with her father, which Lady Verner did not believe; and she pleaded nothing else. It was not satisfactory to my lady, and she kept Lucy the whole of the morning, harping ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... should have thought, Cuchullain, My graver company would better match Your greatness and your years; but I waste breath In harping on that tale. ...
— In The Seven Woods - Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age • William Butler (W.B.) Yeats
... making soup, nursing one another, looking at one another and pretending, in harping on principles, as we ourselves fade? If one half falls ill and retrogresses, shall the other who is strong, who hears the call of life, allow himself to ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... professional landscape man can save you many dollars and much disappointment. I have seen so many sad results in cases of land development where too much confidence has been the stumbling-block on the road to success, that I feel justified in harping on the necessity of asking advice from those who are competent to ...
— Making a Lawn • Luke Joseph Doogue
... blast of wind and creak of bough And rustle of the frost, And winter's inner voice—avow The holy hour is crossed, And far, mysterious music sounds, Sweet like a harping host. ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... moment at least, the man is open to influences from another source than his hate. If the devil may catch a man at unawares when he is in an evil or unthinking mood, why should not the good Power take his opportunity when the evil spirit is asleep through the harping of a David or the feats of a Franks? I sometimes find, as I come from a theatre where I have been occupied with the interests of a stirring play, that, with a sudden rush of intelligence, I understand the things best ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... I never thought of preaching," returned Laura stiffly. "But there's no use always harping on one's own trials and thinking nobody else ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... note in connection with Miss Austen's work; namely, her wholesome influence on the English novel. In Northanger Abbey and in Sense and Sensibility she satirizes the popular romances of the period, with their Byronic heroes, melodramatic horrors and perpetual harping on some pale heroine's sensibilities. Her satire is perhaps the best that has been written on the subject, so delicate, so flashing, so keen, that a critic compares it to the exploit of Saladin (in ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... it's not yet settled between ourselves, Peter Igntitch. I'll speak to you as I would before God, and you may judge between my old man and me. He goes on harping on that marriage. But just ask—who it is he wants him to marry. If it were a girl of the right sort now— I am not my child's enemy, but the ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... go to that north section Dave Thorne is always talking about?" suggested Bob. "He is forever harping on the subject of a fire there, and I'd like to look ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... natural attraction in the society of a talented young professional man. An occasional conversation with a clever architect on things architectural, or on other affairs of common interest (for Westray was careful to avoid harping unduly on any single topic) must undoubtedly prove a relief to Lord Blandamer from the monotony of bachelor life in the country; and in such considerations Westray found a subsidiary, and sometimes he was inclined to imagine primary, interest for ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... to feed and cherish him, bathing the hurt in his leg, the which I found very angry and inflamed. This done I bade him be of good comfort and yield himself to slumber. But this he could no way accomplish, being restless and fevered and his mind harping continually on the strange fate had set him thus in Joanna's power and the sure belief that he must die, soon ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... the agricultural projects entertained for a moment after the interdiction of Vautrin soon faded from Balzac's mind, which was still harping on the necessity of his conquering the suffrages of the public in his character of dramatist. He now set himself to write a play called Mercadet or the Faiseur,[*] the latter word implying by its meaning the tragi-comedy of a penniless financier—the ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... I have never seen him since. Where he is now, I know not. I trust I may meet him on Mount Sion, with the harpers harping with their harps, and singing, as it were, a new song ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... attention to this subject for above fourteen years; still it would not do. However, one night, while I was lying in the hammock and harping on the string on which hung all my solicitude, I hit upon the proper mode by inference: it appeared clear to me that it was the only true way of going to work, and ere I closed my eyes in sleep I was able to prove to myself that there could not be any other way that would ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... ever harping about Lord Farintosh and his titles? I thought it was only women who were jealous—you gentlemen say so.—(Hurriedly.) I am going to-night with grandmamma to the Minister of the Interior, and then to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... questioners, the indefatigable fighters who have broken humanity's shackles, and made the world a more comfortable abiding-place to the present generation than it was to the past. There is unquestionably a strain of Danish romanticism in Bjoernson's persistent harping upon childlike faith and simplicity and a childlike vision of the world. Grundtvig, with whom this note is pervasive, had in his early youth a great influence over him. The glorification of primitive feeling was part of the romantic revolt ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and Miss Harding have played several games together during the past week, and I assured him that the fact possessed not the slightest interest to me. Chilvers pretends to think it does, and seems to take much delight in harping on that subject. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... tell you (what made the thing more curious) that all the time the Tyrolean harps were harping round me in the trees, and even while I looked, a green-and-yellow bird (that, I suppose, was building) began to tear the hair off the head of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the kingdom every hour in the year, and fastening always on the worst as the most palatable morsels. But she is a circumstantial old lady, communicative, scrupulous, leaving nothing to the imagination, harping on the smallest grievances, a village-oracle and critic, most veritable, most identical, bringing us acquainted with persons and things just as they chanced to exist, and giving us a local interest in all she knows and tells. Mr. Crabbe's Helicon is choked up with weeds and ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... right if the parrot don't die," said the dainty pessimist, still harping on his pet theme. "All that bread spoilt, and ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... young, life lies before you. I am old. In a very few years I shall be so old that you will not be able to realise that there was a time when I was "the one woman in the world" for you. I am not harping on your youth in order to vex you—your youth that you hate for my sake! I know that you are not fickle; but I know, too, that the laws of life and the march of time ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... as in La Saisiaz, he admits the subjective character of the evidence; but when he speaks spontaneously out of his own feeling or experience, it is with positive belief in life after death. To Mr. Sharp he said, "Death, death! It is this harping on death that I do despise so much! Why, amico mio, you know as well as I that death is life, just as our daily, our momentarily dying body is none the less alive and ever recruiting new forces of existence. Without death which is our crape-like church-yardy ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... other person in a rage; in addition to all which, he was likewise a sorrowful body in never being able to understand how a determination by vote ought to and did put an end to every questionable proceeding; so that he was, for a constancy, ever harping about the last subject discussed, as if it had not been decided, until a new difference of opinion arose, and necessitated him to change the burden and o'ercome of ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... of me sometimes when you are grown up," he went on in his feeble voice, harping still on the same subject. "You will have no money, my poor little one—if it had not been for that devil Legros—but it is too late to think of that now. Well, I think you will have beauty, and that will ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... Let sceptics rave! I see no difficulty That He, who from primordial atoms formed A human frame, can from the dust awake it Once again, marshal the scattered molecules And make immortal, as was Adam. This body lives! Or else no deep delight Of quiring angels harping golden strings; No voice of Him who calls His children home; No glorious joining in the immortal song Could touch our being But how refined our state! How changed! Never to tire or grow distraught, Or wish for ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... spirit would soar triumphantly above the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds, taking with it all its own wild sweetness and daring. Even the young-eyed cherubim, choiring on meadows of asphodel, might cease their harping for a time to listen to a tale of the vanished earth, told by that golden tongue. Some vague thought of this was in our minds as we looked at her; and somehow it comforted us. Not even the Judgment was so greatly to be feared if after it we were the SAME, our own precious ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... great far cause that moves them; but in grief—in the destitute bareness, the famished hunger of soul, when "one is not," how one craves for certainties! How one yearns for the solid heaven of one's childhood; the harping angels, the never-failing flowers; the pearl gates and jeweled walls of God's great ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... of talk? Why, one day they would say this, and the next day they would say that, and by harping on it long enough, they made themselves believe that the wife—Well, your honor knows that a pretty wife is a chastisement of God. And after all, there are some things that you can't help seeing unless you ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... Mr. Henry White said to his father, next day, "she's about wild, with mother and Lill harping on it ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... beneath the windows with a guitar. It seems he had heard that flame of his sing a Spanish air at Jedburgh. Tom must needs pick it up, and you have no idea how he pestered me. Go where we would, he kept harping on that abominable ditty, in the hopes that his mistress might hear him; and, when I remonstrated on the absurdity of the proceeding, he quoted the case of Blondel, and some trash out of Uhland's ballads. Serenading on the west coast is by no means ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... is the song, that new song that is said to be sung by the hundred forty and four thousand which stand with the Lamb upon Mount Sion, with his Father's name written in their foreheads. These are also called harpers, harping with their harps: 'And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Corsican, still harping on his personal knowledge of things in Ajaccio. "I knew the Bonapartes well, I tell you. There was the father, Papa Charles, a fine, noble-looking man; and their uncle, the canon—ah! he was a good ...
— The Boy Life of Napoleon - Afterwards Emperor Of The French • Eugenie Foa
... pity, the sight begets a sort of coarse sympathy, such as the convict feels for his fellow; an emotion due to the freemasonry of crime. Jupiter takes care to strengthen it, by harping on the cruelty of his master—more than hinting that he would like to leave him, if any other would but buy him. Indeed he'd be willing to run away, if he saw ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... harmony, not only of conduct, but of harmony and proportion in everything. The pulpit is always afraid of the passions, and really imagines that it has some influence on men and women, keeping them in the path of virtue. No greater mistake was ever made. Eternally talking and harping on that one subject, in my judgment, does harm. Forever keeping it in the mind by reading passages from the Bible, by talking about the "corruption of the human heart," of the "power of temptation," of the scarcity of virtue, of the plentifulness of vice—all these platitudes tend ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... aimless times that thought becomes distorted. Willard felt his mind wandering through bleak dreams and tortured fancies, always to find himself harping on his early argument with Pierre: "It's the mind that counts." Later he roused to the fact that his knees, where they pressed against the bag, were frozen; also his feet were numb and senseless. In his acquired consciousness he knew ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... were all therefore; up they came to Grumesby. That heard soon the highest of this land, and to the queen came tiding of Arthur the king, that he was come in safety, and his folk in prosperity. Then were in Britain joys enow! Here was fiddling and song, here was harping among, pipes and trumps sang there merrily. Poets there sung of Arthur the king, and of the great honour, that he had won. Folk came in concourse of many kind of land; wide and far the folk was in prosperity. All that Arthur saw, all it submitted to him, ...
— Brut • Layamon
... always harping on that one string, John. It is only four years since we were married. Have I become an old woman ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... found in the love of Thy will, O my God, and submission to Thy orders, however rigorous they might be. They incessantly watched my words and actions, to find occasion against me. They chided me all the day long, continually repeating, and harping over and over the same things, even before the servants. How often have I made my meals on my tears, which were interpreted as the most criminal in the world! They said, I would be damned; as if the tears would open Hell for me, which surely they were more likely to extinguish. If I recited anything ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... except that every morning after breakfast he proposed a walk through the woods or up the mountain. Indifferent to everything as I was at the moment, I had a consciousness that this exercise was beneficial to me, and I was grateful at heart. Anything was better than harping over and over again on the same string the story of my wrongs. Walking interrupted this in a measure, though during the long tramps which I had with my father we rarely talked, and I usually in monosyllables. In this manner we explored the outlying country ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... Squires' harping cross questions did not rouse Jeffrey to any attention to the story that he had told. At each question he went back to the point indicated and repeated his recital dully and evenly without any thought of ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... when the weder was clere and bright, He toke his harpe to him wel right, And harped at his owen will, Into al the wode the soun gan shill, That al the wild bestes that ther beth For joie abouten him thai teth; And al the foules that ther wer, Come and sete on ich a brere, To here his harping a fine, So miche ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... either side of the Philippa had stood motionless waiting for their orders, but now there was a sharp shout from their leader, and every string twanged together. The air was full of their harping, together with the swish of the arrows, the long-drawn keening of the bowmen and the short deep bark of the under-officers. "Steady, steady! Loose steady! Shoot wholly together! Twelve score paces! ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the crowd to see if he could detect any special interest that would denote a rival bidder, and he wished the auctioneer would stop harping on their good qualities. It surprised him a little that he saw none of his own eagerness reflected in the varied expressions, also it relieved him somewhat. If he had had an unlimited bank account it would have been different, but ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... office in the morning, or hastening home (probably to cook their own dinner) at night, they read those clever, carefully worded articles and speeches by the men of power and weight, harping upon the charm and beauty and superiority of the Home Woman; and they laugh across to each other with a frank, rather pitying, rather irritated laughter, at the extraordinary dull-wittedness of some ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... corporation greed, but what recognition do we give to corporations that obey the laws, whose operations are above censure and who add immeasurably to the wealth of the country and to the prosperity of every citizen in it? With this constant presentation of depravity, this incessant harping upon the one string of human dishonesty, what wonder that our visions should be distorted or that we should exclude from our horizon almost everything but the sinister features of modern life. ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... the use of harping on that? I have seen you drunk so often that I should almost be glad to ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... to spare no pains to induce Lucceius to be reconciled to you. But after doing everything that could be done, not only did I fail to renew his old feelings towards you, but I could not even succeed in eliciting the reason of his alienation. On his part, however, he keeps harping on that arbitration case of his, and the other matters which I knew very well before you left Rome were causing him offence. Still, he has certainly got something else fixed deeper in his mind; and this no letters from you, and no commissioning of me will obliterate as easily ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... man in all merry England can do. Truly, good Lord Bishop, many a knight and burgher, clerk and layman, have danced to my music, willy-nilly, and most times greatly against their will; such is the magic of my harping. Now this day, my Lord Bishop, if I may play at this wedding, I do promise that I will cause the fair bride to love the man she marries with a love that shall last as long as that ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... whence weird hoots and bubbling cries and sharp clicks came at night, the stealthy sand marching over the land, the barren slopes of the mountain, and the misshapen rock, gave one's thoughts a twist in the direction of the vague and mysterious. Wylo's continual harping on the wonderful stone renewed the old longing for adventure. He had seen it from a safe distance, but from the present aspect only the indecorous glint at sunrise ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... "'Still harping,' says Ogden, laughing again. 'Don't you suppose that if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I'd put a Winchester bullet into you and stop my nervousness, if ...
— Options • O. Henry
... were forwarded by him and many were printed in the annual publication of diplomatic correspondence, those that thus appeared dealt almost exclusively with emancipation. Yet Adams was also forwarding addresses and speeches harping on American democracy. A meeting at Edinburgh, February 19, found place, in its emancipation aspect in the United States documents[1365], but the burden of that meeting, democracy, did not. It was there proclaimed that the British press misrepresented conditions in ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... from us, Fairest of women! I am a darkened cage Song cannot hymn in. My songs have followed you, Like birds the summer; Ah! bring them back to me, Swiftly, dear comer! Seraphim, Her to hymn, Might leave their portals; And at my feet learn The harping of mortals! ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... should have read upside down—the little sister he should have kissed or tickled—what not? You remember the obdurate pertinacity with which he missed fire, and balked the triumphant outburst that should have greeted his success? Surely, if some well-wisher among the choir of Angels, harping with their harps, had been at Chorlton then and there, under contract to guide Destiny, by playing loud and soft—not giving unfair hints—to the reuniting of the long-lost sisters, that Angel would have been hard ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... which have so much of heaven in them. I can sometimes hear her singing to me now, from those upper skies, in the name of the four who have gone there from my dwelling, "All are here, all are here." She bequeathed her guitar, but her voice and hand now join with "the voice of harpers harping with ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... "Forever harping on that word home!" said the Pilot, who now detected the timid approaches of Alice to her hidden meaning. "Is a man a stick or a stone, that he must be cast into the fire, or buried in a wall, wherever ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "Still harping on that?" Hanlon demanded hotly. "What makes you think I'm not on the up and up? I worked hard on that stinking hot planet. I got out more ore'n anyone else ever did. And my suggestion about ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... that?—[Aside.] Still harping on my daughter:—yet he knew me not at first; he said I was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for love; very near this. I'll speak to him again.—What do you read, ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... been built by all the states of Asia in common. When Servius, in the company of some Latin nobles with whom he had purposely formed ties of hospitality and friendship, both in public and private, extolled in high terms such harmony and association of their gods, by frequently harping upon the same subject, he at length prevailed so far that the Latin states agreed to build a temple of Diana at Rome[45] in conjunction with the Roman people. This was an acknowledgment that the headship of affairs, concerning which they had so often disputed in ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... sight A globe of circular light, That with long beams the shame-faced Night arrayed. The helmed Cherubim, And sworded Seraphim, Are seen, in glittering ranks with wings displayed, Harping, in loud and solemn quire, With unexpressive notes to ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Stevenson—an abuse that was justified the more, in Mr Moore's idea, because Stevenson was dead. Had he been alive he might have had something to say to it, in the way, at least, of fable and moral. And when towards the close Mr Moore again quotes from Mr Yeats, it is still "harping on my daughter" to undo Stevenson, as though a rat was behind the arras, as in Hamlet. "Stevenson," says he, "is the leader of these countless writers who perceive nothing but the visible world," and ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... mountain seas raced up and hove our barque, reeling from the blow, from towering crest to hollow of the trough! How every day of the twenty-five years of her cried out in creak of block, in clatter of chain sheet, in the 'harping' of the backstays, the straining groan of the ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... adopted in its prosecution. It has not been deemed necessary to retaliate upon the Confederate agents who fill Europe with their tale of woe, by retorting upon them a reference to the unchristian practices of their soldiery. There has been no appeal to the moral sympathies of the Old World, by harping upon the enormities of slavery, and by announcing a crusade against it. Foreign communities have been left to the ordinary modes of information, to the press and the accounts of American and European orators, for the events which ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... brothers, hath already displayed himself so remarkably as to be both hated and despised; and a combination amongst the booksellers will soon be against him and his brother the lawyer. They are men of the keenest avarice, and their very looks (according to what I am told) dart out harping irons. I have ordered Mr. Noel to drop every article in my Lord's Commission when they shall be hoisted up ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... and I sat quiet and helpless, for I know too little about the cause and progress of the war to talk intelligently about it. A sense of responsibility grazed my soul. I wished I were able to help France and Belgium, but what can I do? The constant harping on the subject of war irritated me. I felt relieved when a young girl near me asked, "Miss Metz, do you like the movies? There's a place near here where they show fine pictures, funny ones to make you forget the war for several ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... seemed to understand so well what to do for themselves, ought to be able to sing and play so that one could comprehend what they meant. Yet they kept harping all the while on the same strain. He grew drowsy listening to them, and stretched himself flat on the smooth, fine gravel to take a ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... whole thing," said Paula. "What he's been harping on for the last week.—He is a loathsome sort of beast," she conceded after a little pause. "But ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... lament is that the appetites of the body are too soon exhausted; this languid and curious analysist who rends the soul aside with merciless cruelty, and puts away the quivering nerves with cold indifference, once he has seen their secrets?—this a poet? Then so was Nero harping! Accursed be the book and all the polished vileness that his verses ever palmed off on men by their mere tricks of sound. This a poet! As soon are the swine that rout the garbage, the lions of the Apocalypse by the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the telephone rang twice after that he would not answer. It seemed to him that Mary V had very little to do, harping away still at that subject. He had been secretly a bit homesick for the ranch, but now he thanked heaven, emphatically enough to make up for any lack of sincerity, that ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Liubka cut him short with vexation. "Well, what are you harping on one and the same thing for all the time? Change your act. You've been told: no and no. Don't you think I see what you're trying to get at? But only I'll never agree to unfaithfulness, seeing as how Vasilli Vasillievich is my benefactor, and I adore him with all my soul... ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... landlords have for ages been the traditional embodiment of tyranny and religious ascendency. The Irish people have long memories, very long memories. Englishmen would say: 'No matter what happened to my great-grandfather; I am treated well, and that is enough for me.' Irishmen still go harping on the landlord, although he no longer has any power. The terrible history of the former relationship between landlord and tenant is still kept up and remembered, and will be remembered for ages, if not for ever. Presently you will see ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... is a good honest fellow. I like him much. But the silly dear's harping so continually upon one string, dying, dying, dying, is what I have no patience with. I hope all this melancholy jargon is owing entirely to the way I would have her to be in. And it being as new to her, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... the key, so that it sounded awesomely at his touch. And Phoebus Apollo laughed for joy; for the sweet throb of the marvellous music went to his heart, and a soft longing took hold on his soul as he listened. Then the son of Maia, harping sweetly upon his lyre, took courage and stood at the left hand of Phoebus Apollo; and soon, while he played shrilly on his lyre, he lifted up his voice and sang, and lovely was the sound of his voice that followed. ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod |
