"Ditty" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Comes the Teian bard of pleasure, Round his brow where joy reposes Radiant love enwreaths his roses, Rapture in his verse is ringing, Soft persuasion in his singing:— 'Twas the same melodious ditty Moved Polycrates to pity, Made that tyrant heart surrender Captive to a tone so tender: To the younger bard inclining, Round his brow the roses twining, First the wreath in red wine steeping, He his cithern to his keeping Yields, its glorious fate foreseeing, From her chains a nation freeing, ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... H——, but bore in fact the name of the illustrious author whose conception he embodied; and who certainly would have hugged him for Tom's opening song, delivered in the arms of Huncamunca, if he could have forgiven the later master in his own craft for having composed it afresh to the air of a ditty then wildly popular at the "Coal Hole."[177] The encores were frequent, and for the most part the little fellow responded to them; but the misplaced enthusiasm that took similar form at the heroic intensity with which he stabbed Dollalolla, ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Nobody aboard the craft knew what to do. Once Bob tried to cheer up and hum a ditty, but the ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... have passed from hand to hand, and form the "root of title" of very many owners of house property in Kilkenny. The city is the centre of an extensive agricultural region, famous, according to an ancient ditty, for "fire without smoke, air without fog, water without mud, and land without bog"; but of late it has been undeniably declining. For this there are many reasons. The railways and the parcel-post diminish its importance ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... the figure of a single head with three faces within a wreath of oak-leaves with floriated spandrels.[44] We should like to pursue the subject of these Newbury clothiers and see Thomas Dolman's house, which is so fine and large and cost so much money that his workpeople used to sing a doggerel ditty:— ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... from the dittis or Manchester stuff of which it was once made. It is in use among seamen for holding their smaller necessaries. The ditty-bag of old, when a seaman prided himself on his rig, as the result of his own ability to fit himself from clue to earing, was a treasured article, probably worked in exquisite device by his lady-love. Well can we recollect the pride exhibited in its display when "on end clothes" was a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire; Every elf and fairy sprite Hop as light as bird from brier; And his ditty, after me, Sing and dance ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... silence but for the bells—the bowman's pole is lowered—as with one stroke out sweep the paddles in a poetry of motion. The chimes die away over the water, the chapel spire gleams—it, too, is gone. Some one strikes up a plaintive ditty,—the voyageur's song of the lost lady and the faded roses, or the dying farewell of Cadieux, the hunter, to his comrades,—and the adventurers are launched ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... and twisted the course of true love This ditty explains, No tangle's so tangled it cannot improve ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of their ethical statement. The Persians and the Arabs, with great leisure and few books, are exquisitely sensible to the pleasures of poetry. Layard has given some details of the effect which the improvvisatori produced on the children of the desert. "When the bard improvised an amatory ditty, the young chief's excitement was almost beyond control. The other Bedouins were scarcely less moved by these rude measures, which have the same kind of effect on the wild tribes of the Persian mountains. Such verses, chanted by their self-taught poets, or by the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... lay, ditty, ballad, onody, chansonnette, lyric, lilt, lied, paean, cantata, aria, sonnet, strain, round, rhapsody, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... be printed with the official account of the celebration. It was written at the suggestion of Dr. Jacob Bigelow, who thought the popular tune "The Poacher's Song" would be a good model for a lively ballad or ditty. He himself wrote the admirable Latin song to be found in the record of ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... chance. Come, come, my good old boy, don't be waxy. I can wait, you know. I am quite a juvenile." And with that he stretched himself at full length across three chairs, and began to whistle a fragment of some vaudeville ditty that occurred ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... stroke of the whip his answer was, "Woe, woe to Jerusalem!" And when Albinus [for he was then our procurator] asked him, Who he was? and whence he came? and why he uttered such words? he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him. Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; 20 Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... Dale," and the men, who, we need scarcely say, were fictitious negroes, sang it so well that the audience listened with breathless attention and evident delight, and encored it vociferously. The next song was "Oh! Massa, how he wopped me," a ditty of quite a different stamp, but equally popular. It also was encored, as indeed was every song sting that evening; but the performers had counted on this. After the third song there was a hornpipe, in the performance of which the dancer's chief ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... he went splashing down the road with a very elastic tread, springing over the starlit puddles, and trolling out some sentimental ditty. He reached the inn, and went up ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... boy or girl has never played the game, and sung the ditty, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down," even though nobody now living ever ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... signifying to them that he wants a Subsidy. You must, sure, have heard speak of an old Man, who walks about the City, and that part of the Suburbs which lies beyond the Tower, performing the Office of a Day-Watchman, followed by a Goose, which bears the Bob of his Ditty, and confirms what he says with a Quack, Quack. I gave little heed to the mention of this known Circumstance, till, being the other day in those Quarters, I passed by a decrepit old Fellow with a Pole in his Hand, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... the officers, it appeared, was a bit of a poet, and had composed a choice song for this festive occasion, and which was sung in grand chorus, the Right Honourable Colonel himself, heartily joining. The whole ditty was supremely ludicrous. I ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... I've told them it was none of their business what you folks did; that you could afford to hunt for buried treasure, or buried beans, or buried anything else, if you wanted to. And if you'll report one of them even winking disrespectful, or showing the trace of a grin, I'll set him and his ditty bag ashore ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... not each ditty with the glorious tale? Ah! such, alas, the hero's amplest fate! When granite moulders and when records fail, A peasant's plaint prolongs his dubious date. Pride! bend thine eye from heaven to thine estate, See how the mighty shrink into a song! Can volume, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... together. The crowd of natives was also considerable to-day; and I saw many very beautiful Greeks among them. We stopped to observe a party of Turkish ladies, to whom a Jew was singing, and accompanying himself on a guitar. After listening to various songs, they asked him for a French or English ditty, as he professed to have visited all countries; but he attempted to evade the request, afraid, no doubt, of being detected by the Europeans standing round, for, probably, he had never been five miles from Constantinople ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the Deacon thrummed the piano and hummed to himself in the raucous voice peculiar to most churchmen. Judy in the kitchen meditatively crooned to her maids an ancient lamentation, and out on the lawn, Arthur sang to his mother an amorous ditty in compliment to her youthful appearance. Honora, the song-bird, silent, heard with amusement this sudden lifting up of voices, each unconscious of the other. Arthur's ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... the cook, the tank being retied to keep out drift. The cooker will now be going at full pressure, and the cook is ready to receive the gear. Sleeping-bags, "computation bag," hypsometer, "meat block" (a three-inch-square paper pad on which meteorological notes were taken); clothes-bag opened, three ditty-bags passed in and bag retied; a final temperature taken and aneroid read; sledge anchored securely by tow-rope to the ice-axe, and a final look round to see all gear is safely strapped ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... an Arab youth, but strictly guarded. Her married sister alone knew of their infatuation, and used to help her by keeping a look-out for him at the water-side; and when he appeared, she would return home and sing to herself (as if it were a snatch of some old ditty)—Leila, Leila, your lover comes! But the maiden understood, and swiftly, under pretence of fetching water, she would run to meet him at the well, and take her joy. The story has an air of probability; such things are done every day, at every fountain throughout the land. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... army filed off by night, in silence, leaving behind its munitions and its tents just as they stood, "driven away, almost, by the chastisement of Heaven," says the contemporary chronicler Rabutin, "with but two shots by way of signal." The ditty of the soldier just ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 1718, shows that each side was too strong as yet to be crushed. In dismissing Marlborough, Great Britain had lost one of her chief assets. His name had become a terror to France. To this day, both in France and in French Canada, is sung the popular ditty "Monsieur Malbrouck est mort," a song of delight at a report that Marlborough was dead. When in place of Marlborough leaders of the type of General Hill were appointed to high command, France could not be finally beaten. The Treaty of Utrecht was the outcome ...
— The Conquest of New France - A Chronicle of the Colonial Wars, Volume 10 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • George M. Wrong
... a song about a lost child travelling in the snow; the miner sang a Christmas song—'it had been a very old song when he was a boy,' while the man in the lighthouse (C.C.) consoled himself in his solitude with a 'sturdy' ditty. What was John Browdie's north-country song? (N.N.). All we are told is that he took some time to consider the words, in which operation his wife assisted him, ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... and list a friend Thrill forth harmonious ditty; While I shall tell what late befell At ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... for music. However, there was no doubt about it: he really did love it: at certain passages to which he attached the most ridiculous meanings the tears would come into his eyes. But after having been moved by a scene from Wagner, he would strum out a gallop of Offenbach, or sing some music-hall ditty after the Ode to Joy. Then Christophe would bob about and roar with rage. But the worst of all to bear was not when Sylvain Kohn was absurd so much as when he was trying to be profound and subtle, when ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... hands, a gallon or so of the unhusked rice—called Mopunga here and paddy in India—is poured in, and the three heavy pestles worked in exact time; each jerks up her body as she lifts the pestle and strikes it into the mortar with all her might, lightening the labour with some wild ditty the while, though one hears by the strained voice that she is nearly out of breath. When the husks are pretty well loosened, the grain is put into a large plate-shaped basket and tossed so as to bring the chaff to ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... sometimes almost to fury. He loved music,—not, as he said, the bray of trumpets and the squeak of fiddles, but melody; and occasionally, seated at a piano, he sang, in a voice sweet and low and full of pathos, some tender English ditty. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... of the grave-mounds on the surrounding hill-sides, "Puh p'a teh, pub p'a teh"; then, raising his carrying-pole to the correct angle on the hump on his back, went merrily forward, warbling some squealing Chinese ditty. But Shanks was the songster of the party. He often madly disturbed the silence of middle night by a sudden outburst inte song, and when shouted down by others who lay around, or kicked by the man who shared his bed, and whose choral propensities were less in proportion, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... famous Hanover city; The river Weser, deep and wide, Washes its wall on the southern side A pleasanter spot you never spied; But when begins my ditty, Almost five hundred years ago, To see the townsfolk suffer so From vermin, what ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... this, O comrades, ready before us. Busy the virgins muse, their practis'd ditty recalling, Muse nor shall miscarry; a song for memory waits us. Rightly; for all their souls ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... fount bring freshness deeper, Than that his placid rest this morn Has brought the shrouded sleeper. That rest may lap his weary head Where charnels choke the city, Or where, mid woodlands, by his bed The wren shall wake its ditty: But near or far, while evening's star Is dear to hearts regretting, Around that spot admiring Thought ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... yourself! With all your abominations you are yet a saint in comparison with a parricide. The curse that falls upon you is a love ditty in comparison with the curse that lies ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a little at first, I remember, and whenever (to continue the musical simile) I could get in a comic song, or what I thought one, or some queer fantastic ditty about impossible birds and beasts and fishes and what not, I did not let the opportunity slip; while Keene, who had a very fine falsetto on the top of his chest register, would now and then warble, pianissimo, some little ballad of the drawing-room ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... of this ditty, the chick hopped solemnly forward, gave vent to a most realistic cluck, scratched vigorously for worms, and the Happy Family vanished amid an uproar of applause, while Mary piloted her audience into the circus ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... of the Kegs! That I can, my boy. But read the song," replied old Harmar. His son then read the following facetious ditty: ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... qui arrive!" he told himself. That ancient ditty, "The Yeoman's Wedding," that he had often heard Dr. Mangan sing, attacked him like an illness, and enforced its galloping metres on ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... with a violent start, he wondered what set of brain-cells had been stirred to reproduce rhymes that he had, or so he deemed, long ago forgotten. And still musing, he almost mechanically went on with the wild ditty. ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... uproariously harmonious; Fips sung the good "Old English Gentleman;" Jack the "British Grenadiers;" and your humble servant, when called upon, sang that beautiful ditty, "When the Bloom is on the Rye," in a manner that drew tears from every eye, except Flapper's, who was asleep, and Jack's, who was singing the "Bay of Biscay O," at the same time. Gortz and Fips were all the time lunging at ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... then bring out his store of facts which he has noted down as they occurred; he makes his selection according to circumstances, according to the state of his own mind; not forgetting the state of mind that the children may be in, and especially the state of the weather. The following little ditty may then be repeated, the subject being On ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... uncontrollable regret that he had not been born a "swain" (as he put it). Suddenly, however, one of his roulades ceased with more abruptness than usual and the enchanted Tristram waited in vain for the ditty to be resumed. The fact was that Captain Salt had glanced out of the window and seen at a stable door across the court a man stooping with his back to the inn and washing down the legs of ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... mighty bustle;" "confundor" is "to be jumbled;" and "squalidus" is "in a sorry pickle." "Importuna" is "a plaguy baggage;" "adulterium" is rendered "her pranks;" "ambages" becomes either "a long rabble of words," "a long-winded detail," or "a tale of a tub;" "miserabile carmen" is "a dismal ditty;" "increpare hos" is "to rattle these blades;" "penetralia" means "the parlour;" while "accingere," more literally than elegantly, is translated "buckle to." "Situs" is "nasty stuff;" "oscula jungere" is "to tip him a kiss;" "pingue ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... with running ditty of mingled pride and pity, Jymul Rao makes the six wires sigh; And the girls with tearful eyes note the music's fall and rise, And the boys let ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... while fore and aft they plied their oars, and sang. The gloaming hid all but sound and sex, and threw its veil of romance over the trollers, who sent their hearts out thus across the twilight sea. The song, no doubt some common ditty, gathered a pathos over the water through the night. It swept from one side of us to the other, softened with distance, lingered in detached strains, and then was hushed, leaving us once more ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... then broke into the common street ditty, "Shoe fly, don't bouder me," giving a quaint sound to the ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... lovely ditty "Gala Water," which I always sing in honor of my young host, who is a sort of Laird of Galashiel. The whole place is full of such charming suggestions and associations. The Leader, a lovely, clear, rapid, shallow, sparkling trout-stream, makes a sudden bend across the lawn, opposite the drawing-room ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... two horsemen on the knoll this spiritual ditty was unheard. They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every fold of the subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wear! Now, as this is a true ditty, I do not assert—this, you know, is between us— That she's in a state of absolute nudity, Like Powers's Greek Slave or the Medici Venus; But I do mean to say, I have heard her declare, When at the same moment she had on a dress Which cost five hundred dollars, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... advance, but deemed it only good manners to give some intimation of his approach. He was now within about twenty yards from them, and made an attempt at a comic song, which, however, quivered off into as dismal and cowardly a ditty as ever proceeded from human lips. Harry and the Spectre, both startled by the voice, turned round to observe his approach, when, to his utter consternation, the Shan-dhinne-dhuv sank, as it were, into the earth and disappeared. The hair rose upon Barney's head, ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hang my self, my friends will look for't. Eating and sleeping, I do despise you both now: I will run mad first, and if that get not pitty, I'le drown my self, to a most dismal ditty. [Exit Savil. ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... of a well-known Scottish ditty, at the top of his voice, Donald bounced into the first open door he could find, still followed by his tail. These having taken their seats around a table which stood in the centre of the apartment, he next commenced ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... bad dog," she cried merrily, "how I will punish you!" and she stooped and picked a couple of mushrooms, quite happy again, and even sang a scrap of a country ditty in a pretty bird-like voice as she came to a bramble clump, and went ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... the ditty of "Wapping Old Stairs" (a ballad so sweet and touching that surely any English poet might be proud to be the father of it), and he sang this quaint and charming old song in an exceedingly pleasant voice, with flourishes and roulades ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... half a pound of sharp cheese, three or four pimentos, and a small tin of mushrooms; also add a tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce. Cook all together slowly for a while, then pour over toast or crackers. This is also called "rinktum ditty." ...
— The Khaki Kook Book - A Collection of a Hundred Cheap and Practical Recipes - Mostly from Hindustan • Mary Kennedy Core
... them, "let us set the ditty to music; let us subscribe to have it set by Handel; it will make ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... always thought that there was no need of killin' people. Let them alone, and they will all die themselves; and as for the enemy, let them alone, and they will come home waggin' their tails behind them, as the ditty says. Well, I must tell ye. Abe's been to war. He didn't see the enemy, nor fight, nor nothin'. But a wild Indian came right into his camp, and the soldiers started up to kill him, and what do ye ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... the western sky was clear and flushed with vivid crimson, towards which the prairie rolled away in varying tones of blue. Lights shone in the windows behind the verandah, and from one which stood open a hoarse voice drifted out, singing in a maudlin fashion snatches of an old music-hall ditty. ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... just left it," answered the monk, "and you may thank me if the storm is averted for the moment, although it must burst erelong. Before the ambassador could obtain his audience, I hurried to the archduke, and chanted the old ditty; told him you were the Maccabees of the century—the bulwarks of Christendom: that without you the Turks would long since have been in Gradiska—that the Venetians, through fear and lust of gain, were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... by singing us a fashionable ditty," remarked Ferdishenko, and looked at the mistress of the house, to see what ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... just what I said. You and a million others recite that ditty, or variations of it every day of the week. It all adds up to the fact that the world is full of small-egged animals who for ten years have done nothing but just scream that we're about to be attacked by ...
— Unspecialist • Murray F. Yaco
... Genevieve's eyes spoke of no want of gratitude, and with glee which she no longer strove to repress, she tripped away to equip herself, and Albinia heard her clear young voice upstairs, singing away the burthen of some queer old French ditty. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... foolish, ranting ditty seemed to mock me, my breath came and went to it, my heart beat to it; yet even so, I was praying passionately and this my prayer, viz: That whoso was waiting above us for my death-cry should not ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... their arrival, our travellers, strong with the vigor of the young day, set forth to explore the cliffs, bidding adieu to original Youth, who, standing ready to depart, beside his horse, was carolling the following ditty in glorification ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... the willow, the wild weeping willow, That murmurs a dirge to the rapturous days, And moans when the kiss of the breeze laden billow Entangles and dangles among the sad sprays! A musical ditty to scatter the sadness, A warble of wildness to banish its tears, Till tremulous measures of bountiful gladness Be sounding and bounding through all ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... this house give glimmering light, By the dead and drowsy fire: Every elf, and fairy sprite, Hop as light as bird, from brier; And this ditty after me Sing, and dance ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... commandant, was in a position to do much good without being suspected. Pete was an original character, of a jovial nature, and, when intending some serious adventure, would appear very solemn, and usually singing a doleful ditty, often the following, which was ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... anxious to ascertain who was the author of the above ditty; it was very popular in Aberdeenshire about the beginning of this century. The scene, if I remember rightly, is laid in the parish of Forgue, in Aberdeenshire. Possibly some of the members of the Spalding Club may be able to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... making up a story, rather than uttering his own belief. It may even be doubted whether Virgil himself, who seems first to have invented this fancy, and behind whose broad mantle later poets have sheltered themselves, may not have felt an inclination to depart from the Greek opinion of Philomel's ditty. Why otherwise did he not simply and at once—as his masters Homer and Theocritus had done before him—describe her notes as mournful, instead of casting about for some cause that might excuse him for giving them that character? But however ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 442 - Volume 17, New Series, June 19, 1852 • Various
... such a miserable creature as this, think of the anguish of heart, the sinking of soul and spirit, which the very effort of singing produces. Bitter mockery! Disease, neglect, and starvation, faintly articulating the words of the joyous ditty, that has enlivened your hours of feasting and merriment, God knows how often! It is no subject of jeering. The weak tremulous voice tells a fearful tale of want and famishing; and the feeble singer of this roaring song may turn away, only to die ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the Gate, and most invitingly open: If there shou'd be a Blunderbuss here now, what a dreadful Ditty wou'd my Fall make for Fools; and what a Jest for the Wits; how my Name wou'd be roar'd about ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... whole thing is that eternal ditty of tuneful youth: All for Verse and the World well lost. The enemy is around them on all sides, jailers of the Marshalsea and envious critics, the evil shepherds that preside over grates of steel and noisome beds of straw, but Youth has its mocking ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... the melody of his little ditty in a deep bourdon as he paused a moment at the door. Then he advanced slowly across ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... mount you with the sun, Call all the winds to make you speedy wings, And to my fairest Maya see you run And weep your last while wantonly she sings; Then if you cannot move her heart to pity, Let Oh, alas, ay me be all your ditty. ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... true solder," said Lance Outram to himself, "would put a stop to thy snivelling ditty, by making a broad arrow quiver in your heart, and no great alarm given. But, dang it, I have not the right spirit for a soldier—I cannot fight a man till my blood's up; and for shooting him from behind a wall it is cruelly like to stalking a deer. I'll e'en face him, and ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... renovated easy-chair, I had found one of the new chairs exactly suited to my sensibilities, and should be secretly pleased if the old one were to softly and suddenly vanish away during our absence at the sea-side, after the manner of the Boojum of ditty. I have really no adequate reason to give why I delayed to make this amiable confession. It was the consciousness, however, that I had it to make which had prompted me to help my darling out of her quandary when I perceived that ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... so much what we are, or where we are, but what we're doing, that makes a life of usefulness and fulness," said Madame Giche, when the ditty came to an end. ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... more, my gentle mate! With your tiny tawny bill, Wake the tuneful echo shrill, On vale or hill; Or in her airy rocky seat, Let her listen and repeat The tender ditty that you tell, The sad lament, The dire event, To luckless Itys that befell. Thence the strain Shall rise again, And soar amain, Up to the lofty palace gate Where mighty Apollo sits in state In Jove's abode, with his ivory ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... drunken fashion, and he clung to his seat as if fearing to trust his legs. He joined in every chorus and never lost an opportunity of addressing Victor in terms of deepest friendliness. And in every pause in the noise he seized upon the chance to burst out into some wild ditty of his own. Victor watched with cat-like vigilance, and what he saw pleased him mightily. Jean was drunk. And he would see to it that before he had done the giant would ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... cuckoo, then I cried, Dare I woo and wed a bride? I, like thee, have no home-nest; And the twin notes thus tuned their ditty, - 'Love can ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there. "When lovely woman stoops to folly," it began, what art can wash her tears and stains and shame away? And the answer was what Rosalind herself had already given: the only way "to rouse his pity" was "to die!" She almost laughed at herself for repeating the well-worn, hackneyed, century-old ditty. People did not die now-a-days, either of broken hearts or of chloral, when their lovers deserted them. And Caspar Brooke had never been her lover. No, he had only given her pain; and she wished that she could make him suffer, too. "Revenge" was too high-flown ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... chant a ditty about the virtues of one notorious Molly O'Morgan; Colonel Parker repeated several times, "Aurelle, my boy, don't forget that if Englishmen can afford to make fools of themselves, it is only because England is such a devilishly serious nation;" and Dr. O'Grady, ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... struggle. The young gentlemen on board meantime amused themselves by shouting sundry derisive songs, one of which was specially chosen when the "Revenge" was sufficiently near to be aggrieved by it: and Arthur, who had learned enough Spanish from his mother to act as translator, rendered the ditty into plain English prose for the benefit of Jack and Basset. The former received it with lofty scorn,—the latter with fiery vaticinations concerning his intentions when the ships should meet: and looking at the figure-head of the nearest ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... labyrinthine sea Duteous to the lunar will, But some discord stealthily Vexes the world-ditty still, And the bird that caws and caws Clasps creation ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... she could bear it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, wondering when her husband would come and rescue her from ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... night! One of the guards who was present informed me that not one of the victims uttered a cry, or showed a symptom of terror at so sudden a "wrench from all we know, from all we love." The fate of Phrosine, the fairest of this sacrifice, is the subject of many a Romaic and Arnaout ditty. The story in the text is one told of a young Venetian many years ago, and now nearly forgotten. I heard it by accident recited by one of the coffee-house story-tellers who abound in the Levant, and sing or recite their narratives. The additions and interpolations by ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... "By my troth, what squalling do you call that? I could fancy I hear mice squeaking somewhere about the shop. An you mean to sing at all, sing so that it will cheer the heart and make the work go down well. That's how I sing a bit now and again." And he began to bellow out a noisy hunting ditty with its hollas! and hoy, boys! and he imitated the yelping of the hounds and the shrill shouts of the hunters in such a clear, keen, stentorian voice that the huge casks rang again and all the workshop echoed. Master Martin held his hands over his ears, and Dame Martha's (Valentine's ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... wavering, tremulous lines of colour along the polished surface of the water. On board one of these vessels, about a mile distant, someone was playing a concertina—very creditably, too—and singing a favourite forecastle ditty to its accompaniment; and it was surprising how softly yet clearly the sounds were conveyed across the intervening space of water. Singing and playing was also going on among the more distant ships; but the sounds were too far removed ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... attention. It was a child singing a merry, lightsome air; there was no other sound. We had traversed London from Hyde Park even to where we now were in the Minories, and had met no person, heard no voice nor footstep. The singing was interrupted by laughing and talking; never was merry ditty so sadly timed, never laughter more akin to tears. The door of the house from which these sounds proceeded was open, the upper rooms were illuminated as for a feast. It was a large magnificent house, in which doubtless some rich merchant had lived. The singing ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... soldier-lad composed this ditty Hans Eitelfritz he, fair Colln's son, His kindred dwell in the goodly city, But he himself ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fo'heads to dey feet!" An' sich steppin' to de music down de line, 'T ain't de music by itself dat meks it fine, Hit's de walkin', step by step, An' de keepin' time wid "Hep," Dat it mek a common ditty soun' divine. ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... not be forgetful that a great change has taken place. We are no longer a weak Nation, thinking mainly of defense, dreading foreign imposition. We are great and powerful. New powers bring new responsibilities. Our ditty then was to protect ourselves. Added to that, our duty now is to help give stability to the world. We want idealism. We want that vision which lifts men and nations above themselves. These are virtues by reason of their own merit. But they must not be cloistered; ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Norn" has been lost in England and Germany, it is possibly preserved in a German folk-lore ditty, which speaks of three Sisters of Fate as "Nuns." Altogether, German folk-lore is still full of rimes about three Weird Sisters. They are sometimes called Wild Women, or Wise Women, or the Measurers (Metten)—namely, of Fate; or, euphemistically, ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... out in the city, A jubilant ditty, And every guitar Vibrates to the names of Pedro and Pilar; And the strings and voices are soulless and dull That sound not the name of ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... knapsack sits easy and does not chafe. The one shown in the engraving is of good form; and the original—which I have carried for years—is satisfactory in every respect. It holds over half a bushel, carries blanket-bag, shelter-tent, hatchet, ditty-bag, tinware, fishing tackle, clothes and two days' rations. It weighs, empty, just ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... lively Christmas ditty which is a kind of reply to the preceding ballad. It is preserved in the collection formed by Samuel Pepys, some time Secretary to the Admiralty, and author of the famous diary, and by him bequeathed to Magdalene College, Cambridge. The full title ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... for which he was renowned. Few of his friends were able to sing them, and no one but himself could both sing and play them simultaneously: they were a monstrous, standing joke. Instead of this, however, he turned, winked at his audience, and began a slow, melancholy ditty, with a recurring refrain. He was not allowed to finish the first verse; a howl of disapproval went up; his hearers ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did sing, Trees did grow and plants did spring, Every thing did banish moan Save the Nightingale alone. She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Lean'd her breast against a thorn, And there sung the dolefullest ditty, That to hear it was great pity. Fie, fie, fie, now would she cry; Tereu, tereu, by and by: That to hear her so complain Scarce I could from tears refrain; For her griefs so lively shown Made me think upon mine own. —Ah! thought I, thou mourn'st in vain, None takes pity on thy pain: Senseless ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Julian (ensconced like Royalty in the centre of the first row) as she descended from the platform. She had not the hardihood to glance toward the great man until the indistinct stockman had had his wish, and Mrs. Clarkson, in her fine new raiment, had both sung and acted a coy ditty of the previous decade, wherein every line began with the word "somebody." It was an immediate success; the obstreperous stockman led the encore; but Miss Bouverie, who duly accompanied, extracted solace from the depressed attitude in which Sir Julian Crum sat ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... compared with Webster's "Call for the robin redbreast" in The White Devil, but solemn as Webster's dirge is, it tolls, it docs not sing to us. Shakespeare's "ditty," as Ferdinand calls it, is like a breath of the west wind over an aeolian harp. Where, in any language, has ease of metre triumphed more adorably than in Ariel's Fourth Song,—"Where the bee sucks"? Dowden saw in Ariel the imaginative genius of English poetry, recently delivered ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... tired, went to sleep in a wee loft. I could not sleep. I was always seeing those wounded men passing, passing, and in my ear—like the maddening refrain of a musical comedy ditty—there was always murmuring—"We shall never return. It doesn't matter." Outside was the clink and clatter of the column, the pitiful curses of tired men, the groaning roar of the motor-lorries as they toiled up ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... of coiling a length of rope. The station was just out of hailing distance. Nobody seemed stirring. The whole shore and back land thereabout was deserted; the edge of the city was four miles distant. Hoang returned to the forecastle-hatch and went below, groping under his bunk in his ditty-box. ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... Kilcolman was the 'lamentable lay' to which reference had just been made—the piece in praise of Elizabeth which bore the name of Cynthia. In Spenser's pastoral, the speaker is persuaded by Thestylis (Lodovick Bryskett) to explain what ditty that was that the Shepherd of the Ocean sang, and he explains very distinctly, but in terms which are scarcely critical, that Raleigh's poem was written in love and praise, but also in ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... very funny or apposite ditty to Miles Morgan, but, to judge by its effect upon those within, it was exquisitely witty. The whole company doubled up with laughter. It giggled till its collective sides must have ached; then it slowly and gaspingly subsided. When it ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... told you now the origin of this most lively ditty, Which Johnny Bull dislikes as "dull and stupid"—what a pity! With "Hail Columbia" it is sung, in chorus full and hearty— On land and main we breathe the strain John made for his tea party, No matter how ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... acquaintance with the princess's attendants. Each, in heart, is already false to his vow, without knowing that the wish is shared by his associates; they overhear one another, as they in turn confide their sorrows in a love-ditty to the solitary forest: every one jeers and confounds the one who follows him. Biron, who from the beginning was the most satirical among them, at last steps forth, and rallies the king and the two others, till the discovery ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... O, no, my lord! Besides, I hoped to hear My ditty warbled into fairer ears, By your own ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... and they started forth in a procession, Nana drawing the shoe in front, followed by the whole flock, little and big, an imp about the height of a cigar box at the end. They all sang a melancholy ditty full of "ahs" and "ohs." Nana declared this to be always ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... young girl, she followed him for a moment with her eyes, and then laughing merrily continued her way, swinging her satchel and humming an old ditty. We shall meet with ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... as with terror. None of the other singers, not even Cutts himself, as that high-minded man owned, could stand up before the Snatcher, and he commonly used to retire to Mrs. Cutts's private apartments, or into the bar, before that fatal song extinguished him. Poor Cos's ditty, 'The Little Doodeen,' which Bows accompanied charmingly on the piano, was sung but to a few admirers, who might choose to remain after the tremendous resurrectionist chant. The room was commonly emptied after that, or only ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the mellow wedding bells— Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtledove that listens while she gloats On ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... sense of "oils are spotty"; I know the height of Siniolchum's peak; I know that some may think my ditty dotty; But I cannot tell a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... of the nodding flower; Lest but a sound of stirring leaves might seem To break the charm of her delicious dream! 130 And ye, fond, rising, throbbing thoughts, away, Lest syren Pleasure all the soul betray! Oh! turn, and listen to the ditty From the lowly cave of Pity. On slaughter's plain, while Valour grieves, There he sunk to rest, And the ring-dove scattered leaves Upon his bleeding breast! Her face was hid, while her pale arms enfold What ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... Ross there. He was sitting at the piano strumming a music-hall ditty. As the door opened be shuffled to his feet, shook hands distantly with Auntie Nan, and nodded his head ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... thee, oh, thou human race. God's likeness art thou, oh, how true, how striking! Two lies thou hast natheless, in sooth, to show; The name of one is man, the other's woman! Of faith and honor there's an ancient ditty, 'Tis sung the best, when men each other cheat. Thou child of heaven, the one thing true thou hast Is Cain's foul mark upon ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... had adopted the Russian costume. Godfrey intended to fish as they drifted along, but they had at present at least as much fish on board as they could consume while it was good. Luka, as he worked, sang a lugubrious native ditty, while with his knife he trimmed the skins into shape. Having done this he proceeded to sew them together with ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... now ceased, and no French words were heard. No ditty of Latin origin, be it ever so melodious and fervid, could stand against such a wild storm of Anglo-Saxon vociferation. Every ahoy rang out as if sea captains were hailing each other in ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... Provinces. Nor will the Inhabitants till the General conflagration ever discontinue the Celebration of these Festivals, and the Lamentation and Singing with certain kind of Rhythmes in their Arcytos, the doleful ditty of the Calamity and Ruin of this Seminary of the antient Nobility of the whole Kingdom, which was their frequent Pride ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... doth so Use it, than brutes more brutish still to grow. With deference to your grace, he seems to me Like any long-legged grasshopper to be, Which ever flies, and flying springs, And in the grass its ancient ditty sings. Would he but always in the grass repose! In every heap of dung he thrusts ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... heard Miss Rothesay's steps overhead, bounded to the half-open window, moving quite as easily on the injured foot as on the other. Eagerly she listened; and soon was rewarded by hearing Lyle's voice carolling pathetically down the road, the ditty, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... fighting he left the army and betook himself to the Middle Temple, where possibly he spent more time over lyrics than over the law, for a biographer, describing this period of his life, passes over his legal acquirements, but says that 'his vein for ditty and amorous ode was esteemed most lofty, insolent, and passionate.' He and Spenser were very congenial companions, and later Spenser, speaking of their great friendship, said: 'He pip'd, I sang, and when ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... rather songs on Greek motives than translations from the Greek, the slackness and dilution matter less. But the strictly miscellaneous division holds some of the best work. We could no doubt dispense with the well-known ditty (for once very nearly the "rubbish" with which Moore is so often and so unjustly charged) where Posada rhymes of necessity to Granada, and where, quite against the author's habit, the ridiculous term "Sultana" is fished out to do similar duty in reference to the Dulcinea, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... yours must tranquillize itself Before you try to sleep; and so, to-night, Let us have 'Annie Laurie,' 'Bonnie Doon,' And songs that most affront the dainty ear Of modern fashion." Linda played and sang A full half-hour; then, turning on her chair, Said, "Now shall mother sing that cradle ditty You made for me, an infant. Mother, mine, Imagine you are rocking me to sleep, As in those ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... a free, easy life, burthened with few cares. He is the finest rider in the world, following his cattle on horseback, and never makes even the shortest journey on foot. He plays upon the bandolin, sings an Andalusian ditty, and is fond of chingarito ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... was a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for a company that had met such cruel losses in the morning. But, indeed, from what I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their merry Swiss girls about, until vengeance overtook them—a vengeance so complete, so surprising, that I can hardly now believe what my own eyes saw and my own ears heard. One of the merry Swiss girls sang a love-ditty with a jodeling refrain, which was supposed to be echoed back by her lover afar in the mountains. To produce this pleasing illusion, one of the merry Swiss boys ascended the staircase, and hid himself deep in the corridors of the hotel. All went well up to the last verse. Promptly and truly the ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... for you! Not that I object to the first part of the ditty. It is natural enough that a Scotchman should cry, 'Come, fill up my cup!' more especially if he's drinking at another person's expense—all Scotchmen being fond of liquor at free cost: but 'Saddle his horse!!!'—for what purpose, I would ask? Where is the use of ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... Scholar, or listen while I sing that sweet ditty of country contentment and an angler's life, writ by worthy Master ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... first time that Talbot had seen this warlike ditty. Its intention was to guard soldiers from saying too much in front of strangers. Talbot vowed, however, to apply its moral to himself at all times and ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... music! Still on with a shout and song! Flags above for the triumphs o'er struggles so lone and long! Croon of cradle and love-song! The ditty and dirge of strife, All are daughters of duty and call ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... committed only one plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... feet in the third story window of the Linder mansion, and rested. He moved forward. Opposite the window he paused. He raised the mouthpiece to his lips and embarked on a perilous sea of notes from which the tutored ear might have inferred that once popular ditty, Egypt. ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... many miles of "foot-path way," under how many green hedges, has my childish treble chanted that enlivening ditty! ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... the floor, while he extends the other leg straight before him, raises one hand above his head, and rests the other on his hip. His heels must never touch the floor, nor may he, while bobbing thus comically up and down and trolling his lively ditty, suffer his face to relax from that expression of sober and dignified earnestness which marks the true Szekler. It is a dance and a display of great physical strength and endurance ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... feast, and made merry; afterwards he said, "Dear Mrs. Gossip, it is our duty to take care of the child, it must have good food that it may be strong. I know a sheep-fold from which we might fetch a nice morsel." The wolf was pleased with the ditty, and she went out with the fox to the farm-yard. He pointed out the fold from afar, and said, "You will be able to creep in there without being seen, and in the meantime I will look about on the ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... Moses struck two fingers on the capstan after the manner of a tuning-fork, and, holding them gravely to his ear as if to get the right pitch, began in a really fine manly voice to chant the following ditty:— ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... sat over her sewing, dropped now and then a tear down on her work for the loss of her sister and counselor and long-tried friend. From the lower part of the ship floated up, at intervals, snatches of an old English ditty that Margery was singing while she moved to and fro about her work, one of those genuine English melodies, full of a rich, strange mournfulness blent ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... at the first note of the king of singers all other birds were not mute. But evidently the birds have not enthroned this thrush. Possibly, even, they do not share human admiration for his song. The redstart goes on jerking out his monotonous ditty; chippy irreverently mounts a perch and trills out his inane apology for a song; the vireo in yonder tree spares us not one of his never-ending platitudes. But the hermit thrush goes on with sublime indifference to the voices of common ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... surprise to Russell that a Spanish chieftain should speak English with the Irish accent; but now to find one who claimed to be the King of Spain lightly trolling an Irish ditty to a rollicking tune was, to say the least, just a little unusual. It occurred to him, however, that "His Majesty" must have learned his English from an Irishman; and further thought showed him that such a fact was perfectly natural, since, being a Catholic, he had of course employed ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... the city He carols wild and free Some sweet unmeaning ditty In many a changing key; And each succeeding verse is Commingled with the curses Of those whose ...
— The Scarlet Gown - being verses by a St. Andrews Man • R. F. Murray
... between two stones! Hang the stones!" And Naylor bursts into an old seventeenth century ditty of the ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... the harpsichord, and sang, in sweet unaffected style, one of the songs of her native country, a merry ditty, with a breathing of sadness in the refrain of it, like a twilight wind in a bed ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... to these effusions, LEGION poured forth Ballades, and Rondeaux, and wrote a Chant Royal on a General Election which occupied a whole column of a newspaper, and needed three men to read, with a boy for the "envoy." But this ditty was not thought to have seriously affected the voting classes in any direction. LEGION was now usually spoken of as "the versatile Mr. LEGION," a compliment which never failed to annoy him hugely. Sated with popular applause, he turned into a vein of new poetry, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 12, 1892 • Various
... this place, and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me, 'twas a handsome Milk-maid, that had cast away all care, and sung like a Nightingale; her voice was good, and the Ditty fitted for it; 'twas that smooth Song which was made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago; and the Milk maid's mother sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton |
