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Requiem   Listen
noun
Requiem  n.  
1.
(R.C.Ch.) A mass said or sung for the repose of a departed soul. "We should profane the service of the dead To sing a requiem and such rest to her As to peace-parted souls."
2.
Any grand musical composition, performed in honor of a deceased person.
3.
Rest; quiet; peace. (Obs.) "Else had I an eternal requiem kept, And in the arms of peace forever slept."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Requiem" Quotes from Famous Books



... light of reason, history, and philosophy, we see the divinity of truth and the mortality of error. We look down upon the great spiritual conflict going on in this world—in society and government,—and seeing the mutations of fortune we think we see truth worsted, and sound the funeral requiem of our fondest hopes, our most ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... Enumerate Dilapidate Request Exquisite Exonerate Approximate Insinuate Resurgence Insurrection Rapture Exasperate Complacent Dimension Commensurate Preclude Cloister Turnpike Travesty Atone Incarnate Charnal Etiquette Rejuvenate Eradicate Quiet Requiem Acquiesce Ambidextrous Inoculate Divulge Proper Appropriate Omnivorous Voracious Devour Escritoire Mordant Remorse Miser Hilarious Exhilarate Rudiment Erudite Mark Marquis Libel Libretto Vague Vagabond ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... past, and casual cobbers in Cairene escapades day after day went West; and always there came the momentary sadness, and, maybe, the remark, "Poor old Bill. They hooked him this morning. He was a good old sport." That was his requiem and, save for a few stray thoughts in the silent watches of the night, old Bill ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... the wind-god, as he flies, Moans hollow in the forest trees, And, sailing on the gusty breeze, Mysterious music dies. Sweet flower! the requiem wild is mine. It warns me to the lonely shrine— The cold turf-altar of the dead. My grave shall be in yon lone spot, Where, as I lie by all forgot, A dying fragrance thou ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... and lowly laid, Thy foeman's dread, thy people's aid, Breadalbane's boast, Clan-Alpine's shade! For thee shall none a requiem say?— For thee, who loved the minstrel's lay, For thee, of Bothwell's house the stay, The shelter of her exiled line, E'en in this prison-house of thine, I'll wail ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... in the prime of his powers. He was master of polyphonic music as well as plain-song, and he proposed applying it to grace the older mode, preserving the solemn beauty of the chant but adding the charming chords of counterpoint. He wrote three "masses," one of them being his famous "Requiem." These were sung under his direction before the Commission. Their magnificence and purity revealed to the censors the possibilities of contrapuntal music in sanctuary devotion and praise. The sanction of the cardinals was given—and part-song harmony became permanently ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... churches, temples, turrets, and towers rang continually until sundown, filling the air with a universal requiem of grief, while the black clouds hanging over the metropolis shed showers of tears for the untimely loss of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce

... news greatly rejoiced the Spaniards, who had naturally become very depressed, more especially as they knew that if no news were received of them for six weeks after the date on which they were due at Colombo a requiem mass would, according to Spanish custom, be said for them at their churches ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes

... assembled in the Lateran Church to celebrate the obsequies of Alexander. Hildebrand, as archdeacon, was performing the service. Suddenly, in the midst of the requiem for the departed, a shout was heard which seemed to come as if by inspiration from the assembled multitude: "Hildebrand is Pope! St. Peter chooses the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... surrounded by the most implacable Indian hostility, a malignant fever seized the spirit and head of the enterprise, and on May 21st, 1542, De Soto died. Amid the sorrows of the moment and fears of the future, his body was wrapped in a mantle, and sunk in the middle of the river. A requiem broke the midnight gloom, and the morning rose upon the consternation of the survivors. It has indeed been aptly said, that De Soto 'sought for gold, but found nothing so great as ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... dramatic, and therefore the most familiar incidents of Mozart's life, is the strange story of the anonymous commission he received to write a Requiem Mass. We are sure now that it was Count Walsegg who wished to palm off the composition as one of his own. To Mozart, however, there was something uncanny in the whole matter, and he could not work off ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... have I earned, No Trumpet's Requiem found, Altho' I've laid upon the veldt, With scanty comfort round. My son has seen more fights than I, Tho' he is scarce fifteen, Whilst I must sound my trumpet at The Yeoman's Base-fontein. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross

... Tristan, which Walter Damrosch hailed as an extremely interesting experiment, she has attempted to express something more than the joy of melody and rhythm. Indeed on at least three occasions she has danced a Requiem at the Metropolitan Opera House.... If the new art at its best is not dancing, neither is it wholly allied to the art of pantomime. It would seem, indeed, that Isadora is attempting to express something of the spirit of sculpture, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten

... slept an hour when he was awakened by a solemn strain of music. He looked out. Three ladies, fantastically dressed in green, were seen in the lower end of the apartment, who sung a solemn requiem. The major listened for some time with delight; at length he tired. "Ladies," he said, "this is very well, but somewhat monotonous—will you be so kind as to change the tune?" The ladies continued singing; he expostulated, but the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... and true?' he added, weeping again within time abandon of an open nature and simple age. 'It was for my sins, my forgetfulness of my great work, that this has come on me.—Ho, Marmion! carry these tidings from me to the Dean; pray him that the knell be tolled at the Minster, and a requiem sung for my brother and all who fell with him. We will be there ourselves, and the mayor must hold us excused from his banquet; these men are too loyal not to grieve for ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Requies, requietis, rest, regularly of the Third Declension, takes an Acc. of the Fifth, requiem, in addition to requietem. ...
— New Latin Grammar • Charles E. Bennett

... the needles kept dropping. Every frolicsome breeze of June carried some of them a little farther down the road; every full moon shone more clearly through the barrier of the pines. And at last, when the chill winds of Autumn chanted a requiem through the forest, it was seen that the pines had long been dead, but they so leaned together and their branches were so interlaced, that, even in death, they stood ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed

... labor each day, passed at night to the bunk house, and fell into a snake-like torpor. Life seemed quiet and innocuous. Liquor was prohibited. The regime was military. Soon after the bugle had sounded Retreat each evening the raw little settlement became silent, save for the unending requiem to hope which the great waters chafing through the turbines continually moaned. It was ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough

... overcast; a raw wind moaned through the trees, sighing a requiem. The drab, silent river went placidly, mockingly on its way down to the sea, telling no tales: if Rosabel Vick was rolling, gliding along the bottom, gently urged by the current, the grim waters ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... strains of the second movement of his symphony which was being played in the room above. It brought him back to himself, and he listened—listened as one who hears a voice from the dead. It seemed to him that the requiem of all his hopes was being played. He was still looking at the picture of his wife when Jenny entered. She had come to fetch the lamp, to fill it with oil. The short winter afternoon was drawing to a close and the dusk ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... its fragile stalk Beneath a crown of ripened grain; The birch and oak and maple blazed The Autumn's glory forth, and set aflame With red and gold, the northland pines, Perennial green. The light wind's voice Was muffled in requiem, mournful, low,— A parting song to Summer, sad, soft, And measured slow. Timed to the chant Of death, but tuned to death's sweet hope— Joy-hope of sorrow born—fair birth, A freer life of fuller scope! The sinking sun set all ablush The bosom of the lake. Upon the edge Of twilight ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various

... of thy unhappy nation, Yet for the sake of Freedom's spirit fled, Let thy wild harpstrings, thrilled with indignation, Peal a deep requiem o'er ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... Beethoven made of kettle drums may be regarded among the particular manifestations of his genius. Two kettle drums may be considered among the regular constituents of the orchestra, but this number has been extended; in one remarkable instance, that of Berlioz in his Requiem, to eight pairs. According to Mr. Victor de Pontigny, whose article I am much indebted to (in Sir George Grove's dictionary) upon the drum, the relative diameters, theoretically, for a pair of kettle drums are in the proportion of 30 to 26, bass and tenor; practically ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various

... bell. And the ghostly procession thrice tracks the four ambulatories of the cloisters, solemnly chanting a requiem for ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... ashes. The sad tidings crept through the vast concourse. The flags were furled, the cannon was rolled away, and Cayuga County went home with a clouded brow. Mr. Seward retired to rest at a late hour, and the night breeze in the tall trees sighed a requiem over the blighted hopes of New York's eminent son."—H.B. Stanton, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... in the boat, thinking of the events of the morning, and listening to the mournful rippling of the waters, which, to his subdued soul, sounded like the requiem of his victim, he was challenged from the ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... upon a mind so imaginative. The chapel for prayer, with its somber twilight and its dimly-burning tapers; the dirges which the organ breathed upon the trembling ear; the imposing pageant of prayer and praise, with the blended costumes of monks and hooded nuns; the knell which tolled the requiem of a departed sister, as, in the gloom of night and by the light of torches, she was conveyed to her burial—all these concomitants of that system of pageantry, arranged so skillfully to impress the senses ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... all instruments, the violin, first-rately played, is the most—yes, we will say it—heavenly. Hark! to the clear, vocal melody, now rapturously rising in one soul-exalting strain, anon melting away in the saddest, tenderest lament, as though the soft summer breeze sighed forth a requiem over the dying graces of its favourite flower; then bursting forth in haughty, triumphant notes, swept in gusts from the impassioned strings, as though instinct with life, and glowing with disdain. Any one may see that painters are no musicians, else had they furnished their angels ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... the birth of every government of Europe, and it is not at all improbable that she shall also witness the death of them all and chant their requiem. She was more than fourteen hundred years old when Columbus discovered our continent, and the foundation of our Republic is but ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... worse and finally died at their home at Fordham, near New York. After this sad event Poe wrote a poem which is a sort of requiem for her death. It was not published during his life, but after his death it appeared in the New York Tribune. Immediately it took rank as one of the three greatest poems Poe ever wrote. It is long enough to be complete, it has none of those metrical ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... he sketched both the 'fathers' and the 'children' as far as possible impartially and analytically. He spared neither the 'fathers' nor the 'children' and pronounced a cold and severe judgment both on the ones and the others. He positively sings a requiem to the 'fathers' in the person of the Kirsanovs, and especially Paul Kirsanov, having shown up their aristocratic idealism, their sentimental aestheticism, almost in a comical light, ay almost in caricature, as he himself has justly pointed out. In the prominent representative ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... National Federation, the National League and the People's Rights Association thereafter died a natural death. There were no ceremonial obsequies and none to sing their requiem. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... ours, but the world's. Give him place, O ye prairies! In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem! Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for for ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... ancient forest shade, And see its branches wave, Which have, perchance, a requiem sang Above the red ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower

... his parent earth bequeathed[my][21.H.] His dust,—and lies it not her Great among, With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue?[440] That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? No;—even his tomb Uptorn, must bear the hyaena bigot's wrong, No more amidst the meaner dead find room, Nor claim a passing sigh, because ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... sat in his tent alone, and around him the groans of the wounded and the agonizing wails of the dying greet his ear—the gentle wind singing a requiem to his dead. He nursed alone the bitter consciousness of the total defeat of his army, now a scattered mass—a skeleton of its former greatness—while the flower of the Northern chivalry lie sleeping the sleep of death on the hills and plains round about. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... sleep there, and Scandinavians, and French maitres de manoeuvres and maitres ouvriers: mingling alien dust. Back in the woods, perhaps, the blackbird, or (as they call him there) the island nightingale, will be singing home strains; and the ceaseless requiem of the surf hangs on the ear. I have never seen a resting- place more quiet; but it was a long thought how far these sleepers had all travelled, and from what diverse homes they had set forth, to lie here in ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... stage. What do they call it? Limbo. No, I feel nothing at all about that. They are dead; they have gone before their Judge who, I hope, will open to them the springs of His compassion. It is not my business to think about it. It is simply my business to say, as Leonora's people say: "Requiem aeternam dona eis, Do mine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. In memoria aeterna erit...." But what were they? The just? The unjust? God knows! I think that the pair of them were only poor wretches, ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... bland— The frozen North receded from their sight And fancy's dream entranced them with delight— Oh! who can tell what pangs their soul assail'd When every hope of life and rescue fail'd, When wild despair their throbbing bosoms wrung And winds and waves a doleful requiem sung? There stood the husband whose protecting arm 'Till now had kept his lov'd ones safe from harm. Remorseless grown, the demon of the storm Swept from his grasp her trembling, fragile form. Vague fear o'er children's ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur

... Thy requiem asks a sweeter lay; It falters on my tongue; For all we vainly strive to say, Thou shouldst ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... quartet and Schumann's pianoforte quintet Op. 44; but we recall no musical works heard by him for the first time in very late life making any particular impression on the Father, with one notable exception; Cherubini's First Requiem in C minor, done at the Festival, August 29, 1879. We were to have gone with him, but a Father who accompanied him wrote to us instead next day: "The Father was quite overcome by it, and that is the fact. He kept on saying, 'beautiful, wonderful,' and such-like exclamations. ...
— Cardinal Newman as a Musician • Edward Bellasis

... history and poetry. There is a tradition that upon the top of the elegant tower St. Mary Magdalen, formerly on every May-day morning, at four o'clock, was sung a requiem for the soul of Henry VII., the reigning monarch at the time of its erection. The custom of chanting a ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner

... golden hair was well-calculated to catch the wandering gaze; the flowers in her hat, the great bunch of violets in her dress added insistent alluring bits of color in the dim spot where she sat. Erect as a lily stem, she looked oddly out of place in that large, somber room; there, where the harsh requiem of bruised and broken lives unceasingly sounded, she seemed like some presence typical of spring, wafted thither by mistake. The man continued to regard her. Suddenly he started, and his eyes almost eagerly searched the lovely, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... hev 'em, and she'd orter hev a new hat, too," reflected Bud, and his song became a requiem. He manfully resolved to sacrifice his future to present needs and curtail the laundry fund. After some meditation he called upon the bishop, and asked if he might have an advance of half the amount he would ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... dying, mortality, expiration, quietus, mort, obit, extinction; euthanasia (an easy death). Associated-words: eschatology, thanatology, thanatopsis, necrology, thanatophobia, necrophobia, necrolatry, requiem, necromancy, posthumous, post-mortem, ante-mortem, euthanasian, dirge, crossbones, placebo, in extremis, decedent, funeral, obit, obitual, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... been assigned to my uncle and spent a long time talking together in a low voice; next morning I saw that my uncle looked particularly affectionately and trustfully at his son: he seemed very much pleased with him. David took him to the requiem service for Latkin; I went to it, too, my father did not hinder my going but remained at home himself. Raissa impressed me by her calm: she looked pale and much thinner but did not shed tears and spoke and behaved with perfect simplicity; and with all that, strange to say, I saw ...
— Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... Requiem peace from the hinter-snows Soft as river music flows. Dawn in a flushing glamour tints the sea; Serene ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... in the Crescent city not long ago befell The tear-compelling incident I now propose to tell; So come, my sweet collector friends, and listen while I sing Unto your delectation this brief, pathetic thing— No lyric pitched in vaunting key, but just a requiem Of blowing twenty dollars in ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field

... Johnnie the fall brought unalloyed joy and promise; to those who were older, something akin to melancholy, which deepened with the autumn of their life; while to Mr. Alvord every breeze was a sigh, every rising wind a mournful requiem, and every trace of change a reminder that his spring and summer had passed forever, leaving only a harvest of bitter memories. Far different was the dreamy pensiveness with which Mr. and Mrs. Clifford looked back upon their vanished youth and maturity. At the same time they ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... the wind-harp's wilding tones Sobbing a requiem o'er their bones; "The golden-globed skies shall perish," The harper harps ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... recognised Francis and sprang upon him. The blow which he aimed would most surely have killed him, but that Trent, with the butt-end of a rifle, broke its force a little. Then, turning round, he blew out the man's brains as Francis sank backwards. A dismal yell from his followers was the chief's requiem; then they turned and fled, followed by a storm of bullets as Trent's men found time to reload. More than one leaped into the air and fell forward upon their faces. The fight was over, and, when they came to look round, Francis was the only ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... folk heard they sang the requiem, and that Siegfried was in his chest, they crowded thither, and brought offerings for his soul. Amidst of his enemies, he had good ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown

... aim a decisive blow against the Pomeranian pagans when Valdemar died, on the very day set for the sailing. The parting nearly killed Absalon. Saxo draws a touching picture of him weeping bitterly as he said the requiem mass over his friend, and observes: "Who can doubt that his tears, rising with the incense, gave forth a peculiar and agreeable savour in high heaven before God?" The plowmen left their fields and carried the bier, with sobs and lamentations, to the church in Ringsted, where the great ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... resisted—the alternative was a convent! In pity she implored a short delay, and then convinced that her lover had suffered from her cruel parents' jealousy, gave the vows of her broken heart to the church. And that music is her requiem, and his too! For after those vows had been pronounced, and the black veil had shut out hope for ever, a haggard youth was released from confinement, of whose few and ill-starred years the turbid waters of the Pasig soon washed ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... wild fantasia, still inexpressibly sweet, and from that changed again into a requiem or lament, whose mellifluous tide of harmony swept our thoughts ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss

... for a minute, out of fear they might treat him as a thing of no consequence. How truly awful are those last rites of death,—the whole funereal paraphernalia, the candles, the misericordia, with the covered faces of the singers. It still clings to my ears, the "Anima ejus," and "Requiem aeternam." There breathes from it all the gloomy, awful spirit of Death. We carried the remains to Santa Maria Maggiore, and there I looked for the last time at the dear, grand face. The Campo Santo looks already like a green isle. Spring ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... individual artists of more or less skill and originality. The musical events to which the death of the Emperor Alexander I. gave occasion in 1826, show to some extent the musical capabilities of Warsaw. On one day a Requiem by Kozlowski (a Polish composer, then living in St. Petersburg; b. 1757, d. 1831), with interpolations of pieces by other composers, was performed in the Cathedral by two hundred singers and players under Soliva. On another day Mozart's Requiem, with additional accompaniments by ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... at this time that I came across Mozart's Requiem, which formed the starting-point of my enthusiastic absorption in the works of that master. His second finale to Don Juan inspired me to include him in ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... resting-place, without parade and in solemn silence—just as we believe his unobtrusive spirit would have desired, and just as his Savior was carried from the cross to the sepulchre. No splendid hearse or nodding plumes; no long procession, save the unheard tread of the angels; no requiem, save the unheard harps of the seraphs. We gave him a Protestant Christian burial, such as Quito never saw. In this corner of nature's vast cathedral, the secluded shrine of grandeur and beauty not found in Westminster Abbey, we left him. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... sleep where the reveille and roll-call may be heard, and the tramp of his fellow-soldiers echo and re-echo over him. All this is in unison with his profession; the drum and trumpet are his perpetual requiem; the soldier's honorable tread leaves no indignity upon the dead warrior's dust. But who has a right to trample on a woman's breast? And what had L.E.L. to do with warlike parade? And wherefore was she buried beneath this scorching pavement, and not in the retired shadow of a garden, where ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge

... by Goethe under this title are five in number, of which three are here given. The other two are entirely personal in their allusions, and not of general interest. One of them is a Requiem on the Prince de Ligne, who died in 1814, and whom Goethe calls "the happiest man of the century," and the other was composed in honour of the 70th birthday of his friend Zelter the composer, when Goethe was himself more than 79 (1828). ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... anything they could get.... If the two Miss Pecksniffs and Mrs. Todgers had perished by spontaneous combustion, and the serenade had been in honour of their ashes, it would have been impossible to surpass the unutterable despair expressed in that one chorus: 'Go where glory waits thee.' It was a requiem, a dirge, a moan, a howl, a wail, a lament, an abstract of everything that is sorrowful and ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... bier on which a corpse is lying. Don Quijote in attacking the funeral procession probably thought he had to do with the estantigua. Furthermore, Said Armesto in his illuminating study "La Leyenda de Don Juan" proves that the custom of saying requiem masses for the living was very ancient in Spain. One recalls, too, how Charles V in his retirement at Yuste rehearsed his own funeral, actually entering the coffin while mass ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup

... Godlike eye penetrating at that moment every churchyard and every grave: the mausoleums of the great—the grassy sods of the poor; the marble cenotaph of the noble and illustrious slumbering under fretted aisle and cathedral canopy—the myriads whose requiem is chanted by the bleak winds of the desert or the chimes of the ocean! The child carried away in the twinkling of an eye—the blossom just opening, and then frost-blighted; the aged sire, cut down like a shock ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... urge Earth's wildest wanderer to her farthest verge;— If these on all some transient hours bestow Of rapture tingling with its hectic glow, Then all are poets; and if earth had rolled Her myriad centuries, and her doom were told, Each moaning billow of her shoreless wave Would wail its requiem o'er a ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... was said and sermon preached, and on the 9th the bones of Padre Vicente Fuster were transferred to their final resting-place within the altar of the new church. A solemn requiem mass was chanted, thus adding to the solemnity of ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... of SS. Simon and Jude) he took his oath of office at the Court of Exchequer, dined in public, and, with the aldermen, proceeded from the church of St. Thomas Acons (where the Mercers' Chapel now is) to the cathedral. There a requiem was said for Bishop William, as already described,[3] then they went on to the tomb of Thomas Becket's parents, and the requiem was again said. This done they returned by Cheapside to the Church of St. Thomas Acons, where each man offered a penny. On All Saints' Day (three days later) ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham

... by night, In the dim twilight You may hear a requiem singing; And the people hear Above his bier A small bell clearly ringing. And if ye wait Until midnight late, You may hear the great bell toll: But none can tell Who tolls that bell If it sounds for Olaf's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various

... child, Holy matron, woman mild, For thee a mass shall still be said, Every sister drop a bead; And those again succeeding them For you shall sing a Requiem. ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare

... love that had no gift of song. But all the broken tragedy of life And all the yearning mystery of death Are celebrated in sweet epitaphs of vines and violets. Close by the wall a peristyle of pines Sings requiem to all the dead ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller

... atmosphere of careless, magnificent luxury and slow decay; the stucco peeled off in great patches, the stable roofs sagging, the windmill wheelless, the fences following the line of a drunken man's walk, the trees storm-torn, and the mournful cedars harping with every passing wind a requiem for the glory that was gone. As he looked, the memory of the old man's funeral came to Burnham: the white old face in the coffin—haughty, noble, proud, and the spirit of it unconquered even by death; ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.

... return from the hollows of the cliff like the voices of a multitude praying under their breath. From time to time, the beat of a wave, slow lifted, where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies heavily as the last note of a requiem. Opposite, green with steep grass and set with chalet villages, the Tron Alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... mortally sheepish, Jean-Marie reappeared and went ostentatiously about his business. He was the only unhappy member of the party that sat down that night to supper. As for the Doctor, he was radiant. He then sang the requiem of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Our Pan is dead; His pipe hands mute beside the river;— Around it wistful sunbeams quiver, But Music's airy voice is fled. Spring mourns as for untimely frost; The bluebird chants a requiem; The willow-blossom waits for him;— The Genius of the wood ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... the Mungana, and such was the poor wretch's requiem. With a shiver Alan reflected that had it not been for him and his insane jealousy, he too might have been expected to go into that same scent-bath and have his face painted like a chorus girl. Only would he escape the spell that had destroyed ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... great composers who wrote both classes of music, those which are devoted to religious subjects will be found vastly superior in almost every instance, with the one exception of Mozart's and in the case of this composer, his Mass in B flat and the Requiem will bear comparison with any of his operas. With no regular income, Mozart was compelled to write operas in order to live, but his preference was for sacred music. Haydn, on the other hand, spent no time on grand opera. Through ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... slowly she went from them, Went down the staircase grim, With trembling heart and limb; Her footfalls echoed In the silence vast and dead, Like the notes of a requiem, Not ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge

... and clear, His long, loud summons shall we hear, When statesmen to their country dear Their mortal race have run; When mighty Monarchs yield their breath, And patriots sleep the sleep of death, Then shall he raise his voice of gloom, And peal a requiem o'er their tomb— Hurra! the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... 'Another requiem and a mass for a departed soul, at the church of St Genevieve—is it not so, captain? But that is a matter of course.' And soon after we reached the dwelling of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various

... world's. Give him place, O ye prairies. In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant his requiem. Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood as so many articulate words, pleads for ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... hanged him as a beast is hanged: They did not even toll A requiem that might have brought Rest to his startled soul, But hurriedly they took him out, And hid him ...
— The Ballad of Reading Gaol • Oscar Wilde

... and saw the misty film of death gather over them, while your heart ached with regret as bitter as it was unavailing. The soft snows of winter have fallen—a veil of purity—over the new made graves of innocence and youth, and its wild winds have been the saddest requiem. The dews of summer have wept with your tears, and its zephyrs have sighed over the ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... is meant by Requiem, Nuptial and Votive Masses. A. A Requiem Mass is one said in black vestments and with special prayers for the dead. A Nuptial Mass is one said at the marriage of two Catholics, and it has special prayers for their ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 3 (of 4) • Anonymous

... yield their sighs, A requiem o'er the tomb Of sunny days and cloudless skies, Enhancing ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy

... strange sounds were heard, and all trembled and turned pale as they recognized the singing of a chorus of Banshees. The lady's ailment developed into pleurisy, and she died in a few days, the chorus being again heard in a sweet, plaintive requiem as the spirit was leaving her body. The honor of being warned by more than one Banshee is, however, very great, and comes only to the ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.

... chimes this Sunday morn, 'Mid autumn's requiem, Across the mountain valleys borne,— The bells of Bethlehem! "Come join with us," they seem to say, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. 1, Issue 1. - A Massachusetts Magazine of Literature, History, - Biography, And State Progress • Various

... for Austria—something for the Empire." These phrases repeated themselves over and over again in his mind until they rose and fell with the cadence of the high, wavering voice of the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna as he chanted the mass of requiem for Count Ferdinand ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson

... listening to the orators, partly in the Place d'Armes watching the men at work draping with black the Maritime Prefecture, where the Board of Inquiry was to sit, and the church of Saint Louis, where requiem High Mass was to be celebrated. Finally as much as remained of the holiday was spent at a cafe before a glass of coffee or aperitif, with the satisfaction of a sacred ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... surplices and copes, singing. The brethren were clad in their new liveries, the mayor and aldermen in scarlet, and on their return to their hall enjoyed a great feast. On the Sunday following the election day the brethren attended a mass of requiem for their deceased members, when the Bede Roll was read and prayers offered for the souls of the departed members, as well as for those who still survived, each brother being mentioned ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... the plash of the waves no longer seemed like a requiem over her lost sister; the moonlight gave poetic beauty to the pines; and even the blasted tree, with its waving streamer of moss, seemed only another picturesque feature in the landscape; so truly does Nature give us back a reflection of ...
— A Romance of the Republic • Lydia Maria Francis Child

... sorrowing sadness sweeps across the Land, With which the up-sent jubilant psalm is blent. 'Reft orphans' cries, in mournful cadence soft, Sobs wrung from widows' broken, bleeding hearts; And fond hoar-headed parents' sighs and tears, Commingling all, merge in a requiem sad For those brave hearts that fell in Freedom's cause. Then let us plant Fame's laurels o'er their graves, And keep them green with tears ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning

... about securing the gear, and in action we gave little thought to the event that had marked our day; but there was that in the shriek of wind in the rigging, in the crash of sundered seas under the bows, in the cries of men at the downhauls and the thundering of the torn canvas that sang fitting Requiem for the ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone

... show-place, the "Sacred Soil," where sleep the departed warriors of the Ngatewhatua. The bell-bird and the tui sing a requiem over them by day, while the morepork and the kiwi wail for them at night. And the wonderful loveliness of this spot, where they fought and died, might well inspire a Tennyson to pen ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... to look out over the broad porch. The storm had died away, sighing its own requiem in the misty tree-tops. Dawn was not far away. A thick fog was rising to meet the first glance of day. In surprise Shaw looked at his watch, her face at his shoulder. It ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... studies. During the last moments of his life, though weak in body, he was 'full of the god;' and his application, though indefatigable, could not keep pace with his invention. 'Il Flauta [Transcriber's Note: Flauto] Magico,' 'La Clemenza di Tito,' and a 'Requiem' which he had hardly time to finish, were among his last efforts. The composition of the 'Requiem,' in the decline of his bodily powers, and under great mental excitement, hastened his dissolution. He was seized with repeated fainting-fits, ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... of pain. The world, this busy, struggling, toilsome world, seemed slipping from her grasp, and heaven was very near to her. Her tired feet had borne her to the very brink of the dark river, whose waters chanted their solemn requiem, as the child had told her in his dream. She longed to follow him, and sometimes, in her delirium, would cry out his name suddenly, with every endearing accent. It seemed almost as if the words of the boy had been prophetic, and his ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... Amicos, Omnes, Illibate coluit. Uxorem duxit Annam Filiam Eadmundi Church Armigeri E Maldonia East Saxonum. Unica Corporis prole. (Elizabetha) Mentis multiplici (Libris utilissimis) Familiam propagavit, perennavit Famam. Requiem, Lector, si fas ducis, huic apprecare Et melior abi. Obiit Decembris 26, 1679. AEtatis 61. —— ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... which impressed Mozart with an ominous chill. One night there came a stranger, singularly dressed in gray, with an order for a requiem to be composed without fail within a month. The visitor, without revealing his name, departed in mysterious gloom, as he came. Again the stranger called and solemnly reminded Mozart of his promise. The composer easily persuaded himself that this was a visitor from the other world, ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... the wood-dove quit its bow'r, And seek the spot were she is laid; Its wild and mournful notes shall pour A requiem ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... brought foorth on beare; I saw him die, and no man left to mone His dolefull fate, that late him loved deare: Scarse anie left to close his eylids neare; Scarse anie left upon his lips to laie The sacred sod, or Requiem ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... for her wealth and hated her for her pride, And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her—that she died! How shall the ritual, then, be read?—the requiem how be sung By you—by yours, the evil eye,—by yours, the slanderous tongue That did to death the innocence that died, ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe

... tolling— Knelling for a soul that's sped; Silent and sad the shepherd lad Hears the requiem for ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field

... that took place there, as well as to the actors who centuries ago passed away. Now silence broods over the place once so active with life, and nothing but nature remains, while the distant surf is ever sounding an everlasting requiem to the memory of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... sed ad insipientiam sibi, omnes quasi illos articulos erroneos Pragenses et Wiklivienses pertinaciter tenebat: sed per venerabilem virum magistrum Laurentium de Londoris, inquisitorem haereticae pravitatis, qui nusquam infra regnum requiem dedit haereticis, vel Lolardis, confutatus est."—(Scotichronicon, vol. ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... hint of the probable character of the coming winter, what reliable signs remain? These remain: When December is marked by sudden and violent extremes of heat and cold, the winter will be broken; the cold will not hold. I have said elsewhere that the hum of the bee in December is the requiem of winter. But when the season is very evenly spaced, the cold slowly and steadily increasing through November and December, no hurry, no violence, then be prepared ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... "Ultimatum of a Citizen of the Third Estate on the Memoire of the Princes;" "Te Deum of the Third Estate as it will be sung at the First Mass of the Estates General, with the Confession of the Nobility," "Creed of the Third Estate;" "Magnificat of the Third Estate;" and "Requiem ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... a joy or a grief, put it into a song, so Laurie resolved to embalm his love sorrow in music, and to compose a Requiem which should harrow up Jo's soul and melt the heart of every hearer. Therefore the next time the old gentleman found him getting restless and moody and ordered him off, he went to Vienna, where he had musical friends, and fell to work with ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... to surrender. Twelve shots had been fired. Raked from bow to stern, it was a pathetic spectacle, like some huge leviathan lying wounded to death on the water, with its undaunted heart throbbing a requiem. ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting

... tombstone; He his mantle wrapped around him; Mournfully he blew his trumpet Through the gloomy lonely silence. This had brought upon him later Many mocking jeers like this one: 'Signor Werner is composing For the Jewess there a requiem.'" ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... priest in surplice white That defunctive music can, Be the death-divining swan, Lest the requiem lack his right. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... said Gerard, "I rise with the lark, good neighbour Franklin; but before you go, Sybil will sing to us a requiem that I love: it stills the spirit before we sink into the slumber which may this night be death, and which ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... to Fanny von Ponsing, in Baden, summer of 1858. According to the same authority Beethoven valued Cherubini's "Requiem" more ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven

... homeward as I sauntering move along, The nightingale begins his evening song; Chanting a requiem to departed light, That smooths the raven down of ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton

... glories of the immense coroneted coffins, the oldest shedding their velvet tatters around them. Surrounded by the whole official world of Rosenmold, arrayed for the occasion in almost [139] forgotten dresses of ceremony as if for a masquerade, the new coffin glided from the fragrant chapel where the Requiem was sung, down the broad staircase lined with peach-colour and yellow marble, into the shadows below. Carl himself, disguised as a strolling musician, had followed it across the square through a drenching rain, on which circumstance he overheard the old people congratulate the "blessed" ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater

... was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. Mozart composed his great operas, and last of all his 'Requiem,' when oppressed by debt, and struggling with a fatal disease. Beethoven produced his greatest works amidst gloomy sorrow, when oppressed by almost total deafness. And poor Schubert, after his short but brilliant life, laid it down at the early age of thirty-two; his sole property ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... Magic Flute," when one day he received a visit from a stranger. This man, tall, gaunt, and solemn in manner, clad all in gray, handed the composer an anonymous letter, sealed in black, requesting him to write a "Requiem" as quickly as possible, and asking the price. Mozart agreed to do the work and received from the messenger fifty (some say a hundred) ducats, with a promise of more upon completion of the piece, he agreeing to make no effort to discover who his patron ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands

... mass is the "mass for the dead" and differs considerably from the ordinary mass. Both regular and requiem masses have been written by many of the great composers (Bach, Beethoven, Verdi, Gounod), and in many cases these masses are so complex that they are not practicable for the actual service of the Church, and are therefore performed ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... her knee I struck your keys, And you made sweet my earliest lullaby: From you I thought my requiem might come. ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... the air like sighs—like the distant tones of a bell tolling a requiem—a lament, poetic, mournful, despairing, yet ineffably sweet and tender, ending in one deep, sustained note like the last clod of earth ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... herded close, and a simultaneous wild yell arose from their lips. The outburst was at once a dirge, an apology, an epitaph, and a paean of triumph. A strange requiem, you may say, over the body of a fallen, comrade; but if Jimmy Hayes could have heard it he would ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry

... the restless sea, which seems ever to be moaning a requiem for the dead, I left the little "Jennie," a monument of American pluck, but, at the same time, a mortifying instance of the fruitlessness of our national spirit of adventure when there is no ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... the squareheads, come to tell Newman that all was ready for the burial. So we joined the crowd, and Nils was put away, in the dead of night, by the light of one lantern and many stars. The hum of the wind aloft and the purr and slap of the waters against the bows were his requiem. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... makes life bright and precious, and were fronting with calm smile and quiet pulses a grim and desperate conflict, which she well knew could have an end only in the peace of the pall, that long truce, whose signal is the knell and the requiem. ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... the "dim backward" of pre-natal dreaming. It all comes back to us as we give ourselves up to the whispered cadences of this faint sweet music; while those reiterated syllables about "the great water-lilies among the rushes" fall upon us like a dirge, like a requiem, like the wistful voice of what we have loved—once—long ago—touching us suddenly with a pang that is well-nigh ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... all my interest in the survivor. Oh, no; I would rather seem to mistake and imagine, to be sure, it must be the tabby one that had met with this sad accident. Till this affair is a little better determined, you will excuse me if I do not cry, 'Tempus inane peto, requiem, spatiumque doloris.'" ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... shoulder, and the one she has not touched is always her choice—until she has touched it! Some get broken in the handling. For my part, my wires are working rather rustily, but I must obey the Stage-Manager. For my requiem I wish somebody would ask them ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... how: and I think she knew who had sat by his side on the throne, and who was the mother of his children. We only heard at Sempringham, that on that night shrieks of agony rang through the vale of the Severn, and men woke throughout the valley, and whispered a requiem for the hapless soul which was departing in ...
— The Well in the Desert - An Old Legend of the House of Arundel • Emily Sarah Holt

... a fruitful source of income to the Clerks' Company. We see Masters William Holland and John Aungell, clerks of the Brotherhood of St. Nicholas, with twenty-four persons and three children singing the Masses of Our Lady, the Trinity and Requiem at the interment of Sir Thomas Lovell, the sage and witty counsellor of King Henry VIII and Constable of the Tower, while sixty-four more clerks met the body on its way and conducted it to its last resting-place at Holywell, ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... secure and all danger past! And, as she stranded, the thick-falling white snow which had already covered the decks seemed to be busy wreathing a shroud for the ill-fated ship, while the surges sang her requiem in their dull, heart-breaking roar—the sea-fog hanging over the scene of the calamity the while like ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... exposed to rudest tread: While still, with semblance of the Summer brave, Soft, pitying airs float o'er its cold death-bed; Bright flowers and motley leaves flaunt o'er its grave: As in Earth's Autumn—so, through weeping showers, Love sighs a mournful requiem ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various



Words linked to "Requiem" :   mass, requiem shark, song, threnody, dirge, keen, coronach, lament, vocal



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