"Litany" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was on the window now and then it dropped, with a vague presage, upon the sleek head of the daring and enigmatical captain, reading the Litany, from 'battle, murder, and sudden death, good Lord deliver us,' and he almost fancied he saw a yellow skull over his shoulder glowering cynically on the Prayer-book. So the good attorney prayed on, to the ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... he was back home, Mr. Hamerton set to work regularly at the "Graphic Arts." In the diary this phrase is repeated like a litany: "Worked with great pleasure at my book, the 'Graphic Arts.'" But at the same time there is a complaint that it prevents the mind from being happily disposed for artistic work. I have already said how difficult it was for him to turn ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... of them were clothed in some sort of European apparel; those who were not, drew their krosses close round them, so as to appear more covered. A hymn in the Caffre language was first sung, and then prayers, after which the Litany and responses; the Commandments were repeated in the same language. Mr S then read a chapter in the Bible, and explained it to the assembly. Profound silence and quiet attention generally prevailed, although in some few instances there ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the strangest, weirdest scene that even the pen of poets or brush of painter devised, . . a march round and round the Temple of all the priests, bearing lighted flambeaux and singing in chorus a wild Litany,—a confused medley of supplications to the Sun and Nagaya, which, accompanied as it was by the discordant beating drums and the clanging of bells, had an evidently powerful effect on the minds of the assembled populace, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... titles was added another, when under date of December 10, 1883, Leo XIII directed that the title "Queen of the Rosary" be added to the Litany of the Blessed Virgin. In his brief the Holy Father expresses the desire that all the faithful practise daily the devotion of the rosary. If, therefore, the rosary is considered of such great power and efficacy by the head of the ...
— The Excellence of the Rosary - Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin • M. J. Frings
... great-grandmother was a Catholic. She was a Bullard. Perhaps it is from her that I have this overwhelming impulse to confession. And lately I have been terrified. I must tell it, or I shall shriek it out some day, in the church, during the Litany. 'From battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... much of Dr. Richards from the young girls of Snowdon. She had heard his voice in the Psalter, his responses in the Litany, and accepted it as a sign of marked improvement. He could not be as irreverent and thoughtless as he had been represented by those who did not like him; he must have changed during his absence, and she frankly offered him her hand, and with a smile which he felt even to his finder tips, welcomed ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... a lesser ship, meant for carrying plunder. The Sea King, Olaf (or Anlaff), was the leader; and as tidings came that their sails had been seen upon the North Sea, more earnest than ever rang out the petition in the Litany, 'From the fury of the Northmen, ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are amazingly slow at discovery. Why do you stand there staring at me? Do you expect any sympathy? You will not get it. Go and say a litany outside your wife's door. You have made me spend the most horrible week I ever remember, just because you are not good enough for her. How could you ever dare to suspect that woman? Go away. I shall strangle you ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... points of retrenchment are—removing all repetitions, such as the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Collect for the day; a portion of the close of the Litany is omitted at the discretion of the minister. The Communion Service is not read every Sunday. I suppose the Church authorizes this omission at the discretion of the minister, as I have attended service on more than one occasion when the ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... I want with the little cuss, now," he said to himself, "that I should have got myself treed like a coon, as I am, this yer way?" and Haley relieved himself by repeating over a not very select litany of imprecations on himself, which, though there was the best possible reason to consider them as true, we shall, as ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the inscriptions on tombs bear such witness to the existence of this primitive practice, that it cannot be disputed. It is true that our English Prayer Book neither expressly sanctions nor yet expressly forbids these intercessions. But in the Liturgy, in the Litany, and in the Burial Service, prayers occur which appear to have been purposely so worded, as to lend themselves to a reference in the minds of worshippers to the faithful dead, if any should desire ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... good father was quite delighted at this proposal; and accordingly the crucifixes and the image of the blessed Virgin were carried in solemn procession, amid our drums and military ensigns; Olmedo chanted the litany and administered the sacrament, and we all gave thanks to God ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... woodland through which a clear stream sparkled, a silent, intimate, leafy oasis amid an army-ridden desert, where there was only a cow to stare at them, knee deep in young mint, only a shy cardinal bird to interrupt them with its exquisite litany. ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... the heights of Morningside Park, after which, he entered the cathedral. The priest whose voice had so often thrilled him stood at his post in his surplice, and the choir had finished the processional hymn. During the responses in the litany, and between the commandments, while the congregation and the choir sang, he heard their natural voices as of old ascending to the vaulted roof and arrested there. He now also heard their spiritual voices resulting from the earnestness of their ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... knowing how the affair would have ended had not the door been thrown open at this moment. A couple of priests advanced between the files of prisoners, who sat up at once and started to howl out a dismal litany at the top of their lungs. Tristram's assailants left him hurriedly, and, shrinking back to their pallets, began to lift their voices with the rest. The noise was like that of a cat's battle, and the priests marched to and fro while it continued, smiling to left and right and exhorting the ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... read who had never learnt Latin, and so a translation of the Bible was to be made for them, and there was a great desire that the Church Services—many of which had also been in Latin—should likewise be put into English, and the litany was first translated, but no more at present. The king and Crumwell had taken it upon them to go on with what had been begun in Wolsey's time—the looking into the state of all the monasteries. Some were found going on badly, and the messengers took care to make the ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... would sing from the litany. Her companions joined with her; but still I could discern the voice of Maddalene from all others, which seemed only to unite for the purpose of robbing me of it. Sometimes, too, when her companions were recounting to her their various misfortunes, I could hear her pitying them; could ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... muchacha—for she was but that—had just returned from the convent at San Jose, where she had been for four years. Ah! what would you? The fonda was no place for the child, who should know only the litany of the Virgin—and they had kept her there. And now—that she was home again—she cared only for the horse. From morning to night! Caballeros might come and go! There might be a festival—all the same to her, it made nothing if she had the horse to ride! Even now she ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... An ancient Litany-hymn of the German churches, much used in Passion-week and in the processions before Ascension-day by Luther "gebessert und ...
— The Hymns of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... serio-comic silence while the double mysteries of the hidden Holy of Holies were celebrated. Not more than a dozen devotees at most were present. These gathered modestly in the rear of the nave and put us to shame with their reverent gravity. Strange chants were chanted; it was a weird music, like a litany of bumblebees. Dense clouds of incense issued from gilded recesses that were screened ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... within me, that will destroy me; 'tis that I do infect myself; the man without a navel yet lives in me. I feel that original canker corrode and devour me: and therefore, "Defenda me, Dios, de me!" "Lord, deliver me from myself!" is a part of my litany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries the whole world about him. "Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus,"* though it be the apothegm of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a fool: for indeed, though ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... eye on a handsome man, spins away by the handful, and bestows years and years upon Nero out of her own pocket. As for Claudius, they tell everybody to speed him on his way With cries of joy and solemn litany. ...
— Apocolocyntosis • Lucius Seneca
... recording, lest they should haunt others as they have done by me all my life. Now and then Chapman caught up a long switch and dashed out at some obstreperous child to give an audible whack; and towards the close of the litany he stumped out—we heard his tramp the whole length of the church, and by and by his voice issued from an unknown height, proclaiming—'Let us sing to the praise and glory in an anthem taken from the ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... evening prayer we have two lessons, whereof the first is taken out of the Old Testament, the second out of the New; and of these latter, that in the morning is out of the Gospels, the other in the afternoon out of some one of the Epistles. After morning prayer also, we have the Litany and suffrages, an invocation in mine opinion not devised without the great assistance of the Spirit of God, although many curious mind-sick persons utterly condemn it as superstitious, and ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... to preach. It has been the most formidable sermon I have ever had to preach, and it is a great relief to have it over. I took, as text, Job xxviii. 28, "And unto man he said, The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom"—and the prayer in the Litany "Give us an heart to love and dread thee." It lasted ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... in a few words a telling paraphrase of the word. We know on excellent authority that beauty is truth, that it is the expression of the ideal, the symbol of divine perfection, and the sensible manifestation of the good. A litany of these titles of honour might easily be compiled, and repeated in praise of our divinity. Such phrases stimulate thought and give us a momentary pleasure, but they hardly bring any permanent enlightenment. A definition ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... first few hundred years had held a clearly defined position in evangelical history, had become an independent object of worship. Festivals were held in her honour; churches were dedicated to her; the will of the people triumphed in the litany; art took possession of the grateful subject. The tendency to make Mary the equal of Christ grew steadily. Metaphors originally intended for Christ alone were used indifferently for either. We constantly find her addressed as the "archetype, the light of the world, the vine, the mediator, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... not hear the snowbirds Their morning litany, For when the dawn comes over dale I ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... the Ponte Milvio, the first halt was made at S. Valentine's,[93] the second at the chapel of the Holy Cross. The "Liber Pontificalis," in the Life of Leo III. (795-816), speaks of this strange ceremony. It was called the "great litany," and occurred on the twenty-third of April, the day on which the Romans used to celebrate the Robigalia. The Christian litany and the pagan ceremony had the same purpose, that of securing the blessing of Heaven upon the fields, and averting from them the pernicious effects of late ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... to me!" and yet she often seems to belong to me. I cannot pray, "Give her to me!" for she is another's. In this way I affect mirth over my troubles; and, if I had time, I could compose a whole litany ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... Poems and Ballads Mr. Swinburne keeps on some terms, so to speak, with theology. In the poem entitled 'A Litany' the Lord God discourses with Biblical sternness to His people, who tremble before Him, and threatens them with 'the inevitable Hell,' while the people implore mercy—a strange excursion into the Semitic desert out of the flowery field ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... went to church she prayed to the good Lord to deliver her and everybody else from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness. She felt now that there might well be added to the Litany a fresh petition which should include British communities on the Continent in the ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... from the day that I was seized with dread of being seen during sleep by any other eyes than those of Providence. In the same way, too, from the day I heard my old nurse snorting in her sleep "like a whale," to use a slang expression, I have added a petition to the special litany which I address to Saint-Honore, my patron saint, to the effect that he would save me from indulging in this ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... blood from a fearful scalp wound drained his veins till he fainted. The lad came to in four hours; had he died he would have been quietly reported as washed overboard. If you can stand a few hours of talk from an old smacksman you may hear a sombre litany of horror. Those fishers are, physically, the flower of our race, and many of them have the noblest moral qualities. Knowing what I do of the old days, I wonder that the men are ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... with a barbarian or a millionaire. From the sordid atmosphere of English conjugality upon an income of anything less than an assured 5,000 pounds a year, good Lord deliver me! And you know my reasons for adding another clause to my litany. Good Lord deliver me also from further experience of the exciting vicissitudes of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... a perforated lung, my liver is a swelling sponge, eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his—plague and pestilence, being final, are the will of God—and, upon my soul, it is an absurd comedy of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the deserts of waiting; and after that, four days of rest-camp full of marches and parades and great cleansings of implements and of streets, with regulations of the strictest, anticipating all the different occasions for punishment, a thousand fatigues, each with as many harsh knocks, the litany of optimist phrases, abstruse and utopian, in the orders of the day, and a captain who chiefly concerned himself with the two hundred cartridges and the reserve rations. The regiment had no losses, or almost none; a few wounds during reliefs, and sometimes one or two deaths which were ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... days to read the prayers of the Church. So he had some justification for ascribing his anonymous work to "a true son of the Church"; and his motive was the promotion of that charity and toleration which breathes in its every page. The King had summoned a Convocation, to make certain changes in the Litany, and, if possible, to reconcile ecclesiastical differences; he even dreamt of uniting the Protestant Churches of England and of the Continent, and his Comprehension Bill, had it passed Parliament, might ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... account by Him. If, then, with 'the Father of Lights' there is in this sense 'no variableness, neither shadow of turning,' it is not therefore irrational to pray for specific blessings, as we do in the Litany, because God works out His plans not merely in us but by us; and we may dare to say that that which is to us a free self-determination, may be not other than a ...
— The Discipline of War - Nine Addresses on the Lessons of the War in Connection with Lent • John Hasloch Potter
... the yards the peasants were thrashing and there was a smell of corn and straw. Behind the wattled hedges the fruit-trees were reddening and all around the trees were red or golden. In the church-tower the bells were ringing, the children were carrying ikons to the school and singing the Litany of the Virgin. And how clear the air was, and ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... heavy task that Mr. Barton had to do. For first there was the morning prayer, with its psalms, its lessons and its prayers; next the Litany, and last the communion, in the course of which was delivered one of the homilies set forth by authority, especially designed for the support of those who were no preachers—preceded and followed by a psalm. But all was easy to-day to a man who had such cause for exultation; his voice ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the light on the faces, then with the words which seemed to him magnificent, and then more vaguely with the characters of the other worshippers. But when he suddenly perceived Rachel, all these thoughts were driven out of his head, and he thought only of her. The psalms, the prayers, the Litany, and the sermon were all reduced to one chanting sound which paused, and then renewed itself, a little higher or a little lower. He stared alternately at Rachel and at the ceiling, but his expression was now produced not by what he saw but ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... like him—some," conceded Flame. In her bright cheeks suddenly an even brighter color glowed. "I like him when he leaves out the Litany," she said. "I've told him I like him when he leaves out the Litany.—He's leaving it out more and more I notice.—Yes, I like him ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... in the Litany and Holy Communion. The afternoon was spent in visiting the sick and giving medicine. Several women came to the house for instruction, and seemed to take great interest in Mr. Chambers, teaching; but it was not until Mr. Chambers was married that any women were baptized. At ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... ribbon, but should sweep grandly and languidly in to the parade service, bury half a pew under the festoons and furbelows of my silk dress and velvet trimmings, sink into a nest of matchless millinery for the Litany, scent the air with patchouli as I rose for the hymn, examine the other ladies' bonnets through one of those eyeglasses which are supposed to make it no longer rude to stare, and fan myself from the fatigues of the service ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in black, then the novices in their white robes and veils, carrying lighted tapers to symbolize the eternal radiance that awaited the pure in spirit. The nuns finished the procession that wound its way slowly through the long ill-lighted corridors, chanting the litany of the dead. From the chapel, at first almost inaudible, but waxing louder every moment, came the same solemn monotonous chant; for the Bishop and his assistants were ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... good girl!" This was his commendation, from hour to hour; it made up the litany of his gratitude for what she had been to him. "But I dunno's I feel quite up to ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Them he branded, as hypocritical materialists, and the country for pride in her sweetmeat plethora of them:—mixed with an ancient Hebrew fear of offence to an inscrutable Lord, eccentrically appeasable through the dreary iteration of the litany of sinfulness. He was near a truth; and he had the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I have read nearly the whole of the 'Earthly Paradise' since I came here. It is an awfully jolly book. ('Little Folks' is Miss Campbell's idea of literature for the young; but that's all rot of course.) Who wrote the Litany? If you do not know please ask the Archdeacon when you see him. I've come to the conclusion that some of it ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... in twos, so that when Beth sat at the end of theirs, as she always did, the person in the next pew sat beside her with only the wooden partition between. One Sunday, when she was on her knees, drowsing through the Litany with her cheek on her prayer-book, she became aware of a boy in the next pew with his face turned to her in exactly the same attitude. He had bright fair hair curling crisply, a ruddy fair fat face, and round ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... against maroon and purple cadences ... an instant swagger of defiance in the midst of a litany to death the all-powerful. That is Spain ... ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... church. It was of no use, he said to himself, trying to upset her ideas, for to succeed would only be to make her miserable, and his design was to make the race happy. In the grand old Abbey, therefore, they heard together morning prayers, the Litany, and the Communion, all in one, after a weariful and lazy modern custom not yet extinct, and then a dull, sensible sermon, short, and tolerably well read, on the ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... he did not lose them afterwards, so that he perforce assumed a really edifying degree of attention. Nor, indeed, did the rest of the congregation err in the direction of restlessness or wandering looks, but rather in the opposite extreme, insomuch that during the litany, when we were no longer supported by music, and had, most of us, assumed attitudes favourable to repose, we appeared one and all to succumb to it, especially towards the close, when, from the body of ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over his breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... that stood in no need of external attractiveness lays hold upon the senses as the reticent syllables of that first gospel, spelt out from its original sentences, must have gripped the hearts of those who heard it first. The Latin phrases of a long drawn litany, set to complicated tunes, rolled overhead with an emptiness of barren sound, among the clouds of incense and the glitter of the painted walls and all the service of ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... long enough to remember their great hour forever and had repeated the litany of love to each other till they sensed its wonder, David ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... note-books: there, on the Good Friday of 1773, he took Boswell with him, and Boswell observed, what he said he should never forget, "the tremulous earnestness with which Johnson pronounced the awful petition in the Litany: 'In the hour of death, and at the day of judgment, good Lord ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... You'll kill me!" he gasped. "Picture to yourself this Crispin Galliard blushing and giggling like a schoolgirl beset by her first lover. Picture it, I say! As well and as easily might you picture old Lucifer warbling a litany for the ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... occasion a litany was added which I had heard before, and then came a hymn of the Blessed Virgin which I remembered well. My mother sang it herself and taught me to sing it, so that when the Maestro, swinging his little ivory baton, began in ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... gowns, with neat turbans of cambric or muslin on their heads. The males were dressed in spencers, vests, and pantaloons, all of white. All were serious in their demeanor, and although the services continued more than two hours, they gave a wakeful attention to the end. Their responses in the litany were solemn ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... so, would be manifestly absurd; for example, a soldier may be at once prudent and bold, for these are opposites; he could not be at once prudent and rash, for these are contraries. We may love and fear at the same time and the same person; we pray in the Litany that we may love and dread God, the two being opposites, and thus the complements of one another; but to pray that we might love and hate would be as illogical as it would be impious, for these are contraries, and could no more co-exist together than white and black, hot and ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... stinging laughter, deserving of nothing kinder than mockery from the aged and the wise—which is doubtless why we old and sage folk thank Heaven daily, uplifting cracked voices and withered hands, that we are no longer young. A pious and fraudulent litany for which may we be forgiven! My young friend on the bench stirred. A shaft of moonlight, streaming through the bush upon his face, bewitched ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... that of all queens she was the peeress, of all women the most beautiful, of all wives the most dear. Almost she forgot the horrors of the night, so certain did it seem that his dear voice must soon again tell her the words that have been love's litany since ever time began. ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... judge, lying on his back, his head too low for comfort. He had been killed outright, and there was no distortion of feature. No more peaceful faces than one sees at times on the battlefield, and sudden death, despite the Litany, is not the least enviable exit. In this case there was something like a mild surprise on the countenance. The rather stolid face could never have been very expressive. An unposted letter was found on the ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... walked about the world, causing water to flow from rocks, as did Moses, and in the ancient litany, recited by priest and congregation, the responses of "Hooia, e oia!" meant "It is true!" as does Amen, the response of Christian litanies to-day. The custom of using holy ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... with that in use, only it was purged from all vestiges of the Athanasian heresy. The principal changes were in the Doxology, which was altered into what he declares was its original form, in the prayer of St. Chrysostom, in the first four petitions of the Litany, and one or two others, and in the collect for Trinity Sunday. The Established Church was, however, so blind to the truth that she declined to adopt the proposed alterations, and Whiston was obliged to leave her communion. He found a home, in which, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... the church of Rome, is a mortal sin;"[29] and is it only so in the church of Rome? Or is it but a venial sin in the Church of England? Our litany calls fornication a deadly sin; and I would appeal to his Lordship for fifty years past, whether he thought that or sacrilege the deadliest? To make light of such a sin, at the same moment that he is frighting us from an idolatrous religion, should seem ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... prone in mute adoration, crying all the time with tears streaming down her face. She was at this time like to dissolve in tears! Without fail the mysteries ended with the Pater Noster, the Ave, a certain Litany which the nuns had taught her, and some gasping words of urgency to the Virgin and Saint Isidore. Love was scourging her slender body at this time truly, and with ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... and low, came the chant of the Virgin's Litany. The fashionable people, in rich attire, were promenading up and down the aisle known as "Paul's Walk." In the side chapels a few worshippers lingered before the shrines; and round a lectern, in one corner ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... softly to himself, like a litany, that sentence from the second Inaugural—"With malice toward none, with ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... tail—something that looked like a dried gourd; they shouted periodically together strings of amazing words that resembled no sounds of human language; and the deep murmurs of the crowd, interrupted suddenly, were like the response of some satanic litany. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Canon Horniblow boomed and droned, like some unctuous giant bumble-bee, from the reading-desk. The choir intoned responses from the gallery with liberal diversity of pitch. And presently, alas! Damaris' thoughts began to wander, making flitting excursions right and left. For half-way through the litany some belated worshipper arrived, causing movement in the men's free seats. This oddly disturbed her. Her mind flew again to Faircloth, and the strange impression of her own soul's return declaring this and no other to be his actual ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... them were young men." "Poor Dorothy," exclaimed Nora. "One of them was the minor canon who chants the service every morning. He is a bachelor—" "Then there is a hope for her," said Nora—"and he always talks a little as though he were singing the Litany." "That's very bad," said Nora; "fancy having a husband to sing the Litany to you always." "Better that, perhaps, than having him always singing something else," ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... succeeding days Quiros sighted several other islands, upon which he did not land, and to which he gave names taken from the Calendar, according to a practice which has changed all the native nomenclature of Oceania into a veritable litany. One island visited may be especially noticed; it was named the island of la Gente Hermosa on account of the beauty of its inhabitants, and of the fair colour and coquetry of its women, who, as the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... entering the village we met great loads of wheat and oats, drawn by huge white oxen, who in turn were led by what seemed to me to be very small boys. The latter, stick in hand, walked in front of their beasts, and swelling their youthful voices would intone a kind of litany which the animals apparently understood ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... persecution had discouraged and depressed, she recalled all the exiles, and gave liberty to those who had, on account of their religion, been confined in prison. She also altered the religious service, and gave orders that the Lord's prayer, the litany, the creed, and the gospels, should be read in the churches in the vulgar tongue; and she forbade the elevation of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... huddled room which had witnessed so much spiritual travail. Somehow its dusty rafters seemed saturated with a human quality, as if they had imprisoned all the perverse longings and bitter griefs of the company that once sat in the dim lamplight and chanted their litany of hate. He never really had been a part of this company ... he never really had been a part of any company. At the office of Ford, Wetherbee & Co., at Fairview, at Storch's gatherings, he had mingled with his fellow-men amiably or tolerantly or contemptuously, as the case might be, ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the prayers were read by Adams, and the lessons by Buffet, the service being preceded by hymns. The greatest devotion was apparent in every individual; and in the children there was a seriousness unknown in the younger part of our communities at home. In the course of the Litany, they prayed for their sovereign and all the royal family, with much apparent loyalty and sincerity. Some family prayers, which were thought appropriate to their own particular case, were added to the usual service; and Adams, fearful of leaving ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... supposed that, by this time, the theme of universal admiration was lifted to the very pinnacle of popularity. No such thing. The curate began to cough; four fits of coughing one morning between the Litany and the Epistle, and five in the afternoon service. Here was a discovery—the curate was consumptive. How interestingly melancholy! If the young ladies were energetic before, their sympathy and solicitude now knew ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Dorian mode, which heads the collection in Boyce's Cathedral Music, and which is indeed the first harmonised setting of the Canticles ever composed for the English Liturgy, is very dull, but his harmony of the Litany and of the Versicles after the Creed, has never been equalled for beauty. His Canon tune, to which we sing Ken's Evening Hymn, is also unsurpassed, and his anthem, "If ye love Me," is one of wonderful sweetness and devout feeling. John Redford was his contemporary, and was organist of St. Paul's, ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... clamber up into the gallery with their instruments—a violoncello, a clarinet and a trombone. I see them and soon I hear them, for there is a hymn before the service, a wild strain, a remnant, if I mistake not, of some pre-Reformation litany. I have heard what I believe was its remote musical progenitor in the church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo at Venice not five years since; and again I have heard it far away in mid- Atlantic upon a grey sea-Sabbath in June, when ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... said Eileen feelingly. Her religious exercises were limited to going to church on Sunday morning and coming out, if possible, after the Litany. "And how do ...
— Scally - The Story of a Perfect Gentleman • Ian Hay
... air of flippancy about that reflexion of Coles you will never find in Sir Kenelm. Of the virtues of each plant and flower he used he was fully convinced; and when he tells of their powers, as in his "Aqua Mirabilis," the tale is like a solemn litany, and we are reminded of Clarendon's testimony to "the gravity of his motion." And so, his Closet once more open, he stands at the door, his majesty not greatly lessened; for the book contains a reminiscence of his rolling eloquence, ...
— The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened • Kenelm Digby
... against Parnell. And she did not like him to play with Eileen because Eileen was a protestant and when she was young she knew children that used to play with protestants and the protestants used to make fun of the litany of the Blessed Virgin. TOWER OF IVORY, they used to say, HOUSE OF GOLD! How could a woman be a tower of ivory or a house of gold? Who was right then? And he remembered the evening in the infirmary in Clongowes, the dark waters, the light at the pierhead ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... sacrificial-stone of the Factories and Mills. The cultured, too, and the wise, are counted among thy slaves. Even the righteous surrender themselves to thee and are willing to undergo that hideous transformation. O Success, what an infernal litany thy votaries and high-priests are chanting to thee.... Thou ruthless Gorgon, what crimes thou art committing, and what crimes are ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... rather, early. The "Eyetalians" go by in the frosty moonlight, from their last shift in the claim (for it is Saturday night), singing a litany. ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... clergy and the people. He shrank, however, from the office, and even petitioned the Emperor Maurice to withhold his confirmation of the election. While waiting for the Emperor's answer, Gregory employed the occasion in preaching to the people, calling them to repentance. A Litany was sung through the streets of the city by seven companies of the clergy and people, starting from different churches and meeting at the Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore. From this litany, perhaps, was taken the processional antiphon, "Deprecamur Te Domine," which was sung by Augustine ...
— St. Gregory and the Gregorian Music • E. G. P. Wyatt
... consisted of the incumbent (who became a "Vicar" by Act of Parliament in 1868) and a curate. Our list of services was as follows: Sunday—11 a.m., Morning Prayer, Litany, Table-prayers, and Sermon; 6 p.m., Evening Prayer and Sermon. There was Evening Prayer with a sermon on Thursdays, and a prayer-meeting in the schoolroom on Tuesday evenings. There were no extra services in Lent or Advent, nor on any Holy Days except Good Friday and Ascension Day. The Holy ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... celebrated one by one, as in a litany; for, said one of those poets, an Englishman ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... Wednesday is omitted, only the two prayers at the end being retained; these are read after the Litany. The Athanasian ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... imagery, relics, and crosses; dedicating of kirks, altars, days; vows to creatures; his purgatory, prayers for the dead; praying or speaking in a strange language, with his processions, and blasphemous litany, and multitude of advocates or mediators; his manifold orders, auricular confession; his desperate and uncertain repentance; his general and doubtsome faith; his satisfactions of men for their sins; his justification by works, opus operatum, ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... longer singing hymn and litany, swelled, hoarse through their helmets, the martial chorus. This warrior, in front of the Duke and the horsemen, seemed beside himself with the joy of battle. As he rode, and as he chaunted, he threw up his sword in the air like a gleeman, catching it nimbly as it fell [271], and flourishing ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... traveller near his end, From ghastly gash in mortal strife, Or blow of bandit's blood-stained knife? No! no! They're bawling to the Virgin, Like victim under hands of surgeon! From lamp-lit daub, proceeds the cry Of that unearthly litany! And now a train of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Mr. Raften again and again that evening and nothing was said. He slept little that night and was up early. He met Mr. Raften alone—rather tried to meet him alone. He wanted to have it over with. He was one of the kind not prayed for in the Litany that crave "sudden death." But Raften was unchanged. At breakfast Sam was as usual, except to Yan, and not very different to him. He had a swelling on his lip that he said he got "tusslin' with the boys somehow ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... vision "laid up in heaven";[95] its foundation is already laid upon earth, its capital is Jerusalem, and it is the mission of his people to extend its borders till it embraces all nations[96]—an idea which permeates the Jewish litany. ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... the year 1859. This of course involved various local indications of progress, for which the limits of this history afford no space. A new place, however, is brought to our notice by Mr. Eddy, named Deir Mimas, a large village on the river Litany. A few had here professed Protestantism about two years before, and had encountered a storm of persecution from members of the Greek Church, and from the Mohammedan governor of their district. Yet they had ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... wail on it, Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea. Weird is the mist from the summit to base of it; Sun of its heaven is wizened and grey; Phantom of life is the light on the face of it— Never is night on it, never is day! Here is the shore without flower or bird on it; Here is no litany sweet of the springs— Only the haughty, harsh thunder is heard on it, Only the storm, with the roar ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Loup is in the last lap of the journey to Quebec. There are a score or so of little hamlets, the names of which—St. Alexandre, St. Andre, St. Pascal, St. Pacome, St. Valier and so on—sound like a reading from the Litany of the Saints. And, passing the last of them, we saw across the narrowed St. Lawrence a trail of lace against the darkness of the Laurentine hills, a mass of filigree that moved and writhed, so that we ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... chiefly of women, old men, and children, the virtues of their deceased benefactor. Presently, the sermon came to an end, and the colloquial delivery of the discourse was changed for the monotone of a litany recitation: the people answering with ready response, and many of them employing the aid of their rosaries. The fragrance of incense filled the air; tapers and flowers adorned the altar, above which ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... personal sight of "the King in His beauty," in order to our spiritual orthodoxy. Let me quote again from the Prayer Book of the Moravians, from which I gave one short extract in the last chapter. In their "Church Litany," among the first suffrages, occur these petitions: "From coldness to Thy merits and death. From error and misunderstanding, From the loss of our glory in Thee, Preserve us, gracious Lord and God." The words are the very soul of St Paul, as it ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... returned, headed by a Medicine-man, whom the English called the 'mace-bearer.' With the slow and stately measure of a mystic dance this great high priest of heathen rites advanced chanting a sort of litany. Both litany and dance were gradually taken up by tens, by hundreds, and finally by all the thousands of the devotees, who addressed Drake with shouts of Hyoh! and invested him with a headdress of rare plumage and a necklace of quaint beads. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... 'the flight of the lonely soul to the lonely God.' My brother, it is not enough for you to say, 'We have sinned'; say, 'I have sinned.' It is not enough that from a gathered congregation there should go up the united litany, 'Lord, have mercy upon us! Christ, have mercy upon us! Lord, have mercy upon us!' You must make the prayer your own: 'Lord, have mercy upon me!' It is not enough that you should believe, as I suppose most of you fancy that you believe, that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... diabolism in French letters. As Sainte-Beuve wrote of Baudelaire: "S'est pris l'enfer et s'est fait diable." The lucubrations of the so-called Satanic School of Byron, Shelley and Hugo were surpassed by Baudelaire's rapt worship of evil as the great power of the world. Take his famous Litany to Satan: ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... warning and denunciation. Sixtus the Fourth fitted out a fleet against them. Innocent the Eighth made them his mark from the beginning of his Pontificate to the end. St. Pius the Fifth added the "Auxilium Christianorum" to our Lady's Litany in thankfulness for his victory over them. Gregory the Thirteenth with the same purpose appointed the Festival of the Rosary. Clement the Ninth died of grief on account of their successes. The venerable Innocent the Eleventh appointed the Festival of the Holy Name of Mary, for their ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Constantinople at the head of four hundred thousand men; and the groundless panic of the citizens of Nice will present an image of the terror which he had inspired. The accident of a procession, and the sound of a doleful litany, "From the fury of the Tartars, good Lord, deliver us," had scattered the hasty report of an assault and massacre. In the blind credulity of fear, the streets of Nice were crowded with thousands of both sexes, who knew ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... "That's the Litany of a Pagan, Donna," he answered. "One has to believe to understand when he goes to church in a city, but if you're a Pagan like me, you only have to understand ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... That is why so large a portion of what is written in the great style is anonymous—like Homer and much of the Bible and certain old ballads and songs. It is for this reason that Walter Pater is right when he says that the important thing in Religion is the Ceremony, the Litany, the Ritual, the Liturgical Chants, and not the Creeds or the Commandments, or discussion upon Creed or Commandment. Creeds change, Morality changes, Mysticism changes, Philosophy changes—but the Word of our God—the Word of Humanity—in gesture, in ritual, in ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... to the general fund for the restoration, and some others, made gifts of special objects for the embellishment of the choir. By the end of May, 1892, the mosaic pavement was almost completed, and the bishop's throne, the pulpit, the litany desk, and eighteen stalls had been erected. These gifts were solemnly dedicated at a stately service held on June 2nd, when, after the litany and an anthem, the special service was taken by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the altar, and after that Te Deum was sung. ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting
... take the place of this last act of Adrienne Lecouvreur at the Comedie. Ah! she should have stayed at the Comedie. Yes, I come back to my litany! I cannot help it! We shall lose as much as she will. Yes, I know that we can say Mlle. Dudlay is left to us. Oh, she will always stay with us! I cannot help saying it. What ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... to God in their own behalf; caused them to recite the litany on their knees, at the foot of a large crucifix; and then ordered them to retire, but to have confidence in Jesus Christ. He himself withdrew also into a chamber; from whence coming out some time after, he went down into the chalop with a little child, and having caused him ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... martial music to which the procession had moved had diminished to a dim, melodic undertone, over which the prayer of the Primate rose and fell in swift, rhythmic periods—a litany of ascription and petition, to which the people, standing with faces towards the East and with outstretched ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the hills, each house and tree and figure seemed still penetrated with light, the glorified creatures of some just revealed and already fading world. The echoes of the evening bell were floating on the lake, and from a boat in front, full of peasant-folk, there rose a sound of singing, some litany of saint or virgin, which stole in harmonies, ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... importance of Iemon, now in very fact Master of Tamiya. Whether or not he followed the advice of Cho[u]bei, and gave the old woman tokage (lizard); whether her constant small journeys to the houses of neighbours, reciting a litany of praise of this wondrous son-in-law; whether the loss of the companion of so many years wore out the feeble frame; it is fact that O'Naka followed her lord before the maple leaf turned red. Again the Tamiya was the scene of the funereal chanting of the priest. The corpse removed ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... certainly very well performed. Such was always the case at Barchester, as the musical education of the choir had been good, and the voices had been carefully selected. The psalms were beautifully chanted; the Te Deum was magnificently sung; and the litany was given in a manner which is still to be found at Barchester, but, if my taste be correct, is to be found nowhere else. The litany in Barchester cathedral has long been the special task to which Mr. Harding's skill and voice have been devoted. Crowded audiences ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... not heard this litany before? Who does not know this never-varying refrain of all politicians? That the mass bleeds, that it is being robbed and exploited, I know as well as our vote-baiters. But I insist that not the handful ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... souls! This is the second natural birth;—for I do not speak of those peculiar religious experiences which form the point of transition in many lives between the consciousness of a general relation to the Divine nature and a special personal relation. The litany should count a prayer for them in the list of its supplications; masses should be said for them as for souls in purgatory; all good Christians should remember them as they remember those in peril through travel or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... meeting was held in a wine-shed. As Vinicius drew near, the murmur of prayer reached his ears. On entering he saw by dim lamplight a few tens of kneeling figures sunk in prayer. They were saying a kind of litany; a chorus of voices, male and female, repeated every moment, "Christ have mercy on us." In those voices, deep, piercing sadness ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... ulterior effect upon his men if such an example had been set them? These rough Canadian irregulars consisted, as they do to-day, of the finest fighting material in the world. The law of self-preservation had no place in the litany of Isaac Brock. He was a daily dealer in self-sacrifice. Besides, this was not the time or place to calculate involved issues. He was not a cold-blooded politician, nor was he an opportunist; he was merely ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... you had no manners? The warmest expressions of regard from my mouth seem to reach your ears transformed into insults. Were I to repeat the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, you would retort as though I had been reproaching you. This is because you hate me. You never ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... the eyes may see Only the glancing needle which they hold; But all my life is blossoming inwardly, And every breath is like a litany; While through each labor, like a thread of gold, Is woven ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... very likely to turn Sandy so sullen that he would refuse to answer, or to tell the truth, at any rate; and Ford's muscles were very, very sore. He did not feel equal to a scuffle with Sandy, just then. He repeated something which sounded like an impromptu litany and had to do with the ultimate ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... roll back and off. The day for which all other days are made has closed, and the world has burned down, and the last cinder has gone out, and an angel flying on errand from world to world will poise long enough over the dead earth to chant the funeral litany as ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... England there ever was a time when no man knew or cared about this saddening condition of affairs? The light failed soon, and the boats durst not hang about after the fleet began to sail; but, until the last minute, one long, slow, drizzle of misery seemed to fall like a dreary litany on the surgeon's nerves. The smashed fingers alone were painful to see, but there were other accidents much worse. Every man in the fleet had been compelled to fight desperately for life, and you cannot go through ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Thomas Prince's litany, rhymed by a later bard, summed up the gist of all the supplications that ascended ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... sufficiently high rate the doctrines of Oxford; and so little gifted with taste, that he would have probably failed to appreciate the sublimities of Brady and Tate. Nor could Peter have known that the 'liturgy of the heart' was in the Covenanter's cottage, and that the 'litany' of the spirit breathed from his evening devotions. But it is all known to the Rev. Mr. Cumming. He knows, too, that there were sufferings and privations endured by the persecuted Presbyterians of those days, of which writers of less ingenuity have no adequate conception; ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... sat rocking herself and softly moaning, as if I were not there; I not daring to speak to the lone and awful woman. After a little pause, she knelt down before the picture of our Lady of the Holy Heart, and spoke to her by all the fanciful and poetic names of the Litany. ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Okkak, and expressing our joy at finding them well in health, and our hopes, that they were all walking worthy of their Christian profession, as a good example to their heathen neighbours. Then the Litany was read, and a spirit of true devotion ...
— Journal of a Voyage from Okkak, on the Coast of Labrador, to Ungava Bay, Westward of Cape Chudleigh • Benjamin Kohlmeister and George Kmoch
... pretty brown head; and then up came a brown feathery body; and last of all came the slender legs on to the edge of the nest. There she turned, and, looking down into the nest, from which came a whole litany of chirpings for breakfast, said, 'Lie still, little ones.' Then she turned to the children. 'My husband is King ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... lettuce leaf; a draught of milk of Sundays, but meat never saving holydays. I sleep never beyond three hours of a night, and of a Friday night not at all. I creep round our chapel on my bare knees every Friday morrow and Saturday even, and do lick a cross in the dust at every shrine. I tell our Lady's litany morrow and even. Sorry! When every sister of our house doth reckon ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... discontent south of the border. The prison with which Laud had rewarded Prynne's dumpy quarto had tamed his spirit so little that a new tract, written within its walls, denounced the bishops as devouring wolves and lords of Lucifer. A fellow-prisoner, John Bastwick, declared in his "Litany" that "Hell was broke loose, and the devils in surplices, hoods, copes, and rochets were come amongst us." Burton, a London clergyman silenced by the High Commission, called on all Christians to resist the bishops as "robbers of ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... was given with the same ceremony to Tobaidischinni, and the blue tube with the same ceremony to Ahsonnutli. The quiver was removed from Ahsonnutli before she knelt. The song-priest, kneeling in front of Naiyenesgony, repeated a long litany with responses by the invalid, when the gods left the lodge led by Naiyenesgony who deposited his tube and stick in a pinon tree, Tobaidischinni depositing his in a cedar tree, and Ahsonnutli hers in ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... to inspect the property, which they had seen only once—and that a mere passing glance. Maitre Gouy and his wife escorted them, and then began a litany of complaints. ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... smashed; obscene songs were sung, in form of litany, from the pulpits and altars; what was done with the communion-vessels, when they were not worth stealing,"—is hideous to the religious sense, and shall not ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle |
