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Dirge   Listen
noun
Dirge  n.  A piece of music of a mournful character, to accompany funeral rites; a funeral hymn. "The raven croaked, and hollow shrieks of owls Sung dirges at her funeral."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dirge" Quotes from Famous Books



... yet sees the white rivulet gleam, And the leaf of December fall sere on the stream; While Irfon his dirge whispers on through the combe, And the purple-topt hills gather ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave

... blowing vigorously on his Jew's harp, Diana followed him beating a little drum, and Iris, with long black ribbons fastened to her flowing chestnut locks, was walking behind, carrying the tiny coffin. Iris, as she walked, rang an old dinner bell in a very impressive manner, and also sang a little dirge to the accompaniment of the bell and the two other children's music. These were the ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade

... was wild enough. Before the door a circle was formed by about twenty women, all in their best clothes, sitting on the ground, and swaying their bodies to and fro, while they sung in chorus the wild dirge already mentioned, the words of which I could not make out; in the centre of the circle sat four men playing on gumbies, or the long drum formerly described, while a fifth stood behind them, with a conch—shell, which he kept ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... sonorously, "are wandering about, lost and homeless on this melancholy and moving day of October 1st, waiting for the little robins to come and bury them under the brown and withered leaves. Ain't it harrowing, Miss! Personally I should prefer to have the last sad dirge sung over me by a quail on toast, or maybe a Welsh rabbit. What time did you breakfast, Miss? I had a ruined ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... this sad end will be a warning to all young wives who go out walking with handsome young men. Mr. Kimball's son is now no more. He sleeps beneath the cypress, the myrtle, and the willow. The music is a dirge by the eminent pianist for Mr. Kimball's son. ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... and assurance which these simple children obtain from their Moses and the Prophets. Yet external Nature does its share in their training; witness that most poetic of all their songs, which always reminds me of the "Lyke-Wake Dirge" in the "Scottish ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various

... regard it as merely fantastic to believe that the Dejection, that dirge of infinite pathos over the grave of creative imagination, might, but for the fatal decree which had by that time gone forth against Coleridge's health and happiness, have been but the cradle-cry of a new-born poetic power, in which ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... no kindred wail, No holy knell thy requiem rung; Thy mourners were the plaided Gael; Thy dirge the ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... knell is rung, By forms unseen their dirge is sung; There Honour comes, a pilgrim grey, To bless the turf that wraps their clay; And Freedom shall awhile repair, To dwell ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... There is pathos as well as dignity. Its author, had he lived in the nineteenth century, in default of new worlds to explore, or Armadas to fight, might have written an In Memoriam. In previous English poetry no such dirge is to be found as his Epitaph on Sir Philip Sidney. A couple of stanzas will indicate ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... drums. Gusts of rain and the water from the roof beat against the south windows, while the wailing wind played its mournful cadences about the eaves, and the stanch timbers added their creaking notes to swell the dirge-like chorus. ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... with thee on Time's remotest age, Ten thousand years, ten thousand times told o'er; Still, still with thee my onward course I urge; And now no longer hear the surge Of Time's light billows breaking on the shore Of distant earth; no more the solemn dirge— Requiem of worlds, when such are numbered o'er— Steals by: still thou art on ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard

... as they wail through the copses, Dirge-like and solemn to hear, Nature's own grand Thanatopsis Sadly shall ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... half-hearted kind of way; the girls struck the palms of their left hands with their fans. The boys were in clean working dress. Some had towels wound round their heads, some wore caps and others hats. The girls were got up in all their best clothes with fine obi and white aprons. The music was dirge-like. It was not at all what Western people understand to be singing. The performers emitted notes in a kind of falsetto, and these five or six notes were repeated over and over and over again. The ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... a breathless translation of the famous dirge for the Galician rebels of '46, in which a devastated land wails like Rachel ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the rocky cliffs of the sea, halcyon,[144] dost chant thy mournful elegy, a sound well understood by the skilled, namely, that thou art ever bemoaning thine husband in song, I, a wingless bird, compare my dirge with thine, longing for the assemblies[145] of the Greeks, longing for Lucina, who dwells along the Cynthian height, and near the palm[146] with its luxuriant foliage, and the rich-springing laurel, and the holy shoot ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides

... is claimed for it in this direction, while it often does succeed in distressing the ear and so obscuring the sense, though that is by the way. It is not as though given rhythms and line-lengths had any peculiar emotional significance attached to them. A dirge may be in racing anapaests, laughter in the most sedate iambic measure; a solemn invocation may move in rapid three-foot lines, while grave heroic verse may contain the gayest of humours. In a long work, indeed, variety of structure may be used to give ...
— The Lyric - An Essay • John Drinkwater

... Fidelio,—the sublime and adoring hymn of the "Alleluia" in The Mount of Olives,—the matchless pomp of the Sinfonia Eroica,—the passionate beauty of the sentiment of Adelaida,—the aerial grace of his quartets and waltzes,—the thrilling and almost awful pathos of the dirge written for six trombones,—but, above all, they will recall to mind the noblest work ever conceived and perfected by composer, one of the greatest achievements of the human mind, the Mass in D. And, bearing these wonders in their memory, their hearts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... Father, from afar off! From two hundred miles from here. From afar off, Father, from afar off!" the woman began in a sing-song voice as though she were chanting a dirge, swaying her head from side to side with her cheek resting in ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... appear four phantom shapes clothed as women in dusky robes. They are Want, Guilt, Care, and Need. The four grey sisters make halt before the castle. In hollow, awe-inspiring tones they recite in turn their dirge-like strains: they chant of gathering clouds and darkness, and of their brother—Death. They approach the door of the castle hall. It is shut. Within lives a rich man, and none of them may enter, not even Guilt—none save only Care. She slips through the keyhole. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill

... old men and women—old in years, old in wisdom, old in the lore and learning of their nations. Some of them wept, some chanted solemnly the dirge of their lost hopes and happiness, which would never return because of this calamity; others discussed in hushed voices this awesome thing, and for hours their grave council was broken only by the infant cries of the two boy-babies in the bark lodge, the ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... he passed the plains, the place of the sleepless winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its dirge of death and decay. ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris

... recognizing the fatal character of such a blow,[215] was overwhelmed with discouragement. But Catharine de' Medici displayed little emotion. "Very well!" she quietly remarked, "then we shall pray to God in French."[216] But the truth was soon known, and the dirge and the miserere were rapidly replaced by the loud te deum and by jubilant processions in honor of the signal success of the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... equal worth shall shine, (Such is the promise of his early fire) If such a hope of thine exalted line. Dark Fate and Fortune wreck not in their ire. Alas! from Naples in this distant shrine, Naples, where he is hostage for his sire, His dirge is heard: A stripling of thy race, Young Obyson, shall fill ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... day. And so busy had he been all night, piling and piling weights upon weights of earth above John Harmon's grave, that by that time John Harmon lay buried under a whole Alpine range; and still the Sexton Rokesmith accumulated mountains over him, lightening his labour with the dirge, 'Cover him, crush ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... Forego the dirge; let no one raise the cry, Or make unseemly show of grief and gloom, Nor think o'er me, who shall not really die, To rear the ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... the creed had been spent in fleeing from the bullets of the white men and seeking out-of-the-way barren spots where neither white men nor the white men's stock were likely to penetrate; but they knew enough to understand the signs of deep mourning the old man had assumed, and to recognize the dirge as the wail for those who had fallen ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott

... anthems, a dirge accompanied by trumpets was sung, "And the King said to all the people that were with him, rend your clothes and gird you with sackcloth and mourn. And the King himself followed the bier. And they buried him; and the King lifted up his ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... they buried the lad Godwin, with chant and dirge; and when the funeral was done Hereward went up toward the high altar, and bade Winter and Gwenoch come with him. And there he knelt, and vowed a vow to God and St. Guthlac and the Lady Torfrida his true love, never to leave from slaying while there was a ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... melancholy dirge in Norman French; the words, of which the following is an imitation, were united to a tune as ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... of the Emperor Inkyo (A.D. 453), the Korean Court sent eighty musicians robed in black, who marched in procession to the Yamato palace, playing and singing a dirge as ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... considered himself a singularly ill-used and injured man, and drawing himself up to his full height, as if it were a matter with which Heaven should be acquainted at the earliest possible opportunity, he indulged, as we before said, in the melancholy consolation of a whistled death-dirge, occasionally interrupted by a long-drawn interlude half sigh, half snuffle of his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... dying man's cabin and I repaired to my stateroom, very moved by this scene. All day long I was aquiver with gruesome forebodings. That night I slept poorly, and between my fitful dreams, I thought I heard a distant moaning, like a funeral dirge. Was it a prayer for the dead, murmured in that language I ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... conspicuous my name By absence shall appear; When I have lost all hopes of fame, Which once I held so dear; When 'plucked' I seek a vain relief In plaintive dirge or sonnet; Thou wilt have caused that bitter grief, Thou beautiful ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... effect may be compared to that which would be felt, if we should detach the songs of the artificial drama from their original impulse and feeling, (for instance, the willow dirge of Desdemona, and the fantastic moans of Ophelia,) and produce them in a parlor. Not but that these lyrics have a universal fitness, and a value which no time can change or circumstance diminish; but as we are looking at them ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... of whatever age or nation"—he seems to have already a foretaste of the wonderful vision so soon to open to his eyes. "Now," he concludes, "take down your harp of ten strings and sweep all the chords. Let us make less complaint and offer more thanks; render less dirge and more cantata. Take paper and pen and write in long columns your blessings.... Set your misfortunes to music, as David opened his dark sayings on a harp.... Blessing, and honour and glory and ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... this English clime The same sweet cry no circling seas can drown, In melancholy cadence rose to swell Some dirge of Lycidas or Astrophel When lovely souls and pure before their time ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... sun rise to compare with this for spirit and volume of sound. The difference between the singing in the dusk and in the dawn is the difference between the slow, sweet melody of a dirge and the triumphant, full-voiced peal of a wedding march. Even one who has always lived in the country can scarcely believe his ears the first time he is afield in June ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp

... of birds of passage; cranes were drawing their gigantic triangles across the sky, and storks at an immeasurable height were filling the clouds with mournful cries, which fell upon the saddened country like the dirge of parting summer. For the first time in the year I felt a chilliness in the air. I think that all men are filled with an involuntary sadness at the approach of the inclement season. In the first hoar-frosts there is something ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... 'twas easy to be seen that terror and confusion filled it. Whimpering, white-faced women and wailing bairns ran hither and thither blindly. Somewhere in the back part of the house the bagpipes were soughing a dismal kind of dirge. Fierce-eyed men with mops of shock hair were gathered into groups of cursing clansmen. Through them all I pushed my ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... in piteous strain, Grief-laden, tear-evoking, shrill; Ah woe is me! woe! woe! Dirge-like it sounds; mine own death-trill I pour, yet breathing vital air. Hear, hill-crowned Apia, hear my prayer! Full well, O land, My voice barbaric thou canst understand; While oft with rendings I assail My byssine ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... is difficult to imagine. Only one street lamp in three is lighted, and the cafes, which close at 10.30, are put on half-allowance of gas. To mend matters, everyone who likes is allowed to put up a shed on the side walk to sell his goods, or to collect a crowd by playing a dirge on a fiddle. The consequence is that the circulation is rendered almost impossible. I suggested to a high authority that the police ought at least to interfere to make these peripatetic musicians "move on," but he told me that, were they to do so, they would be accused of being "Corsicans and Reactionaries." ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... deeply. Bitter experience had taught that never was moment so unpropitious for errands like the present as when that cheerful dirge filled the air. But the thought of the waiting Silvey nerved him. He turned the doorknob and coughed hesitantly. His mother looked up from the pan of apples on her lap and smiled. She knew that lagging step and drooping ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely

... of the wind brought mournful strains of the victim's dirge to our lodge. I fastened the door, with robes against it to keep the sound out. Then a smell of burning drifted through the window, and I stop-gapped that, too, with ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... Rabbits had come by just at the wrong moment! They took his impending punishment even more cheerfully than he did himself, as our friends generally do, and promised to go in a body and see the operation. One, indeed, Simmonds, lamented over his sad fate, and sang by way of a dirge...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough

... departed Osiris. The wailing widow, who called on him to return with "the silent speech of tears," was that queen of the idolater's devils whose shameful worship her father had often spoke of with horror. Still, this dirge was so true and noble, so penetrated with fervent, agonized grief, that it had gone to her heart. The sorrowing Mother of God, Mary herself, might thus have besought the resurrection of her Son; just thus must ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... northwest. The numerous stakes, buoys, and other water-marks by which the channel is designated, the frequency of light-houses and signal telegraphs, and the wrecks that lie strewn along the beach, over which the surging foam breaks like a perpetual dirge, afford striking indication of the dangers to which mariners are subject in this wild region. Hans Christian Andersen, in one of his most delightful works, has thrown a romantic interest over the scenery of Jutland, giving a charm to its very desolation, and investing ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... rest, Who went forth brave and bright as any here! I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, But the sad strings complain, 240 And will not please the ear: I sweep them for a paean, but they wane Again and yet again Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf wraps, Dark to the triumph which they died to gain: Fitlier may others greet the living, For me the past ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... white dwellings on the beach in whose casement a light was yet burning, came a low, sad strain of sorrow. I had heard that sound once before, and knew now it was the wail of Irish grief. Strange that mournful dirge of Erin sounded in that distant land. Grace knew the language of her country, and ere the "keen" had died upon ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan

... and in our power to make a safe and honorable peace, and we refuse to do it; if our free institutions are in danger of becoming subverted, and giving place to an irresponsible tyranny; if we are moving in the narrow circles which are to ingulf us in national ruin,—then we had better sing a dirge, and leave this idle assemblage, and hush the noisy cannon which are reverberating through the air, and tear down the scaffolds which are soon to blaze with fiery symbols; for it is mourning and not joy that ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... was turned from the contemplation of these difficulties by a sudden change in Rory's tune. He stopped in the midst of his low, wailing dirge and struck up loudly the lively air that told again and again of the mirth produced when "Jinny banged the Weaver." Scotty raised his head and looked across the pasture-field. That tune always ushered Weaver Jimmy upon the stage, and there he was, coming over the field, ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... considerable apprehension of being well ducked; and at about the thirtieth time of crossing, I almost fancied there was but little chance of escaping a watery grave, with sharks for sextons, and the wild surf for a dirge! The truth is that at each successive time of passing this formidable barrier of surf we become better and better acquainted with the dangers and possibilities ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... murky sky, In the hush of desperation, not to conquer but to die. Hark! the bagpipe's fitful wailing—not the pibroch loud and shrill, That, with hope of bloody banquet, lured the ravens from the hill— But a dirge both low and solemn, fit for ears of dying men, Marshall'd for their latest battle, never more to fight again. Madness—madness! Why this shrinking? Were we less inured to war When our reapers swept the harvest from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... vanity fair, In robes that rival the tulip's glare, Think on the chaplet of leaves which round His fading forehead will soon be bound; Think on each dirge the priests will say When his cold ...
— Romantic Ballads - translated from the Danish; and Miscellaneous Pieces • George Borrow

... none but British soldiers would have sung. It had no known author and no known composer. It sort of "growed," like Topsy. If it had had a title given to it I suppose it would have been called "I want to go home," for that was its dirge-like refrain, always sung very cheerfully indeed, or with mock earnestness. Time and again I heard its chorus taken up with terrific gusto from end to end of this trench, and the whole extraordinary composition spread to other trenches like a contagion. Its popularity was instant and ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey

... at excellence that should be his own, and his friends treated his efforts as the wanderings of fatuity. The proofs of his capacity are, his Ode on Evening, his Ode on the Passions (particularly the fine personification of Hope), his Ode to Fear, the Dirge in Cymbeline, the Lines on Thomson's Grave, and his Eclogues, parts of which are admirable. But perhaps his Ode on the Poetical Character is the best of all. A rich distilled perfume emanates from it like the breath of genius; a golden cloud envelopes it; a honeyed paste of ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt

... silent, stately stone, Dirge and song and shoutings low, In thy heart Dwell serene,—and sorrow? No, ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy

... Nor heeds the public scorn, or transient curse, Unknown alike to honour and remorse. Behold the leering belle, caress'd by all, Adorn each private feast and public ball, 140 Where peers attentive listen and adore, And not one matron shuns the titled whore. At Peter's obsequies[5] I sung no dirge; Nor has my satire yet supplied a scourge For the vile tribes of usurers and bites, Who sneak at Jonathan's, and swear at White's. Each low pursuit, and slighter folly, bred Within the selfish heart and hollow head, Thrives ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... immortality"—the immortality of independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the laborers' chorus, "Roma! Roma! Roma! Roma non e piu come era prima," it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... of Octeville. The leper was conducted to the hospital with exactly the same ceremony as was used for the interment of the dead, and was followed by all the members of the confrerie to which he belonged, and preceded by a mourner ringing a dirge. One of the statutes of a confrerie ordaining this procession has been preserved (Arch. de la Seine Inferieure, G. 5,238):—"Le seroient tenus convoier jusques a sa malladerie le maistre et varlets portans leurs ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... Bacchus, come and join In solemn dirge, while tapers shine Around the grape-embossed shrine Of honest ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

... on the French farm became locally famous. Within a year two other men declared they had seen the figure of a gigantic Indian dancing and singing a funeral dirge in the moonlight. Farmer boys, who had been for an evening in town and were returning late at night to lonely farmhouses, whipped their horses into a run when they came to the farm. When it was far behind them they breathed more freely. Although ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson

... slowly back to the house, a low wail—half a chant, half a dirge—rose from the black crowd, and floated off on the still night air, till it died away amid the far woods, in a strange, unearthly moan. With that sad, wild music in our ears, ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore

... chant and dirge, they swept out through the Sun-gate, upon the harbour esplanade, and wheeled to the right along the quay, while the torchlight bathed in a red glare the great front of the Caesareum, and the tall obelisks before ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... avenue on his way home, a young girl passed him, walking very briskly. She paused for a moment just ahead of him to give some money to a poor woman who, doubled up on the pavement in a black shawl, was grinding out from a wheezy little organ a thin, dirge-like strain. ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... so fond. So she laid the doll on the sofa, and covered it with an antimacassar, to sleep. Then she forgot it. Meantime Paul must practise jumping off the sofa arm. So he jumped crash into the face of the hidden doll. Annie rushed up, uttered a loud wail, and sat down to weep a dirge. Paul remained quite still. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... mythical character was Maneros, son of the earliest Egyptian king. He seems to hold the same position as Linus, son of Apollo, among the Greeks. The first song of Egyptian music was a dirge for his untimely end, and a lament for the swift passing away of youth, spring, joy, and so on. Gradually the song itself, instead of the king's son, began to be called Maneros, and became the well-known banquet song of the ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson

... life's procession, pass along To the accompaniment of secret dirge, Or laughter interspersed with tear and groan; Nor pause a moment, nor retrace a step, But march in Fate's spectacular review In pageant to our ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King

... rise Above thy lonely, sun-bleached frame; No epitaph of well-turned lies Shall be inscribed beneath thy name; No bells for thee a dirge shall ring, No choir beside thy grave shall sing, Yet hast ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... silver crosses, the procession moves on to the cemetery on the outskirts of the town. The padre sheltered by a white umbrella, reads the Latin prayers aloud. A small boy swings the smoking censer, and the singers undertake a melancholy dirge. The withered body, with the hands crossed on the breast, clothed all in black, is borne aloft upon a bamboo litter, mounted with a black box painted with the skull and bones, and decked with candles. Women in black veils with candles follow, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... celebrated. All was exceedingly solemn and beautiful, in a far different style from the maimed rites that had been bestowed upon poor Queen Joanna in Scotland. The young King's face was more angelic than ever, and as psalm and supplication, dirge and hymn arose, chanted by the full choir, speaking of eternal peace, Eleanor bowed her head under her veil, as her bosom swelled with a strange yearning longing, not exactly grief, and large tears dropped ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge

... standstill: two or three dogs lay on the soft green lawn fast asleep, an old gardener smoking his pipe and sitting on the edge of a wheelbarrow seemed following their example; and birds and insects only kept up a monotonous and drowsy dirge. ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre

... strange temperament, I suppose," he resumed. "To-night this ravishing scene of beauty and splendor makes me sad at heart, I know not why. It seems too brilliant, too dazzling. I would as soon go home and compose a dirge ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli

... down there in her mist, Paris of lost Alsace and hopeless revanche, of ardor and charm crushed once, as they might be again, as the voice of that pale girl in black, with her air of coming from lights and cigarette smoke, and of these simple mothers rose above the noise of the street, half dirge, half battle-cry, while out beyond somewhere the little soldiers in red breeches were fighting, and the fate of France hung in the ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... man continued to go up and down the streets of Jerusalem, declaring the woes that were to come upon the city. By day and by night he chanted the wild dirge, "A voice from the east! a voice from the west! a voice from the four winds! a voice against Jerusalem and against the temple! a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides! a voice against the whole people!" This strange being was ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White

... the long lanes on misery's verge, Find out their dark dens, and list to their dirge; Where want and famine, and by ourselves made, Forgive our frail follies, and come to ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright

... petitioned for mercy. She gave no sign of life or being, saving that she moaned at regular intervals in piteous accents:—'He has forgotten and abandoned me!' as if that one simple expression comprised in itself, her acknowledgment of the uselessness of her life, and her dirge for her ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... not leave the earth; some who sing, others who hum, others who talk. Certain poems are like clarions, and celebrate the battle of Crecy, of which Chaucer had not spoken; others resemble lovers' serenades; others a dirge for the dead. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... tears, my poor Ximena; lay thy dear one down to rest; Let his hands be meekly folded, lay the cross upon his breast; Let his dirge be sung hereafter, and his funeral masses said; To-day, thou poor bereaved one, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... roaring fire and every sign of comfort, and it's my belief there's no one at home within but a woman and a few bairns. The odd thing is that as I get a look of the woman between the door-post and the wall, she sits with her back to the cruisie-light, patching clothes and crooning away at a dirge that's broken by her tears. If it had been last week, and our little adventures in Glencoe had brought us so far up this side of the glen, I might have thought she had suffered something at our hands. But we were never near this tack-house ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro

... what the Divine word brings forward. The last of these verse interruptions is a fully developed Ode on Fallen Babylon. The structural form of this ode is antistrophic inversion (7, 6; 6, 7), like that of No. /iv/ of the Sonnets (above, page 260). Another effect in this ode is the Taunt or Dirge Song.—My consecrated ones ... them that exult in my majesty. The Divine voice is heard calling to God's 'hosts,' the idea suggested by the title 'Jehovah Sabaoth.' Compare Joel, chapter iii. 11 and 13; Psalm ciii. 20, 21.—I will sit upon the ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... understand it. That it may give this sense of something half-forgotten, it must be sung with a certain lack of minute feeling for the meaning of the words, which, however, must always remain words. The songs in "Deirdre," especially the last dirge, which is supposed to be the creation of the moment, must upon the other hand, at any rate when Miss Farr's or Miss Allgood's music is used, be sung or spoken with minute passionate understanding. I have rehearsed the part of the Angel in "The Hour-Glass" with recorded notes throughout, ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt

... Thomson 63 On the Popular Superstitions of the Highlands of Scotland; considered as the Subject of Poetry; inscribed to Mr. John Home 66 An Epistle, addressed to Sir Thomas Hanmer, on his Edition of Shakespeare's Works 78 Dirge in Cymbeline, sung by Guiderus and Arviragus over Fidele, supposed to be dead 87 Verses written on a Paper which contained a Piece of Bride-cake, given to the Author by a Lady 89 To Miss Aurelia C——R, on her ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins

... tune and the dance, and arose a weird dirge of compassion over what might have been! So moving was it, the player himself was melted. His dark nature showed its fairest side,—sensitive refinement, grace of expression, flowing ease of manner. Quick was he in fancy, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... likely. Better for them, if they be not. The consciousness of life need be no comfort to me. In that wild chaunt there is breathing a keen spirit of vengeance. Oh! that I had not survived to hear it! Too surely do I know what will follow that dirge of death. It might as well be ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... we sing the funeral dirge of Cape ideals, the Republicans sing songs of gladness. Thus, when Mr. Sauer, a noted disciple of the late Mr. Saul Solomon, died, the 'Bloemfontein Friend', the leading Ministerial daily of ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or never more! See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore! Come! let the burial rite be read—the funeral song be sung!— An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young— A dirge for her the doubly dead in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... almost completely irresponsible. The stunning effect of the blow may be seen in the wandering lines of Ulalume (1847). The end came to him in Baltimore in 1849, the same year in which he wrote the beautiful dirge of Annabel Lee for his dead wife. He was only forty when he died. This greatest literary genius of the South was buried in Baltimore in a grave that remained unmarked ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... was singing when his lodger entered the kitchen, but his was no joyful ditty. It was a dirge, which he was intoning as he bent over the cookstove. A slow and solemn and mournful wail dealing with death and burial of one "Old Storm Along," whoever ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... was on the battle-field; and the cold pale moon Looked down on the dead and dying; And the wind passed o'er with a dirge and a wail, Where the young and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... his beautiful boy he uttered the voice of parental sorrow in immortal accents. In the poems, "In Memoriam," and in "The Dirge," he records how lonely the lovely Concord Valley is to him since his brothers are gone as he wanders there ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... Veronese also bared his head and made the sign of reverence, for they were passing the island of San Michele, toward which a mournful procession of boats, each with its torch and its banner of black, was slowly gliding, while back over the water echoed the dirge from those sobbing cellos. Here, where only the dead were sleeping, the sky was as blue and the sea as calm as if sorrow had never been born in ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... night—the lamps burnt dimly—the military band played in the minor key—the waiters stalked about with so silent, melancholy a tread, that we took their towels for pocket-handkerchiefs; the concert in the open rain went off tamely—dirge-like, in spite of the "Siege of Acre," which was described in a set of quadrilles, embellished with blue fire and maroons, and adorned with a dozen double drums, thumped at intervals, like death notes, in various parts of the doomed gardens. The divertissement was anything but diverting, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... heroes, from hoard in cave, — trusting the ground with treasure of earls, gold in the earth, where ever it lies useless to men as of yore it was. Then about that barrow the battle-keen rode, atheling-born, a band of twelve, lament to make, to mourn their king, chant their dirge, and their chieftain honor. They praised his earlship, his acts of prowess worthily witnessed: and well it is that men their master-friend mightily laud, heartily love, when hence he goes from life ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous

... Canonbury's tower, an ancient pile To various fates assigned; and where by turns Meanness and grandeur have alternate reign'd; Thither, in latter days, have genius fled From yonder city, to respire and die. There the sweet bard of Auburn sat, and tuned The plaintive moanings of his village dirge. There learned Chambers treasured lore for men, And Newbery there his A B ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving

... A dirge, the preacher said, should be sung for him in every church in Oxford; he charged all the priests to say each a mass for the repose of his soul; and finally, he desired the congregation present to kneel where they were, and pray ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... him home to the House of Stones All the way, all the way, To his grave in the sound of the winter sea: The sky was dour, the sky was gray. They played him home with the chieftain's dirge, Till the wail was wed to the rolling surge, They played him home with a sorrowful will To his grave at the foot of the Holy Hill And the pipes went mourning all ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... songs of the Poet's soul Are set to the passionate grief Of winds that sough and bells that toll The dirge of the falling leaf. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... aghast; For ere night's midmost, stillest hour was past, The native revels of the troop began; Each Palikar his sabre from him cast,[29.B.] And bounding hand in hand, man linked to man, Yelling their uncouth dirge, long daunced the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... ... God sees me, God, who took my heart And drowned it in life's surge. In all your wide warm earth I have no part— A light song overcomes me like a dirge. Could Love's great harmony The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose, Not weigh me down? am I a wife to choose? Look ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning

... Ruler of heaven; and they halted a while to rest, 65 Tired after the terrible struggle. A tomb then they began to make, His friends in sight of his foes. Of the fairest of stone they built it, And set their Savior upon it. A sorrowful dirge they chanted, Lamented their Master at evening, when they made their journey home, Tired from their loved Lord's side. And they left him with the guard. 70 We crosses stood there streaming with blood, And waited long after the wailing ceased Of the ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various

... at a first performance to take in everything with both eye and ear, and I shall excuse myself from attempting to do justice to M. RAVEL'S music. But I was free (the curtain being down) to listen to one long orchestral passage which followed the capture of Chloe. It was of the nature of a dirge, and it seemed to me to suggest very cleverly the sorrows of a poultry-yard. I suppose Chloe must have been in the habit of feeding them ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various

... bounded o'er each scene Where cisterns had so lately been: Away in frantic haste he sprung, And sought to cool his burning tongue. He howled, and to his famished cry The dreary echoes gave reply; And owlet's dirge, through shadows dim, Rolled back ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... Breidablik, Nanna, Balder's wife, Came with the Goddesses who wrought her will, And stood by Balder lying on his bier. And at his head and feet she station'd Scalds Who in their lives were famous for their song; These o'er the corpse intoned a plaintive strain, A dirge—and Nanna and her train replied. And far into the night they wail'd their dirge. But when their souls were satisfied with wail, They went, and laid them down, and Nanna went Into an upper chamber, and ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... solemn hush, the measured tramp of the jury advancing, and filing into their box, had the mournful, measured beat as of pall bearers, keeping step to a dismal dirge; and when the foreman laid upon the table the fatal brass unicorn, the muffled sound seemed ominous as the grating of a coffin lowered upon the cross bars of a gaping grave. As the roll was called, each man ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... how deep in they really were. Foreman was in a particular jolly mood the next morning, for he had spent the night bidding against Pierrepont Morgan at an auction sale of old masters; but he listened patiently while Sowers called off the figures in a sort of dirge-like singsong, and until he had wailed out his final note of despair, a bass-drum crash, which he thought would bring Foreman to a realizing sense of ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... you know, O ransomed brother, That we stand upon the verge, Where old time fills up his ages, And the lost will mourn his dirge? ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr

... women of Palomitas took up the trail over the mesa to the north. Their high notes of a song came back to him,—one of those wailing chants of a score of verses dear to the Mexican heart. In any other place he would have deemed it a funeral dirge with variations, but with Indian women at sunrise it ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan

... which was now charged with an awful menacing gloom that frightened my soul. Sometimes, when straying alone, like an unquiet ghost among the leafless trees, when a deeper shadow swept over the earth, I would pause, pale with apprehension, listening to the many dirge-like sounds of the forest, ever prophesying evil, until in my trepidation I would start and tremble, and look to this side and to that, as if considering which way to fly from some unimaginable calamity coming, I knew not from where, to ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... and then looked down on the white face on the pillow. At the fireplace sat his honour, buried in thought, and not heeding the talk of the jovial priest who sat and stirred his cup beside him. There, too, among the crowd of dirge- singing, laughing, whisky-drinking neighbours, I could see the outlandish-looking skipper of ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... indication of pity crossing his composed features, but it would immediately revert again to its former gaze, as if already looking into the womb of futurity. Much of the time he was chanting a kind of low dirge in the Delaware tongue, using the deep and remarkable ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... not much! but let th' "dank wynd" moan, "Shimmer th' woold" and "rive the wanton surge;" I ask not much; grant but an "eery drone," Some "wilding frondage" and a "bosky dirge;" Grant me but these, and add a regal flush Of "sundered hearts upreared upon a byre;" Throw in some yearnings and a "darksome hush," And—asking ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... the dirge of the people of the Long House," said Paul, upon whose sensitive mind the scene made a ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... romantic ballads, we have not so rich a store; yet "The Gay Goss-hawk," the "Nut-browne Mayde" and the touchingly beautiful "Barthram's Dirge" may stand amongst the best ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... among old Ireland's mountains I hear the breezes sing a sad dirge, low, Wild, and yet soft, with tears from many fountains And murmuring ...
— Lays from the West • M. A. Nicholl

... are done here by slaves in chains, who perform a kind of plaintive melancholy dirge in recitative, to sooth their unavailing toil, which, with the accompanyment of the clanking of their irons, is the real voice of wo, and attunes the soul to sympathy and compassion, more than the most elaborate piece ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards

... daughter of the wandering musicians who had, at the open grave, played as a dirge, or, rather, as a ringing hymn of resurrection and deliverance, the chant of the fatherland-that dark girl to whom he had said: "Bring me this jewel, and come and live in peace with the Zilahs"—was the mother of this beautiful, fascinating creature, ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... dirge of the mother's heart, and the wife's sorrow, had almost every eye in tears; and, indeed, it was impossible that the sympathy for her should not be deep and general. They all knew the excellence and mildness of her husband's character, and that every word she uttered concerning ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... dismal picture of the time when the sun shall be burned out, and the world float like a charnel ship through the dark, cold voids of space—the sun a burned-out char, a dead cinder, and the world one dismal silence, cold beyond measure, and dead beyond consciousness. The philosopher has wailed a dirge without [Page 261] hope, a requiem without grandeur, over the world's future. But nature herself, to all ears attuned, sings paeans, and shouts to men that the highest energy, that of life, does ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... bones rattled Like shutters in a blast; And they stared from eyeless sockets On me as they circled past; And the music that kept them whirling Was a funeral dirge ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... officers during all the ceremony, from the foot of the mainsail, and wetting the leaves of the prayer-book. The wind sighed over us amongst the wet shrouds, with a note so mournful, that there could not have been a more appropriate dirge. ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne

... headlong to the fratricidal strife. War, in itself, is no subject for tragedy, and the poet hurries us rapidly from the ominous preparation to the fatal moment of decision: the city is saved, the two competitors for the throne fall by each other's hands, and the whole is closed by their funeral dirge, sung conjointly by the sisters and a chorus of Theban virgins. It is worthy of remark that Antigone's determination to inter her brother, notwithstanding the prohibition with which Sophocles opens his ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... Chapel the choir is chanting a dirge. Gamba goes and closes the door on the sound: then creeps to the foot of the couch. The dying woman gently motions aside the cross a priest is holding to her, and looks up at ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q

... like a dirge, but still the leader of the hawks of the desert kept it up. He bellowed it out now in a harsh, shrill voice. It rasped uncomfortably, like rusty ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... song! I pour the dirge of the Departed Days, For well the funeral song Befits this ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... arms, for a second his kisses were on her lips, and then came the sundering. A storm of tears was in her heart, but with dry eyes she said the words of good-bye. Meanwhile from the hills came a drift of snow, and a dreary wind sang in the pines the dirge of the dead summer, the plaint ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan

... mark is Mr. Swinburne's description of the volume as "worthless." It contains twenty-one numbers, besides that lofty dirge, so unapproachably solemn, The Phoenix and the Turtle. Of these, five are undoubtedly by Shakespeare. A sixth (Crabbed age and youth), if not by Shakespeare, is one of the loveliest lyrics in the language, and I for my part could give it to no other ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... hawser strained and groaned, chocks and bitts crooned their song of stress, the wind whistled its dirge, while out from the breakers ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... my failing voice, But the same language with more full appeal Shall hail thee. Many are the sons of song Whom thou hast heard upon thy native plains, Worthy to sing of thee; the hour is come; Take we our seats and let the dirge begin. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... Let dirge be sung, and trentals rightly read, For Love is dead: Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth My mistress' marble heart; Which epitaph containeth, "Her eyes were once his dart." From so ungrateful fancy; From such a female frenzy; From them that use men ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... knew him, and they laid him by his bride; Down the aisle and o'er the threshold they were carried, side by side; While the organ played a dirge that no man ever heard before, And then softly sank ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... and more intolerably arch, Alice became more and more severe. She purified the accompaniment from all taint of the young lady's intentions. It grew graver and graver. It was a hymn, a solemn chant, a dirge. The dirge of the last hope of the young lady ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... square roughly drawn in the middle of the road; then to the strains of a bamboo fiddle, bamboo flute, bamboo drum, the melodrama was begun. The hero pranced into the open square to the tune of a minor dirge, not knowing a single sentence of his part; the prompter, kneeling down before a flaring candle, told him what to say; he repeated in parrot-like fashion, and then pranced off the square to slow dirge-like music. Now the heroine minced in from the opposite ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger

... procession left the gates of the city, and in the midst was Psyche, clad in garments of black, and led by her father, while her mother followed weeping behind. Singers wailed out a dirge, which was scarcely heard above the sobs of the mourners, and the torches burned dimly ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... love can be more deadly to the choice of her heart than her hate to one she abhors. The impatience of restraint you speak of and her very inability to brook opposition can be turned to good account now." And old Sanders again tapped in the rhythm of a dirge on ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... dead, let thy last kindness be With leaves and moss-work for to cover me: And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter, Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister! For epitaph, in foliage, next write this: Here, here the tomb of Robin ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick

... and solemn state. Then thousands gathered to bow the head in reverence as the plumed hearse drove down the line. There was all the pomp of military display—drooping flags, battalions with reversed arms, and bands playing dirge-like airs. Now, the wife of the President was leaving the White House, and there was scarcely a friend to tell her good-by. She passed down the public stairway, entered her carriage, and quietly drove to the depot where we took the cars. The silence ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley

... sight, and for some time none spake. The solemn dirge continued, interrupted only by the stifled sobs of ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... down the deserted corridor, his footsteps echoed hollowly like a dirge. A line from an old poem sprang to his mind: "We are the dead, row on row we lie—" He was the dead, but still he chased the chimera of hope, yet knowing in his heart it ...
— Faithfully Yours • Lou Tabakow

... a natural proclivity for quoting the appropriate dirge when sorrow shows itself. The Book of Lamentations—Shakespeare's sadder lines—roll off their tongues majestically and seem to give them consolation—as it were to lay a sound, unjoyous basis for the proper enjoyment of the ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... Colbert was stooping by a distant tomb reading its epitaph to little Jennie, who listened with the deepest interest. There was no sound to mar the stillness of that peaceful retreat, the whispering winds went, dirge-like, through the waving grass, and the leaves rustled softly above the ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... Islander on the Garioch, is still sung; the 'Woes of the Children of the Mist' are yet rehearsed in the ears of their children in the most plaintive measures. Innerlochy and Killiecrankie have their appropriate melodies; Glencoe has its dirge; both the exiled Jameses have their paean and their lament; Charles Edward his welcome and his wail;—all in strains so varied, and with imagery so copious, that their repetition is continually called for, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... wide-open ears of Jacob his father's words sounded like a doom, giving an awful finish to the dirge-like effect of the whole announcement. His face had been gathering a wondering incredulous sorrow at the notion of Mordecai's going away: he was unable to imagine the change as anything lasting; but at the mention of "hard times for Jacob" there was no further ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... packs began to weigh more heavily; the mouth organs and vocalists were less persistent in their efforts and gradually stopped in disgust, and only an accordion, wielded by a husky Scotchman at the rear of the company, strove to cheer us up. It was probably "Lochaber no more" or some other dirge he was playing, as he always showed unnatural fondness for the weird and the sad—probably due to the difficulty of fingering lively airs while ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry

... to the women. The soft crooning of their voices reached him as they resumed the dismal dirge of their ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre

... of life. I hear the loud Hosanna chanted for a soul which dies in the Lord. I will repeat the strain. No. My voice refuses to fall back upon the ear. Where is my heart that it beats not swelling to the anthem's measure? Cold! cold! cold! Nay; I will rise. I will respond unto the funeral dirge. I will shout. Oh! my trunk is hardened, and my tongue is glued. Silence! they pause. Say, do they hear me? No. Silence, horrible and awful. Hark! they mourn with lamentation on my fate. O, Heaven! must I endure all this? Must the living weep ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various

... are they bawdy? come, sir, I see by your simpring it is you that sings, but do not squeake like a French Organ-pipe nor make faces as if you were to sing a Dirge. Your fellowes may goe behind the arras: I love to see Musitions in their postures imitate those ayrey soules that grace our Cittie Theaters, though in their noats they come as short of them as Pan ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various



Words linked to "Dirge" :   keen, coronach, lament, vocal, requiem, threnody, song



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