"Harp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The illustration is at least as old as Christianity itself. Pray take it in the noble words of Hooker.—"They neither spoke nor wrote one word of their own: but uttered syllable by syllable as the Spirit put it into their mouths; no otherwise than the harp or the lute doth give a sound according to the discretion of his hands that holdeth and striketh it with skill. The difference is only this: an instrument, whether it be pipe or harp, maketh a distinction in the times and sounds, which ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... played on their breasts as David played the harp, and perhaps Achilles; Bochsa never, nor any of his tribe. He made the old man forget his genealogies, his small ambition, his gout, his years, and be a boy again an hour or two in thought, and blood, and early fire. He made the women's bosoms pant and swell, and seem to aspire to be the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull gendereth and faileth not; their cow calveth, and casteth not her calf. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They take the timbrel and harp, and rejoice at the sound of the organ. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down into the grave. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve Him? ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... of the family, and for the first time enjoyed the pleasures, of highly-polished society. Mrs Courtenay was an admirable performer upon the harp; Miss Emma Courtenay, her niece, was a delightful pianist; and my host himself was no mean amateur upon the flute. Our evenings would pass quickly away, in reading Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine, Metastasio, or the modern writers of English ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... written during the period of my convalescence; the songs are, for the greater part, the production of 'the days of other years.' Many of the latter had been already sung in every district of the kingdom, but had been much corrupted in the course of oral transmission. These wanderers of the hill-harp are now ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... all. One, who lived on the air of sweet sounds, and who was almost always to be found seated by her harp or some other instrument, had, till the late storm, been generally merry and playful, though sometimes sad. But for a long time after that, she was often found weeping, and playing little simple airs which she had heard in childhood— backward longings, followed by fresh tears. ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... my father. Accept my uncle's protection I will not; yet, how am I to live, for my father has saved nothing? I have been very busy lately, trying to qualify myself for a governess, and practise the harp and piano for several hours every day. I shall be very, very glad when you come home again." I showed the letters to O'Brien, who read them with much attention. I perceived the colour mount into his cheeks, when he read those parts of her letters in ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... got the idea of a present in his head and must harp upon it. "Or even," said he, "if you was helped to knocking her up a new chain for the front door,—or say a gross or two of shark-headed screws for general use,—or some light fancy article, such as a toasting-fork when she took her ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... the world. The famous Hercules was one, and so was Achilles, and Philoctetes likewise, and Aesculapius, who acquired immense repute as a doctor. The good Chiron taught his pupils how to play upon the harp, and how to cure diseases, and how to use the sword and shield, together with various other branches of education, in which the lads of those days used to be instructed, ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... edifice. Running up the steps she walked round and round the sculptured base of the monument, studying the marble faces and reading the names, and above all admiring the figures there—blind old Homer playing on his harp, with Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and all the immortal sons of song, grouped about him listening. But nothing to her mind equalled the great group of statuary representing Asia at one of the four corners, with that colossal calm- faced woman seated on an elephant in the centre. What a great majestic ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... began to write. She moved to the window, then restlessly back to the lighted room and sat down before the hearth, but in a moment she left this, too, and moved again through the room. She passed her harp, and as she did so, she drew her hand across the strings. The sweet and liquid sound ran through the room. Rand turned. "I have not heard," he said, in a low voice,—"I have not heard that sound since—since last August. Will you sing to ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... The musicians in the gallery, who had been playing on flute and timbrel, began now on the psalteron and the native sambuca. Behind was a row of lute-players; but most in view was a trignon, an immense Egyptian harp, at which with nimble fingers a ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... alike the objects of popular attachment: the miserable destiny of the outlawed and ruined Westmorland, and the untimely end of Northumberland through the perfidy of the false friend in whom he had put his trust, were long remembered with pity and indignation, and many a minstrel "tuned his rude harp of border frame" to the fall of the Percy or the wanderings of the Nevil. There was also an ancient gentleman named Norton, of Norton in Yorkshire, who bore the banner of the cross and the five ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... pleasure." When he has a new watch, "to see my childishness," says he, "I could not forbear carrying it in my hand and seeing what o'clock it was an hundred times." To go to Vauxhall, he says, and "to hear the nightingales and other birds, hear fiddles, and there a harp and here a Jew's trump, and here laughing, and there fine people walking, is mighty divertising." And the nightingales, I take it, were particularly dear to him; and it was again "with great pleasure" that he paused to hear them as he walked to Woolwich, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... never reached Mary. She helped decorate the table with sprigs of artificial shamrock and Irish flags, hunted up verses from various poets of Erin to write on the little harp-shaped place cards, and suggested a menu which typified the "wearin' o' the green" in every dish, from the olive sandwiches to the creme de menthe. To further carry out the colour scheme, the girls all came in their gymnasium suits of hunter's green, and the unconventional attire tended to ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... creatures of his legend with form and sentiments, as if they were people who had lived under his roof; and few real men have left such distinct characters as these fictions. And they spoke in language as sweet as it was fit. Yet his talents never seduced him into an ostentation, nor did he harp on one string. An omnipresent humanity co-ordinates all his faculties. Give a man of talents a story to tell, and his partiality will presently appear. He has certain observations, opinions, topics, which have ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... she ran over her finger alphabet confusedly, like one who, playing on a stringed instrument, has not the attention sufficiently fixed to give precision and expression to the performance. The minstrel, described by Sir Walter Scott, with his fingers wandering wildly through the strings of his harp, resembles poor Laura giving utterance, thus ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... the morning are entertained till evening with the conversation of young women, and the music of the harp; for each house has its young women and harps allotted to this purpose. Two circumstances here deserve notice: that as no nation labours more under the vice of jealousy than the Irish, so none is more free from it than the Welsh: and in each family the art of playing on ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... know why you still harp on that absurd idea that I am what I am and still am not? Do you not know ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and lighted up with something of their former brilliancy; she uttered a long sigh, and uncrossing her arms, passed them around my neck with a look of ineffable delight. 'Ah, it is thou, Romuald!' she murmured in a voice languishingly sweet as the last vibrations of a harp. 'What ailed thee, dearest? I waited so long for thee that I am dead; but we are now betrothed: I can see thee and visit thee. Adieu, Romuald, adieu! I love thee. That is all I wished to tell thee, and I give thee back the life which thy kiss for a moment ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... "feast times," to see how they all looked in their new dresses. She certainly retained her sympathy with the young, and put away the feelings and habits of old age with a determined hand, for it is said, when she was eighty she took lessons on the harp. The present generation remember personally nothing of the great statesman; he has become history to us, and we must look to history, garbled as it always is, and always will be, by the opinions and feelings of its writers, to determine the position of Charles James Fox in the annals ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... his choir, superbly gowned in their flowing sarongs, wearing their long Papuan pampooties and followed in turn by a group of instrumentalists playing on conchs, nose-flutes and a species of mouth-organ closely resembling the jew's-harp, but much larger and more penetrating in its quality. The crowds in the street were enormous; hundreds of strong women fainted, and the casualties are estimated at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... through the pupil stage, nor hitherto has any one proposed to hand me over his to manage. You, in fact, are the first person to make so generous an offer. You will bear in mind, I hope, that a learner of the harp is apt to break and spoil the instrument; it is therefore probable, if I take in hand to learn the art of economy on your estate, I ...
— The Economist • Xenophon
... sensitive about its recognition by others, and preferred to instil into her daughter's mind sound wholesome principles to useless and giddy accomplishments. And yet the daughter was accomplished, an excellent musician upon the piano and harp, and a vocalist of rare sweetness and perfection of execution, as well as mistress of other usual studies of ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... sculptures. Upon the roof of the building (stable) represented in connection with the Nativity, there lies a wheel, the signification of which no one could tell me. Among other musical instruments represented in relief in this church, there are the harp, the bugle and ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... breast, left her shoulders, chest, and arms free in their chaste nudity. A support, fixed to the pedestal on which was placed the player, and traversed by a bolt in the shape of a key, formed a rest for the harp, the weight of which, but for that, would have borne wholly upon the shoulders of the young woman. The harp, which ended in a sort of keyboard, rounded like a shell and covered with ornamental paintings, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... in the first days of its publication. George Ellis playfully observed to Scott that "the personal appearance of the Minstrel who, though the Last, is by far the most charming of all minstrels, is by no means compensated by the idea of an author shorn of his picturesque beard, deprived of his harp, and writing letters to his intimate friends." The Minstrel of the Lay was but a creature of imagination; the Minstrel of "Marmion" ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... to the slightest touches of Apollo's lyre. If the heart be but attuned to harmony, it will vibrate to the simplest notes, faint though they be, as by the wafting of the evening breeze among the chords of a neglected harp, sadly hung upon the willows; it will cherish the feeblest idea, and nurture it into perfect melody. As love begets love, so does harmony beget its kind in the heart of him who can strike the keynote of nature, and listen to the wild and solemn ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... there till bed- time. At supper, though there are but rarely 'mimici sales,' which I cannot translate—some sort of jesting: but biting and cruel insults (common at the feasts of the Roman Emperors) are never allowed. His taste in music is severe. No water-organs, flute-player, lyrist, cymbal or harp-playing woman is allowed. All he delights in is the old Teutonic music, whose virtue (says the bishop) soothes the soul no less than does its sound the ear. When he rises from table the guards for the night are set, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... the warriors' emotions by eloquent speeches before a battle. Similarly the Babylonian Marduk, "seer of the gods," was also their champion in fight. Ogma fought and died at Mag-tured; but in other accounts he survives, captures Tethra's sword, goes on the quest for Dagda's harp, and is given a sid after the Milesian victory. Ogma's counterpart in Gaul is Ogmios, a Herakles and a god of eloquence, thus bearing the dual character of Ogma, while Ogma's epithet grianainech, "of the smiling countenance," recalls Lucian's account of the "smiling face" ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... when the two girls had finished their education and were living in luxury and enjoyment. The days and hours passed merrily by. They would read in the shade, play and sing on the harp, would paint or work at wool, and in the afternoon, when the burning sun had left the world to the shade of evening, they would drive out in a magnificent attelage to ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... similar ideas found an echo. The fashionable life of the capital shattered not merely the fortunes of men, but also their vigour of body and mind. That elegant world of fragrant ringlets, of fashionable mustachios and ruffles—merry as were its doings in the dance and with the harp, and early and late at the wine-cup—yet concealed in its bosom an alarming abyss of moral and economic ruin, of well or ill concealed despair, and frantic or knavish resolves. These circles sighed without disguise for a return of the time of Cinna with its proscriptions and ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... he seemed rapt and inspired. Were I to paint an angel I should try to seize his lineaments and the glory shining on his pale face. The song I loved best to hear him sing was Schubert's "Erl-King," which thrilled me with a sense of terror and mystery and made me tremble like a harp-string in response to his piercingly clear tones. Ever and anon, as I listened to the child's cry of "Oh, father, my father!" I was clutched by the icy hand of the awful phantom he had invoked. Does anybody sing Schubert's songs nowadays, or are they invariably left to the violins, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... over which the wind is thrumming low suggestive melodies, a sudden rush and flapping in the grasses beside you breaks noisily into the gamut of half-heard primary tones and rising, vanishing harmonics. Then, as you listen, and before the silence has again stretched the chords of her Eolian harp tight enough for the wind's fingers, another sound, a cry, comes floating down from the air—Quoskh? quoskh-quoskh? a wild, questioning call, as if the startled night were asking who you are. It is only a blue heron, wakened ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... Duchess and Doll-Tearsheet, flung pellmell into a heap, ranked themselves according to method: at what hour 'the Citoyennes took to their needlework;' and we, yielding the chairs to them, endeavoured to talk gallantly in a standing posture, or even to sing and harp more or less. Jealousies, enmities are not wanting; nor flirtations, of an ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... an hour of deep repose, That yet upon my heart shall close, When all that nature dreads and knows Shall burst upon me wondrously; Oh, may I then awake, forever, My harp to rapture's high endeavor; And, as from earth's vain scene I sever, ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... different—as if one were to be absolutely without any will about any thing, and yet to delight in the crossing of one's will. Now, if I have not any wall, I do not see how it is to be crossed. And to have none whatever would surely make me something different from a woman and a sinner. I should be like a harp that could be played on—not like a living creature ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... though to what degree I cannot now judge. She painted in oils;—I had never before seen any one use the brush, and days would not have been too long for me to watch the pictures growing beneath her hand. She played the harp; and its tones are still to me the heralds of the promised land I saw before me then. She rose, she looked, she spoke; and the gentle swaying motion she made all through life has gladdened memory, as the stream does the woods ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... will imagine some music-loving sylph attempting to guide the wind among the strings of an Aeolian harp, every now and then for a moment succeeding, and then again for a while the wind having its own way, he will gain, I think, something like a dream-notion of the man's playing. Mary tried hard to get hold of some clew to the combinations and sequences, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... went on, "will you dare tell me that the sheiling singers on Loch Finneside have never heard my 'Harp of the Trees'? If there's a finer song of its kind in all Albainn I've yet ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... herself for feeling more terror than love for her. "Perhaps," she said, dear angel, "these severities were needful; they had certainly prepared her for her present life." As I listened it seemed to me that the harp of Job, from which I had drawn such savage sounds, now touched by the Christian fingers gave forth the litanies of the Virgin at the foot ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... unproperly to them that in Christian Churches, have a Calling to say publique prayers for the Congregation. In the same sense, the Prophets that came down from the High place (or Hill of God) with a Psaltery, and a Tabret, and a Pipe, and a Harp (1 Sam. 10.5,6.) and (vers. 10.) Saul amongst them, are said to Prophecy, in that they praised God, in that manner publiquely. In the like sense, is Miriam (Exod. 15.20.) called a Prophetesse. So is it also to be ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... far journey; only an afternoon's drive through the woods and by the river, in an April, long ago; Miss Betty's harp carefully strapped behind the great lumbering carriage, her guitar on the front seat, half-buried under a mound of bouquets and oddly shaped little bundles, farewell gifts of her comrades and the good Sisters. In her left hand she clutched a small lace handkerchief, with which ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... and must ever have at its back some sense in us of the speaking voice. But in writing prose nowadays, while always recollecting that prose has its origin in speech—even as it behoves us to recollect that Homer intoned the Iliad to the harp and Sappho plucked her passion from the lyre—we have to take things as they are. Except Burns, Heine, Beranger (with Moore, if you will), and you will find it hard to compile in all the lyrical poetry of the last 150 years a list of half a dozen first-class or even second-class ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into a lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of Aeolus-sweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora. And now, too, a voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions of Hesper, floated out thence, all gorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank, day by day, lower and lower, until its edges rested ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... David and his harp, Donnelley and his dog! These are inseparable associations, and so fine and historic an animal is "Brownie" that the newspapers devote write-ups to him just as if he were a regular celebrity or something like that. He is now guarding the chicks on a ranch and is making a dandy truant officer, ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... Desire, Desire! Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of love! Make of my heart an Israfel burning above, A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer! Smite every rapturous wire With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor, Crying—"Awake! awake! ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... considered; but a short consideration will despatch them. It is not easy to guess why he addicted himself so diligently to lyrick poetry, having neither the ease and airiness of the lighter, nor the vehemence and elevation of the grander ode. When he lays his ill-fated hand upon his harp, his former powers seem to desert him; he has no longer his luxuriance of expression, nor variety of images. His thoughts are cold, and his words inelegant. Yet such was his love of lyricks, that, having written, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... poetess must be like an AEolian harp, that every sighing wind awakes to music, but to grave and chastened melody, the full charm of which can only be truly appreciated by those who have sorrowed, and who look beyond this earth for repose. ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... dying groans, his living songs Shall better please my God Than harp or trumpet's solemn sound, Than goats' or ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... time, with the moon marching up heaven steadfastly, and the white fog trembling in chords and columns, like a silver harp of the meadows. And then the moon drew up the fogs, and scarfed herself in white with them; and so being proud, gleamed upon the water, like a bride at her looking-glass; and yet there was no sound of either John Fry, or ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... the hallow'd gift of tongues Comes from the selfsame power that gives us breath: He binds and looseth them at his dispose; And in his name will Dunstan undertake To work this cure upon fair Honorea. Hang there, my harp, my solitary muse, Companion of my contemplation. [He hangs his harp on the wall. And, lady, kneel with me upon the earth, That both our prayers ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... set among feathers of wings of other birds corrupteth and fretteth them. As strings made of wolf-gut done and put into a lute or in an harp among strings made of sheep-gut do destroy, and fret, and corrupt the strings made of sheep-gut, if it so be that they be set among them, as in a lute or in an ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... which appeared, formed by the hand of nature, Apollo amidst the Nine Muses holding a harp. At Venice another may be seen, in which is naturally formed the perfect figure of a man. At Pisa, in the church of St. John, there is a similar natural production, which represents an old hermit in a desert, seated by the side of a stream, and who holds in his ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... instead of going back, she turned a corner, and tripped along towards University Place. She had twisted her head so much in looking for Horace, that it was completely turned round. And, besides, a little farther on was a man playing a harp, and a small boy a violin. Fly paused and listened, till she no longer remembered Horace or the "skipt." She forgot this was New York, and dreamed she had come to fairy-land. Her soul was full of music. Happy thoughts about nothing in particular made her smile and clap her hands. Birds, ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... harp, woke dulcimer and flute,— Then prone in dust fell prince and peer, in lowly worship mute! The wise, the gifted, and the great, the lordly and the base Before the image bent the knee, and bowed in ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... have pulled away from them or dragged them into the river. He lashes the water into foam, and bellows with rage, while they yell with delight and excitement. The stout post is shaken, and the Manila line hums like a harp-string. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... Aviravirmayedhi.] We are in misery because we are creatures of self—the self that is unyielding and narrow, that reflects no light, that is blind to the infinite. Our self is loud with its own discordant clamour—it is not the tuned harp whose chords vibrate with the music of the eternal. Sighs of discontent and weariness of failure, idle regrets for the past and anxieties for the future are troubling our shallow hearts because we have not found our souls, and the self-revealing ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... explosive projectile. The first music to soothe the savage breast was the soughing of the wind through the trees. Then strings were stretched across a crevice for the wind to play upon and there was the AEolian harp. The second stage was entered when Hermes strung the tortoise shell and plucked it with his fingers and when Athena, raising the wind from her own lungs, forced it through a hollow reed. From these beginnings we have the organ and the orchestra, producing ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... "You are too forward, Mr. Delancy. Perhaps some time, when we have learned, we will let in a few of you, to look in at the door, fifty dollars a ticket, for some charity. I don't see why dancing isn't just as good an accomplishment as playing the harp in a Greek dress." ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dearest Mrs Bellamy! Think what it will cost us to refuse this." And so holds up a splendid card, thick as boards and embellished with a gilt edge and the Royal Arms and the Irish Harp, and Heaven knows what braveries, inviting the Honourable Mrs Gunning, Miss Gunning, and Miss Elizabeth Gunning to the Birthnight ball at the Castle, on the part of his Excellency, the Earl of Harrington. Diamonds were never so bright as the eyes that sparkled above it; ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... old life-tree of their race into our modern English literature, which had grown effete and stale from having had its veins injected with too much cold, thin, watery Gallic fluid. Yes, Walter Scott heard the innumerous leafy sigh of Yggdrasil's branches, and modulated his harp thereby. Carlyle, too, has bathed in the three mystic fountains which flow fast by its roots. In an especial manner has the German branch of the Teuton kindred turned back to those old musical well-springs bubbling up in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... so much else to do that I shall have to be content for the present with the foam of the wine cup of passion. O man of desire! Curb your greed, and practise your hand on the harp of illusion till you can bring out all the delicate nuances of suggestion. This is not the time to drain the ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... little resting spell after the darkies sat down; then came a great heaving crash and storm of music. Everything from a jew's-harp to an organ was set a-going, and behind them thousands of women sent up their voices amid a crash of anvils, the thunder of guns, and the ringing of bells that plunged one headlong into a volcano of sound that was neither music, nor thunder, nor an ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... marrying her to a man of noble lineage and great wealth, and Auffredy woke from his dream of happiness at once. His strains were now all gloom and sadness, and Elionore heard, with something like astonishment, the melancholy and despairing lays, to which alone he tuned the harp that all delighted to hear. Beatrix, too, whose wishes had not been consulted on a subject so important to herself, appeared quite changed from the tune the tidings first reached her; and her pale cheek and starting tears proved too plainly her aversion ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... The harp that trembled to thy touch; Hast thou forgot thine early lore? And know'st not that I love so much, That song contents my heart ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... Ham should have the gospel, and I intend that my Negroes shall. The gospel is calculated to make mankind better, and none should be without it." "What say you," replied Carlton, "about the right of man to his liberty?" "Now, Carlton, you have begun again to harp about man's rights; I really wish you could see this matter as I do. I have searched in vain for any authority for man's natural rights; if he had any, they existed before the fall. That is, Adam and Eve may have had some rights which ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... was deep and sweet as the organ in church on Sunday; and sometimes it rang out clear as a bugle; and sometimes as the tale went on he would take the harp which was ever by his side, and touching it with skilful fingers, would weave a gay little song or a tender strain of music into his story, like a jeweled thread in ...
— The Story-teller • Maud Lindsay
... of good food always calmed Robert's savage breast; it blew upon him as the wind on an AEolian harp hung in the trees, evoking faint ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... of Mrs. Parrot's harp of hope were reduced to one. A brave-hearted girl, she had started married life determined to fill it with music, despite the prophecies that she was a fool to marry Parrot. But the strings of her harp broke one by one, and ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... prepare for his freehold in New Jerusalem. He qualified himself for a place with the sore-legged Lazarus. He dwells in the presence of the Lamb. He drinks of the river of life. He twangs his hallelujah harp and blows his hallelujah trumpet. Maybe he looks over the battlements and sees Kate Dennis in Hades. The murderer in heaven, and the victim in hell! Nay more. It has been held that the bliss of the saved will be heightened by witnessing the tortures of the damned. In that case Kate Dennis may ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... cry out to them as she stood there unregarded? "Oh, have pity upon me!" Lady Mary said; and the pang in her heart was so great that the very atmosphere was stirred, and the air could scarcely contain her and the passion of her endeavor to make herself known, but thrilled like a harp-string to her cry. Mrs. Bowyer heard the jar and tingle in the inanimate world, but she thought only that it was some charitable visitor who had come in, and gone softly away again at ...
— Old Lady Mary - A Story of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... 'Jesus! Jesus!' The people said, 'That is not lawful! let us stone him!' But he did not desist. The things that were occurring were unheard of, astounding. Flowers, large as the sun, turned around before my eyes, and I heard a harp of gold vibrating in mid-air. The day sank to its close. My arms let go the iron bars; my strength was exhausted; and when he bore ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... catch the note; capital also is the boy playing the double pipe, with the close drapery swirling about his plump limbs, as one sees in San Francesco of Rimini, that temple dedicated to Isotta and to Childhood. The head of the boy playing the harp shows the best characteristics of this group. The hair is relatively short, and falls in thick glossy ringlets over his ears; it is bound by a heavy chaplet of leaves and rosettes; above this wreath the hair is smooth and orderly. ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... figure carrying rolls of papyrus to a man who is seated and intently reading. The method of reading these rolls or volumes, which were written in transverse columns across the breadth of the papyrus, is clearly shown here. Behind him a young woman is seated, playing on the harp. All these figures are placed under the light architectural designs above described, which seem intended to surmount a terrace. It is a common practice at the present day in Italy, especially near Naples, to construct light ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... carpet was lifted from the room set apart for dancing, and to protect the dancers from slipping the floor was chalked, usually in colors. The music was almost invariably a first and second violin, with flute and harp accompaniments. Light refreshments, such as water-ices, lemonade, negus, and small cakes were handed about on waiters between every two or three dances. The crowning glory of the entertainment, however, was the supper, prepared under the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... bathed and swam, too, (the latter with a life-preserver), but they were afraid to venture out too far, on account of sharks, which were occasionally seen near the shore. At a certain season of the year there was frequently heard, near the bath-houses, a strain of music, like the Aeolian harp, which had never been satisfactorily accounted for, although many wise heads had pondered over it. Some supposed that it proceeded from a certain kind of small fish, which, in their perambulations through the mighty deep, for some secret reason best know to themselves, touched at this ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless
... yet no golden blinkers got To shade thine eyes from this devoted spot, Whose wrongs tho' blazoned o'er the world they be, Placemen alone are privileged not to see— Oh! turn awhile, and tho' the shamrock wreathes My homely harp, yet shall the song it breathes Of Ireland's slavery and of Ireland's woes Live when the memory of her tyrant foes Shall but exist, all future knaves to warn, Embalmed in hate and canonized by scorn. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Sabbath or fasting day. Whoever brought cards into the dominion paid a fine of L5. No one could make minced pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music, except the drum, trumpet, and jews-harp. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... and Imagination, require any particular notice. But a remark of general application may be made. All Poets, except the dramatic, have been in the practice of feigning that their works were composed to the music of the harp or lyre: with what degree of affectation this has done in modern times, I leave to the judicious to determine. For my own part, I have not been disposed to violate probability so far, or to make such a large demand upon the Reader's ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... herself, resolved to be as happy as she could. She amused herself by walking in the gardens and gathering the white roses, and when tired of that she read and played on the harp which she found in her room. On her dressing-table she found these lines, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... their crimsoned points as if from recent slaughter; and this trickling red formed a setting for the shapes of beings come, no doubt, from the distant shores of Ganges: on one side a king playing on a golden harp; on the other a monarch wielding a sceptre ending in the turquoise-blue ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... knewest that island, far away and lone, Whose shores are as a harp, where billows break In spray of music and the breezes shake O'er spicy seas a woof of colour and tone, While that sweet music echoes like a moan In the island's heart, and sighs around the lake, Where, watching fearfully ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Shaikhs, saying: "A certain person has borne testimony against my character on the score of lasciviousness." He answered, "Shame him by your continence.—Be thou virtuously disposed, that the detractor may not have it in his power to indulge his malignity. So long as the harp is in tune, how can it have its ear pulled (or suffer correction by being put ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Jew! That wonderful boy a Jew!... But then so was David the shepherd youth with his harp and his psalms, the sweet singer in Israel. [She surveys the room and its contents with interest. The windows rattle once or twice in the rising wind. The light gets gradually less. She picks up the huge Hebrew tome on the piano and puts it down with a ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... suitor and a rival of Caractacus for the hand of that Princess. He was a person gigantic in stature, and was slain by Suetonius in the battle which terminated the liberties of Britain. From him descended directly the Princes of Pontydwdlm, Mogyn of the Golden Harp (see the Mabinogion of Lady Charlotte Guest,) Bogyn-Merodac-ap-Mogyn, (the black fiend son of Mogyn,) and a long list of bards and warriors, celebrated both in Wales and Armorica. The independent Princes of Mogyn long held out against the ruthless Kings of England, until finally Gam Mogyns made ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the harp-player on the tomb of King Antuf contains an allusion to these ruined palaces: "The gods [kings] who were of yore, and who repose in their tombs, mummies and manes, all buried alike in their pyramids, when ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... incessant and invariable, a long scream that almost hissed. On reaching the wreck, however, this shriek became hoarse with rage, and howled as it shook the rigging. It used the shrouds and stays of the still upright mainmast as an aeolian harp from which to draw horrible music. It made the tense ropes tremble and thrill, and tortured the spars until they wailed a death-song. Its force as felt by the shipwrecked ones was astonishing; it beat them about as if it were a sea, and bruised ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... sideboards, tables, bedsteads, etc., which the family have not been able to remove, and which the occupying soldiers have found no use for. The most notable of these articles is a musical instrument, which may be described as a compound harp-organ. It is, in fact, an upright harp, played by keys which strike the wires by a pianoforte action, which has an ordinary piano keyboard. This is, in fact, the earliest form of the modern pianoforte. Then, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... changeling—fairy-born and human-bred! You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months. If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp." ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... things, like forgettin' his commutation ticket, or gettin' lost in Brooklyn, or havin' his new straw lid blow under a truck and walkin' bareheaded a few blocks. Say, I'll bet he won't like it in Heaven if he can't punch a time card every mornin', or if they shift him around much to different harp sections. ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... existed; he was a first-rate mechanic, an expert navigator, a great musician, both in theory and practice, and a poet of singular excellence. Of him it was said, and with truth, that he could build a ship and sail it, frame a harp and make it speak, write an ode and set it to music. Yet that saying, eulogistic as it is, is far from expressing all the vast powers and acquirements of Lewis Morris. Though self-taught, he was confessedly the best Welsh scholar of his age, and was well-versed in ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... the spring of Lisnayan in the town of Ibowan he rested and he sat on the high stone and began to play the bamboo Jew's harp and Igowan saw him. "Adolan come and see this young fellow and hear him play the Jew's harp." The harp said, "Iwaginan Adolan, Inalangan come and see your brother, if he is your true brother." So Adolan went truly to see him and he found that it was a newborn baby ...
— Traditions of the Tinguian: A Study in Philippine Folk-Lore • Fay-Cooper Cole
... Sarah Fricker, with whom he was now very much in love, and had begun housekeeping in a cottage at Clevedon near the Bristol Channel. The beauty of the place and his happiness there are celebrated in "The Aeolian Harp" and "Reflections on Leaving a Place of Retirement" (better known by its opening words, "Low was our pretty cot"). His next residence was in Bristol—rather a base of operations than a home, for Coleridge was on the road much of the ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... into the fire in sudden melancholy, he said, "'By." But the next minute he sparkled into excited joy, and jumped up to hang about her neck and whisper that in Philadelphia he was going to buy a false-face for a present for Dr. Lavendar; "or else a jew's-harp. He'll give it to me afterwards; and I think I want a jew's-harp ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... The spirit-harp within the breast A spirit's touch alone can know,— Yet thine the power to wake its rest, And bid its echoing ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... harp, and minstrelsy now tune All hearts to joyful mood; The cheerful music does ...
— Hymns, Songs, and Fables, for Young People • Eliza Lee Follen
... harp to the sea-shore, and sat and played; and the sea-maiden came up to listen, for sea-maidens are fonder of music than all other creatures. But when the wife saw the sea-maiden she stopped. The sea-maiden said, ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... must be gained," demurred Tournicquot; "you overlook the fact that madame must consent. It is a fact that I do not understand why she should have any consideration for you, but if she continues to harp ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... pressed down my soul: they have digged a pit before me, and are fallen into the midst of it themselves. My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed: I will sing, and give praise. Awake up, my glory; awake, lute and harp: I myself will awake right early. I will give thanks unto Thee, O Lord, among the people, and I will sing unto Thee among the nations. For the greatness of Thy mercy reacheth unto the heavens, and Thy truth unto the clouds. Set up Thyself, O God, above the heavens, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... Tristram was sent into France, and had one to govern him named Gouvernail, and how he learned to harp, hawk, and hunt. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... found in England. It is delicately and elaborately sculptured, and each of the twelve angels in the niches holds a musical instrument—a flageolet, a trumpet and two wind instruments, a tambour, a violin, an organ, a harp, bagpipes, ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... troop of grey plover in an autumn morning, without feeling an elevation of soul like the enthusiasm of Devotion or Poetry. Tell me, my dear friend, to what can this be owing? Are we a piece of machinery, that, like the AEolian harp, passive, takes the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... To play a harp yourself, signifies that your nature is too trusting, and you should be more careful in placing your confidence as well ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... harp that played in the wind,—now soft, now loud; now sweet, now solemn. He said that the harp played itself. The people heard the sounds, full of seeming expression, as though touched by airy fingers, and, as they could not discredit the evidence of their own ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... those of sound, and a whole infinity of them which are swifter than those known to us as light. So we begin to understand that the vibrations by which we see and hear are only like two tiny groups of a few strings selected from an enormous harp of practically infinite extent, and when we think how much we have been able to learn and infer from the use of those minute fragments, we see vaguely what possibilities might lie before us if we were enabled to utilize the ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant and the Montserratian coat of arms centered in the outer half of the flag; the coat of arms features a woman standing beside a yellow harp with her ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... from the hut, a minstrel appeared, who played upon a species of harp, and sang praises of myself and Rionga; and, of course, abused Kabba Rega with true ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... He was a harp; all life that he had known and that was his consciousness was the strings; and the flood of music was a wind that poured against those strings and set them vibrating with memories and dreams. He did not merely feel. Sensation invested itself in form and color and radiance, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... so; I never feel safe until I have pleased them; I don't think they are the first to see one's defects, but they are the first to catch the color and fragrance of a true poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a bow-string,—to a woman and it is a harp-string. She is vibratile and resonant all over, so she stirs with slighter musical tremblings of the air about her.— Ah, me!—said my friend, the Poet, to me, the other day,—what color would it not have given to my thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the praise and glory of ould Ireland in the great days that's gone, when we were all Phenayceans and Armenians, and when we worked all manner of beautiful contrivances in gold and silver,—bracelets and collars and teapots, elegant to look at,—and read Roosian and Latin, and played the harp and the barrel-organ, and eat and drank of the best, ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... did not condescend to any such subterfuges. She sat quite still doing nothing, looking very much as she had looked for the last forty years. Her harp stood on one side of the fireplace, and Miss Roberta's guitar hung by a faded blue ribbon from a nail ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... a remarkable memory, of which the Emperor often availed himself; she was also an excellent musician, played well on the harp, and sang with taste. She had perfect tact, an exquisite perception of what was suitable, the soundest, most infallible judgment imaginable, and, with a disposition always lovely, always the same, indulgent to her enemies as to her friends, she restored ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... affections of the heart towards God and man. I have seen and felt the effect produced by them in the humble dwelling of the village pastor, where none but human voices swelled the notes; and in the chateau, where the harp and the organ have mingled their fine sounds with the well modulated tones of an accomplished family of sons and daughters. My thoughts, at the moment I am writing this, are at Chateau Blonay, but most of the voices, which I heard there, are now silent in death! I am thoroughly convinced ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... joy, such, perhaps, as the universe had never before known. But to each of us the most perfect joy will be his own consciousness, existence being then a rapture such as we never experienced. Then the bird is winged, the jewel is set in gold, the flower blooms, the harp receives all her strings, the heir is crowned. No wonder that Paul said, looking through and beyond heaven, "If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... antique world, as fresh in their magic loveliness as when the bards and seers of Olympus and the Agean first stamped them in heaven. There "the great snake binds in his bright coil half the mighty host." There is Arion with his harp and the charmed dolphin. The fair Andromeda, still chained to her eternal rock, looks mournfully towards the delivering hero whose conquering hand bears aloft the petrific visage of Medusa. Far off in the north the gigantic Bootes is seen driving towards the Centaur and the Scorpion. And yonder, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... bigger notes, that may thy sense allure, And for thy worth frame some fit poesie: The golden ofspring of Latona pure, And ornament of great Ioves progenie, Phoebus, shall be the author of my song, 15 Playing on yvorie harp with ...
— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser
... nigger-shooter almost infallibly. He had the first air-gun in town and a shot-gun at fifteen. He thought that he was manlier than Drury because he was wiser and stronger. It never occurred to him that Drury might suffer more because he was more finely built, that his nerves were harp-strings while ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... upon; to dwell upon a subject. Have among you, my blind harpers; an expression used in throwing or shooting at random among the crowd. Harp is also the Irish expression for woman, or tail, used in tossing up in Ireland: from Hibernia, being represented with a harp on the reverse of the copper coins of that country; for which it is, in hoisting the copper, i.e. tossing up, ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... isn't it? Why harp on that string? Don't you see that it maddens me? Do you want to drive me to ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... ark to dance afore, like Isrul's prophet king; We has no harp to soun' de chords, to holp us out to sing; But 'cordin' to de gif's we has we does de bes' we knows, An' folks don't 'spise de vi'let-flower bekase ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... his position, Mr. Walker introduces the following anecdote: "About the year 1730, one Maguire, a vintner, resided near Charing Cross, London. His house was much frequented, and his skill in playing on the harp was an additional incentive: even the duke of Newcastle and several of the ministry sometimes condescended to visit it. He was one night called upon to play some Irish tunes; he did so; they were plaintive and solemn. His guests ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... neighbors of the Assyrians, and, in a certain sense, the inheritors of their empire, had a passion for music, and delighted in a great variety of musical instruments, has long been known and admitted. The repeated mention by Daniel, in his third chapter, of the cornet, flute, harp sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music—or, at any rate, of a number of instruments for which those terms were once thought the best English equivalents—has familiarized us with the fact that in Babylonia, as early as the sixth century B.C., ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... that brings such joy and sorrow Into men's hearts (yea, too, so piercing sharp That joy is, that it marcheth nigh to sorrow For ever, like an overwinded harp). ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... pinched it gently, and then replied: "If I smoked three thousand of these cigars I think I would need a harp instead ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... to play a little with the bow, and oh! strange and dreadful was the music that came from its string beneath the touch of his gloved fingers. It sang like a harp and wailed like a woman, so fearfully indeed that the lad Day, who all this while stood by aghast, stopped his ears with his fingers, and Hugh groaned. Then this awful archer swiftly set ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... was dancing to merry music, in others flowed ale and beer, and in others yet again sweet cakes and barley sugar were sold; and sport was going outside the booths also, where some minstrel sang ballads of the olden time, playing a second upon the harp, or where the wrestlers struggled with one another within the sawdust ring, but the people gathered most of all around a raised platform where stout ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... pure gold. What he meant by 'fourpence-halfpennies' somewhat puzzled me, there never having been any piece of English money coined of that value. I found that a proclamation was issued shortly before Mr. Bunyan's time (April 8, 1603), to save the people from being deceived with the silver harp money of Ireland, purporting to be twelve and sixpenny pieces. It fixed the value of the Irish twelvepence to be ninepence English; so that the Irish sixpence was to pass current for fourpence-halfpenny in England. That accomplished antiquary, Mr. Hawkins, the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... towards her harp; wildly, almost unconsciously, she touched with one hand its strings, while her eyes were fixed on the ground. An imperfect melody resounded; yet plaintive and passionate. It seemed to attract her soul. She raised her head, and then, touching ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... quickly after his wife came in: They sat talking, I think, till eight a-clock. I said I fear'd I might be some Interruption to their Business: Dr. Noyes reply'd pleasantly: He fear'd they might be an Interruption to me, and went away. Madam seem'd to harp upon the same string. Must take care of her Children; could not leave that House and Neighborhood where she had dwelt so long. I told her she might doe her children as much or more good by bestowing ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... languages, teachers of science, and metaphysicians to puzzle the heads of the old and weary the brain of the young. Teachers of music with massive organs for the music rooms of the college arrived, teachers of piano and harp, all of which were a revelation to these simple people, who could not conceive of any sweeter music than the song of the birds, their mothers evening hymn or the soft sweet notes of the happy wife as she crooned her ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt
... Arms," "Bridge Hotel," "Harp Hotel," "Aberconway Temperance Hotel" (old house containing coffee-room dated 1400), and others. Alternative Route.—Train from Paddington, via ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... no recollections and no perceptions of identity. On a sudden the music ceased, but the brilliant light still continued to surround me, and I heard a low but extremely distinct and sweet voice, which appeared to issue from the centre of it. The sounds were at first musical like those of a harp, but they soon became articulate, as if a prelude to some piece of sublime poetical composition. "You, like all your brethren," said the voice, "are entirely ignorant of every thing belonging to yourselves, the world you inhabit, your future destinies, and the scheme of the universe; ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... and looked so natural that I imagined I could see its leaves and tendrils sway in the wind. The occupants of the dining-room were all ladies, and again I noted the fact that they were all blondes: beautiful, graceful, courteous, and with voices softer and sweeter than the strains of an eolian harp. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... "That globe on which the figure of Hope sits," Miss Heath had said, "is meant to represent the world. Hope is blindfolded in order more effectually to shut out the sights which might distract her. See the harp in her hand, observe her rapt attitude— she is listening to melody— she hears, she rejoices, and yet the harp out of which she makes music only possesses one string— all the rest are broken." Miss Heath said nothing further, and Prissie scarcely took in the full meaning of the ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... there was a great opportunity, and the opportunity was matched by the man. Phillips was handsome as an Apollo. His voice was sweet as a harp. No man ever studied the art of public speech more scientifically. He played upon an audience as a skillful musician upon the banks of keys in an organ. A Southern slaveholder heard him in the Academy of Music, hating him, ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... house of the beautiful Neapolitan. He found Ione sitting amidst her attendants, who were at work around her. Her harp stood at her side, for Ione herself was unusually idle, perhaps unusually thoughtful, that day. He thought her even more beautiful by the morning light and in her simple robe, than amidst the blazing lamps, and decorated with the costly jewels of the previous ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... darling old bear, we won't harp on that twice-told tale again," Clara interrupted, with a knowing smile. "Point da rechauffes! Let us leave one another's misdeeds and one another's explanations for their proper sphere—the family ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... King Amen'ophis III., at Thebes, in Egypt, which, being struck with the rays of the morning sun, gives out musical sounds. Kircher says these sounds are due to a sort of clavecin or AEolian harp enclosed in the statue, the cords of which are acted upon by the warmth of the sun. Cambyses, resolved to learn the secret, cleft the statue from head to waist; but it continued to utter ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... drapers; and the most frequent style of shop is a store, containing everything from a pickaxe and tin dish (for gold washing) to Perry Davis's patent Pain-killer. We have of course our inns—the Imperial, where the manager of the bank and myself lived; the Harp of Erin, the Irish rendezvous, as its name imports, even its bar-room being papered with green; the German Hotel, where the Verein is held, and over which the German tri-coloured flag floats on fete-days; and there is also a Swiss restaurant, the Guillaume ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... her eyes, smoothing her hair, folding her to my heart, which was sunken and deep—why not forever?—in that dream of peace. I ran from her presence, and shouted, and leaped with joy, and sat the whole night through, thrilled into happiness by the thought of her love and loveliness, like a wind-harp, tightly strung, and answering the airiest sigh of the breeze with music. Then came calmer days—the conviction of deep love settled upon our lives—as after the hurrying, heaving days of spring, comes the bland ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... all sports, and exercises, and modes of life that improve the physical organism, I have no respect for bone, and nerve, and muscle in the abstract. Health is a fine harp, but I want to know what tune you are going to play on it. I have not one daisy to put on the grave of a dead pugilist or mere boat-racer, but all the garlands I can twist for the tomb of the man who serves God, though he be as physically weak as Richard Baxter, whose ailments were almost ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... himself in the garb of the character which he was to assume, and, taking his harp upon his shoulder, wandered away in the direction of the Northmen's camp. Such a strolling countryman, half musician, half beggar would enter without suspicion or hinderance into the camp, even though he belonged to the nation of the enemy. Alfred was readily admitted, and he wandered ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the case of music, which seems to have been loved and studied from the first. As far back as we can see him the Irish Celt was celebrated for his love of music. In one of the earliest extant annals a Cruit, or stringed harp, is described as belonging to the Dashda, or Druid chieftain. It was square in form, and possessed powers wholly or partly miraculous. One of its strings, we are told, moved people to tears, another to laughter. A harp in Trinity College, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... people have a long list of instruments, and their music, though monotonous, is soft and plaintive: Bowdich gives a specimen of it ("Sketch of Gaboon," p. 449), and of a bard who seems to have been somewhat more frenzied than most poets. Captain Allen (iii. 398) speaks of a harp at Bimbia (Camarones) tightly strung with the hard fibre of some creeping plant. The Bakele harp (M. du Chaillu, chap, xvi.) is called Ngombi; the handle opposite the bow often has a carved face, and it might ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... Asked them if I might go,—but no one heard. Then, sick with longing, I arose at last And went unto my father,—in that vast Chamber wherein he for so many years Has sat, surrounded by his charts and spheres. "Father," I said, "Father, I cannot play The harp that thou didst give me, and all day I sit in idleness, while to and fro About me thy serene, grave servants go; And I am weary of my lonely ease. Better a perilous journey overseas Away from thee, than this, the life I lead, To sit all day in ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ." ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... swung a hammock from one of its branches since Judge Trent's visit. From beneath its shade was no view of the sea, but one could lie there and listen to the rhythmic murmur of the waves answering the strains of an AEolian harp which Thinkright's clever hands had fashioned and placed in the shadow of the upper branches. There Sylvia took the books which her cousin gave her to study, and read and study she did, despite the temptation to day-dreaming. Little by little, by gentle implications, Thinkright ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... behind me a long, uneven sigh, like the throbbing of a broken harp-string,—and when I turned round again, no trace of the nymphs remained.... The broad forest gleamed green as before, and only in spots, athwart the close network of the branches, could tufts of something white be seen melting away. Whether these were the tunics ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hecatombs of lean kine and sheep—is supposed to have been a refined and splendid prince, dwelling in ideal "halls," (doubtless compounded out of the Dublin Bank and Rotunda,) and enjoying the finest music on a double-action harp. As a fact, there is no evidence whatever that the old Irish Pentarchy was much better than any five chieftainships of the Sandwich Islands. Even the historians who laud it in most pompous phrases, like Keatinge, give nothing but details of wars and massacres, disorders ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... power, it seemed to me that these members of the evidently vast organization known as the Si-Fan were dupes, to a man, of the Chinese orator! It seemed to me that he used them as an instrument, playing upon their obvious fanaticism, string by string, as a player upon an Eastern harp, and all the time weaving harmonies to suit some giant, incredible scheme of his own—a scheme over and beyond any of which they had dreamed, in the fruition whereof they had no part—of the true nature and composition of ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... earnestly to catch the few words of one who was on the eve of departure, and the words of whom, at such a moment, almost invariably acquire a value never attached to them before: as the sounds of a harp, when the chords are breaking, are said to articulate a sweet sorrow, as if in mourning for their ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms |
