"Choir" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the church, and looking up, you observe with a sort of horror that the ceiling is of massive granite and flat. The sacristan has a story that when Philip saw this ceiling, which forms the floor of the high choir, he remonstrated against it as too audacious, and insisted on a strong pillar being built to support it. The architect complied, but when Philip came to see the improvement he burst into lamentation, as the enormous column ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... possessing a piece of tapestry with an inscription in Greek letters surrounded by lions "parseme," was much put about till he obtained something to match it, to hang on the opposite side of his choir at Auxerre.[399] And it is known that the monks of St. Florent, at Saumur, wove tapestries about 985, and continued to do so for two centuries. St. Angelme of Norway,[400] Bishop of Auxerre, who died in 840, caused many tapestries to be executed for his church. At Poitiers ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... gone by. The abbess of the Convent of Santa Ines and Maese Perez's daughter were talking in a low voice, half hidden in the shadows of the church choir. The penetrating voice of the bell was summoning the faithful. A very few people were passing through the portico, silent and deserted, this year, and after taking holy water at the door, were choosing seats in a corner of the nave, where a handful of residents ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... from Cambridge, and that day, passing through Huntingdon and Stilton, we rode as far as Peterborough, 25 miles. There I first heard the Cathedral Service. The Choristers made us pay money for coming into the choir with ...
— Weather and Folk Lore of Peterborough and District • Charles Dack
... his last bag of ballast; Puck hid his face in his mother's dress, while she, in the presence of that mighty danger, sang a hymn. Mrs. Parker was one of the singers in the choir of a church at Paris, and her voice had been much admired; but she had never sung before as she sang now. Her voice was sustained instead of drowned by the roar of the sea, and was re-echoed back from the rocky cliff marvelously clear ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... "While the choir sang another hymn, under the direction of the pastor's daughter, who is also the daily teacher of the young, we showed some of our photographs, and never were more grateful for that art. My lady friend sang another solo, and then began an indescribable scene. Chief John was ...
— God's Answers - A Record Of Miss Annie Macpherson's Work at the - Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada • Clara M. S. Lowe
... there was a blaze of brilliancy such as he had beheld in the cathedral in Spain; and all the portraits of the old magistrates and burgomasters became imbued with life, descended from the frames in which they had stood for years, and placed themselves in the choir. The gates and side doors of the church opened, he thought, and in walked all the dead, clothed in the grandest costumes of their times, whilst music floated in the air; and when they had seated themselves in the different pews, a solemn ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... music of the organ rolls forth once more; and, at the far end of the nave, the choir ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... orders, as the most acting executor, was—"What would be the difference in the expense between a public and private funeral?" and was told only a few pounds to the prebendaries, and about ninety pairs of gloves to the choir and attendants; and he then determined that, "as Dr. Johnson had no music in him, he should choose the cheapest manner of interment." And for this reason there was no organ heard, or burial service ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... the fairy numbers Of music fall on the sleeper's ear, When half-awaking from fearful slumbers, He thinks the full choir of heaven is near,— Than came that voice, when, all forsaken. This heart long had sleeping lain, Nor thought its cold pulse would ever waken To such benign, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... gentlemen are rare in England, though it is suspected that one or two may be found among the reviewers on the staff of certain newspapers; otherwise how shall we account for the solitary falsetto voices in the choir of our daily and weekly press, shouting abstinence from the housetops? But with the exception of these few critics every one will find pleasure in this narrative; even in aged men and women enough sex is left to allow them to take an interest in a love story; ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... school to finish his education, and why are you on the lookout already for a boarding-school for the two girls where they will have the best of Christian influences? What is your object in being so particular that the younger boys are regular in their attendance at our surpliced choir?" ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... Sabbath. I was twenty-one that day. Marjie and I sang in the choir, and most of the solo work fell to us. Dave Mead was our tenor, and Bess Anderson at the organ sang alto. Dave was away that day. His girl sweetheart up on Red Range was in her last illness then, and Dave was at her bedside. Poor Dave! he left Springvale ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... many-charioted streets, upon the parks where fashion's progress circles to the 'Io Triumphe' of regardant throngs, even upon the quarters where life knows but one perennial season, that of toil. The air is voiceful; every house which boasts a drawing-room gathers its five o'clock choir; every theatre, every concert-room resounds beneath the summer night; in the halls of Westminster is the culmination of sustained utterance. There, last night, the young member for a Surrey borough made his maiden speech; his ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... notes that he could play were few, though sufficient for the humble needs of the church, but the children had no doubt that he was the finest performer in the world, and watched anxiously for the minute when he should begin sawing away at the strings, and the choir should break (very much through their noses) into the anthem, "I will arise, I will arise and goo tu my va-ther," with ...
— The Drummer's Coat • J. W. Fortescue
... the earlier arms of the See of York were the same as on that of Canterbury, the colours of their fields differed; for in a north window of the choir of York Minster is a shield of arms, bearing the arms of Archbishop Bowett, who held the see from 1407 to 1423, impaled by the pall and pastoral staff, on a field gules. The glass is to all appearance of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... not have expressed himself in the words of the Psalmist, he recognised them. The most reliable tenor in the choir at Haileybury is necessarily ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... round, and, with the proud smile of a victor, he extended his hands in blessing. At the same moment all the bells in the tower rang out joyfully, and from the organ-loft a choir of voices began to sing, somewhat unsteadily at first, but soon firmly ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... Our choir would scarcely be excus'd, Even as a band of raw beginners, But mercy now must be refus'd, To such a ...
— Fugitive Pieces • George Gordon Noel Byron
... aisles, and transversely into three nearly square compartments by clustered piers, supporting two great arches which run up to the roof. The whole of the inner compartment is occupied by a crypt or under church open to the nave, above which is the choir and altar niche, approached by flights of steps in the aisles. This general arrangement is followed more or less closely in the churches at Bittonto, Bari, Altamura, Ruvo, Galatina, Brindisi, and Barletta. The scale of the southern churches is, however, much smaller ...
— The Brochure Series Of Architectural Illustration, Vol 1, No. 2. February 1895. - Byzantine-Romanesque Doorways in Southern Italy • Various
... enraged him. He turned up a crooked street, and stopped before an ancient church, grotesque with broken buttresses, pinnacles, and gargoyles. The portal was wide open, and, as he entered, some scores of school-children burst suddenly into song. It seemed to him an accusation, shouted by a choir of angels. ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... Jerome it was very lovely; and before its homely altar, not homely to him, in the performance of those solemn offices, symbols of heaven's mightiest truths, in the hearing of the organ's harmonies, and the yet more elegant interunion of human voices in the choir, in overlooking the worshipping throng which knelt under the soft, chromatic lights, and in breathing the sacrificial odors of the chancel, he found a deep and solemn joy; and yet I guess the finest thought of his the while was one that came ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... quo' she! Yes, I'm a busy B to-day, Mistress Mapp. Sermon all morning: choir practice at three, a baptism at six. No time for a walk to-day, let alone a bit turn ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... in Saragossa is one of the most ancient in Spain, and bears in its architecture some resemblance to the Moorish mosque that once stood on the same spot. It is a huge square building, dimly lighted by windows set high up in the stupendous roof. The choir is a square set down in the middle—a church within a Cathedral. There are two principal entrances, one on the Plaza de la Seo, where the fountain is, and where, in the sunshine, the philosophers of Saragossa sit ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... his synagogue, but there was no other within such easy walking distance—an important Sabbatic consideration—and besides, the others were reported to be even worse. Dread rumours came of a younger generation that craved almost openly for organs in the synagogue and women's voices in the choir, nay, of even more flagitious spirits—devotional dynamitards—whose dream was a service all English, that could be understood instead of chanted! Dark mutterings against the ancient Rabbis were in the very air of these ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... religious girl; she joined the Rev. Dr. Bellow's church soon after her arrival in Brooklyn, and presently secured a position in the choir of the church. The members of the congregation soon began to take more than a passing interest in her, being attracted more and more by the sweetness of her singing and the saintliness of her beauty and by the circumspection ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... The choir arose to sing, accompanied by the organ, and their voices rolled out under the vaulted aisles of foliage, with that thrilling, far-away effect of the singing voice in the midst of illimitable spaces. This was followed by prayer, and then Mr. Deering, the president, called ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... Church has been "restored" since Mary's day, and there is now no indication of the grave, which, as the present rector courteously informs the Editor, is believed to be beneath the organ, in the north choir aisle. ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... Rome and entered the city in triumph. As he came to St. Peter's he stooped to kiss the steps in memory of the illustrious men that had trodden it before him. The Pope there received him in great ceremony, and the choir chanted, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... church, which stood quite close to the little rectory, he heard the choir singing the Veni Creator, and remembered enough of former visits to church services to know that the sermon was about to begin. Early for dinner, he decided to pass the time listening to what the Bishop might have to say. There were no vacant ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... The choir gave an al fresco concert on the night of the second day of the match in the grass close. The resonance from the surrounding buildings made the songs very effective ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... erect, within it, amid a court of cardinals and diplomats. As for the mass that followed, it had its moments of beauty for the girl's wondering or shrinking curiosity, but also its moments of weariness and disillusion. From the latticed choir-gallery, placed against one of the great piers of the dome, came unaccompanied music—fine, pliant, expressive—like a single voice moving freely in the vast space; and at the High Altar, Cardinals and Bishops crossed and recrossed, knelt ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Silence, ye vocal choir, And thou, mellifluous lute, For man soon breathes his last, And all his hope is past, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... William Bellus had been peculiarly favored. His predecessors had to deal with Perry Thomas, and in spite of his gentle ways and intellectual cast, Perry is active and wiry. He is a blacksmith by trade, and is the leading tenor in the Methodist choir. This makes a combination that for staying powers has few equals. My biggest boy's predecessor had been utterly broken. Even the girls jeered at him until he quit school entirely. But William had another ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... of the Founder. The lower part of the walls was built of this; the upper part was built with stone brought from Clipsham in Rutlandshire in 1477. A third kind, from Weldon in Northamptonshire, was used for the vaulting of the choir and ante-chapel, executed in 1512 and the following years. The north and south porches were vaulted with a magnesian limestone, more yellow in colour, from the Yorkshire ...
— A Short Account of King's College Chapel • Walter Poole Littlechild
... the two instruments. Sometimes, too, when Cousin Tom was not too drowsy after his day and his ale, the three would sing and I would listen; for my Cousin Tom sang a plump bass very well when he was in the mood for it. As for me, I had but a monk's voice, that is very well when all the choir is a-cry together, but not of much use under other circumstances. In this way then I made acquaintance with a number of songs—such as Mr. Wise's "It is not that I love you less" and his duet "Go, perjured man!" ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... assembly composed of two burgesses from each "plantation," [2] elected by the inhabitants. This assembly, the first legislative body that ever sat in America, met on the 30th of July, 1619, in the choir of the rude church at Jamestown. The dignity of the burgesses was preserved, as in the House of Commons, by sitting with their hats on; and after offering prayer, and taking the oath of allegiance and supremacy, they proceeded to ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... had made to her English patron. But she found herself compelled to beg that some other specimen, chosen from among the wonderful wealth of early Christian art that remains at Ravenna, might be substituted for that in the choir of St. Apollinare. She made the attempt to return to the scaffolding by the side of the window, but she found that her strength was unequal to the task. She could not bear to look on the prospect from that window. By agreement with her employer, some further figures from the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... against the pettiness that threatened to overwhelm them, against the all-pervading asceticism of their home, they flung themselves into the difficulties of the musical art, and spent themselves upon it. Melody, harmony, and composition, three daughters of heaven, whose choir was led by an old Catholic faun drunk with music, were to these poor girls the compensation of their trials; they made them, as it were, a rampart against their daily lives. Mozart, Beethoven, Gluck, Paesiello, Cimarosa, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... Jacksonville and he talked for about an hour about pearly gates and the golden streets of Paradise; and there was Mitch lyin' there, pale, his eyes sealed, just asleep, but in such a deep, breathless sleep. And they had the church choir there which sang. And one of the songs they ...
— Mitch Miller • Edgar Lee Masters
... painter—that log cabin crowded with representatives of every state in the Union, in every variety of garb, and of all ages, from the gray-haired backwoodsman to the babe in its mother's arms. No costly organ was here, with its gentle, quiet breathings, or grand and massive harmonies; no trained choir; no consecrated temple, with its Sabbath bell, and spire pointing heavenward; no carpeted aisles and "dim religious light," and sculptured, cushioned pulpit. But I could not doubt the presence of the Spirit. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... Signorelli, and, with the exception of one, from his own designs. This one is the weakest of his roof-paintings in execution, and the composition and actual drawing of the central figures, are the work of Fra Angelico. It represents the "Choir of Martyrs," a group of seven figures. In the centre are seated three Deacons in full canonicals, with Bishops on either side, and below two Saints in plain robes. These last have all Signorelli's characteristics ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... choirs were the best in the old Catholic days, it is equally true, I believe, that our orchestral associations are now the best in Europe. So, at least, the German papers said on the occasion of the recent visit of a north of England choir. But one cannot read Pepys without knowing that the general musical habit is much less ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... In Eden on the humid Flowers, that breathed Their Morning Incense, when all things that breathe From th' Earth's great Altar send up silent Praise To the Creator, and his Nostrils fill With grateful Smell; forth came the human Pair, And join'd their vocal Worship to the Choir Of Creatures wanting Voice— ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... strode he up the choir Where the monks and nuns they stand, Not one of them dared read or sing For fear ...
— The Serpent Knight - and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... be feared that this, rather than the architecture, was the chief idea in the minds of the youths, as a babel of strange sounds fell on their ears, "a still roar like a humming of bees," as it was described by a contemporary, or, as Humfrey said, like the sea in a great hollow cave. A cluster of choir-boys were watching at the door to fall on any one entering with spurs on, to levy their spur money, and one gentleman, whom they had thus attacked, was endeavouring to save his purse by calling on the youngest boy to sing ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... live honestly, without coming to want." He died at Chits on the 25th of November, 1456, and, according to the historian John d'Auton, who had probably lived in the society of Jacques Coeur's children, "he remained interred in the church of the Cordeliers in that island, at the centre of the choir." ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... so; but if she have either sense or ear, nothing would so predispose her to be cross as the squeaking of Mr. Touchett's penny-whistle choir." ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... helpless, the betrayed, the outcast and the dying, who lie uncared for at the mercy of human fiends, and often so near to the temples of God that their agonized appeals for help are drowned by the organ and choir! ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... Domhnullach neo-chosdail O nach coltach e ri cach. 'N uair bhios iadsan ag iarraidh fortain Bidh esan 'n a phrop aig fear cais Ma bha do mhathair 'n a mnaoi choir Cha do ghleidh i 'n leabaidh phosda glan, Cha 'n 'eil cuid agad do Chloinn Domhnuill, 'S Rothach no Rosach am fear. 'N uair a bhuail thu aig an uinneig Cha b' ann a bhuinnigeadh cliu, Dh' iarraidh na druaip bha 's a' bhotul, Mallachd ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... doubtless an assistant to blow the bellows. If either of them should chance to glance down into the body of the church at the moment when the fugitives happened to be making for the chosen spot, all would be lost. For instance, the choir stalls rose in tiers one behind another, and that of course meant that beneath the floor of the rearmost tier there would be a hollow space amply sufficient to conceal a dozen men—if they could but obtain access to it. Then there was the high altar. It was doubtless hollow, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... by his faith discerned; and his only earthly wisdom is to accept the united testimony of the men who have sought these things in the way they were commanded. Of whom no single one has ever said that his obedience or his faith had been vain, or found himself cast out from the choir of the living souls, whether here, or departed, for whom the song ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... in the choir and she had three children," screamed Cap'n Abernethy, "and she limped some. Folks say she had a cork foot. Hey, Simeon, DID she have a ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... of noble aims and self denial. May the rippling music of the Little Miami be to you a friendly voice of comfort; may the golden notes of the thrush and the fragrant perfume of the flowers console you, until you hear the chanting of the angelic choir and breathe the perfume from flowers that never fade ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Guarneri at the present time. Violins of Amati and other makers were, up to this time, obtainable at nominal prices. The number in Italy was far in excess of her requirements, the demand made upon them for choir purposes in former days had ceased, and the number of Violins was thus quite out of proportion to the players. The value of an Amati in England in 1799 and 1804 may be gathered from the following extracts from the day-book of the second William ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... owner and a hundred like him are very still. The vested choir chants prettily. Then the bishop speaks: "O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord,... defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies." "Amen!" say the owners ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... is here," he wrote to the Common Father of the faithful, "a cathedral made of stone; it is large and splendid. The divine service is celebrated in it according to the ceremony of bishops; our priests, our seminarists, as well as ten or twelve choir-boys, are regularly present there. On great festivals, the mass, vespers and evensong are sung to music, with orchestral accompaniment, and our organs mingle their harmonious voices with those of the chanters. There are in the sacristy some very ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... the Indians from other villages came in canoes to Massett, the usual festive custom of "dancing with painted faces, and naked slaves with their bodies blackened," was dispensed with, and in lieu of it the visitors were received by a choir of a hundred Hydahs, children and adults, chanting the anthem, "How beautiful upon the mountains." "The unanimous opinion of all was that the new and Christian welcome was far superior to the ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... pictures which he painted there—as for example the front of the altar of Saint Cecilia and a picture of the Virgin, in Santa Croce, which was and still is (i.e. in 1550) attached to one of the pilasters on the right of the choir." ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... ideas of the nineteenth century in that respect were unknown to him. He had come to conquer, to civilize, to convert (for he was really a devout man from his youth upward); and, as his chaplain takes care to tell us, knew many prayers and psalms of the choir by heart; and the lives of thousands of barbarians, for so he deemed them, were of no account in the balance of his mind, when set against the great objects he had in view. In saying this, I am not apologizing for this cruelty; I am only ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... English, the Duchess of Gordon and her beautiful daughter, Lady Georgiana. Madame Louis Buonaparte, who had been one of Madame Campan's eleves, was the principal Frenchwoman. The piece, Esther, was performed admirably; the singing of the choir of young girls charming, and the petite piece, La Rosiere de Salency, was better still: you know it is a charming thing, and was made so touching as to ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... choir. The sweet voices of the white-robed boys rising along the vaulted roof of the old church melted the hearts of those who, with excuses for their curiosity to their neighbours, ventured to go and hear them. The vicar had a natural talent, ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... a little earlier on Sunday, because I allow Sarah to go home," admitted the old lady. "She is a great hand to attend church, you know, and I believe sings in the choir like a lark. I often hear her practicing down in the kitchen while cooking dinner. But I'd be delighted if you boys could stay and take a bite ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... Randolph of Roanoke had not in him the least infusion of Yankee. Standing erect in the almost vacant space, he uttered the responses in a tone that was in startling contrast to the low mumble of the clergyman's voice, and that rose above the melodious amens of the choir. He took it all in most serious earnest. When the service was over, he said to his companion, after lamenting the hasty and careless manner in which the service had been performed, that he esteemed it an honor to have worshipped God in Westminster ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... Amongst them was Rev. Mr. Fortin, All Saints, now a bishop; Rev. Mr. Matheson, Manitoba College, now bishop and Primate of Canada, who married Miss Fortin, the bishop's sister (I sang at the wedding); Rev. Mr. German, Grace Methodist Church, of whose choir I was a member; the late Colonel William N. Kennedy, of distinguished Nile memory, who was also a member of the choir. The late Mrs. Chambers, formerly of Peterboro', was the organist. I can say with much delight that my acquaintances and ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... fine organ pealed out—and there are few finer organs in England than that of Helstonleigh—the vergers with their silver maces, and the decrepit old bedesmen in their black gowns, led the way to the choir, the long scarlet trains of the judges held up behind: and places ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... tyranny of the leading bass nor the conceit and touchiness that seems inseparable from the tenor voice, since Mr Robins kept a firm and sensible hand on the reins, and drove that generally unmanageable team, a village choir, ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... heart a consuming pyre Of flame, to brighten and refine:— A singer, in the starry choir, That will not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... superior mind What vast resource, what various talents joined! Tempered with social virtue's milder rays, There patriot worth diffused a purer blaze; Formed to command respect, esteem, inspire, Midst statesmen grave, or midst the social choir, With equal skill the sword or pen to wield, In council great, unequaled in the field, Mid glittering courts or rural walks to please, Polite with grandeur, dignified with ease; Before the splendors of thy high renown How fade the glow-worn ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... such music would not have had any ethical significance to him, bad or good. Augustin lived before what we reckon the very beginnings of modern music, with nothing to entice and delight his ears in the choir but the simplest ecclesiastical chant and hymn-tune sung in unison. We are accustomed to an almost over-elaborated art, which, having won powers of expression in all directions, has so squandered them that they are of little value: and we may confidently say that the emotional power of our ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... 1795, the Spanish government, before giving up to France the eastern portion of the island of San Domingo, ordered the removal of the ashes of the great sailor to Havana, a canon substituted some other remains for those of Christopher Columbus, and that the latter were deposited in the choir of the cathedral, to the left of the altar. Thanks to this manoeuvre of the canon, whether dictated by a sentiment of local patriotism or by respect to the last wishes of Columbus who had indicated San Domingo as his chosen place of sepulture, it is not the dust of the illustrious ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... its present condition the general effect of the building is disappointing, although there are many admirable details. The chapter-house and the archway below the church are fine relics of its Norman period. In the choir is the tomb of Bishop Butler, author of the Analogy, for twelve years bishop of this diocese. There is also a tablet to his memory, erected in 1834, with an inscription by Southey. Among the monuments one finds two names which shine, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... of the girls by name,' she said, 'but I have heard of Eloise Smith. She sings in the choir, and is a basket-boarder of ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... passing through, it was always my custom to remove my hat—just as any one would do on entering a church. There that day, as I stood gazing at the glorious sunbeams as they filtered through the great chancel window, I listened to the enchanting music of the feathered choir high overhead, that seemed to be singing to the accompaniment of one of Nature's most powerful organs—the roaring river—that thundered aloud, as, with all its force, it wildly rolled huge boulders ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... I dare affirm, Since genius too has bound and term, There is no bard in all the choir, Not Homer's self, the poet-sire, Wise Milton's odes of pensive pleasure, Or Shakespeare whom no mind can measure, Nor Collins' verse of tender pain, Nor Byron's clarion of disdain, Scott, the delight of generous boys, Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Mrs. Jarvis would see her, and be certain sure to love her. She couldn't help it. And between them they'd spite that nasty Madeline, see if they wouldn't. Horace himself had said he knew his aunt would like to see Beth. He told her that, going home one evening from choir practice. Horace had done that twice, and Frank Harper and Will Drummond were both just wild about it. But of course there was nothing at all between her and Horace, and if Beth minded the tiniest bit she'd never speak to him ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... strength and realistic faculty in bringing before the vulgar eye the unseemly struggle or unspeakable pain. The formal arrangement of the heap of corpses in the centre of the group; the crowded standing of the mothers, as in a choir of sorrow; the actual presence of Herod, to whom some of them appear to be appealing,—all seem to me to mark this intention; and to make the composition only a symbol or shadow of the great deed of massacre, not a realisation of its visible continuance ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... morning, and I have to give up one night a week to choir practice," Thea declared rebelliously, pushing back her plate with an angry determination ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... Sir Maurice Drummond of Concraig, and carried with her the office and lands held by her father. Sir Maurice was the first Drummond who was Steward of Strathearn. Both he and his wife were buried within the choir of the Church of Muthill. It is not to libel human nature to say that the Tullibardine Murrays looked with disfavour upon the passing of the Stewardship to the Drummonds of Concraig. The latter, however, were legally in possession, and ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... river said confidentially to a friend that he was going to launch on the community "a legitimate sensation"—a boys' choir. My plans for getting the poor people to church succeeded. Such a thing as fraternizing the steady goers—goers by habit and heredity—and the unsteady goers—goers by the need of the soul—was impossible. The most surprising thing in these evening meetings ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... and I are climbing up from the great Mosque of the Ommayyades into the Minaret of the Bride, at the hour of 'Asr, or afternoon prayer. As we tread the worn spiral steps in the darkness we hear, far above, the chant of the choir of muezzins, high-pitched, long-drawn, infinitely melancholy, calling the faithful to ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... Rias Richardson lived now; and on that slope and hidden in its forest nook, among the birches and briers, the little schoolhouse where Cynthia had learned to spell; here, where the road made an aisle in the woods, she had met Jethro. The choir of the birds was singing an evening anthem now as then, to the lower notes of Coniston Water, and the moist, hothouse fragrance of the ferns rose from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... sweet singer 'Blue Bird,' who has so often made these columns melodious, that she has escaped the ignominy of being exhibited in Messrs. —— and Co.'s aviary." I should add that this simile of the aviary and its occupants was ominous, for my tuneful choir was relentlessly slaughtered; the bottom of the cage was strewn with feathers! The big dailies collected the criticisms and published them in their own columns with the grim irony of exaggerated head-lines. The book sold tremendously ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Cardena, for the glory of God, and the honour of St. Peter and St. Paul, and of the Cid and other good knights who lay buried there, and for the devotion of the people, to beautify the great Chapel of the said Monastery with a rich choir and stalls, and new altars, and goodly steps to lead up to them. And as they were doing this they found that the tomb of the blessed Cid, if they left it where it was, which was in front of the door of the Sacristy, before the ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... performers, however humble; and has by this means called forth a degree of attention, of familiarity, of practical effort, which makes the art enter in some measure into life, and in that measure, become living. To play an instrument, however humbly, to read at sight, or to sing, if only in a choir, is something wholly different from lounging in a gallery or wandering on a round of cathedrals: it means acquired knowledge, effort, comparison, self-restraint, and all the realities of manipulation; quite apart even from ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... not in any dream selfishly serene. In the choir of the poets there were not wanting tragic voices: voices of pride, voices of ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... choir sing here from the 7th to the 21st of June. Eighty voices. It will be a great treat. Arrange so as to hear something of it. Carl is Secretary of Legation and Charge d'Affaires at Turin. George tills the ground, but not yet his own; ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... youth, in manly beauty, in strength, in race, in courage, in mind—all kneeling side by side, bound together in a common bond of union by the grand historic associations of that noble place— all mingling their voices together with the trebles of the choir and the thunder-music of the organ. This is a spectacle not often equalled; and to take a share in it, as one for whose sake in part it has been established, is a privilege not to be forgotten. ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... occasional passer-by whose quick footfalls rang sharply in the silence. Here and there was an illuminated shop window. The drug store on the opposite corner showed a bright interior, where two small boys devoured ice cream sodas with solemn rapture. Somewhere up a side street a choir was practising a hymn, making ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... something gay and open about this Cathedral. The whole ritual is clear to view; there is a lavish display of scarlet in the choir upholstery; the music is singularly swift and cheerful; the whole tone of the place is bright and joyous. One cannot but realise how perfectly such a worship is adapted to such worshippers. Surely an accomplished ecclesiastical art and insight have been at work here. ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... to our ears, lends itself so readily to a musical setting as the Sapphic; and the many melodies attached to odes in this metre by the monks of the Middle Ages attest its special adaptability to choir-singing. Augustus was highly pleased with the poet's performance, and two years' afterwards he commanded him to celebrate the victory of his step-sons Drusus and Tiberius over the Rhaeti and Vindelici. [37] This circumstance ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... quiet are the woods! The choir of birds that daily ushers in The rosy dawn with bursts of melody, And swells the joyful train that waits upon The footsteps of the sun, is silent now, Dismissed to greenwood bowers. Save happy cheep Of ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... mother's knee, clinging to her dress for support, while her arms hold him firm. A band of infant angels play on the flower-strewn grass in the open space in front. With joined hands they circle about as in the figure of a dance or game. The music for their sport is furnished by a heavenly choir, hovering in the upper air and singing the score from ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... off the smoker, and these ambassadors of fashion as many hotel bus drivers were inviting with importunate hospitality to honour their respective board and bed. There was the shirt-sleeved figure of Jim Ludlow, ticket agent and tenor of the Presbyterian choir. And leaning cross-legged beneath the station eaves, giving the effect of supporting the low roof, were half a dozen slowly masticating, soberly contemplative gentlemen—loose-jointed caryatides, whose lank sculpture forms the ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the churches would give me something, but since this new 'issue' come out, theology and dogology and all such as that, nobody cares to pay any 'tention to me. Think you are crazy now if you say 'amen.' Don't nobody carry on the church now but three people—the preacher, he preaches a sermon; the choir, he sings a song; and another man, he lifts a collection. People go to church all the years now and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Arkansas Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... font, the altar cloth, and the robes of the vested choir he insisted should be immaculate in whiteness. White, the color of the lily, he declared, was the emblem of purity. There were members of his flock so worldly minded as to whisper insinuatingly that white was extremely becoming to Colette King. Many washerwomen had ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... found a kind old farmer who gave me board and lodging for what I could do out of schoolhours on the farm, and here I remained for some years, Then came over me the old longing for music. I had kept the little music I knew during my stay at the farm, for I had led the Sabbath choir and the Sunday-school singing, and had never missed a Sabbath while I was there. But I longed for some knowledge of music. I felt that I could not live without it, and though the kind old farmer offered me good wages if I would remain with him, and a ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... the robust northern style which, to the ears accustomed to simple melody, accompanied by the tum-ti-tum of guitar-notes, that lightest dessert of the musical feast, was as the howling of demons drowning the songs of an angel-choir. Ivan, progressing slowly southward towards the Eternal City, found his name everywhere unknown; so that he was obliged to depend for comfortable rooms and ready service solely on his title. In Rome, to be ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... made it, in the hands of a poet, the glorious epic that France still awaits. But from me they must accept it as one of those sculptured balustrades, carved by a hand of faith, on which the pilgrims lean, in the choir of some glorious church, to think upon the end ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... melodious companies is a dry list of names, in spite of which the dead owners of them are nameless. But the chronicler's description of them may carry some lessons for us, for is not the Church of Christ a choir, chosen to 'shew forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light'? We take a permissible liberty with this fragment, when we use it to point lessons that may help that great band of choristers ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... there is no evil? And when Jupiter, having resolved all matter into himself, shall be alone, other differences being taken away, will there then be no good, because there will be no evil? But is there melody in a choir though none in it sings faultily, and health in the body though no member is sick; and yet cannot virtue have its existence without vice? But as the poison of a serpent or the gall of an hyena is to be mixed with some medicines, was it also of necessity that ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... them, chatting softly. They all remained standing a short time under the great linden, waiting until the bell ceased, until the church-door was opened and the minister appeared with the sacristan and the four choir-boys. Not until then were they allowed to enter ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... The choir loft where father sang comes back to me again; I hear his tenor voice once more the way I heard it when The deacons used to pass the plate, and once again I see The people fumbling for their coins, as glad as they could be To drop their quarters on the plate, ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... driven in between the middle planks; the ordinary question was with four wedges, the extraordinary with eight. At the third wedge Lachaussee said he was ready to speak; so the question was stopped, and he was carried into the choir of the chapel stretched on a mattress, where, in a weak voice—for he could hardly speak—he begged for half an hour to recover himself. We give a verbatim extract from the report of the question and the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... office-bearer, instead of coming in humbly by the door as became a woman. She would sit still ostentatiously until every one had gone, waiting for her husband. She quite led the singing, everybody remarked, paying no more attention to the choir than if it did not exist; and once she had even paused on her way to her seat, and turned down the gas, which was blazing too high, with an air of proprietorship that ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... Minster's outlined mass Rose dim from the morass, And thitherward the stranger took his way. Lo, on a sudden all the Pile is bright! Nave, choir and transept glorified with light, While tongues of fire on coign and carving play! And heavenly odours fair Come streaming with the floods of glory in, And carols float along the happy air, As if the reign of joy did ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... shamed, reproving look. "I would think better of the Intendant." Her gratitude led her to imagine excuses for him. The few words reported to her by Dame Tremblay she repeated with silently moving lips and tender reiteration. They lingered in her ear like the fugue of a strain of music, sung by a choir of angelic spirits. "Those were his very words, dame?" added she again, repeating them—not for inquiry, but ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... large tracts in the reign of Louis XVI. The sale of their woods, the letting of their pastures, of fishing rights, or of the office of wine-taster in grape-growing districts, formed the revenues of the rural community. Its expenses were many and various. It repaired the nave of the church, the choir being kept in order at the cost of the priest. The parsonage and the wall round the churchyard were maintained by the parish. The drawing for the militia was at the expense of the community. So were some of the roads. It paid the schoolmaster ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... to me, "This miserable measure the wretched souls maintain of those who lived without infamy and without praise. Mingled are they with that caitiff choir of the angels, who were not rebels, nor were faithful to God, but were for themselves. The heavens chased them out in order to be not less beautiful, nor doth the depth of Hell receive them, because the damned would have some glory ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... every moment, the state of the cosmos is the expression of a transitory adjustment of contending forces; a scene, of strife, in which all the combatants fall in turn. What is [50] true of each part, is true of the whole. Natural knowledge tends more and more to the conclusion that "all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth" are the transitory forms of parcels of cosmic substance wending along the road of evolution, from nebulous potentiality, through endless growths of sun and planet and satellite; through all varieties of matter; ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... attention of the world to Russia. He was the first of a series of preachers. He was listened to and applauded, but he said nothing new. After him followed the preachers: Gogol, Tolstoi, Goncharov, Tchehov, Turgeniev, Dostojevsky, and many others, like a choir, in which three voices are still the strongest and most expressive: Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostojevsky. ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... false hair and beards, and occasionally also masks. The female parts were played by boys so long as their voice allowed it. Two companies of actors in London consisted entirely of boys, namely, the choir of the Queen's Chapel and that of St. Paul's. Betwixt the acts it was not customary to have music, but in the pieces themselves marches, dances, solo songs, and the like, were introduced on fitting ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... ne'er didst thou, fair mount, when Greece was young, See round thy giant base a brighter choir; Nor e'er did Delphi, when her priestess sung The Pythian hymn with more than mortal fire, Behold a train more fitting to inspire The song of love than Andalusia's maids, Nurst in the glowing lap of soft desire: Ah! that to these were given such peaceful shades As Greece ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Florence, but I now learned from Mr. Ruskin that this was a scandalous waste of charity. I should have gone about with an imprecation on my lips, I should have worn a face three yards long. I had taken great pleasure in certain frescoes by Ghirlandaio in the choir of that very church; but it appeared from one of the little books that these frescoes were as naught. I had much admired Santa Croce and had thought the Duomo a very noble affair; but I had now the most positive assurance I knew nothing about them. After a while, if it was only ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... insistently. For it was not merely remembered, as we remember most things, but vividly and often reproduced, together with the various melodies of the birds I had listened to; a greater and principal voice in that choir, yet in no wise lessening their first value, nor ever ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... and they limped forward up the roofless nave and through the door. She stared at the plain stone altar, at the eastern window, of which part was filled with ancient coloured glass and part with cheap glazed panes; at the oak choir benches, mouldy and broken; at the few wall-slabs and decaying monuments, and at the roof still ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... all silences, where wait Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet! Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate, For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet. No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet, No age-embalmed hour with mummied wing, Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete, ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... different colours and tints, which are kept in separate drawers, marked with numbers as far as seventeen thousand. For a single head done in Mosaic, they asked me fifty zequines. But to return to the church. The altar of St. Peter's choir, notwithstanding all the ornaments which have been lavished upon it, is no more than a heap of puerile finery, better adapted to an Indian pagod, than to a temple built upon the principles of the Greek ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... foot of the mountains, the fugitive herds were grazing; the cranes, flocking back to the pools, renewed the strange grace of their gambols; and the great kingfisher, whose laugh, half in mirth, half in mockery, leads the choir that welcome the morn—which in Europe is night—alighted bold on the roof of the cavern, whose floors were still white with the bones of races, extinct before—so helpless through instincts, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... own letters grew the more earnest the more ironical hers became. He wrote to her about a book he was reading, and when she said she had not seen it, he sent it her; in one of her letters she casually betrayed that she sang contralto in the choir, and then he sent her some new songs, which he had heard in the theatre, and which he had informed himself from a friend were contralto. He was always tending to an expression of the feeling which swayed him; but on ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... had come to an end the stately peace of the place had seemed to sink into his being and become part of himself. The voice of the minister bestowing his blessing, the voices of the white-clothed choir floating up into the vaulted roof, stirred him to a remote pleasure. He liked it, or he knew he would like it when he knew what to do. The filing out of the choristers, the silent final prayer, the soft rustle of people rising gently from their knees, somehow actually moved ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... erect two pulpits in the choir of St. Maria del Fiore, and adorn them with historical figures in basso-relievo of bronze, together with varieties of other embellishments. About this period, the great block of marble, intended for the gigantic statue of Neptune, to be placed near the fountain on the Ducal Piazza, was ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... getting five times that amount—but I can get you a start of sorts, right away. Come around now to the Record office, and I'll introduce you to Dodgson, the editor, a perfectly uninspired person, who ought to have been a grocer's assistant and have sung in a chapel choir. But he has the grace to realise his limitations, and take my advice. It will mean two guineas every now and then for a Page Four article—a thousand ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... Holy Ghost, at Heidelburg, had, for many years, been shared equally by the protestants and Roman catholics in this manner: the protestants performed divine service in the nave or body of the church; and the Roman catholics celebrated mass in the choir. Though this had been the custom time immemorial, the elector Palatinate, at length, took it into his head not to suffer it any longer, declaring, that as Heidelburg was the place of his residence, and the church of the Holy Ghost the cathedral ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... one most awful if offended. Even in 1831 Lowick was at peace, not more agitated by Reform than by the solemn tenor of the Sunday sermon. The congregation had been used to seeing Will at church in former days, and no one took much note of him except the choir, who expected him to make a figure ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... before), blazing with stars (he had never seen illuminating gas). It was under this chandelier that he himself soon found a seat. All the Bible students sat there who could get there, that being the choir of male voices; and before a month passed he had been taken into this choir: for a storm-like bass rolled out of him as easily as thunder out of a June cloud. Thus uneventful flowed the tenor of his student life during those several initiatory weeks: then something occurred that began ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... over her eyes and the weight increased. The incense sickened her and a stray, ragged note from one of the tenors in the choir grated on her ear like the shriek of a slate-pencil. She fidgeted, and raising her hand to her hair touched her forehead, ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... for the story's sake, and then re-reads the book out of pure delight in its beauty. The story is American to the very core.... Mr. Allen stands to-day in the front rank of American novelists. The Choir Invisible will solidify a reputation already established and bring into clear light his rare gifts as an artist. For this latest story is as genuine a work of art as has come from an American hand."—Hamilton Mabie in ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... to approach the effect of any sky that interests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon the united influence of every cloud within its compass: they all move and burn together in a marvelous harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its appointed place, or fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not able to recollect (which in the case of a complicated sky it is impossible you should) precisely the form and position of all the clouds at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will not fit if you draw ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... datos. At that time this village had four hundred families and was divided into four barangais; consequently there were four datos, each one of whom had charge of a hundred inhabitants who are called collectively catongohan. I summoned my four datos and from the choir I showed them the altar; they saw (and they had known it beforehand) that mass could not be celebrated. "Without celebrating mass each day," I said to them, "although I may be unworthy of it, I cannot live, for that is my sustenance which gives me strength to serve you for Christ's sake. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson
... any longer, but the spinster went on calmly: "The tune might just as well have been 'Down by the Old Bull and Bush' then, but it wasn't my fault, because when your hands and arms and feet and eyes and ears are all struggling to keep time with a village choir that varies its pace every few bars, you've got nothing left to release a ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... the champion Subscription List Header. Many had tried to oust her from this enviable position but without success. Near them stood Avery Goodman, the rector, and he was deeply engaged in a flirtation with Miss May Young, one of his choir girls. ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... and children in the choir were seized and tortured to disclose where the treasures of the abbey were concealed, and were also put to death with the prior and sub-prior. Turgar, an acolyte of ten years of age; a remarkably beautiful boy, stood by the side of the sub-prior as he was murdered and fearlessly ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... very early last night; the lights in the chapel of the abbey were still flickering, and the monks were chanting the complines. The mellow music of a drizzle seemed to respond sombrely to the melancholy echo of the choir. About midnight the rain beat heavily on the pine roof of the forest, and the thunder must have struck very near, between me and the monks. But rising very early this morning to commune for the last time ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... cool is the valley now And there, love, will we go For many a choir is singing now Where Love did sometime go. And hear you not the thrushes calling, Calling us away? O cool and pleasant is the valley And ...
— Chamber Music • James Joyce
... its choir assembles, And every nightingale is steeping The trees in his melodious weeping, Till leaf and bloom with ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." How very Christlike was that funeral of the veld. It resembled the Messiah's in that it had no carriages, no horses, no ordained ministers, nor a trained choir singing the remains into their final resting place. The veld funeral party, like the funeral party of the Son of Man, was in mortal fear of the representatives of the law; it, like that party, had not the light of the sun, nor the light of a candle, which charitable friends in our day would usually ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... gallery between the two smaller side portals. One's impression of this great edifice is that of a sense of noble proportions, rather than ornateness, and this is to be considered remarkable when one remembers the different epochs of its construction. That the choir was commenced in 1221 is established by the epitaph of Hugues, prevot of St. Martin's, whose ashes reposed in the church which he built: that the first stone of the nave transepts was laid with ceremony by Marguerite of Constantinople in 1254; that the south portal was of the fifteenth century ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... Confessor became, as it were, the central idea of the whole. Very lavishly did King Henry spend his money over the restored Abbey: the cost was at least half a million, as we should reckon it. His work includes the apse and choir, the two transepts, one arch of the nave, and the chapter-house; Under the Edwards the nave unfolded itself farther west, and the Abbot's House and Jerusalem Chamber were built. Richard II. was very ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... cavernous place, with its choir beneath the dome, I heard low prayers in Latin. Men and women who passed me bowed and crossed themselves ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... It was worthy of the cathedral, and higher praise cannot be given. 'I have blotted out as a thick cloud,' sang the boy soloist in a clear sweet treble, 'I have blotted out thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins.' Then came the triumphant cry of the choir, borne on the rich waves of sound rolling from the organ, 'Return unto me, for I have redeemed thee.' The lofty roof reverberated with the melodious thunder, and the silvery altoes pierced through the great volume of sound like arrows of song. 'Return! Return! Return!' called the choristers ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... with a not uneager anticipation to the fixtures of its calendar. He attended with admirable regularity both morning and evening services, on Sunday, the mid-weekly prayer-meeting, and Friday evening choir practice. For in the course of time he had been won over to join the choir, and modestly discovered to our edification a barytone voice, wholly untrained but not unpleasing. Mrs. Rogers, our organist, averred his superiority to Packy Soule, whom he superseded, and was supported ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... her home from singing school—she warbled like a bird. A sweeter voice than hers for song or speech I never heard. She was soprano in the choir, and I a solemn bass, And when we unisoned our voices filled that holy place; The tenor and the alto never had the slightest chance, For Mary's upper register made every heart-string dance; And, as for me, I shall not brag, and yet I'd have ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... were as pink as the Castilian roses that grew even before the kitchen door and were quivering at the moment under the impassioned carolling of a choir of larks. Her black eyes were full of dancing lights, like the imprisoned sun-flecks under the rose bush, and never had indolent Spanish hands moved ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... Choir Invisible" was primarily a love story, the setting in which its action moved was historical. Apart from the masterly handling of human passion and the harmony of thought and expression with which he has treated the larger and ...
— James Lane Allen: A Sketch of his Life and Work • Macmillan Company
... leading songsters in this choir of the old Barkpeeling is the Purple Finch or Linnet. He sits somewhat apart, usually on a dead hemlock, and warbles most exquisitely. He is one of our finest songsters, and stands at the head of the Finches, as the Hermit at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... lofty aisles pealed forth, night and day, the anthems of the choir, close outside, night and day, rose also, even more surely to God, the sighs of a sorrowful woman and the cries of little children whom all her toil could hardly supply with bread. Because, He hears the feeblest wail of want, though it comes not from a dove or even from a harmless sparrow, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... That those breaths can blow open to Heaven and God! Ah! "Silver Street" leads by a bright, golden road— O! not to the hymns that in harmony flowed— But to those sweet human psalms in the old-fashioned choir, To the girls that sang alto, the girls ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... architectural incongruities which, seen in the broad glare of day, would have offended the eye of taste, were lost in the general grand effect. On the left ran the magnificent pointed windows of the choir, divided by massive buttresses,—the latter ornamented with crocketed pinnacles. On the right, the building had been new-faced, and its original character, in a great measure, destroyed by the tasteless manner in which the repairs had been executed. On this side, ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... there were the archdeacon's two sons,—for the Rev Charles Grantly had come to Plumstead on the occasion. And in the vaulted passage which runs between the deanery and the end of the transept all the chapter, with the choir, the prebendaries, with the fat old chancellor, the precentor, and the minor canons down to the little choristers,—they were all there, and followed in at the transept door, two by two. And in the transept they were joined by another clergyman ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... his frame, renewed In eloquence of attitude, Rose, as it seemed, a shoulder higher; Then swept his kindling glance of fire From startled pew to breathless choir; 10 When suddenly his mantle wide His hands impatient flung aside, And lo! he met their wondering eyes Complete in ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... including the recess, cannot be less than one hundred feet in diameter. Eight or ten feet above and immediately behind the pulpit, is the organ loft, which is sufficiently capacious for an. organ and choir of the largest size. There would appear to be something like design in all this;—here is a church large enough to accomodate thousands, a solid projection of the wall of the Cave to serve as a pulpit, ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt
... of approved English and Latin Hymns, Liturgical Motets and appropriate Devotional Music for the various seasons of the Liturgical Year. Particularly adapted to the requirements of Choir, Schools, Academies, Seminaries, ...
— The St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book • Various
... the credence table destroyed. Under James Archbishop Abbott put the finishing stroke on all attempts at a high ceremonial. The cope was no longer used as a special vestment in the communion. The Primate and his chaplains forbore to bow at the name of Christ. The organ and choir were alike abolished, and the service reduced to a simplicity which would ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... structure, bristling with spiky spires and covered with a scale armour of black pitched shingles. It is certainly of no more recent date than the twelfth century, and possibly of the close of the eleventh. The architecture shows the Byzantine style in the rounded choir and the arched galleries along the sides, the Gothic in the windows and pointed gables, and the horned ornaments on the roof suggest the pagan temples of the ante-Christian period. A more grotesque affair could hardly ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... in one of the side aisles between the second and the third chapel on the left as you enter. In the hollow of a pier both of them crouched, seated on some steps, hidden from the rest of the assembly. Turning their backs to the choir, on raising their eyes they saw the summit of the altar, the crucifix and the stained windows of a lateral chapel. The beautiful old chants wept out their pious melancholy. They were holding hands, the two little pagans, before ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... with the King in the tribune, facing the grand altar and the choir, with the exception of the days of high ceremony, when their chairs were placed below upon velvet carpets fringed with gold. These days were marked by the name ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... this time on in many ways the most prominent characteristic of Judaism. The prevailingly prominent liturgical element that characterizes the concluding psalms of the Psalter suggest their original adaptation to the song services of the temple. Under the reign of Simon the temple choir was probably extended and greater prominence given to this form of the temple service. The peace and prosperity in the days of Simon gave the opportunity and the incentive to put in final form the earlier collections of psalms and probably to add the introduction ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... to make preparations for his departure. He got measured for a burial-suit, he drew up his will, he picked out a nice lot in the cemetery and had it fenced in, he joined the church and selected six of the deacons as his pall-bearers; he also requested the choir to sing at the funeral, and he got them to run over a favorite hymn of his to see how it would sound. Then he got Toombs, the undertaker, to knock together a burial-casket with silver-plated handles, and cushions inside, and he instructed the undertaker to use his best hearse, and to buy sixty ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... the church, and not to allow anybody to take anything from it. His Excellency, however, took two pieces of it, of which he kept one, and sent the other to Duke Sigismund of Austria, and there was a great deal of talk about the stone, which was suspended in the choir, where it still is, and a great many people came ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... besides meat.' They then went to bed; but the king watched all night in prayer. When day dawned the king went to mass; then to table, and from thence to the Thing. The weather was such as Gudbrand desired. Now the Bishop stood up in his choir-robes, with bishop's coif on his head, and bishop's crosier in his hand. He spoke to the Bonders of the true faith, told the many wonderful acts of God, and concluded his ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... The walls are entire, the roof is of wood, and some of the rafter work is in fair preservation. It is in this building that the remains of Rosamond are supposed to have been deposited, when they were removed from the choir of the church, by the order of Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1191. On the north wall is painted a pretended copy of her epitaph in Latin. Many stone coffins have at various times been found ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... Committee evidently intended to begin and end with music. What particular solo they expect me to perform I am somewhat uncertain. But the truth is you have already had a part of the music and you will have the rest when I am done. For my part is only that of the leader in the old Puritan choir—to take up the tuning fork and pitch the key; and I do this when I say that we are assembled for the two hundred and seventy-third time [laughter] to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock. If any one ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... driver can stop the engine at any moment that he pleases, but he can only please to do so at certain points which have been fixed for him by others, or in the case of unexpected obstructions which force him to please to do so. His pleasure is not spontaneous; there is an unseen choir of influences around him, which make it impossible for him to act in any other way than one. It is known beforehand how much strength must be given to these influences, just as it is known beforehand how much coal and water are necessary for the vapour-engine ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... clearly specified, and hazarded the experiment of rhyming 'cook's son' with 'Duke's son,' which in less fervent times might have provoked the criticism of the captious. It became the fashion in college to chant this martial ode whenever Hyacinth was seen approaching. It was thundered out by a choir who marched in step up and down his staircase. Bars of it were softly hummed in his ear while he tried to note the important truths which the lecturers impressed upon their classes. One night five musicians ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... our attention. There is not a sound in nature so cheering and animating as the song of the purple martin, and none so well calculated to drive away melancholy. Though not one of the earliest voices to be heard, the chorus is perceptibly more loud and effective when this bird has united with the choir. ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey |
