"Lute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... youth of dreaming eye yet dauntless foot, Who all Francesca's wealth of loving had; One brave to scale a wall and steal the fruit, Nor fear because some dotard owned the root; Yea! one who wore his love like sword on thigh And kept not all his valour for his lute; One who could dare as well as sing and sigh. Ah! then were hearts to love, but they are ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... preach, he practised too. I must tell you just one story to show you how he practiced. Herbert was very fond of music; he sang, and played too, upon the lute and viol. One day as he was walking into Salisbury to play with some friends "he saw a poor man with a poorer horse, which was fallen under his load. They were both in distress and needed present help. This Mr. Herbert ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... comfortable rooms in the tarven. Arvilly wuz dressed in black throughout; I hinted to her she ort to wear some badge in honor of the day, and she retired to her room and appeared with a bow made of black lute string ribbin and crape. I felt dretful. I sez, "Arvilly, can't you wear sunthin' more ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... supposed to be so "near allied." Such natures are aeolian harps acted upon, not by "the viewless air," but by a subtler, more impalpable power, which comes none know whence, and goes none know whither—one moment yielding soft melodies as of an angel's lute borne across sapphire seas, the next wailing like some lost soul or shrieking like Eumenides. The "self-poised," the "well-balanced" man, of whom you can safely predict what he will do under given conditions; the man who ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... at times made him masquerade in poetry as a low comedian, and ride Pegasus too often with his tongue in his cheek. There are moments when he wounds us by monstrous music. Nay, if he can only get his music by breaking the strings of his lute, he breaks them, and they snap in discord, and no Athenian tettix, making melody from tremulous wings, lights on the ivory horn to make the movement perfect, or the interval less harsh. Yet, he was great: ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... light streams across the old street. It makes such a brilliant illumination that it is impossible for any one to pass unseen. This ruse, which proves such a hindrance to the lovers, is equally distasteful to Beckmesser, who has come down the street and has taken his stand near them to tune his lute and begin his serenade. Before he can utter the first note, Hans Sachs, having become aware of his presence also, and maliciously anxious to defeat his plans, lustily entones a noisy ditty about Adam and Eve, hammering ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... the glory of it; for we read: "Hail to the spirit of mighty Mars. When he strode through our peaceful village, he awoke many a war song in our breasts. As for our hero, Mars, the war god forged iron reeds for his lute, and he breathed into it the spirit of the age, and all the valour, all the chivalry of a golden day came pouring out of his impassioned reeds." Such is the magic of those large white plumes on Martin Culpepper's memory. Although John ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... rock-room of the tomb, and Neferhotep had left a plot of ground in trust to the Necropolis, with the charge of administering its revenues for the payment of a minstrel, who every-year at the feast of the dead should sing the monody to the accompaniment of his lute. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... best first. Coach tells me ab-so-lute-lee, you are our only hope. The hope of Sunrise, tomorrow. You've got the beef, the wind, the speed, the head, and the will. Oh, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... at noonday sing More softly than the softest flute, And lightlier than the lightest lute Their fairy tambours ring. ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... leave the loom, and leave the lute, And leave the volume on the shelf, To follow him, unquestioning, mute, If 'twere the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... senses. Bits of veritable Shakspearean gold, burnished star-bright, embossed in pewter! Diamonds set in dirt! Sentences illuminated with words of power, suddenly rising and sinking, through a flare of fustian! Here Apollo's lute—there hurdy-gurdy. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... forced to confess Katherine would ill answer this character, it being soon apparent of what manner of gentleness she was composed, for her music-master rushed into the room to complain that the gentle Katherine, his pupil, had broken his head with her lute, for presuming to find fault with her performance; which, when Petruchio heard, he said, "It is a brave wench; I love her more than ever, and long to have some chat with her;" and hurrying the old gentleman for a positive answer, he said, "My business ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... homage of the newly-created noble, Henry descended from the canopy, and passed into an inner room with the Lady Anne, where a collation was prepared for them. Their slight meal over, Anne took up her lute, and playing a lively prelude, sang two or three French songs with so much skill and grace, that Henry, who was passionately fond of music, was quite enraptured. Two delightful hours having passed by, ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the piano was unknown, but every educated woman performed upon the lute, which had the advantage that, in the hands of the lady playing it, it presented an agreeable picture to the eyes, while the piano is only a machine which compels the man or the woman who is playing it to go through motions which are always ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... Our Lady, but this was the first time I had ever had a finger in such a pie as this now baking, and the strangeness of it made me tremble. But fear, pah! Besides I was in the right, and does that not make the just hand steady and the pious eye true? I took up my lute and touching the strings so gently that I myself could scarce hear, I sang, soft as summer wind at even, so softly that none, not ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... as Youthe hadde: 2670 The moste part were of gret Age, And that was sene in the visage, And noght forthi, so as thei myhte, Thei made hem yongly to the sihte: Bot yit herde I no pipe there To make noise in mannes Ere, Bot the Musette I myhte knowe, For olde men which souneth lowe, With Harpe and Lute and with Citole. The hovedance and the Carole, 2680 In such a wise as love hath bede, A softe pas thei dance and trede; And with the wommen otherwhile With sobre chier among thei smyle, For laghtre was ...
— Confessio Amantis - Tales of the Seven Deadly Sins, 1330-1408 A.D. • John Gower
... still dwelling-place wraps night's dusky mantle about her, Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning, Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death's mystery open. If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern, Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the voice that ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... our ears, silly Yoomy that thou art!—no! no! none of your sentiment now; my soul is martially inclined; I want clarion peals, not lute warblings. So throw out your chest, Yoomy: lift high your voice; and blow me the old ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... evidently a beauty, was between the shafts. As Andy lifted himself to the seat beside Ripley, the latter made a peculiar, purring: "Z-rr-rp, Lute!" ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... merry tunes He would bow at nights or noons That chanced to find him bent to lute a measure, When he made you speak his heart As in dream, Without book or music-chart, On some theme Elusive as a jack-o'-lanthorn's gleam, And the psalm of duty shelved ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... your mockery was more desirable than the adoration of any other woman. And all this helped to make a master-poet of me. Eh, why not, when such monstrous passions spoke through me—as if some implacable god elected to play godlike music on a mountebank's lute? And I made admirable plays. Why not, when there was no tragedy more poignant than mine?—and where in any comedy was any figure one-half so ludicrous as mine? Ah, yes, Fate gained her ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... rift within the lute That by and by will make the music mute, And ever widening slowly ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... means came up to the ideas which he had entertained of monastic asceticism; and when, over and above all this, he found more than a breviary and a crucifix within reach, namely, a sort of pocket-library and a lute, his ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... grander than his "body-servant." He had bought him yesterday at quite a low price. The well-grown Samian was scarcely thirty years old; he could read and write and was in a position therefore to instruct the children in these arts; nay, he could even play the lute. His past, to be sure, was not a spotless record, and it was for that reason that he had been sold so cheaply. He had stolen things on several occasions; but the brands and scars which he bore upon his person were hidden by his new chiton and Keraunus felt in himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... doing one's duty does not always make one happy—and she felt the joy of her home-coming was already marred; for, with a person of Audrey's temperament, there is no complete enjoyment if she were not in thorough harmony with everyone. One false note, one 'little rift within the lute,' and the whole melody is spoiled. So Audrey's gaiety seemed all quenched that afternoon, and though her old friend testified the liveliest satisfaction at the sight of her, and Priscilla could not make enough of her, she was conscious that, as far as her own pleasure was ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sweet poetry agree, As they must needs, the sister and the brother, Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other. Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As passing all conceit, needs no defence. Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes; And I in deep delight ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... on their return from the church: "Long live in health the bride and groom! What a beautiful and fortunate marriage! Let the mind be firm and the heart constant. And so we come to the happy day. I would that my words were as sweet as those of a song, and my lute well tuned! A hundred years I would sing new songs. Long live love and marriage!" This other song, from Palermo, a variant of one already published, is also an expression of good wishes for the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... away,[25] the queen bade bring instruments of music, for that all the ladies knew how to dance, as also the young men, and some of them could both play and sing excellent well. Accordingly, by her commandment, Dioneo took a lute and Fiammetta a viol and began softly to sound a dance; whereupon the queen and the other ladies, together with the other two young men, having sent the serving-men to eat, struck up a round and began with a slow pace to dance a brawl; which ended, they fell to singing ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... fancy sorrows Until time brings the substance of despair, And then their griefs are shadows. Give me exile! It brought me love. Ah! days of gentle joy, When pastime only parted us, and he Returned with tales to make our children stare; Or called my lute, while, round my waist entwined, His hand kept chorus to my lay. No more! O, we were happier than the happy birds; And sweeter were our lives than the sweet flowers; The stars were not more tranquil in their course, Yet not more bright! The fountains in their ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... in another lay a heap of plaster-casts, gigantic hands and feet, broken-nosed masks of the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Hercules Farnese, and other foreigners of distinction. Upon the chimney-piece were displayed a pair of foils, a lute, a skull, an antique German drinking-mug, and several very modern empty bottles. In the middle of the room stood two large easels, a divan, a round table, and three or four chairs; while the floor was thickly strewn with empty color-tubes, ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... stand on the lower steps of the Madonna's throne, "exquisite courtiers of the Infant King," as Mrs. Oliphant gracefully calls them. One, myrtle-crowned, is blowing on a pipe, while the other bends gravely over a large lute. ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... silent, chanced to hear A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch'd Even from the blazing chariot of the sun A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, And filled the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... there, and outlook towers; I bred birds and fishes. In my harem there were always good musicians who played dance tunes. When I went out I enjoyed nature or hunted birds and fished. When I came home, I enjoyed playing the lute or reading; I also liked to concoct an elixir of life and to take breathing exercises,[3] because I did not want to die, but wanted one day to lift myself to the skies, like an immortal genius. Suddenly I was drawn back ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... a delaine dress of light and dark blue with a large white lace fichu. Her shoes were of blue cloth to match and had six buttons. She wore white kid gloves and white stockings. Her bonnet was flat with roses at the sides and a cape of blue lute-string. The strings were the same. Wasn't she stylish for a girl who was married ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... emotion. The officer addressed her with kind and respectful inquiries. Those were the first words of her mother tongue she had heard for four weeks. Like the breath of the "sweet south" blowing across the fabled lute, those syllables, speaking of home and friends, relaxed the tension to which her nerves had been so long strung and she wept. Twice she essayed to tell how she happened to be found in such a melancholy situation ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... so low the leaves were mute, And the echoes faltered breathless in your voice's vain pursuit; And there died the distant dalliance of the serenader's lute: And I held you in my bosom as the husk may hold ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... called the Golden Sun, belonging to a Creek on the Main,—a twopenny-halfpenny little thing, 35 tons; ten Spaniards and Indians, and a Negro that was chained down to the deck to amuse the Ship Company with playing on the Guitar (a kind of Lute). However, we found a few ounces of Gold-dust aboard her, worth some sixty pounds sterling. After examining our Prisoners (who gave us much trouble, for we had no Linguist, and 'twas a Word and a Blow in questioning them: that is, the Blow came from us ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... having hardly the courage to assert themselves amid the more pretentious bloom. The sun lay warm and lovingly in this fragrant area of the grand old palace, and the air was very soft and sweet. It was the same scene which had gladdened witching eyes centuries ago, when the notes of the lute mingled with the careless, happy voices of the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Recollection of my Morning's Debate with my Husband, which made me feel sad; and then, Mrs. Mildred, seeminge anxious to make me forget her Unmannerliness, commenced, "Can you paint?"—"Can you sing?"—"Can you play the Lute?"—and, at the last, "What can you do?" I mighte have sayd I coulde comb out my Curls smoother than she coulde hers, but did not. Other Guests came in, and talked so much agaynst Prelacy and the Right divine of Kings that I woulde fain we had remained at Astronomie and Poetry. For Supper there ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... poetry two things are clear. They are mediaeval in location; they are modern in temper. Their geography is yesterday, their spirit is to-day; and so we have the questions and thoughts of our era as themes for Tennyson's voice and lute. His treatment is ancient: his theme is recent. He has given diagnosis and alleviation of present sickness, but hides face and voice ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... daughter-in-law, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not a man living so affectionate to his children as he. He loveth his old wife as if she were a young maid; he persuadeth her to play on the lute, and so with the like gentleness he ordereth his family. Such is the excellence of his temper, that whatsoever happeneth that could not be helped, he loveth, as if nothing could have happened more happily. You would say there was in that place Plato's ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... of gold the sun enweaves With checquered patterns on the floor Of velvet lawns the scythe smoothes o'er: Their waving fans the soft winds spread Each way to cool Queen Summer's head: The woodland dove made music soft, And Eros touched his lute full oft. ...
— Queen Summer - or, The Tourney of the Lily and the Rose • Walter Crane
... Sappho, we had thought, Hearing thy songs so sweetly, deftly wrought, That thou shouldst have an heritage one day Beyond thy father's lands: his lute to play. For not an hour of daylight's joyous round But thou didst fill it full of lovely sound, Just as the nightingale doth scatter pleasure Upon the dark, in glad unstinted measure. Then Death came stalking near thee, timid thing, And thou in sudden ...
— Laments • Jan Kochanowski
... after years of dreadful restaurants gave me especial satisfaction, but alas! there was a flaw in my lute. We had to eat in our living room; and when I said "Mother, one of these days I'm going to move the kitchen to the south and build a real sure-enough dining room in between," she turned upon ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... own painful situation by music, or by reading, or by conversation. Grief, like the dull adder, stops its ear that it may not hear the song of the charmer; and while she sang to him or played to him upon the lute, at that time an instrument still extremely common in England, or read to him from the books which she thought best calculated to attract his attention, she could see by the vacant eye that sometimes filled with tears, and the lips that from time to time murmured a word or two of impatience and ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... well. It came from a famous jeweller's on Nanking Road, and had been designed by an old court poet of long ago. The tiny ivory spokes were fretted like ivy-twigs in the North, but on the leaves of silk was painted a love-story of the South. There was a tea-house, with a maiden playing a lute, and the words of the song, fantastic black ideographs, floated off to the ears of her lover. Foh-Kyung spread out its leaves in the sun, and looked at ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... November, left it about the end of the first week in December, and arrived in Paris on the 16th of December 1765. A sort of apocryphal tradition is said to linger in the island about Rousseau's last evening on the island, how after supper he called for a lute, and sang some passably bad verses. See M. Bougy's J.J. ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... regular way For any leader and regular pay; Who trusted steel, and thought it odd To fear the Devil or honor God. His forte was not in the field alone, He was no common fighter, For in all accomplishments he shone,— At least, in all the lighter. To lance or lute alike au fait, With grasp now firm, now light, He flourished this to knightly lay, And that to lay a knight. Ready in fashion to lead the ton, In the battle-field his men, He danced like a Zephyr, and, harness on, Could walk his mile in ten. And Nature gave him such a frame, His ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... least that the young Galileo would have to be provided with some profession by which he might earn a livelihood. From his father he derived both by inheritance and by precept a keen taste for music, and it appears that he became an excellent performer on the lute. He was also endowed with considerable artistic power, which he cultivated diligently. Indeed, it would seem that for some time the future astronomer entertained the idea of devoting himself to painting as a profession. His father, however, decided that he should study medicine. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... as in other old noble castles the highborn lady sitting among her maidens in the great hall turning the spinning-wheel. No, she played upon the ringing lute, and sang to its tones. Her songs were not always the old Danish ditties, however, but songs in foreign tongues. All was life and hospitality; noble guests came from far and wide; there were sounds of music and the clanging of flagons, so loud that I could not drown them!' said the ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... for what it failed to sound I brake the string, And dashed the sweet lute down, a too much fingered thing, And found a wild new voice,—oh, still, why should ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... which the seven Companies worked together, and the success they attained was, I think, something to be proud of. Sir William Goulding was an excellent Chairman. There was just one little rift in the lute. One of the seven Companies showed a disposition, at times, to play off its own bat, but this was, after all, only a small matter, and the general harmony, cohesion and unanimity that prevailed were admirable, and unquestionably productive of good. We had ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... still crippled—we women—by the long years in which nothing was expected of us but to sit in ivy-mantled casements and work embroidery while our lords went out to fight, or thrummed the lute under ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... replied, "we've got somebody in view that would like to try and fill it. Barzilla Small was in to see me yesterday afternoon and he's sartin that his boy Luther—Lute, everybody calls him—is just the one for the place. He's been to work up in Fall River in a bank, so Barzilla says; that would mean he must have had some experience. Whether he'll do or not I don't know, but he's about the only candidate in sight, these war times. What ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... terrace, turning absently toward the direction whence came the voice. Zanetto with a lute on his shoulder, and dragging his cloak up the steep, enters with a happy ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni
... many English critics appears cold and constrained. So unfaltering a note of admiration sounds gratefully in the ears of Shakespeare's countrymen. Yet on closer investigation there seems a rift within the lute. When one turns to the French versions of Shakespeare, for which the chief of Shakespeare's French encomiasts have made themselves responsible, an Englishman is inclined to moderate his ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... sink, Was caught up into love, and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm. The cup of dole God gave for baptism, I am fain to drink, And praise its sweetness, Sweet, with thee anear. The names of country, heaven, are changed away For where thou art or shalt be, there or here; And this ... this lute and song ... loved yesterday, (The singing angels know) are only dear Because thy name moves right in what ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... large brocaded pattern, in true queenly fashion, and questioned the Minister as to his opinion of the looks of the new Princess. But she gave no point to her words. The scene was, fortunately, a short one, and no sooner had they disappeared than a young man entered. He held a lute in his left hand, and with his right he twanged the strings idly. He was King Cophetua, and many times during rehearsal Alice had warned May that her reading of the character was not right; but May did not seem able to accommodate herself to the author's view of the character, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... while ye sing around me, My poises beat to your fitful tune, And higher thoughts in my breast awaken, But the spell must vanish too soon, too soon. Here while I lie let your echoes linger, And rest awhile on this lute of mine; And though I play with an erring finger, The sounds shall charm if they're caught from thine. And my song shall be rich in melody, Learned from thy singing, oh' ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl
... fair-grown yew tree, for a chosen bow: And, when the pleasant sun is getting low, Again I'll linger in a sloping mead To hear the speckled thrushes, and see feed Our idle sheep. So be thou cheered sweet, And, if thy lute is here, softly intreat My soul to keep ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... managed to open its unlocked door with his free hand, descended a winding stair and came into the upper hall. It was in darkness, but up the wide staircase streamed the perfumed light of many myrtle candles, and with it laughter, and the sound of a man's voice singing to a lute. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... dwelling was "a great dark tower, where," says he, "we had cold cheer, such as herrings and biscuit, for it was Lent." Arriving at Paris, the bishop caused him to be carefully instructed in all the requisite accomplishments of a page,—the French tongue, dancing, fencing, and playing on the lute: and after nine years spent under his protection, Melvil passed into the service of the constable Montmorenci, by whose interest he obtained a pension from the king of France. Whilst in this situation, he was dispatched on a secret mission to Scotland, to learn the real ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... thus, I heard the tinkle of a lute and a voice singing, and though these sounds were dull and muffled, I judged them at no great distance; therefore I began to creep forward, the knife ready in one hand, the lanthorn in the other, ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... and Fidelio. Fidelio strums his lute softly throughout the next conversation, up to the words "and cease ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... is cold, Because of a silent tongue! The lute of faultless mould In silence oft hath hung. The fountain soonest spent Doth babble down the steep; But the stream that ever went Is silent, ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... made room for the carved virgins and saints, the lute-playing angels and nibbling squirrels and twittering birds of Gothic sculpture, I wish to put before the reader in one significant example. The Cathedral of Ferrara is a building which, although finished in the thirteenth century, ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... write a poem about those tadpoles, but Endymion tells us that Louis Untermeyer has already smitten a lute on that topic. We are queasy of trailing such an able poet. Therefore we celebrate these tadpoles in prose. They deserve a prose as lucid, as limpid, as cool and embracing, as the ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... pauses, through the swelling base; And, as each mingling flame increases each, In one united ardour rise to Heaven. Or if you rather choose the rural shade, And find a fane in every sacred grove, There let the shepherd's lute, the virgin's lay, The prompting seraph, and the poet's lyre, Still sing the God of Seasons as they roll. For me, when I forget the darling theme, Whether the blossom blows, the Summer ray Russets ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... Mary is designated 'The Bloody,' we are astonished when we read the authentic descriptions, still extant, of her personal appearance. She was a little, slim, delicate, sickly woman, with hair already turning grey. She played on the lute, and had even given instruction in music; she had a skilful hand; on personal acquaintance she made the impression of goodness and mildness. But yet there was something in her eyes that could even rouse fear; ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... in her net and he is enamoured. ... Then she sends messages to him and continues her crafty arts, lets him understand that she is losing sleep for love of him, is pining for him; maybe she sends him a ring, or a lock of her hair, a paring of her nails, a splinter from her lute, or part of her toothbrush, or a piece of fragrant gum (chewed by her) as a substitute for a kiss, or a note written and folded with her own hands and tied with a string from her lute, with a tearstain ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... thou and I! 'Tis the mad piper, Spring, who is leading; 'Tis the pulse of his piping that throbs through the brain, irresistibly pleading; Full-blossomed, deep-bosomed, fain woman, light-footed, lute-throated and fleet, We have drunk of the wine of this Wanderer's song; let ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... dropped the Colonel's clothes-brush. "Lan' sakes!" he cried, "ef she ain't recommembered." Recovering his gravity and the brush simultaneously, he made Virginia a low bow. "Mornin', Miss Jinny. I sholy is gwinter s'lute you dis day. May de good Lawd make you happy, Miss Jinny, an' ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... (thought I) lie scenes of pleasure, Where the free and blessed dwell, And each moment bears a treasure, Freighted with the lotus-spell, And there floats a liquid measure From the lute of Israfel. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... out that the Lord Giovanni was oftener at the Palace than at the Castle, and during that summer Pesaro was given over to such merrymaking as it had never known before. There was endless lute-thrumming and recitation of verses by a score of parasite poets whom the Lord Giovanni encouraged, posing now as a patron of letters; there were balls and masques and comedies beyond number, and we were as gay as though Italy held ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... musical construction and in their intellectual attitude: in general the northern works are more heroic and the southern more sentimental, though there are exceptions. The most famous northern works of the Mongol epoch are P'i-p'a-chi ("The Story of a Lute"), written about 1356, probably by Kao Ming, and Chao-shih ku-erh-chi ("The Story of the Orphan of Chao"), a work that enthralled Voltaire, who made a paraphrase of it; its author was the otherwise unknown ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... Taliesin tune the lay; Or thou, wild Merlin, with thy song Pour thy ungovern'd soul along; Or those perchance of later age More artful swell their measur'd rage, Sweet bards whose love-taught numbers suit Soft measures and the Lesbian lute; Whether, Iolo, mirtle-crown'd, Thy harp such amorous verse resound As love's and beauty's prize hath won; Or led by Gwilym's plaintive song, I hear him teach his melting tale In whispers to ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... and sing By the ruined castle walls, Where the torrent-foam falls, And long weeds wave: Take thy lute and sing, O'er the grey ancestral grave! Daughter of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... hear, nor to see, a pared away beard, a beaten down, disordered, gutted beard. May the Italian sickness deliver me from this vile joker with a squashed nose, fiery nose, frozen nose, nose without religion, nose dry as a lute table, pale nose, nose without a soul, nose which is nothing but a shadow; nose which sees not, nose wrinkled like the leaf of a vine; nose that I hate, old nose, nose full of mud—dead nose. Where ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... the lute, nor harp of many strings Shall all men praise the Master of all song. Our life is brief, one saith, and art is long; And skilled must be the laureates of kings. Silent, O lips that utter foolish things! Rest, awkward fingers striking all notes wrong! How from your toil shall issue, white and strong, ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... Lute," Forrest began sternly. "Just because I am a decrepit old man, and just because you are eighteen, just eighteen, and happen to be my wife's sister, you needn't presume to put the high and mighty over on me. Don't forget—and I state the fact, disagreeable ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... it's all up with that.' I did not understand him, nor was I able to learn anything about the state of things when I first reached the house of my relatives, for my brother-in-law had been sent into the town as special constable. It was only on his return home, lute in the afternoon, that I heard what had taken place in one hotel at Chemnitz while I had been resting in another inn. Heubner, Bakunin, and the man called Martin, whom I have mentioned already, had, it seemed, arrived before me in a hackney-coach at the gates of Chemnitz. On being asked for their ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... looking at them." So the two climbed the tree and, peering in, heard Shaykh Ibrahim say, "O my lady, I have cast away all gravity mine by the drinking of wine, but 'tis not sweet save with the soft sounds of the lute-strings it combine." "By Allah," replied Anis al-Jalis, "O Shaykh Ibrahim, an we had but some instrument of music our joyance were complete." Hearing this he rose to his feet and the Caliph said to Ja'afar, "I wonder what he is about to do!" and Ja'afar answered, "I know not." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... O Desire, Desire! Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of Love! Make of my heart an Israfel burning above, A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer! Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying—"Awake! awake! Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour With its mountains ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... and to comply with all that they would desire. At the approach of night they all assembled around me, and placed before me a table of fresh and dried fruits, with other delicacies that the tongue cannot describe, and wine; and one began to sing, while another played upon the lute. The wine-cups circulated among us, and joy overcame me to such a degree as to obliterate from my mind every earthly care, and make me exclaim: "This is indeed a delightful life!" I passed a night of such enjoyment ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... city of Anton and sailed out to sea, to the Armenian kingdom of King Sensibri Andronovich. There they cast anchor, and went into the city to follow their business; whilst Bova went on shore, and wandered about, playing on the lute. Meantime the port officers came on board the ship, whom King Sensibri sent to enquire whence the ship had come, who the merchants were, and what was their business. But when they heard Bova Korolevich playing, and saw the beauty of his features, they forgot what they had come ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... {kleios}, glory, or from {kleio}, to celebrate. She is generally represented under the form of a young woman crowned with laurel, holding in her right hand a trumpet, and in her left a book: others describe her with a lute in one hand, and in the other a plectrum, ...
— Roman Antiquities, and Ancient Mythology - For Classical Schools (2nd ed) • Charles K. Dillaway
... greatly astonished her parents by her musical gifts and by her talent as an improvvisatrice. She composed, when only ten years of age, some really excellent canzone and, more than this, she set them to her own tunes for the lute and pipe, and arranged ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... And thou are full of whispers and of shadows. Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell; Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, What the still night suggesteth to the heart. Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth, Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea; Thy face remembered is from other worlds, It has been died for, though I know not when, It has been sung of, though ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... nothing remarkable in this, except that nowadays kings do not wear crowns at night. It occurred to me that there was a masquerade going on in the Tuileries, though I heard no music, except the tinkle of, it might be, a harp, or "the lascivious pleasing of a lute," and I walked along down towards the central pavilion. I was just in time to see two ladies emerge from it and disappear, whispering together, in the shrubbery; the one old, tall, and dark, with the Italian complexion, in a black robe, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... signs, divorced from its original sense, served to represent several words, similar in sound, but differing in meaning in the spoken language. The same group of articulations, Naufir, Nofir, conveyed in Egyptian the concrete idea of a lute and the abstract idea of beauty; the sign expressed at ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... on:—"It doesn't matter. If you had ever done so, I believe you would confirm my experience of the position. If Orpheus had whistled, instead of singing to a lute, Eurydice would have stopped with Pluto, and Orpheus would have cut a very poor figure. I began to perceive that Achilles wasn't going to respond, and I knew the hare wouldn't, all along. So I walked on and got to a wood of oaks with an interesting appearance. The interesting appearance was inviting, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... you often enough that Mr. Lewis hates literary women! I am not goose enough to expect him to sympathize with any intellectual pursuits of mine. No. Fatima in the harem, or Nourmahal thrumming her lute under a palm-tree, is his belle-ideale; failing that, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... shall be red roan, And the lover shall be noble, With an eye that takes the breath. And the lute[316-1] he plays upon Shall strike ladies into trouble, As his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the city. I know no houses that so keep their secrets. In every one, I doubt not, is furniture worthy of the exterior: old paintings of Dutch gentlemen and gentlewomen, a landscape or two, a girl with a lute and a few tavern scenes; old silver windmills; and plate upon plate of serene blue Delft. (You may see what I mean in the Suasso rooms at the Stedelijk Museum.) I have walked and idled in the Keizersgracht ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... solitude. She looked upwards at the starry heaven, but felt no communion with its loveliness. She surveyed the garden of sweets from the terrace, but all appeared to be desolate. Of late, her only companions had been her tears and her lute, whose notes were as plaintive ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... up a lute straitway, Upon the same I strove to play; And sweetly to the same did sing, As made ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... should ever come upon a thin folio entitled "Musick's Monument," (London, 1676,) we advise him to clutch it, retire from the haunts of men, and abandon himself to the delight of reading the Izaak Walton of music. It is a most quaint and curious treatise upon "the Noble Lute, the best of instruments," with a chapter upon "the generous Viol," by Thomas Mace, "one of the clerks of Trinity College in the University of Cambridge." Master Mace deigns not to mention keyed instruments, probably regarding keys as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... that happy valley, Through two luminous windows, saw Spirits moving musically, To a lute's well-tuned law, Round about a throne where, sitting (Porphyrogene) In state his glory well befitting, The ruler ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... beautiful had praise of lute and pen, Her hair was like a summer night, dark and desired of men, Her feet like birds from far away that linger and light in doubt, And her face was like a window where a man's ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... permission to speak to the people by the voice of Aaron; but the poet has no such privilege; nay, his doom is so far capricious, that, though he may be possessed of the primary quality of poetical conception to the highest possible extent, it is but like a lute without its strings, unless he has the subordinate, though equally essential, power of expressing what he feels and conceives, in appropriate and harmonious language. With this power Dryden's poetry was gifted in a degree, surpassing in modulated harmony that ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... draw his volatile substance and his tincture: And let the water in glass E be filter'd, And put into the gripe's egg. Lute him well; And ...
— The Alchemist • Ben Jonson
... physical tenderness, the simple expressions of love, because he had feared they might unduly influence her! He had grown in many ways. She must be careful to reach up to his ideals. That about Flo Hutter's toil-hardened hands! Was that significance somehow connected with the rift in the lute? For Carley admitted to herself that there was something amiss, something incomprehensible, something intangible that obtruded its menace into her dream of future happiness. Still, what had she to fear, so long as she ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... great scriptorium? Was he some 'Frenchman' imported from sunny Champagne, where Thibaut, the mawkish singer was making verses which his people loved to listen to? Did he teach the young novices French as well as writing? Did he touch the lute himself on Feast-days, and charm them with some new lyric of Gasse Brusle, or delight them with one of Rutebeuf's merry ditties? France was all alive with song at this time, and princes were rivals now for poetic ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... process, and the Great-Name Possessor binds the sleeping Kami's hair to the rafters of the house, places a huge rock at the entrance, seizes Susanoo's life-preserving sword and life-preserving bow and arrows as also his sacred lute,* and taking Princess Forward on his back, flees. The lute brushes against a tree, and its sound rouses Susanoo. But before he can disentangle his hair from the rafters, the fugitives reach the confines of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... mysterious loom always with colours sad in part, sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit with retributions called on the other side of the grave offences that walk upon this; and once even the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said—"one of whom I know, and the others too surely I shall know." For already, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... I could hear voices, and the murmurs of the sleeping men and the groans of the wounded. The scene closed. There was space and light, and a gorgeous figure, stiff with the splendour of his robes, talked in a dark garden with his lady. Their voices murmured, a lute was played, some one sang, and through the thread of it all I saw that moment when, packed together on our cart, we hung for an instant on the top of the hill and looked back to a country that had suddenly crackled into flame. There was that terrific crash as of the smashing of a ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... quite alone in the world, might not much weigh on me; but there are others for whose sake I should like to make fortune and preserve station. Many years ago—it was in Germany—I fell in with a German student who was very poor, and who did make money by wandering about the country with lute and song. He has since become a poet of no mean popularity, and he has told me that he is sure he found the secret of that popularity in habitually consulting popular tastes during his roving apprenticeship ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... are handled must be apparent to any careful reader. As the Calender in poetry generally, so even more decidedly in their own department, do these songs mark a distinct advance in formal evolution. Just as they were themselves foreshadowed in the recurrent melody of Wyatt's farewell to his lute— ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... to feign'd testament The seal affixing, that himself might gain, For his own share, the lady of the herd." When vanish'd the two furious shades, on whom Mine eye was held, I turn'd it back to view The other cursed spirits. One I saw In fashion like a lute, had but the groin Been sever'd, where it meets the forked part. Swoln dropsy, disproportioning the limbs With ill-converted moisture, that the paunch Suits not the visage, open'd wide his lips Gasping as in ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... arouse suspicion, which I would have you shun. There are books in the library, for who would read; foils in the garden, balls in the fives-court, for who would breathe themselves before supper; and lastly, there are some fair slaves in the women's chamber, for who would listen to the lute, or kiss soft lips, and not unwilling. I have still many things to do, ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... his best to teach her how wildly well a born New-Yorker can play the lute of emotion. To proclaim now that he was the anonymous husband of this glitterer on the billboard would have been ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... "[Greek: poikilia]," which observe, both in that place and again in the third book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but the idea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and sound—the "ravishing division to the lute," as in Pindar's "[Greek: poikiloi hymnoi]"—runs through the compass of all Greek art-description; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles, you were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by only seeing them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretend to inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that we could learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without the trouble of practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well, without exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation of our studies in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before us is book sufficient; a roguish trick of a page, a sottish mistake ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... hinge, hank, catch, latch, bolt, latchet[obs3], tag; tooth; hook, hook and eye; lock, holdfast[obs3], padlock, rivet; anchor, grappling iron, trennel[obs3], stake, post. cement, glue, gum, paste, size, wafer, solder, lute, putty, birdlime, mortar, stucco, plaster, grout; viscum[obs3]. shackle, rein &c. (means of restraint) 752; prop &c. (support) 215. V. bridge over, span; connect &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Here, with the alteration only of certain names, is the document itself. Mr. Jones, it should be mentioned, is a member of the firm to which the Officer in question (whom we will call Mr. Lute) wishes to return:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... foliage is the foil To golden lamps and oranges. Heap my golden plates with fruit, Golden fruit, fresh-plucked and ripe; Strike the bells and breathe the pipe; Shut out showers from summer hours; Silence that complaining lute; Shut out thinking, shut out pain, From hours that cannot ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... this game which the dolls could vary indefinitely. The dwarfs also gave concerts and taught her to play the lute, the viola, the theorbo, the ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... the same humility, "that if there was any thing within the poor compass of his skill which could gratify Sir John de Walton in any degree, he would but reach his lute, and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... tuned by the guru as the strings of a lute (vina) each different from the others, yet each emitting sounds in harmony with all. Collectively they must form a key-board answering in all its parts to thy lightest touch (the touch of the Master). Thus their minds ...
— Studies in Occultism; A Series of Reprints from the Writings of H. P. Blavatsky • H. P. Blavatsky
... Teian muse, The hero's harp, the lover's lute, Have found the fame your shores refuse; Their place of birth alone is mute To sounds which echo further west Than your ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... In 1599 there appeared a very ambitious work in folio form, so arranged that four persons might sing from it, and bearing the title: "The Psalms of David in Metre, the Plain song being the common Tune, to be sung and played upon the Lute, Orpharion, Citterne, or Bass-viol, severally or together; the singing Part to be either Tenor or Treble to the instrument, according to the Nature of the Voice, or for Four Voices; with Ten Short Tunes in the end, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... happy,—men whose tender pain Was fraught with fervor, as the night with stars. And then I spoke of heroes' battle-scars And lordly souls who rode from land to land To win the love-touch of a lady's hand; And on the strings of thy low-murmuring lute I struck the chords that all ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... much so that, seeing, while crossing the hall, a mandolin lying forgotten on a chair, she told Mary Seyton to take it, to see, she said, if she could recall her old talent. In reality the queen was one of the best musicians of the time, and played admirably, says Brantome, on the lute and viol d'amour, an instrument much resembling ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... thin, Like a scarlet skin On an ivory fruit; And a filigree frost Of frail notes lost From a fairy lute. ...
— Nets to Catch the Wind • Elinor Wylie
... too, has heard thy strains And echo 'midst my native plains Been sooth'd by Pity's lute; There first the wren thy myrtles shed On gentlest Otway's infant head— To him thy cell ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... which one often sees in Rome even now, chiefly in outer reception-halls and ranged in stiff order against the walls. The shutters were drawn near together to keep out the heat and to darken the room a little. She had a lute on her knees, but her hands held a large sheet of music, from which she had been reading over the words of the song before trying it. She did not look up as the door opened and was shut, for she supposed it must be Cucurullo who had ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Long live your Majesty! Shall Alice sing you One of her pleasant songs? Alice, my child, Bring us your lute (ALICE goes). They say the gloom of Saul Was lighten'd ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... friend, asked leave to sing a few verses; and, fixing his keen eyes upon the coquette, he began in tones of lute-like sweetness the following song, entitled 'The Syren with a Heart of Ice.' We have translated it, as nearly as possible, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... exhorting strain, in grandiose style, full of large intervals, was given with a glorious fervor, and no lark ever carolled more blithely or more at ease than her voice as it soared to F in alt! Benedict's English ballad, 'Take this Lute,' she sang with a simplicity and pathos that won the audience completely; and no part seemed more genuine or more expressive than the difficult cadenza ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... youth passed through the door that led to the room beyond, Gian Maria caught for a moment the accents of an exquisite male voice singing a love-song to the accompaniment of a lute. ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... of a rascal he had seen at a fair, who burned henbane and made folks with the toothache breathe in the fumes; and then feigned to draw a worm forth from the aching tooth; but it was no worm at all, but a lute string that he held ready in his hand. There are sad rascals abroad, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... on many occasions. We have likewise made acquaintance with some other individuals, particularly with Mr. St. Pierre, junior, who is a considerable merchant, and consul for Naples. He is a well-bred, sensible young man, speaks English, is an excellent performer on the lute and mandolin, and has a pretty collection of books. In a word, I hope we shall pass the winter agreeably enough, especially if Mr. M—e should hold out; but I am afraid he is too far gone in a consumption to recover. He spent the ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... thirty, had a brood of seven, no money and many debts. There is trouble for you—ye silken, perfumed throng, who nibble cheese-straws, test the hyson when it is red, and discuss the heartrending aspects of the servant-girl problem to the lascivious pleasings of a lute! ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... Reward, or Thanks for their obliging Pains; 'Tis well if they become not Prey: The Whistling Winds add their less artful Strains, And a grave Base the murmuring Fountains play; Nature does all this Harmony bestow, But to our Plants, Arts, Musick too, The Pipe, Theorbo, and Guitar we owe; The Lute it self, which once was Green and Mute: When Orpheus struck th' inspired Lute, The Trees danc'd round, and understood By Sympathy the ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... hall, in conversation varied by chess, dice, and cards, recitals of romance, and music, sometimes performed by the choristers of the Royal chapel, or sometimes by the company themselves, and often by one or other of the two kings, who were both proficients as well with the voice as with the lute and organ. ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... own degree. Then amongst them the cups went about and all sorrow was put to rout and the birds of joyance flapped their wings. This continued for an hour of time whilst the guests sat listening to the performers on the lute and other instruments and after there came forward five damsels other than the first twenty and formed a second and separate set and they showed their art of singing in wondrous mode even as was done by the first troop. Presently on like guise came set after set till the whole twenty had ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... certainly I shall charge to your account, as it melted away. There were olives, beetroots, gourds, onions, and a hundred other dainties. You would also have heard a comedian, or the reading of a poem or a lute-player, or even if you had liked, all three, such was my liberality. But luxurious delicacies and Spanish dancing girls at some other house were more to your taste. I shall have my revenge of you, depend upon it, but I won't say how. Indeed, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... when it was perceived that with difficulty he kept his eyes open; and then seemed to go to rest with no other purpose than the refreshing and enabling him with more vigour and chearfulness to sing his morning hymn, as he then used to do to his lute before he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... filled with scenic and musical effects. For instance one showed the ecstasy of David, dancing before the ark "to the sound of a large lute, a violin, a trombone, but more especially to his own harp." These references to the employment of many instruments in accompanying the voice or the dance make us wonder whether our historical stories of the birth and development of the orchestra are well grounded. But we shall have occasion ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... importance that Jubal invented rude instruments of music, calling them harp and organ; but they were the introduction of all the world's minstrelsy; and as you hear the vibration of a stringed instrument, even after the fingers have been taken away from it, so all music now of lute and drum and cornet is only the long-continued strains of Jubal's harp and Jubal's organ. It seemed to be a matter of very little importance that Tubal Cain learned the uses of copper and iron; but ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... diligently still the singer strums, To drown the horrid sound, with all his thumbs. Gods, what a spectacle! The angels lean Out of high Heaven to view the sorry scene, And Israfel, "whose heart-strings are a lute," Though now compassion makes their music mute, Among the weeping company appears, Pearls in his eyes and cotton in ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... with a feeling of worship, but that soon passed away. I ceased even to respect Sandip; on the contrary, I began to look down upon him. Nevertheless this flesh-and-blood lute of mine, fashioned with my feeling and fancy, found in him a master- player. What though I shrank from his touch, and even came to loathe the lute itself; its music was ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... lurking shadows, dim and mute, Fall vaguely on the dusky river; Vexed breezes play a phantom lute, Athwart the waves that ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... no Tartar maiden That a blackamoor of price Should tune my lute and hold to me My glass of sherbet-ice. Far from these haunts of vices, In my dear countree, we With sweethearts in the even ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... I know that," says Mr. Desmond still full of unholy enjoyment. "I lack 'bright Apollo's lute strung with his hair;' but if you will wait a moment I will run back to Coole and get the ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... shifting sand but upon the granite of recollection. Single, he could go back to his world and pick up the threads again, but not with a wife at his side. Oh, yes; they would be happy at first. Then Elsa would begin to miss the things she had so gloriously thrown away. The rift in the lute; the canker in the rose. They were equally well-born, well-bred; politeness would usurp affection's hold. Could he save her from the day when she would learn Romance had come from within? No. All he could do was to help her find ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... bard ye view In the form of maiden-catcher too; For he no city enters e'er, Without effecting wonders there. However coy may be each maid, However the women seem afraid, Yet all will love-sick be ere long To sound of magic lute ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... cried aloud, "To you it is commanded, O peoples, nations: 'The moment you hear the sound of the trumpet, flute, lute, harp, bagpipe, and all kinds of musical instruments, you shall fall down and worship the golden image. Whoever does not fall down and worship shall be thrown into a burning, fiery furnace.'" So when all the people heard the sound of the trumpet, flute, lute, harp, bagpipe, and all ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... are mute, The bond is rent in twain; You cannot wake the silent lute, Or clasp its links again. Love's toil, I know, is little cost; Love's perjury is light sin; But souls that lose what I have lost, What ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... been paced to the gentle music of the lute and clavichord, a schottische succeeded to the martial ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... what else was objected. But, ah! What mortall wit may dare t' areed Heavens counsels in eternall horrour hid? And Cynthius pulls me by my tender ear Such signes I must observe with wary heed: Wherefore my restlesse Muse at length forbear. Thy silver sounded Lute hang up ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... Japanese tradition, in the fifth year of the Emperor Korei (286 B.C.), the earth opened in the province of Omi, near Kioto, and Lake Biwa, sixty miles long by about eighteen broad, was formed in the shape of a Biwa, or four-stringed lute, from which it takes its name. At the same time, to compensate for the depression of the earth, but at a distance of over three hundred miles from the lake, rose Fuji-Yama, the last eruption of which was in the year 1707. The last great earthquake at Yedo took place about ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... over-filled, where the sun is as a magician for ever changing with a wand of gold all common things to paradise; where every wind shakes out the fragrance of a world of fruit and flower commingled; where, for so little, the lute sounds and the song arises; here, misery looks more sad than it does in sadder climes, where it is like a home-born thing, and not an alien tyrant as it ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... Seeing the Elgin Marbles, On a Picture of Leander, Lamia, and the beautiful Ode on a Grecian Urn. But Keats's art was retrospective and eclectic, the blossom of a double root; and "golden-tongued Romance with serene lute" had her part in him, as well as the classics. In his seventeenth year he {263} had read the Faery Queene, and from Spenser he went on to a study of Chaucer, Shakspere, and Milton. Then he took up Italian and read Ariosto. The influence of these ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... shoulders; her eyes were large, deep and brown, and her skin was exquisitely fine in texture and color; her dress was artistic and well suited to her lithe figure. She held an instrument resembling a lute in her hands, and stopped suddenly when she noticed that ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... bass viol generally hung in a drawing-room for the visitors to play; but the few ladies who used this instrument were thought masculine. The education of girls at this time admitted of scarcely any accomplishment but music: they were taught to read, write, sew, and cook, to play the virginals, lute, and cithern, and to read prick-song at sight,—namely, to sing from the score, without accompaniment. Those who were acquainted with any language beside their own were the few and highly-cultured; and a girl who knew French or Italian was ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... something or other so exquisitely, that it were sin to make him do anything else—it is your jacks-of-all-trades who are masters of none.—But hark to Chaubert's signal. The coxcomb is twangling it on the lute, to the tune of Eveillez-vous, belle endormie.—Come, Master What d'ye call (addressing Peveril),—get ye some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand, as Betterton says in the play; for Chaubert's cookery is like ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a soul full of unused treasures of emotion, and pure, clear depths of passion that as yet slumbered unstirred. If her heart was a lute, its highest and lowest chords had never been sounded hitherto. This also she was aware of, and she knew what their music would be like when ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... Orpheus with his Lute made Trees, And the Mountaine tops that freeze, Bow themselues when he did sing. To his Musicke, Plants and Flowers Euer sprung; as Sunne and Showers, There had made a lasting Spring. Euery thing that heard him play, Euen the Billowes of the Sea, Hung their heads, & then lay by. In ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... still, as the Dormont case and the Ormiston case have shown, coincidences as unlooked for do occur. A fastidious critic has found fault with Brown's flageolet. It is a modest instrument; but what was he to play upon,—a lute, a ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... down from three sides of the room and reflected the pretty women and their gowns, the old silver, the rare glass, and the flowers. They were probably refreshed by the exquisite taste of the little banquet that might recall the first reflection of their youth. Morally there was a rift within the lute among the guests, for Molly betrayed that Adela had got on her nerves. Lady Sophia Snaggs poured easy conversation on the troubled waters, but at last the catastrophe could ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... fallen a sacrifice to a pair of fringed gloves. A sincere heart has not made half so many conquests as an open waistcoat: and I should be glad to see an able head make so good a figure in a woman's company as a pair of red heels. A Grecian hero, when he was asked whether he could play upon the lute, thought he had made a very good reply when he had answered 'No, but I can make a great city of a little one.' Notwithstanding his boasted wisdom, I appeal to the heart of any Toast in town whether she would not think the lutenist preferable to ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... world, and clung to each other more closely than ever, but, after a little, they got used to the change, and learned eagerly how to shoot at a mark and tilt at a ring, or to sing sweet love-songs to the sound of a lute. ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various |
