"Lilt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... It was that of a never-ending band. Playing all the way, too, but silently. Yet, the music was there. The pity was that one could not hear it. The pomp, the swagger, the swing of the Guards, the shifting movement, the bright array—all these were unmistakable. The very lilt of the air made itself felt. Very cheery. Certainly, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... by the throat was in tune with all of them. For what does a lover ask but to be one and twenty, to be astride a willing horse, and to be beside the one woman in the world for him? Sure 'tis heaven enough to watch the colour come and go in her face, to hear the lilt of her voice, and to see the changing light in her eye. What though at times we were shy as the wild rabbit, we were none the less happy for that. In our hearts there bubbled a childlike gaiety; we skipped upon the sunlit ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... 'King Charles, the Young Hero'. Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade' is technically a finer poem than anything Tegnr has written, but it lacks the deep, virile bass, the tremendous volume of breath and voice, and the captivating martial lilt which makes the heart beat willy nilly to the rhythm of the verse" (Essays ...
— Fritiofs Saga • Esaias Tegner
... days; the Marchesino (strutting from the hips and making his bold eyes round), Peppina, Ruffo. They went by and returned, gathered about her, separated, melted away as people do in our musings. Her eyes were fixed on the low roof of the cave. The lilt of the water seemed to rock her soul in a cradle. "Madre—Ruffo! Madre—Ruffo!" The words were in her mind like a refrain. And then the oddity, the promiscuity of life struck her. How many differences there were in this small group of people by whom she was surrounded! ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... than any Negro poet writing in the dialect to-day, summons to his work the lilt, the spontaneity and charm of which Dunbar was the supreme master whenever he employed that medium. It is well to say a word here about the dialect poems of James Edwin Campbell. In dialect, Campbell ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... piece out the remainder without difficulty. We talked for hours over single stanzas, and I found him reading into them a wail of regret and a rebellion which, for the life of me, I could not discover myself. Possibly I recited with a certain joyous lilt which was my own, for—his memory was good, and at a second rendering, very often the first, he made a quatrain his own—he recited the same lines and invested them with an unrest and passionate ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... The calling of birds, The lowing of cattle Must blend with the words. Without these, indeed, you Would find it ere long, As though I should read you The words of a song That lamely would linger When lacking the rune, The voice of the singer, The lilt of the tune. ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... to sing. He owned a light tenor, clear and melodious, and the air had a curiously barbaric lilt which, musically considered, was reminiscent of the gypsies' chorus in "The Bohemian Girl." But the words were couched in a strange tongue, sonorous and full voweled, and the Hungarians in the room became greatly ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... said Dud to Jim, as they made their way through the chatting, laughing throng, and caught the lilt of the music on the beach beyond, where bathers, reckless of the church bells' call, were disporting themselves in the sunlit waves. "It's tough, with a place like this so near, to be shut up on a desert island for a whole vacation. I say, Jim, let's look up the Fosters ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... carry memorial jewel. No maiden fair shall wreathe her neck with noble ring: nay, sad in spirit and shorn of her gold, oft shall she pass o'er paths of exile now our lord all laughter has laid aside, all mirth and revel. Many a spear morning-cold shall be clasped amain, lifted aloft; nor shall lilt of harp those warriors wake; but the wan-hued raven, fain o'er the fallen, his feast shall praise and boast to the eagle how bravely he ate when he and the ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... beautiful it was for her! How beautiful it was to sing the little song in the sweetness of her own spirit. How sweet it was to move pure and unhampered at last in the music! The lovely ease and lilt of her own soul in its motion through the music! She wasn't aware of the flute. She didn't know there was anything except her own pure lovely song-drift. Her soul seemed to breathe as a butterfly ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... big steel safe and a tent and was buying coal lands right and left. More young men drifted in from all points of the compass. A tent-hotel was put at the foot of Imboden Hill, and of nights there were under it much poker and song. The lilt of a definite optimism was in every man's step and the light of hope ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... by her first name, Bertha, which was beautiful and dignified, instead of that silly "Rilla"? She did not mind Walter's version, but nobody else was allowed to call her that, except Miss Oliver now and then. "Rilla-my-Rilla" in Walter's musical voice sounded very beautiful to her—like the lilt and ripple of some silvery brook. She would have died for Walter if it would have done him any good, so she told Miss Oliver. Rilla was as fond of italics as most girls of fifteen are—and the bitterest drop in her cup was her suspicion that he told Di more of ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was rather an impressive moment and the pipers, rising to the occasion, played "Blue bonnets o'er the Border." Behind was the sunset in a sky of brilliant crimson. In front stretched great uplands of a dim green, while we, the new Crusaders, crossed over to the lilt of the pipes, whose music astonished Palestine now heard for the first time; and with us in great columns moved guns and cavalry, camels and transport, half seen in a haze of hanging dust. These of course are after thoughts, at the time one's point of view was ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... enjoyed, the rest of the time passed very slowly. It is not easy to play tunes to satisfy the cravings of different nationalities at a moment's notice. A few Russians flung themselves about to the lilt of some of their rowdiest cake-walks, while the "Marseillaise," seeming a universal favourite, was repeatedly called for. On the morning of the fourth day three weird-looking figures, wearing a queer mixture of ready-made Dutch ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... very dark, and the girls could not make out what she looked like, but they could see that she was small and graceful and her voice—well, her voice had a gay lilt that made one want to laugh even though all she said was "what a pleasant day it is." No wonder, with that father and mother, Connie ...
— Billie Bradley on Lighthouse Island - The Mystery of the Wreck • Janet D. Wheeler
... The antique home of quietness. Nor to the folk can piper play The tune of "Hills and Far Away," For they are with them. Morn can fire No peaks of weary heart's desire, Nor the red sunset flame behind Some ancient ridge of longing mind. For Arcady is here, around, In lilt of stream, in the clear sound Of lark and moorbird, in the bold Gay glamour of the evening gold, And so the wheel of seasons moves To kirk and market, to mild loves And modest hates, and still the sight Of brown kind faces, and when night Draws dark ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... heard it. I think it made the very heart of our Lord glad. What a surprise it was to those in that gloomy old prison. They had heard the walls ring with groans and shrieks. They had heard bitter oaths in the night, but songs with the lilt of an irrepressible joy in them—they had never ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... Then, suddenly, a burst of music came up as some one opened a saloon port-hole and as quickly closed it again—a tenor voice singing to the piano some trivial modern song with a trashy sentimental lilt. It was—in this setting of sea and sky—painful; O'Malley caught himself thinking of a barrel-organ in a ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... knight to bear him company rode, not eager and swift, like a prince who went to find a treasure, but steady and slow, as we should go to meet sorrow. Not one of the hundred men who followed dared to lilt a lay or fling a laughing jest from his mouth. All rode silent among their gay trappings, for so saith ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... her prettiness. One saw at once that her cheeks should have been pink and white like the daisy, and that her hair, which was yellow as the primrose, should have tumbled in wavelets about them. There ought to have been sunshine in the blue eyes, and laughter on the red lips, and merry lilt in the soft voice. But the pink had faded from the girl's cheek; the shadow had chased the sunshine from her eyes; her lips had taken a downward turn, and a note of sadness had stolen the merriment ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... lounge upon the grass, and the cigars, and the new fish stories, and the general invoice of the old ones, it was delectable to get back to the girls again, and in the old "best room" hear once more the lilt of the old songs and the staccatoed laughter of the piano mingling with the alto and falsetto voices of the Mills girls, and the gallant soprano of the ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... Niagara Falls were utilized it could supply the world with seven million horse-power. I do wish Gershom would get over trying to pat the world on the head, instead of shaking hands with it! I'm afraid I'm losing my lilt. I can't understand why I should keep feeling as blue as indigo. I am a well of acid and a little sister to the crab-apple. I think I'll make Susie come down so we can humanize ourselves with a little music. For I feel like a Marie Bashkirtseff with ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... canoes paddled by, and as they passed, the hum of voices and laughter and the cheery lilt of island melody died away, and the paddlers looked shoreward to the motionless figure of Prout, who, with the child by his side, seemed to heed naught but the wide sweep of ocean that ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... people. A cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits. It recrudesced the laughter and the song, and put a lilt into my own imagination so that I could laugh and sing and say foolish things with the liveliest of them, or platitudes with verve and intensity to the satisfaction of the pompous mediocre ones who knew no other ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... stir, there was a bustle in the court; a sparkle in the eyes of some as they glanced slyly and under their lashes at the house, a lilt in the tread of others as they stepped to and fro. He divined that hands would fly to caubeens and knees seek the ground if a certain face showed at a window: moreover, that that at which he merely guessed was no secret to the barefooted ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... day in spring when the desire mastered the fear that was in her. It was a perfect afternoon, the air a-lilt with bird-songs, and full of the perfume of early flowers. Her husband was ploughing in a distant field, and surely would not return for an hour or two; what might one not do in an hour? She called her little friend, Petie, who was hovering about the door, watching for her. Quickly, ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards
... lay, ditty, ballad, onody, chansonnette, lyric, lilt, lied, paean, cantata, aria, sonnet, strain, round, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... aversion to music which marked Dr Johnson, Victor Hugo, Theophile Gautier, and some other poets. Nay, he liked Beethoven, which places him higher in the musical scale than Scott, who did not rise above a Border lilt or a Jacobite ditty. The Wren songs, entitled The Window, were privately printed by Sir Ivor Guest in 1867, were set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, and published by Strahan in December 1870. "A puppet," ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the Psalms of David ower, And lilt wi' holy clangor; Of double verse come gie us four, And skirl up the ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... worn travelers and their escort reached the village, Jessie could hear the gay lilt of the chantey that heralded ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... bird, my bonnie, bonnie bird, Is that a sang ye borrow? Are thae some words ye 've learnt by heart, Or a lilt o' dule an' sorrow?" "Oh, no, no, no!" the wee bird sang, "I 've flown sin' mornin' early, But sic' a day o' wind and rain!— Oh! waes me for ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sorrow, and the scorn, That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers Till death clipt close their flight with shameful shears; Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire Could buy thee bread or kisses; when light fame Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, Villon, our sad bad glad ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... re-formed, in the order in which it had arrived, and to the lilt of the gay music of the powerful band, the volatile spirits of the multitude revived, and the loud "huzzahs" rent the air as Apleon—the Anti-christ—passed through the ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... sometimes is struck by a conviction that this or the other writer has thoroughly liked the work on which he is engaged. There is a gusto about his passages, a liveliness in the language, a spring in the motion of the words, an eagerness of description, a lilt, if I may so call it, in the progress of the narrative, which makes the reader feel that the author has himself greatly enjoyed what he has written. He has evidently gone on with his work without any sense of weariness, or doubt; and the ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... in to the boathouse landing to the lilt of a familiar rowing song. Wyn's camping days were over; the outing of the Go-Ahead Club was at ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a night-bird's, haunting and elusive as the murmur of the sea in a shell: a lilt from La Fille de Madame Angot, a light opera long since forgotten in New York. Hillard, genuinely astonished, lowered his pipe and listened. To sit dreaming by an open window, even in this unlovely first month of the year, in that grim unhandsome city which boasts of its riches and still accepts ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... endeavouring to find pleasure otherwise than by the practice of the domestic virtues. Disquieting memories of bursting boilers surge up to the surface of the mind, and old catches like the weird ballad of Sir Patrick Spens lilt themselves to the clank of the ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... wheat fields all about us were ripening to their harvestry. The wind gossiped with the grasses along our way, and over them the buttercups danced, goldenly-glad. Waves of sinuous shadow went over the ripe hayfields, and plundering bees sang a freebooting lilt in ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... The lilt of this little romance, with its pretty repetitions, is delightful, and the symbolism is, of course, ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... of infantry still pressing forward to a camping place somewhere beyond the town. We could just make out the shadowy shapes of the men, but their feet made a noise like thunderclaps, and they sang a German marching song with a splendid lilt and ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... instead Of your brows direct and wise, Of the little lilt of your head And your dark-lashed, sky-clear eyes, Of the soft brown braids demure, The poise as of quiet light, The perfect profile, sweet and pure,— ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... too perfect of body, too sound of health, not to revel in such a dawn as swept across the flats next morning. The sun caressed her throat, her bare head, the uplifted face. As the tender light of daybreak was in the hills, so there was a lilt in her heart that found expression in her voice, her buoyant footsteps, and the shine of her eyes. She had slept soundly in Beaudry's blankets while he had lain down in his slicker on the other side of the fire. Already she was quite herself again. The hours of ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... he said to Mihul. He made vague curving motions in the air with one hand, more or less opposing ones with the other. "That sort of an up-and-sideways lilt ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... ideas and vision. He liked the lilt and swing of the Lays and Ballads, and enjoyed the Essays with their superb colouring. Disputing Macaulay's dictum that neither painters nor poets are helped by the advances in civilisation, science and refinement, he wrote: "This ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... one and the refined sentiment of the other, is a point worth noticing. The easy flow, the careless charm of their versification, is by no means the artless matter it may seem to a careless reader. Nor is it the easiest of metrical tasks to poise perfectly the loose lilt of such ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... of talk, in which the clock tinker indulged so freely, afforded his young friend no little amusement. His tongue had long obeyed the lilt of classic diction; his thought came easy in Elizabethan phrase. The slight Celtic brogue served to enhance the piquancy of his talk. Moreover he was really a man ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... collection of folk-poetry entitled, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1846). Mr. Dixon wrote comparatively little poetry himself, but his song, "The Milkin'-time," has the lilt of the best Scottish folk-songs and well deserves its inclusion here. In a longer poem, "Slaadburn Faar" (1871), he gives a humorous and racy description of the adventures of a farmer and his wife on their journey from Grassington to Slaidburn to attend the local fair. In general idea ...
— Yorkshire Dialect Poems • F.W. Moorman
... in life He felt things, he did not study them If women hadn't memory, she answered, they wouldn't have much Lilt of existence lulling to sleep wisdom and tried experience Lonely we come into the world, and lonely we go out of it Never to be content with superficial ...
— Quotations From Gilbert Parker • David Widger
... Of course I knew her, and a sweet, dear girl she was, too. Stop laughing at Alanna, all of you, or I'll send you upstairs until Dad gets after you. Very quiet and shy she was, but the lovely singing voice! There wasn't a tune in the world she wouldn't lilt to you if you asked her. Well, the poor child, I wish I'd never lost sight of her." She pondered a moment. "Is the boy still serving Mass at St. Mary's, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... to Lueneburg!" repeated the boy, with a mocking lilt in his voice. "And Lueneburg is twenty miles from Hamburg. Hadst thought of that!" He ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... was it in death's cold land there was no perfume Of the scented flowers, or lilt of a bird's gay tune. No sea there, or no cool of a wind's fresh breath, No woods, no plains, no dreams, ...
— The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems • Dora Sigerson
... his pony, shifting his position to ease his cramped limbs after the manner of the range rider. In spite of himself, his eyes would drift toward the jaunty little figure on the pinto. The masculine in him approved mightily her lissom grace and the proud lilt of her dark head, with its sun-kissed face set in profile to him. He thought her serviceable costume very becoming, from the pinched felt hat pinned to the dark mass of hair, and the red silk kerchief knotted loosely round the pretty throat, to the leggings beneath the corduroy ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... wondering wherein consists the true lyrical magic. In that line of Burns's, clearly, it lies in the harmony of lyric thought and lyric lilt. In— ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... her down with sound of viol; Wheeling angels, past espial, Descanting on "Viola." ANGELS. Sing, in our footing, a Lovely lilt of "Viola!" ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... breaking his promise. One evening, when March was melting into April, and the pulses of spring were stirring under the lingering snow, he was walking home from school alone. As he descended into the little hollow below the manse a lively lilt of music drifted up to meet him. It was only the product of a mouth-organ, manipulated by a little black-eyed, French-Canadian hired boy, sitting on the fence by the brook; but there was music in the ragged urchin and it came out through his ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the Tweed, Your skins wi' claes o' tartan cleed, An' lilt alang the verdant mead, Or blithely on your whistles blaw, An' sing auld Scotia's barns an ha's, Her bourtree dykes an mossy wa's, Her faulds, her bughts, an' birken shaws, Whare love an' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... footsteps of the absent boys, but for a long time there was no break in the lilt of the forest. Then—it must have been two o'clock—he heard the quick beat of running feet, and directly Gastong, as Jack had fancifully named his new acquaintance, came spurting into ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... lilt for the dancing," Burr Gordon said; and then he colored furiously, as if he had startled himself in ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... could not have written 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' in the same tune and key as 'Treasure Island'; and the music of 'Marxheim' differs from both. The reason is organic: the writer is inspired by his theme, and it passes through his mind with a lilt and measure of its own. It makes its own style, just as a human spirit makes its own features and gait; and we know Stevenson through all his transformations only by dint of the exquisite distinction and felicity of word and phrase that always ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... beyond the common. She does not pretend to heroics and she seldom allows herself to touch a note of pathos; her mission is just to inspire other hearts with the infectious gay courage of her own. It finds a natural expression in the easy lilt of her measures. She is fluent rather than polished and never overlays her designs with excess of embroidery. Long practice has made her familiar with a craft which is not so easy as it looks; and in particular she has learnt the art of the final line. Miss ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... was walkin on the strand, I spied ane auld man sit On ane auld black rock; and aye the waves Cam washin up its fit. His lips they gaed as gien they wad lilt, But o' liltin, wae's me, was nane! He spak but an owercome, dreary and dreigh, A burden wha's sang was gane: "Robbie and Jeanie war twa bonnie bairns; They playt thegither i' the gloamin's hush: Up cam the tide and the ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... eye, let the wanderer go by. Woman-love and wistful heart, let the gipsy one depart. For the farness and the road are his glory and his goad. Oh, the lilt of youth and Spring! Eyes laugh and lips sing. Yea, but it is good to ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... is full of poetry, the translator having retained the lilt of the original, together with many of the old English words which, if they need a glossary, is only because we have gradually lost the meaning in ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... her soft, deep, loving eyes and her smiling mouth. Every now and then she burst into song; and then her thrilling voice, so sweet and fresh, had tones in it that only birds and good women full of love may compass. Mostly the song was a lilt or a verse which spoke for her own heart and love; but just as the clock struck three, she broke into a low laugh which ended in a merry, mocking melody, and which was evidently the conclusion of her argument concerning ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... how it appeared. All through that time he wore an odd look of excitement, triumph, pleasure, which lifted him away from himself. There was a sort of lilt in his very step; his eyes shone, his cheeks were flushed. When he cleared a pile of freshly-ironed, starched things from the end of a table, so as to spread out a score upon it, laid them on the floor where the cat padded them over with dirty feet, and his mother railed ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... the grass, and read, in a chant, or rather in a lilt, the Danish ballad of Chyld Dyring, as translated by Sir Walter Scott. Gibbie's eyes grew wider and wider as he listened; their pupils dilated, and his lips parted: it seemed as if his soul were looking out of door and windows at once—but ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... rich, and then the Muse Shall court thy precious interviews, Shall take thy head upon her knee, And such enchantment lilt to thee, That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow From farthest ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Lilt thy song, and lute away In the wildest fashion:— Pour thy rippling roundelay O'er the heights of passion!— Flash it down the fretted strings Till thy mad lips, missing All but smothered whisperings, ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... being of her own land, one of the highlands, with the perfume of the gorse and the heather in the lilt of it, and the second, by demand of Sandy, the gipsy song which had been handed down from woodland mother to woodland child for hundreds of years; a song which sent Nancy's lawless blood to her cheeks and set her heart beating with an inherited ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... balada and pastorela, which had had such a luxuriant growth in Southern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A highly elaborated metrical system mainly distinguishes these writers, but some of page xiii their work catches a pleasing lilt which is supposed to represent the imitation of songs of the people. The popular element in the Galician productions is slight, but it was to bear important fruit later, for its spirit is that of the serranas of Ruiz and ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... Nae linties lilt on hedge or bush: Poor things! they suffer sairly; In cauldrife quarters a' the nicht, A' day they feed but sparely. Now, up in the mornin's no for me, Up in the mornin' early; A pennyless purse I wad rather dree, Than rise in ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... we wince, though none deplore us, We, who go reaping that we sowed; Cities at cock-crow wake before us— Hey, for the lilt of the London road! One look back, and a rousing ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... travelled the one leading to the ferry when they heard the whirlwind sound of horsemen coming after them, at which the honest man of Crail darted aside and lay flat on his grouff ayont a bramble bush, while my grandfather began to lilt as blithely as he could, "The Bonny Lass of Livingston," and the spring was ever after to him as a hymn of thanksgiving, but the words he then sang was an auld, ranting, godless and graceless ditty of the grooms and serving-men that sorned about his father's smiddy, and the closer ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Lintel and door, and when she lifts the blind Floats through the darkened chamber of her sleep; While leagues away my love-winged messages Go flocking home; and though they mingle not, Our thoughts seek one another. In the lilt Of winds I hear her whisper: "Oh that I Might melt into the moonbeams, and with them Leap through the void, and shed myself with them Upon my lover." Slow the night creeps on. Sleep harbours in the little room. She dreams — Dreams of a fall ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... kitchen to say that he must have some of the good old rousing Scotch songs they used to sing when he was home. So Mary brought out the old tartan-covered song-book and they sang it through, from the dreamy wail of "Ye Banks and Braes" to the rollicking lilt ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... sat in a shadowy corner of the crowded room, and listened to the singing, wild and strong, and with no hint of coming battle in its full rolling lilt. He noted with satisfaction how the "Long, Long Trail," and "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag" gradually gave place to "Tell Mother I'll Be There," and "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder," growing strong and full and solemn in the grand old melody of "Abide With Me." There were fellows there ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... unusually fresh and original. Contrast it with the maudlin "Keep the home fires burning," which holds the field to-day, and it touches great art. I never hear it even now on the street organ without a certain pleasure—a pleasure mingled with pain, for its happy lilt comes weighted with the tremendous emotions of those unforgettable days. It is like a butterfly caught in a tornado, a catch of song in ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... through sound of bees and river. The notes fell, round and starred, between young leaves, Trilled to a spiral lilt, stopped on a quiver. The Lady Eunice listens and believes. Gervase has many tales of her dear Lord, His bravery, his knowledge, his charmed life. She quite forgets who's speaking in the gladness Of being this man's wife. Gervase is wounded, grave indeed, the word Is kindly said, but to ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... Cardigan strode, and there was a lilt in his heart now. Already he had forgotten the desperate situation from which he had just escaped; he thought only of Shirley Sumner's face, tear-stained with terror; and because he knew that at least ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... herself, gravely composing her face, and clearing her throat, she began, in a high, shrill, piercing voice, rocking her head to the peculiar lilt of the words, and interpolating short ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the wy the bairns were ta'en in wi' him. Man, a've seen him tak a wee laddie on his knee that his ain mither cudna quiet, an' lilt 'Sing a song o' saxpence' till the bit mannie wud be lauchin' like a gude ane, an' ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... in the Green Meadows rose the clear lilt of Carol the Meadow Lark, and among the alders just where the Laughing Brook ran into the Smiling Pool a flood of happiness was pouring from the throat of Little Friend the Song Sparrow. Winsome Bluebird's sweet, almost plaintive, whistle seemed to fairly float ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... might be multiplied indefinitely; and the reader will admit that there is as much of a lilt about those which are here quoted as there is about the majority of the ditties which he has hummed to himself in his hour of contentment. Here is Philodemus' description of his ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... notes of the "Marseillaise," but, strangest of all to French ears, to listen to that new battle-cry, "Are we down-hearted?" followed by the unanswerable "No—o—o!" of every regiment. And then the lilt of that new marching song to which ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... lilt of a Gaelic song in these pages that brought a sorrow on me. That very sweet language will be gone soon, if not gone already, and no book learning will revive the suppleness of idiom, that haunting misty loveliness.... It is a very pathetic thing to ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... all days, Cappy would not have missed luncheon with the Bilgewater Club for a farm. As he breezed along there was a smile on his ruddy old face and a lilt in his kind old heart, for he was rehearsing his announcement to his youthful friends of how he had but recently tanned the hide of a brother! He almost laughed aloud as he pictured himself solemnly relating, in the presence of J. Augustus Redell and ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... repeated the couplet, and was plainly vastly pleased with it. "Faith, and I wonder is that my own, or something I read somewhere. Something of the lilt of a Scotch strathspey to 't, shouldn't you say? You know more of such things. What d'y' say—shall I claim that for my ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... "Oh, Elsie, child, what do you mean?" she asked anxiously. The dimples disappeared but though Elsie spoke quietly, still there was that wonderful lilt in her voice. ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... melody and harmony and flow of verse there can be no doubt that our poet is, for instance, an excellent writer of songs, in which a vigorous simplicity is the prime requisite. They lilt along with great vivacity and ease. But elsewhere I could wish that here and there he would amend his rhymes. "Reviewer" and "literature," "pierced" and "athirst," "noise" and "voice," "inquisition" and "division," ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... kindliness and the love of pleasure. The guitars and banjos were playing some wailing tune, with a note of sadness in the core of it so keen and penetrating that it made the water come to Harry's eyes. But it changed suddenly to something that had all the sway and lilt of the rosy South. Men sprang to their feet and clasping arms about one another began to sway back and forth in ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of old Castile, Ola, Ola," Manuel sang confidentially with a subdued and gallant lilt... Obviously impracticable. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... a lilt, a go, a flourish. To employ a vulgarism of the hour, it had the punch. It landed you and between the eyes. It required neither commentaries nor explanation. It was all there. It was tangible as a brickbat, self-evident ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... could reproduce Dougal's accent, and I will not attempt it. There was a touch of Irish in it, a spice of music-hall patter, as well as the odd lilt of the Glasgow vernacular. He was strong in vowels, but the consonants, especially the letter "t," ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... there were many prose writers in the seventeenth century who are among the men to be remembered. But their books, although some day you will love them, would not interest you yet. They tell no story, they are long, they have not, like poetry, a lilt or rhythm to carry one on. It would be an effort to read them. If I tried to explain to you wherein the charm of them lies I fear the charm would fly, for it is impossible to imprison the sunbeam or find the foundations of the rainbow. It is better ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... glasses met in a tink and a pledge and her ready laughter rose in duet with his. She caught the lilt of a popular song from, the tenpiece orchestra and sang upward with the tirralirra of a lark, and the group at the adjoining table threw her a shout. Mr. Fitzgibbons beat a knife-and-fork tattoo on his plate and pinched ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... ditty, and not too nice in its sentiments, as, indeed, why should it be, to please its hearers? There was a lilt in its chorus which even Stefan's unmusical voice could not hide, and it set the men's heads nodding in time as they roared it out together, waking the echoes with the declaration that—"The eye of a maid may sparkle, And the fools may for love repine, But the wise man knows ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... experienced the like. As we turn over the leaves, we may find ourselves in sympathy with some one or other of these staid joys and smiling sorrows. If we do we shall be strangely pleased, for there is a genuine pathos in these simple words, and the lines go with a lilt, and sing themselves to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Moore as wireless operator was swift of the swiftest; he despatched with a lightning lilt, and the keenness of his ears, for which he was famous on more than one ocean, made it possible for him to receive signals with rarely the necessity for ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... cutting swiftly into the great space of the subtle, unspeakable deep, driven by wind after wind of heavenly melody," he writes at another time. His best poems move to the cadence of a tune. He probably heard them as did Milton the lines of "Paradise Lost". Sometimes there was a lilt like the singing of a bird, and sometimes the lyric cry, and yet again the music of the orchestra. "He has an ear for the distribution of instruments, and this gives him a desire for the antiphonal, for ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... before the boss went away, some word of commendation that set his hands to working the faster, and made the work seem easy. The work had gone on without interruption for weeks, and never slowly, but there were times when it went with a lilt and a laugh; when laborers heaved at a hoisting tackle with a Yo-ho, like privateersmen who have just sighted a sail; when, with all they could do, results came too slowly, and the hours flew too fast. And so it was that Christmas ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... me— (My uncle, of course, though he seemed to be Only a boy—I loved him so!) And ah, how pleasant he made it all! And the things he knew that I should know!— The stage, the "drop," and the frescoed wall; The sudden flash of the lights; and oh, The orchestra, with its melody, And the lilt and jingle and jubilee Of "The Little Man ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... There's a sky beyond the skies Where only one star shines— The Star of Laughing Bells— In Chaos-land it lies; Cold as morning-dew, A gray and tiny boat Moored on Chaos-shore, Where nothing else can float But the Wings of the Morning strong And the lilt of laughing song From ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... what's brewing To the lilt of his lyric wiles: The fiddler knows what rueing Will come ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... paste tiara and crowned Margot—Margot, who was in flaming red to-night, and looked a devil's daughter indeed, with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinkling as she threw herself into the thick of the dance and kicked, and whirled, and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and the fluting of her ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... resolution. The big iron pot was now, like an honest old sailor that had done his duty, kicked aside the corner; the drummer and fifer seating themselves on the keel of the inverted dinghy, and struck up a lilt, and:— ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... achievements. The poem was dedicated to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was as rejoiced and grateful as only a true friend could be. The artist could admire the piece profoundly, but still not more sincerely than Edmund Burke, the statesman and the orator. As Tennyson had a lilt and Byron a sentiment, swiftly and easily appealing, consciously or unconsciously caught, and sincerely felt or insincerely imitated, so Goldsmith possessed a teaching charm and a guiding grace that ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... battered swing doors, marched a company of soldiers, the tramp of their feet and the lilt of their voices filling the place with strange echoes, for, being wet and weary and British, they sang cheerily. Packs a-swing, rifles on shoulder, they tramped through shell-torn waiting room and booking hall and out again into wind and wet, and I remember the ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... station to meet him on a fine young Saturday morning at the beginning of June. She set out from the house which maintained a sort of lordly aloofness among pine-covered hills, more than usually conscious of the lilt of summer in ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... valse, Allegro moderato, is first played by the violins, dolce con grazia, with accompanying strings, horns and bassoon. In the second part, with some loss of the lilt of dance, is a subtle design—with a running phrase in spiccato strings against a slower upward glide of bassoons. The duet winds on a kind of crescendo ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... habitation, came the dynamite explosions blowing up the city in blocks. When the muffled roar was over, the gathering quiet was pierced by the thin, high notes of gramophones. From the shadow of trees Caruso's voice rose in the swaggering lilt of "La Donna e Mobile," to be answered by Melba's, crystal-sweet, from a machine stored in a crowded cart. There were ragtime melodies, and someone had a record of "Marching Through Georgia" that always drew forth applause. Then, as the night advanced, a gradual hush fell, a slow sinking ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... and lilt went out of them, and they were again maundering and futile things, getting in one another's way, stumbling and shuffling through the darkness, hesitating to grasp ropes, and, when they did take hold, invariably taking hold of the wrong rope first. Skulkers there were among them, too; and ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... forgot you," she said, with a whimsical lilt in her voice. "I was thinkin' how elegant it is when we get home ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... little, my darling. I will say thee a psalm, or perhaps one of those old Manx ballads thou didst use to lilt so lightly." ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... child playing with fire Cynthia heedlessly spoke these words. They had no deeper significance to her than the lilt of a world-old song. Marriage was the end-all and consummation of her magic stories and, in this case, it had simply been a trifle more difficult to consider on account of the social difference between Sandy ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... I wonder how it would sound to me now—the rollicking lilt of Barney Leave the Girls Alone—even if a sweet maid flung its banter at me with flashing fingers and ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... is on or near the base of the bobbin. When the cone of the bobbin diminishes so as to materially increase the pull on the traveler, the conical drums are started by a belt shipper attached to the lilt motion. By the movement of the belt on these drums a continually accelerated motion is given to the rings, their maximum speed being about one-twentieth the number of revolutions per minute as the spindle has at the same moment. This action is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... get the final lilt of songs, To penetrate the inmost lore of poets—to know the mighty ones, Job, Homer, Eschylus, Dante, Shakespere, Tennyson, Emerson; To diagnose the shifting-delicate tints of love and pride and doubt— to truly understand, To encompass these, the last keen faculty and entrance-price, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... the front door stood open to the cool of the summer night. From the ballroom came the swaying lilt of the music and the beat of the dancers' feet. Ethne drew a breath of relief at her reprieve from her duties, and then dropping her partner's arm, crossed ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... chill with the bite of winter and though tiny snowflakes drifted aimlessly to earth with a quite deceitful innocence, as if they knew nothing of more to come and were only idling through the air, the blood of Charming Billy rioted warmly through his veins and his voice had a lilt which it had long lacked and he sang again the pitifully foolish thing with which he was wont to ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... top to bottom, its windows great squares of gold against the night. The door stood open, but except for a servant or two there was no one in the wide hall. The guests were dancing in the ballroom at the back, and George caught the lilt of the music as he skirted the house, then the sound of voices, the light laughter of the women, the deeper ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... suspicions as to what he knew, as well as to keep from arousing those of others, his heart was telling a very different story all the time. He could see again the dainty grace with which she had danced for him, heard again that low voice breaking into a merry piping lilt, warmed once more to the living, elusive smile, at once so tender and mocking. He might set his will to preserve an even front to her gay charm, but it was beyond him to control the thrills that shot ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... agreement. Aunt Emily dropped her umbrella then. And at the same moment a singing voice became audible in the trees behind them. The song came floating to them through the sunlight with a sound of wind and birds. It had a marvellous quality, very sweet and very moving. There was a lilt in it, a laughing, happy lilt, as though the Earth herself ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Shallow as was his mental observation, there was that in the things which had happened which made his little power of analysis useless. Carrie was still with him, but not helpless and pleading. There was a lilt in her voice which was new. She did not study him with eyes expressive of dependence. The drummer was feeling the shadow of something which was coming. It coloured his feelings and made him develop those ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... the lilt, the tenderness and the rhythm that makes music in the soul. It was neither singing, nor chanting, nor speaking, but a subtle mixture of the three; and the effect upon me was one of haunting harmonies that left me ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... slope could be traversed. A fast-running dog is not an easy mark for a bullet—especially if the dog be a collie, with a trace of wolf—ancestry in his gait. A dog, at best, does not gallop straight ahead as does a horse. There is almost always a sidewise lilt to his run. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... much of this"—so let us strike the chords to a merrier measure—to a "livelier lilt"—as suits the variable spirit of our Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of getting rid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would not suppose that we are subject to the blue devils? ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... now. It is doubtful, even, if Webster would. The public has already tired of the lilt of Ingersoll's redundant rhetoric, pleasing as was its music. The effective speech to-day is ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... rhythm and form. From Corinth, where Arion first laboured, we pass to Sicyon, where the taming of the dithyramb into an art form was accomplished by Praxilla, a poetess who added a new charm to the lilt of this Bacchic metre, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... his sister had finished the story of Gerty Keane, and of her fondness for her lonesome, friendless, and unlovable father; sat gazing out upon the moonlit landscape, but seeing nothing; sat while the nightingale's lilt, plaintive and low or mournfully sweet, bubbled tremulously from the grove, but hearing nothing. And in the shadow of the old-fashioned arm-chair snuggled Flora, her eyes resting lovingly, wistfully on her ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... the lilt from my heart of hearts, And the breath of song from my soul; And the mind of me that had once been free And buoyantly young, and whole; Grew calm and still as a barren sea, Where never a star beam shone, A sea where never a ripple danced— That reflected ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... Josephine Preston Peabody Song: On May Morning John Milton A May Burden Francis Thompson Corinna's Going a-Maying Robert Herrick "Sister, Awake" Unknown May Edward Hovell-Thurlow May Henry Sylvester Cornwell A Spring Lilt Unknown Summer Longings Denis Florence MacCarthy Midsummer John Townsend Trowbridge A Midsummer Song Richard Watson Gilder June, from "The Vision of Sir Launfal" James Russell Lowell June Harrison Smith Morris Harvest Ellen Mackay Hutchinson Cortissoz Scythe Song Andrew Lang September George Arnold ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... well known. At the end of a pleasant evening when there had been music—in which James himself was the first connoisseur in Scotland, inventing, some say, the national lilt, the rapidly rising and falling strain which is so full of pathos yet so adaptable to mirth—"and other honest solaces of grete pleasance and disport," the sound of trampling feet and angry voices broke upon the conventual stillness outside and the cheerful talk of the friendly group within. ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... interest to carry the reader pleasantly over the ground. The Gentle Shepherd is the work of a poet, and gives a higher impression of Ramsay's power than his songs alone would warrant. His lyrical pieces, though not wholly without the lilt and charm such verse exacts, are perhaps mainly of service in showing the immeasurable superiority of Burns. Ramsay was a successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the High Street of Edinburgh, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... had or not, it is certain that the gallery had. All the evening they had been stewing in an atmosphere like that of the inner room of a Turkish bath, and they were ready for anything. It needed but a trifle to set them off. The lilt of that unspeakable Yankee melody supplied that trifle. Kay's malcontents, huddled in their seats by the window, were the first to break out. Feet began to stamp in time to the music—softly at first, then more loudly. The wooden dais gave out ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... worth while to get Carquinez to loosen up. Nor was he ever really himself until he felt the mellow warmth of the vine singing in his blood. He was an artist, it is true, always an artist; but somehow, sober, the high pitch and lilt went out of his thought-processes and he was prone to be as deadly dull as a British Sunday—not dull as other men are dull, but dull when measured by the sprightly wight that Monte Carquinez was when he was ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... law to fleg us a', An' schedule richt frae wrang, The man o' the cave had got the crave For the lichtsome lilt o' sang. Wife an' strife an' the pride o' life, Woman an' war an' drink; He sang o' them a' at e'enin's fa' ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... Conversations, 1824, p. 261), and he may have heard without heeding this and other passages quoted by privileged readers; or, though never a line of Christabel had sounded in his ears, he may (as Koelbing points out) have caught its lilt at second hand from the published works of Southey, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of the Rocks to see the studious pilgrims at his pages. Stevenson haunts the gloomy inlet where the Admiral Benbow stood and where old Pew came tapping in the night. In the flesh I shall join their revels as an equal comrade. Clovelly, however, although its lilt was pleasant to the ear, ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... itself from the others in a burst of joyous energy and sweep a great circle and back again to its comrades, and then away, away, away to the skyline.—Ye swift ones! O, freedom and sweetness! A song falling from the heavens! A lilt through deep sunshine! Happy wanderers! How fast ye fly and how bravely—up and up, till the earth has fallen away and the immeasurable heavens and the deep loneliness of the sunlight and the silence of ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... young man, though with a lilt of dubiety, and a frown of excogitation, as if he weren't sure that he had ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... was beautiful, that was allowed by even the most unappreciative of the girls. There was a joyous lilt and a true melody about them that put them high in the rank of composition, and the accompaniments played with Fraeulein's delicate touch were harmonious and suitable. The words, unfortunately, were ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... more than some thirty fathoms in from the edge of the weed. And there stood Mistress Madison beside me, doing somewhat of a dainty step-dance upon the flooring of the look-out, and singing a quaint old lilt that I had not heard that dozen years, and this little thing, I think, brought back more clearly to me than aught else how that this winsome maid had been lost to the world for so many years, having been scarce of the age of twelve when the ship had been lost in the ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... late. Their merit is of a supreme quality; some of the most famous musical composers, inspired by his works, have graced them with admirable music. One of the most attractive features in his lyrics is their spontaneous ease of expression. They seem to lilt into music of their own accord, as naturally as birds sing. The best of these are found in the comedies of the Second Period and in the romantic plays of the Fourth. "Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more" in Much Ado About Nothing; "Blow, blow, thou winter ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... appeal. A bit of history about this same Andante shows how the composer prized national themes and folk tunes, and strove to secure them. It is said that morning after morning he was awakened by the singing of a laborer, working on the house below his window. The song had a haunting lilt, and Tschaikowsky wrote it down. The melody afterwards became that touching air which fills the Andante of the First String Quartet. Another String Quartet, in F major, was written in 1814, and at once acclaimed by all who heard it, with the ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... see all the country round; so, catching up my stick, I swung off in that direction. It was bright, but cold, and the surf, I remember, was booming loudly, though there had been no wind in our parts for days. I zigzagged up the steep pathway, breathing in the thin, keen morning air, and humming a lilt as I went, until I came out, a little short of breath, among the whins upon the top. Looking down the long slope of the farther side, I saw Cousin Edie, as I had expected; and I saw Jim Horscroft walking by ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... song, and one which was invaluable to lift their feet along, as they expressed it, was the following. There was a kind of spring and lilt to ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson |
