"Miserere" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... by the year. Twice a week he came and went through his whole repertoire, and lately, out of sympathy for me, he would play the Miserere of the Trovatore, [Footnote: Miserere of the Trovatore. Trovatore is an opera by Verdi.] which was his show piece, twice over. He stood there in the middle of the street looking steadfastly up at my windows while he played, and when he had finished he would take off his hat with an "Addio, Signor!" [Footnote: ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... into it nearly four hundred years ago. The finger of Providence still points to it amid wreck and ruin and smoldering ashes as the place where a teeming city with every mark of a splendid civilization shall be the pride of our Western shores. Her wailing Miserere shall be turned ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... or too slow, and to correct their emphasis. And since it was hot, the little Erard piano was carried each day out into the mission garden. There, in the cloisters among the oleanders, in the presence of the tall yellow hills and the blue triangle of sea, the "Miserere" was slowly learned. The Mexicans and Indians gathered, swarthy and black-haired, around the tinkling instrument that Felipe played; and presiding over them were young Gaston and the pale padre, walking up and down the paths, beating time, or singing ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... his eyes, but a voice ringing on the air made him open them again. The voice was strangely like his own, yet purified and sweet with sincerity and goodness. It was singing the "Miserere," and the words beat him backward to the ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... season of all seasons for devotion to the Sacred Heart, and our Convent was palpitating with the joy of its spiritual duties, the many offices, the masses for the repose of the souls in Purgatory, the preparations for Tenebrae, with the chanting of the Miserere, and for Holy Saturday and Easter Day, with the singing of the Gloria and the return ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... but cannot color. They give us some fair landscapes made up of form and effect; they can compass a cavernous bit of Rembrandt, a curtain of fog or shower, or a staircase of wood and rock climbing into the distance, just as they can sometimes faintly depict the infinite chiaroscuro of the Miserere in St. Peter's; but the monochrome, in music as in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... that jutted over the cove where a spring bubbled from the crag, and made a ribbon of water. Here is the place, on this sheet. Over there, are the fir trees. Very soon I heard a rich voice chanting a solemn strain from Palestrinas' Miserere; the very music I had listened to in the Sistine Chapel, a few months before; and peeping from my sheltered nook, I saw a man clad in monkish garb stoop to drink from the spring. He sat a while, with his ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... repentant, Magdalen, prodigal son, "a sadder and a wiser man" [Coleridge]. V. repent, be sorry for; be penitent &c. adj.; rue; regret &c. 833; think better of; recant &c. 607; knock under &c. (submit) 725; plead guilty; sing miserere[Lat], sing de profundis[Lat]; cry peccavi; own oneself in the wrong; acknowledge, confess &c, (disclose) 529; humble oneself; beg pardon &c. (apologize) 952; turn over a new leaf, put on the new man, turn from sin; reclaim; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of the "Apollo" thrill through me, and the "Laocoon" and the proud heads of Antinous, and the pictures which are what our imaginations demand for Raphael and Leonardo and Michel Angelo, how I stood in the flood of the "Miserere," which was and was not what I knew it must be, how I plucked roses from the graves of Shelley and Keats, and led a Roman life for a winter, not for myself only, but ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... paenitentiae [Lat.], stool of repentance, cuttystool^. penitent, repentant, Magdalen, prodigal son, a sadder and a wiser man [Coleridge]. V. repent, be sorry for; be penitent &c adj.; rue; regret &c 833; think better of; recant &c 607; knock under &c (submit) 725; plead guilty; sing miserere [Lat.], sing de profundis [Lat.]; cry peccavi; own oneself in the wrong; acknowledge, confess &c, (disclose) 529; humble oneself; beg pardon &c (apologize) 952; turn over a new leaf, put on the new ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... benevolent though unknown individual,—but the feeling of grief, of perfect, unmingled sorrow, so powerfully represented, came to the heart like an echo of its own emotion, and carried it away with irresistible influence. Travellers have described the same feeling while listening to the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel, at Rome. Canova could not have chiseled the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... to a work of art? Then those glaciers of Switzerland, that grand, unapproachable mixture of beauty and sublimity in her mountains!—what would it be to one who could see it? Then what were all those harmonies of which she read,—masses, fugues, symphonies? Oh, could she once hear the Miserere of Mozart, just to know what music was like! And the cathedrals, what were they? How wonderful they must be, with their forests of arches, many-colored as autumn-woods with painted glass, and the chants and anthems rolling down their long aisles! On all ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... sound will rise, how wild and dreary, When the death-angel touches those swift keys What loud lament and dismal Miserere Will mingle with their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the traveler had given up the ghost several minutes before. Then the company sang a miserere and went home ...
— Fables For The Times • H. W. Phillips
... is; and when I reflect on what this tremendous, this inscrutable Being has done for me and my sinful race, so beautifully shown forth in both our creeds, what do I know? but that I am a poor miserable worm, crushed before the moth, whose only song should be the miserere, whose only prayer 'God be merciful to ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Damer, his sculptor friend, and of her drawing with very great expression. He was not so complimentary of her music some years before, when he tells of being invited to Lady Lucan's to hear her daughters sing Jomelli's "Miserere," set for two voices: "It lasted for two hours, and instead of being pathetic was eminently dull, until at last I rejoiced when 'the two women had ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the first time. He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to the plaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds and the muffled sound of tramping feet in the street below for it was about six in the evening, and New York was going home from work. He had a bright fire and the added cheer of a couple ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to nought the other's strength." What other could I answer save "I come?" I said it, somewhat with that colour ting'd Which ofttimes pardon meriteth for man. Meanwhile traverse along the hill there came, A little way before us, some who sang The "Miserere" in responsive Strains. When they perceiv'd that through my body I Gave way not for the rays to pass, their song Straight to a long and hoarse exclaim they chang'd; And two of them, in guise of messengers, Ran on to meet us, and inquiring ask'd: Of your condition we would ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... almost a continuous line of cafes, where the idle Venetians of the middle classes lounge, and read empty journals; in its center the Austrian bands[47] play during the time of vespers, their martial music jarring with the organ notes—the march drowning the miserere, and the sullen crowd thickening round them—a crowd, which, if it had its will, would stiletto every soldier that pipes to it. And in the recesses of the porches, all day long, knots of men of the lowest classes, unemployed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... ego cognosco me graui[ter] peccasse. Et libenter volo emdare [per] gr[atiam] tu Miserere mei [pro]pter amar passion tu. D[omin]e i[hes]u [christ]e. Redemisti nos in sangue tuo. Laus sit tibi [pro] ...
— A Ryght Profytable Treatyse Compendiously Drawen Out Of Many and Dyvers Wrytynges Of Holy Men • Thomas Betson
... persons claiming the benefit of clergy were obliged to read a verse in a Latin manuscript psalter: this saving them from the gallows, was termed their neck verse: it was the first verse of the fiftyfirst psalm, Miserere mei,&c. ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... noble order of the Garter. Garter-King-at-Arms likewise presides over all heraldic ceremonies of the Court. His crown of gold is formed with oak leaves, one shorter than the other, springing from a circlet of gold, having engraved upon it the words "MISERERE MEI DEUS." His tabard, as principal herald, is of crimson velvet, splendidly embroidered with the ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... vainly flows Contrition's tear: Earth, hide them, and thou, Sea, Which round the lone isle, where their bones repose, Dost sound for ever, their sad requiem be, In fancy's ear, at pensive evening's close, Still murmuring{b} MISERERE, DOMINE. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... me, und we vill try something you know vell. I shall then be able to judge both of your execution und your tone. There iss de chord. Ah! now you are ready? All right. Shall we try de 'Miserere' from 'Il Trovatore?' I see you ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond
... rent for a three-room tenement, with one room almost dark and one quite windowless, as he had had to pay, in London, for the comfortable floor which they had occupied in Soho, but food cost twice as much, he woefully declared—and played the "Miserere" on his flute. He would not go to Karrosch, or any of the large, important orchestras; none of the small ones wished a flutist. He learned to loathe the mere word "phonograph"—in so many places did it form a clock-work substitute to do the work he ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... wandered through the church. Prayer of Moses, Miserere, De Profundis, the Voice of One crying in the Wilderness, a Song in the Night, the darkness of desolation rifted only by the cry for deliverance, tragic human experience, exhausted human hope, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the nineteenth century. Descriptions of it will often be met with in old volumes of travel. Thus, I find a traveler through Spain in 1786 describing how, at Barcelona, he was present when, in Lent, at a Miserere in the Convent Church of San Felipe Neri on Friday evening the doors were shut, the lights put out, and in perfect darkness all bared their backs and applied the discipline, singing while they scourged themselves, ever louder and harsher and with ever greater vehemence until in twenty ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... multitude. It was filled with laudations of the inquisition, and with blasphemous revilings against the condemned prisoners. Then the sentences were read to the individual victims. Then the clergy chanted the fifty-first psalm, the whole vast throng uniting in one tremendous miserere. If a priest happened to be among the culprits, he was now stripped of the canonicals which he had hitherto worn; while his hands, lips, and shaven crown were scraped with a bit of glass, by which process the oil ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... sorrow, so powerfully represented, came to the heart like an echo of its own emotion and carried it away with irresistible influence. Travelers have described the same feeling while listening to the "Miserere" in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. Canova could not have chiselled the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... her own party, for whom she had done so much. Even at Tours and Orleans, so far as appears, there was no subscription—to speak in modern terms,—no cry among the burghers to gather their crowns for her redemption—not a word, not an effort, only a barefooted procession, a mass, a Miserere, which had no issue. France stood silent to see what would come of it; and her scholars and divines swarmed towards Rouen to make sure that nothing but harm should come of it to the ignorant country ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... charnel city than it is in the tomb itself! Adrian rode on at a brisker pace, and came at length before a stately church; its doors were wide open, and he saw within a company of monks (the church had no other worshippers, and they were masked) gathered round the altar, and chanting the Miserere Domine;—the ministers of God, in a city hitherto boasting the devoutest population in Italy, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Verdun; and over Europe, mortals are going in for afternoon sermon. But at Paris, all steeples are clangouring not for sermon; the alarm-gun booming from minute to minute; Champ-de-Mars and Fatherland's Altar boiling with desperate terror-courage: what a miserere going up to Heaven from this once Capital of the Most Christian King! The Legislative sits in alternate awe and effervescence; Vergniaud proposing that Twelve shall go and dig personally on Montmartre; which is decreed ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... arquebuse, which shattered his reins. "Jesus, my God," he cried, "I am dead!" He then took his sword by the handle, and kissed the cross-hilt of it as the sign of the cross, saying aloud as he did so, "Have pity on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy" (Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam); thereupon he became incontinently quite pale, and all but fell; but he still had heart enough to grasp the pommel of the saddle, and remained in that condition until a young gentleman, his own house-steward, helped ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... called upon for a song, with his eyes fast stuck in his head, & as well as the Canary he had swallowed would give him leave, struck up a Carol, which Christmas Day had taught him for the nonce; & was followed by the latter, who gave "Miserere" in fine style, hitting off the mumping notes & lengthened drawl of Old Mortification ...
— A Masque of Days - From the Last Essays of Elia: Newly Dressed & Decorated • Walter Crane
... monks and nuns; ancestral tombs thrilling with prophetic powers; colourless passion, dignified by the high-sounding title of renunciation, and set to the accompaniment of tolling bells; a ceaseless whining of the 'Miserere'; how distasteful all that has become to me since then!" And—of Fouque's romances—"But our age turns away from all fairy pictures, no matter how beautiful. . . . This reactionary tendency, this continual praise of the nobility, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... dismal paths where the night wind sighed a miserere in the cedars, and things of the dark scurried away with furtive noises, or flapped ill-omened black wings overhead. In a corner shaded by cypresses was the Hynds vault, a venerable affair with a slate roof. Outside, in an inclosed space were ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... to put on sackcloth and ashes this day. I am indulged so far as to appear in my own seat. Peccavi, pater, miserere mei. My book will be ready in a fortnight. If you have any subscribers, return them by Connell. The Lord stand with the righteous; amen, ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... not have told whether he played a drinking-song or a Miserere. With her, as with many, the quiet rhythm of the music stimulated thought, and gradually the perplexity cleared from her mind. Stephen La Mothe was not a fool, that counted for much. He was honest, that counted for much more. The King was notoriously ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Ruiz, the faithful servant, stole from the shadows, while Ruiz tried to reconnoitre and spy out where Manrico was hidden. The Countess was worn with fear and trouble. While they stood there, outside the prison, the "Miserere" was dolorously ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... with procession and devout prayers of the prior, and the convent gave me an orison to bless me with, and to write the first word in my forehead, the which prayer is this, 'Jhesu Christe, Fili Dei vivi, miserere mihi peccatori.' And the prior taught me to say this prayer when any spirit, good or evil, appeared unto me, or when I heard any noise that I should be afraid of." When left in the cave, William fell ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... vaulted ceiling, the other end being attached to a windlass, by turning which he could be hoisted, into the air, and dropped again, either slowly or with a jerk, as ordered by the judge. The suspension generally lasted during the recital of a Pater Noster, an Ave Maria, or a Miserere; if the accused persisted in his denial, it was doubled. This second degree, the last of the ordinary torture, was put in practice when the crime appeared reasonably probable ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... talent; and by degrees, when he is older and more solid, he will no doubt improve, though he must first change considerably." When Vogler came back he entered the Church, was immediately appointed Court Chaplain, and composed a Miserere which all the world declares to be detestable, being full of false harmony. Hearing; that it was not much commended, he went to the Elector and complained that the orchestra played badly on purpose to vex and annoy him; in short, he knew so well how to make his game (entering into so many ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... all sad with lonely wind and rain, Went sobbing by, repeating o'er and o'er The miserere, desolate and drear, Which every human heart must sometime hear. Pain is but little varied. Its refrain, Whate'er the words are, is for aye the same. The third day brought a change, for with it came Not only sunny smiles to Nature's face, But Roy, our Roy came back to ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... point, to deliver in their corn; much of it in sheaf, so that we have to thrash it in the market-place, in the streets that are wide: and thus in Prag is heard the sound of flails, among the Militia-drums and so many other noises. With the great church-organs growling; and the bass and treble MISERERE of the poor superstitious People rising, to St. Vitus and others. In fact, it is a general Dance of St. Vitus,—except that of the flails, and Militia-men working at the ramparts,—mostly not leading any-whither." ["LETTER from a Citizen of Prag," date, 21st Sept. (in Helden-Geschichte, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... are (1) indications of a gallery over the S. porch (intended to be used by choristers on Palm Sunday); (2) holy water stoup within S. door; (3) curious 13th-cent. stone reading-desk or pulpit in S. wall; (4) "Miserere" seats in the choir, with their quaint carvings (attributed to the 14th cent.); (5) Jacobean oak pulpit; (6) Norm. font; (7) sanctus bell-cot; (8) fine 15th-cent. tomb (with French epitaph) of "Rycharde Persyvale"; (9) piscina in S. wall. There is an altar-tomb ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... The Miserere of the manicurist. Peewee, the Titian-haired Aphrodite of the Thousand Nails has been inveigled into submitting her lipstick ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... symbol] "Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi dona nobis pacem. Agnus Dei, miserere nobis."[46] ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... one of the judges of Joan of Arc, his epitaph, Millin, his account of a crime, screened under the privilege of St. Romain, Milner, Rev. Dr., his description of a monumental effigy in Rouen cathedral, Mint, at Rouen, Miserere, sculpture upon, in Beverley Minster, Missal from Jumieges, in the library, at Rouen, Missals, merit attached to writing, in early times, Mont aux Malades, near Rouen, site of a ducal palace, Mont Ste. Catherine, fort upon, priory, fortress probably ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... their ensign in war; thus it is that the Ottoman ordinances are, I believe, to this day dated from "the imperial stirrup," and the display of horsetails at the gate of the palace is the Ottoman signal of war. Thus too, as the Catholic ritual measures intervals by "a Miserere," and St Ignatius in his Exercises by "a Pater Noster," so the Turcomans and the Usbeks speak familiarly of the time of a gallop. But as to houses, on the other hand, the Tartars contemptuously called them the sepulchres of the living, and, when abroad, could hardly be persuaded to ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... mercy upon us miserable sinners; who neglect to repent of our past sins, and commit every day many to be repented of." [Miserere, misericordiae Mater, nobis miseris peccatoribus, qui retroacta peccata poenitere negligimus, ac multa ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler |
