"Lute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lute to love, Ere storms disturb the tranquil hour, For her who strives my truth to prove, My only pride, and beauty's flower; But who will ne'er my pain remove, Who knows and triumphs in ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... The lute is sounding in a chamber bright With a high festival; on every side, Soft in the gleamy blaze of mellowed light, Fair women smile, and dancers graceful glide; And words still sweeter than a serenade Are breathed with guarded voice and speaking eyes, By joyous hearts in spite of all their ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... and hopeful. No. 1, who had been a mechanic, proposed to increase his earnings by mending bicycles. No. 2 was an agriculturist pure and simple, and showed me his fowls and pigs with pride. Here, however, I found a little rift within the rural lute, for on asking him how his wife liked the life he replied after a little hesitation, 'Not very well, sir: you see, she has been accustomed ...
— Regeneration • H. Rider Haggard
... the mulatto would not eat any more, arose; the filibuster imitated her, and says, "Reassure yourself, my Angela, there is nothing to fear. Come into the garden, the night is fine, the moon magnificent. Tell Mirette to bring my lute; in order to make you forget these painful thoughts I will sing you the ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... vain, all, all in vain, They beat upon mine ear again, Those melancholy tones so sweet and still. Those lute-like tones which in the bygone year Did steal into mine ear— Blew such a thrilling summons to my will, Yet could not shake it; Made my tost heart its very life-blood spill, Yet could not ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... grows grey, And youth has left my body. Enough of that. To-night is ripe for pleasure, and indeed, I would be merry as beseems a host Who finds a gracious and unlooked-for guest Waiting to greet him. [Takes up a lute.] But what is this, my lord? Why, you have brought a lute to play to us. Oh! play, sweet Prince. And, if I am too bold, ...
— A Florentine Tragedy—A Fragment • Oscar Wilde
... decide, And then proceed to what else was objected. But, ah! What mortall wit may dare t' areed Heavens counsels in eternall horrour hid? And Cynthius pulls me by my tender ear Such signes I must observe with wary heed: Wherefore my restlesse Muse at length forbear. Thy silver sounded Lute hang ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... vastly large, and the pictures being in more presentable condition than usual, I enjoyed them more than I generally do; particularly a Virgin and Child by Vandyke, where two angels are singing and playing, one on a lute and the other on a violin, to remind the holy infant of the strains he used to hear in heaven. It is one of the few pictures that there is really any pleasure in looking at. There were several paintings by Titian, mostly of a voluptuous character, but ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is dead to him, to all; Her lute hangs silent on the wall, And on the stairs, and at the door, Her fairy step is heard ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... message from Goethe transmitting a medal for Sir Walter Scott; sums generously sent for his brother John's medical education in Germany; loans to Alexander, and a frustrate scheme for starting a new Annual Register, designed to be a literary resume of the year, make up the record. The "rift in the lute," Carlyle's incapacity for domestic life, was already showing itself. Within the course of an orthodox honeymoon he had begun to shut himself up in interior solitude, seldom saw his wife from breakfast ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... them he set a-going, and which way he begun to move them? He will not so much as understand what you mean. He is an absolute stranger to what he has done in all the inward springs of his machine. The lute-player, who is perfectly well acquainted with all the strings of his instrument, who sees them with his eyes, and touches them one after another with his fingers, yet mistakes them sometimes. But the soul that governs the machine of ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... maid, her grudge against the two sexes; the old man, his gray hairs and his lost hours. And can it be, that all this which should have been immortal, is quite—quite lost, is as though it had never been?" he sighed. "Can it be that its fame is now sustained by me; who twang with my poor lute, cracked and old, these feeble ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... own color,—when I see light clouds floating together half gray, half tinted by the sun, they seem to me to resemble the soft and noiseless garb she wore,—the birds sing, only to recall to me the lute-like sweetness of her voice,—and at night, when I behold the millions upon millions of stars that are worlds, peopled as they must be with thousands of wonderful living creatures, perhaps as spiritually composed as she, I sometimes find it hard, that out of all the exhaustless types ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... it was set to the razor, Not to the lute or harp, Therefore it was that the fancy Should be bright, and the wit be sharp. But, then, said Satan to himself, As for that said beginner, Against my infernal Majesty, There is ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... lute that we call a bluebird, You blend in a silver strain The sound of the laughing waters, The patter of spring's sweet rain, The voice of the wind, the sunshine, And fragrance of blossoming things. Ah! you are a poem of April, That ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... yet what others are, A boudoir's babbling fool; The flattered star of bench or har, A party's chief or tool: Come shower or sunshine, hope or fear, The palace or the plough— My heart and lute are broken here,— I'm not a lover now! Lady, the mist is on my sight, The chill is on my brow; My day is night, my bloom is blight,— I'm not a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... with looking at them." So the two climbed the tree and, peering in, heard Shaykh Ibrahim say, "O my lady, I have cast away all gravity mine by the drinking of wine, but 'tis not sweet save with the soft sounds of the lute-strings it combine." "By Allah," replied Anis al-Jalis, "O Shaykh Ibrahim, an we had but some instrument of music our joyance were complete." Hearing this he rose to his feet and the Caliph said to Ja'afar, "I wonder ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... column—there gather, on the anniversary of his birth, the crowds who love him and love his song. Every heart beats high as the Bellman choirs burst forth in turn into the well-known melodies, composed or adapted by the poet himself to his words, and sung by him to the accompaniment of his lute. And song alternates with enthusiastic orations, addressed to the crowd by improvised orators, teeming with quotations of well-known lines. It is an orgy of Bellman's verse, such as the Stockholmer ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough
... understand him, nor was I able to learn anything about the state of things when I first reached the house of my relatives, for my brother-in-law had been sent into the town as special constable. It was only on his return home, lute in the afternoon, that I heard what had taken place in one hotel at Chemnitz while I had been resting in another inn. Heubner, Bakunin, and the man called Martin, whom I have mentioned already, had, it seemed, arrived before me in a hackney-coach ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... Lute," Forrest began sternly. "Just because I am a decrepit old man, and just because you are eighteen, just eighteen, and happen to be my wife's sister, you needn't presume to put the high and mighty over ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the gravity of his countenance, said, "Why is my lord cast down and silent? Why are those rare and priceless pearls, his words, shut up so tightly between those gorgeous oyster-shells, his lips?" But to this he made no reply. Thinking further to divert him, she brought her lute into the chamber and stood before him, and sang the song and danced the dance of Ben Kotton, which is called Ibrahim's Daughter, but she could not lift the veil of ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Singing where the future lies Wrapped in hues of Paradise, Pleading with her poignant note That forever seems to float Farther down the vista that is calling to thy heart. Hearken! From the heights Where thy soul alights Bend thine ear to listen for the lute of Love is sighing: "Eagle-heart, child-heart, Love is love, and art is art; Answer while thy lips are red; Wilt thou have a barren bed? Choose between us which to wed: Answer, for thy bride awaits, and ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... wraps night's dusky mantle about her, Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning, Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death's mystery open. If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern, Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... note of lute and lyre, The lily's purple, the red rose's glow; It wonders at the witchery of the fire, And marvels at the ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... of him and ushered him into a large dining-hall, where the table had been forsaken in favour of a lesser table placed in the ample window, round which sat assembled some six or eight persons, with fruit, wine, and conserves before them, a few little dogs at their feet or on their laps, and a lute lying on the knee of one of the young gentlemen. Sir Francis presented the young Lord de Ribaumont, their expected guest, to Lady Walsingham, from whom he received a cordial welcome, and her two little daughter, Frances and Elizabeth, and likewise to the gentleman with the lute, a youth about ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... voice is jarring as discordant music. These fits are not the consequence of violent or contending passions: they grow not out of sorrow, or joy, or hope, or fear, or hatred, or despair. For in the hour of affliction the tones of our fellow-creatures are ravishing as the most delicate lute; and in the flush moment of joy where is the smiler who loves not a witness to his revelry or a listener to his good fortune? Fear makes us feel our humanity, and then we fly to men, and Hope is the parent of kindness. The misanthrope and the reckless are neither agitated nor ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... grown as dull as modern Athens, and its ladies of pleasure almost as vulgar as Scotch landladies; formerly, the first beauties of the time assembled every evening under the Piazzas, and promenaded for hours to the soft notes of the dulcet lute, and the silver tongues of amorous and persuasive beaus; then the gay scene partook of the splendour of a Venetian carnival, and such beauties as the Kitten, Peggy Yates, Sally Hall the brunette, Betsy Careless, and the lively Mrs. Stewart, graced the merry ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... I allow the claim made for the other by Grigsby in the Globe that 'for pungency of satire there has been nothing like it since Swift laid down his pen, and for sheer sweetness and tenderness of feeling—ex forti dulcedo—nothing to be mentioned in the same breath with it since the lute fell from the tired hand of Theocritus.' These were foolish exaggerations. But one must not condemn a thing because it has been over-praised. Maltby's 'Ariel' was a delicate, brilliant work; and Braxton's 'Faun,' crude though it was in many ways, ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... signs, divorced from its original sense, served to represent several words, similar in sound, but differing in meaning in the spoken language. The same group of articulations, Naufir, Nofir, conveyed in Egyptian the concrete idea of a lute and the abstract idea of beauty; the sign expressed at once ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... lyre, 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
... sob in our ears, silly Yoomy that thou art!—no! no! none of your sentiment now; my soul is martially inclined; I want clarion peals, not lute warblings. So throw out your chest, Yoomy: lift high your voice; and blow me the ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... the furniture of your apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your eyes from ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... subdue our selfish will; Each to each our tempers suit, By thy modulating skill, Heart to heart, as lute to lute. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... the production of madrigal music. To the latter the English people were much devoted. Reading at sight was at that day, even more than now, a common accomplishment among the educated. The English queen Elizabeth was quite fond of music, and was somewhat accomplished in the art, performing upon the lute, virginals, and viol. She often charmed the attaches of and visitors to her court by her skilful performances. During her reign, and by her encouragement, the cultivation of this noble art received a new and strong impulse ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... some other individuals, particularly with Mr. St. Pierre, junior, who is a considerable merchant, and consul for Naples. He is a well-bred, sensible young man, speaks English, is an excellent performer on the lute and mandolin, and has a pretty collection of books. In a word, I hope we shall pass the winter agreeably enough, especially if Mr. M—e should hold out; but I am afraid he is too far gone in a consumption ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... ravishing, that every Part, Proportion'd was to the nicest Rules of Art: So awful was her Carriage when she mov'd, None could behold her, but he fear'd and lov'd, She danc'd well, sung well, finely plaid the Lute, Was always witty in her Words, or Mute; Obliging, not reserv'd, nor yet too free, But as a Maid divinely bless'd should be; Not vainly gay, but decent in Attire, } She seem'd so good, she could no more acquire } Of Heaven, than what she had, & Man ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... "improvvisatori" has never died out in central and southern Italy. One of the most celebrated in the sixteenth century, named Silvio Antoniano, at the age of eleven could sing to the accompaniment of his lute on any argument proposed to him, the poetry being as graceful and pleasing as the music. One day, while sitting at a state banquet in the Palazzo di Venezia, Giovanni Angelo de' Medici, one of the cardinals present, asked him if he could improvise "on the praises of the clock," the sound of which, ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... wishing to be unsexed; that God has given her the nursery, the ball-room, the opera, and that, if these fail, He has graciously provided the kitchen, the wash-tub, and the needle? Or shall I tell her that she is a lute, a moonbeam, a rosebud; and touch my guitar, and weave flowers in her hair, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... grey; her complexion was exquisitely fine, and her hands and arms remarkably delicate, both as to shape and colour. Her stature was of an height that rose to the majestic. She danced, she walked, and she rode with equal grace. She sung, and played upon the lute with uncommon skill." ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... coin its thoughts into words. Mrs. Carlton, like a sensible mother, said nothing until the floods of Jessie's grief passed away. Then smoothing her head with her hand, she spoke in tones, so soft and lute-like, that they sounded like sweet music in ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... breath was silent, chanced to hear A distant strain, far sweeter than the sounds Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetch'd Even from the blazing chariot of the sun A beardless youth, who touched a golden lute, And filled the illumined groves ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... to say," returned Don Quixote, "that it is a complete adventure, but that it is the beginning of one, for it is in this way adventures begin. But listen, for it seems he is tuning a lute or guitar, and from the way he is spitting and clearing his chest he must be getting ready to ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... to the semi-official nature of the ball, rose and drank the health of the distinguished guest in long and flowery praises. Rezanov responded in briefer but no less felicitous vein, and concluded by remarking that the only rift in the lute of his present enchanting experience was the fear that whereas he had nearly died of starvation several times during the past three years, he was now threatened with a far more ignominious end, ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... life seemed focussed into one Thought-dazzling spot that set ablaze the blood, What need to tell? Fit language there is none 220 For the heart's deepest things. Who ever wooed As in his boyish hope he would have done? For, when the soul is fullest, the hushed tongue Voicelessly trembles like a lute unstrung. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... philosophy; and their wise men imagined a marvellous relation to exist between harmonious sounds and the operations of nature. Harmony was esteemed the panacea, or universal remedy, in mental and even bodily affections; in the tones of the lute were found medical recipes in almost all diseases. Upon one occasion, in the presence of the grand vizier, Alfarabi, accompanying his voice with an instrument, is related to have roused a large assembly to an extreme pitch of joyful excitement, from which he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... the tubes yyy, xxx. Before shutting the baloon with its stopper, I introduced the support BC, surmounted by the china cup D, containing 150 grs. of phosphorus; the stopper was then fitted to the opening of the baloon, luted with fat lute, and covered with slips of linen spread with quick-lime and white of eggs: When the lute was perfectly dry, the weight of the whole apparatus was determined to within a grain, or a grain and a half. I next exhausted the baloon, by means ...
— Elements of Chemistry, - In a New Systematic Order, Containing all the Modern Discoveries • Antoine Lavoisier
... black; the Furies are three, who visit with retributions called on the other side of the grave offences that walk upon this; and once even the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impassioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know." The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said—"one of whom I know, and the others too surely I shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, I saw (dimly relieved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... misshapen thing, which at times made him masquerade in poetry as a low comedian, and ride Pegasus too often with his tongue in his cheek. There are moments when he wounds us by monstrous music. Nay, if he can only get his music by breaking the strings of his lute, he breaks them, and they snap in discord, and no Athenian tettix, making melody from tremulous wings, lights on the ivory horn to make the movement perfect, or the interval less harsh. Yet, he was great: and though he ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde
... those which would be serviceable for the inculcation of propriety and righteousness. Ascending as high as Hsieh and Hu-k, and descending through the prosperous eras of Yin and Ku to the times of decadence under kings Y and L, he selected in all 305 pieces, which he' sang over to his lute, to bring them into accordance with the musical style of the Sho, the W, the Y, and ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... painted a panel for the altar of the Madonna in SS. Vitale e Agricola; in which panel are two very beautiful angels, who are playing on the lute. I will not enumerate the pictures that are scattered throughout Bologna in the houses of gentlemen of that city, and still less the infinite number of portraits that he made from life, for it would be too wearisome. Let it be enough ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... quite dark, and Walter comes to see Eva, but they have not sat long together, when the sounds of a lute ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... instead of fond and unseemly ballads. 1579." In 1599 there appeared a very ambitious work in folio form, so arranged that four persons might sing from it, and bearing the title: "The Psalms of David in Metre, the Plain song being the common Tune, to be sung and played upon the Lute, Orpharion, Citterne, or Bass-viol, severally or together; the singing Part to be either Tenor or Treble to the instrument, according to the Nature of the Voice, or for Four Voices; with Ten Short Tunes in the end, to which, for the most part, all Psalms may be usually sung; ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... at home, (Trying to secure book on table and nearly falling out of the hammock.) Oh, just give me that little green book. (Pointing to books on the table.) The one at the bottom there—that's the one. (BETTY gives it to her.) Thank you. (Reading the title.) "The Lute of Love," by Claude Devenish. (To herself as she turns the pages.) It doesn't seem much for half-a-crown when you think of the Daily Telegraph .... Lute ... Lute .... I should have quite a pretty mouth if I kept on ...
— Belinda • A. A. Milne
... as in other old noble castles the highborn lady sitting among her maidens in the great hall turning the spinning-wheel. No, she played upon the ringing lute, and sang to its tones. Her songs were not always the old Danish ditties, however, but songs in foreign tongues. All was life and hospitality; noble guests came from far and wide; there were sounds of music and the clanging of flagons, so ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... chords are mute, The bond is rent in twain; You cannot wake the silent lute, Or clasp its links again. Love's toil, I know, is little cost; Love's perjury is light sin; But souls that lose what I have lost, What have ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the master kissed ground between his hands and sat down each one in her own degree. Then amongst them the cups went about and all sorrow was put to rout and the birds of joyance flapped their wings. This continued for an hour of time whilst the guests sat listening to the performers on the lute and other instruments and after there came forward five damsels other than the first twenty and formed a second and separate set and they showed their art of singing in wondrous mode even as was done by the first troop. Presently on like guise ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... locked herself in her chamber, alone with her intense agitation. The young men were swaggering about, and taunting each other, and boasting. Luca alone sat apart, thrumming an old lute. Giovanni Sanzio, who had ridden home at evening from Citta di Castello, came in from his own house and put his hand ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... of the Freeholder too nice and gentle for such noisy times; and is reported to have said, that the ministry made use of a lute, when they should have called ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... "Ab-so-lute-ly nothing; but I suspected. It's part of my job to be a nifty young suspector—and to use what I guess at. He just got away from me. As for the rest of it, that's part of the game. This is no croquet match; you must expect to get your head ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... you set some store by good repute: In truth, its voice is softer than a lute: Then know, great fishes on great dishes still Produce great scandal, let alone the bill. Think too of angry uncles, friends grown rude, Nay, your own self with your own self at feud And longing for a rope to end your pain: But ropes cost twopence; so you long in vain. "O, talk," you ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... fair causes of his companion's displeasure. The sun, then setting, shone full on his countenance as he looked round; and that countenance was one that might have haunted the nymphs of Delos; the face of Apollo, not as the hero, but the shepherd—not of the bow, but of the lute—not the Python-slayer, but the young dreamer by shady places—he whom the sculptor has portrayed leaning idly against the tree—the boy- god whose home is yet on earth, and to whom the Oracle and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... picture he had been accustomed to delight in from the shilling gallery—after the first few days he began to focus this strange world and to suffer its fascination. And he was proud of the silent part allotted to him, a lazy lute-player in attendance on the great lady, who lounged about on terrace steps in picturesque attitudes. He was glad that he was not an unimportant member of the crowd of courtiers who came on in a bunch and bowed and nodded and pretended ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... she continued her intimacy with Mrs. Thorne—and with Mr. Thorne. When clouds began to gather along the matrimonial horizon, and "rifts within the lute" to make discord of life's music, she beheld the one, and hearkened to the other with savage thrills of satisfaction. She did nothing to widen the breach—Norma was too proud to be a mischief-maker, but she did nothing to lessen it. She watched with ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... most part, see what he "likes" with them; and is, by divine law, answerable for his liking. And, even at this late hour of the day, it is still conceivable that such of them as would verily prefer to see, suppose, instead of a tramp with a harmonium, Orpheus with his lute, or Arion on his dolphin, pleased Proteus rising beside him from the sea,—might, standing on the "pleasant lea" of Margate or Brighton, have sight ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... river below came the long cries to Allah of the Moslem boatmen and the clear music of an 'ood or lute; the deep note of the native drums had been silenced. It had given way to the song of an Arab tenor. The music of the 'ood, whose seven double strings, made of lamb's gut, are played with a slip of a vulture's feather, drifted through the clear ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... cash with two fingers where they had before needed both hands. This distressingly active person made no secret of his methods and intention; for, upon his arrival, he plainly announced that his object was to make the foundations of benevolence vibrate like the strings of a many-toned lute, and he compared his general progress through the haunts of the charitably disposed to the passage of a highly-charged firework through an assembly of meditative turtles. He was usually known, he added, as "the rapidly-moving person," or "the one devoid of ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... this, managed to open its unlocked door with his free hand, descended a winding stair and came into the upper hall. It was in darkness, but up the wide staircase streamed the perfumed light of many myrtle candles, and with it laughter, and the sound of a man's voice singing to a lute. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... did any one hear her voice. But a rumour was in circulation to the effect that it was very beautiful, and that, locking herself in her chamber, early in the morning, while everything in the city was still sleeping, she loved to warble ancient ballads to the strains of a lute, upon which she herself played. Despite the pallor of her face, Valeria was in blooming health; and even the old people, as they looked on her, could not refrain from thinking:—"Oh, how happy will be that young man for whom this bud still folded in its petals, still ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... their return from the church: "Long live in health the bride and groom! What a beautiful and fortunate marriage! Let the mind be firm and the heart constant. And so we come to the happy day. I would that my words were as sweet as those of a song, and my lute well tuned! A hundred years I would sing new songs. Long live love and marriage!" This other song, from Palermo, a variant of one already published, is also an expression of good wishes for the pair: "Health to this excellent pair! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the particulars of the ceremony. The youthful monarch conducted his yet more youthful bride and her attendants to his pavilion, while the heralds summoned the knights to the tournament, and prepared the other sports of the day. He took his lute and performed before her, and he sang words of his own composition, which related to her—for, like others of his family that had gone before, and that came after him, James had a spark of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... with the same humility, "that if there was any thing within the poor compass of his skill which could gratify Sir John de Walton in any degree, he would but reach his lute, and presently ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... at the Post-office, where I was once before. And thither anon come all the Gresham College, and a great deal of noble company: and the new instrument was brought called the Arched Viall, where being tuned with lute-strings, and played on with kees like an organ, a piece of parchment is always kept moving; and the strings, which by the kees are pressed down upon it, are grated in imitation of a bow, by the parchment; and so it is intended to resemble several vyalls played on with one bow, but so basely ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... "Sweet as a wind-lute's airy strains Your gentle muse has learned to sing, And California's boundless plains Prolong the soft ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... palace was filled with music, some of it very beautiful and all of it played by very famous people. A sweet singer came with his lute and sang to the King of all the princesses and queens that had listened to his tunes. But at the end the King was still weak and sorrowful. A harpist from a far country came and played music that sounded like the mighty wind on high mountain tops and the rushing flow of great mountain ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... him, in the high, strident voice of Lute Perkins. He took a deep breath of fresh, clean air, and looked about him. After the hot, dusty room, the grove, with its green foliage, through which the moonlight filtered, looked invitingly cool. He ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... they ranged themselves in two ranks as if they were of the black-eyed Brides of Paradise. And after a while in came other ten damsels, bearing in their hands lutes and divers instruments of mirth and music; and these, having saluted the two guests, sat down and fell to tuning their lute-strings. Then they rose and standing before them, played and sang and recited verses: and indeed each one of them was a seduction to the servants of the Lord. Whilst they were thus busied there entered other ten damsels like unto them, high-bosomed maids and of an equal ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... things are clear. They are mediaeval in location; they are modern in temper. Their geography is yesterday, their spirit is to-day; and so we have the questions and thoughts of our era as themes for Tennyson's voice and lute. His treatment is ancient: his theme is recent. He has given diagnosis and alleviation of present sickness, but hides face and voice ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... things were which made room for the carved virgins and saints, the lute-playing angels and nibbling squirrels and twittering birds of Gothic sculpture, I wish to put before the reader in one significant example. The Cathedral of Ferrara is a building which, although finished in the thirteenth century, had been begun ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... assurances that I have a very fine "bass" if I could but manage to humor it. Fortunately for the ears of the audience, that attempt is now abandoned. My mother is hard at work on her tapestry,—the last pattern in fashion, to wit, a rosy-cheeked young troubadour playing the lute under a salmon-colored balcony; the two little girls look gravely on, prematurely in love, I suspect, with the troubadour; and Blanche and I have stolen away into a corner, which, by some strange delusion, we consider out of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... contemplate him, Coppee belongs to the group commonly called "Parnassiens"—not the Romantic School, the sentimental lyric effusion of Lamartine, Hugo, or De Musset! When the poetical lute was laid aside by the triad of 1830, it was taken up by men of quite different stamp, of even opposed tendencies. Observation of exterior matters was now greatly adhered to in poetry; it became especially descriptive and scientific; the aim of every poet was now to render ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... just how they looked, for pictures of them, or at least of similar instruments, are found on Egyptian and Babylonian monuments. The harp was probably like a large guitar, only it was played like a mandolin, with a plectrum. The psaltery or lute was a larger-sized harp. The cornet or trumpet was simply a curved ram's horn blown with the lips like our cornets; there was also another form made out of brass, long and straight. The Hebrews also used a wind instrument ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... calling those who ate apart, sat down with them without the curtain; and I enquired concerning them and behold they were his brethren.[FN43] he set before them what they needed of wine and dessert, and they ceased not to press the damsel to sing, till she called for the lute and tuning ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... him to sew. No, ma'am. But I started a-tellin' you huccome I come to know dat Pompey an' Sis' Sophy-Sophia was legally married wid a broom. One day he come over to my cabin, jes like I commenced tellin' you, an' he s'lute me wid, 'Good-mornin', Sis' Tamar; I come over to see ef you won't please, ma'am, loand Sister Sophy-Sophia Sanders dat straw broom wha' you sweeps out de chu'ch-house wid, please, ma'am?' An' I ricollec's de answer I made him. I laughed, ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... foughte with the folk without, and have in this mannere Ylore the castle and themselve, and well thou wo'st I am here. And for my castle, that is ylore, sorry I am enow, And for my men, that the king and his power slew. And my power is to lute, therefore I dreade sore, Leste the king us nyme[12] here, and sorrow that we were more. Therefore I will, how so it be, wend against the king, And make my peace with him, ere he us to shame bring.' Forth he went, and het[13] his men if the king come, That they shoulde him the ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... were again on the road, La Mothe's saddle-bags fastened on his led horse. He himself followed at the hour named by the King, but on foot, a knapsack strapped across his shoulders and on it a lute in open advertisement of his new trade. His sword was with his saddle-bags, but was no loss, so free from danger were the roads under the iron persuasion of the justice of the King. Nor were travellers numerous. Only twice was he passed, once by a courier riding post to ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... Laotse (whom they sent some fifty years earlier) at his labors; and consider, what those labors would achieve for the Black- haired People. He would bring light to the most excellent minds; the God of Light said, "I have seen to that." He would in time waken the lute-strings of the Spirit, and set Chu Hia all a-song; the God of Music said, "I have seen to that." They foresaw Wu Taotse and Ma Yuan; they foresaw Ssu-k'ung T'u and the Banished Angel; and asked "Is it not enough?" And the thought grew on them that it was not enough, till they sighed with ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... vain? Put up the old weapon, O despot, slack hand from the scourge and the chain; For the days of the PHARAOHS are done, and the laureates of tyranny mute, And the whistle of falchion and flail are not set to the chords of the lute. True, the Hebrew, who bowed to the lash of the Pyramid-builders, bows still, For a time, to the knout of the TSAR, to the Muscovite's merciless will; But four millions of Israel's children are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... bed talking with pleasure with my wife, and then up and all the morning at my own chamber fitting some Tangier matters against the afternoon for a meeting. This morning also came Mr. Caesar, and I heard him on the lute very finely, and my boy begins to play well. After dinner I carried and set my wife down at her brother's, and then to Barkeshire-house, where my Lord Chancellor hath been ever since the fire, but he is not come home yet, so I to Westminster Hall, where the Lords newly up and the Commons ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... of which(2) was an apartment of stone, facing the south,—the place where Buddha sat, when Sakra, Ruler of Devas, brought the deva-musician, Pancha-(sikha),(3) to give pleasure to him by playing on his lute. Sakra then asked Buddha about forty-two subjects, tracing (the questions) out with his finger one by one on the rock.(4) The prints of his tracing are still there; and here ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... more common. There are those, to be sure, who find no music in the sounds poured forth oftenest by a gramophone, often by a pair of gypsies with a flaring pipe and two small gourd drums, and sometimes by an orchestra so-called of the fine lute—a company of musicians on a railed dais who sing long songs while they play on stringed instruments of strange curves. For myself I know too little of music to tell what relation the recurrent cadences of those songs and their broken rhythms may bear to the antique modes. But I can ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... occasion," thus the one replied, "And now let all our tuneful skill be tried. "Whilst the gay courtiers quaff the smiling bowl, "And wine's strong fumes inspire the madden'd soul, "Where all around is merriment, be mine "To strike the lute, and ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... mercy as he hears— The serpents in Megara's hair, Kiss, as they wreathe enamour'd there; All harmless rests the madding thong;— From the torn breast the Vulture mute Flies, scared before the charmed lute— Lull'd into sighing from their roar The dark waves woo the listening shore— Listening the Thracian's silver song!— Love was the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... akin to that in the Three Ages, though there love steps in as the beautifier of rustic harmony. It is to be found also in Giorgione's Concert Champetre, in the Louvre, in which the thrumming of the lute is, however, one among many delights appealing to the senses. This smouldering heat, this tragic passion in which youth revels, looking back already with discontent, yet forward also with unquenchable ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... scenes of pleasure, Where the free and blessed dwell, And each moment bears a treasure, Freighted with the lotus-spell, And there floats a liquid measure From the lute of Israfel. ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... wid excitement an' pride an' lub. Wen he right afore de balc'ny his voice rung out like a trumpet, 'Right 'bout, face. 'Sent arms.' I dun declar dat 'fore we could wink dey was all in line frontin' us wid dere guns held out. Den he s'lute her wid his sword an' she take a red rose fum her bosom an' trow it to him an' he pick it up an' put it to his lips; den it was 'Right 'bout! March!' an' away dey went tromp, tromp, towa'ds de Bat'ry. I kin ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... entirely shut out from her. Often the day vanished without a human being appearing in sight. Very unhappy was the Lady Imo-gene, gazing on the silent woods, or pouring forth her passion over her lonely lute. ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... gowns, the old silver, the rare glass, and the flowers. They were probably refreshed by the exquisite taste of the little banquet that might recall the first reflection of their youth. Morally there was a rift within the lute among the guests, for Molly betrayed that Adela had got on her nerves. Lady Sophia Snaggs poured easy conversation on the troubled waters, but at last the ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... of glory rise Before my dazzled eyes! Young zephyrs wave their wanton wings, And melody celestial rings. All blooming on the lawn the nymphs advance, And touch the lute, and range the dance: And the blithe shepherds, on the mountain's side, Arrayed in all their rural pride, Exalt the festive note, Inviting Echo from her inmost grot—— But ah! the landscape glows with fainter light; It darkens, swims, and flies for ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... say you would rove Where the bud cannot wither; Where Araby's perfumes Each breeze wafteth thither. Where the lute hath no string That can waken a sorrow; Where the soft twilight blends With the dawn of the morrow; Where joy kindles joy, Ere you learn to forget it, And care never comes— Don't you wish you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 24, 1841 • Various
... about the large mansion like a restless spirit whose duties in life are fulfilled, and who longs to take its flight. Sometimes she took her lute, and in wild and plaintive voice she would sing those romances which Gomez Arias had loved to hear. Then she would ramble through the garden, and visit those spots endeared by the recollection of her love. ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... off all her beautiful long brown hair and dressed herself in boy's clothes. Then she took her lute and, without saying anything to anyone, she went forth into ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... Katharine would ill answer this character, it being soon apparent of what manner of gentleness she was composed, for her music-master rushed into the room to complain that the gentle Katharine, his pupil, had broken his head with her lute, for presuming to find fault with her performance; which, when Petruchio heard, he said: 'It is a brave wench; I love her more than ever, and long to have some chat with her'; and hurrying the old gentleman for a positive answer, he said: 'My business ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... circle, hoop; grommet, gimmal, terret, manilla, lute; annulation, annulet. Associated Words: annular, annularity, annulate, signet, dactyliology, dactylioglyphy, dactylioglyph, cameo, intaglio, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... beneath the moss, a hole Leads to his home, the den wherein he sleeps; Lulled by near noises of the cautious mole Tunnelling its mine—like some ungainly Troll— Or by the tireless cricket there that keeps Picking its drowsy and monotonous lute; Or slower sounds of grass that creeps and creeps, And trees ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... The blooming prairie, the log cabin nestling near the border-line of grove or forest, the old water-mill, the cross-roads store, the flintlock rifle, the mould-board plough, the dinner-horn,—with notes sweeter than lute or harp ever knew,—are once more in visible presence. At such an hour little stretch of the imagination is needed to recall from the shadows forms long since vanished. And what time more fitting can ever come in which to speak of those who have gone before,—of the early settlers ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... Amina rose, and went into another closet near to that where the dogs were, and brought out a case covered with yellow satin, richly embroidered with gold and green silk. She went toward Safie and opened the case, from whence she took a lute, and presented it to her; and after some time spent in tuning it, Safie began to play, and, accompanying the instrument with her voice, sang a song about the torments ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... commanded a prospect of the street. Who should come swinging up the way but Richard? It was the habit of that rising journalist to make one or two daily excursions past the Harley house. Richard was none of your moon-mad ones who would strum a midnight lute beneath a fair maid's window. Still, he liked to walk by the Harley house; the temporary nearness of Dorothy did his soul good. Besides, he now and then caught a glimpse of her ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... ever read? Hope ye that ever immortalitie So meane harpes worke may chalenge for her meed? If under heaven anie endurance were, These moniments, which not in paper writ, But in porphyre and marble doo appeare, Might well have hop'd to have obtained it. Nath'les, my Lute, whom Phoebus deigned to give, Cease not to sound these olde antiquities: For if that Time doo let thy glorie live, Well maist thou boast, how ever base thou bee, That thou art first which of thy nation song Th'olde honour of ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... next to Ishak, having dictated some lines, and Ishak having written them down, the latter sang them to a favourite air of Haroun's, being accompanied on the lute by Isaac, the most famous of all the players on ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... point that our nascent impressions are brusquely shocked. Fuenterrabia is not all steeped in dreams of the past. It has waked for once into the business present as well. Its proud reserve has been broken. There is a rift in the lute. Here by the mossy courtyard, enclosed by historic walls and the spirit of an unworldly past, we are met by a sign-board, with the ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... frolic, or a fight? Would the morrow find them smiling and happy as of yore, or driving off in separate cabs to take refuge in the bosoms of their separate families? Darsie opined that all would seem the same on the surface, but darkly hinted at the little rift within the lute, and somehow after that night the glamour seemed to have departed from this honeymoon pair, and the fair ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in winter by furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-beds. They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains of quicksilver and water. City and country were full of conviviality, and of dancing to the lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken and gluttonous wassail orgies of their Northern neighbors, the feasts of the Saracens were marked by sobriety. Wine was prohibited. The enchanting moonlight evenings of Andalusia ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... question appal him? Not in the least. He had youth, he had health, he had hope, he had his beloved talent and the secret training he had given himself toward its cultivation. His "heart-strings were a lute"—he felt it, and with an optimism rare for him he also felt that he had but to strike upon that lute and the world must needs stop ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... crown'd with feathers, fluttering light, I had a splendid dream of thee last night: I saw thee sitting, on a throne of gold, Among the Gods, upon Olympus old, The only sad one; for thou didst not hear The soft, lute-finger'd Muses chaunting clear, Nor even Apollo when he sang alone, Deaf to his throbbing throat's long, long melodious moan. I dreamt I saw thee, robed in purple flakes, Break amorous through the clouds, as morning breaks, And, swiftly as a bright ...
— Lamia • John Keats
... would know that this is the palace of a king. See how stately the structure is, and how spacious the court beyond the massive gates! And there are walls and towers and countless rooms. No one but Odysseus could have built such a fortress. I hear the sound of the lute and perceive the tempting odor of roasting meat, and there are crowds of guests coming and going. There must be ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... crossing the hall, a mandolin lying forgotten on a chair, she told Mary Seyton to take it, to see, she said, if she could recall her old talent. In reality the queen was one of the best musicians of the time, and played admirably, says Brantome, on the lute and viol d'amour, an instrument ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... he had lost consciousness. With closed eyes he sought the form of the heaven-ascended Surja Mukhi; he saw her seated as a queen upon a jewelled throne. The perfumed wind played in her hair, all around flower-like birds sang with the voice of the lute; at her feet bloomed hundreds of red water-lilies; in the canopy of her throne a hundred moons were shining, surrounded by hundreds of stars. He saw himself in a place full of darkness, pain in all his limbs, demons inflicting blows upon him, Surja Mukhi ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... be pictorially portrayed, with many other equally weighty considerations, still the chivalrous knights of the tournay, and the fair ladies of their devoirs, attained proficiency in the art. Wolf of Wolfrath, the lute-player, records, that at a grand tournament held at Vienna in 1560, crowns of laurel were awarded to the knights who wore the wittiest devices, as well as to those who excelled in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 444 - Volume 18, New Series, July 3, 1852 • Various
... azure, and their bosoms rose and fell as if they were all dreaming of blessedness. Some strains of ravishing harmony that were floating among the islands ceased when I appeared, and I thought I heard the snapping of a lute-string. All the spirits started at once. They were crescent-shaped, and stood upon their nether tips. A star upon their foreheads shone like a pure diamond. They ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... on the window-sill, by no means came up to the ideas which he had entertained of monastic asceticism; and when, over and above all this, he found more than a breviary and a crucifix within reach, namely, a sort of pocket-library and a lute, his astonishment found ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... on and on, and the Goths drew the corpses, as they found room, towards a dark pile in the midst, where old Wulf sat upon a heap of slain, singing the praises of the Amal and the glories of Valhalla, while the shrieks of his lute rose shrill above the shrieks of the flying and the wounded, and its wild waltz-time danced and rollicked on swifter and swifter as the old singer maddened, in awful mockery of the terror and ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... when storms are wild And passions break upon the heart and brain, To leave their ruin there—shipwreck and waste— Pick up your lute! Upon it undefiled You'll find song-pearls that your heart-deeps retain, The crown the years have brought you, white ...
— Sonnets from the Crimea • Adam Mickiewicz
... meals after years of dreadful restaurants gave me especial satisfaction, but alas! there was a flaw in my lute. We had to eat in our living room; and when I said "Mother, one of these days I'm going to move the kitchen to the south and build a real sure-enough dining room in between," she turned ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Enter Beatrice and Fidelio. Fidelio strums his lute softly throughout the next conversation, up to the words "and cease ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... the room, jumped on his horse, and galloped away back. Meantime the mouse kept running over the strings of the lute. They twanged, and the sister never guessed that her brother was off. When she had sharpened her teeth she burst into the room. Lo and behold! not a soul was there, nothing but the mouse bolting into its hole! The witch waxed wroth, ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... redistributed. The laden drays that passed the house in which she lived rumbled a deep double-bass to the tune of love. The newsboys' shouts were the notes of singing birds; that garden was the pleasance of the Capulets; the janitor was an ogre; himself a knight, ready with sword, lance or lute. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... magistrate, the earliest sample of those worldly judges who enlivened the gown in the seventeenth century, plays the lute between whiles, and even makes the witches dance before sending them to the stake. And he writes well, far more clearly than anyone else. But for all that, one discovers in his work a new source of obscurity, inherent to those times. The witches ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... hain't done no cryin' uv no consequence yit, 'n' whar a chile starts out dat dar way it speaks well for her. If Mornin had de raisin' o' dat chile, dar wouldn't be no trouble 't all. Bile der milk well 'n' d'lute down right, 'n' a chile like dat ain't gwine to have no colick. My young Mistis Mars D'Willerby bought me from, I've raised three o' hern, an' I'm used to bilin' it right and d'lutin' it down right. Dar's a heap in de d'lutin'. ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... then called for, and several of the princely company sang to the lute; Jean, pleased to show there was something in which her sister excelled, and gratified at some recollections that floated up of her father's skill in minstrelsy, insisted on sending ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... expression, it was necessary to be one of the Mr. Lutes or Miss Nedra Jennings Nuncheons, of Stephen French Whitman's "Predestined," who were regular habitues of "Benedetto's," under which name Gonfarone's was thinly disguised. Mr. Lute wrote a quatrain once every three months for the "Mauve Monthly," and Miss Nuncheon, tall and thin, with a mop of orange-coloured hair, contributed somewhere stories about the "smart set," "a society existing far off amid the glamour ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... yet, though withered and forlorn, I had renounced what man desires, I'd thought some poet might be born To string my lute with silver wires; At least in brighter days to come Such men as I would ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... acceptance, the lady left the room in search of her daughters, whom the knight knew well, for they had solaced many of the weary hours of his illness with pleasant chat, and music from their voices and from the lute and spinet, on which they played agreeably. While awaiting them he bade the servant to empty the box and count the ducats into three lots, two of a thousand each ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... too marked not to provoke frequent comment, and whenever it was alluded to in her hearing, her spine stiffened and her head went up. It was quite evident to her family that the rift in the lute was serious, and strange to say, it was her father, who might have been expected to hail the signs, who was most concerned to see them. He expostulated with her when she spoke bitterly of Billy's son, as once he had been ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... in Boston some friends of my mother's named Gay. In the family was an old lady over eighty, who was a wonderfully lively spirited person. She still sang, as I thought, very beautifully, to the lute, old songs such as "The merry days of good Queen Bess," and remembered the old Colonial time as if it were of yesterday. One day Mr. Gay came out and took me to his house, where I remained from Saturday ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... explained to me what was said by the king, in Japanese. The women were at first somewhat bashful, but the king desired them to be frolicsome. They sung several songs, and played on certain instruments, one of which resembled our lute, being bellied like it, but longer in the neck, and fretted like ours, but had only four gut strings. They fingered with their left hands, as is done with us, and very nimbly; but they struck the strings with a piece of ivory held in the right hand, as we are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... them one fortunate wight might rouse some sentiment in the lovely statue he desired to win. But all in vain. Each prince, or duke, or simple knight, duly instructed in the sad case, did his best: one would try poetry, another his lute, a third sighs and appeals, a fourth, imagining he had made some way, would attempt the bold stroke of telling Ice-Heart that unless she could respond to his adoration he would drown himself. She only smiled, and begged him to allow her to witness the ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... out of sight. The Juggler, with tricks and illusions came forth, And the Russians with musical horns from the North, Transporting enough to make Orpheus mute: As loud as the trumpet, as soft as the lute, They fill'd every bosom, absorbing them quite, And the reeds seem'd to burden the air with delight. Such strains have rung round me in seasons gone by, When escaped from the cloister I mused with a sigh, And ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset
... granting of favour unto one that solicits it with a pure heart); He that has a face always full of delight; He that is exceedingly subtle; He that utters the most agreeable sounds (in the form of the Veda or as Krishna playing on the lute); He that gives happiness (to all His worshippers); He that does good to others without expecting any return; He that fills all creatures with delight; He that has subdued wrath; He that has mighty arms (so mighty that He has slain as if in sport the mightiest ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... its rusty lock and broken hinges, brings to mind a rosy-cheeked girl in a poke bonnet, who went a-visiting in the stage-coach. Inside is the bonnet itself—white, with a gorgeous trimming of pink "lute-string" ribbon, which has faded into ashes of roses at the ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... well; when the king ceased to follow, the spell was broken,—the Maid was martyred. In this sense the poet conceives the coming of Arthur, a sign to be spoken against, a test of high purposes, a belief redeeming and ennobling till faith fails, and the little rift within the lute, the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, makes discord of the music. As matter of legend, it is to be understood that Guinevere did not recognise Arthur when first he ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... constitution was broken up. Gout and rheumatism assailed him alternately or in leash. He began to feel the annoyance of the constraint they occasioned; he regretted those legs which had figured so well in a ronde or a minuet, and those hands which had played the lute to dames more fair than modest; and to add to this, the pain he suffered was not slight. He sought relief in gay society, and was cheerful in spite of his sufferings. At length came the Shrove Tuesday and the feathers; and the consequences were terrible. He was soon a ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... miserable—for doing one's duty does not always make one happy—and she felt the joy of her home-coming was already marred; for, with a person of Audrey's temperament, there is no complete enjoyment if she were not in thorough harmony with everyone. One false note, one 'little rift within the lute,' and the whole melody is spoiled. So Audrey's gaiety seemed all quenched that afternoon, and though her old friend testified the liveliest satisfaction at the sight of her, and Priscilla could not make enough of her, she was ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... 'n' they got right in on top o' her Hottentot pillow-shams 'n' old Dr. Carter tore a sham with his toothpick. 'N', added to all that, Amelia 's furious 'cause she read in a book 't teaches how to stay married 't a husband's first night out is the first rift in the lute, 'n' she was down town buyin' a dictionary so 's to be sure what a lute is afore she accuses young Dr. Brown. 'N' there's a man over in Meadville down with a sun-stroke, 'n' they want Dr. Carter to hurry, 'n' they can't seem to make him realize nothin'. He jus' sits there in Mrs. Brown's ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... taste. There are loads of portraits; but most of them seem christened by chance, like children at a foundling hospital. There is a portrait of Languet,(343) the friend of Sir Philip Sydney; and divers of himself and all his great kindred; particularly his sister-in-law, with a vast lute, and Sacharissa, charmingly handsome, But there are really four very great curiosities, I believe as old portraits as any extant in England: they are, Fitzallen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Humphry Stafford, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... replied Smith. "Every one of my fellows does something or other so exquisitely, that it were sin to make him do anything else—it is your jacks-of-all-trades who are masters of none.—But hark to Chaubert's signal. The coxcomb is twangling it on the lute, to the tune of Eveillez-vous, belle endormie.—Come, Master What d'ye call (addressing Peveril),—get ye some water, and wash this filthy witness from your hand, as Betterton says in the play; for Chaubert's cookery is like Friar Bacon's Head—time ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... in vain, They beat upon mine ear again, Those melancholy tones so sweet and still: Those lute-like tones which, in long-distant years, Did steal into ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... must be apparent to any careful reader. As the Calender in poetry generally, so even more decidedly in their own department, do these songs mark a distinct advance in formal evolution. Just as they were themselves foreshadowed in the recurrent melody of Wyatt's farewell to his lute— ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... inward pillow of her arm Rested her burning cheek: she moved her eyes; She blushed; and blushing plunged into the wave. Now brazen chariots thunder through each street, And neighing steeds paw proudly from delay. While o'er the palace breathes the dulcimer, Lute, and aspiring harp, and lisping reed; Loud rush the trumpets bursting through the throng And urge the high-shouldered vulgar; now are heard Curses and quarrels and constricted blows, Threats and defiance and suburban war. Hark! the reiterated clangour sounds! ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... before, in Palma de Mallorca, a young nobleman, a poet, a skilled player on the lute had stood tiptoe for attainment before the high-born and very stately lady he had courted through many moonlight nights, when her eye had chilled his quivering love suddenly and she had pulled open her bodice with both hands and ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... perpetual solitude. She looked upwards at the starry heaven, but felt no communion with its loveliness. She surveyed the garden of sweets from the terrace, but all appeared to be desolate. Of late, her only companions had been her tears and her lute, whose notes were as plaintive as ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... as expressive as he can, not only of the situation of his heart, but of every particular circumstance between him and the lady, not forgetting to lard them with the most extravagant encomiums on her beauty and merit. These he sings in the night below her window accompanied with his lute, or sometimes with a whole band of music. The more piercingly cold the air, the more the lady's heart is supposed to be thawed with the patient sufferance of her lover, who, from night to night, frequently continues his exercises for many hours, ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... following year, at the request of the boroughreeve and constables of Manchester, he contrived an oscillating and rotating wet gas meter of a new kind, which enabled them to sell gas by measure. This was the first meter in which a water lute was applied to prevent the escape of gas by the index shaft, the want of which, as well as its great complexity, had prevented the only other gas meter then in existence from working satisfactorily. The water lute was immediately ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... sun warm, the cold mountain's rim. I could hear voices, and the murmurs of the sleeping men and the groans of the wounded. The scene closed. There was space and light, and a gorgeous figure, stiff with the splendour of his robes, talked in a dark garden with his lady. Their voices murmured, a lute was played, some one sang, and through the thread of it all I saw that moment when, packed together on our cart, we hung for an instant on the top of the hill and looked back to a country that had suddenly ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... painting drunkards, doth not last Now; Aretine's pictures have made few chaste; No more can princes' courts, though there be few Better pictures of vice, teach me virtue. He, like to a high-stretch'd lute-string, squeakt, O, Sir! 'Tis sweet to talk of kings! At Westminster, Said I, the man that keeps the Abbey-tombs, And for his price doth, with who ever comes, Of all our Harrys and our Edwards talk, From king to king, and all their kin ...
— English Satires • Various
... that he had just returned from Wolgast, where the ducal widow was much comforted by the presence of her son, Prince Ernest Ludovick, whom she had not seen since he went to the university. He was the handsomest youth in all Pomerania, and played the lute so divinely that at court he was compared ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... He came into the pleasant living room of the Bridge House upon the first evening when Dr. Langton had been suffered to leave his bed and lie for a while on the couch in this other and more cheerful apartment. Magdalen had her lute in her hands, and had been softly singing to him, when the sound of the opening door brought her soft, sweet ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... by the pavement linger Under the rooms where once she played, Who from the feast would rise and fling her One poor sou for her serenade? One poor laugh from the antic finger Thrumming a lute string frayed? ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of many courses, and lasted a considerable time, and at its conclusion the room was partially cleared, and a number of dancing girls, of elegant form and richly clad, entered the apartment, and amused the guests with their graceful movements. Azgid, observing a lute lying near him, took it up, and, telling the lady how fond he was of music, begged her to favour him with an air. Perizide complied with his request very graciously, and commenced playing. The Prince listened with delight, ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... redressed all abuses, and to have rewarded us according to our merits. He was of a gay disposition, and fond of music; and it is said that his attendants, while his illness was at the height, brought a lute player into his apartment, in hopes of soothing his distress. While a favourite air was playing, he was said to have beat time with perfect accuracy, and expired just when the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr |
