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Pastoral   Listen
noun
Pastoral  n.  
1.
A poem describing the life and manners of shepherds; a poem in which the speakers assume the character of shepherds; an idyl; a bucolic. "A pastoral is a poem in which any action or passion is represented by its effects on a country life."
2.
(Mus.) A cantata relating to rural life; a composition for instruments characterized by simplicity and sweetness; a lyrical composition the subject of which is taken from rural life.
3.
(Eccl.) A letter of a pastor to his charge; specifically, a letter addressed by a bishop to his diocese; also (Prot. Epis. Ch.), a letter of the House of Bishops, to be read in each parish.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pastoral" Quotes from Famous Books



... of Camarines, in the same island, under the protection of St. John the Evangelist; and the other in the aforesaid city of Santisimo Nombre de Xesus, in the island of Cebu, of that archipelago, under the protection of the guardian angel. In this way each one may exercise in his diocese the pastoral office; and the metropolitan archbishop, together with the bishops, may labor with jurisdiction, authority, and power in the conversion and instruction of the said natives; and he and they may provide for other spiritual matters which may seem desirable for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair

... compelled to devote three-quarters of their energies to keeping a congregation together, the other quarter to doing them good. They accomplish the first, sometimes by patient, persistent, assiduous, unwearying pastoral labor, sometimes by achieving a public reputation, sometimes by the doubtful expedient of sensational advertisements of paradoxical topics. But in whatever way they do it the hardest part of their work, a part, country parsons know next to nothing of, is to get and keep a congregation. ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... extending an enormously big and thick hand, bid them "Gooden daag." Hans Coetzee was a very favourable specimen of the better sort of Boer, and really came more or less up to the ideal picture that is so often drawn of that "simple pastoral people." He was a very large, stout man, with a fine open face and a pair of kindly eyes. John, looking at him, guessed that he could not weigh less than seventeen stone, and that estimate was well within ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... His pastoral calls were appalling; arm extended like a pump handle to shake hands, one up and down motion, a "how do you do?"—"fine day," then a solemn pause, generally followed by his one story; "The day my wife and I were married it rained, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss

... a fine county, extending to the Tweed, which is a pleasant pastoral stream; but you will be surprised when I tell you that the English side of that river is neither so well cultivated nor so populous as the other. — The farms are thinly scattered, the lands uninclosed, and scarce a gentleman's seat ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... indicated, as belonging to the case. She was not a woman to whom the breathing of pastoral passion would be suitable; yet he saw that she despised him for a lover; and still she professed to understand his dilemma. Perplexity at the injustice of fate and persons universally, put a wrinkled mask on his features and the expression of his feelings. They ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of coal and iron! land of gold! land of cotton, sugar, rice! Land of wheat, beef, pork! land of wool and hemp! land of the apple and the grape! Land of the pastoral plains, the grass-fields of the world! land of those sweet-air'd interminable plateaus! Land of the herd, the garden, the healthy house of adobie! Lands where the north-west Columbia winds, and where the south-west Colorado winds! Land of the eastern Chesapeake! ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... and Giovanni Sforza's successor in the dominion of Pesaro. Famous painters decorated it with allegoric and historical pictures; Bembo and Bernardo Tasso sang of it in melodious numbers, and there, in the presence of the Della Rovere court, Torquato read his pastoral Aminta. This villa is now in a deplorable state of decay. Pesaro offered but little in the way of entertainment for a young woman accustomed to the society of Rome. The city had no nobility of importance. The houses of Brizi, of Ondedei, of Giontini, Magistri, Lana, ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... Angelo was exalted with the Epic grandeur of his own Dante, Raphael presented the most finished scenes of dramatic life, and might be compared to the immortal Shakespeare—scenes of spiritual beauty, of devotion, and of pastoral simplicity, yet uniting a classic elegance which the poet does not possess. Buonarroti was the wonder of Italy, and Raphael became ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... strangers, when I lost sight of the guard to whom my mother had intrusted me. I was perched up in a high gig with a hood to it, such as in those days was called a chair, and my companion was driving deliberately through the most pastoral country I had ever yet seen. By-and-by we ascended a long hill, and the man got out and walked at the horse's head. I should have liked to walk, too, very much indeed; but I did not know how far I might do it; and, in fact, I dared not speak to ask to be helped down the deep steps of ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... seems an ideal pastoral land—a place where one would naturally locate a charming idyl or bucolic love-story!" he said one evening, to Surgeon Paul Denslow, after descanting at length upon the beauties of the country which they were "redeeming" from the hands of ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... The pastoral anxieties of the English legate had extended to Calais, where the Protestants were in considerable numbers. A commission was sent thither which proceeded with the usual severities,[585] and the sufferers, or those among the garrisons in Calais and Guisnes whose sympathy with the ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... avoid multiplication of work (though each local church remains independent and self-governing), are the stations situated in the cities of Chaocheng, and Yoyang, now severally in charge of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Taylor and Mr. and Mrs. F. Briscoe, whose time is occupied with pastoral and ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable

... became; nor did she, perhaps, ever wholly acquiesce in that scheme of things which M. Caro impressively designates as "the universal order." Yet with age, the abandonment of many distractions, the retreat to Nohant, the consolations of nature, and her occupation with tales of pastoral life, beginning with La Mare au Diable, there develops within her, there diffuses itself around her, there appears in her work a charm like that which falls upon green fields from the level rays of the evening sun after a day of storms. It is not the charm, precisely, of ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert

... true of Middleton and Dekker. Massinger makes a story of the Sforza family the subject of one of his best plays. Beaumont and Fletcher draw the subjects of comedies and tragedies alike from the Italian novelists. Fletcher in his 'Faithful Shepherdess' transfers the pastoral style of Tasso and Guarini to the North. So close is the connection between our tragedy and Italian novels that Marston and Ford think fit to introduce passages of Italian dialogue into the plays of 'Giovanni and Annabella' and 'Antonio and Mellida.' ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... is cast upon the existence of these two peoples, the long-headed and the round-headed, by Caesar, who refers to the former as an aboriginal pastoral people, while the latter are described as colonists from Belgic Gaul, and agriculturists. This distinction between the herdsman and the agriculturalist is quite in accordance with the stages of culture known and recognised by the ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens

... year 40 B.C., being then a pastoral poet imitating Theocritus,—nothing very serious,—wrote a strange poem that stands in dignity and depth of purpose far above anything in his model. This was the Fourth Eclogue of his Bucolics, called the Pollio. In it he invokes the "Sicilian ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... invader—with the tax-collector come for taxes, then with the elderly minister making a pastoral call, with the formal schoolmaster, and with Samuel J. Tilden—the victim reached over his shoulder, and, seizing the assailant by a handful of calico jacket, brought him around, squirming, ...
— Eli - First published in the "Century Magazine" • Heman White Chaplin

... pastoral stillness and the moon begat in the postillion desire for a pipe. Daylight prohibits the dream of it to mounted postillions. At night the question is more human, and allows appeal. The moon smiles assentingly, and smokers ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... latter part of the nineteenth century. How easy life was in the early eighties, compared with this, how mild were the ways of nations, how primitive, pure and upright the dealings of financiers in that day of pristine virtue and pastoral simplicity! It was all very well to be an idealist then, Mr. Lushington sometimes said to Margaret; the world was young, then; there was time for everything, then; there was room for everybody, then; even the seasons were different, then! At least, all old people say ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... local freedom imparted by her cantons: while France required unity, Switzerland needed federalism: the French rejected this last as damaging their power and glory; but the Swiss did not ask for glory; they needed "political tranquillity and obscurity": moreover, a simple pastoral people must have extensive local rights, which formed their chief distraction from the monotony of life: democracy was a necessity for the forest cantons; but let not the aristocrats of the towns fear that a wider franchise would end their influence, for a ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... he says no more for water, than has been said by the poets of all nature, from the time of the first pastoral; they tell us that the sun will make a bare old mountain smile, and the wind will throw the finest forest ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper

... and helmets of brass. Of a far different stamp are the figures reclining before us. These are improvised warriors, hateros, cattle-farmers, who, grasping their lances and lassos, have eagerly exchanged the monotony of pastoral life for the wild excitement of the charge upon Spanish squadrons, and the ferocious slaughter of fellow-men. No two of this invincible band are clad alike. Here is a sergeant, wearing an old and dilapidated blanket poncho-fashion, with ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... event was soon followed by a great calamity to Rome—the greatest she had ever suffered. The city fell into the hands of the Gauls—a Celtic race. They were rather pastoral than agricultural, and reared great numbers of swine. They had little attachment to the soil, like the Italians and Germans, and delighted in towns. Their chief qualities were personal bravery, an impetuous temper, boundless vanity, and ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... Primrose Dame Gleeson White If James Jeffrey Roche Don't James Jeffrey Roche An Irish Love-Song Robert Underwood Johnson Growing Old Walter Learned Time's Revenge Walter Learned In Explanation Walter Learned Omnia Vincit Alfred Cochrane A Pastoral Norman Gale A Rose Arlo Bates "Wooed and Married and A'" Alexander Ross "Owre the Moor Amang the Heather" Jean Glover Marriage and the Care O't Robert Lochore The Women Folk James Hogg "Love is Like a Dizziness" James Hogg "Behave Yoursel' before Folk" Alexander ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various

... 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 ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... is the more remarkable when we recall the profound and revolutionary change that has taken place in the social life of man since the Constitution was adopted. It was framed at the very end of the pastoral-agricultural age of humanity. The industrial revolution, which has more profoundly affected man in the last century and a half than all the changes which had theretofore taken place in the life of man since ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck

... 2.; Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. In a pastoral dialogue between Philander and Palaemon, published in 1691, the dislike with which women of fashion regarded William is ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... made one day in June purposely as a setting for a pastoral comedy; and chance stole it, like a kindly knave, and gave it to the Sylvan Players. Never did a gathering of people look down from the rise of a natural amphitheater upon a fairer scene; a Forest of Arden, built by ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer

... contempt the power of the Parthian: but the madness of faction was sometimes provoked to implore the dangerous aid of the common enemy, who was posted almost at the gates of the colony. [39] The Parthian monarchs, like the Mogul sovereigns of Hindostan, delighted in the pastoral life of their Scythian ancestors; and the Imperial camp was frequently pitched in the plain of Ctesiphon, on the eastern bank of the Tigris, at the distance of only three miles from Seleucia. [40] The innumerable attendants on luxury ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... scenes of horror and of blood—and indeed in direct contrast to such did he the more readily welcome the peaceful tranquillity of his present life. For the dreaded Ba-gcatya at home were a quiet and pastoral race—owning extensive herds of cattle—also goats and a strange kind of large-tailed sheep—though, true to their origin, horned cattle formed the staple of their possessions, and the land around the king's great palace was dappled with grazing stock, and the air was musical ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford

... near the hotel until after six o'clock, wondering at the quaint architecture, the pretty gardens and the pastoral atmosphere that enveloped the city. Everybody was busy, contented, quiet and happy. There was no bustle or strife, no rush, no beggars. At six they saw hundreds of workingmen on the streets, going to their homes; shops were closed and there came to their ears the distant boom of cannon, ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... pastoral about the tall one, though. She's alive all the way from her runover heels to the wiggly end of the limp feather that flops careless like over one ear. She's the long-waisted, giraffe-necked kind; but not such a bad looker if you can forget the depressin' ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... him amazingly: he went singing about the gardens which hung upon the side of the grey hill, and composed a pastoral comedy to be acted by the Countess's ladies in the ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... names, which distance increased more than their victories,—Washington, Franklin, La Fayette, the heroes of public imagination; those dreams of ancient simplicity, of primitive manners, of liberty at once heroic and pastoral, which the fashion and illusion of the moment had transported from the other side of the Atlantic,—all contributed to fascinate the spirit of the Continent, and nourish in the mind of the people contempt for their own institutions, and fanaticism ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... 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. In seeking a field, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various

... pastoral Colin Clout's Come Home Again, was the countess of Derby. Her name was Alice, and she was the youngest of the six daughters of sir John Spenser, of Althorpe, ancestor of the noble houses of Spenser ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... 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 ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... single canopy is a full-length picture of the archbishop in eucharistic vestments (the stole unusually short), a pall over his shoulders, and an elaborate pastoral ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... 16 were on secular and all the rest on religious subjects; made 39 addresses, of which all but 27 were on matters most nearly touching the vital religious concerns of the church, read aloud in church 156 chapters of the Bible, 149 of which were very long ones; made pastoral calls, 312; took tea on such occasions, 312 times; distributed 804 tracts; visited the sick several times; sat on the platform at temperance and other public meetings 47 times; had the headache Sabbath mornings, ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... with the expectation of getting some substantial diet, will be grievously mistaken; but those who are content if they can catch and hold fast a fleeting flavour will not regret the half-hour spent in listening to the songs of the elves and the prattle of the pages in this quaint old pastoral. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... in making diplomatic inquiries. He found his youthful client was the daughter of a widow who had a small ranch on the cross-roads, near the new Free-Will Baptist church—the evident theatre of this pastoral. They led a secluded life; the girl being little known in the town, and her beauty and fascination apparently not yet being a recognized fact. The Colonel felt a pleasurable relief at this, and a general satisfaction he could not account for. His few inquiries concerning Mr. Hotchkiss only confirmed ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various

... pastoral solitude of Littlefield London seemed unpleasantly crowded and noisy. The reek of petrol was a poor substitute for the clean country air, and the hoot of innumerable motors and 'buses struck on his ear with new and singularly disagreeable ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes

... portraits representing Mr. Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United States of America. These illustrious men are highly coloured in fighting trim, and fighting attitude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing up under the heels of his half- boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent eloquence ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... good as five pounds in his pocket. With that to cheer us we played our tragedy of "The Broken Heart" very merrily, and after that, changing our dresses in a twinkling, Jack Dawson, disguised as a wild man, and Moll as a wood nymph, came on to the stage to dance a pastoral, whilst I, in the fashion of a satyr, stood on one side plying the fiddle to their footing. Then, all being done, Jack thanks the company for their indulgence, and bids ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett

... ornaments, &c.); iron is employed (and bronze is also used) in the making of tools and implements, such as knives, axes, adzes, axles of a chariot (that of Hera; mortals use an axle tree of oak), and the various implements of agricultural and pastoral life. Meanwhile, iron is a substance perfectly familiar to the poets; it is far indeed from being a priceless rarity (it is impossible to trace Homeric stages of advance in knowledge of iron), and it yields epithets indicating strength, ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang

... Dryden's 'Absalom and Achitophel,' and the epistle of a known and celebrated wit (Mr. Charles Montague) to my Lord of Dorset, the best judge in poetry, as well as the best poet; the tutelar numen o' the stage, and on whose breath all the Muses have their dependence."—Proem to an Essay on Pastoral, and Elegy on Queen Mary, by the Honourable Edward Howard, ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... venture on quagmire once more. Jonson's literary rivalry of Daniel is traceable again and again, in the entertainments that welcomed King James on his way to London, in the masques at court, and in the pastoral drama. As to Jonson's personal ambitions with respect to these two men, it is notable that he became, not pageant-poet, but chronologer to the City of London; and that, on the accession of the new king, he came soon to triumph over Daniel as the ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson

... Parts may still be had. Penitential Reflections for Days of Fasting and Abstinence. (Tracts for Lent), 6d. Compiled. Rules for the Conduct of Human Life, 1d. Abp. Synge. Ejaculatory Prayers, 2d. A. Cook. Pastoral Address to a Young Communicant, 1/2d. Original. Litanies for Domestic Use, 2d. Compiled. Family Prayers. Cloth, 6d. Original. Companion to the Altar. Cloth, 6d. Unknown. Aphorisms by Bishop Hall. Cloth, 9d. Original. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various

... eyes 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 monogram ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... censure and rebuke seems necessarily appendant to the pastoral office. He, to whom the care of a congregation is entrusted, is considered as the shepherd of a flock, as the teacher of a school, as the father of a family. As a shepherd tending not his own sheep but those of his master, he is answerable for those that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... belonging to the governor-in-chief: this was purchased by Mr. George Guest, who sold the sheep at L5 per head, and was repaid in cattle. In the Sydney, Joseph Holt, now discharged from restraint, visited Van Diemen's Land, and contributed to its welfare by his agricultural and pastoral experience. He found Collins still living in a tent. A few acres of land had been cultivated at New Town by convicts, in charge of Clarke, the superintendent: cattle had arrived from Bengal, and sheep from Port ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... thinking, and a freedom from ancient prejudices, becoming a man who paid three hundred pounds a-year of rent, while, in fact, he had a lurking belief in the traditions of his forefathers. After my usual manner, I made farther enquiries of other persons connected with the wild and pastoral district in which the scene of the following narrative is placed, and I was fortunate enough to recover many links of the story, not generally known, and which account, at least in some degree, for the circumstances of exaggerated marvel ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... look at the nurses and babies; they imparted to the scene a kind of primordial, pastoral simplicity. "Yes," he said at last, "I suppose I am." And then, in answer to his companion's inquiries, he related briefly his history since their last meeting. It was an intensely Western story, and it dealt with enterprises which it will be needless to introduce to the reader in detail. Newman ...
— The American • Henry James

... chimney-place faced with white marble, and throws its joyous light on the carefully polished floor; nothing can be more cheerful than the old fashioned chintz hangings and curtains with red Chinese figures upon a white ground, and the panels over the door painted with pastoral scenes in the style of Watteau. A clock of Sevres china, and rosewood furniture inlaid with green—quaint and portly furniture, twisted into all sorts of grotesque shapes—complete ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... Guillaume Tell, they have disappeared. These overtures are not negligible. The overture to Guillaume Tell is notable for the unusual invention of the five violoncellos and its storm with its original beginning, to say nothing of its pretty pastoral. The fine depth of tone in the exordium of Struensee and the fugue development in the main theme are also not to be despised. But all that, we are told, is lacking in elevation and depth. Possibly; but it ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... and King, this energetic protest and the unlimited devotedness which the nobles of Rome offer in reverence to your Sceptre, no less than to your Pastoral staff."—(In the Weekly Register of January 28, 1860, from the ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... ridiculous as it was immodest,—Mademoiselle la Baume le Blanc de la Valliere will think it but proper I should send her back again to her pigeons in the country, in order that, in Touraine yonder, or in Le Blaisois,—I know not where it may be,—she may at her ease study sentiment and pastoral life combined." ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... elemental succession of intervals of the second, all produced by adding the ninth to the common chord—thus: C, G, C, D, E—with certain enharmonic changes. Its simplicity gives it, at a first hearing, a placid, pastoral aspect, somewhat disconcerting to the literalist, but the discerning will not fail to note the mutterings beneath the surface. It is first sounded by two violas and the viol da gamba, and then drops without change to the bass, where ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... poetry is a species of descriptive poetry. It is devoted to a portrayal of country life and manners, and generally embodies a slight degree of dramatic action. "A pastoral," says Alexander Pope, "is an imitation of the action of a shepherd, or one considered under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic or narrative, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... one hand, a hindrance to the servant of Christ, they also may fit him, on the other hand, for certain parts of his work, in teaching him things which are important to be known, especially for the pastoral work. The Lord now brought, in addition to this, very great sufferings upon my beloved wife, which lasted for six weeks, combined with a partial lameness of the left side.—Immediately after the eventful time of August 8th and 9th, the Lord ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller

... communion with the world is the shallowest nonsense. Your Madame du Deffand at eighty and your Horace Walpole at sixty are as lively as a girl and boy. Your octogenarian Voltaire is the most agreeable creature in existence. But take Cymon and Daphne from their flocks and herds and pastoral valleys in their old age, and see what senile bores and quavering imbeciles you would find them. Yes, I have no doubt you found your Dorking aunt a nuisance. Take off your wet overcoat and put it out of the room, and then ring for more hot water. You'll ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... now describe a spot, the name of which will probably be new to all excepting close students of Balzac. The great novelist loved the valley of the Loing almost as fondly as his native Touraine; and if these pastoral scenes did not inspire a chef d'oeuvre, they have thereby immensely gained in interest. "Ursule Mirouet," of which I shall have more to say further on, is not to be compared to such masterpieces as "Eugenie Grandet." But a leading incident of "Ursule ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... I have heard my father say that we are descended, at a distance indeed, from the great Earls of Dalwolsey." [Footnote: The head of the ancient and distinguished house of Ramsay, and to whom, as their chief, the individuals of that name look as their origin and source of gentry. Allan Ramsay, the pastoral poet, in the same ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... Sidney (1554-1586) wrote for his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, a pastoral romance, entitled Arcadia (published in 1590). Unlike Lyly, Sidney did not aim at precision, emphatic contrast, and balance. For its effectiveness, the Arcadia relies on poetic language and conceptions. The characters in the romance live and love in a Utopian Arcadia, ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... were customary amongst all the ministers of the denomination. It was not pleasant to be outbid in his own department, especially by one who was not a communicant, and to be obliged, when he went on a pastoral visit to a house in which Mrs. Butts happened to be, to sit still and hear her, regardless of the minister's presence, conclude a short mystical ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford

... commenced with Rossini's Overture to "William Tell"—perhaps the finest piece of instrumental picture music since Haydn's Creation and the Pastoral Symphony of Beethoven. Its fresh and vivid coloring, its atmospheric changes, its smart Alpine vigor and heroic ensemble, were made as present and as real as any sixty instruments could make them. Exquisitely did those three violoncellos sketch the first scene of soft, cool sunset on ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... size, and of beauty more than human, so far as its lineaments could be traced in the early dawn. What is singular, however, in the story, on any hypothesis which would explain it out of Csar's individual condition, is, that others saw it as well as he; both pastoral laborers, (who were present, probably, in the character of guides,) and some of the sentinels stationed at the passage of the river. These men fancied even that a strain of music issued from this aerial flute. And some, both of the shepherds and ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... the depressed Briton from London; the hardy Gael from the Highlands of Scotland; the solemn Moravian from Herrnhut; the phlegmatic German from Salzburg in Bavaria; the reflecting Swiss from the mountainous and pastoral Grisons; the mercurial peasant from sunny Italy, ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... true and primary author of it, however, as is usual with great motive powers, was out of sight. Having carried off, as a mere boy, the highest honors of the University, he had turned from the admiration which haunted his steps, and sought for a better and holier satisfaction in pastoral work in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... individuals of both sexes destined to look after herds, appeared to me always less further removed than in France, from the pictures which the ancient poets have left us of the shepherds and shepherdesses in their pastoral poetry. The songs by which they endeavour to while away the tedium of their monotonous life, are more remarkable in their form and substance than in the other European nations to which I have had access. I never recollect without surprise, that being on a mountain ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... heartiness, made every one think that he could do something of the same kind. Just in the same manner, out of the more generally human, some snatch those poems which should have portrayed a foreign nationality, as, for instance, the Jewish pastoral poems, those on the patriarchs altogether, and whatever else related to the Old Testament. Bodmer's "Noachide" was a perfect symbol of the watery deluge that swelled high around the German Parnassus, and which abated but slowly. The leading-strings of Anacreon likewise allowed innumerable ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... memorable night which I am describing she must have been in one of her heartless fits. Perhaps she was thinking of some of Endymion's flirtations with the rosy-cheeked mountain lasses, when ranging among the pastoral hills. Be this supposition correct or not, just as the approaching sleigh reached a hundred paces of the gate by which the robbers were concealed, a flood of moonlight ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... coldly manifested when the chairman proposed 'the health of the ETTRICK SHEPHERD;' it appeared, however, that he was much less familiar with his works than with those of Burns, and though a native of a pastoral district, made sad work among the romances and ballads of the imaginative shepherd. This want was, however, in some degree supplied, by a most characteristic speech from Hogg himself, in which he related ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various

... has thus shown itself always active in the service of luxury and idolatry, it has also been strongly directed to the exaltation of cruelty. A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly always bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... attempt insinuating his objections to a pastoral life, poor Henry was at length reduced to the necessity of coming to the point with the old gentleman, and telling him plainly that it was not at all suited to his inclinations, or Lady ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... The foliage of the olive tree is then decayed and withered, and as it predominates in the landscape, and resembles the scorched complexion of the soil itself, an ashen and arid hue is given to the whole. Still, however, there were scenes in the hilly and pastoral parts of the country, where the quality of the evergreens relieved the eye even in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various

... white satin gown, where were we? In Tiverton? Nay, in the great world of fashion and of crime. I remember very little now about the order of the plays; very little of their names and drift. I only know we were swept triumphantly through the widest range ever imagined since the "pastoral-comical, historical- pastoral," of old Polonius. And in all, fat, middle-aged Wilde was the dashing hero, the deep-dyed villain; and his wife, middle-aged as he, and far, oh, far more corpulent! ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... watering-places claim CANUTE as their own that he may be expected to be multiplied exceedingly in the approaching Peace revels; but from more than one Pastoral Letter it may be gathered that the Episcopal Bench is very wisely in favour of the King's retirement from the margin of the ocean before his shoes are actually wet. It is held that in these days of leather-shortage ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 7, 1919. • Various

... the heart of Peloponnesus; mountainous, and only fit for pasture; therefore celebrated by bucolic or pastoral poets. ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus

... Jacob was certainly this only: that it partook of the nature of all such towers of the flocks. The tertium comparationis is not thereby changed; the figure is only more individualized, and, therefore, more striking and impressive. A reference to the pastoral life of the Patriarchs is certainly one of the reasons of the frequent use of images taken from pastoral life. In a different way, Hitzig endeavours to come to the same result. He supposes that ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg

... that name before, But in due season it became To him who fondly brooded o'er Those pages a beloved name! Adown the centuries I walked Mid pastoral scenes and royal show; With seigneurs and their dames I talked— The ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... one of these characters made himself conspicuous among able 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 ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... says—"Finding that few, by comparison, attended public worship, I visited them in their cottages to read and explain the Bible; and I was led to adopt this plan from the particular situation of the Foresters, destitute of churches or ministers whom they could properly call their own. In these pastoral visits, made on different evenings in different places, and in which I have usually spent two hours in reading and practically explaining the Holy Scriptures, I have sometimes had 200 persons present at ...
— The Forest of Dean - An Historical and Descriptive Account • H. G. Nicholls

... among many causes of national deterioration, spoke with chief fear of the influx of English wealth, gradually connecting all industry with the wants and ways of strangers, and inviting all idleness to depend upon their casual help; thus gradually resolving the ancient consistency and pastoral simplicity of the mountain life into the two irregular trades of ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... only amongst the bourgeois," said Lady Emily affectedly; "that is not the sort of menage I mean to have. Here is to be the style of my domestic establishment;" and she repeated Shenstone's beautiful pastoral...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... learning; and we can learn something about the time when he died from the date of his will. 'Letters of administration were granted to Martha Bourepos, wife of David Bourepos, 25th of October, 1711' (New York Surrogates' Office). He probably resigned his pastoral charge in 1694. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... this tasty little picture? Ladies, ladies, this is a great mistake! In the midst of your arduous brain toil, what could be more soothing and refreshing than to gaze upon this charming pastoral scene? This azure earth, this verdant sky, this lovely maid who combined in her person all the simpering charms of youth, and never, for one misguided moment, troubled her ochre head over the acquirement of that higher knowledge which, as we all know, is the proud ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... Darkens in double-bass to ocean's hue, Rises in violins to noon-tide's blue, With threads of quivering light shot through and through. Green as the mantle that the summer flings Around the world, the pastoral reeds in time Embroider melodies of May and June. Yellow as gold, Yea, thrice-refined gold, And purer than the treasures of the mine, Floods of the human voice divine Along the arch in choral song are rolled. So bends the bow complete: And radiant rapture ...
— Music and Other Poems • Henry van Dyke

... Allan 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... give an analysis of this vast work here. We have already spoken of the charming interlude, Les Bergers a la Creche. This pastoral is followed by Marche des Rois Mages, a pretty piece, but a little overdeveloped for its intrinsic worth. The vocal parts, Beatitudes and Le Pater Noster, would be more suitable in a church than in a concert hall. Then come some most brilliant pages, La Tempete sur le lac ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens

... This pastoral exhortation was entirely unavailing. The bishops and clergy of the Russian church still pertinaciously adhered to the faith of their fathers. The crusaders were ere long driven from the imperial city, and the Greek church again attained its supremacy in the East, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... 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 ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... boy, alone in the field, tries all sorts of experiments in musical attraction on the animals about him. Professor Albert S. Cook suggests that Browning is here indebted to the Greek pastoral romance of Daphnis and Chloe. See Smith's translation in the Bohn edition. The passages read in part as follows: "He ran through all variations of pastoral melody; he played the tune which the oxen obey, and which attracts the goats—that in ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... their music books, and others are accompanying them with lutes and viols, the song is not always supposed to be the same. In a Nativity they sing the "Gloria in excelsis Deo;" in a Coronation, the "Regina Coeli;" in an enthroned Madonna with votaries, the "Salve Regina, Mater Misericordiae!" in a pastoral Madonna and Child it may ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson

... horizon, until, shortly, the storm broke forth in unwonted fury, and swept away from the national statute book every vestige of American slavery. For a quarter of a century longer he continued in the service of the Master, laboring successfully in every department of the ministerial work—evangelical, pastoral, and in the advocacy of all moral reforms, and especially as a leader in the warfare waged against the saloon interest in Kansas. He lived to see his adopted State take an advanced position in the legal prohibition movement, slavery in the United States ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... Kaffirs proper and Zulus, a division of the Bantu negroes, found all over S. Africa, are a pastoral and latterly agricultural people of fine physique, naturally hospitable, honest, and truthful, but now much contaminated by the white man; Kaffir wars broke out in 1834, 1846, 1850, and 1877; the name, which means infidel, was originally applied by the ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Two elements of confusion established themselves, and augmented the general anarchy—viz., the Touaregs and the Foulbes, the former coming from the great desert of Sahara, and the latter from the west. Both were pastoral nomads. A petty Foulbe chief, of the country of Noukouna, named Ahmadou, spread a report that he was of the family of the Prophet, and for the next eighty years the Sudan was given over to fire and sword by a succession of rulers ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... beginning, Bethlehem had been the home of people engaged mostly in pastoral and agricultural pursuits. It is quite in line with what is known of the town and its environs to find at the season of Messiah's birth, which was in the springtime of the year, that flocks were in the field both night and day under the watchful care of their keepers. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... circumstances, I suppose.... But,' added De Stancy simply, 'Willy, I—don't want to marry, you know. I have lately thought that some day we may be able to live together, you and I: go off to America or New Zealand, where we are not known, and there lead a quiet, pastoral life, defying social rules and ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... the stormy outward world, in themselves; they could think as serenely of tranquil love; the kiss could be given as passionately and returned as tenderly, as if the lot of their existence had been cast in the pastoral days of the shepherd poets, and the future of their duties and enjoyments was securely awaiting them in a land of ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... simony, under which head he included every species of lay investiture. [Sidenote: and their consequences.] The prosecution of his plans soon brought him into a violent dispute with the weak and wicked Emperor Henry IV., who was as eager to secure the right of bestowing upon Bishops the ring and pastoral staff, as well as of their sole appointment, and thus reduce them to the state of mere secular vassals, as Gregory was by the same means to secure their ecclesiastical obedience to the see of Rome, and their total independence of any civil power. [Sidenote: Result of the contest.] ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... leading a dashing life in the city. The Brindlock family have taken him to their arms again as freely and heartily as if he had never entered the fold over which the good Doctor exercised pastoral care, and as if he had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... must be admitted, no less than the further remark that, in still earlier times, the pastoral Hebrews very probably had yet more restricted notions of what constituted the "whole earth." Moreover, I, for one, fully agree with Professor Diestel that the motive, or generative incident, of the whole story is to be sought in the occasionally excessive and desolating floods ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... soldier caste; every citizen was necessarily a soldier. And, again, while the Greeks rightly despised mechanical arts as much as the Egyptians, they did not make the fatal mistake of despising agricultural and pastoral life; but perfectly honoured both. These two conditions of truer thought raise them quite into the highest rank of wise manhood that has yet been reached; for all our great arts, and nearly all our great thoughts, have been borrowed or derived from them. Take away from us what they have given; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... a gentleman and a good fellow, but was sadly weak in the matter of drink. This weakness was a source of general amusement, in fact, it rather tended to increase the parson's popularity with the diggers. Whenever he went up the creek on pastoral visitation bent, every one would be on the qui uive, and as he returned men would lie in wait for him with proffers of alcoholic refreshment. By the time he reached home Mr. B would be more or less intoxicated, and several ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... combination the sublimity of Switzerland, the picturesqueness of the Rhine, the rugged beauty of Norway, the breezy variety of the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, or the Hebrides of the North Sea, the soft, rich-toned skies of Italy, the pastoral landscape of England, with velvet meadows and magnificent groves, massed with floral bloom, and the blending tints and bold color of the New England Indian summer. Features with which nothing within the vision of another city can be placed in comparison are the Olympic range of mountains in front ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax

... tell us a man who pleads his own case has a fool for a client, so does the insurance lawyer who is retained to foreclose a mortgage. In all prosperous city churches, the preacher who attracts the crowd in the morning allows a 'prentice to preach to the young folks in the evening; he does not make pastoral calls; and the curate who reads the service at funerals is never called upon to perform a marriage ceremony except in a case of charity. Likewise the teacher's profession has its specialists: the man who teaches Greek well can not write good English; the man who teaches composition ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... list is the "Fete Champetre" of the Louvre, or, as it is often called, the "Concert." This lovely "Pastoral Symphony" (which appears to me a more suitable English title) is by no means universally regarded as a creation of Giorgione's hand and brain, and several modern critics have been at pains to show that Campagnola, or some other Venetian imitator ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... difficult by reason of the formal and conventional terms of pastoral poetry. Therefore, in the preparatory work, the teacher should explain these terms; and should dwell on the circumstances that called forth the poem. The history of the times should be touched upon sufficiently to make clear the meaning of the ...
— Teachers' Outlines for Studies in English - Based on the Requirements for Admission to College • Gilbert Sykes Blakely

... from the British ridge, the plain over which the great fight raged is a picture of pastoral simplicity and peace. The crops that Sunday morning were high upon it, the dark green of wheat and clover chequered with the lighter green of rye and oats. No fences intersect the plain; a few farmhouses, each ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... me a vision that I had that night (one, no doubt, born of an engraving by Teniers that hung on the wall); there seemed to pass before my eyes little people belonging to a bygone age who danced in the shade of a wood like that of Limoise; the apparition awakened in me an appreciation of the pastoral gayety of that time, a conception of the abandon and joyousness of the picnickers who were dancing so merrily under the spreading ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti

... out, but the moon shone on, lustrous and splendid. First he reviewed his odd adventure in the archbishop's gardens. He had spoken to princesses before, but they were women of the world, hothouse roses that bloom and wither in a short space. The atmosphere which surrounded this princess was idyllic, pastoral. She had seen nothing of the world, its sports and pastimes, and the art of playing at love was unknown to her. Again he could see her serious eyes, the delicate chin and mouth, the oval cheeks, and the dog that followed in her steps. Here was an indelible picture which time could never ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath

... with all these pastoral and heroic graces, Our simplest flowers wear the loveliest faces; The sparrows are our most enraptured singers, And round their songs the fondest memory lingers; Our forests tower and tremble, star-enchanted, ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott

... orders neutrals expelled from Alsace; Archbishop of Cologne writes pastoral letter ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Herbage green, and yellow grain; From Touraine's smooth irriguous strand, Garden of a fruitful land, To thy dominion, haughty Rhone, Leaping from thy craggy throne; From Alp and Apennine to where Gleam the Pyrenees in air; From pastoral vales and piny woods, Rocks and lakes and mountain-floods, The warriors come, in armed might Careering, careless of the right! Their leader he who sternly bade Freedom fall; and glory fade, The scourge of nations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... of the family is the renowned Eaton Hall, near Chester; that stately mansion set in the centre of a country rich in pastoral beauty. Its enlargement and beautification was begun by the second Earl in 1802, and has been carried on by its present lord until it is now the most magnificent of all the modern mansions of the nobility. G.F. Watts's ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing

... diction, and elevation of sentiment: but as the magnificence of his performances was more, the simplicity was less; and, perhaps, where he excels Theocritus, he sometimes obtains his superiority by deviating from the pastoral character, and performing what Theocritus ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... is better suited for the raising of sheep than for anything else, and the step from the life of a warrior and hunter to that of a shepherd is not a long one, nor a hard one to take. Under the stress of necessity the Navajo became a peaceable pastoral tribe, living by their flocks and herds, and practicing horticulture only in an extremely limited and precarious way. Under modern conditions they are slowly developing into an agricultural tribe, and this development has already ...
— Navaho Houses, pages 469-518 • Cosmos Mindeleff

... afternoon was not badly spent in discussing this. We recall the fact that it isn't the human ear-drum exactly which will get this—if it ever comes to us—and that Beethoven was stone-deaf when he heard his last symphonies, the great pastoral and dance and choral pieces, and that he wrote them from his inner listening. Parts of them seem to us strains from that great harmony that the birds are trying to ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort



Words linked to "Pastoral" :   bucolic, piece of music, rural, idyl, pastorale, missive, literary composition, pastor, composition, shepherd, idyll



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