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Pastoral   Listen
adjective
Pastoral  adj.  
1.
Of or pertaining to shepherds; hence, relating to rural life and scenes; as, a pastoral life.
2.
Relating to the care of souls, or to the pastor of a church; as, pastoral duties; a pastoral letter.
Pastoral staff (Eccl.), a staff, usually of the form of a shepherd's crook, borne as an official emblem by a bishop, abbot, abbess, or other prelate privileged to carry it. See Crook, and Crosier.
Pastoral Theology, that part of theology which treats of the duties of pastors.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pastoral" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Cebu is addressing his king and sovereign with all sincerity and frankness; and he can say no less to your Majesty than that it is impossible for one bishop alone to visit and confirm his people, and to discharge his other pastoral duties, in all the numerous and intricate islands of Visayas, which have been in his charge until the present—especially in the so distant Marianas Islands, which have no communication with Cebu. Those islands ought to be assigned to the archbishopric of Manila, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... received addresses in a special pavilion, presented medals and inspected the veterans. The Corporation address was in a box modelled after a Maori meeting-house and made of gold, silver and bronze. Another military luncheon followed and in the afternoon a children's demonstration was attended and the Pastoral and Horticultural Shows visited. At Lyttleton, on the following day, another foundation-stone of a Queen Victoria statue was laid and then the Royal couple left for Tasmania after the Duke had issued a farewell address speaking of the ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins

... cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in the embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves; And mid-May's wildest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz

... off them I did, by a great effort of will, but I fear I heard little of the service, for my mind was full of the great house on the river-bank, which it had once been my fortune to visit. Mr. Fontaine had taken me with him in his chaise for a pastoral call at quite the other end of his parish, and as we returned, we were caught in a sudden storm of rain. My companion had hesitated for a moment, and then turned his horse's head through a gateway with a curious ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... little love story can hardly be excelled. It is a pastoral, an idyl—the story of love and courtship and marriage of a fine young man and a lovely girl—no more. But it is told in so thoroughly delightful a manner, with such playful humor, such delicate fancy, such true and sympathetic feeling, that nothing ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland

... were driven, than one can imagine, but a dashing work. Then "The Slaughter of the Innocents," a confused scene of fine and daring drawing, in which, owing to gloom and grime, no innocents can be discerned. Then a slender nocturnal pastoral which is even more difficult to see, representing Mary Magdalen in a rocky landscape, and opposite it a similar work representing S. Mary of Egypt, which one knows to be austere and beautiful but ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... in royal habit dressed, With starry diadem upon his head, And o'er his shoulders an imperial vest Worn upon holidays.—The king displayed A sceptre, pastoral shape, with hooked crest: In a rich jacket too was he arrayed, Given by the inhabitants of Sericane, And Ganymede ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... Let not hate vex thee sore, Nor yet ignore The cause of hate and sorrow in thy breast. Time bringeth rest: All is made easy through his power divine. The heir of Agamemnon's line Who dwells by Crisa's pastoral strand Shall yet return unto his native land; And he shall yet regard his own Who reigns beneath ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... good business in some of the outback towns of the great pastoral wastes of Australia. There's the thoughtless, careless generosity of the bushman, whose pockets don't go far enough down his trousers (that's what's the matter with him), and who contributes to anything that comes along, without ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson

... a "sick member." Whenever circumstances permitted she gladly served as pastoral assistant for her father, but she always felt that raising the family was her one big job, and nothing was allowed to take precedence of it. As she walked that afternoon down Maple Street,—seemingly so-called because it was bordered with grand old elms,—she felt at peace with all the world. ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston

... deal with phases of life and personal experience that are all too much neglected but which every Christian needs to understand. Each paper is complete in itself, though all have a general relation. They are pastoral in nature and have by the blessings of God comforted, encouraged, strengthened, and enlightened many souls. That they may by divine help continue to be a blessing to many is the earnest desire ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... that Mr. Pope had nothing in him Original as a Writer, that Mr. Tickel greatly excelled him in his Translation of Homer, and many of his Contemporaries in other Branches of Writing, and that he is infinitely inferior to Mr. Phillips in Pastoral: And yet such Arguments or Apologies as these have been used by himself, or his Tea-Table Cabals, for calling Gentlemen Scoundrels, Blockheads, Gareteers, and Beggars,: If he can transmit them to Posterity under such Imputations, he is a bad Man; if ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted

... must ask you, dear Herr Doctor, in order that the statement on all the title pages—"critically revised edition"—may be complied with, to send me—together with your new edition of the scores of the "Pastoral," the C minor, and A major Symphonies—a copy of my own transcriptions of them. Probably I may alter, simplify, and correct passages—and add some fingerings. The more intimately acquainted one becomes with Beethoven, the more one clings to certain singularities and finds that even insignificant ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... two must be said as to Mr Crawley's family. It is declared that a good wife is a crown to her husband, but Mrs Crawley had been much more than a crown to him. As had regarded all the inner life of the man,—all that portion of his life which had not been passed in the pulpit or in pastoral teaching,—she had been crown, throne, and sceptre all in one. That she had endured with him and on his behalf the miseries of poverty, and the troubles of a life which had known no smiles, is perhaps not ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... his confidences, under the name of Colin Clout, a name borrowed from Skelton, a satirical poet of Henry VIII.'s time, which Spenser kept throughout his poetical career. Harvey reappears in one of Spenser's latest writings, a return to the early pastoral, Colin Clout's come home again, a picture drawn in distant Ireland, of the brilliant but disappointing court of Elizabeth. And from Ireland in 1586, was addressed to Harvey by "his devoted friend during ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... on, he turns as fondly as does the infant to the mother's arms, to sink in sleep in the bosom of the scene of his childhood. How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful bard, when, wandering forth in disgrace upon a doubtful world, he cast a heavy look upon his pastoral home, could he have foreseen that, before many years, he should return to it covered with renown; that his name should become the boast and glory of his native place; that his ashes should be religiously guarded as its most precious treasure; ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... they returned a little back, and took occasion to pass above the aforesaid hospital to try what intelligence they could come by in those parts. In which resolution riding on, and by chance in a pastoral lodge or shepherd's cottage near to Coudray hitting upon the five pilgrims, they carried them way-bound and manacled, as if they had been spies, for all the exclamations, adjurations, and requests that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... who settled in Iran, the Persians were the most prominent,—a brave, hardy, and adventurous people, warlike in their habits, and moral in their conduct. They were a pastoral rather than a nomadic people, and gloried in their horses and cattle. They had great skill as archers and horsemen, and furnished the best cavalry among the ancients. They lived in fixed habitations, and their houses ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... the report was submitted to the district synods and then to Conference. Long, earnest, animated, but loving was the debate that ensued; the assembled ministers, by a large majority, determined that the laity should henceforth share in their deliberations on all questions not strictly pastoral. ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... the pastoral staves carried by bishops. That of Otho Bishop of Hildesheim in 1260 is inscribed in the various parts: "Persuade by the lower part; rule by the middle; and correct by the point." These were apparently the symbolic functions of the crozier. The ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... was due partly to the promises of La Ronde Denys, and still more to a pastoral letter from the Bishop of Quebec, supporting the assurances of the missionaries that the heretics would rob them of the ministrations of the Church. This was not all. The Acadians about Annapolis had been alienated by the conduct ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... afternoon, found him almost enthusiastic over his "last discovery." A new poet, according to Jewdwine, had arisen in the person of an eminent Cabinet Minister, who in ninety-seven was beguiling the tedium of office with a very pretty playing on the pastoral pipe. Mr. Fulcher's In Arcadia lay on the editorial table, bound in white vellum, with the figure of the great God Pan symbolizing Mr. Fulcher, on the cover. Jewdwine's attitude to Mr. Fulcher was for Jewdwine humble, not to say reverent. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... Fenn wished that he was sure of Miss Philippa's state of mind; and at last he said to himself that it was his duty to find out about it, so, with his little sister beside him, he started on a round of pastoral calls. He found Miss Philly sitting in the sunshine on the lowest step of the front porch—and it seemed to Mary that there was a good deal of delay in getting at the serious business of play; "for brother talks so much," she complained. But "brother" went on talking. He told Miss Philippa ...
— The Voice • Margaret Deland

... Treaty boundary along the 22nd Parallel, but have withdrawn their military presence; Egypt is economically developing the "Hala'ib Triangle" north of the Treaty Line; periodic violent skirmishes with Sudanese residents over water and grazing rights persist among related pastoral populations from the Central ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... fed, the soberest livers, and the most awakened and best informed Christians, those of the zealous preaching divines, or those of the prelatic clergy with their readers? In whose churches and parishes were all the other pastoral duties, catechizing, visiting the poor and ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... made it too plain to be questioned, that these seven races were originally one; that they must have emigrated from a region of Central Asia, at the east of the Caspian, and northwest of India; that they were originally a pastoral race, and gradually changed their habits as they descended from those great plains into the valleys of the Indus and the Euphrates. In these seven linguistic families the roots of the most common names are the same; ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... peasant's hut, situated within the confines of a great, leafless, winter forest; it represented an evening in December; flakes of snow were falling, and the herdsman foretold a heavy storm; he summoned his wife to aid him in collecting their flock, roaming far away on the pastoral banks of the Thone; he warns her that it will be late ere they return. The good woman is reluctant to quit her occupation of baking cakes for the evening meal; but acknowledging the primary importance of securing the herds and flocks, she puts on her sheep-skin mantle; and, addressing a stranger ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... a comfortable home. Overton Cottage, on the other side, fills in with its walks and plantations an abrupt bend of the river, and the view from the up-going road at its back is very lovely, though the scene is purely pastoral. Overton Churchyard is one of the "seven wonders" of North Wales: it has a very trim and stately appearance, not that ragged, free if melancholy, outspreadedness which distinguishes many country cemeteries, that unpremeditated luxuriance of creepers and flowers, blossoming bushes and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... disposition for swift action which sent him one day, after the troops had withdrawn to their new post, and the plains had returned to their usual pastoral aspect, in search of Nevil Steyne. And it was significant that he knew just when and where to ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum

... mortified and confused that in his effort to obey he partially fell over a bronze sheep, designed to ornament some pastoral scene, and the heel of Mr. Schwartz's heavy boot came down with a thump that made everything ring. There was a titter from some of the clerks. Mr. Ludolph, who was following his daughter, exclaimed, "What's the matter, Fleet? You seem ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... operations by means of public Companies, but, as a matter of fact, few names can be mentioned of men who mine extensively single handed. Yet, risky as it is, mining can hardly be said to be more subject to unpreventable vicissitudes than, say, pastoral pursuits, in which private individuals risk, and often lose or make, enormous ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... Orlando Furioso displayed a powerful imagination no less than a rare and cultivated taste; and the unhappy mad Tasso (1544-1595), who in Jerusalem Delivered produced a bulky epic poem, adapting the manner of Virgil to a crusading subject, and in Aminta gave to his countrymen a delightful pastoral drama, the exquisite lyrics of which were ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... their Deity, partly because the tragic element, which was so potent an influence in the development of the Greek drama, was wanting in their heroes. The theory that the Song of Songs, that canticle of canticles of love, was a pastoral play had no lodgment in his mind; the poem seemed less dramatic to him than the Book of Job. The former sprang from the idyllic life of the northern tribes and reflected that life; the latter, much more profound in conception, proved ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... herself that can convert the world; we have the Lord's own word for that. If you have read in any tongue His last charge on earth to His apostles, as recorded in the Gospel of St. John, you must see and recognize that. The burden of that wonderful pastoral is, 'That we all may be ONE: that the world may believe.' To rend the body is to destroy its unity. To destroy its unity is to hinder the work of Christ upon earth. Think and ponder that well, and pray for guidance, for patience, for the submissive will which would endure ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... this feast sat the wild, pastoral, gaudy company, speaking little over their food; and there at the other the pale padre, questioning his visitor about Rachel. The mere name of a street would bring memories crowding to his lips; and when his guest would tell him of a new play, he was ready with old ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister

... could," he returned pleasantly. "What can we do better? We are in a most pastoral frame of mind, with pastoral surroundings; poetry could ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... becoming an Ambassador's wife. He equally avoided pawning his youth to any of the maturer married ladies, whose status and character, together with those of their husbands, license them to practice as certificated Egerias. His dangerous penchant was for highly spiced adventuresses, and for pastoral amourettes, wistful and obscure. But he never gave away his heart; he lent it out at interest. He received it again intact, with the profit of his musical inspiration. Thus his liaison with Veronique Gerson produced the ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... of the men of letters who came to Alexandria to enjoy the patronage of Philadelphus was Theocritus. Many of his poems are lost; but his pastoral poems, though too rough for the polished taste of Quintilian, and perhaps more like nature than we wish any works of imitative art to be, have always been looked upon as the model of that kind of poetry. If his shepherds do not speak the language of courtiers, they have at least a ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... The open-air life, the free intercourse of families, the roaming frolics of the young men, the songs and merriment of young and old, seem to have made this a singularly happy time. The writer of the account (Mr. Clark, of Ulva) says that he had frequently listened with delight to the tales of pastoral life led by the people on these occasions; it was indeed a relic of Arcadia. There were tragic traditions, too, of Ulva; notably that of Kirsty's Rock, an awful place where the islanders are said to have administered Lynch ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... and the loving serenity of his expression,—a kind of embodied musical self-absorption, yet an accurate portrait of the man in his inspired mood; so might he have stood when gathering into his serene consciousness the pastoral melodies of Nature, on a summer evening, to be incorporated into immortal combinations of harmonious sound;—we might descant upon the union of majesty and spirit in the figure of Washington and the vital truth of action in the horse, the air of command and of rectitude, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... some trace of its popular origin is the pastorela[15] or pastoral which takes its name from the fact that the heroine of the piece was always a shepherdess. The conventional opening is a description by a knight of his meeting with a shepherdess, "the other day" (l'autrier, the word with which the poem usually begins). A dialogue ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor

... hand, as he was coming from the altar, and had his body cut into seventy-two parts, in order that they might never more be collected together in order to pay them the worship which was due to them as the body of a martyr for the truth and for pastoral liberty. ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... Community; Towns and Mercantile Classes; Lord Novgorod the Great; The Imperial Administration; The New Local Self-Government; Proprietors of the Modern School; The Noblesse; Social Classes; Among the Heretics; Pastoral Tribes of the Steppes; St. Petersburg and European Influence; Church and State; The Crimean War and Its Consequences; The Serfs; The New Law Courts; Territorial Expansion and ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek

... old maid's gown, though it had been tormented into all the fashions from King James to King George, ever underwent so many transformations as these poor plains have in my idea. At first I was contented with tending a visionary flock, and sighing some pastoral name to the echo of the cascade under the bridge ... As I got further into Virgil and Clelia, I found myself transported from Arcadia to the garden of Italy; and saw Windsor Castle in no other view than the Capitoli ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... Timur thought, no doubt, that it would be very meritorious on his part to assist God in this his labour of filling the great abyss by throwing into it all the existing population of China: while he spread over their land in pastoral tribes the goodly seed of Muhammadanism, which would give him a rich supply of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... pass from these to men who lead a purely pastoral life, like the South American Gauchos, or some Asiatic nomads, there is an important change. Let us suppose the owner of a flock of sheep to live on the milk, cheese, and flesh which they yield. It is obvious that the flock ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... competitors. The many spirited tracts which he wrote on passing events are now known only to the curious: but his History of his own Times, his History of the Reformation, his Exposition of the Articles, his Discourse of Pastoral Care, his Life of Hale, his Life of Wilmot, are still reprinted, nor is any good private library without them. Against such a fact as this all the efforts of detractors are vain. A writer, whose voluminous works, in several branches of literature, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... may imagine that the machinery of the ring worked to a charm. In the city and in the legislature and throughout the State there was the liveliest buzzing and humming and clicking of political wheels and cranks and cogs that had ever been known in those hitherto pastoral localities. The case of Fastburg against Slowburg was put in a hundred ways, and proved as sure as it was put. It really seemed to the eager burghers as if they already heard the clink of hammers on a new State-House ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson

... overview: Western Sahara, a territory poor in natural resources and lacking sufficient rainfall, depends on pastoral nomadism, fishing, and phosphate mining as the principal sources of income for the population. Most of the food for the urban population must be imported. All trade and other economic activities are controlled by the Moroccan Government. Incomes and standards ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... connection with native members of the church under our care. We desired him to take the charge of that work, and gather a church at Peh-chui-ia, under the care of the English Presbyterian Church. But, at his urgent request, we took the pastoral oversight of the work in that region, administering the ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

... properly alike in composition and feeling-suggesting perhaps that the differences between the seasons in California are but slight. There is throughout a conventional touch, and all are in pastoral mood. The groups ...
— An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney

... popes; who as they are most religious observers of their own promises, so they exhort all other princes to perform theirs; and when fainter methods do not prevail, they compel them to it by the severity of the pastoral censure, and think that it would be the most indecent thing possible if men who are particularly distinguished by the title of the faithful, should not religiously keep the faith of their treaties. But in that new-found world, which is not more distant from us in situation than the people ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... books translated by Alfred—perhaps the first—was called the "Pastoral Care" ("Cura Pastoralis"). It was written by St Gregory the Great, and was intended for the clergy as a guide to their duties. The king had a copy sent to every bishopric. He called it the Herdsman's Book, or Shepherd's Book. Sending all these copies made of course a great ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... his latter days were spent in the country, the life (p. 118) he led henceforward deserves anything but the name of a pastoral. With the return from Europe begins the epic period of Cooper's career. The next ten years, in particular, were years of battle and storm. He had been criticised harshly and unjustly; he came back prepared and disposed to criticise. His feelings found expression ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... destroyed. He bought ten thousand head of cattle out of the money the King allowed to the Jesuits of Guayra, and from the sale of some few objects saved from the general destruction of the towns, and settled down his Indians, who in Guayra had been all agriculturists, to a pastoral life. Thus did he bring successfully nearly twelve thousand people a distance of about five hundred miles through desert country, and down a river broken in all its course by rapids, landing them far from their enemies in a safe haven at the last. Most commonly ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham

... adventure abroad, it is little wonder that the visit of an uncle from Australia strengthened a desire I felt to seek my fortune in that country. This uncle—H. C. Corfield—was the owner of some pastoral country in the Burnett district, and described in glowing terms life in the Australian bush. I might say here this was not all it had been painted, but that ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... distant hills than at any other point. The business character of this street mingled oddly in summer with the rural life around it. At several right-angles, green and mossy lanes, arched by venerable elms, seemed to be offering their crooked elbows to lead it back to the simple pastoral life from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various

... of Orleans nobly condemns slavery. The Bishop's pastoral is an answer to H. E., Archbishop of New York. The French bishop therein is true to the spirit of the Catholic church. The Irish archbishop, compared to him, appears ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... note that one of the pastors of the Beccles church was a Mr. Nokes, who had been trained—where Calamy and many others were trained—at the University of Utrecht, and that in the same year in which Dr. Watts accepted the pastoral office, he addressed to Mr. Nokes a poem on 'Friendship,' which is still included in the Doctor's works. Dissent, when I was a boy, was considered low. We were contemptuously termed 'pograms,' a term of reproach the ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie

... not permitted to allude to the fete of St. Cloud as a scene of pastoral amusement, or of the primitive simplicity which is associated with that epithet. The French are not a pastoral people, although they are not less so than the English; neither are the suburbs of a metropolis rural life. They are too near the pride of human art for pastoral pleasures, and no aristocracy is more infested with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various

... would produce a contemporary lexicon of Persian, must not only read up all the diaries and journals of Teheran and the vocabularies of Yezd and Herat, he must go further a-field. He should make himself familiar with the speech of the Iliyat or wandering pastoral tribes and master a host of cognate tongues whose chiefs are Armenian (Old and New), Caucasian, a modern Babel, Kurdish, Luri (Bakhtiyari), Balochki and Pukhtu or Afghan, besides the direct descendants of the Zend, the Pehlevi, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... of a brilliance and a sprightliness and mordancy that not overmany classic symphonies can rival. Other and former composers, no doubt, had dreamt of making the orchestra more concretely expressive, more precisely narrative and descriptive. The "Pastoral" symphony is by no means the first piece of deliberately, confessedly programmatic music. And before Strauss, both Berlioz and Liszt had experimented with the narrative, descriptive, analytical symphony. But it was only with Strauss ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... Renan writes His life, that is the way in which the Founder of Christianity develops Himself. First we have the young man, amiable, sweet, 'charming,' enacting a 'beautiful pastoral' in the 'delicious climate of Galilee,' where it appears that nobody has anything to do save to enact 'pastorals,' although we are told 'brigandage was common in Galilee,' which seems a strange accompaniment to 'pastorals.' ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... but I've known you too long to be shocked at anything you do. Besides, in the end of all things, I imagine I should follow your own deplorable methods of speech. Swearing may not be decent socially; but it's a healthy pastime. Only look out you don't do it in the midst of a pastoral call." ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray

... repugnant to her, being a rubicund, bland personage, much given to fine linen, long dinners, and short sermons. His third spouse had been suddenly translated, and though the years of mourning had not yet expired, things went so hardly with Gamaliel, that he could no longer delay casting his pastoral eyes over the flock which had already given three lambs to his fold, in search of a fourth. None appeared whose meek graces were sufficiently attractive, or whose dowries were sufficiently large. Meantime the nine olive-branches grew wild, ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... conventionalities which with us is a convention of summer ease on the sands beside the sea, but which is here without that extreme effect which the bathing-costume imparts on our beaches. These young people stretched side by side on the grass in Hyde Park added a pastoral charm to the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... accessible to Filipinos who could not read Spanish in the eighteenth century would serve not unfairly for much of the nineteenth. The first example of secular prose fiction I have noted in his lists is Friar Bustamente's pastoral novel depicting the quiet charms of country life as compared with the anxieties and tribulations of life in Manila. [140] His collection did not contain so far as I noticed a single secular historical narrative in Tagal or anything in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 • Emma Helen Blair

... overview: Western Sahara depends on pastoral nomadism, fishing, and phosphate mining as the principal sources of income for the population. The territory lacks sufficient rainfall for sustainable agricultural production, and most of the food for the urban population must be imported. All trade and other economic activities are controlled ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... birth and growth of a great independent civilization. Assyria embraced a chalk plateau of the later Mesozoic period, with tertiary deposits, and had an extremely limited area suitable for agricultural pursuits. Its original inhabitants were nomadic pastoral and hunting tribes, and there appears to be little doubt that agriculture was introduced along the banks of the Tigris by colonists from Babylonia, who formed city States which owed allegiance to the kings of ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie

... in no way formidable, are real enough in their small way; but they are immensely increased when the herds have been often disturbed. Disturbance need not necessarily mean shooting. In countries unvisited by white men often the pastoral natives will so annoy the buffalo by shoutings and other means, whenever they appear near the tame cattle, that the huge beasts will come practically nocturnal. In that case only the rankest luck will avail to get ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... Khan, in the two first parts of his Genealogical History, relates the miserable tales and traditions of the Uzbek Tartars concerning the times which preceded the reign of Zingis. * Note: The differences between the various pastoral tribes and nations comprehended by the ancients under the vague name of Scythians, and by Gibbon under inst of Tartars, have received some, and still, perhaps, may receive more, light from the comparisons of their dialects and languages by ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... far as the confines of Aethiopia, the heretic was alternately dragged and recalled, till his aged body was broken by the hardships and accidents of these reiterated journeys. Yet his mind was still independent and erect; the president of Thebais was awed by his pastoral letters; he survived the Catholic tyrant of Alexandria, and, after sixteen years' banishment, the synod of Chalcedon would perhaps have restored him to the honors, or at least to the communion, of the church. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... Roe. The author takes us to his garden on the rocky hillsides in the vicinity of West Point, and shows us how out of it, after four years' experience, he evoked a profit of $1,000, and this while carrying on pastoral and literary labor. It is very rarely that so much literary taste and skill are mated to so much agricultural experience and good sense. Cloth, ...
— The Peanut Plant - Its Cultivation And Uses • B. W. Jones

... Gautier: "'Frankly I am in earnest this time. Order me a dove-coloured vest, apple-green trousers, a pouch, a crook; in short, the entire outfit of a Lignon shepherd. I shall have a lamb washed to complete the pastoral....' This is ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman

... strangely vilified in their unpleasing likenesses. The somewhat loose satin evening-dress, with the shepherdess's crook, was absurd enough; and no very great improvement upon the earlier taste of complimenting portraits with the personation of the heathen deities. The poetical pastoral, however, very soon descended to the real pastoral; and, as if to make people what they were not was considered enough of the historical of portrait, even this took. We suspect Gainsborough was the first to sin in this degradation line, by no means the better one for being the furthest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... An oddly pastoral kind of office it was, and one that would never have answered in England. It stood in a neat back yard, fenced off from a pretty flower-garden. Goats browsed in the doorway, and a cow was within half-a-dozen ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins

... need of pastoral admonition in such a town as Peltonville Center. There was a grimly commonplace and universal goodness everywhere, and the village was only saved from unconsciousness of its own perfection by the individual shortcomings ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye

... lands are of more generous breadth. Pleasant islands stud the peaceful stream. The sylvan foliage has by this time attained very nearly its fullest size. The horse chestnut, the pawpaw, the grape, and the willow are in bloom. A gentle pastoral scene is this through which ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... looks forward to a meeting with Lord and Lady Allcash, which he anticipates will redound to his personal profit. His exultation is interrupted by the entrance of the villagers arrayed in festival attire in honor of the approaching wedding ceremonies, singing a bright pastoral chorus ("Oh, Holy Virgin! bright and fair"). The finale of the act is occupied with the development of the scheme between Lorenzo, Beppo, and Giacomo, to ensnare Fra Diavolo and compass his death; and with ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the church about this season are extremely tender and inspiring: they dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement; they gradually increase in fervor and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good-will to men. I do not know a grander ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... itself. Instead of leaving her then large possessions for the hand of the future spoiler, he might have effectually provided for their full employment in the religious education of the whole people, and in the maintenance of a well-educated, pious, and zealous body of clergy, restored to their pastoral duties and devoted to the ministry. That the church needed a vigorous and thorough, but honest and friendly reform,—not the confiscation of her property to personal aggrandizement and secular purposes, but the re-adjustment ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... the passions, feelings, errors, and virtues of the human race in real life; lyric poetry, or that suited to music, as songs, odes, &c; didactic, or instructive; elegiac, or sentimental, and affecting; satirical, or censorious; epigrammatic, or witty and ludicrous; and pastoral, or descriptive of ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers

... possible scene. The Virgin Mary came from Cana, a little town in Galilee placed in the hills about nine miles from Nazareth, the home of the lowliest and the poorest, of a kindly pastoral people living in the open air, needing and wanting very little, simple in their habits. Elizabeth, Mary's old cousin, lived in Judea, and St. Luke writes thus: "Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judea; and entered into the house of Zacharias" ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... a richer land of mighty oaks and waving cornfields, a fat pastoral country, not unlike Devonshire in detail, with green uplands, and wild-rose tangled hedgerows, and much running water, and abundance of summer flowers. At a point above Fossombrone, the Barano joins the Metauro, and here one has a glimpse ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... had composed my first Sonata in D minor. I had also begun a pastoral play, and had worked it out in what I felt sure must be ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... you have already heard about their military affairs and about their agricultural and pastoral life, and in what way these are common to them, and how they honor with the first grade of nobility whoever is considered to have knowledge of these. They who are skilful in more arts than these they consider still nobler, and they set that one apart for teaching the art in which ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells

... lately issued a pastoral letter, commanding prayers to be offered up for the cessation of the malady affecting the silkworms in his own and the ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... keep him true to his province," said Monsieur Urbain. "Read Ronsard, my friend. It was the name he gave to Henry, Duc d'Anjou. But I must fetch the book, and read you the pretty pastoral." ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price

... has been able to produce a mixture that suits the taste of the people, and the quantity of tea sold by it is a ton a day. This is the business of but one out of many houses in Belfast. Then there is the brisk trade in such towns as Newtownards, Lisburn, Ballymena, &c. In pastoral districts the towns languish, the people pine in poverty, and the ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... annum was a boon only to be appreciated after such a pinching year as the past; the gratitude for the old Squire's kind pardon was so strong, and the blessing of re-admission to pastoral work touched him so deeply, that, in his weakened and dejected state, he could not restrain his tears, nor for some moments utter a word. At last he said, 'Oh, Mr. Calcott, I have not deserved this ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Here are clear rivulets, with fertile valleys and forest trees. The wide belt of country that borders the Black Forest, and probably extends along the Rio Verde to the Salinas and Gila, bears every indication of being able to support a large agricultural and pastoral population. The valley of the Rio Verde is magnificently wooded with furs and oaks, affording excellent timber. Ancient ruins are said by trappers to be scattered over its whole length to the confluence with the Salinas. We, therefore, seem to have skirted the boundary of a country once populous, ...
— Memoir of the Proposed Territory of Arizona • Sylvester Mowry

... was not so wealthy; but it was a quiet, cheap, and hospitable place, and its prosperity rested on a very solid basis. The amount of cultivation, both agricultural and horticultural, contrasted favourably with that of Melbourne, which had been almost exclusively pastoral till the gold diggings broke out, and had had many drawbacks, in the shape of land regulations, to its becoming a ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... the way, which set us back. So merely stopping over night that time in St. Louis, I sped on westward. As I cross'd Missouri State the whole distance by the St. Louis and Kansas City Northern Railroad, a fine early autumn day, I thought my eyes had never looked on scenes of greater pastoral beauty. For over two hundred miles successive rolling prairies, agriculturally perfect view'd by Pennsylvania and New Jersey eyes, and dotted here and there with fine timber. Yet fine as the land is, it isn't the finest portion; (there is a bed of impervious clay and hard-pan ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... town where he had spent the first fifteen years of his life, amid the most striking of New England landscapes, and the sight of the steep yet delicately pastoral slopes never failed to thrill him as the train toiled up the wide valley to Bremerton. The vision of these had remained with him during the years of his toil in the growing Western city, and embodied from the first homesick days an ideal to which he hoped sometime permanently to return. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... salutary to his own mind to have possessed so near a relation to whom he could thus freely open the workings of his heart. At this time he also received great benefit from attendance on the faithful ministry of Rev. Charles Simeon, under whose pastoral instructions he himself declares that he "gradually acquired more knowledge in divine things." With this excellent man he had the most friendly and unreserved intercourse. Mr. Martyn received his first impressions of the transcendent excellence of the Christian ministry of Mr. Simeon, ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea

... and subject permitted, it would be pleasant to portray the romantic life of those pastoral days. Arcadian conditions were then more nearly attained than perhaps at any other time in the world's history. The picturesque, easy, idle, pleasant, fiery, aristocratic life has been elsewhere so well ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... go well; and he grumbled. I walked on a little before, but was excessively entertained with the method taken to keep him in good humour. Hay led the horse's head, talking to Dr Johnson as much as he could; and (having heard him, in the forenoon, express a pastoral pleasure on seeing the goats browzing) just when the Doctor was uttering his displeasure, the fellow cried, with a very Highland accent, 'See such pretty goats!' Then he whistled, WHU! and made them jump. Little did he conceive what Doctor Johnson was. Here now was a common ignorant Highland clown ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell

... methods of obtaining food, ants have been classified as hunting, pastoral, and agricultural, "three types," as Lord Avebury remarks, "offering a curious analogy to the three great phases in the history of human development." As regards their social condition they differ from mankind in having successfully established communism. At the present day all ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... Chapel which is now used as a vestry. Formerly, it was the sacristy, a place from which the pilgrims of humble rank were excluded, but where those of wealth and high station were allowed to gaze at a great array of silken vestments and golden candlesticks, and also the Martyr's pearwood pastoral staff with its black horn crook, and his cloak and bloodstained kerchief. Here also was a chest "cased with black leather, and opened with the utmost reverence on bended knees, containing scraps and rags ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... too, in those early days of his ministry was devoted to pastoral calls, not the formal ministerial call where the children tiptoe in, awed and silent, because the "minister is there." Children hailed his coming with delight, the family greeted him as an old, old friend before whom all ceremony and convention were swept away. He was genuinely interested ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr

... beautiful bride; but, fortunately, love often comes with marriage. You shall learn to love me, Rosaura. Our existence shall be a happy and envied one. You detest state affairs: I will leave them and devote myself solely to you. Far from the capital, we will lead a pastoral life, amidst myrtles and meadows, flocks and shepherds, in all the sweet tranquillity of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various

... in a late pastoral letter directed to the Spaniards, the father of Rome complains bitterly of the treatment which he has received in Spain at the hands of naughty men. "My cathedrals are let down," he says, "my priests are insulted, and the revenues of my bishops are curtailed." He consoles himself, however, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... March, 1829, he became pastor of the Allen-street Presbyterian church in this city, in which office he remained until after his appointment to the Professorship of Theology in the Union Theological Seminary, then newly formed in this city. He was dismissed from his pastoral charge in March, 1837. The labors of his professorship were begun and carried on for some years in discouragement. The pecuniary basis on which the Seminary rested was inadequate, and there were arrearages in the salaries. In 1843 Professor W. was invited ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, in the Scottish dialect, as the best pastoral that had ever been written; not only abounding with beautiful rural imagery, and just and pleasing sentiments, but being a real picture of manners; and I offered to teach Dr. Johnson to understand it. 'No, Sir (said he,) I won't learn it. You shall retain your superiority ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... has been the uniform course of Christians in the South towards the slaves, we will quote from the first pastoral letter of the Synod of the Carolinas and Georgia, to the churches under ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... just as day declined. Hay was making in the fields, and perfumed the country far and wide with its reviving fragrance. I promised myself a pleasant walk in the groves, took up Gesner, and began to have pretty pastoral ideas; but when I approached the nymphs that were dispersed on the meads, and saw faces that would have dishonoured a flounder, and heard accents that would have confounded a hog, all my dislike to the ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford

... the Bishop of Vincennes, Ind., in his Pastoral Letter of 1872—"duty compels us to instruct the pastors of our churches to refuse absolution to parents who, having the facilities and means of educating their children in a Christian manner, do, from worldly motives, expose them to the danger of losing their faith. This measure, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... earlier periods of English history, roads were of comparatively less consequence. While the population was thin and scattered, and men lived by hunting and pastoral pursuits, the track across the down, the heath, and the moor, sufficiently answered their purpose. Yet even in those districts unencumbered with wood, where the first settlements were made—as on the downs of Wiltshire, the moors of Devonshire, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... wedded to our own plans His views regarding Ecclesiastical dignities His promotion to the Bishopric of Geneva and his refusal of the Archbishopric of Paris A Bishop's care for his flock Upon the first duty of Bishops Upon the pastoral charge Upon the care of souls Upon learning and piety Advice to Bishop Camus as to resigning his See The joyous spirit of Blessed Francis Upon daily Mass. His advice to a young Priest A Priest saying Mass should be considerate of others Blessed ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... developement. The old New England preachers were of a character peculiarly adapted to the severe exigencies of their day. They stood as iron men in an iron age. However rude in other social features, the early settlers, as they worked their way to the frontier, demanded the soothing influences of pastoral care, and the first institution reared in the forest was the pulpit, the next the school-house. The pastors were settled for life, and minister and people abode in communion, with little change but that of age. ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... accepted the offered hospitality. Night was now falling, when they came in sight of a pretty river winding its way through a pastoral country. The hills were greener and more abrupt than those which Brown had lately passed, sinking their grassy sides, at once upon the river. They had no pretensions to magnificence of height, or to romantic shapes, nor did their smooth ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... painted many pictures in Udine, and some may still be seen on the doors of the old organ, on the outer side of which is painted a sunken arch in perspective, containing a S. Peter seated among a multitude of figures and handing a pastoral staff to S. Ermacora the Bishop. On the inner side of the same doors, likewise, in some niches, he painted the four Doctors of the Church in the act of studying. For the Chapel of S. Giuseppe he executed a panel-picture in oils, drawn and coloured ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 05 ( of 10) Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto • Giorgio Vasari

... The overbearing suzerain power had at that date, scattered over a huge frontier, two cavalry regiments, three field batteries, and six and a half infantry battalions—say six thousand men. The innocent pastoral States could put in the field forty or fifty thousand mounted riflemen, whose mobility doubled their numbers, and a most excellent artillery, including the heaviest guns which have ever been seen upon a battlefield. At this ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... filigree case of exquisite workmanship, with raised figures depicting the loves of an Arcadian shepherd and shepherdess; and, as it lay on the white hand of its owner, it bore an evanescent fragrance that seemed to recall scenes as beautiful and as completely past as the days of pastoral perfection, when— ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... however, in his romance of The Wandering Heir, written to minister to the Tichborne excitement, takes for his helper the most unlikely colleague in nature—a grave, tranquil, intensely respectable Friend, a writer of colonial histories in a far pastoral retreat by the Delaware. Such workmen were never matched before; yet the words of Benjamin Ferris, the Wilmington antiquarian, form a part, and a telling part, of the exciting romance signed by Charles Reade. The words of Ferris, unexpectedly earning renown in a work ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various

... should. For one thing, she signed it "Elspeth," and for another, I had the conceited notion that what moved her most was the thought that I was running into danger. I longed to have speech with her, but I found from the servant that Doctor Blair had left that morning on a journey of pastoral visitation, and had taken her with him. The man did not know their destination, but believed it to be somewhere in the north. The thought vaguely disquieted me. In these perilous times I wished to think of her as safe in the coastlands, where a ship ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... golden sheen Of burnished mail the sunbeams throw, Flashing the poplars tall between, As knights ride by to meet the foe; Or, mayhap, shepherd lads who blow On slender pipes, a pastoral dance— Ah, strong were they in weal and woe Adown ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones

... not disgrace Arcadia. Her beauty had made enough sensation, and in some people's eyes is even improved. She has a most pleasing person, countenance and manner; and if they could but carry to Scotland some of our sultry English weather, they might restore the ancient pastoral life, when fair kings and queens reigned at once over their subjects ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall



Words linked to "Pastoral" :   piece, idyll, opus, literary work, piece of music, arcadian, eclogue, composition, rural, missive, literary composition, letter, musical composition, bucolic, pastorale, idyl, shepherd



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