"Lilt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... greatest weapon in life He felt things, he did not study them If women hadn't memory, she answered, they wouldn't have much Lilt of existence lulling to sleep wisdom and tried experience Lonely we come into the world, and lonely we go out of it Never to be content with superficial reasons ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... individuality, with its constant accentuation of the acoustic, soon made itself felt and brought into German poetry what Tieck had tried for and failed in—an effect of perfect musical synthesis. The melody of the verse receives a peculiar lilt by frequent changes in metre between stanzas or in the midst of the stanza, and is thus saved from monotony. Were its metrical harmony tiring in any way, it could not have been set to music with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... Dud to Jim, as they made their way through the chatting, laughing throng, and caught the lilt of the music on the beach beyond, where bathers, reckless of the church bells' call, were disporting themselves in the sunlit waves. "It's tough, with a place like this so near, to be shut up on a desert island for a whole vacation. I say, ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... guitars and banjos were playing some wailing tune, with a note of sadness in the core of it so keen and penetrating that it made the water come to Harry's eyes. But it changed suddenly to something that had all the sway and lilt of the rosy South. Men sprang to their feet and clasping arms about one another began to sway back and forth in the waltz and ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 they roared it out together, waking the echoes with the declaration that—"The eye of a maid may sparkle, And the fools may for love repine, But the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... did not suppose that our reverend Brother Gunsaulus ever attempted poetry. His verses have that grace and lilt that are the prime essentials to successful comic-opera libretto writing. When I want a collaborateur, I shall know ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... law to fleg us a', An' schedule richt frae wrang, The man o' the cave had got the crave For the lichtsome lilt o' sang. Wife an' strife an' the pride o' life, Woman an' war an' drink; He sang o' them a' at e'enin's fa' By aid o' ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... was coming when his country would reap its glorious fruits." His Greek Marseillaise ([Greek: Deute paides ton Hellenon]) is known to Englishmen through Byron's translation, "Sons of the Greeks, arise, etc." But the glorious lilt and swing of his Polemisterion, though probably familiar to every child in Greece, is less known in this country. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... still hardly more than a boy, burrowed among the manuscripts of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, making himself an able antiquary at a time when most youth are idling or philandering. Moreover, he was himself the son of a border chief and knew minstrelsy almost at his nurse's knee: and the lilt of a ballad was always like wine to his heart. It makes you think of Sir Philip Sidney's splendid testimony to such an influence: "I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... flocking from every side; For they knew their Gipsy Joe of old, His free wild words and his laughter bold: So high and low all gathered together By the village well in the autumn weather, Lured by the gipsy's bargain-chatter And the reckless lilt of his hare-brained patter. And there the Revd. Salvyn Bent, The parish church's ornament, Stood, as it chanced, in discontent, And eyed with a look that was almost sinister The Revd. Joshua Fall, the minister. And the Squire, it happened, was riding by, ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... works with her brain—with the hate of an Italian who sees another taking the bread out of his mouth. All this, coupled with the fact that your Italian is a natural-born hater, may indicate that the life of Mary Gowd had not the lyric lilt that life is commonly reputed ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... thus, within the cool, green twilight, watchful of eye and with heavy quarter-staff poised upon his shoulder, he presently heard the music of a pipe now very mournful and sweet, anon breaking into a merry lilt full of rippling trills and soft, bubbling notes most pleasant to be heard. Wherefore he went aside and thus, led by the music, beheld a jester in his motley lying a-sprawl beneath a tree. A long-legged knave was he, pinched and something doleful of visage yet with quick bright eyes that laughed ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... his eyes the lilt of the girl's movements. Apparently he had not heard what the officer said. At least he gave ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... bards ayont the Tweed, Your skins wi' claes o' tartan cleed, An' lilt alang the verdant mead, Or blithely on your whistles blaw, An' sing auld Scotia's barns an ha's, Her bourtree dykes an mossy wa's, Her faulds, her bughts, an' birken shaws, Whare love an' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... worn travelers and their escort reached the village, Jessie could hear the gay lilt of the chantey ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, Villon, our sad ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... chant, lay, ditty, ballad, onody, chansonnette, lyric, lilt, lied, paean, cantata, aria, sonnet, strain, round, rhapsody, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... lilt of them and the keen beauty of the night, the inherited pain of the ages rose from the depths of the young girl's heart, so that she thought it must break; for what reason she could not have told, since she was without care or sorrow that she knew, except the French Revolution, ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... plentiful feast in the maple-tree shade, The lilt of a song to an old-fashioned tune, The talk of a friend, or the kiss of a maid, To sweeten the cup that we drink to the noon. Oh, the deep noon, the full noon, Of all the day the best! When the blue sky ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... anything else. Down below, in the street, the sunny grey pavement went beside the palisade. A woman in a pink frock, with a scarlet sunshade, crossed the road, a little white dog running like a fleck of light about her. The woman with the scarlet sunshade came over the road, a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her. Ursula watched spell-bound. The woman with the scarlet sunshade and the flickering terrier was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... was in tune with all of them. For what does a lover ask but to be one and twenty, to be astride a willing horse, and to be beside the one woman in the world for him? Sure 'tis heaven enough to watch the colour come and go in her face, to hear the lilt of her voice, and to see the changing light in her eye. What though at times we were shy as the wild rabbit, we were none the less happy for that. In our hearts there bubbled a childlike gaiety; we skipped upon the sunlit hilltops ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... training proved worth while. He was saluted from a hundred laughing heads at a score of windows with the song that had followed him all over Canada. He drove into the College, not to the stirring strains of "Oh, Canada," but to the syncopated lilt of "Johnny's in Town." ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... far as I know: 'One flew east and one flew west and one flew over the cuckoo's nest.'" I wish I could convey by words the lilt of her clear, fearless, boyish voice, the sparkle of mischief and daring in her eyes, and deep beneath, like treasures in the sea, that look of steadfastness, of praying, that made you wonder if she was really as happy and as carefree as she seemed to be, and ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... lilt of a Gaelic song in these pages that brought a sorrow on me. That very sweet language will be gone soon, if not gone already, and no book learning will revive the suppleness of idiom, that haunting misty loveliness.... It is a very ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... be the wife of his king Marke. The cheery song of a sailor who, unseen, at the masthead, sings to the winds which are blowing him away from his wild Irish sweetheart, floats down to us. It has a refreshing and buoyant lilt, this song, with something of the sea breeze in it, and yet something, as it is sung, which emphasizes ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... A gang of some twenty or thirty spit-turners emerged and took up their positions round a very long table in a path in the wood. They all wore their cook's caps on one side, and with their basting implements in their hands they kept time together as they worked, to the lilt of a ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... herself. And all the doubts and fears that from time to time had assailed her were banished by this impulse to go to him, to be with him. He loved her! The words, as she sat in the trolley car, ran in her head like the lilt of a song. What did ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had the lilt Of chiming waters that are spilt In sprays of spurted melody From founts of carven porphyry, And in the billowy turbulence Of her dusk hair drowned soul and sense— Dark tides and ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... rock wall seemed to leap forward in the brilliance, but he did not smoke; he paced restlessly about and at last crept into his bunk and lay with his face to the wall. Larry sat long before the fire. "It's the music that's got in my blood," he said. "Katherine could sing and lilt the Scotch airs like a bird. She had a touch for ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... "The Great Cloud" rolls over a strip of lowland, lowering in a vast imperial whiteness, vague and shadowy as sleep or death. Ruysdael would have stopped for a moment to watch it. But its lyrical lilt would trouble a mind that could only think in prose; Shelley would like it better, and most certainly it would not fail to recall to his ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Castle of Dromore' again that night with its queer haunting lilt. And when she had gone up, and he was smoking over the fire, the girl in her dark-red frock seemed to come, and sit opposite with her eyes fixed on his, just as she had been sitting while they talked. Dark red had suited her! Suited the look on her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Lilt thy song, and lute away In the wildest fashion:— Pour thy rippling roundelay O'er the heights of passion!— Flash it down the fretted strings Till thy mad lips, missing All but smothered whisperings, Press this ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... my fingers split the sand On the sun-flooded beach? Hath not my naked body felt the water sing When the sea hath enveloped it With rippling music? Have I not felt The lilt of waves beneath my boat, The flap of sail, The strain of mast, The wild rush Of the lightning-charged winds? Have I not smelt the swift, keen flight Of winged odours before the tempest? Here is joy awake, aglow; Here is ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... what you think—a silver livre!" But she did not wait for his music. Dropping him a little demure, mocking curtsy she turned and ran down the box-edged path, singing as she went, and the air she sang was Stephen La Mothe's "Heigh-ho! love is my life; Live I in loving and love I to live!" and the lilt of the music set ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... "Chust a wee lilt o' the pipes might pring the creatures oot o' their holes. There was a man ance, Apollo they ca'd him, as played on the pipes, an' a' the bit beasties cam' roond to listen; and she'll pe thenking that a' that time back the pipes would pe ferry safage like, and a mon like ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... is just in its grandest prime, The earth is green and the skies are blue; But where is the lilt of the olden time, When life was a melody set to rhyme, And dreams were so real they ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... my darling. I will say thee a psalm, or perhaps one of those old Manx ballads thou didst use to lilt so lightly." ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... herself, gravely composing her face, and clearing her throat, she began, in a high, shrill, piercing voice, rocking her head to the peculiar lilt of the words, and interpolating short explanatory remarks, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... flushed hours I dream (High thought) instead of armour gleam Or warrior cantos ream by ream To load the shelves - Songs with a lilt of words, that seem To ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... From drawing-room and library and dining-room came the laughter and chatter of many people. Then the music struck up a gay and popular air. The lilt and swing of it made her giddy. But the little flower-room was cool and sweet, and she drew a breath ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... swift plane, no faltering in its stride. The beat of the engines was as rhythmical to experienced ears as the regular swing and lilt of some perfectly rendered piece of music to the ears of ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... two." Struck by the note of appeal in her voice, so unlike its lilt of the moment before, he added: "Ride on if ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... brewing To the lilt of his lyric wiles: The fiddler knows what rueing Will come of this ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... were going; momently one would detach itself from the others in a burst of joyous energy and sweep a great circle and back again to its comrades, and then away, away, away to the skyline.—Ye swift ones! O, freedom and sweetness! A song falling from the heavens! A lilt through deep sunshine! Happy wanderers! How fast ye fly and how bravely—up and up, till the earth has fallen away and the immeasurable heavens and the deep loneliness of the sunlight and the silence of ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... the next morning, and the sunbeams were playing hide-and-seek through the branches that dance in the soft wind. All the air was sweet and the little girl couldn't help being light-hearted. She sang, too; not measured hymns of sorrow and repentance, but a gay lilt that followed the bird voices. And she went down to breakfast and said ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... those of others, his heart was telling a very different story all the time. He could see again the dainty grace with which she had danced for him, heard again that low voice breaking into a merry piping lilt, warmed once more to the living, elusive smile, at once so tender and mocking. He might set his will to preserve an even front to her gay charm, but it was beyond him to control the thrills that ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... lilt in her voice Mollie, at her end of the wire, sat up and stared inquiringly into the black mouth ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... forgot you," she said, with a whimsical lilt in her voice. "I was thinkin' how elegant it is when we ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... 'My bird, my bonnie, bonnie bird, Is that a sang ye borrow? Are these some words ye've learnt by heart, Or a lilt o' dool an' sorrow? 'Oh, no, no, no,' the wee bird sang; 'I've flown sin' mornin' early; But sic a day o' wind an' rain— Oh, wae's me ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... gratefully. It was that of a never-ending band. Playing all the way, too, but silently. Yet, the music was there. The pity was that one could not hear it. The pomp, the swagger, the swing of the Guards, the shifting movement, the bright array—all these were unmistakable. The very lilt of the air made itself felt. Very cheery. Certainly, the river was ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... him. Shallow as was his mental observation, there was that in the things which had happened which made his little power of analysis useless. Carrie was still with him, but not helpless and pleading. There was a lilt in her voice which was new. She did not study him with eyes expressive of dependence. The drummer was feeling the shadow of something which was coming. It coloured his feelings and made him develop those little attentions and say those little words which were mere ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... near to breaking his promise. One evening, when March was melting into April, and the pulses of spring were stirring under the lingering snow, he was walking home from school alone. As he descended into the little hollow below the manse a lively lilt of music drifted up to meet him. It was only the product of a mouth-organ, manipulated by a little black-eyed, French-Canadian hired boy, sitting on the fence by the brook; but there was music in the ragged urchin and it came out through his simple toy. It tingled over Felix from head to ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in which the clock tinker indulged so freely, afforded his young friend no little amusement. His tongue had long obeyed the lilt of classic diction; his thought came easy in Elizabethan phrase. The slight Celtic brogue served to enhance the piquancy of his talk. Moreover he was really a man of ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... in front. Tramp, tramp! Their tread is purposely thunderous on the bare boards of the corridor. They sing as they advance. It is a ragtime chorus whose most memorable line runs, "You never seem to kiss me in the same place twice." A jaunty lilt, to be sure, both in tune and in rhythm. Tramp, tramp! The one-eyed leader swerves round a corner, roaring the refrain. His followers swerve too. Suddenly the Matron is encountered, emerging from her room. ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... Aunt Emily dropped her umbrella then. And at the same moment a singing voice became audible in the trees behind them. The song came floating to them through the sunlight with a sound of wind and birds. It had a marvellous quality, very sweet and very moving. There was a lilt in it, a laughing, happy lilt, as though the Earth herself were singing ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... this young girl. Thoughts of the stored-up golden honey seen gleaming through the translucent waxen cells of the virgin comb made the senses reel as you looked at her, if you were man born of woman, with your passions alive and keen-edged in you, and your blood had not lost the lilt of the song that it has sung in healthy veins of sons of Adam since the Woman was made for and given to the Man. For Artemis may invite, if unconsciously, the hot pursuit of the hunter; the shy, close-folded nymph among the sedges may awaken the primal desire of Pan among ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... well as to other men. In America old age found its most enthusiastic advocate in Walt Whitman, who in lines To Get the Final Lilt of Songs indicated undiminished confidence in himself at eighty. Bayard Taylor, [Footnote: See My Prologue.] too, and Edward Dowden, [Footnote: See The Mage.] were not dismayed by ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... get words for it in English,' he said again, half speaking with his parted lips; 'it's too dactylic in rhythm for English verse to go to it. Beranger might have written a lilt for it, as far as mere syllables go, but Beranger to write about Miss Butterfly!—pho, no Frenchman could possibly catch it. Swinburne could fit the metres, I dare say, but he couldn't fit the feeling. It shall be a song without words, unless I write some Italian lines for it myself. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... As we turn over the leaves, we may find ourselves in sympathy with some one or other of these staid joys and smiling sorrows. If we do we shall be strangely pleased, for there is a genuine pathos in these simple words, and the lines go with a lilt, and sing themselves to ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her—an agonizing sense of youth's futility. Rackingly above the crash and lilt of music, the quick, wild thud of dancing feet, the sharp, staccato notes of laughter—she heard the dull, heavy, unrhythmical tread of the oncoming years—gray years, limping eternally from to-morrow on, through unloved lands, on ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... jewel. No maiden fair shall wreathe her neck with noble ring: nay, sad in spirit and shorn of her gold, oft shall she pass o'er paths of exile now our lord all laughter has laid aside, all mirth and revel. Many a spear morning-cold shall be clasped amain, lifted aloft; nor shall lilt of harp those warriors wake; but the wan-hued raven, fain o'er the fallen, his feast shall praise and boast to the eagle how bravely he ate when he and the wolf were wasting ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... Tennyson's reading had the lilt, the tenderness and the rhythm that makes music in the soul. It was neither singing, nor chanting, nor speaking, but a subtle mixture of the three; and the effect upon me was one of haunting harmonies that left me ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... made previously, no more than some thirty fathoms in from the edge of the weed. And there stood Mistress Madison beside me, doing somewhat of a dainty step-dance upon the flooring of the look-out, and singing a quaint old lilt that I had not heard that dozen years, and this little thing, I think, brought back more clearly to me than aught else how that this winsome maid had been lost to the world for so many years, having been scarce ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... will some ticket When his statue's built, Tell the gazer "'Twas a cricket Helped my crippled lyre, whose lilt Sweet and low, when strength usurped Softness' place i' the scale, she ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... Spirit's children dwelt Forever hushed is the papoose's wail, and stilled the squaw's low-crooning lilt. No longer shimmers starlight from eyes of savage maids Worshippers of the fire and sun, poor dwellers of the caves— The sisters of the deer and lo, shy startled fawns of Aztec race Or coy ancestral ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... the plays early and late. Their merit is of a supreme quality; some of the most famous musical composers, inspired by his works, have graced them with admirable music. One of the most attractive features in his lyrics is their spontaneous ease of expression. They seem to lilt into music of their own accord, as naturally as birds sing. The best of these are found in the comedies of the Second Period and in the romantic plays of the Fourth. "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more" in Much Ado About Nothing; "Blow, blow, thou winter ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... one which was invaluable to lift their feet along, as they expressed it, was the following. There was a kind of spring and lilt to ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the Psalms of David ower, And lilt wi' holy clangor; Of double verse come gie us four, And skirl up the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... exuberant younkers! You "guy" "the old gang" as "played out," As fogies, and fussers, and funkers, You've over-much reason, no doubt. But, great Scott! as your rowing-rhymes rattle And lilt lyric praise of the Crews, We too sniff the air of the battle! We too have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various
... The variant had a lilt, a go, a flourish. To employ a vulgarism of the hour, it had the punch. It landed you and between the eyes. It required neither commentaries nor explanation. It was all there. It was tangible as a ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the grass, and read, in a chant, or rather in a lilt, the Danish ballad of Chyld Dyring, as translated by Sir Walter Scott. Gibbie's eyes grew wider and wider as he listened; their pupils dilated, and his lips parted: it seemed as if his soul were looking out of door and windows ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... "Oh, Elsie, child, what do you mean?" she asked anxiously. The dimples disappeared but though Elsie spoke quietly, still there was that wonderful lilt ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... proud daughter of old Castile, Ola, Ola," Manuel sang confidentially with a subdued and gallant lilt... Obviously impracticable. But ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the wine-sweet breezes hold, Fair wildings blow—bright buttercups agleam Like shining sequins scattered on the wold, And daffodills—a wealth of faery gold. The building birds their coming bliss presage With lilt and lyric brimming o'er the page Of Nature's volume bound in green and gold. Here 'mid the birds and blossoms 'neath the blue— My heart unburthened of the old regret— Let me forget long striving to forget; For life is sweet to-day and ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... mother always sang him this song when he had been a good boy; I replied that mine had done the same. How many French mothers have sung the merry little lilt, I wonder? We sang one snatch and another, and I could not see that the marquise had had the advantage of the little peasant girl, ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... with a loose pulley on the large end of the receiving cone as to remain stationary while the wind is on or near the base of the bobbin. When the cone of the bobbin diminishes so as to materially increase the pull on the traveler, the conical drums are started by a belt shipper attached to the lilt motion. By the movement of the belt on these drums a continually accelerated motion is given to the rings, their maximum speed being about one-twentieth the number of revolutions per minute as the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... quietness. Nor to the folk can piper play The tune of "Hills and Far Away," For they are with them. Morn can fire No peaks of weary heart's desire, Nor the red sunset flame behind Some ancient ridge of longing mind. For Arcady is here, around, In lilt of stream, in the clear sound Of lark and moorbird, in the bold Gay glamour of the evening gold, And so the wheel of seasons moves To kirk and market, to mild loves And modest hates, and still the sight Of brown kind faces, and when night Draws ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... in the Green Meadows rose the clear lilt of Carol the Meadow Lark, and among the alders just where the Laughing Brook ran into the Smiling Pool a flood of happiness was pouring from the throat of Little Friend the Song Sparrow. Winsome Bluebird's sweet, almost plaintive, whistle seemed to fairly float in the air, so that ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... quiet house came the careless ripple of a flute, showering light and sensuous music. There was a dare-devil lilt and sway to the flippant strains and Aunt Agatha covered her face ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... multiplied indefinitely; and the reader will admit that there is as much of a lilt about those which are here quoted as there is about the majority of the ditties which he has hummed to himself in his hour of contentment. Here is Philodemus' description ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... common. She does not pretend to heroics and she seldom allows herself to touch a note of pathos; her mission is just to inspire other hearts with the infectious gay courage of her own. It finds a natural expression in the easy lilt of her measures. She is fluent rather than polished and never overlays her designs with excess of embroidery. Long practice has made her familiar with a craft which is not so easy as it looks; and in particular she has learnt the art of the final line. Miss POPE may ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... is full of poetry, the translator having retained the lilt of the original, together with many of the old English words which, if they need a glossary, is only because we have gradually lost the meaning in ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... "Maybe Madelon would lilt for the dancing," Burr Gordon said; and then he colored furiously, as if he had startled himself ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... prison. Some of them, too, are welcome as the flowers in May for their own sake; some of them may have a human voice; some may have that magic which transforms a wooden box into a song-bird, and what we jeeringly call a fiddle into what we mention with respect as a violin. From that grinding lilt, with which the blind man, seeking pence, accompanies the beat of paddle wheels across the ferry, there is surely a difference rather of kind than of degree to that unearthly voice of singing that bewails and praises the destiny of man at the touch ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... singing. I think the angels opened the windows when they heard it. I think it made the very heart of our Lord glad. What a surprise it was to those in that gloomy old prison. They had heard the walls ring with groans and shrieks. They had heard bitter oaths in the night, but songs with the lilt of an irrepressible joy in them—they had never heard anything ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... figure, hasn't she?" he said to Mihul. He made vague curving motions in the air with one hand, more or less opposing ones with the other. "That sort of an up-and-sideways lilt when ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... that eventful night. So quickly did it come upon us, so little did we look for it, that when Kess Denton, the yellow man, stood at the open gate and uttered a loud and piercing yell of defiance, not one among us could lilt a rifle, not one thought of plan or action. There the fellow was, laughing like a maniac. Why he came, whence he came, no man could tell. But he leaped into the seas and the night engulfed him, and only his mocking laugh told us that ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... the dulcet instrument We favour, still the lilt will stop; And with a gorgeous chalice blent Oft lurks the tiny poisoned drop. I'm not so spry myself to-night; I'll try a dose of arrowroot. You'll own that Indigestion's quite ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... fete calling him to their festivities. If so, he was in no haste to let realization overtake anticipation. His reins hung loose. He hummed snatches of Spanish, French, and English songs. Their cosmopolitan freedom of variety was as out of keeping with the scene as their lilt, which had the tripping, self-carrying impetus of the sheer ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Nae linties lilt on hedge or bush: Poor things! they suffer sairly; In cauldrife quarters a' the nicht, A' day they feed but sparely. Now, up in the mornin's no for me, Up in the mornin' early; A pennyless purse I wad rather dree, Than ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... haste an' turn King David owre, And lilt wi' holy clangor; O' double verse come gie us four, An' skirl up the Bangor: This day the kirk kicks up a stoure; Nae mair the knaves shall wrang her, For Heresy is in her pow'r, And gloriously she'll whang her Wi' pith ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... explosions blowing up the city in blocks. When the muffled roar was over, the gathering quiet was pierced by the thin, high notes of gramophones. From the shadow of trees Caruso's voice rose in the swaggering lilt of "La Donna e Mobile," to be answered by Melba's, crystal-sweet, from a machine stored in a crowded cart. There were ragtime melodies, and someone had a record of "Marching Through Georgia" that always drew forth applause. Then, as the night advanced, a gradual hush fell, ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Macaulay lacked ideas and vision. He liked the lilt and swing of the Lays and Ballads, and enjoyed the Essays with their superb colouring. Disputing Macaulay's dictum that neither painters nor poets are helped by the advances in civilisation, science and refinement, he wrote: "This argument disproved by the examples of men like Shakespeare ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and a frown of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had quite ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... permitted, always stood the table ankle-deep in the cool green plush of the sward; and after the lounge upon the grass, and the cigars, and the new fish stories, and the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the staccatoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano of ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... saw, instead Of your brows direct and wise, Of the little lilt of your head And your dark-lashed, sky-clear eyes, Of the soft brown braids demure, The poise as of quiet light, The perfect profile, sweet and pure,— Never I ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... worth while to get Carquinez to loosen up. Nor was he ever really himself until he felt the mellow warmth of the vine singing in his blood. He was an artist, it is true, always an artist; but somehow, sober, the high pitch and lilt went out of his thought-processes and he was prone to be as deadly dull as a British Sunday—not dull as other men are dull, but dull when measured by the sprightly wight that Monte Carquinez was when ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... the occasion, played "Blue bonnets o'er the Border." Behind was the sunset in a sky of brilliant crimson. In front stretched great uplands of a dim green, while we, the new Crusaders, crossed over to the lilt of the pipes, whose music astonished Palestine now heard for the first time; and with us in great columns moved guns and cavalry, camels and transport, half seen in a haze of hanging dust. These of course are after thoughts, at the time one's point of view was rather different. ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... but he has found himself by opus 40, a volume of "Six Love Songs," containing half a dozen flawless gems it is a pity the public should not know more widely. A later book, "Eight Songs" (op. 47), is also a cluster of worthies. The lilt and sympathy of "The Robin Sings in the Apple-tree," and its unobtrusive new harmonies and novel effects, in strange accord with truth of expression, mark all the other songs, particularly the "Midsummer Lullaby," with its accompaniment ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... muse, an' lilt me a spring, Tho'daghtless awhile tha's been on the wing; But yet tha mun try to cum up ta t'mark, An' give us sum rhyme for a bit of a lark: An' tho' at thy notes in this sensation age, Wiseacres may giggle an' critics may rage, Thou art my sole hobby ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... made in the rigging. The passengers were all below. Then, suddenly, a burst of music came up as some one opened a saloon port-hole and as quickly closed it again—a tenor voice singing to the piano some trivial modern song with a trashy sentimental lilt. It was—in this setting of sea and sky—painful; O'Malley caught himself thinking of a barrel-organ in ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... the world! Let us carol its song, Let us conquer its grief and the wrath of its wrong, Till the lilt of its laughter shall sweeten the sod With the joys of the skies and the gladness ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... drive through Cairo to the Pyramids, whether you spin out there in a motor, or trot on a donkey, or lilt on a camel, squatting cross-legged on a load of green bersim. Past the great swinging bridge, and the Island of Ghezireh (the word that in itself means "island") begins the six-mile dyke, which is the road made by Ismail ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... bow lovingly across the strings, and swung into the Irish dance the old, common tune with the little gay lilt to it that grips the heart and makes the feet beat time, and has the power to wake old memories across the years. There were no memories to wake in the happy young hearts in the loft at Billabong that night. But ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... by, and as they passed, the hum of voices and laughter and the cheery lilt of island melody died away, and the paddlers looked shoreward to the motionless figure of Prout, who, with the child by his side, seemed to heed naught but the wide sweep of ocean that lay ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... have an equal chance of immortality with "The Song of the Shirt" and "The Bridge of Sighs," rising, as they do, right out of the depths of that Inferno, sublime from their very simplicity? Which of Charles Mackay's lyrics can compare for a moment with the Eschylean grandeur, the terrible rhythmic lilt of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... that irremediable loss—stands incomparably above the rest. Short, vigorous, completely rounded—it breathes that high spirit of hope and trust, held by that warrior people; and, not alone the finest war dirge of the South, it is excelled by no sixteen lines in any language, for power, lilt and tenderness! ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... the court of Charlemagne. Now, Angilbert was a poet of exquisite grace, and surprisingly modern is his music, which is indeed a wonderful anticipation of the lilt of Edgar Poe. I compare ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... shifting his position to ease his cramped limbs after the manner of the range rider. In spite of himself, his eyes would drift toward the jaunty little figure on the pinto. The masculine in him approved mightily her lissom grace and the proud lilt of her dark head, with its sun-kissed face set in profile to him. He thought her serviceable costume very becoming, from the pinched felt hat pinned to the dark mass of hair, and the red silk kerchief knotted ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... at the dawn of the morning, and with many a knight to bear him company rode, not eager and swift, like a prince who went to find a treasure, but steady and slow, as we should go to meet sorrow. Not one of the hundred men who followed dared to lilt a lay or fling a laughing jest from his mouth. All rode silent among their gay trappings, for so saith ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... direct judgment on him for impiously endeavouring to find pleasure otherwise than by the practice of the domestic virtues. Disquieting memories of bursting boilers surge up to the surface of the mind, and old catches like the weird ballad of Sir Patrick Spens lilt themselves to the clank of the staggering ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... one of the guests was improvising an accompaniment on the colonel's new piano, had struck up "Camptown Races," and the rollicking lilt of the chorus was resounding ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... relented, and graciously acquiesced. When they left the office Matt Peasley was stepping high, like a ten-time winner, for he had suddenly made the discovery that life ashore was a wonderful, wonderful thing. There was such a lilt in his young heart that, for the life of him, he could not forbear doing a little double shuffle as he waited at the elevator with Cappy and his ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... trampling street Let thy life garner daily wheat; The epic of a man rehearse, Be something better than thy verse; Make thyself rich, and then the Muse Shall court thy precious interviews, Shall take thy head upon her knee, And such enchantment lilt to thee, That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow From farthest stars to grass-blades low, 150 And find the Listener's science still Transcends the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... uncertain of the way, catching the wind in his nervous hands, and turning about in a little space like an animal in a cage, over the hedge through the apple-boughs a boy's clear voice rose suddenly, singing a rollicking tune, with a snapping of fingers and tapping of feet in time to its merry lilt. ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... verses. I wonder if you will mind very much when I tell you they were suggested by you. You must forgive the poet's license I take. Here is one verse. The metrical irregularity is intentional, because I want, as it were, to put you apart: to change the lilt and the mood altogether when I speak ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... made him start. He brought—thus the idea came unbidden to his mind—something with him that galvanised him quite absurdly, as fear does, or delight, or great wonder. There was a music in his voice too—a certain—well, he could only call it lilt, that reminded him of plainsong, intoning, chanting. Drawling was not ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... scenes, and native charms, They fondly bring to min' The trystin'-tree and bonny lass, Wi a' love's dreams langsyne. Oh! lilt me owre some tender strain, For weel I lo'e to hear— Be 't bonny "Broom o' Cowdenknowes," And ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... years I abstained from all spirituous liquors. My lads had made no such resolution. The big iron pot was now, like an honest old sailor that had done his duty, kicked aside the corner; the drummer and fifer seating themselves on the keel of the inverted dinghy, and struck up a lilt, and:— ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... I may no more, The world's heart throb at my workshop door. The sun was keen, and the day was still; The township drowsed in, a haze of heat. A stir far off on the sleepy hill, The measured beat of their buoyant feet, And the lilt and thrum Of a little drum, The song they sang in a cadence low, The piping note of ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... There was an interrogative lilt at the end of all his sentences, even when, as now, he was making statements that admitted of no denial. But his guest missed the incontrovertible and final quality of what ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... my lovely Willow!—Let the Waters lilt your graces,— They alone with limpid kisses lave your leaves above, Flashing back your sylvan beauty, and in shady places Peering up with glimmering pebbles, like the ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... voice of a young girl, washing white and blue clothing in a trough of running water, sped us upon our journey. Her head was bound in a scarlet handkerchief; and smiling at us while she pounded the linen, she sang a strange song, half chant, with that wild Eastern lilt which has been handed down from the Moors to the sons and ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... giving my baby to you. The Sahib her father is not able to be with her, much. But you are to care for my baby for me. Do you understand, my dear?" She often called Nels "my dear" with a peculiar inflection on the dear and an upward lilt of tone. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... of all days, Cappy would not have missed luncheon with the Bilgewater Club for a farm. As he breezed along there was a smile on his ruddy old face and a lilt in his kind old heart, for he was rehearsing his announcement to his youthful friends of how he had but recently tanned the hide of a brother! He almost laughed aloud as he pictured himself solemnly relating, in the presence of J. Augustus Redell and Live Wire Luiz, the tale of the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... steel safe and a tent and was buying coal lands right and left. More young men drifted in from all points of the compass. A tent-hotel was put at the foot of Imboden Hill, and of nights there were under it much poker and song. The lilt of a definite optimism was in every man's step and the light of hope was in every ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... three accented syllables. In the one case, as in the other, there is a certain family resemblance, in the melody as in the theme, that to the untrained and unaccustomed ear may convey an impression of monotony. But to each ballad, as to each psalm, there belongs a peculiar strain or lilt, touched, as a rule, with a solemn or piercing pathos, often cast in the plaintive minor mode, that alone can bring out the full inner meaning of the words, and that is endeared and hallowed by centuries of association. As easily might we explain why the words ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... at Kootenay! I hate to think of it empty. We had such good times there twelve months ago. They have a song here to a nursery rhyme lilt, Apres le Guerre Finis; it goes on to tell of all the good times we'll have when the war is ended. Every night I invent a new story of my own celebration of the event, usually, as when I was a kiddie, just before I fall asleep—only ...
— Carry On • Coningsby Dawson
... are here recorded, had gone to the coast on business. Shon had won the reputation of being a "white man," to say nothing of his victories in the region of gallantry. He made no wealth; he only got that he might spend. Irishman-like he would barter the chances of fortune for the lilt of a voice or the clatter ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that if all the energy of Niagara Falls were utilized it could supply the world with seven million horse-power. I do wish Gershom would get over trying to pat the world on the head, instead of shaking hands with it! I'm afraid I'm losing my lilt. I can't understand why I should keep feeling as blue as indigo. I am a well of acid and a little sister to the crab-apple. I think I'll make Susie come down so we can humanize ourselves with a little music. For I feel like a Marie ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... makes, in harmony with the subject treated. Stevenson could not have written 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' in the same tune and key as 'Treasure Island'; and the music of 'Marxheim' differs from both. The reason is organic: the writer is inspired by his theme, and it passes through his mind with a lilt and measure of its own. It makes its own style, just as a human spirit makes its own features and gait; and we know Stevenson through all his transformations only by dint of the exquisite distinction ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various |
