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Cadence   Listen
noun
Cadence  n.  
1.
The act or state of declining or sinking. (Obs.) "Now was the sun in western cadence low."
2.
A fall of the voice in reading or speaking, especially at the end of a sentence.
3.
A rhythmical modulation of the voice or of any sound; as, music of bells in cadence sweet. "Blustering winds, which all night long Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull Seafaring men o'erwatched." "The accents... were in passion's tenderest cadence."
4.
Rhythmical flow of language, in prose or verse. "Golden cadence of poesy." "If in any composition much attention was paid to the flow of the rhythm, it was said (at least in the 14th and 15th centuries) to be "prosed in faire cadence.""
5.
(Her.) See Cadency.
6.
(Man.) Harmony and proportion in motions, as of a well-managed horse.
7.
(Mil.) A uniform time and place in marching.
8.
(Mus.)
(a)
The close or fall of a strain; the point of rest, commonly reached by the immediate succession of the tonic to the dominant chord.
(b)
A cadenza, or closing embellishment; a pause before the end of a strain, which the performer may fill with a flight of fancy.
Imperfect cadence. (Mus.) See under Imperfect.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cadence" Quotes from Famous Books



... airy music was heard in the front parlor, followed by the rhythmical cadence of light feet and the rustle of silks like a breeze through ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... that followed, the leader's sword still remained uplifted untrembling in the air. Across the narrow gorge, from the wooded sides of the opposite mountains, came, with mocking cadence, the echo of the last words of the invitation, clear and distinct, as if spoken again by some one concealed in the further forest. A deep frown darkened the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... felt his way to it, not quite sure, yet, of its place by the window. He sat down in front of it, and pressed the stiff old pedals. His careful fingers found a chord, and the yellow notes responded with their sweet, thin cadence—the vox humana stop was out. He pulled, by chance, the diapason, and filled the room with deep, shaken notes. Half frightened at the magic possibilities, he slipped from the chair and ran out into the young May night, to whisper to it something of the love and wonder that ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price

... seemed to promise best, and so he set about practicing upon it. At first the meter gave him great difficulty; he could not subdue his strong passion and his wild tropes to the even tenor of the decasyllabic cadence. Then followed his decision to publish his play piecemeal in the Thalia,—an unfortunate decision as it proved. His hope was to profit betimes by what his critics might say. He was in a mood of boundless docility and boundless confidence in the public. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... engraved, one his thought leaves enshrined; With a golden-sweet cadence another's entwined Makes for ever all those who shall hear it his friends. Though he died, on the canvas lives Raphael's mind; And from death's darkest doom till this world of ours ends, The mother-clasped infant his ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... shall sabre Gleam around his crest; Fought his fight; fulfilled his labour; Stilled his manly breast. All unheard sweet Nature's cadence, Trump of fame and voice of maidens, Now he ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... sweet perfumes; And there, under a drooping vakul-tree, A bower of roses and sweet jasmine vines, Within a couch, without a banquet spread, While near a fountain with its falling spray Ruffled the surface of a shining pool, Whose liquid cadence mingled with the songs Of many birds concealed among ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles

... How sweet in flowings The repeated cadence is! Though you sang a hundred poems, Still the best one would be this. I can hear it 'Twixt my spirit And the earth-noise intervene,— "Sweetest eyes ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... up, the shutters opened, and her own voice in conversation with some person who answered from below. This is not "Much ado about nothing"; I could not be mistaken in her voice, and such tones, so soft, so insinuating; and, to say the truth, the accents from below were in passion's tenderest cadence too,—but of the sense I can say nothing. I raised the sash of my own window that I might hear something more than the mere murmur of this Spanish rendezvous; but, though I used every precaution, the noise alarmed ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... What a pity, sure! It war a plumb mistake, Copenny," plained an elder man, whose rifle had not been fired. There was a regretful cadence in his voice akin to tears, and he held his long, ragged red beard in one hand as he peered down ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... seemed ready to collapse. The flush of anger and excitement left her face; a white, desolate look came in its stead. Her eyes grew wide and she blinked her lashes with an awed uncertainty that boded ill for the stability of her adventure. An owl hooted in mournful cadence close by and she felt that her hair was going straight on end. The tense fingers of one hand gripped the handle of the travelling-bag while the other went ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... apostrophas, and so miss the accent: let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified; but, for the elegancy, facility, and golden cadence of poesy, caret. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why, indeed, Naso but for smelling out the odoriferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, ...
— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... this world of ours rejoices In those ancient singing voices, And our hearts beat high and quick, To the cadence of old Tiber Murmuring praise of roistering Liber And of ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... of laws which shall be subject to no essential metamorphosis. So long as we laugh when we are joyful, and weep when we are sick and sorry; so long as we flush with anger, or grow pale with fear, so long shall we thrill to a golden sunset, the cadence of an air, or the ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... she spoke the charming slightly strange English he best knew her by he seemed to feel her as a creature, among all the millions, with a language quite to herself, the real monopoly of a special shade of speech, beautifully easy for her, yet of a colour and a cadence that were both inimitable and matters of accident. She came back to these things after they had shaken down in the inn-parlour and knew, as it were, what was to become of them; it was inevitable that ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... was beginning. Church bells were ringing as they ring at Naples—a great crash, followed by a rapid succession of quivering little shakes, then the crash again. Hawkers were crying fruit and vegetables and fish in rhythmic cadence; ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... fair could I impart," &c., it is most exact measure, and yet, let them both be sung before a real critic, one above the biases of prejudice, but a thorough judge of nature,—how flat and spiritless will the last appear, how trite, and lamely methodical, compared with the wild warbling cadence, the heart-moving melody of the first!—This is particularly the case with all those airs which end with a hypermetrical syllable. There is a degree of wild irregularity in many of the compositions and fragments which are daily sung to them by my compeers, the common people—a ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... These corruptions I have often silently rectified; for the history of our language, and the true force of our words, can only be preserved, by keeping the text of authors free from adulteration. Others, and those very frequent, smoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure; on these I have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed, or a particle inserted or omitted, I have sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that some liberties may be easily ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... no leisure for loitering for on hearing the cadence of the chimes Jerry ejaculated ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett

... cadence, while the thousands of beholders watched and listened enthralled, the Furies walked round the theatre and sang ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... was a hard struggle. To see her beautiful, animated face—her light, agile form—to feel her little hand—to hear the musical cadence of her unequalled voice, and yet to repress all undue emotion. By Jove! I tell you what it is, it isn't every fellow who could have held out ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... before a huge pine log was placed in position, the machinery of the mill was set in motion, and the circular saw began to eat its way through the log, with a loud whirr which resounded throughout the vicinity of the mill. The sound rose and fell in a sort of rhythmic cadence, which, heard from where we sat, was not unpleasing, and not loud enough to prevent conversation. When the saw started on its second journey through the log, Julius observed, in a lugubrious tone, and with ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various

... the silence—came the welcome, thrilling cadence of the horse's hoofs—the steady thunder of a horse hard-ridden but not foundered. The sun went down and blackness supervened, but the sound increased, as one lone rider raced with ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... the jowari is ground by women, who, kneeling before them, rub the grain down to flour with a smaller stone, which they hold with both hands at once. Thus rubbing and grinding away, swaying monotonously to and fro, they cheer the time by singing and droning in cadence to ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... Raffaelle painted. The prettiest feet pointed for the dance, the slimmest waists encircled in the waltz, stimulated the gaze of the most indifferent person present. The murmur of sweet voices, the rustle of gowns, the cadence of the dance, the whir of the waltz harmoniously accompanied the music. A fairy's wand seemed to have commanded this dazzling revelry, this melody of perfumes, these iridescent lights glittering from crystal ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... weak with recent illness, Wolfe reclined among his officers, and, in a low tone, blending with the rippling of the river, recited several stanzas of the recent poem, Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.' Perhaps the shadow of his approaching fate stole upon his mind, as in mournful cadence he whispered ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats

... silver world to look out upon—a wealth of quivering silver over the breast of the waters, and a deeper, richer gray on cliffs and roof tops. Out of this silver world came the sound of waters, lapping in soft cadence against the pier; the rise and fall of sails, stirring in the night wind; the tread of human footsteps moving in slow, measured beat, in unison with the rhythm of the waters. Just when the stars were scattering their gold on ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... When fervour's expected, Keep cool and collected, Or never attempt AGITATO. But, of course, when his tongue is of leather, And his lips appear pasted together, And his sensitive palate as dry as a crust is, A tenor can't do himself justice. Now observe - (SINGS A CADENCE) - It's no use - I can't ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... grew sober again when Bert said with a pensive cadence: "Well, I tell you, those were days of hard work; but many's the time I've looked back at 'em these last three years, wishin' they'd never ended an' ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland

... put it differently," she said, still with that gentle cadence which ameliorated the bitterness of her tone. "Girls who have brothers seldom fall into Sellers' clutches. You see, he is a last resort. He does not demand references, and he poses ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... did not feel called upon to lay down the conduct of guerilla warfare. This dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed stranger was his first intimate enemy. He spoke, allowing for a clipped cadence that recalled to Copper vague memories of Umballa, in precisely the same offensive accent that the young squire of Wilmington had used fifteen years ago when he caught and kicked Alf Copper, a rabbit in each pocket, out of the ditches of Cuckmere. The enemy ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... the poop, listened to the soft voices, rising and falling, in a melancholy cadence; sometimes the woman cried out as if in anger or in pain. He would stop short. The sound of a deep sigh would float up to him on the stillness of the night. Attentive stars surrounded the wandering brig and on all sides their ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... may recognise in the old woman's song portions of an ancient ditty that used to be chanted in a wailing cadence in several parts of Scotland. I suspect the song as a whole is lost—the more to be regretted for its sweet simplicity and melodious wail (so far as judged in the fragments), which in a modern song would be viewed as weakness or affectation. Indeed, the modes of thought and feeling that ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton

... can one toil at the great task with this hurry and tumult of birds just outside the open window? I hear the Thrush, and the Blackbird, that romantic liar; then the delicate cadence, the wiry descending scale of the Willow-wren, or the Blackcap's stave of mellow music. All these are familiar—but what is that unknown voice, that thrilling note? I hurry out; the voice flees and I follow; and when I return and sit down again to my task, the Yellowhammer trills ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... came to him the cadence of the river and the forests. There was silence of human voice ashore, but under him he heard the lapping murmur of water as it rustled under the stern and side of the bateau, and from the deep timber came the never-ceasing whisper of the spruce and cedar tops, ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... song, your Honor," continued Pothier, waving one hand in cadence to a ditty in praise of wine, which a loud voice was heard singing in the Chateau, accompanied by a rousing chorus which startled the very pigeons on the roof and chimney-stacks. Colonel Philibert recognized the song as one he had heard in the Quartier Latin, during his ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... Russia in dealing with Eastern questions. For the rest, the poem is distinguished by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at times to the sublimest raptures, and closing on the half-pathetic cadence of that well-known Chorus, "The world's great age begins anew." Of dramatic interest it has but little; nor is the play, as finished, equal to the promise held forth by the superb fragment of its so-called Prologue. (Forman, ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... would be lectures on the English tongue, essays on the nature, original, usage, authorities, and differences of words, or the propriety, parity, and cadence of style, and of the politeness and manner in writing; reflections upon irregular usages, and corrections of erroneous customs in words; and, in short, everything that would appear necessary to the bringing our English tongue to a due ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe

... grand old Celtic tongue. Moore is the greatest of Ireland's song-writers, and one of the world's greatest. As a poet few have equaled him in the power to write poetry which charms the ear by its delightful cadence. His lines display an exquisite harmony, and are perfectly adapted to the thoughts which they express and inspire. His grave is in England, where he spent the later years of his life, and where he died in 1852. In 1896, the Moore Memorial Committee of Dublin erected ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools

... among whom I grew up, at the fishery or in the hayfield, talked with Bunyan's magic. But I do assert that they had something of the accent; enough to be like, in a child's mind, the fishermen and labourers among whom Christ found his first disciples. They had the large simplicity of speech, the cadence, the accent. But let me turn to Ireland, where, though not directly derived from our English Bible, a similar scriptural accent survives among the peasantry and is, I hope, ineradicable. I choose two sentences ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... soft the music of those village bells, Falling at intervals upon the ear In cadence sweet; now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louder still, Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on! With easy force it opens all the cells ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... in six months, my dog shall howl by note. I laugh at those who, when the stage they tread, Neglect the heart, to compliment the head; With strict propriety their cares confined To weigh out words, while passion halts behind: To syllable-dissectors they appeal, Allow them accent, cadence,—fools may feel; 960 But, spite of all the criticising elves, Those who would make us feel, must feel themselves. His eyes, in gloomy socket taught to roll, Proclaim'd the sullen 'habit of his soul:' Heavy and phlegmatic he trod the stage, Too proud for tenderness, too dull for ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... could see the color rising in her face and the shimmer of delight in her eyes. She laid her hand on his tense, throbbing arm. "I see," she said, a sweet cadence in her voice. "I've had all my scare for nothing. Oh, Alfred, I've been nigh crazy. I doubted you. All the talk about your wife's wonderful luck went clean against my better judgment. I kept telling myself ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... In soft cadence they heard, as from the opposite side of the gulch, the tramping of feet. Swinging along in the dusk the men came, shadowy, unhalting, and homeward bound, like so many tired hounds returning after the day's hunt. Their ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton

... are taught to march to the cadence of his own war-songs—which, though lacking the fire of Tyrtaeus or Koerner, are not ill-suited to arouse patriotic sentiment. Take these lines as ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... it was an invasion from the East. Instead of the sharp, broken cries of the dealers on Saturday night, the shuffle of innumerable feet, the murmur of innumerable voices in a familiar tongue, there was a silence broken only by strange guttural sounds dropping into a sing-song cadence, the language of the East. Chinamen stood on guard at every stall, slant-eyed and yellow, clothed in the cheap slops of Sydney, their impassive features carved in fantastic ugliness, surveying the scene with inscrutable eyes that had opened ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... a great deal to the part of the weak King with the evident object of making his helplessness pathetic. He gives Henry, too, his sweetest phrases, and when he makes him talk of bewailing Gloster's case "with sad unhelpful tears" we catch the very cadence of Shakespeare's voice. But he does not confine his emendations to the speeches of one personage: the sorrows of the lovers interest him as their affection interested him in the "First Part of Henry VI.," and the farewell words of Queen Margaret to Suffolk are especially ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... clansmen raise Their voices in their chieftain's praise. Each boatman, bending to his oar, With measured sweep the burthen bore, In such wild cadence, as the breeze Makes through December's leafless trees. The chorus first could Allen know, "Roderigh Vich Alpine, ho! ieroe!" And near, and nearer, as they rowed, Distinct the martial ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... Anderson's experiments in form are interesting to study. Compare the prosiness of his verse with his efforts to use poetic cadence in The Triumph of the Egg. Does it suggest to you the possibility of developing a form intermediate ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... lo, the wonted thrill, Of joy in sorrowing cadence dies: Alas! the minstrel's hand is chill, And ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich

... ought to prevent his uniting within single book-covers productions that had so much of their essential spirit in common. Unlike the Chinese, we do not read by sight only, and there is in the story such richness, freshness, and variety of cadence, as appeal to the ear also. Prose may be the lowest order of rhythmic composition, but we know it is capable of such purity, sweetness, strength, and elasticity, as entitle it to a place as a sister art with poetry. Milton, however, although he wrote the noblest of English ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... Julia, with a merry laugh, so musical in its intonations that the rough sailors who heard its sweet cadence could not resist the contagion, and a bright smile lit up each weather-beaten countenance within the sound ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various

... air below, which had all day been increasing in closeness, was now almost stifling, but our men lost no courage. Some sang as they worked, and the cadence of the voices, mingling with the roar of waters, sounded ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... melody which chooses, rejects, and orders words for the satisfaction that a cunningly varied return of sound can give to the ear. Some critics have amused themselves with the hope that here, in the laws and practices regulating the audible cadence of words, may be found the first principles of style, the form which fashions the matter, the apprenticeship to beauty which alone can make an art of truth. And it may be admitted that verse, owning, as it does, a professed ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh

... hands correctly in every dance. There is an idea to be put across in every step from your entrance—your first greeting to your audience—through the measured cadence of your dance steps, to the final exit—your appeal for approval. While you acquire the necessary dance steps to make you a perfect dancer, also learn the hand and arm movements that complement your steps and perfect the picture into ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... the fox-glove, the wild-brier rose, the budding birch, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of gray plovers (p. 101) in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... front narrow? its general an amateur? They were to fight at last, and how should a mongrel horde of barbarians, but half their number, stand firm against the impetus of such a shock. A moment's hush; then measured voices rose in calm cadence—the voices of the tribunes administering the military oath to each cohort, "Faithful to the senate, obedient to your imperator." What Roman could doubt that the voice of victory ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion, and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every moment. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes—ah! so like our mother's—averted from us ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... quiet figure on the bed. She could not even tell if he had heard, yet perhaps he might, and so she gathered them, a little string of wondrous pearls, and let them fall with soft and gentle cadence from ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)

... cadence of the measure the sound was broken capriciously, the book had been thrown down, and the singer herself stood balancing in the doorway between the rooms, a hand on either side,—still lightly trilling her scales, smiling, beaming, blue-eyed, rosy. The sunbeam ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... unfailing sweetness of numbers which probably as much as anything set the Faery Queen at once above all contemporary poetry. The English language is really a musical one, and say what people will, the English ear is very susceptible to the infinite delicacy and suggestiveness of musical rhythm and cadence. Spenser found the secret of it. The art has had many and consummate masters since, as different in their melody as in their thoughts from Spenser. And others at the time, Shakespere pre-eminently, heard, only a little later, the same grandeur, and the same subtle beauty in the sounds ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... heaven and all things of heaven have relation to one God, angelic speech is such that by a certain unison flowing from the unison of heaven it closes in a single cadence - a proof that it is impossible for the angels to think otherwise than of one God; for ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg

... of the clash and din of arms you will catch ever and anon the sound of the up-lifting cadence of some grand old Scottish Psalm tune, bringing comfort, and courage, and clam,—and then the call of the Pipes, inspiring war-worn troops to accomplish impossible tasks, such as the feats which have made the Gordon ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... her gentle little laugh floating with so musical a cadence athwart the waters that he found himself regretting such a sweet voice should be kept from the world by the unappreciative walls of a convent,—"Captain Roland, I was never more awake than I am at this moment. Life has somehow become ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr

... was bored with his work, which happened often; Shakespeare, whenever he was lazy, which was not seldom. Beethoven, we now begin to see, could be very earnestly professional; and as for Milton—consider this end of the last speech of Manoah, in Samson Agonistes, where we expect a simple cadence:— ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock

... has finished his prayer or exhortation, he says, "I have done," upon which there is a general exclamation in unison. With these religious services, probably derived from the white men, the tribes above-mentioned mingle some of their old Indian ceremonials, such as dancing to the cadence of a song or ballad, which is generally done in a large lodge provided for the purpose. Besides Sundays, they likewise observe the cardinal holidays of ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving

... to rise. One woman's voice first breathed it; other voices mingled with hers till they were all singing. It was a simple, swaying melody in glad cadence. The tree boughs rocked with it on the lessening wind of the summer night, till, with the cumulative force of rising feeling, it seemed to expand and soar, like incense from a swinging censer, and, high and ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... dramatic, and lyrical forms, because he sought to kindle a harmony in thoughts divested of shape and action, and he forbore to invent any regular plan of rhythm which would include, under determinate forms, the varied pauses of his style. Cicero sought to imitate the cadence of his periods, but with little success. Lord Bacon was a poet. [Footnote: See the Filum Labyrinthi, and the Essay on Death particularly.] His language has a sweet and majestic rhythm, which satisfies the sense, no less than the almost superhuman wisdom of his philosophy satisfies the intellect; ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... referring only to the lower strata of society. The better classes, even, retain a fondness for their mother-tongue which years of residence in Paris will not obliterate. In their very French, they still retain the inflections, the tones of the South,—a measured cadence in the phrase, which the Parisian uniformly styles gasconner. They feel ill at ease in what they call the cold-mannered speech of the Franchiman. In the words of one of their poets, Mistral, who has proved that he was no less a master of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... other, looking often upon me. At length one of them called out in a clear, polite, smooth dialect, not unlike in sound to the Italian: and therefore I returned an answer in that language, hoping at least that the cadence might be more agreeable to his ears. Although neither of us understood the other, yet my meaning was easily known, for the people saw the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift

... lease. Nothing like having things in leases. The business instinct—what? Put it in black and white, says I. 'La Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca, of the Palazzo Sebastiani, via Quattro Fontane, Rome, party of the second part.' A beau vers, is n't it? The lilt, the swelling cadence, the rich rhyme, the hidden alliterations,—and then the sensitive, haunting pathos, the eternal verities adumbrated by its symbolism. I 've stood upon Achilles' tomb, and heard Troy doubted. Time—that monster-mother, who brings forth her children ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland

... Guizot, suddenly there arose from the room beneath, oh, such sounds! It was Prince Albert, dear Prince Albert, playing on the organ; and with such master skill, as it appeared to me, modulating so learnedly, winding through every kind of bass and chord, till he wound up with the most perfect cadence, and then off again, louder and then softer. No tune, as I was too distant to perceive the execution or small touches so I only heard the harmony, but I never listened with much more pleasure to any music. I ventured at dinner to ask him what I had heard. 'Oh! my organ, a new possession of mine. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... sadness, and in the evening a band of these hired performers were exerting all the animating powers of song and dance to amuse her. But while the lofty saloon resounded with their warblings, and the light sound of feet upon its marble pavement kept time to the cadence of the song, poor Inez, with her face buried in the silken couch on which she reclined, was only rendered more wretched by ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... he coaxed. "Soon be home! At-a-baby—yo-yo-yo!" He kept in cadence with his pony's gallop, and it seemed to him that she responded with a further burst of speed. He looked back again. Certainly he was increasing the distance between himself and his pursuers! They appeared a greater distance from him than when they had started. Now ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker

... lose sight of nature and probability, as it obliges heroes, princes, kings, and queens, to express themselves in a pompous strain in their familiar conversation, which it would be ridiculous to attempt in real life. The giving utterance to the most impetuous passions in an uniform cadence, and by hemistichs and rhymes, would undoubtedly be tedious and offensive to the ear, if the charms of poetry, the elegance of expression, and the spirit of the sentiments, and perhaps, more than all of ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... require a rich verbal memory from which to select the symbols best fitted to call up images in the reader's mind, and we also require the delicate selective instinct to guide us in the choice and arrangement of those symbols, so that the rhythm and cadence may agreeably attune the mind, rendering it receptive to the impressions meant to be communicated. A copious verbal memory, like a copious memory of facts, is only one source of power, and without the high controlling faculty of the artist may lead to diffusive indecision. Just as ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... it?" The undertaker gave an affirmative nod. Mr. Miller looked appealingly toward the distinguished orator, and then Colonel Ingersoll advanced to the side of the grave, made a motion denoting a desire for silence, and, in a voice of exquisite cadence, delivered one of his ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... repeated with horror, with the cadence and the southern, rather Ukrainian accent which particularly in women gives to emotional speech the effect of singing. 'It is a life! Ah, my God, my God! what does it mean? Oh, my ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... in the starlit dusk, when the little, leaping flame of his night fire flung ruddy shadows that danced in giant mimicry in the cavernous arches of the pines; when the faint tinkle of the belled pack-horse rang a faery cadence in the distance; then there was no such thing as loneliness in his big, outdoor world. Rather, he was content in a solid way. An inner glow of satisfaction because of work well done, a sense of well-being, founded upon perfect physical health and ease, kept ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... the fox flattered the crow when he told him he had a sweet voice? Yet one of the most musical sounds in nature proceeds from the crow. All the crow tribe, from the blue jay up, are capable of certain low ventriloquial notes that have peculiar cadence and charm. I often hear the crow indulging in his in winter, and am reminded of the sound of the dulcimer. The bird stretches up and exerts himself like a cock in the act of crowing, and gives forth a peculiarly clear, vitreous sound that ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... in a beautiful cadence as she concluded, and she held out her hands as in supplication. I am always sensitive to female influences. Besides, what would Jorrocks' ghost be to this? Could anything be in better taste? Would I not be exposing myself to the chance of injuring my nervous system by interviews ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various

... other's breast, And all our joys and sorrows are confest As though our lips did love's fond tale repeat. Ah! then thine eyes send forth, mine eyes to greet, Glances in which thy whole soul is exprest, Then, like some song-bird flutt'ring in its nest, I hear thy heart in pulsing cadence beat. ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)

... manner of proportion to the distance of time between him and them. The verses of bishop Hall are in general extremely musical and flowing, and are greatly preferable to Dr. Donne's, as being of a much smoother cadence; neither shall we find him deficient, if compared with his successor, in point of thought and wit; but he exceeds him with respect to his characters, which are more numerous, and wrought up with greater ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... child's heart almost stopped beating. If only she could see her father coming! She had never heard any sound just like that; it was not savage, nor very loud, but somehow it seemed to carry a kind of horror on its floating cadence. It reminded her, very faintly, of the howling of some dogs that she had heard in the Settlement. She was not afraid of dogs. But she knew there were no dogs ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts

... and when they had died away, the tingling echo of the prolonged knell was scarcely audible. Ere yet that last distant tingling had finally subsided into silence, it seemed as if it again was awakened; and Everard could hardly judge at first whether a new echo had taken up the falling cadence, or whether some other and separate sound was disturbing anew the silence to which the deep knell had, as its voice ceased, consigned the ancient mansion and ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... it would be awkward and out of order," she says in a slow, melodious voice that has a peculiar lingering cadence. "But he is most imperious," and her smile dazzles them. "And you must pardon me for allowing myself to be persuaded. It was so ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... shall return chastier of the foe, To the freed kingdoms of my native land! Then shall our song with loftier cadence flow, Boasting the deeds of thy heroic hand! Scorn not, meanwhile, the feeble lines which thus Thy future glory and success foretell. Live, prince beloved! be brave, be prosperous; Conquer, howe'er opposed,—and fare ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... plunging down precipitous slopes, past brawling brooks and silent pools all red and gold with sunset, past oak and ash and thorn on and on, with ever those thudding footfalls close behind. And, as we ran, it seemed to me that our feet beat out a kind of cadence—his heavy ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... can hardly read a paper in the Rambler or Idler, and, I will add, the Adventurer, without deriving from it some improvement, either moral or intellectual, or both. The structure and cadence of Johnson's sentences is certainly monotonous; but I seldom read half a page without being struck by the depth of his thought, the accuracy and minuteness of his observation, and the astonishing extent of his ...
— Advice to a Young Man upon First Going to Oxford - In Ten Letters, From an Uncle to His Nephew • Edward Berens

... The near scene In naked, and severe simplicity Made contrast with the universe. A pine Rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response at each pause, In most familiar cadence, with the howl, The thunder, and the hiss of homeless streams, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... the regular whistling sounds of his plane, while from the locksmith's quarters came a clatter of hammers struck in cadence. ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... stand with the customary folding of the arms before a regimental line of countenances so black that I can hardly tell whether the men stand steadily or not; black is every hand which moves in ready cadence as I vociferate, "Battalion! Shoulder arms!" nor is it till the line of white officers moves forward, as parade is dismissed, that I am reminded that my own face is not the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... application. He then began to sing, performing a series of cantabile movements in the most ludicrous manner possible; sometimes chanting a Miserere or an Ave, then breaking into some wild northern ballad or roundelay of unintelligible import. It was in the midst of a cadence which he was terminating with great earnestness and effect that the first deep rumble, the result of Simon's appeal to the truth and justice of their cause, interrupted Dick's vocal dispositions for a while; but when the second concussion took place, shaking the very stones in their sockets ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... gazes with delight on the tranquil and gracefully curved strand, stretching three or four miles on to Bray, which fringes that charming inlet known as Killiney Bay; its waves sending upwards, in measured cadence, their soft, distinct, suggestive murmurs, whilst they spend themselves on the shore of the ever new, ever delightful, ever enchanting Vale of Shangannah, immortalized by our Irish poet, Denis Florence M'Carthy. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... which had in them a certain element of mystery, as have all things which reach only one sense. They were in their humble way the voices of the unseen, and as he listened they seemed to take on a rhythmic cadence. Presently the drone of multifold vibrations sounded in his ears with even rise and fall, like the mighty breathing of Nature herself. The sun was low, and the sky was full of violet clouds. Barney could see outlined ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... tide of somewhat irregular harmony. Isaac did not know the words as well as I did, so I lent him my hymn-book; one result of which was, that the print being small, and the sense of a hymn being in his view a far more important matter than the sound of it, he preached rather than sang—in an unequal cadence which was perturbing to my more musical ear—the ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... take fire, upon the least appearance of provocation; which temper he strives to subdue, with the utmost violence upon himself: so that his breast has been seen to heave, and his eyes to sparkle with rage, in those very moments when his words, and the cadence of his voice, were in the humblest and softest manner: perhaps that force upon his nature may cause that insatiable love of revenge, which his detractors lay to his charge, who consequently reckon dissimulation among his chief perfections. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... laughter, rarer than song; for women as a rule laugh too loudly, and the sound of their merriment partakes more of the nature of a goose's cackle than any other sort of natural melody. But this large, soft and silvery, was like a delicately subdued cadence played on a magic flute in the distance, and suggested nothing but sweetness; and at the sound of it Gervase started violently and turned sharply round upon his friend Murray with a look of wonderment ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... or read aloud. The sentence or period was considered more rhythmically than logically, and subdivided in speech into rhythmical parts called commas and cola. The end of the sentence was to be marked not by a printer's sign, but by the falling cadence of the rhythm itself. Furthermore, great care should be taken to avoid hiatus between words, as when the first word ends and the word following begins with a vowel. But the glory of style to the classical rhetorician lay in its use of ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... They laid hands upon Tarzan and bore him forth, and as they chanted they kept time with their crooked bodies, swaying to and fro to the rhythm of their song of blood and death. Behind them came La, swaying too; but not in unison with the chanted cadence. White and drawn was the face of the High Priestess—white and drawn with unrequited love and hideous terror of the moments to come. Yet stern in her resolve was La. The infidel should die! The scorner of her love should pay the price ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... note like that instrument, without stopping to breathe. It went on and on like a Bach fugue, winding and whining its way, turning the corners of the lines of the catch without a break. The effect was soon visible in the emotional crowd: feet began to move in a regular cadence and voices to join in, with spurts of ejaculation; and soon, with an air of martyrdom, the members began to leave their seats and pass before the table and deposit their contributions. It was a cent contribution, and we found it very difficult, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... least likely to be spiritually creative. It is true that we find a number of poems addressed by poets to their wives. But these are more likely to be the contented purring of one who writes by a cozy fireside, than the passionate cadence of one whose genius has been fanned to flame. One finds but a single champion of the married state considered abstractly. This is Alfred Austin, in whose poem, The Poet and the Muse, his genius explains to the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... meeting with Beatrice. No one who saw his slouching stride and sunken head could have known that his soul was in the seventh heaven of ecstasy. He did not think; he did not even very definitely desire. He merely wallowed in memories, chiefly in material memories; words said with a certain cadence or trivial turns of the neck or wrist. Into the middle of his stationary and senseless enjoyment were thrust abruptly the projecting elbow and the projecting red beard of Turnbull. MacIan stepped back a little, and the soul ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... the parlour. It was a cold, clammy room, dark. He could hear footsteps passing outside on the asphalt pavement below the window, and the wind howling with familiar cadence. He began feeling for something in the darkness of the music-rack beside the piano. He touched and felt—he could not find what he wanted. Perplexed, he turned and looked out of the window. Through the iron railing of the front wall he could see the little motorcar sending its straight beams of ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence

... He is past fifty-two; no gray hairs, no beard, looks clean shaven and youthful, like a man of thirty, prematurely old. He is swarthy, wrinkled. He is powerful, rested, self-possessed, masterful. The cadence of his voice is full of kindness and conciliation. Its rhythms speak in sympathy and respect for the feelings of every one. Some of his words move me like great music. He says in closing so clearly, so beautifully, sounding ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... Only the rhythmic cadence of the saddles broke the silence as they swung to the movement of the horses. Sometimes they looked at each other, and then they smiled, but they ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... ring in his ears a little, the true Hawthornesque murmur and half-mournful cadence become clear. I am told, by the way, that when the Atlantic cable was to be laid, some one quoted this to a near relative of the writer's, not remembering the name of the author, but thinking it conclusive proof that the ocean depths would receive the cable securely. Another ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop



Words linked to "Cadence" :   catalexis, common meter, cadency, amen cadence, metrical unit, meter, measure, poetic rhythm, prosody, scansion, foot, beat, passage, plagal cadence, common measure, cadent



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